Chapter 158

Justin’s POV

When I left Helen’s house that night, it was hard to convince myself to leave the front porch. Russo went down the steps ahead of me and waited in the light of the street. I glanced behind me, looking at the window over my shoulder.

Inside, Randy was helping Helen clean up after our dinner. It had been odd, having a meal with my mate with essentially two chaperones. Both Randy and Russo stayed for the meal, and the four of us sat around the table talking about stupid stuff like the weather and where it might be nice to take a vacation once things had settled down. It was like pretending all of the other problems didn’t exist.

In some ways, it angered me not to be able to be close to my mate. Now that I was calmer about everything, my lycan had decided that perhaps the best course of action would now be to fuck her into submission. He wanted to take our wayward mate and spread our scent all over her body and inside, leaving behind his essence and impregnating her so there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that no matter what house she lived in, she belonged to us.

They were cruel thoughts, and I didn’t like them because they didn’t take her into consideration at all. But at least my lycan was willing to get close enough to do anything with her, and wanting to claim her in some fashion was a shift in the right direction, even if the thoughts were the wrong way to get there, being somewhat violent.

Every time the lycan started to think thoughts about my mate that I knew were wrong, I tried doing what Russo suggested and asserting my authority against him by making my opposing wishes abundantly clear. Russo was right. My lycan and I were two halves to the same creature, and I didn’t have to relinquish control to him if all he was going to do was destroy the life we spent working on—and my lycan certainly did like to destroy things.

But he was going to find out another outlet for all of that anger. Not that there weren’t plenty of worthy targets out there. My father and the Huntsman and William were still at large. All I had to do was work training him to put that aggression to good use.

“How do you feel about how dinner went?” Russo finally asked me when we were several houses away from Helen’s.

I tucked my hands behind my back and drew a deep sigh, looking up at the stars. “It was boring and kind of sucked.”

“It was calm, and that was good,” he said.

“I suppose I’m not used to things being calm between Helen and me.”

Russo shot me a glare that I could see even in the low light from the street lamps. “Yeah, we all know what sort of things you and Helen usually get up to. And you’re right. It’s not calm. But I think if you were to try something like that right now when you got excited and distracted, your lycan is going to completely take over. Tell me honestly that he’s ready to interact that closely with Helen safely.”

I shook my head. “He wasn’t even safe before with her.”

When he kept staring at me, I grumbled, “You’re right. He’s a danger to her.”

Russo nodded his head. “So, boring or not, I think this is the way things need to continue.” He poked my shoulder. “Did you notice how happy she was?”

“I did notice that,” I replied. “I learned a lot about her.”

Russo looked at me, his wings fluttering on his back. “Like what?” he asked.

“Well, honestly, I didn’t know she was so fond of having her fish broiled instead of fried or smoked.”

Russo dug his finger into my arm, poking me again. “The lycan king is just a big old softy at heart. You’re learning about her.”

I swatted his hand away from me. “Knock it off, fae.”

But I couldn’t help the smile that twitched on my lips. Was this what having a real friend felt like? Was it okay to tease one another?

Footsteps pounded behind me, and I caught harsh breathing. I spun at the sound, alert for any attack. But it was just Randy catching up with us.

“Is she all settled in for the night then?” I asked Randy.

He nodded. “She’ll never notice the guards that are posted in the house across the street or at the very back of her backyard. They combed the scent suppressant through their hair, so she shouldn’t even catch a whiff of them. They’ll keep a good eye on her while she stretches her leg and tries to live life a little bit on her own.”

He grinned at me. “Thank you, alpha.”

This startled me. “For what?” I asked.

“For tonight. For treating her nicely.”

I scowled back at him. “This is not the only night that I have treated her nicely,” I protested, growling between both of them. “We’ve had many nights of passion between us.”

Randy now fell into step beside me and said, “Yeah, we all know about the nights of passion. It’s not the same thing. And during those nights of passion, did you ever notice the small things about her personality, like how she looks guilty before she eats off a plate?”

I was startled by that. “No. In fact, I didn’t even notice that tonight.”

“I’m sure it’s leftover from her parents feeding her scraps,” he said. “She probably feels guilty eating at the dinner table with all of us like tonight. But she did very well trying to suppress her discomfort so we could all have a pleasant meal together.”

I lowered my chin. “That was a new experience for me, too,” I admitted.

Randy put a hand on my shoulder, supporting me. “I know. The few times your father let me eat with you, it was a lonely experience. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been to have all of your meals by yourself. Just be glad you had a table and a chair to eat off of in your room, even if you had chains around your wrist.”

This train of thought was a little bit disturbing to me. I had faced enough hard truths for one day, so I changed the subject. “She looked really happy when I gave her that job,” I said. “Thank you for giving me the idea for that, Russo.”

He smiled at me. “You’re welcome, and I honestly hope things work out between the two of you. You had such potential at the very beginning. It would seem a shame if all of that fell apart because you guys couldn’t work together.”

“We’ll learn how,” I said. “And I finally realized that after both our warped upbringings that, we might need some help in making that happen. So I’m glad that I have the two of you who I can trust.”

I squashed back a shiver at that thought. “Please tell me that I can trust you both. It seems like every time I turn around, somebody else has betrayed me lately.”

“You can trust me,” both Russo and Randy said at the exact same time.

None of us spoke aloud the horrible truth, but I’m sure we all thought the same thing. I could trust them as long as that despicable wizard that my father had employed didn’t get a hold of them. I really hoped that that wizard wasn’t back in my father’s employ or, worse, working on his own. The last time that wizard had been accounted for, he was being used by the Huntsman, and I only needed to have to look out for so many enemies.