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Dreamcatcher 2

Ben in the Shadows

Ben, a werewolf, has spent a decade being experimented on by a
mad scientist. Retreating into a fantasy world to cope with his

pain, he eagerly awaits a hero to save him. Jasper, a lifelong
screw up, proves heroic in rescuing him, but is convinced of his
own ill-worth and terrified he won’t be able to live up to the

romantic fantasies Ben has of him.

Once mated, the two broken men gain access to each other’s

dreams, where neither man can hide from the shadows of his
troubled past, and the skeletons in both their closets threaten to

overcome the love they both need so badly. Jasper and Ben are
bound together for eternity, but will they find in each other their

destruction…or their salvation?

Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal,
Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 48,873 words

BEN IN THE SHADOWS

Dreamcatcher 2

Ellen Ginsberg

EVERLASTING CLASSIC

MANLOVE

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Everlasting Classic ManLove

BEN IN THE SHADOWS
Copyright © 2011 by Ellen Ginsberg
E-book ISBN: 1-61034-894-X

First E-book Publication: September 2011

Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without
express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance
to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com

Letter to Readers

Dear Readers,

If you have purchased this copy of Ben in the Shadows by Ellen
Ginsberg from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you.
Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

Regarding E-book Piracy

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This is Ellen Ginsberg’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please
respect Ms. Ginsberg’s right to earn a living from her work.

Amanda Hilton, Publisher

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BEN IN THE SHADOWS

Dreamcatcher 2

ELLEN GINSBERG

Chapter One

Ben jerked his head and whined as a latex-gloved hand caressed

his face, smearing a strip of his own blood across his muzzle.

“Be still,” came the voice from above him.
He didn’t need Pierson to tell him. Between the stuff Pierson

doped him up with twice a day and the heavy leather restraints that
bound him to the table, Ben was surprised he’d managed to move as
much as he had. At any rate, it hadn’t been fear that had motivated
him so much as distaste at the gentle, almost caring touch of his
captor. Ben had endured so much torture from Pierson over the years
that the man’s occasional moments of compassion were disarming.
Almost intolerable. And, as Dr. Pierson knew all too well, there was
an awful lot Ben could tolerate.

Distantly, Ben registered the sharp sting of the wide-gauge needle

as it punctured his skin and the dull ache as the blood was drawn.
That he could handle. That he was used to. He was used to much,
much worse treatment, if he cared to let his mind settle on it.

He didn’t. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the thirteen-inch TV-DVD

combo resting on a metal file cabinet in the corner of the room. That
tiny set had taught him everything he needed to know about the world
outside the lab, the world he’d scarcely seen for himself. That set had

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been his friend, his comforter, his teacher, and his escape into a world
with laugh tracks and handsome faces and conflict that always ended
happily. If it weren’t for the occasional snap of latex or sting of a
needle or cut of a knife, he could dissolve into that fantasy altogether.

“I know, I know, it hurts, it hurts,” Pierson purred as another

needle bit into the tough patch of exposed skin where the fur on his
foreleg had been shaved. There were enough holes in that square inch
of flesh to make him look like a junkie in his human form, and like a
junkie’s, his skin had begun to harden around the holes from overuse.

A dull pain spread through his leg as the needle withdrew another

vial of blood. Ben couldn’t be certain how many years he had been
here, but the words too long and long enough came to mind. Long
enough to be cut up and prodded into and injected and inspected and
sewn back together more times than he wanted to remember. Long
enough that he would probably never forget.

“There. It’s all over now, my little pet,” Pierson whispered, and

Ben bristled at the endearment.

Ben felt the snap of tension released around his midsection as

Pierson loosened the straps that bound him to the surgical table,
jarring him out of his thoughts. He scrambled off the hard metal table,
toenails clicking on the linoleum as he stretched out his wolf form. A
quick glance to Pierson showed he was busy meticulously labeling the
vials. Were it not for the dreamy, drugged haze the sedative left him
in, Ben could take the bastard down in one leaping bound. Under the
present circumstances, however, the best he could hope for was a little
privacy as he shifted into his human form to stretch. He glanced
sideways at Pierson, who had removed his latex gloves and was
washing his hands for dear life in the sink. Ben had gotten a few
glimpses of them lately, had seen that they were red and cracked and
raw from so much scrubbing.

After sterilizing the table, Pierson set the vials on the counter,

pausing to neatly order them amid the great sprawling mess that had
overtaken the countertop. No matter how painstakingly Pierson tried

Ben in the Shadows

to organize his ever-growing collection of specimens, they were
simply too great in number to attain any degree of order. His lab, as
he had come to call it, was nothing more than a dank basement where
he had come to horde the hodgepodge pieces of medical equipment he
collected over the years.

There were infusion pumps, EEGs, ECGs, ultrasound

machines…Ben knew all their names by heart, as familiar as he’d
become with them over the years, but these monitors were the least of
his concerns. More upsetting was the cornucopia of surgical
instruments Pierson so loved to use in his examinations—the scalpels,
drill bits, retractors, the suction tips and tubes and clamps and
occluders and forceps used to spread open, cut into, dilate, prod at,
suction out, and filter in. And then there were the endless wooden
cabinets lining the area above the little workbench Pierson had
installed, the home to all the medications he’d been fed, regardless of
dosage and contraindication.

It didn’t matter how much he gave him. Ben’s superhuman

immune system always took care of the damage. Pierson had made
damn sure to chronicle just how much damage Ben’s body could
absorb, typing out each of his experiments and filing them away in
one of the many cabinets that lined the walls of the basement. Pierson
had a clear record of every cut he’d made, every bone he’d broken,
every poison he’d administered to his howling, crying subject.

Ben could take it, though. He was strong. He was accustomed to

the pain. He could barely remember a time in his life when he didn’t
feel it. He knew he’d only been a kid when Pierson found him
wandering around Borderland State Park amidst the jagged rocks
below the cliff that jutted out of the Devils River. One rock, Ben had
noticed, was streaked with blood, and he couldn’t stop staring at it, as
if it offered some explanation for why he had no memory of how he’d
gotten there, or who his parents were, or where he’d come from. Ben
knew now what that explanation was. He had a name for it. Amnesia.
He’d hurt his head on the rock and in an instant, wiped out any

Ellen Ginsberg

memory of anything that had come before that moment when he, as a
scared little kid, had found himself naked and shaking on that rock
with no idea what he was doing there. Amnesia was what he’d later
come to call his predicament and what he called it now, but at the
time, the only word Ben had known for it was loneliness.

He sat there for a long time, wishing someone would come and

find him and tell him what to do, and then suddenly, he saw someone
standing in the distance, staring at him.

That was the first time he’d seen Dr. Alan Pierson.
In spite of his loneliness, Ben had been instinctively scared of

Pierson and the way he was staring at him. Ben had shifted into his
wolf form to protect himself, but Pierson wasn’t deterred by the sight
of a wolf emerging before his eyes in the place where the scared little
boy had been. If anything, Dr. Pierson was encouraged by the sight.
He had asked Ben if he understood him, and when Ben nodded,
realizing that he could, Pierson had been very pleased. Pierson had
smiled and told Ben he could help him. Those words were comforting
to Ben, and he decided to trust his new friend.

Pierson took him home, and fed him, and cleaned him up, and

bought him new clothes and the little TV to watch. He discovered that
Ben knew how to read and write a little, and he had helped Ben with
that, too, teaching him all kinds of things about the world around him.
Pierson was a scientist, and he believed in education. Ben appreciated
what Pierson had done for him. He wanted to help Pierson, too, and
Pierson assured him he could be a very big help, not just to him, but
to science. Ben’s heart had swelled with pride at the importance
conveyed in that word and the reverence with which Pierson spoke it.
He agreed to do whatever he could to help the cause.

That was when the experiments started.
“You were a very good boy today.”
Pierson smiled warmly at Ben over his shoulder as he adjusted the

contents of the overflowing refrigerator to make room for the fresh
batch of specimens. Ben held his tongue, gazing regrettably over at

Ben in the Shadows

the television as Pierson flipped it off, rolling two errant office chairs
over to the examination table and sitting in one. He gestured toward
the other for Ben to sit in it. Ben stared at it hesitatingly.

“Rather just watch TV if that’s okay with you.”
Disgust spread over Pierson’s face as he digested Ben’s words

like a bitter pill. “We do very valuable work here,” he told Ben. “I
didn’t think I needed to remind you how much more important that is
than one of your silly shows.”

Anger rose in Ben’s throat as he stared around the room at the

dusty file cabinets that held the evidence of Pierson’s work. As far as
Ben knew, Pierson had never breathed a word of it to another soul. “If
it’s so important,” Ben began, trying for an even tone but unable to
hold his temper, “then what’s it doing in the middle of this crappy
basement where no one can see it?”

Pierson’s eyes flashed with rage at that. But only for a moment,

Ben noticed hopefully. That was good. When he was in his wolf form,
he was at the mercy of Pierson’s endless experiments, but as a human,
Ben had a good sense of how to push his captor’s buttons. Pierson
was far too paranoid and reclusive to ever invite over a guest or
anyone who might help Ben. Suggesting that Pierson share his
“work”—and more importantly, Ben—with the rest of the world was
the best escape plan Ben could think of.

Pierson’s momentary flash of anger settled into a sour, tired

expression on his face. He turned the look on Ben. “That was a
naughty tone you took with me.”

Ben bit his lip. Maybe he’d pushed too far after all. “I’m sorry,”

he said, quickly and obediently.

Pierson’s expression softened at the words. “That’s good,” he

said. “Because you know what a bad boy gets.”

Ben nodded. He knew all too well. “A broken bone.”
“That’s right.” Pierson sat back in his chair, relaxing a little. He

tilted his chin upward, as if to remind himself of his own importance.
“I can’t have you out of line. You know that.” He glanced at Ben a

Ellen Ginsberg

moment then flitted his eyes away guiltily. “Although I suppose
sometimes it must make you somewhat eager to be rid of me…”

“I’m not,” Ben said quickly, moving to sit in the chair next to

Pierson. Ben knew full well what would happen if he didn’t placate
the crazy bastard, and fast. He chose his words carefully. “It’s just this
lab. Obviously you need more space. And better equipment.” Ben bit
his tongue at the thought of that. Abruptly, he banished the thought.
“What you’re trying to accomplish here…People would help you if
they found out about it. You’d be a hero.”

Pierson’s eyes gleamed at Ben’s little diatribe. It figured. All Ben

had done was recite the same words Pierson told him all these years,
the ones he used to justify Ben’s pain when it got so bad he cried and
howled and begged for mercy. Soon it will be over, and you’ll have
done your part to save the world, Pierson would tell him when he
started to cry. He’d said it so many times, Ben had started to believe it
himself. Except for the part about it being over soon.

Pierson brushed a tear from his eye. “Do you really think so?” he

asked. Ben nodded furiously, and the older man smiled, patting Ben’s
thigh. “Me too.”

With that, he pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket

and handed it to Ben. Ben glanced down at it, and his eyes flitted back
to Pierson, disbelieving. “Is this…what I think it is?”

Pierson nodded. “A letter,” he said. “A request for funding.

There’s a company not too far from here, BioSolve, that specializes in
medical patents and drug development. I think they’d be quite
interested in the little miracle healer I’ve got stashed away here.”

He ruffled Ben’s hair affectionately. The second Pierson removed

his hand, Ben’s moved to his hair quickly to smooth it back down, his
stomach turning as it always did when Pierson’s attitude toward him
changed and Ben was promoted from medical subject to confidante.
Still…Pierson had drafted what would hopefully be Ben’s ticket out
of this hell hole. As graciously as he could, he smiled then turned his
eyes to the words on the page.

Ben in the Shadows

To Whom It May Concern (This Means YOU!!!),

As I write this letter, a letter of such dire importance I can

scarcely STAND the way my brilliance escaped the attention of
numerous other “highly esteemed” but—mark my words!—KNOW-
NOTHING individuals in your field, I find myself in exceptionally dire
straits. For nearly a decade now, I have been working on a MIRACLE
DRUG OF EPIC PROPORTIONS, the far-reaching effects of which I
have only just begun to document. What we are talking about here is
nothing short of a NEW PHASE IN HUMAN EVOLUTION, given the
extent to which said drug has properties to fight disease, speed
recovery rates, and even allow its user to essentially CHEAT DEATH
ITSELF!!!

I haven’t completed developing the drug yet. BUT!—and this is

where YOU come in—I am humbly asking for your cooperation, as I
know any REASONABLE, SCIENTIFICALLY MINDED ADULT
would provide it in the name of PROGRESS. I would like to discuss
with your company the possibility of partnering on a business venture
certain to SAVE THE HUMAN RACE and also, I loathe to mention,
make you lots of “$$$,” to put things in your coarse terms, since I am
certain from my past dealings with your types and given the
abominable state of health care in America that is actually all you
really care about. I would, of course, slow my own rate of scientific
discovery by going through all the official channels, but
circumstances which need to be SEEN TO BE BELIEVED prevent me
from doing so. As such, I beg of you to contact me AT ONCE! A minor
financial investment on your part will secure your place in the history
books!! I anxiously await a reply at the number included below. The
fate of the human race hangs in the balance…THIS WILL BE YOUR
ONE AND ONLY WARNING!!!!!!!

CALL NOW!!!

Ellen Ginsberg

Dr. Alan Pierson, ex-PhD, current BIO-REVOLUTIONARY!
555-0640

Ben’s trembling hands closed tighter around the paper as he

finished reading the words on the page. If he could have, he would
have crumpled it into a tight ball and pitched it into the trash. He’d
hoped the letter would be his salvation, but Pierson’s mad, rambling
scrawl didn’t stand a chance of being taken seriously.

And there was no way he could possibly tell him that.
“Well?” Pierson asked haughtily, snatching the letter from Ben

and folding it with sharp, definitive creases. “I thought I’d send it
today.” He eyed Ben cautiously. “Unless you think they can’t be
trusted? You don’t suppose they’d try to steal my work, do you?”

“Not at all,” Ben said quickly, eager to disable his paranoia before

it could spread further and prevent him from dismissing the idea of
contacting BioSolve altogether. “It’s just…they might be a little more
amendable if you didn’t—I mean, if you were a little less accusing of
them. Just for the first impression, you know. To get them here.”

Pierson’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, no, no. That’s the brilliance of

it. You see? A person who isn’t put off by this will almost certainly be
an ally. Someone who feels the way I do. Someone I can trust.”

Ben sighed. Pierson might be well on his way to a straitjacket, but

his particular brand of crazy made a strange sort of sense. “Still,” Ben
said. “Maybe I could look over it a little before you send it. You
know, for…spelling errors, or whatever.”

Pierson snorted. “You? You’re just a boy.” Absently, Ben shrunk

back from him, feeling his confidence deflate, even as he reminded
himself it wasn’t true. He’d been a boy when he arrived, but he’d seen
his reflection change in the mirror. In spite of his lean body, the lines
of his face were harder than they’d been when they came. He
suspected he was around nineteen or twenty, a full-grown man,
though it was hard to conceive of himself as such under Pierson’s

Ben in the Shadows

insistent coddling. “And need I remind you I’m a PhD,” Pierson
added huffily.

“Ex-PhD,” Ben said, and added, not without some irony, “current

bio-revolutionary.”

Pierson’s gaze darkened. “Of course, if you think it’d be better not

to send it…”

Ben shook his head firmly. “Send it,” he said. That surge of hope

in his chest that came with the appearance of the letter had risen and
shrunk to a hard knot in his throat, but it was there all the same. At
worst, the letter would be ignored and he’d be stuck here. At best,
someone would read it and show up out of plain perverse curiosity.
Maybe whoever came would even surmise Pierson’s mental state and
send a shrink down to retrieve him. Probably Ben could use one
himself.

The rest of the evening went on uneventfully, with Pierson puffing

himself up about the goodness he was doing for the human race, and
his brilliance, and his overwhelming spirit and courage. Each time
Ben seconded him, and each time he surprised himself with how
easily the words came to his mouth the more he repeated them. That
had been happening a lot lately. Sometimes he worried that if he ever
found a way to escape into the real world, he’d be too fucked up to
even face it.

Later that night, when Ben had shucked his clothes and shifted, he

lay back down in his cage in the dark room and stared at the glow of
the television. There was an action movie marathon on AMC, and
Ben let his worries drift into a world where the lines between good
and evil were clearly drawn, where the good guys always won in the
end, where Daniel Craig or Clive Owen or Russell Crowe or some
equally muscled hotshot would seek out evil and destroy it, and where
romance was almost always promised with the happy ending.

He let his eyes grow red and heavy, and he imagined that the

world outside was just like that and some attractive, brooding stranger
would rise out of his humble, rough-edged beginnings to his destined

Ellen Ginsberg

role as an action hero. That stranger would find Ben and rescue him
because it was fate, and they would fall in love and kiss as the movie
faded to black. There would be nothing more to show after that
because there wouldn’t be any more conflict. They would live long,
happy lives together.

Every night, Ben fell asleep with the TV on, hoping to let the lines

of reality and fantasy blur just like that, so he could tell himself in his
dreams there was no difference between the world outside the lab and
the one inside the television set. And every morning, Ben would wake
up from his happy haze and find himself jerked out of the cage and
onto Pierson’s table. His late-night hopes would dissolve with the
cold smack of reality, and he’d realize in the harsh morning light just
how stupid he’d been to hope a better life would find him.

Desperately, he tried to chase the realization from his mind to

keep it from penetrating his dreams, but he couldn’t, and instead, he
drifted to sleep whimpering, his mind stuck like a skipping record on
one terrible thought. He was stuck here. His life was fixed. And no
one would ever come to rescue him.

For Ben, there would be no happy ending.

Ben in the Shadows

Chapter Two

Jasper was a bastard, not a hero.
He stared regretfully at the still-burning tip of the cigarette

wedged between his fingers, the one he’d smoked all the way down to
the filter. His fingers clung to it stubbornly, but he forced himself to
drop it on the asphalt and grind it out under his shoe. There. It was
done now, the very last one in the very last pack he intended to buy.
As a werewolf, Jasper and his indestructible lungs might stand zero
chance of getting cancer, but that certainly wasn’t the case for every
sad sap that walked through his perpetual cloud of smoke..He’d been
considering quitting for a while, but tonight, his late-blooming
conscience had finally talked him into making the leap, and he drove
right past the gas station on the way here without even stopping for
another pack of Camels. For five minutes, he’d actually felt good
about himself.

Those five minutes were officially over. Now he just wanted

another smoke. He wasn’t cut out for this good-guy shit.

He turned and walked up the drive of the house of Dr. Alan

Pierson.  Ex-PhD, current Bio-Revolutionary, he reminded himself,
recalling the laugh riot that self-bestowed title had induced with the
other BioSolve execs when they passed “Comrade” Pierson’s letter
around the boardroom. Jasper had smiled and snickered with the rest
of the corporate assholes until they decided it would be downright
hilarious  if someone actually set up a meeting with the lunatic and
provided them with all the grisly details. And of course, that someone
just  had  to be Jasper. Not only was he exactly the sort of irreverent
prick needed for the job, he was also the company’s youngest exec.

Ellen Ginsberg

Hilarious as the prospect of meeting Pierson was, it wasn’t like any of
the senior execs were volunteering to do it themselves. The meeting
was, after all, off the clock.

Jasper sighed and stared up at the rickety old two-story farmhouse

in front of him, his nerves jangling in spite of the nicotine rush. He
checked the address Pierson had given him on the phone. Yep, this
was the place all right. Jasper snorted, giving the exterior the once-
over again. Good Lord. If Mrs. Haversham and Dr. Frankenstein had
ever gotten married and moved in together, this decrepit-old-mansion-
cum-mad-scientist’s-laboratory would have been their undisputed
dream home.

Briefly, he thought about turning tail and going home. It wasn’t

like he could be fired for failing to indulge his boss’s lame excuse for
fun around the office. Get it together, Jas. Don’t be such a pussy.
With that thought, he took a breath and rang the bell. He always had
responded well to self-abuse.

The door creaked with predictable creepiness, and a man with

smooth black hair, a hawkish nose, and two eyebrows painfully in
need of plucking peered out from behind it.

“Dr. Pierson?”
“Yes, yes, that’s right! In the, ah, the flesh, as it would be. Come

in, come in…” he said, ushering Jasper into the house with a
grandiose gesture and closing the door with an all-too-final-sounding
thunk.

Jasper stared uncomfortably at Pierson, trying to keep his eyes

from trailing to the heaps of manuscripts and medical texts that lined
the bookshelves, counters, coffee tables, and windowsills. Someone
seriously needed to call Hoarders on this guy, and fast.

Pierson clapped his hands together, rubbing them vigorously.

“The, ah, specimen of note is in the laboratory. Fancy name for my
basement,” he said with a decidedly creepy giggle and a wink.

Jasper stared blankly at him until he realized the maniac wanted a

response to his little joke. “Charming,” was the best he could manage

Ben in the Shadows

as he contemplated the myriad implications of the word specimen. If
this guy had a basement full of blood and urine samples he wanted to
play show and tell with…

Jasper shook his head firmly. BioSolve can blow me if they think

I’m sticking around for that. A bold offer, considering how utterly
unfuckable the other board members were. Even by Jasper’s
standards. He was, after all, the guy who had spent most of college
sleeping his way through the undergraduate classes in a chemical-
induced stupor. And why the hell not? Drugs and alcohol had been
relatively easy to come by, and in those conditions, there had been a
plentiful number of guys, either gay, bisexual, or “just
experimenting,” that had been ready and willing to provide a further
distraction from the mess that was his life. Come to think of it, there
might have been some girls in there, too. He couldn’t really
remember. Things had gotten a little hazy around senior year.

Not that it mattered. Like all the other havoc Jasper managed to

inflict on his superhuman immune system over the course of his adult
life, the four-year binge had hardly done him any permanent damage.
He’d still graduated summa cum laude, still distinguished himself in
graduate school despite his continued tendencies toward fucking and
getting fucked up in excess of four times a week, and still managed to
rake in money hand-over-fist in pharmaceutical development, having
gotten a job at BioSolve and rising to the top of the company in
record time. They liked him there. He fit in well with the rest of the
marginally ethical corporate sleazebags.

Still…with each predictably creaky step downward, Jasper could

feel his face hardening into a perma-cringe, and it took a focused
mental cataloguing of every big-ticket item he’d bought with his
sizable income over the years to keep him from turning on his heels
and bolting back up the stairs and out the door as Pierson rattled on
about his so-called wonder drug.

“I think you’ll be impressed with the properties this drug could

potentially harness. What I have now is a strand of recombinant DNA

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that is resistant to virtually every imaginable threat. All I would need
to complete the sequence is the funding for synthesizing it with a
genetically modified E. coli strand. Although, it’s of utmost
importance that the source is handled delicately, as there are certain
legal and, ah, moral issues at—”

Jasper froze as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

“The…source?” he asked.

Pierson looked at him, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

“You won’t believe it until you see it. It’s the most amazing thing.”

His hands gestured magnanimously to a corner of the room

obscured by his own figure and hiding amid the broken-down
monitors and machines and trays and trays of sharp, steel surgical
instruments.

Jasper didn’t see anything at first, distracted by the snap of latex

as Pierson pulled on one then another glove from a nearby box. He
walked to the refrigerator to withdraw a nearly empty glass vial of
some nameless formula from inside it. When he moved out of the
way, Jasper saw it—a cage just large enough to hold a large dog.
Cowering inside it was the hunched over body of a lone red wolf.

Red wolf shifter, his mind corrected. Yours. Jasper could feel the

blood draining from his face, probably to make room for the vast
parade of crazy running through his head. Sure, red wolves hadn’t
lived in Texas since the 1970s, but they weren’t extinct, thanks to
reintroduction efforts. The fact that this crackpot had one caged up in
the basement of his own personal loony bin was weird, but hardly
reason for Jasper’s breath to still or his heart to hammer in his chest.
There was no way that the creature staring at him with all-too-human
eyes was a werewolf. Not after thirty years of convincing himself
there weren’t any others out there apart from him and his brothers.

Twenty-nine, his mind corrected instinctively. He’d only turned

thirty a few weeks ago, celebrating with his standard combination of
too much booze and too many cigarettes and too much time spent
looking for too many anonymous sexual partners at a club in Austin.

Ben in the Shadows

He had disentangled himself from not one but two unfamiliar naked
bodies and driven back to Borderland with a hangover that healed far
too quickly to remind him why the evening’s activities had been a bad
idea in the first place. He would have, of course, gotten an earful of
lecture on his behavior from Alex and Lars if they’d been there, but
he hadn’t bothered to invite his irrationally overprotective older
brother or his neurotically perfect younger brother…probably for
precisely that reason. All the same, there had been one hell of a
birthday surprise for him when he got home.

Lars had found another werewolf, a young—and, he hated to

admit, fairly sexy—little twink named Danny. He’s not my mate, Lars
had been quick to correct when Alex had jumped to all kinds of
conclusions about the sudden appearance of his doting houseguest,
but that didn’t change the fact that the selfish bastard was keeping his
new little pet all to himself. This one, though, was a different story.
This one…

Jasper shut the thought out before it had time to formulate, feeling

his face flush as Pierson followed his line of sight to the wolf in the
cage. The fat lips of the mad scientist curled into a self-satisfied smile
as he drew up a shot of the mysterious formula into a syringe. “That,”
he said, laying the syringe on the metal table with its sharp
instruments, “is Ben.”

Pierson strode to the cage, pushing aside piles of clutter on the

floor to squat beside it. He opened the door, dragging Ben out by the
scruff of his neck. Ben hardly gave any resistance, his paws skidding
across the floor for only a second before he trotted out, letting Pierson
lead him.

“Could I trouble you to…ah…” Pierson wrapped one arm around

Ben’s underbelly and one around his chest, nodding to the
examination table.

Jasper closed the space between them with two quick steps,

rolling the table closer so Pierson could set him down on it. Ben lay
on his side, his feet kicking lazily out underneath him. His glassy

Ellen Ginsberg

yellow eyes looked up at Jasper, pleading with him as Pierson pressed
one latex-gloved hand against the side of his head to hold it as he
withdrew the syringe from the table and administered it into a patch
on his neck where the fur had been shaved away.

Pierson’s latexed fingers stroked the fur along Ben’s jawline.

Jasper half-expected him to bite them off, but he merely turned his
head, the hint of protest disappearing from his eyes, replaced by a
glazed look as Pierson withdrew the syringe with a satisfactory smile.
Ben’s chest rose and fell with resignation as Pierson drew his hands
away, but he didn’t move.

“There,” Pierson said. “That was the last of it, but it ought to be

enough. He’ll be calm as a kitten now.”

“What did you give him?”
“Just a tiny sedative.” Pierson smiled. “He’s quite good with me,

but I wasn’t sure how he’d act around a stranger. We don’t, ah,
ah…Well, we don’t get many visitors here, I suppose.”

Jasper bet they didn’t. His jaw clenched as he watched Pierson

strap Ben onto the table as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
Again, he glanced around the room. Just how many machines had the
wolf been exposed to, how many instruments had he been prodded
and cut by, how many shots had the wolf gotten over the years?
Jasper didn’t like to think about it. Instinctively, his hand reached out
to touch the trembling animal. Ben sighed underneath his touch as he
softly stroked his underbelly. He didn’t know how much comfort he
could possibly provide, but it seemed to calm him a little.

“Yes, that’s right, my good boy!” Pierson said to Ben, his own

hand reaching out to rub his muzzle. “That’s just what I told you.
See? Perfectly harmless. Never a bite or a snap, he’ll sit perfectly still
for just hours for me, which, you can understand, is why it’s so very
important that I’m the one who continues on as his handler, even
as…”

Pierson went on and on, and Jasper could tell from the way his

thick eyebrows waggled up and down as he talked that he’d reached a

Ben in the Shadows

subject of dire importance, but Jasper was hardly listening, focusing
his every effort on calming the animal beneath his touch. He looked
down at the wolf’s wide yellow eyes, glassy but seeming to register
the same intensity of feeling Jasper was overwhelmed by as he stared
into them. It was as if some unspoken communication had passed
between them. Mate, it said. Mate, mate, mate.

“What are you doing with him?” Jasper asked, mentally chastising

himself for the protective note that had already crept into his tone.
Thankfully, Pierson hadn’t seemed to notice.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing.” Pierson turned a tentative

glance toward Ben before he continued, almost in a whisper. “He
won’t die. He can be injured, poisoned, diseased…” He shook his
head. “Nothing gets to him.”

Jasper’s heart thudded in his chest. His hand stilled on Ben, who

still lay docile on the table beneath him. “What kind of…sedative did
you say you administered?”

“Ah!” Pierson exclaimed, waggling his finger at Jasper. “Yes, yes,

yes. No, normal sedatives aren’t optimal for him because of his
unusual healing properties. Very clever. You get the gold star, don’t
you?” Pierson giggled. “Well, Mr. Scientist, I suppose I can fill you
in. This particular concoction is actually laced with silver ions.”

Jasper’s breath hitched in his breath, and his fingers closed around

the wolf’s shoulder. Werewolf, a voice in his head corrected him. This
time, he did not fight it back.

“Silver,” Pierson continued, “has a toxic effect on some bacteria

and fungi. I had thought injecting him with the silver serum might
enhance Ben’s antibiotic capacities, but instead, it seemed to almost
shut down his immune system altogether. This particular compound is
mixed with Seroquel to keep him docile. Works like a charm, really,
even when I’m operating on him. The only real difficulty is that the
serum slows the rate of the healing process. You won’t get nearly the
sort of spectacle I’ve seen before, but with the tiny dose I gave him,
you’ll certainly be able to see for yourself…”

Ellen Ginsberg

Pierson plucked a scalpel from a nearby table of surgical

instruments and held it up to Jasper as if he were proffering a hundred
dollar bill. “I know it must be hard to imagine without a
demonstration, of course,” he said. “That’s why I insisted you come
by. I wouldn’t dream of asking for such a, ah, generous grant for my
research unless you’d seen the proof of what this serum will be able to
do first. Oh, of course, I’ve got stacks of paperwork, documentation,
blood tests, and samples to demonstrate the myriad healing capacities
of Ben’s DNA, but as a show of good faith, why don’t you take a
crack at it yourself?”

Pierson clapped him good-naturedly on the back. “Go ahead,” he

said, trying to press the scalpel into Jasper’s hand. Jasper pulled away
from it like a hot poker, and he had to force his wolf back down to
keep his claws from bursting through the calloused skin of his
fingertips. “He’s incapable of being harmed. Cut him up, break his
bones, rip his flesh off…You can’t imagine how fast he can heal
after—”

That last sentence was all it took to snap the thread of Jasper’s

self-control. In an instant, one claw-tipped hand shoved Pierson
roughly against a row of file cabinets. His canines had grown into
sharp points, the evidence of which written all over Pierson’s terrified
expression as he snarled at him.

Pierson squirmed fearfully under the weight of his hand, his

mouth gaping open and shut like a fish’s. His breath came in little
bursts as he tried to gasp out a sentence with no luck.

“You’re–you’re–”
“A werewolf,” Jasper growled. “Like him.” Pierson didn’t answer,

but he saw the spark of recognition in his eye. “There are more of us.
I intend to take him to the pack where he belongs.”

“How many?”
“Enough to keep him safe.”
Pierson’s face crumpled. “It’s not fair,” he whined. “He’s mine.”

Ben in the Shadows

Jasper’s clawed hand tightened on Pierson’s chest, and he yelped

in pain. It took every shred of control he had to leave the gesture at
that. “Mine,” he growled.

With a final shove to push Pierson back, he turned his attentions

to Ben, undoing the straps so he could skitter eagerly off the table.
The glaze was still in his eyes, but something else was there too.
Determination. Hope.

“Run,” Jasper said to him. “Get out of here.”
Ben didn’t move. He pawed at Jasper once, then twice, looking at

him with a desperation he didn’t think those glassy, glazed over eyes
could contain. Gently, Jasper reached down to Ben to shove at his
haunches. “Go on!” Jasper said, his voice rising in frustration. He
couldn’t understand why the wolf wouldn’t move.

When Jasper felt the small, hard, metal circle press into the back

of his head and heard the click of the hammer being cocked, Ben gave
another pleading whine. Jasper understood that one. Perfectly.

“I keep it loaded with silver bullets,” Pierson explained. “An

emergency precaution. Although, I’m not sure whether it would
matter at this close a range. I hadn’t actually tested yet to see if Ben’s
bones could regenerate after being snapped off. I didn’t want to maim
my only specimen. With you at my disposal, though, I suppose I
could give it a try.”

Jasper didn’t move a muscle, his eyes focused on Ben’s ahead of

him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Shift,” Pierson said. He giggled. “Be a good little doggie and

shift, and then get inside the cage.” The barrel of the gun shifted
against Jasper’s skull, and he heard the sound of squeaking wheels
across the cement floor as the exam table rolled into his field of
vision. “You can put your clothes on that. If you’re a very good boy, I
might let you have them back sometimes.”

Ben’s eyes widened in fear as Jasper stood and began to undress.

“It’s okay,” he mouthed to the little wolf, but he couldn’t stop his
hands from shaking.

Ellen Ginsberg

Pierson’s hands had shaken, too, as the gun pressed against his

head, as if he wasn’t used to holding it, or was perhaps afraid to. By
now, he’d retracted the weapon from its point-blank shot, but Jasper
didn’t fool himself that Pierson didn’t have it trained on him from
wherever he stood. All the same, his hold on the thing had given him
away as an amateur, not a crack shot. Could Jasper avoid his shot if
he shifted fast enough? Could he dislodge that gun from Pierson’s
grip with a single surprising bite?

Jasper stripped off his last item of clothing, setting his boxer

briefs on the examination table. He kept his back to Pierson, but he
could feel his eyes on him.

“Now, shift.” Pierson giggled. “Be a good boy, and you’ll get a

treat. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

Ben crouched back on his haunches and emitted a low growl.

Jasper shifted, his bones melting and reforming until he stood on all
fours, no longer a man but a large wolf. He turned, his claws clicking
on the cement floor, and stared up at Pierson. The gun was shaking in
his hand.

“That’s a good boy,” he said. “Now get in the cage.”
Jasper didn’t get in the cage. He had seen how Pierson had

responded to Ben’s drugged and half-hearted affections. Jasper knew
Pierson wouldn’t hurt him if he approached him carefully enough. He
trotted toward Pierson, approaching him slowly, his head stooped
submissively downward as it edged unmistakably closer to the hand
he held the gun with. Pierson’s finger twitched on the trigger, but he
didn’t pull it back.

“Back,” he said. “Get back.”
Jasper whined, pawing at the ground. Pierson lowered the gun a

little, his resolve weakening. Jasper turned his head up and licked the
hand that held it. Pierson smiled faintly. “Good boy,” he said. Jasper
licked him again. “Good boy.”

Jasper held that submissive, affectionate pose just as long as he

could stand it. Then, with a single, sharp movement, he sunk his

Ben in the Shadows

canines into Pierson’s hand, his strong jaws gripping down on it like a
vise until Jasper nearly ripped it from its socket.

Pierson howled in agony as the blood shot from his wrist,

spraying the floor, the shelves, the exam table, the medical
equipment, and the file cabinets. His hand hung loosely from his
wrist, and the gun flew out of its grip, skidding across the floor to the
other side of the room. Pierson jerked and jumped like a firecracker,
backing himself onto one of those infuriating machines where Jasper
continued to scratch and claw at him.

He would have stopped if it hadn’t been for the machines. As it

was, the evidence of Pierson’s torture was all around him. There were
files and files of data, detailing experiments, cataloguing
specimens…Jasper couldn’t stop thinking about the pain Pierson had
put Ben through, breaking and healing and stabbing and poking him.
Jasper had made every effort to destroy his own body himself, but this
wolf, this Ben, was an innocent. He didn’t deserve that pain, and the
idea that this man had inflicted it on him was enough to make Jasper
murderous.

In a single, final act of violence, Jasper tore Pierson’s throat out.
The act was done before he realized he’d completed it, and he

pulled away, suddenly frightened by the bloody mass of human flesh
that lay still on the floor. His eyes were glazed. Dead. Pierson was
dead, and Jasper had killed him.

And now Jasper had another reason to hate himself.

Ellen Ginsberg

Chapter Three

“Are you okay? Mr. Craven?”
Distantly, Jasper could hear the question, could see the red and

blue flash of the ambulance lights in the drive of Pierson’s house as
the clusters of various workers—EMTs, wildlife commission reps,
Borderland PD—swarmed around the lawn.

They weren’t calling it a crime scene. That, at least, he was

thankful for. He sure as hell wasn’t okay, though. His hands were still
shaking. He could shove them in his pockets, press them against his
slacks, fold them across his chest, but still no dice. They would
probably quiver like a criminal’s for the rest of his life.

He could only imagine what Ben was going through.
Run, Jasper had said to the wolf, to Ben, and he had taken off, into

the woods. Jasper didn’t know how stable he was, mentally or
physically. He had told him to meet him at Ecstasy Rock, which was a
few miles away. Wolves’ bodies were designed for a life on the move
and were capable of traveling long distances during a single day, but
was Ben well enough to run that far after Pierson’s silver poisoning?
He had said he’d worked on the “specimen” for years. Jasper couldn’t
even imagine the psychological ramifications of being held prisoner
like that for so long…What if Ben didn’t know where he was or got
lost? What if he shifted right out in front of a human or group of
humans? It would be dangerous to attract that kind of attention, and
Ben had already been through plenty in his life. With what Jasper had
done to free him, he couldn’t help but want some good to come of it.
If not, he wasn’t sure he could live with himself.

Ben in the Shadows

No, it was more than that, Jasper corrected himself. He needed to

be sure he kept Ben safe. He could bring him home. Take care of him.
Love him, his inner voice whispered, and Jasper stiffened at that
suggestion. If that was what this was about, he was a bigger asshole
than he thought. Here he’d just rescued the poor shifter from a
lifetime of abuse, and all his stupid, sorry consciousness could dwell
on was his ever-present need to get his dick wet.

“Mr. Craven? Do you need me to repeat the question?” Jasper was

pulled out of his thoughts when Sheriff Briggs shined his flashlight
into his pupils. “Oh, Jesus, I think he’s in shock…”

Shock was one word for it, all right. Had he just been entertaining

sexy thoughts about a laboratory subject? An abused laboratory
subject, he reminded himself. A probably straight abused laboratory
subject. And one you haven’t even seen in human form…although you
probably will if you go meet up with him at Ecstasy Rock like you
promised. And when he does shift, he’ll probably be naked, so you
could probably start mating right—

This time, it was the sound of Briggs’s two hands clapping in

front of his face that pulled Jasper back to reality before that he could
take that particular thought any further. “I’m not in shock, you
fucking half-wit. And quit calling me ‘Mr. Craven.’ We went to high
school together, remember, Briggs? History class?”

Briggs’s eyes narrowed, but he lowered the flashlight. “I

remember,” he said, clearing his throat. “But it’s still Sheriff Briggs.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. Oh, the joys of living in a small town, he

thought, but he kept his sarcastic comments to himself, wanting to get
the hell away from Pierson’s house as quickly as possible. “Fine.
Sheriff Briggs. Are we done here?”

“Almost.” His eyes surveyed Jasper. “I just asked if you were

feeling okay. After the…” Briggs’s expression softened as he trailed
off, glancing around the front yard to where EMTs were now loading
Pierson’s body into the ambulance. Pierson wasn’t the bloody mess
Jasper had backed away from earlier as he went to put on his clothes

Ellen Ginsberg

and call for help with trembling hands. Now Pierson’s body was
encased in a sterile black body bag. It was over now. He was gone.

Jasper had told Briggs what happened earlier—his version of it,

anyway. That Pierson had been keeping a coyote there as a lab
animal. That Pierson had let it out to show Jasper, and that the feral
animal had attacked and killed him.

It wasn’t such a stretch. It had been an animal that attacked

Pierson, and an angry, feral one at that. Jasper felt his muscles tense
as he remembered Pierson holding the scalpel out to him, the
stiffening of his muscles as he bit into his hand, the copper taste of his
blood as it exploded into his mouth, the way his body had jerked and
spasmed as the life drained out of it…

Jasper closed his eyes for a long moment then opened them,

schooling whatever anxiety might remain on his expression away.
“I’m fine,” he answered breezily. “Fuck do I care, anyway? Just some
dead nutcase in a lab coat.”

Briggs snickered a little, grateful for the break in tension. Jasper

Craven, at your service. He was a hell of a court jester, a charming
party host, a more than likable drunk, and a great lay, but fuck if he
knew how to process anything approaching actual human emotion. He
could no more keep from repressing the shock of attacking Pierson
than he could sprout wings and become a bird-shifter. Serious self-
examination just wasn’t in his nature. It hadn’t been for a long time
now.

He still remembered the day things changed. It was his sophomore

year in college. He’d stubbornly refused to get a cell phone, not
exactly eager to be bombarded by phone calls day and night from his
over-protective older brother Alexander, so the call had come on the
shared phone in his dorm. His resident advisor had come to tell him.

“It’s your brother,” he said. “He says it’s serious.”
Jasper had rolled his eyes. “He always says it’s serious.”
Jasper had walked—strolled, probably, was the better word, and

leisurely at that—to the lobby of Hagen House and stuck the phone

Ben in the Shadows

under the crook of his neck, holding it there with one shoulder and
exuding the irreverent, casual air that was just so typical of himself.
That he was, in fact, pretty proud of himself for having.

“Fuck do you want?” he said into the phone.
“Mom and Dad,” Alex had said into the receiver. That was all he

managed before his voice broke. That was when Jasper knew it was
serious. Alex never cried.

For as long as Jasper could remember, his parents had told him

and his brothers the same story. They weren’t like other kids. They
were special. That much was pretty glaringly obvious, what with their
tendency to morph into huge, hulking wolves any time their emotions
got the better of them, a situation that had forced his parents to
homeschool them all the way through grammar school. Jasper had
been the one to break that trend, begging his parents to just, for once,
for the love of God, let him go to high school and college like a
normal kid.

Eventually, his planeswalker mother and werewolf father had

caved. Not without a good deal of nagging, however. His mother,
especially, had wanted to ensure that the boys didn’t get too attached
to this plane of reality. She swore that someday fate would call them
back to Morgana, the faraway, supernatural plane where freaks like
Jasper and his family members apparently congregated and mated en
masse with all the other vampires and planewalkers and…what? Elves
and fairies and trolls and goblins?

He could laugh all he wanted now, treat it as coolly and

irreverently as he had for the past ten years, but it didn’t change the
fact that at the time, being around other supernaturals had sounded
pretty damn good to him. Especially the part about finding a mate.
He’d slept with plenty of humans, but the idea of connecting with
someone so intimately, of feeling that person’s soul bleeding through
his, of feeling anything, really, while fucking beyond the hot
smacking of flesh and the cold feeling of loneliness...God help him,
Jasper had wanted it.

Ellen Ginsberg

More than that, Jasper had wanted to believe all that crazy bullshit

his mom was always rambling about how being a planeswalker meant
being closely attuned to destiny, to the will of providence, to fate. She
longed to return to Morgana, but waited for fate to call her there.

That day, ten years ago, the day Alex called Jasper crying on the

phone, fate called their mother to the top of Ecstasy Rock with their
father, where the two of them jumped from the steep cliff and
plummeted into the jagged rocks below. A forest ranger had spotted
them, called for emergency support, and kept them alive, sort of, in a
hospital. That was what Alex had called to tell Jasper ten years ago—
that their parents were in a coma, and he had to come home. The sight
of his parents lying unconscious in side-by-side hospital beds after
attempting to “planeswalk” to Morgana had told Jasper all he needed
to know about destiny and providence and everything else his mother
had believed so strongly in.

Jasper didn’t believe in fate anymore.
He winced at the bright light shining in his eyes, narrowing his

gaze at Briggs. “Will you stop doing that, Briggs?”

“Sheriff Briggs,” he corrected defensively. “And what do you

want me to do? You keep getting all glassy-eyed. I’m supposed to
monitor you closely for any signs of shock or…”

“The EMT guys already checked me out,” Jasper said flatly,

glancing at the ambulance that was finally pulling away. “And, like I
said, I’m fine.”

Except for the fact that he was an emotionless zombie who

couldn’t feel a goddamn thing even after his wolf ripped out some
guy’s jugular. Except for the fact that he was still reeling from the
revelation that there were other creatures like him and his brothers,
and one of them was waiting for him up at Ecstasy Rock. Except for
the fact that ten years ago, his parents had jumped from that same
rock, plummeting him into a self-imposed oblivion he didn’t know if
he’d ever be able to drag himself out of.

“I’m fine,” he repeated, smiling stiffly.

Ben in the Shadows

He held that stupid grin long enough for Briggs to extend his

hand, and when he did, Jasper shook it firmly and sauntered off on his
way as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He got into his car and
drove to Borderland State Park, just as coolly. It wasn’t until he’d
gotten out of the car and started up the long trail to Ecstasy Rock that
he felt the cold edge of fear slam into his stomach.

He really, really should’ve stopped by the gas station to get those

cigarettes, but he was already walking up the path on embarrassingly
shaky legs. It was too late now. He’d felt the pull of fate, as his
mother always said. Jasper winced at the thought, realizing where that
pull had led her and where that had gotten her.

Yeah, he was his mother’s son all right. Ten years after her

accident, and he was about to climb up a high, jagged cliff, in
search…Jasper felt his face grow hot. Embarrassing as it was, he
could barely bring himself to think it, but fuck it, yes, in search of
something that would bring meaning to his stupid, shallow life.

In search of his destiny.
He slowed his steps as he climbed higher up the path to the top of

the cliff, hoping to hell he could keep from falling off.

* * * *

Ben was in love. In love, in love, in love.
He repeated to himself over and over the name of his hero. Jasper

Craven. Jasper Craven. He’d heard Pierson say it and thought it
sounded sexy, but the gorgeous, sleek, dark-haired man who had
strolled into his life with the looks of a movie star and the moves of
an action hero was nothing like the fantasy he’d dreamed of. He was
much, much better. Jasper Craven. His hero, his savior, his mate.

Mate. That word kept running through his head, too, but he didn’t

know exactly what it meant. Some niggling ghost of a memory from
his mysterious life before Pierson, the one blocked by amnesia, made
him want to associate it with the kind of whispered talks kids had on

Ellen Ginsberg

the playgrounds about sex in coming of age movies. Ben felt a blush
creep up his neck and onto his face. Sex, he thought reverently, and
ran a hand slowly down his bare chest. Whatever mating was, he
hoped it involved sex. He had a feeling it did. Something to do with
sex and something to do with his wolf. It was a lucky thing that Jasper
was a werewolf, too. Ben smiled. No, not lucky. This was fate.

Ben laid his naked body back on the cool rock. The rock where he

would meet his mate. And mate his mate, he thought, feeling an inner
flutter in his stomach at the very idea. He squirmed on the rock. His
body was unbelievably flushed, obviously from the heat of his
attraction to his mate. Well, of course, in a tiny, unimportant way,
there was the run he’d had here, and his legs and lungs had burned
from the first strenuous exercise he’d had in a while, but…no. He was
perfectly okay. He felt absolutely no traces whatsoever of the silver
sedative Pierson had given him. He was ready to go the second his
mate—

He sat up abruptly, hearing a rustle in the woods. The sudden

action made him a little lightheaded, and he had to rest his weight
back down on his elbows, giving him the perfect view of the stars
above him. There were just so many of them. It was dizzying, this
sense of vast openness. Of course, he’d seen stretches of beach and
sea and sky on TV and in movies, but that thirteen-inch box had
hardly prepared him for the real thing. It had been so long since the
last time he’d been out of doors, and he remembered so little of it.
The last time was when Pierson had found him wandering this same
state park. Pretty damn close to this exact spot, come to think of it. It
was a little overwhelming for Ben to think of all the time he’d been
locked up with Pierson, but he made himself swallow down the urge
to contemplate it. He’d had quite enough of that. Tonight, this night,
now, was only about him and his mate.

He sat bolt upright as he heard—no, felt, his whole body felt—

Jasper approaching.

Unfortunately, doing that made him unbelievably dizzy again.

Ben in the Shadows

“Oh, ow.” Nice opening line, he chastised himself, and he winced,

this time more from embarrassment than pain. “Sorry. I’m fine, really,
I just…”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Jasper said quietly.
Ben loved the way Jasper was staring at him. He’d seen that

lovesick look a hundred times on the actors and actresses in
romances. Back in the lab, Ben had been damn near neurotic about
wearing clothes, wanting to distinguish himself from his wolf, the
specimen that Pierson had conceived of him as, but he’d gladly trade
his modesty for a glimpse of what lay under the bulging fabric at
Jasper’s crotch. Just the heat in Jasper’s gaze as he stared at Ben’s
naked body was enough to make him melt. In fact, if Jasper continued
to look at him like that, he’d never wear a stitch of clothing again as
long as they were together.

Which, Ben knew from every romance he’d ever seen, would be

forever. Their eyes had met from across the room, Jasper had fought
for him and won, and now they were alone together. He would come
to him, and they would kiss, and if it were a movie, the screen would
fade to black, leaving them alone with the secret love they were about
to share, something that was only for their eyes and would only
belong to them.

This was the part where they made love.
“Come here,” Ben said.
Jasper came and sat down beside him. His arm brushed against

Ben’s leg, and he could feel the warmth of Jasper’s body against his
and the rough pads of his fingertips where they were calloused in the
very spots his wolfen claws had burst out of them earlier. Ben
shivered. Jasper was closer than anyone besides Pierson had been to
him in so very, very long, but it wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. He
pressed his body against Jasper’s, dragging him down to the ground
next to him, breathing in his scent until he felt drugged by it.

Jasper’s arm wrapped around his waist so carefully, like he

thought he might break him if he squeezed too tight. To be honest, it

Ellen Ginsberg

might have hurt if Jasper hadn’t been so gentle. It had been hours now
since Ben’s last injection, and now that the sedative was starting to
wear off, he could feel things like he hadn’t been able to in years. Not
just physically, either. His overwhelming anxiousness, sharp as he
could ever remember feeling it, settled in his stomach like a block of
ice, making him feel sick and shaky and keeping him on the perpetual
edge of need as Jasper slowly stroked his hair.

“Are you okay?” Jasper asked. His voice was breathy. Ben could

feel his breaths, in and out and in again, and he stilled his own
breathing, trying to train it to match his mate’s.

Ben nodded in response to Jasper’s question. Okay was an

understatement. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt a touch
that hadn’t been accompanied by pain. That soft touch of Jasper’s
hand against his hair felt good, too good almost. Wanting to lose
himself in that dizzying feeling, Ben pressed himself harder into
Jasper, his breath getting more frantic as he began to lose control, his
hands digging inside of Jasper’s shirt, grabbing fistfuls of his back,
wanting to feel Jasper’s hands on him, too, scratching at the surface of
his skin.

Jasper pulled away abruptly. “Whoa, whoa…hey. Take it easy.”
“I will,” Ben said. He would do anything Jasper wanted him to.
Jasper kept his hand in his hair, still stroking it, though not as

smoothly as before. He took it away, smiling sheepishly. “Too bad we
can’t find you any clothes out here.”

“Do you want me wearing clothes?”
Jasper furrowed his brow. “Does it matter what I want?”
He hadn’t meant it as sharply as it sounded, Ben was sure of that,

but all the same, he felt a sudden rush of hurt at Jasper’s pointed
words. Ben’s lip quivered, and he shook his head up and down,
slowly. “So much.”

His voice broke practically before he could get the word out, and a

sob escaped his lips. He couldn’t help it. The sedatives were wearing
off, and he felt so much. The nothingness of his life had blossomed

Ben in the Shadows

into an everything all at once, and Ben hardly knew what to do with
the bubble of emotion resting below the surface of his skin,
threatening to burst at any moment.

Jasper was there for him, though. Jasper pulled him close, put his

big arms around Ben’s small body, and rocked him until he stopped
shaking. All the while, he repeated to him the same words, like a holy
litany in his ear, “It’s okay, you’re okay,” and better still, “I’m here,
I’m here, I’m here.”

Ben clutched his arms tightly against Jasper, pawing fistfuls of his

shirt in his hands. His breaths came in big gulps, and he fought to
control them as Jasper ran his hands up and down the lengths of his
arms, pressing his forehead to his mouth and letting his lips linger
there, but not quite kiss his trembling flesh. Jasper still hadn’t kissed
him yet. He needed to be kissed, needed Jasper to show him that he
loved him. If, after all this, he rejected him…A fresh batch of
whimpers escaped his mouth before he could hold them back.

“What do you need? Anything. Please, I…I want to make it better

for you. What can I do to make it better?”

“Love me?” Ben said. It came out as a question. A plea. He

looked up into Jasper’s eyes to see how he would answer it.

Before he could find his gaze, Jasper’s lips crushed against his,

and Ben’s heart thrilled at the promise in that kiss. Yes, it said. The
answer was yes.

* * * *

Jasper didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
He’d come up here to help the poor wolf, for God’s sake, to see if

he was okay, only he wasn’t a wolf anymore. He was a human now,
an unexpectedly hot and young-looking human who was naked
enough that Jasper had immediately been able to see the sizable
proportions of his half-hard cock and couldn’t keep his own from
swelling conspicuously. Not too conspicuously, he had hoped. That

Ellen Ginsberg

hope had been shot all to hell when the poor scared kid had pulled
him close, wanting some kind of comfort or protection—never mind
the fact that Jasper was the absolute worst person in the world to seek
it from and as such what the fuck did he think he was doing here—and
Jasper had gone and kissed him. Was still kissing him. Couldn’t stop
kissing him. Ben’s hands tangled in his hair and clutched at his
shoulder blades to pull him back down to the ground with him, and
Jasper went so willingly, eagerly, desperately…

Unthinkingly, he bit down on Ben’s lip, sucking it into his mouth.

He stopped when heard Ben’s whimper and felt the copper taste of
blood as it blossomed under his lips.

For the second time that night.
Shit, shit, shit. Jasper couldn’t think apart from the frantic

expletives that snapped him back to reality as they raced through his
brain. For a moment, he’d almost forgotten what a bastard he was, but
the sick, sinking reminder of what he’d done to Pierson came crashing
back into his mind when Ben’s blood touched his tongue, and he
pulled himself away from him as abruptly as possible. He was too
fast. He could still see the wound he left on Ben’s lip. A tiny little tear
like that normally would have knitted closed as quickly as it had
opened, but with the silver serum still coursing through his body, it
lingered there uncomfortably long before healing, a bloodred
reminder of just how badly Jasper had fucked up.

Jasper stared at Ben now, his blue eyes still shyly begging for

approval beneath the uneven line of his short blond bangs. There was
something wholesome about his appearance. All-American looking,
Jasper would almost say, if it weren’t for Ben’s too-thin frame and the
rough, calloused patches of skin on his neck and the inner crook of his
elbow.

Jasper winced, remembering how nonchalantly Pierson had

slipped the needle through that shaved patch of skin on the neck of
Ben’s wolf. Ben had been poked and prodded and stabbed and cut
into so many times it made Jasper’s head spin. From the moment he

Ben in the Shadows

saw Ben in the lab, Jasper had wanted to get the poor wolf out of
there more than anything. From the moment Jasper had touched him,
he’d wanted to promise that no one would ever hurt Ben again, and
now Jasper had gone and done it himself. He should have known
himself better than to make a promise. He knew he wasn’t good at
keeping them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It wasn’t enough, but it was all he could

think of. “You shouldn’t have to—”

Ben raised his chin, holding his ground. He stared Jasper down.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “This is fate.”

“Fate?” Jasper asked. He’d meant to sneer the word, but it came

out as a whisper. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d seen
where that dizzying drug fate had gotten his parents. He didn’t want
to let some idiotic notion that this was “meant to be” grant him
permission to come on to Ben rather than trying to help him. Ben was
just a poor, scared kid, not...Jasper had to push the word mate to the
back of his mind. “No. This isn’t fate, this is…” He couldn’t think of
another word for it, so he left it at that, starting his sentence over with
half the confidence he’d had before. “You’ve been locked up for so
long, you’re not thinking right. You think I’m some kind of hero,
but—”

“You got me out of there.”
“I killed someone to get you out of there.”
“You saved me.”
“Only because it was what any half-decent person would do in my

position. Which I am. Barely.”

Ben shook his head fiercely. “You’re the best person I’ve ever

met,” he said, taking Jasper’s hand in his.

Jasper snatched it away. “Compared to who? Pierson?”
He couldn’t help the harsh tone in his voice, but he didn’t know

how else to get the message across. He. Could. Not. Do. This. Christ,
he’d already fucked the kid up enough, probably, taking advantage of
him like that. The desperate, pleading look in Ben’s eyes hardened

Ellen Ginsberg

into anger, and he pawed at Jasper again, trying to clutch Jasper’s
body to his own. Jasper backed away, but Ben persisted, pulling him
close, kissing his neck, his chest, his shoulders. Jasper pushed him
away, hating himself all the more when Ben hit the ground.

Again, Ben picked himself up with remarkable aplomb, and he

stared at Jasper hard. “I know this is right,” he said quietly. His words
were steady, but his eyes looked unsure, searching for something to
grasp onto. Finally, he seemed to catch it. “You’re my mate,” he said.

Mate. The word drew Jasper’s attention like a magnet. He might

have succeeded in pushing the thought out of his head before, but it
was back now, and with a bullet. His dad—to Jasper and his brothers’
profound embarrassment—had painstakingly explained the mating
process to them, but he’d scarcely thought about the talk for years. It
had been just one more piece of crazy from his childhood he’d tucked
neatly away in his ever-growing mental file of things not to dwell on.

If he had, he’d have remembered earlier. It involved biting.
Jasper eyed Ben carefully. “Where’d you hear that?”
“What?”
“That word. Mate.”
“I don’t know.”
“What made you think of it?”
“I don’t know,” Ben repeated. He looked at Jasper helplessly.

“You.”

That shut Jasper up in a hurry. He remembered the way the word

had wormed into his own mind, making a home there, refusing to go
away. He still couldn’t get rid of it.

Maybe Ben was right.
Or maybe Ben was a badly abused torture victim desperate to

justify why the same person who’d rescued him from Pierson had so
suddenly taken advantage of him. He was probably so desperate to
believe that someone, anyone, was capable of showing him some
kindness that he was willing to turn one awkward kiss into a cosmic
sign they were soul mates.

Ben in the Shadows

Ben lay on the ground apart from him, naked and vulnerable. He

was staring at the night sky like he’d never seen the moon before.
Jasper wondered just how long Ben had been imprisoned by Pierson
and whether anyone was waiting for him now that he was free.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
“Let me take you home,” Jasper said. “I can get you some clothes,

some money…if you want, I can set you up with an apartment—”

“I don’t want an apartment. I want to stay with you.”
Jasper dug his nails into the dirt beneath him. Ben needed

someone that could take care of him, not some sexual predator
preying on his vulnerability. But then, it wasn’t like he could exactly
send him to the nearest abuse shelter to spill whatever traumas he’d
been through to a very human psychologist. He needed—

A smile crept up Jasper’s lips as the thought occurred to him. He

needed a shrink who was also a werewolf. And that, at least, was one
thing he could provide the kid.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to my car.”
Ben looked at him a moment. A smile spread over his face when

he saw Jasper was serious. Like that, relief and hope seemed to well
inside Ben, and he clamored over to Jasper’s side, practically
attaching himself to him at once. Jasper couldn’t say he minded.
“Where are we going?” Ben asked.

“My house. I want you to meet my brother Lars.”

Ellen Ginsberg

Chapter Four

“But why?” Ben whined, twisting his hands in Jasper’s comforter.

It was enough that he was already wearing Jasper’s clothes, and not
much of them, but now Ben was in Jasper’s bed, half-naked and
refusing to rectify the situation. “If you and your brothers are all
werewolves anyway—”

Jasper cut off the question with a low, long growl as he held out

the neatly laundered stack of clothing. He’d been holding it out to Ben
much longer than he’d intended, and the conversation was starting to
wear on him. Every second Ben didn’t put those clothes on, Jasper
was coming that much closer to losing his grip on his fast-unraveling
self-control.

Lars had been absolutely no help whatsoever. He was with Danny,

apparently out on some kind of shopping spree. Like the kid really
needed another pair of skinny jeans or any more Converse All-Stars.
Only Alex was home, and the smile that lit up his face when Jasper
showed up with a half-naked adolescent who introduced himself—
much to Jasper’s dismay—as “Jasper’s mate” was much too smug for
Jasper’s taste. He had quickly hurried Ben up the stairs to get him
dressed and sort this entire situation out before giving the kid’s
massively misguided crush any more encouragement.

Jasper stared at Ben, whose arms were petulantly across his chest.

“I’m waiting for an answer.”

“Because you wouldn’t want to be uncouth,” Jasper finally spat

out, unable to think of a better reason. “You know, you didn’t put up
this much of a fight when I gave you my clothes earlier.”

Ben in the Shadows

Ben smiled teasingly, nodding to the neatly folded stack of

Danny’s clothing Jasper held out to him. “Those clothes don’t smell
like you.”

Jasper sighed loudly, the swelling of his cock pressing against the

inside of his fly and giving him an unwelcome reminder that he
wasn’t wearing any underwear.

He had given them to Ben earlier.
Jasper had tried his damndest to fight any burgeoning tensions

that might crop up on the ride home, giving Ben not only his suit
jacket to cover up with, but, in an attempt to hide that gargantuan
adolescent cock of his, his boxer briefs. Jasper had hoped the gesture
would help to dampen the sexual tension between them. Instead,
surrendering his unmentionables to Ben had only seemed to excite
him more about the prospect of going home with Jasper, and the sight
of Ben strutting back to the car half-undressed in Jasper’s too-big
clothes had done little to quell his own cock’s excitement, so all in all,
the idea was a resounding failure. By the time they’d made their way
back down the path from the top of Ecstasy Rock to Jasper’s car, they
were sporting twin hard-ons.

Ben sat in the car next to Jasper, staring up at him like he was a

goddamn movie star, not-so-covertly sniffing the inside of his jacket,
and holding his fucking hand until he pulled up in the long gravel
drive and had to wrench the thing away from him. He really hadn’t
wanted to. It was simply the only way to get out of the car and into
the house before Jasper gave into temptation and started dry humping
the poor kid right there on the bucket seat.

Jasper had been certain he’d be able to get his dick under control

if he could just get inside and pilfer some of Danny’s clothes to dress
Ben in. Lars had bought Danny more than enough, and he was
considerably closer to Ben’s size than Jasper was. Jasper had swiped
the clothes from a drawer in Lars’s room and returned triumphantly
only to find Ben curled up in his comforter like he was staging a
seduction.

Ellen Ginsberg

“It just seems awfully inconvenient for a werewolf,” Ben said. “I

mean, every time you shift, you’re just going to shred them anyway.”

“Well, we don’t exactly do a lot of shifting around this house.

Except for Alexander, anyway.” Jasper snorted. He could not resist
adding, under his breath, “Weirdo.”

Ben rolled his eyes at the addendum. “Says the werewolf who

thinks he’s human.”

“Did you wear clothes around Pierson?”
Ben smiled. “Pierson isn’t as sexy as you.”
“I told you I wasn’t getting involved with you. I told you—”
“You told me ‘relationships based on emotionally intense

experiences never work.’ And I knew that anyway. I’ve seen Speed
like six times.” Jasper rolled his eyes. The kid was a veritable
encyclopedia of film trivia. “And I’m saying, ‘we’ll just have to base
it on sex then.’”

“Get. Dressed.”
“No.”
“Fine!” Jasper exploded. Exasperated, he flung the clothes onto

the floor, balling his hands into fists and digging his nails into his
palms. They were dangerously close to becoming claws, only serving
to prove Ben’s point and infuriating him further.

He growled, and Ben’s eyes darkened. “I didn’t mean to upset

you.”

Jasper felt the blood drain from his face, and he let his wolf sink

back down beneath the surface of his skin. He didn’t blame Ben for
being upset. He’d seen what happened the last time Jasper shifted.
That Ben hadn’t run screaming from him right then and there was a
testament to how badly he needed someone, even the wrong person,
to comfort him.

Cautiously, Jasper brushed a hand over Ben’s shoulder, trying not

to delight in the hard and smooth ridges he felt under his hand as he
rubbed his back—for comfort, Jasper reminded himself—and was

Ben in the Shadows

glad he did when he saw the grateful expression Ben looked up at him
with.

“You have to stop doing that,” Jasper said.
“Doing what?” Ben asked, leaning into his touch. His head

nuzzled against Jasper’s shoulder, and Jasper’s mouth opened of its
own volition. He would only have to turn his head a little more to kiss
the rough patch on Ben’s neck that was calloused from Pierson’s
injections.

“Worrying about me. I’m not going to hurt you unless…”
“Unless I disappoint you?”
Jasper shook his head. Ben’s hair pressed against his nose, and he

inhaled his scent. Unless I lose control with you again. Unless I let
you love me. Unless I try to love you back and fuck it up like I’ve
fucked up everything else in my stupid, sorry life.

Abruptly, he pulled away. His hands were nearly shaking from the

force of his need. He’d never had problems controlling his emotions
before, had always appeared cool as a cucumber, but now his hands
were wild and uncontrollable, like alien creatures that had attached
themselves to his stoic body, proclaiming, See? See? You may not
think he cares, but look at us! Unsure what to do with those
incriminating appendages or how to hide them, Jasper hugged them
against himself, clutching them in his shirt. Ben clamored back
against him, but Jasper stood, walking briskly away from the bed.
Resolutely, he turned his back on Ben, as if he had some deep, dark
secrets to tell his friend, the armoire.

“Unless what?”
“Unless everything,” Jasper spat angrily. “I’m not a nice guy.”
“You’re a hero. You rescued me.”
“You don’t want a hero like me. I’m fucked up.”
“So?” Ben said. The bed squeaked, bare feet padded across the

wooden floor, and before long, two arms wrapped around Jasper’s
waist from behind him. “I don’t care.”

Ellen Ginsberg

“And so are you,” Jasper continued. He let himself be held, his

only protest a hand pressing weakly against the front of the armoire.

“I don’t care,” Ben said. “You’re my mate.”
There was that word again, mate, calling forth every single

impulse Jasper had repressed for the last ten years and begging him to
once again believe, to care, to love. He had never felt anything so
strongly in his life.

Ben’s hands traveled downward, tugging at the dress shirt that

was tucked neatly into his pants. The fabric gave easily, allowing
itself to be manipulated by Ben’s gentle touch, but Jasper wouldn’t
surrender so quickly. He caught Ben’s hand in his, holding it still.

“Stop it,” he said, but it was useless. Ben’s other hand was already

tugging at his shirt, and Jasper had to turn around to grab his wrist and
stop him, careful not to pull him any closer in the process.

Ben smiled at Jasper, and he swallowed nervously. To keep Ben

from touching him, Jasper had pulled him around, holding both of
Ben’s wrists above his head as his back pressed against the armoire.
The position was decidedly sexual.

“I can see you getting hard for me,” Ben said.
“Quit smirking.”
“And I know you want me.” Ben’s eyes traveled down to where

Jasper’s cock was straining against the zipper of his slacks.

“You think that means something?” Jasper asked. “You have any

idea how many guys I’ve fucked?” His voice was practically
breaking. “You think this is going to be something special, but it
won’t be. Not with me. I won’t be tender, or sweet, or gentle.”

Jasper’s thumb stroked across Ben’s wrist, tracing the delicate line

of his tendons. He leaned in closer, close enough he could feel Ben’s
cock pressed against his through the fabric of his pants. His mouth
brushed Ben’s forehead then dipped down toward his ear. He wanted
to kiss it. Stroke it. Love it. Love Ben…

Ben in the Shadows

“I won’t care about what it’s like for you or what you’re feeling.

I’ll hurt you, and I won’t give a shit. I’ll take what I want, and when
it’s over, I’ll just walk away.”

“You cared when you kissed me.”
“When I bit you,” Jasper corrected.
“And you didn’t walk away.”
Jasper closed his eyes, panting as Ben squirmed underneath him.

His entire long length was pressed hot and flat against Jasper’s thigh,
just two tiny layers of clothing between their skin, and Jasper was
desperate to get them off. Ben’s blue eyes stared into his as if they
could see straight into his soul, penetrate his thoughts, and steal his
secrets. Ben tugged his wrist away—how gently had he been holding
it?—and dropped a hand between them to Jasper’s belt buckle.

His dick practically leapt at the opportunity to get free, and his

hips bucked toward Ben, as if ready to make an offering of
themselves, but Jasper steeled his resolve, tightening his grip on
Ben’s other wrist. Not too tightly, though. He couldn’t bear to hurt
him.

Stoically, Ben finished undoing the buckle with one hand and

started in on his fly. “I could do this a lot faster with two hands, you
know.”

“Who says I want you to?”
As if to answer, Ben closed his hand around Jasper’s cock. He

stroked it in long, slow strokes, almost experimentally. His hand was
soft. His eyes were trusting. Jasper shifted his position, sliding a hand
up Ben’s slim waist, grasping at the taut, naked flesh, and his pants
slid off his hips, dragged down by the weight of his belt, to pool
around his ankles.

Jasper choked down a dry swallow. “If we do this…”
“If?” Stroke, stroke, stroke. Ben rolled his thumb over the tip of

Jasper’s cock, wiping the pre-cum off the tip and slicking it over the
head. Jasper’s mouth fell open as he panted with need.

Ellen Ginsberg

“If we do this…” Jasper stopped himself from saying we can’t

mate, reminding himself that didn’t believe in destiny. Quickly, he
amended his words. “If we do this, you can’t bite me.” Ben’s hand
dipped all the way down to the base of his cock, cupping his balls.
Jasper’s hand squeezed around his hip bone as he pressed his lips to
Ben’s forehead, his temple, his cheek. “Even if you want to, but I
can’t…” Jasper’s fingers pressed gently against Ben’s Adam’s apple,
but he wanted to kiss him on the mouth. “I won’t be…” His thumb
caressed his collarbone, that spot he longed to lay claim to, and oh, he
wanted to love him, love him, love him. “I’m not…”

Ben’s hand stilled on his balls and then pulled away. Jasper

moaned from the dull ache it left in its place. He stared at him hard.
“You’re just scared,” Ben said sullenly. He practically spat the words
at him.

The word flared Jasper’s anger and his need in equal measure. He

raked both hands down Ben’s back to cup his ass and pull him closer.
Ben’s chin pressed against his chest, and he growled. “I don’t get
scared,” he said, but despite his bravado, there was a tremble in his
voice.

“Then fuck me.”
The words had barely left Ben’s lips before Jasper’s had crushed

into them, kissing, nipping, sucking, licking, wanting to swallow him
whole.

Slow down, Jasper told himself, remembering the splash of

crimson on Ben’s lip earlier, remembering Ben’s naked vulnerability.
How long had that been? An hour? Two? Jasper had promised himself
then that he wouldn’t touch Ben again, that he would bring him here
and get him help and do the right thing for just once in his life, and
now here he was, playing this scared and confused kid for some kind
of quick fuck.

Except it wasn’t. Somewhere inside him, he knew that. His heart

might be pulsing liquid fire through his veins and his hands might be
fumbling at his clothes to feel them skin-to-skin and his mouth might

Ben in the Shadows

be gasping against Ben’s like it held his own breath inside it, but
something—everything, idiot, everything—about this experience was
different than every stupid, self-effacing lay he’d had in his shallow,
sorry life.

He tore his mouth away from Ben’s long enough to pull his shirt

over his head, his hands sticking in the buttoned-up cuffs of the
sleeves so that he nearly popped the buttons off when he had to yank
them out. Ben was right, he realized. Clothes were a goddamned
inconvenience. Ben needed only to slip his hands into the waistband
of his boxer briefs and slide them down his hips, but Jasper still had
his undershirt to deal with before he could feel that smooth, young
torso pressing against his own. Jasper kicked at his shoes to get them
off, silently vowing to never wear the things again if he could just get
inside that tight, naked ass his palms had wrapped around, but it was a
futile struggle. He knew his socks were still there.

Except that it was all worth it when Jasper felt their naked bodies

pressed together for the first time. In the struggle against his socks, he
had practically fallen onto the floor, and Ben met him there, yanking
the hated things off for him before he crawled into Jasper’s lap. He
straddled Jasper just as he had up at Ecstasy Rock, only this time
Ben’s cock was fully erect and enormous as it pressed into his
stomach. Jasper wrapped his arms around Ben’s neck and his legs
around Ben’s back and pressed soft kisses all along his jaw. He closed
his eyes and breathed, in and out. Every inward breath drew Ben’s
scent into his body. He roved his hands up and down Ben’s arms and
back, slowly at first, feeling every curve of his body, the points of his
elbows, the ridges of his ribcage, the crest of his spine, then fast,
faster. Ben pulled his hair and sucked his tongue, and his every
movement up and down stabbed his cock into Jasper’s stomach until
Jasper couldn’t take it anymore.

He laved his tongue along Ben’s throat—oh, he wanted to bite

him there, but he didn’t, couldn’t, promised himself he could at least
refrain from that—tracing a trail down, down, down. Ben fell back,

Ellen Ginsberg

drawing a sharp breath when his body hit the hard floor beneath him.
Jasper’s eyes flew open in fear.

“You’re okay?”
Ben nodded, frantically, drawing up his legs and stroking the sides

of Jasper’s face as Jasper continued to kiss down his stomach to the
slick spot on his dick. His hand had groped against it a moment ago,
and he’d been so desperate to taste the pre-cum there. Now he savored
Ben’s flavor, closing his eyes as he sucked the juices into his mouth
and rolled them on his tongue. He took the tip into his mouth and the
balls into his palm and put a gentle pressure on them until he heard
Ben’s happy whimper. He laved his tongue all over it, up and down,
slowly, licking and sucking and kissing its every inch.

A hand pressed into his hair, and he heard Ben’s voice. “Oh,

please. Please, please, please,” he begged as he spread his legs wider,
bucking his hips against Jasper to try to force more of himself into his
mouth. Jasper raked his fingers down the backsides of those pale
thighs, swallowing him greedily, or at least as much of him as he
could take. Ben bucked his hips into him, both hands now pressing
hard against the back of his head, thrusting him in and out.

With each thrust, Ben’s movements grew more uncoordinated and

his breath grew more ragged, as if he was teetering on the edge of
losing control. Jasper had hardly gotten started and Ben was already
close to coming. Jasper wanted to meet him in that raw moment of
ecstasy. He wanted to be inside him when he did.

Reluctantly, he pulled his mouth away from the slick, swollen

cock inside of it. Jasper ran his hand along the path he’d traced with
his tongue, slickening his fingers with spit and running them down
beneath Ben’s balls, trying to find that spot he was so desperate to get
inside. He traced his finger along the outside of the hole, watching
Ben’s eyes close and his hips jerk as he wriggled into it. Jasper
winced as Ben succeeded in impaling himself and drew in a sharp,
pained breath. Terrified, Jasper withdrew his finger, but before he
could pull out, Ben thrust down on it again.

Ben in the Shadows

“Hey,” he murmured, pressing a kiss against his thigh. “Careful.”
Ben’s eyes closed and his mouth opened as he breathed in big

desperate gulps. His fingers twitched and his legs pressed against
Jasper. “I want…I need…”

“Turn over,” Jasper whispered.
Ben nodded. He sat up, stroking a hand across Jasper’s face then

turned around, his smooth, round ass sticking in the air as he climbed
onto his hands and knees. Jasper ran a hand between those two
rounded globes, spreading them until he could see the rosy pink
opening between them. Tentatively, he traced a line around it with his
tongue. Ben squirmed underneath him, and Jasper squeezed a hand
against his hip, squeezed it harder when he felt the way it fit so neatly
inside his palm.

He lapped around the hole and the crease and couldn’t keep from

darting inside of it. Ben moaned, and he foraged into it again. Fuck,
he couldn’t wait to get inside him. Jasper sucked his own fingers into
his mouth, pressing two of them into the hole at once and biting back
the panic before Ben pressed against him, forcing them deeper inside.
Carefully, so carefully, he stroked the inside of him as Ben rocked
back against his hand. That slow, rocking rhythm and the promise of
what it would do to Jasper’s cock was too much for him, and he
brought his free hand to his mouth, sucking his fingers into his mouth
and laving his palm with his tongue before he dropped it to his cock
to stroke himself.

He ran his slippery hand over his dick, the first touch he’d felt

there since Ben’s slow groping earlier, but even though his need had
grown exponentially since then, it wasn’t enough. He wanted Ben’s
hands, Ben’s mouth, Ben’s hole enveloping him. He stroked his lover
with the same rhythm as himself, but he had to feel their bodies join.

Withdrawing his fingers, he pulled up onto his knees behind Ben

and replaced those fingers with the tip of his cockhead. When his two
big hands closed around Ben’s small, slender hips, the thrill that
rushed through him pushed his claws out, forcing them through the

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calloused tips of his fingers as he thrust inside Ben with one long
stroke.

Terror raced through Jasper at the bite of pain that always

accompanied the emergence of his wolf, but there was excitement,
too, a giddy, dizzying rush of need that urged him onward, even
though every rational thought inside his head was screaming at him to
stop. He rocked in and out of Ben with that same easy pace, stirring
his raw, animal need to a fevered frenzy.

“Oh, oh, oh,” Ben said, punctuating the end of each long thrust as

Jasper hit his prostrate. Oh was right. Oh, it had never been like this.
Oh, how his pleasure washed over him, wiping away all the angry
traces of his self-hatred. Oh, he had never felt so close to anyone, had
never felt less alone or more alive. Oh, how he wanted more.

His hands—careful with those claws—roamed up Ben’s body to

his stomach, wrapping around him, drawing his back up against
Jasper’s chest. It was harder to thrust like this, and his cock protested
the action. It could go to hell as far as Jasper was concerned. He
might have been on the verge of the biggest orgasm of his adult life,
but it hardly compared to the pulsing, pounding, screaming thought
that had materialized in his head, the need to take, to claim, to
possess, to mate.

Ben lolled his head against the crook of Jasper’s neck,

masturbating his own cock in long, languid strokes. He pressed his
mouth against Jasper’s shoulder, exposing the pale, perfect skin of his
neck as he sucked and nipped at Jasper’s shoulder. Every nip Ben
made with his teeth brought Jasper closer to the edge, his hard cock
still wedged inside him and moving with small, forceful jerks.

Jasper’s canines pushed down, raw pain cutting through his gums

as they did, but he hardly noticed it, focused as he was on the hollow
of Ben’s neck.

“Can you feel it?” Ben asked, his voice ragged with need.
“Oh,” was Jasper’s only reply.
“Bite me,” he panted.

Ben in the Shadows

God, he wanted to. His mouth opened of his own volition, but he

bit back the urge, shaking his head even as rational thought flew from
it. But when Ben sank his teeth into his shoulder, Jasper lost control,
biting into that sweet spot as he came and came and came.

It was like no orgasm he had ever experienced in his life. The

copper taste of Ben’s blood was sharp on his tongue again, but it was
different this time, and he lapped at the wound, eager to taste it. He
could feel his mate’s love, impossible as it was, flowing into him—
could feel his own self-hatred lessening as the wound on his shoulder
pulsed underneath him. Other feelings replaced it, strange, shaky
confused ones he couldn’t quite disentangle, ones that made him
uneasy and afraid but alive. Ben jerked and spasmed with the force of
his own orgasm, and Jasper wrapped his hand around the inside of
Ben’s thigh, pulling him up, wanting to pull him closer, hoping that
Ben, too, felt their souls entwine and needing some physical
confirmation of the act.

Jasper wrapped his arms around Ben, kissed his neck, tousled his

hair, nipped his ear, but Ben continued to thrust against him long after
Jasper felt him jerk and ride out the wave of his own orgasm.
Something was wrong. Jasper was certain Ben had come, but now he
seemed desperate and needy, as if the act hadn’t sated him but left
him longing.

Jasper pulled away from him and dropped his hand to Ben’s cock.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Let me take care of you.”

But when Ben turned, his hand flew away from him, terrified. His

face was white, and his eyes were nervous. His mouth was covered in
blood.

* * * *

In movies, the screen always faded to black when the leads kissed.

Ben had spent a lot of time imagining those private moments after
that last fade out, but nothing he’d imagined had prepared him for

Ellen Ginsberg

this. Not the pleasure he felt when Jasper bit him or the horror he felt
when he bit into Jasper.

The feel of Jasper’s blood running into him was pleasant. That

much he could determine. He liked the feel of his body against his,
the feel of his cock inside him, even the feel of his skin between his
teeth. Especially that. The second Ben bit down, he came like crazy.
But even as his body gave in to the feeling, he’d started to stiffen.
Something inside him—or rushing into him, more precisely—had
made him want to recoil from Jasper. His erection wouldn’t go away,
as if to say this isn’t finished, and his body ground against him, but he
didn’t think he could take anymore.

It was like his mind had been poisoned.
He stared at Jasper, wiping the blood from his mouth, cursing the

gesture when he saw him flinch as if struck by it. He was certain the
distaste was written across his face. “What happened?” he asked.

Jasper turned away from him, pacing the room in a frenzy. “What

happened is we fucked up. We mated.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ben shouted.
“It means this,” Jasper said, turning on him savagely, wiping the

blood from his shoulder to show the scar tissue underneath. It was the
size of a bite mark. Ben’s bite mark. “That’ll never go away. I will
always be linked to you, and you’ll always be able to feel what I’m
feeling. So whatever fucked up shit you felt when you bit me, get
used to it. I’m part of you now. Permanently. And every time I fuck
you, every time I come inside of you, it’s going to get stronger.” He
tore up the room, the dresser drawers, the armoire, dug under the bed,
his agitation seeming to grow with each new stride he took.
“Goddamn. Goddamn.”

“What are you looking for?”
“A towel, a robe…anything I can walk to the bathroom in so I can

clean myself up.”

“Why, because you want to get rid of me?” Ben asked. “Because

you don’t want me?”

Ben in the Shadows

Jasper didn’t respond, only picked his shirt up off the floor and

wiped himself with it, removing the blood smear on his shoulder and
the sticky seed on his cock. That was as much of an answer as Ben
needed. Ben knew now what that awful feeling was when he bit
Jasper. It was his rejection.

Ben’s wolf prickled under the surface of his skin. “You can’t say

that. You said that we’d be stuck together forever. You have to love
me.”

Jasper took a step toward him, and Ben remembered the rush of

terrible feelings that flowed into him with his mating bite. “Like you
love me?” Jasper said, and touched his hand to the mark on Ben’s
neck. Instinctively, Ben recoiled, and Jasper withdrew his hand.
“That’s what I thought.”

Ben growled as he felt his fingertips prickle with the need to

sharpen into claws. The worst part was that he could feel Jasper now,
just like Jasper said he would, the same way Ben could feel his own
emotions when they welled inside him. Jasper was acting angry, but
Ben knew Jasper didn’t feel angry. What he did feel was fear and guilt
and regret and pity.

“You’re not fooling anyone with this act, you know,” Ben said. “I

can feel what you feel now. I know you care about me.”

Jasper stared at him. “You feel close to me because we just

fucked. And you need someone. But I’m not—”

Ben cut him off. “So this is just like every other time for you.”
Jasper’s eyes flitted to the side of Ben then came back to meet his.

He smiled weakly, his nervous eyes surveying him. “Why, wasn’t it
for you?”

“I’ve never done it before.”
“Goddamn it!”
That settled it. He’d been bad. And Ben knew what a bad boy got.

In an instant, all the memories of his years with Pierson came
crashing back to him, just as sharp as before. Sharper, maybe, for he
felt Jasper’s insecurities now, too, the uncomfortable haze of guilt that

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came to mind when Ben thought of Pierson, and when he thought of
his murderer. Jasper. Part of him hated Jasper now, and Ben hated
himself for that feeling. He’d left the lab on shaking feet, needing
some release from all the feelings that were raging through him, and
he’d gotten it. Only it wasn’t the love he’d expected, but something
darker. Ben felt it coursing through him as he tasted Jasper’s coppery
blood, felt it overwhelming him now as he stared at his ungrateful
mate.

Jasper was a bad boy, too.
The need to rage, to destroy, to obliterate rose inside of Ben. The

need to shift. It sharpened as he recognized it, burning his skin with
the tightness it took to hold it back.

Jasper paced across the room, running a hand through his hair.

“Either way, I’m fucked. If I stay with you, I’ll fuck you up. If I leave
you…”

Ben growled. “Why would you leave me?”
Jasper turned on his heels, facing him again. “You don’t get it.”

He came toward Ben, squeezing his shoulders. The touch was rougher
than it’d been before, and his body wanted to resist the movement.
His wolf didn’t like it. “I’ll hurt you,” he said. “I’m not…”

His eyes dropped to Ben’s neck, and Jasper trailed off, his hands

slipping from Ben’s shoulders as his gaze fixed on the spot on his
neck that Jasper had sunk his teeth into. Slowly, Jasper raised a hand
to touch it.

It wasn’t slow enough.
Suddenly, Ben felt his wolf burst out from inside of him, snarling

and snapping in defense. He leapt back, stumbling backward from his
assailant on his taut, outstretched legs. He splayed his front paws in
front of him in a defensive crouch.

“Ben…” Jasper said. There was concern in his voice, but a note of

exasperation, too. And Ben knew where exasperation led. He bared
his teeth. “Will you please just shift back so we can talk about this
like normal people?” Ben narrowed his eyes into slits, his ears flat

Ben in the Shadows

against his head. He growled, and he could hear Jasper’s muttered
reply, barely audible but there all the same. “Oh, for Christsakes…”

Jasper took a step toward him, and Ben lost all semblance of

control. He didn’t want to hurt Jasper, but he was furious. For years,
he had been locked up, tortured, tormented, poked, and prodded at,
and for what? He had expected his mate’s love to flow into him and
heal him, not settle inside him like an uneasy pact while his mate
paced the room with regret.

It was Jasper’s fault. For some reason or another, he was resisting

the full force of their mating. For some reason, he didn’t want to share
himself with Ben, and that made Ben’s wolf prickle with fury. In a
rage, he raced through the room, leaving a path of destruction in his
wake. He jumped on the bed, ripping long slits in the sheets and
comforter, grasping the pillow in his mouth and shaking with all his
might.

“No. Ben, no!” Jasper rushed over to catch him, trying in vain to

yank the pillow from him, but his human hands were no match for
Ben’s strong jaws, and he only managed to shake more errant feathers
from the torn seam.

Ben opened his mouth to let out a single, loud bark, and Jasper

nearly fell backward with the force of his release, grasping the pillow
in his hands. Ben scrambled off the bed, knocking over the
nightstand, scratching the wood floor, and scraping against the door
as he flew through it and bounded down the stairs, Jasper hot on his
heels, hastily covering his crotch with the pillow he still clasped in his
hands.

Ellen Ginsberg

Chapter Five

“Damn it, Ben!”
Jasper bounded down the stairs, desperate to get a handle on Ben

and calm him down. One little mistake, just one innocuous little slip-
up after he’d practically scrubbed himself squeaky clean, had ruined
him, and his life was rapidly spiraling far more out of control than it
ever had during his drug-addled early adulthood. And that was saying
something, considering what an emotionally numb fuckup he’d been
in those days.

Goddamn it, Ben had gotten to Jasper, though. You saved me, he’d

said, and Jasper had wanted so badly to believe it. And then he’d lost
control and mated with Ben. It would be hard as hell to hide from Ben
now. They shared a soul, for God’s sake.

Now, Ben knew what a bastard Jasper really was. Oh, sure, Ben

couldn’t read his thoughts or revisit his memories or anything—thank
God—but the mating bite would have almost certainly clued Ben in to
Jasper’s decided lack of inner virtue. That much was clear from the
way Ben was squirming on the floor underneath Jasper, refusing to
submit to his dominant hold. Desperately, Jasper tried to calm him,
but Ben only growled defensively, as if every touch was the
unwelcome advance of some untrustworthy predator.

If he could just get Ben back into human form, he could talk to

him, maybe try to smooth things over, but as things were, the little
wolf was on the floor, writhing and snarling and snapping ferociously.
Jasper’s face reddened as he caught both his brothers and Danny
watching his struggle with his mate, and his grip tightened
instinctively on Ben, embarrassed to be caught in such a state.

Ben in the Shadows

Ben wriggled his wolf’s strong shoulders underneath him,

squirming out from Jasper’s grip and bounding toward Danny.
Thinking that pissing Lars off was the last thing Ben would want to
do, Jasper scrambled to intervene, but Danny shook his head.

“Stop moving,” he said. “I think you’re scaring him.”
Indignation flared inside Jasper. Just what the hell did this little

twink think he was doing telling him how he could and couldn’t touch
his mate? He gave Danny a hard stare, and a harder one still as Ben’s
breathing began to calm down. When Danny held out his hand for
Ben to lick it, Jasper had to bite back the urge to charge him and rip it
off.

The fact that Danny was right—that his simple gesture had

managed to calm Ben down when Jasper had only upset him further—
only fueled Jasper’s rage. And his guilt. And his jealousy. And his
confusion.

He’d always imagined, in some sappy, embarrassing pocket of his

mind, that if he ever mated, it would help him. That it would ease
some of the terrible guilt and doubt and worthlessness he felt pulsing
through him all the time. Instead, those feelings had doubled when he
saw them reflected in Ben. He’d seen the look on Ben’s face after
they mated. It was one of pure disgust.

Jasper could hardly blame him.
“I think he was abused,” Danny said as he patted Ben. Jasper

snorted. Danny had no idea how right he was about that. And
although Jasper had hardly begun to process the swirling mass of
emotional outpouring he’d felt pouring out of Ben when he bit into
him, Jasper was certain of one thing—the kid needed time. Whatever
else he’d pretended to be since Jasper met him up at Ecstasy Rock,
Ben was also scared and confused and repressing a whole hell of a lot
of hurt from the years he’d spent with Pierson.

All the same, it didn’t seem like those years of abuse had soured

him to human touch or affection. Danny had stretched out his hand

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and waited for Ben to come to him. He did, and he was fine. Ben
trusted Danny. He just didn’t trust Jasper. Not anymore, anyway.

Jasper blew out a sigh. “His name is Ben.”
Danny shrugged. “Okay, I think Ben was abused. I used to work

at an animal shelter.”

“Oh, well, I guess you’re the expert then.”
“You were a little rough with him,” Lars pointed out.
“He’s a maniac!” Jasper shouted, immediately regretting the

defensive outburst. He couldn’t help it, though, any more than he
could stop his face from flushing at Lars’s accusation. He had tried so
hard to be gentle.

You were gentle when you kissed me, Ben had said. Jasper had

replied that he would hurt him, that he’d fuck him rough and
carelessly, but he hadn’t. He’d sworn to Ben that if they fucked it
wouldn’t mean anything, but Jasper had felt something, something
impossible to deny now that he’d felt Ben’s emotions rush into him
and seen the bite mark Ben left on his shoulder. Jasper had hurt
himself and been hurt before, but this was different. This was
permanent. Ben was part of him now, not just for one night, but
forever.

Not ready to process that thought, Jasper tamped it down, but it

was harder to still the jealousy that was overwhelming him at the
sight of Ben licking Danny’s outstretched palm and Danny rubbing
his other hand all over Ben’s head and neck and ears. After a biting
word to Danny regarding his obnoxiously incessant need to pet Ben,
Danny pulled away and Ben trotted out of the living room. Jasper
watched him go, fighting back the urge to follow him. He didn’t seem
like he was going far, but so help him, if he didn’t come back…

Suddenly, he felt Danny watching him. Jasper reddened, worried

about the expression that was written across his face. “Is he your
mate?” Danny asked.

Jasper reddened. “Not really the territorial type,” he ground out.
“I guess we’ll see about that,” Lars muttered.

Ben in the Shadows

Jasper shot him a look. He’d seen the way his brother and Danny

had been looking at each other since he came downstairs. Something
was different between them tonight. Lars might have been protested
that they were before, but Jasper doubted that charade would last
much longer. “You’re one to talk.”

Danny blushed then gave Lars a look that absolutely confirmed

Jasper’s suspicions. It pissed him off. Unlike Jasper, his irritatingly
good-hearted younger brother had been the perfect gentleman with
Danny, leaving him ample time to cope with whatever utterly banal
issues he probably had before claiming him. They’d probably go back
to his room later and have annoyingly perfect sex.

And Jasper would be the one sleeping on the couch.
Alexander interrupted Jasper from his thoughts. “Is that a mating

bite?”

Unthinkingly, Jasper snapped a hand to his shoulder to cover it

then realized that the pillow slipped in his motion. Frantically, he
adjusted it. “Shut up,” he snapped. “Ben!”

“What?” Ben sauntered back into the living room, wearing his

good white button-down shirt and another pair of his overpriced
Calvin Klein boxer briefs. Just what exactly did this kid have against
pants, anyway?

“Those are my clothes,” Jasper stammered.
Ben folded his hands over his chest. “Yeah, well, you should put

them on. Laundry room’s right over there.”

“Did you think about asking first?”
“And walk around the house like you with my cock hanging out? I

didn’t want to be uncouth.”

Jasper felt a rush of heat surge into his cheeks as Ben spit his own

words back at him. “My room. Now. We need to talk.”

* * * *

Ellen Ginsberg

“Well, I guess you’ve met the family now,” Jasper said as he

pulled on the slacks Ben had slid off of him earlier. His voice was
dripping with sarcasm.

Ben glared at him from across the room and sighed, crossing his

arms defensively across his chest. Don’t be such a dick, he’d wanted
to say, but no one could say Jasper hadn’t warned him of that. Right
before he sunk his teeth into his shoulder. A rush of emotion swelled
back up to Ben’s throat, and he hated himself for it. He swallowed it
back, trying to think of something else to say.

“Are all your brothers werewolves?”
Jasper nodded. “Danny’s not my brother, but—”
“He’s nice.”
Jasper’s eyes narrowed. Hot waves of jealousy were rolling off of

him, and Ben could feel them from across the room. However wary
Jasper seemed to be of the commitment they’d just entered into, he
did want Ben. Or at least, he didn’t want anyone else to have him.
Ben’s new friend had hardly even patted him on the head and Jasper
had been ready to bite the kid’s head off. So at least there was that.
“Good for him. He is Lars’s mate, though, whatever he just said, so I
wouldn’t get too—”

“Are your brothers gay, too?”
Jasper pursed his lips. “I have no idea what Alex’s…inclinations

are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with either gender, but if I had to
wager a guess…”

“That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”
“Alex is extremely weird. Yes. I agree.”
Ben narrowed his gaze. “You know what I mean. Three gay

brothers?”

“How would you know?” Jasper snapped. “Haven’t you been

locked away from the civilized world for like, your entire
adolescence?”

“I watch TV.”
“Oh, and that’s just a fucking windfall of gay education.”

Ben in the Shadows

“I like Will & Grace.”
Jasper made a face. “Ew.” He shook his head as if to clear it of

some offensive thought. “Anyway, it’s not that weird where we’re
from.”

“Where are you from?”
“Nowhere.” Jasper stiffened. “Can we not talk about this now?”
“You brought it up.”
Jasper sighed, pacing the length of the room as if looking for some

hidden escape. It’s no use, Ben wanted to say, you’re stuck with me.
All the same, he hadn’t seen his mate like this yet. He’d been nervous
and aloof and embarrassed and annoyed, but this was something
different. Whatever Jasper was feeling now, he’d thrown up some
kind of hasty defense to keep it from showing. And that only made
Ben more curious.

Jasper reluctantly turned back to face him. “My dad was a

werewolf, like me and my brothers. My mom…” His eyes flitted
down to the floor. “I don’t know. She said she was a planeswalker.”

That word stirred something in Ben. His throat was suddenly very

dry, and he felt dizzy. Must still be the silver serum, he thought to
himself, but he could have sworn the aftereffects wore off a while
ago. He schooled his breath back into a steady in-out pace. “What’s a
planeswalker?”

“Someone who can travel to different planes of reality?” It was

funny. Jasper was looking at Ben with this expression that asked, isn’t
it the dumbest thing you ever heard, but Ben didn’t think that was
what Jasper felt about it. If it was, he doubted Jasper would keep what
he was feeling so closely guarded. “Right, well, if you go by that, I
guess we’re all technically from this other plane where there is…” He
laughed, a short, mirthless laugh, and shook his head again. “God, I’m
sorry, it’s so fucking ridiculous. Okay. We are—this is according to
my nutcase mother, mind you—from a plane of reality where
everyone has supernatural powers and straight people are the
minority. The whole place is apparently falling ass-backwards in gay

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werewolves and vampires and whatever other fairy-tale bullshit you
want to dream up. It’s called…”

Jasper spread his hands in front of him, pausing as if for emphasis

before he muttered the magic word, but Ben beat him to it.
“Morgana,” he whispered, his dry throat croaking out the word before
he could stop it.

Jasper’s face went white as a sheet. “What did you just say?”
What had he just said? “I–I don’t know. It was just a word that

popped into my head.”

“You said Morgana. Like it was the name of the plane.”
“Is it?” Ben asked. “Is it?”
Jasper didn’t respond, just stood there stupidly, staring at the

floor. Ben’s head was spinning with the force of the revelation.
“Before Pierson,” he finally began, slowly and carefully, “where did
you come from? What did your parents say about…”

“I don’t remember my parents.”
“What do you remember?”
Ben stayed silent. Because of his amnesia, he couldn’t remember

anything before Pierson except for wandering the Devils River below
Ecstasy Rock. Being there tonight with Jasper had stirred something
in him, though, some vague, dark past from before his conscious
memory, just like the word, planeswalker, had stirred something now.

“This Morgana place,” Ben said quickly, “is Danny from there,

too?”

Jasper shook his head. “His parents are both human. They’re from

Oklahoma.”

“But there are other werewolves, right? Or planeswalkers?” Ben

asked. “Are they from…”

“We’ve never met anyone else.”
“Oh.”
For the barest of seconds, Ben had hoped to find some kind of

clue to where he was from or who he was, but that hope deflated as

Ben in the Shadows

quickly as it had appeared. Just like his hopes for what mating would
be.

“My parents said a lot of stuff,” Jasper said. “And I’m pretty

convinced now that most of it was total and complete bullshit.
Especially this planeswalker garbage. My mom was really…I don’t
know. I think having all of us…not-normal kids…sort of messed her
up.”

“Did your mom tell you about mating, too?”
Jasper bit his lip. “Look, whatever we just did…”
“Is that why you didn’t want to mate with me? Because you don’t

believe in mating or any of that stuff your parents said?”

“I don’t believe in planeswalking,” Jasper snapped, “because my

parents tried to do it once. They jumped from the top of a very tall
rock. A cliff, actually, with some very sharp, very unfortunate rocks
underneath—”

“This is Ecstasy Rock?” Ben asked, his eyes wide. This new detail

stirred something, too. He could tell he was upsetting Jasper, but he
had to ask. He had to know more. “What happened to them?”

“They’ve been unconscious for the past ten years,” Jasper

finished. Ben snapped his mouth closed, wishing to God he’d kept it
that way in the first place. “So no, I kinda doubt that particular
bedtime story has any bearing on reality.”

Ben swallowed. “Oh.”
He sank back onto the bed behind him. He had felt an awful lot of

raw emotion surge into him when he bit into Jasper, and he’d been
terrified at how painful most of it was. For the first time since it they
mated, Ben was starting to think that pain had nothing to do with him.
He pulled his legs up onto the bed, hugging his knees to his chest.
Jasper came to sit next to him on the bed, keeping a careful distance.
Ben stared at the space between them.

“This whole mating thing,” Jasper said slowly. “It’s not like I

don’t believe in it.”

“You just don’t want it.”

Ellen Ginsberg

“What I went through was ten years ago, and I’m still screwed up

about it. What you went through…”

“You don’t know what I went through.”
“I know how it made you feel.”
Ben’s chest rose and fell as he breathed in and out. Jasper raised a

hand to his back. It felt good, comforting, but he shrugged it away.
“You were supposed to fix me. You rescued me, and you kissed me.
We made love?” Jasper bit his lip at that, and Ben could feel so much
guilt rolling off of him. Ben continued. “I thought that was going to
take all the pain away, but it only made it worse.”

“Don’t say that.” Jasper’s voice was almost a whisper. That hand

came creeping back to Ben like a magnet, running across his knee.
Ben could feel the need coming off of him. If Jasper had taken him in
his arms altogether, Ben would have collapsed there, but he didn’t. He
stopped with just the muted brush of that one shy hand. Ben pushed it
away again, more forcefully this time.

“Why are you trying to comfort me, anyway? You fucked me, and

now you don’t want me—”

“I don’t know what I want.”
“Why not?” Ben’s voice was rising. “I’m too immature? Too

fucked up? You don’t like me? You don’t want to commit?”

“Just shut up!” Jasper said. His guilt was sharper now, deeper,

darker. Ben could feel it growing by the minute.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You said you’d fucked a lot of guys—”
“And you told me to fuck you.”
Ben bit his lip. He could feel his own guilt now, was certain from

the look on Jasper’s face he could feel it, too. And he could feel
Jasper’s regret. There was nothing Ben could do. The closer they got
to each other, the more they tried to talk, the worse things became.
And they were stuck together.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I just thought if we…that maybe if

we made love, then you’d want…or you would feel…” Try as he

Ben in the Shadows

might, Ben couldn’t bring himself to say it. It was so stupid to think
that Jasper could love him back.

He let out a long, shuddering sigh, and then Jasper’s hand caught

his, wrapping around it and squeezing it tenderly. This time, Ben let
him hold it. “After what happened with my parents, I tried really hard
not to let myself feel anything,” Jasper said quietly. “And I got really
good at that after a while. But when I saw you, I felt…”

“Felt what?” Ben whispered. Jasper’s mouth formed a tight line.

His lips were sealed shut. A bubble of emotion stayed lodged in Ben’s
throat. He spoke the word around it. “Love?”

Jasper didn’t say it, and Ben didn’t expect him to. When they

mated, he thought he’d felt it, just a little, with all that shame and guilt
and pain, the tiniest bud of love, a mirror of his own feelings, which
were practically overflowing for Jasper. He didn’t know what he was
feeling now. His head was swimming from the emotional whiplash
the day had put him through. Maybe Jasper was right. Maybe it was
too soon.

Ben tried to pull his hand away from Jasper’s, but Jasper’s arms

caught him, pulled him in. They lay down on the bed together, and he
curled against Jasper as he stroked his hair and the back of his neck.
Ben closed his eyes, feeling their breathing reach a single pulsing
pace together.

“It wasn’t just sex for me,” Jasper said, stroking the shell of his

ear. “If it was, I’d be gone by now because that’s the kind of guy I
am. I’m not proud of that, but…”

“So what is this?” Silence. Ben’s breath shook as he released it.

“Jasper, I need…”

“I’m not good with this stuff,” he said. “I’m not good with

feelings and…”

“Try.”
Jasper swallowed. “I just wish we hadn’t done it so soon. I don’t

want to take it back, I just…” His voice faltered, and he laughed,
embarrassed. “We kinda fucked this up, didn’t we?”

Ellen Ginsberg

Ben nodded. He felt a kiss against the back of his head, and turned

around to meet Jasper’s lips with his. He caught Jasper’s bottom lip in
his, sucking it into his mouth. Ben’s palm brushed the rough stubble
on Jasper’s face, and his leg pressed against Jasper’s thickening cock.

Ben pulled away. He wanted to feel that stiffness inside him, in

his hand, his mouth, his ass…but even as his need built, that awful
sinking hesitation, the same one that had settled inside him with the
force of the mating bite, came creeping back up to edge his want with
worry. It would always be there, Jasper had said. It would only get
worse each time they fucked.

Ben couldn’t let that happen again. Not until he got his feelings

sorted out. He eyed Jasper on the bed, his stiff cock signaling how
obviously he wanted Ben. He considered the question on his mind for
a moment before he let it slip past his mouth.

“Prove it,” he said. “Prove to me it isn’t just the sex.” Jasper

stroked a hand across Ben’s brow. It dipped along his jawline,
running down his chest. Ben pushed it away. “I’m serious.”

“How?”
“If your brother’s a psychologist, I’ll go talk to him, like you told

me to. Whatever you want to convince you I’m okay. And I’ll try to
get better, but until he thinks I am…”

Jasper’s hand had slipped away from his and was tracing the line

of Ben’s cock. Ben smiled, firmly pulling him away by the wrist. He
deposited Jasper’s hand on his own cock as he pulled away from his
embrace, sitting up on the bed.

Jasper furrowed his brow at him a moment, but his eyes widened

as he caught the meaning of Ben’s gesture. “You’re going to leave my
sex life up to Lars?”

“You really don’t like your brother much, do you?”
“The guy brought his mate home, and he’s been sleeping on the

couch for the past two weeks!”

Ben in the Shadows

“Well, I guess you’re going to have to fight him for it.” Ben

smirked, noting that Jasper’s hand hadn’t yet left his erection. “At
least until the end of my long, hard healing process.”

“Long and hard is right,” Jasper quipped, as he climbed off the

bed, his stiff dick still tenting out his pants. He walked to the door,
grumbling as he went.

Ben raised an eyebrow at him. “Where are you going?”
“To the living room, to negotiate sleeping arrangements. And

maybe rekindle my nicotine addiction.”

Ben smiled. Jasper had told him how he’d only just quit smoking

in the car ride over. Each time Ben had leaned into him in the car,
Jasper had grumbled and pushed him away and swore aloud to stop at
the nearest gas station to buy another pack of Camels. But he hadn’t.
Ben smirked. Even if he had, he would’ve had a rough time smoking
them. Ben had stolen Jasper’s lighter out of his pocket during one of
those long, lingering gropes.

“Be strong,” he said as Jasper disappeared out the door, flipping

him the bird as he went.

Ben smirked as he left and leaned over the nightstand to open the

drawer and pull out the smooth metal object he’d pulled from his
pocket. In all the time since he’d swiped it, Jasper hadn’t even noticed
it was gone. He ran his finger over it once, and a sense of calm drifted
over him from far outside his body. He smiled and put the lighter
back in its hiding place.

He had a feeling Jasper would be okay.

Ellen Ginsberg

Chapter Six

Ben stood in front of the magazine rack, flipping through the

pages of the open GQ in his hands, and stared at the handsome
celebrity faces printed on the glossy page. Danny leaned over his
shoulder and pressed a finger to one of them, an all-American guy in
his early thirties with nearly perfect hair. Jasper could see it perfectly
from his vantage point over Ben’s shoulder. He narrowed his eyes at
it.

“He’s hot,” Danny said.
“Dustin Lance Black?” Ben asked, and Danny nodded his

confirmation. Ben smiled. “Definitely. And he wrote the screenplay
for Milk.” Ben glanced back at Jasper and his smile widened into a
bemused smirk. His eyes returned to Danny confidentially. “Also?
Totally gay.”

“Really?” Danny said, leaning closer into the magazine, and to

Ben.

A low growl escaped Jasper’s throat as he ran his finger across the

smooth, rectangular Zippo in his pocket. He’d neurotically carried it
with him ever since he learned about Ben swiping it, but he hadn’t
smoked for nearly two weeks…pretty much the amount of time it had
been since he’d had sex. He was starting to think he’d made a grave
mistake, giving up both at the same time.

Especially if he was going to have to watch Ben ogle attractive

gay celebrities while Lars’s mate pawed all over him.

“They’re just friends.” Lars clapped a hand to his shoulder. “You

know that, right?”

Ben in the Shadows

“Obviously,” Jasper said, moving his hand from his pocket to the

scar on his shoulder where Ben had bit him.

Everything Jasper had done in his life since his parents’ accident,

the endless string of clubs and drugs and one-night stands, had all
been predicated on his belief that there was no fate. No meaning in
anything. No consequences. But that scar was still there, a reminder
that the night they’d shared had permanent significance. That it meant
something. Even if he didn’t know what that something was yet.

He sighed, returning his eyes to Ben. “You know what? Go ahead.

Read the magazine. Ogle the celebrities. Form a fucking secret
handshake, for all I care.”

Danny glanced at Ben, his eyes shining with mirth. “Oh my God.

We should totally have a secret handshake.”

Ben smiled smugly at Jasper. “Totally.”
Jasper glanced at Lars helplessly. Lars smiled. “I think it’s good

that he has a support group.”

Jasper looked at him dubiously. “If this is what you’re teaching

him in therapy, I swear to God, I’m going to buy him a self-help book
and tell him to never speak to you again.” Lars did not laugh at the
joke. Jasper rolled his eyes. “Joking. Obviously.”

Lars nodded, strolling down the aisle away from Ben and Danny.

Jasper glanced over to ensure they were far enough away and lowered
his voice. “How’s he doing by the way?”

“Ben? Fine. Making good progress. I get the feeling he’s

repressing some of what happened to him, but that’s to be expected.”

Jasper sighed. He had that feeling, too.
Most of the time, Ben was fine. In spite of his jealousy, it did

comfort Jasper to know that his mate had a friend in Danny, and he
got along with Lars and Alex as well. And, although not fucking Ben
again had been murderous for Jasper, he enjoyed having him around.
It surprised the hell out of Jasper. With all the casual hook-ups Jasper
had in his past, he’d never really been one for relationships. Suddenly
finding himself mated to Ben was strange, but Jasper would be lying

Ellen Ginsberg

if he said he didn’t relish every minute they spent together. Ben gave
good backrubs and had decent taste in movies. Fuck, Jasper even
liked cuddling with the little twink. During the day, things were
pleasant. Blissful, even.

But at night…
Jasper shuddered, remembering the nightmare he’d had the night

before. Pierson had risen from the grave like a zombie to finish the
super-cure he’d spent so much time babbling about, and he was
receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for it. There had been a big banquet
and all kinds of elegant, important people were dressed up and
applauding him. Applauding Ben, too, for the important role that he’d
played in saving the human race. For his noble and worthwhile
sacrifice. Somewhere in the back of the room, Jasper was screaming
like a madman, his bloodred hands proclaiming his guilt in killing
Pierson. Two men in suits snatched Jasper and roughly handled him,
shoving him through the double doors and out of the auditorium
where he couldn’t disrupt the ceremony. Ben had taken one look at
Jasper’s red hands and his bloodshot eyes and turned up his nose at
him. He had more important things to do than waste his time with
Jasper.

Jasper blew out a breath, eyeing Ben across the supermarket as he

joked and laughed with Danny. Catching Jasper’s eye, his smile
broadened to a heartbreaking width, and he gave a shy wave. Jasper
smiled back, but uneasiness welled inside him. Sure, he seemed fine
now, but after what Ben had been through, how much good could two
weeks of cuddling possibly do him? Especially if that cuddling was
with someone as screwed up as Jasper, his mind added bitterly.

“I’m never gonna have sex again,” Jasper muttered under his

breath.

Lars arched a bemused eyebrow at him. “You know, if you think

I’m going to wave a green flag and give you my blessing to go—”

Ben in the Shadows

Jasper held up his hands to keep his brother from finishing the

sentence. “Wasn’t talking about that. And anyway, that was Ben’s
idea. Not mine. All I said was that I’d give him time.”

“Good,” Lars said with a snort. “Because for the record? Giving

me the say-so over what your dick gets to do and when doesn’t
exactly fit my description of professionalism in the workplace.”

Jasper winced. “Oh my God, my dick wants nothing to do with

your workplace. Can we please just never talk about this again?”

“Deal,” Lars said. “Although, for the record? I actually think this

is one of the more intrepid things you’ve done. Taking it slow, I
mean. Even if your methods are a little fucked up and weird.”

Jasper rolled his eyes, staring at a display of antiseptic facial

cleansers. Lars’s gaze drifted over to Danny, and Jasper noticed his
brother’s expression darken a little. Lars thrust his hands deep in his
pockets, the way he always did when he was trying to keep himself
from saying something he wanted to. As if his stupid hands were
going to do the blabbing for him if he let them loose.

“Everything okay?” Jasper asked.
“Fine,” Lars replied, and Jasper snorted in disbelief. “What?”
“You’re doing that thing you do. With your hands.”
He nodded toward Lars’s pockets, and Lars reddened with

embarrassment, pulling his hands out of his pockets and crossing
them over his chest. Then he leaned over to Jasper, lowering his
voice. “I don’t know. It’s weird, the whole mating thing. I thought
Dad had done a pretty thorough job of explaining it…” Jasper rolled
his eyes. Uncomfortably thorough, Jasper thought, but he refrained
from adding his two cents. “But things keep turning up with Danny.
Like weird stuff.”

“TMI,” Jasper muttered.
Lars shook his head. “Forget it. If you’re not even going to take

this seriously…”

He turned to walk away to end the conversation, but Jasper caught

his arm to prevent him from moving. Lars stayed put, but his gaze

Ellen Ginsberg

fixed on Danny again. Jasper had a feeling he knew what Lars was
talking about. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” He glanced at Danny, nodding
in his direction. “How is he?”

Lars shrugged. “Fine now. For the moment.”
Jasper’s initial appraisal of Danny as neurotically well-adjusted

had proven utterly untrue. He’d since learned that Danny’s parents
had made him so ashamed of his wolf that he’d been forced to repress
it practically his whole life. As a result, meeting his mate had kind of
screwed him up a little. At least, Jasper assumed it did. That same
night Jasper had brought Ben home, the night Lars stopped sleeping
on the couch, Jasper had gone downstairs to contemplate a cigarette
and instead found Danny in the kitchen, sleepwalking. He had gotten
a hold of a silver knife and was walking somnambulant up the stairs
to attack his sleeping mate with it, apparently in the throes of a
nightmare. The poor kid would have killed Lars in his sleep if Jasper
and Alexander hadn’t stopped him.

Lars cleared his throat. His eyes were nervous, and his hands were

back in his pockets. “Look, I know you guys aren’t sleeping together,
but—”

“Really thought we weren’t going to talk about this anymore…”

Jasper muttered, but Lars’s expression was dead serious as he looked
at him.

“You still sleep at the same time, right? I mean, approximately?”
“Yeah,” Jasper said reluctantly. Not that he’d been sleeping much

at all with all the nightmares he’d been having. In the past two weeks,
his dreams had assaulted him with every neurosis he had, from the
effects of Pierson’s abuse on Ben to Jasper’s checkered past as a
recreational drug user and garden variety manwhore. He glanced
around the supermarket, wondering where the hell Alex had snuck off
to with the cart. He definitely needed to remember to pick up some
coffee.

“Do you guys ever share dreams?” Lars asked.

Ben in the Shadows

Jasper turned back to him, feeling the color drain from his face.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“That night, when you found Danny…there was something I

didn’t tell you. I remembered his dream, too. The nightmare he had
when he was sleepwalking? I was there, dreaming the same thing,
right along with him. I don’t know if it’s just a natural part of mating
or what, but we’ve had other dreams together since then, which makes
me think you and Ben might…”

Jasper could hardly listen to what he was saying anymore. In the

weeks that he’d been with Ben, they had talked a lot, but Jasper had
always been careful to keep things from getting too heavy. He hadn’t
wanted to upset Ben so soon after things ended with Pierson, but more
than that, he hadn’t wanted to scare him away. Half the skeletons
Jasper had in his closet should have been enough to send any sane
man running from him, so he’d carefully avoided the subject of his
own wayward youth, stuffing it far down into his subconscious where
he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Only he had worried about it, night after night, in his dreams.
And Ben had apparently been witness to all of them.
“So we share dreams?” Jasper repeated. “How is that even

possible?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a mates thing.” Lars raked his eyes over

Jasper. “Why, do you think you’ve done it?”

Jasper nodded tensely. He couldn’t be one-hundred percent

certain, but it made sense. There had been more than a few nights
when, after a particularly bad nightmare, Jasper would go upstairs to
check on Ben and see him turning and moaning restlessly in his sleep.
Other times, Jasper would have a dream involving himself and a past
lover and see Ben glaring at him over the kitchen table at breakfast. If
those moments were all just coincidences, there were an awful lot of
them.

Jasper ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling every muscle

tense as he watched Ben from across the aisle. He was still talking to

Ellen Ginsberg

Danny. “Does, ah…okay, shit,” Jasper stammered. “Danny knows
about this, obviously, but…I mean, you don’t think he’d tell Ben,
would he?”

“I don’t know,” Lars said. He looked at Jasper suspiciously.

“Please tell me you’re not going to try to hide this from him.”

“You don’t know what my dreams are like,” Jasper shot back at

him. Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to him, and he winced.
Try as he may, he couldn’t shake the image of Ben humbly smiling in
his dream while Pierson explained to the adoring crowd before them
what a noble sacrifice he’d made, letting himself be cut up and
experimented on. “Or what Ben’s dreams are like. Jesus, he’s really
fucked up about all that stuff Pierson did to him. I mean, you have no
idea.”

“I have an idea,” Lars said, putting a hand on his shoulder. The

gesture comforted and annoyed Jasper in equal measure. “I’ve been
counseling him for two weeks now. I know. Just like I know he really
cares about you.” Jasper shrugged Lars’s hand away from him, but he
continued. “The same way you care about him.”

“How would you know if I cared about him?”
Lars gave him a look. “I walked past your room the other night

and you were sitting at your desk listening to Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ on
your laptop.”

“That doesn’t prove anythi—”
“On repeat.”
With no excuse for that other than the embarrassing truth, Jasper

glanced over his shoulder to try and plan an escape. “Where the hell
did Alex run off to with the cart, anyway? I need to go pick up some
coffee.”

He started down the aisle, but Lars caught him by the elbow.

“Hold on. Look, the point is, I don’t know why you think you guys
aren’t any good for each other, but that’s obviously bullshit. Fate
paired you for a reason.”

Ben in the Shadows

“Oh, fuck off, Lars!” Jasper shouted. A nearby mother and the kid

she was dragging away from the candy aisle glanced over at Jasper
and gave him a dirty look. He lowered his voice. “Whatever’s going
on between us? Let’s just leave fate out of it, shall we?”

Lars snorted. “Why? You’re mates.” His forehead wrinkled. “Is

this about Mom and Dad?”

“I said leave it.”
Lars shook his head. “You’re not a kid anymore, you know? You

can’t just go on a bender and forget it exists.”

“Well, luckily, I don’t do benders anymore.”
“Yeah, now you just repress everything. You can’t push it away

forever, though. You’re going to have to deal with it sometime.”

“Deal with what?”
Jasper turned to see Alex standing behind them with a now-full

cart of groceries, apparently having finished with the shopping.

“Nothing,” Jasper said quickly, leveling a glance at Lars. “Mate

stuff. Don’t worry about it.”

Alex tensed at Jasper’s choice of words, and Jasper immediately

regretted them. When Ben and Danny had first arrived, Alex had
seemed excited for his brothers, but as the weeks passed and the
foursome—Ben, Jasper, Lars, and Danny—had spent more and more
time together, he’d grown increasingly moody. It wasn’t like him.
Alex had always been a bit of a loner, a role he’d always seemed
comfortable with in the past. Unlike Jasper and Lars, Alex never lost
his faith in Morgana. Rather than going to college, finding friends and
lovers, and committing to a career on the Earth plane, Alex had spent
every waking minute of his adult life honing his shifting abilities and
waiting for destiny to send him a mate. If anyone deserved one, it was
Alex, but the weeks passed and he was still alone. Jasper smiled at
him warmly, clapping him on the shoulder in what he hoped would be
seen as an affable gesture. “Thanks for taking care of the shopping.”

Alex shrugged, his anger seeming to dissipate as he pushed the

cart away, gesturing to Ben and Danny as they made their way back

Ellen Ginsberg

over to where the brothers were standing. “Didn’t want to get in
anyone’s way,” he grumbled.

Hearing this, Jasper glanced sideways at Lars, but his attention

waned when Ben rejoined his side and slid his arm up Jasper’s back.

“Miss me?” he asked.
Jasper nodded absently. He did, but his worried mind was

elsewhere. Lars’s words, you have to deal with it eventually, were still
ringing in his ears, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask about the
dreams. Not yet, anyway. He glanced over at Danny then eyed Ben.
“What did you guys talk about?” he asked suspiciously.

Ben shrugged noncommittally. “Oh, you know. Celebrity gossip.

Hair products. Guy stuff.” Jasper breathed a sigh of relief that dream
sharing hadn’t made the list. Ben continued to run his hand over
Jasper’s back and neck, amused. “You know it’s really precious how
tense you get anytime I talk to another guy.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “I’m not tense,” he lied. “And don’t call me

precious.”

Ben smirked. “Precious,” he teased, leaning in to Jasper and

lowering his voice, “I am going to give you such a back rub when we
get home.”

* * * *

“Ow! Fuck, harder!” Jasper groaned through his teeth.
“This is as hard as I can go!” Ben’s voice was strained from the

force of his efforts.

“Don’t be such a pussy, just…ow. Ow! Ow!” Jasper’s mouth fell

open and his eyes closed as the delicious bite of pain washed over
him, radiating out from his shoulders as Ben dug into them with his
knuckles.

“Better?” Ben asked, smoothing his palm over the spot he had just

been rubbing. Jasper winced as it made contact with his tender skin. If
he were human, there would likely be a bruise. But since he wasn’t…

Ben in the Shadows

“Mmm,” Jasper replied, relishing in the tiny pinpricks of pleasure-

pain that were raised with each now-gentle touch of Ben’s fingers. It
was a good thing his desk was in front of him. His cock was hard as a
rock. “Best…massage…ever.”

He tilted his head back to glance up at Ben standing behind his

chair, and Ben’s fingers grazed against his chin. They lingered there a
minute, and he turned his head, forcing them against his lips. It wasn’t
a kiss, exactly. Not technically, anyway.

“What are you trying to do here?” Ben asked softly. It was almost

a protest, but he didn’t move his fingers. Jasper could feel them
against the stubble on his face.

“That’s not allowed?” Jasper murmured. The movement of his

lips brushed Ben’s fingers across his mouth. Ben’s thumb stroked
tentatively over his earlobe, and Jasper closed his eyes. “I didn’t mean
for it to be sexy.”

Ben raised a suspicious eyebrow at him. “Really.”
“I’m not even remotely turned on right now.”
“You wanna stand up and tell me that?”
“I prefer to sit, thanks,” Jasper said, covertly adjusting the fabric

of his slacks under the desk.

Ben leaned against his ear. “I can see your hard-on from here.”
Jasper ground his teeth together as he felt his dick swell even

more. “Maybe you should stop blowing in my ear, then.”

With that, Ben pulled away from him, and he walked around

Jasper’s side to hop onto his desk in front of him. His legs dangled off
the front of the desk, his bare feet brushing against Jasper’s lap. Ben
spread his legs apart, bracing them against either of the arm rests on
Jasper’s chair. It gave Jasper a hell of a view of his mate’s crotch.

Good lord. Jasper had never taken more cold showers than he had

since Ben arrived. Not to mention the endless hours he’d spent trying
to refocus his energy into his work or going to the gym. If things kept
up like this, he was going to singlehandedly make Employee of the
Month, diminish the household’s gas bill, and finally get those

Ellen Ginsberg

washboard abs he’d been vying for since opening his gym
membership, all in one lousy month. He was also going to lose his
fucking mind.

He tapped at Ben’s leg to pull a stack of papers out from under his

thigh and replace them on the desk. “I had planned on doing some
work tonight, you know. Before you distracted me.”

Ben adjusted his foot on the armrest to kick at Jasper’s arm. “Like

you minded. What are you working on, anyway?”

Jasper cleared his throat, hoping to sound casual. “Just some thing

to help Danny with his nightmares.”

He studied Ben’s face for any sign of recognition, still unsure

whether Danny had told him about dream sharing or not. If he didn’t,
there was a chance he could dodge the issue entirely. He’d purchased
a vast amount of caffeine-based beverages from the store to get him
through the next few weeks and had every intention of spending those
weeks combing through every document BioSolve had on
experimental medications. Surely there was some kind of report on a
drug that might stop people from dreaming. If he could put that drug
to use, he might just manage to avoid Ben ever finding out about all
the garbage rattling around in his subconscious.

He turned his hopeful eyes to Ben, but there was something

clouding his expression. Jasper bit his lip. “What’s wrong?”

Ben lowered his eyes. “I miss you at night,” he said quietly.
Jasper raised an eyebrow at his mate. It wasn’t exactly what he’d

been expecting to hear. “What?”

“Forget it. It’s stupid.”
“Tell me,” Jasper persisted.
Ben sighed and looked at Jasper skeptically, but he continued

anyway. “I have nightmares sometimes at night. I don’t know,” he
said. “Sometimes, I just…I wish you could…” He trailed off as his
eyes drifted to his feet where Jasper’s thumb was tracing slow circles
over Ben’s left ankle.

“Hold you?”

Ben in the Shadows

Ben nodded. “Yeah.”
Jasper sighed, leaning over until his forehead rested against Ben’s

knees, and soon he felt Ben’s fingers stroking the hair at the nape of
his neck. God, it felt good. If he could just feel that every night as he
fell asleep, he would—

He looked up at Ben, but his voice stuck in his throat.

Disappointment radiated off his mate, and he pulled his feet from
Jasper’s lap. “Forget it,” Ben said, “it’s stupid.”

Jasper caught his feet, holding them in place, keeping Ben from

pulling away. “It’s not stupid,” he said firmly. Ben’s eyes met his, and
Jasper swallowed around his fear. “I have to tell you something.

Ben raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to go on.
Jasper sighed. Fuck it. “Your nightmares,” he said. “I know. I

have them, too.”

Ben looked at him uncertainly. “You have nightmares?”
Jasper shook his head. “We have…the same nightmares.”
He could feel discomfort easing up from inside of Ben. As it did,

he replayed in his head all the idiot things he’d unwittingly confessed
to Ben in their dreams. It wasn’t just the stupid decisions he’d made,
the stupid shit he’d done while drunk or high, or the countless,
nameless guys he’d carelessly fucked. He’d been an entirely different
person then, someone he didn’t particularly care for and someone he
certainly didn’t want Ben to meet. Raking his eyes over Ben, he tried
to gauge the expression on his face and the feelings rolling off of him.

“So all the nightmares I’ve been having since we mated…”
Jasper nodded weakly. “They were mine, too.” Ben’s body

seemed to stiffen under him, and Jasper let go of his feet, pushing
away from him. “So now you know everything.”

Ben’s brow furrowed in thought. Jasper turned his eyes away, not

wanting to consider what particular episodes from their nightly
nightmares he was envisioning.

When he looked back at him, Ben’s eyes were narrowed

thoughtfully. Finally, he spoke. “How come you get off on pain?”

Ellen Ginsberg

Jasper felt his face flush. He had no idea what Ben was talking

about, but he had to choke down a dry swallow before schooling the
shock off his face. Wherever the non sequitur was coming from, it
was an accurate assessment. “That’s a weird thing to say.”

Ben tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I’m sorry. I

wasn’t aware that ‘back rub’ was secretly code for ‘punch my
shoulders as hard as you can until my dick gets hard.’”

“Those are two utterly unrelated events.”
Ben curled his feet under him on the desk. “There was this one

dream the other night…and there was a guy in it I didn’t recognize.”
He closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Marc,” he
said, opening his eyes again. “That was his name.”

Jasper didn’t have to listen to Ben tell him about the rest of the

dream. He already knew where it was going.

The closest thing Jasper had ever had to a relationship was an ill-

spent month with a guy named Marc he’d met in a club the summer
after graduate school. It had been a weird summer. Jasper had fully
intended after graduating to try to be more of an adult. He’d told
himself that he had a real job now, that it was time to stop screwing
around and that his young and reckless days of “casual”—and he used
that term loosely—drug use were over. He wasn’t exactly addicted to
anything, and there were still his grown-up vices of boozing and
smoking and compulsive man-whoring to entertain himself with, so it
should have been a relatively easy transition. In a way, it had been.
He had, at least, stopped abusing his body with recreational drug use.

Instead, he’d found Marc to abuse his body for him.
Jasper had never considered himself submissive, had always

preferred to take the dominant role in lovemaking, but the masochistic
streak that he’d been nursing ever since his parents’ accident—or not-
accident, as he continually, torturously reminded himself—had
emerged with Marc, and Marc had latched onto it like the bastard he
was. The sex wasn’t good, but Jasper had stuck around, gladly
surrendering every ounce of his control to a man he hadn’t even liked

Ben in the Shadows

much, let alone trusted. He’d finished graduate school with honors,
was working his way up the corporate ladder, and had no visible scars
from the years he’d already dedicated to dissolving into his own pain
with his constant benders, but privately, his life was a mess. He hated
himself. He’d wanted so badly for someone else to punish him for all
his past mistakes.

It was a long month. After a while, things got pretty intense.
Jasper watched nervously as his mate recited the sordid details of

his dream to him, the details that were much, much too close for
comfort to the actual events of that ill-spent month. Ben had seen a
side of Jasper in his dream he’d never, ever wanted him to know
about. Panic rose in his throat as he considered how the deplorable
details of that screwed-up summer must have sounded to his mate,
someone who’d never even been with another lover before. “Look,”
Jasper said. “I told you when we got together, I told you I was fucked
up—”

“And I told you I didn’t care.”
Jasper stared at him, breathing in and out. He wanted to believe

him so badly. “So why’d you bring it up then?”

Ben hesitated before he asked, “Does it have something to do with

what happened to your parents?”

“You are really into dredging up painful memories, aren’t you?”
“And you’re really into avoiding them,” Ben shot back. “It’s not

fair, you know. You told me to go to therapy, so I went. But it doesn’t
matter as long as you won’t talk to me.”

“I talk to you all the time.”
“Not about this!” Ben shouted.
Ben’s red face contorted with pain, and Jasper swiveled in the

chair to face away from him. He couldn’t stand to see him cry again.
If he did, he would just break down and tell him everything. And he
couldn’t do it. Not that.

“So what do you want to hear? That I’m just as screwed up as you

are? That I can barely take care of myself, let alone another person?

Ellen Ginsberg

That before I met you, I could barely come without the promise of
pain? You think that shit’s going to help you feel better? You really
want to deal with that on top of everything else you’re going
through?”

“I want to deal with it together,” came the voice from behind him.
Ben’s hands settled on his shoulders again, pressing into them.

Jasper pushed them away, but they came back, insistent on touching
him. They pressed down hard against the sore spots Ben had raised
only minutes before, causing a fresh ripple of pain to blossom on the
spot. Jasper bit his tongue. Dear God, he did like it.

Ben’s hand pushed up into his hair, running along the back of his

neck, leaving a spiky, mussed trail in the wake of his fingers’ path.
And this touch was gentler. Comforting. Jasper leaned into it. “What
happened?” Ben asked quietly. “I know it upset you, but…”

Hot tears prickled at the corners of Jasper’s eyes. How long had it

been since he’d felt them? He tried to choke them back, like always,
to keep the oblivious momentum of his life in balance, but it was too
late. Ben had swiveled the chair around to face him. Those tears were
already falling, and he brushed his thumb against his cheek to wipe
them away.

“I was a really good kid,” he said quietly. “Really good. You

know, you watch those old monster movies, and they say that being a
werewolf is a curse?”

“I know,” Ben said. He had crawled into Jasper’s lap and pressed

his head to his chest. Jasper breathed in his scent.

“I didn’t think that for a minute. My mom, she said that it was a

gift, right? All this stuff we could do…someday, we were going to
understand why we were like this. We needed to be strong for that
day. Be ready for it. And we were. I was.” Jasper’s voice broke. “And
then it didn’t happen. That day never came.”

Ben pressed a kiss to his temple and stroked the spot where he’d

left it. He was grateful for his mate’s touch, for his arms around him,
but that touch was too gentle, too featherlight by a longshot. Jasper

Ben in the Shadows

took his hand and squeezed it hard as he continued. “Lars and
Alex…they were fine—”

“I don’t think they were fine.”
“They didn’t fuck up like I did,” Jasper said. “Suddenly there

weren’t any consequences anymore. I realized that I had this body
that couldn’t be hurt and enough brains to talk my way out of
whatever problems I walked into, and I just…there was a lot of drugs,
and a lot of sex, really fucked up sex—”

“Doesn’t matter. I care about you. You’re not going to scare me

away.”

Jasper looked at him, and he could feel his face screwed up and

strained from all his embarrassing outpouring of emotion. Ben’s
words only brought another wave of raw, tangled pain up to catch in
his throat. His eyes were so trusting and honest as he listened to
Jasper’s laundry list of bad decisions, of all the shit he’d done. He
could barely stand to look at him.

“I hurt myself, and I let people hurt me just to watch myself heal.

To prove that I was special. That nothing could hurt me. That I
couldn’t die. And that it was a fucking curse.”

Ben’s eyes betrayed the worry Jasper felt him struggling to

suppress. His Adam’s apple, only inches from Jasper’s lips, bobbed
up and down as he took a hard swallow. “That’s what you think?”

“That’s what I thought,” Jasper said. “And then you showed up,

and I wasn’t ready, and I don’t—”

Ben stilled his words with a kiss. Not gentle this time, but rough,

and needy. His tongue plunged into his mouth as he fisted his hands
in his hair. Jasper leaned his head in, greedily, his hands closing
around Ben’s hips as he pressed against him, straddling him in the
chair. Ben sucked on his lower lip, and he groaned with pleasure,
squeezing his ass in his hands as he allowed himself a single moment
of pleasure before breaking away.

“We can’t,” Jasper said. “We said we’d wait until—”

Ellen Ginsberg

“Until what? Until we’re both perfect?” Ben’s eyes searched

Jasper’s. It was terrifying, but he didn’t shy away from them this time.
“I know what we said. And I know what happened last time, how I
reacted when we mated—”

“I don’t blame you. You shouldn’t have to deal with all my

bullshit. Not after what you’ve been through.”

“I want to,” Ben said insistently. “I don’t want you to hide from

me, and I don’t want to hide from you either. I’m sick of being so
careful with each other. This is right. I know this is right between us.”

Jasper shook his head. “I don’t deserve you,” he said.
“You do,” Ben said. His hands ran up and down Jasper’s chest.

They dove under his shirt and ran along the ridges of his abs as he
pressed his cheek against Jasper’s forehead. “I know you do. What
can I do to convince you? What do you need me to do?”

Jasper’s hands tightened helplessly against the globes of Ben’s

ass, and he ground into him. “Harder,” Jasper groaned. The word left
his mouth before he could stop it, but Ben ground into him harder.
The rough denim of his jeans forced a delicious friction against his
hard cock under the zipper of his fly, and Jasper groaned again.

Ben stared into his eyes, kissed him on the lips, gently, but Jasper

pulled away, panting. “I want you to hurt me,” Jasper said, his voice
strained with desire. “And then I want you to make it feel better.”

Ben’s hands tightened against his hair, yanking at it until he drew

a smile from Jasper, who leaned his head back as Ben bent his head to
suck and bite at the skin on his neck. Jasper’s mouth opened in
ecstasy as he felt the skin break and heal, break and heal while Ben
continued to dry hump him on the chair.

He raked his fingers up Ben’s back, feeling the fabric of his T-

shirt bunch underneath his nails, and he drew it up over Ben’s head to
strip it off. Ben tugged at his own shirt, yanking it so roughly as
Jasper leaned against the back of the chair that several buttons
popped, fueling Jasper’s desire as he ripped it off of him.

Ben in the Shadows

Ben’s hands pressed hard against Jasper as they slid up and down

his now-naked torso. With a growl, he started to fumble at the fly of
Ben’s jeans, but was distracted when Ben captured a nipple between
his fingers and rolled it between them, pinching and twisting, making
it impossible to concentrate as the sparks of pleasure-pain raced
through his body.

“You like this?” Ben asked, his voice breathy, his mouth pressed

against Jasper’s forehead as he ground his denim-clad cock against
Jasper’s crotch.

Jasper only nodded his head, unable to speak as he bit his tongue

from crying out. Ben bent his head down, his teeth grazing along
Jasper’s face and neck, lowering his head down his chest.

“You trust me?”
Jasper nodded, shifting down in his seat, trying to raise his nipple

to meet Ben’s mouth. When it did, Ben captured it in his mouth and
bit down. His teeth dug into the sensitive nub, and Jasper could no
longer suppress the scream he was holding back.

“Fuck! Oh, fuck! Holy hell!”
Ben pulled away, abruptly, worry etched across his face. “You’re

okay?”

Jasper squeezed a hand against Ben’s arm as hard as he wanted to

feel Ben’s mouth against his nipple. He spoke between shallow gasps
of breath. “Please. Don’t. Stop.”

Ben returned to suck and bite at Jasper’s other nipple, and he

steeled his breath into big, chest-heaving pants, but the sweet,
torturous release was only just beginning. Ben’s hands were busy at
his fly, and he wrenched his mouth away from the nipple to shove his
pants and boxers down to his ankles, climbing off the chair and
settling himself in front of Jasper’s exposed cock, red and swollen
from the friction of the hard dry hump.

Jasper squeezed his hands helplessly against Ben’s shoulders as

Ben wrapped one hand around his dick, stroking it in long, quick,
violent strokes. The hard, building pressure was almost too much for

Ellen Ginsberg

Jasper, and he nearly came in his hand when Ben turned his head to
suck at the tender skin of his inner thigh. Jasper thrust his hips
forward so far on the chair, his ass was nearly hanging off of it. Ben
licked his fingers once, and with no further warning, shoved two of
them hard and fast into Jasper’s hole.

The spit had hardly slickened them, and Jasper gasped at the

sharp, burning pain as he felt those fingers invade him. That pain
melted into pleasure as Ben pushed relentlessly toward his prostate.
The pain blossomed again as his fingers retreated. In and out, pleasure
and pain, attack and retreat until Jasper thought he might explode
from the pressure. Ben had pulled away from the skin of his thigh, his
round, curious eyes locked onto his, watching his face as if he were
seeing him for the first time in his life.

In a way, Jasper supposed he was.
Jasper had tried hard to hide the details of his misguided youth

from Ben, but he was staring at him now, his fingers inside him, and
he wondered if Ben could feel his body’s aches and desires the same
way he could feel Ben’s. Ben’s whole being was radiating love for
him, enveloping Jasper in its protective warmth while his whole body
quivered on the edge of a catharsis he so desperately needed.

Ben pressed his cheek against his thigh as he stroked his prostate,

one hand rubbing his own cock through the faded denim that still
enclosed it. “Can I fuck you?” he whispered.

Jasper nodded, his stomach muscles still tightening and releasing

with each stab of pleasure-pain. He palmed his own cock, stroking it
roughly, squeezing at the balls as Ben stood and stripped off his jeans.
Jasper kicked at his heels to pull his own pants off, pooled as they
were around his ankles.

He stared at Ben standing shyly in front of him, naked and

stroking his erection. As if drawn to the sight of it, Jasper knelt down
in front of him. One palm traced up the length of Ben’s thigh, and the
other closed around the globe of his ass as he took him into his mouth,

Ben in the Shadows

feeling his big dick practically overstuff him, wanting to lap and suck
and lick at as much of it as he could.

He’d almost forgotten the size of it, and he felt a thrill rush

through him as it nearly hit the back of his throat. Jasper wanted that
fat cock stretching every inch of him until it had practically split him
apart. He moved his mouth cursorily over it, letting his licks spread
out to Ben’s thighs and balls and belly. Jasper’s movements were
frantic as he lapped and kissed Ben’s skin, practically abandoning his
cock for the soft spaces surrounding it, not wanting to waste time
getting it too wet, not wanting to lose that edge of pain when he felt
himself be penetrated.

Ben’s hands tangled in his hair, forcing his head up and down on

his cock. Jasper let himself be guided, giving himself over to the
motion of his hand against the back of his head. Ben fed him his cock
until he was shaking, and Jasper could feel his knees wanting to
buckle beneath him. He pulled away and looked at Ben, silently
begging. “Now?” he asked.

Ben nodded. “Turn around.”
Jasper felt his cock throb with pleasure as he turned and placed his

palms on the floor. Ben ran his fingers down his ass, sliding his
thumbs into the crease to part it as he situated himself between
Jasper’s legs, spreading them further open.

Ben pressed the tip of his cock to his hole, and Jasper swallowed

around the lump in his throat. When Ben thrust in, that lump exploded
from his throat in a raw, pleading cry.

“Oh, God!” he shouted. His whole body was on fire. “Oh, fuck!”
“I got you,” Ben said, his voice tight as he pulled out and pushed

in again. “I’m here.”

Jasper pushed back against him, and he felt Ben’s body tighten as

he thrust again, with practiced careful restraint. “Don’t hold back,” he
choked out. His body rocked against Ben’s. “I want to feel you.”

Ben thrust again, harder, deeper. Jasper’s hand closed tight around

his cock, and he shook it up and down in time to Ben’s advances.

Ellen Ginsberg

“Harder,” he said, and he felt heat blossom across the cheek of his ass
as Ben’s palm cracked against it. Ben stabbed his cock into him again,
faster, and Jasper pushed back against him, wild with need. “Harder!”
he shouted, and Ben spanked him again, hitting the same sore spot,
making every nerve ending tremble on the edge of release. His body
was shaking with ecstasy as Ben raked his nails along his back and he
felt four long scratches break the surface of his skin.

When he felt the hot, pulsing rush of Ben’s release shoot inside

him, Jasper felt the taut thread of his need snap, and he came, on his
hand, on the floor, as hard as he’d ever come before. Weak from the
effort, he collapsed against his own sticky seed on the floor as Ben
pulled out of him, bringing a twin rush of pleasure and regret with the
loss of pressure inside him.

Ben leaned over his back, kissing a path back down to his ass, and

Jasper moaned, half in pleasure, half in protest. He didn’t think his
body could take any more, but his lover’s tender kisses were different
from the hard fuck he’d just delivered him. Gently, almost reverently,
he felt Ben’s hand stroke over the tender, swollen cheeks of Jasper’s
ass where he’d smacked him, laying tender kisses against each plump
swell.

Jasper sighed, giving himself over to this new bliss the same way

he’d given himself over to the pain before. That tight ball of hurt, of
secrecy and worry, had seemed to dissolve along with his need as he
screamed out his release, his catharsis, and he relished now these
loving touches that brought him back to Earth.

Ben’s hands reached up and smoothed along his back, too, where

the scratches he’d left had already sealed but still throbbed under
Jasper’s skin. He threaded a hand under his stomach to turn him over,
and Jasper turned and stroked Ben’s hair as Ben laved affectionate
kisses across his swollen nipples. Jasper felt his every muscle relax
under Ben’s touch until he kissed lower, down to his stomach, to lap
up the sticky remnants of his seed. He could feel the emotion
radiating off of Ben as he did. It was saying very clearly, I love you.

Ben in the Shadows

He looked up at Jasper, and although the look in his eye was

intense, it was not the frightened, confused stare he’d given him when
he bit him. What had transpired between them here was different this
time, and, Jasper hoped, better. No one had ever looked at him like
that before, and for a moment, fear welled inside Jasper, and he hoped
to God he didn’t betray that trust. His hand tousled Ben’s hair and
pressed his head back down to his cock and belly and chest, giving
himself over to the sensations of being licked clean and new.

Finally, Ben pulled himself up to Jasper’s mouth and planted one

last kiss there. By then, Jasper was so relaxed he could barely move
his mouth to meet his mate’s, and he had to suppress a yawn when
Ben pulled away. At first Ben smiled at him, but his eyes turned
serious when Jasper wrapped his arms around him, spooning him
close to his body.

“Fall asleep with me,” he said. “Please? I just want to stay like

this a little longer.”

Jasper wanted to protest, but he couldn’t pull away from Ben. His

mate cuddled close to his body, his body soft and warm against
Jasper’s chest, and Jasper couldn’t help but close his tired eyes. Even
on the floor of his office, it felt so right to lie there as their bodies
stilled and they began to drift to sleep. Nightmares be damned, he
wanted to wake up in Ben’s arms. With a final effort, he willed his
worry deep into the very corners of his mind, where he had willed so
many other unpleasant thoughts and feelings over the years.

Then sleep overtook him, and he gave his mind over to his

subconscious, and whatever miserable thought or fancy it chose to
dwell on.

Ellen Ginsberg

Chapter Seven

The jacket Ben was wearing was too big for him, and he had to

keep pushing up the sleeves to keep them from dwarfing his hands.
Just like he’d done with Jasper’s jacket, he thought, smiling at the
memory of the first time Jasper’s scent had surrounded him.

It didn’t surround him now, though.
This wasn’t Jasper’s jacket.
Ben looked down, a little alarmed at the white sleeves that

cloaked his arms. It was a lab coat he was wearing, a white lab coat
like the kind Pierson used to wear when he was operating on him.
Panic shot through Ben, and his heart raced as he remembered his
body lying limp from the silver serum and the cold steel of the
examination table biting into his back even through his wolf’s thick
coat of fur. The memory was made more poignant as he spun around,
catching in the corners of his vision the familiar, awful sights of
Pierson’s overstuffed shelves, the operating tray, and all those broken-
down, patched-up, fucked-up machines Pierson had used to make
Ben’s life a living hell all those awful, hazy years before Jasper had
saved him.

So what the fuck was he doing here now?
He’d been careful not to direct his glance to the center of the

room, where the operating table was, that detail he’d most wanted to
forget. He looked down now, and his breath stilled in his chest at the
sight he saw there.

There was a wolf on the table, a red wolf, and someone had

strapped it down. Ben’s hand, previously hidden by the too-big sleeve
of the lab coat, pulled out now, streaking the otherwise pristine white

Ben in the Shadows

cotton with a sickening red from the bloody scalpel it was clutching.
Seeing the scalpel, he dropped it in disgust, but that didn’t end the
sinking sense of horror cutting through him as his surroundings
continued to clarify. He could still see the wolf’s bloody form, could
see how it was cut open from the scalpel, but the wolf wasn’t Ben,
couldn’t be Ben, because Ben was here in his human form, and there
was the wolf on the table, bleeding, while he felt no pain.

Only that wasn’t exactly right, either.
Even before he looked into the pained yellow eyes of the wolf, he

could feel it hurting beneath him. The hurt radiated out from its body,
and Ben could feel that pain flowing into him. He looked down at the
wolf again in horror as he realized who it was.

Jasper.
As soon as the thought formed in his mind, Jasper appeared,

facedown on the table beneath him, his back revealing a long, red
gash where an incision had run along the body of the wolf that had
lain on the table only a moment before. Only now, Jasper was in his
human form.

Funny. Ben hadn’t seen him shifting.
“I hurt you,” Ben whimpered, staring at that terrible gash on

Jasper’s back. He blinked. There were four gashes now. They no
longer resembled incisions, but the long scratches he’d dragged down
the length of Jasper’s back during their lovemaking.

Frantic to help him, Ben bent over to lick his lover’s wounds, but

Jasper only winced and moaned in pain as he touched them with his
tongue. They wouldn’t heal. There was something inside him, some
taste that marred the familiar warm copper bite of his blood.
Something cold and unwelcoming. Silver.

He could see the shiny metal object glistening inside of Jasper,

peeking out from between the bloody slits in his skin. Hypnotized,
Ben touched a finger to it. It was stuck fast inside of him, buried
under his skin.

Ellen Ginsberg

Jasper winced as Ben’s finger traced the inside of his wound.

“Don’t touch it,” he gasped. “Don’t—”

“I have to,” Ben said, his voice quivering. He didn’t want to hurt

him, but he had to get it out. “Please. Jasper, you’ll never heal if I
don’t—”

“You’re the one who opened me up,” Jasper snapped. His voice

thickened into a low growl. “You picked me apart with all your
questions. All your questions and all your need. I was fine before I
met you. I could keep it from hurting.”

His voice broke as Ben dug into him, getting a hold on the curved

silver surface. Jasper howled in pain, and Ben knew he must be
hurting him, but he couldn’t make himself stop. The halogen glow of
the overhead light was blinding as Ben pulled at the piece of silver to
get it out, and with each practiced tug, those flickering, buzzing lights
seemed to burn brighter, painfully bright, bathing the room in a
horrible whiteness that left no room for shadows or secrets.

“Stop!” Jasper shouted as the object slid through his muscle.
“I can’t,” Ben ground back at him, pulling the glinting metal

object free. He held it up to him in wonder. Blood glistened against
the metallic shine, but its shape was unmistakable. It was a silver
hook.

Ben panted with exertion, staring down at Jasper on the table.

Now that the silver hook was out, his wound had healed. The
unforgiving glow of the overhead lights bore down on them, revealing
the clutter inside the room for what it was. The labels on the file
cabinets were unmistakable now, each headed with a name and
underneath each header, a subtitle. JASPER: Ways I abused my body
with sex. BEN: My secret sympathies for Pierson. JASPER: People I
betrayed while drunk. BEN: The way I felt when you killed him.
JASPER: Why I haven’t shifted since it happened. The files full of
folders and papers weren’t Pierson’s records, but their secrets, the
secrets they had tried to keep from each other. The things they had

Ben in the Shadows

tried so desperately to hide. Ben stared at the sheer volume of them.
“This is the room where we have to tell the truth.”

“Turn off the light,” Jasper pleaded.
Horror surged through Ben at the thought of it. The glare of the

light was nearly blinding, reflecting off the metal surface of the
examination table, but he couldn’t stand the thought of the dark. He
had hurt Jasper on the table, and he was afraid to hurt him again. He
thought it might be worse in the dark. He was still holding that
shining silver hook in his hand. He didn’t know what he might do
with it.

Ben’s heart pounded in time with the hum of that buzzing, shining

light as he scanned the walls of the room. So many files, so many
folders, so many boxes. Bad dreams, bad memories, forgotten items
from their childhood that had been haphazardly stuffed into the
subconscious. A hard lump formed in Ben’s throat as he read the tags
on the boxes marked Morgana. There were three for Jasper—Ben
expected that much from the deep-seated hurt the word seemed to
draw out of his mate. But there was also one for Ben.

Ben moved toward the file as if hypnotized, but Jasper pulled him

back. “Stop,” Jasper pleaded again. His hands clawed at Ben to pull
him back, but Ben only fought harder, struggling toward the file. “Just
leave them closed.”

“I have to open it. I have to see—”
“You don’t want to know what’s—”
His words caught on a cry as Ben struggled against him. The hook

was still in his hand, and when Ben finally pulled free, it slid out
between them, ripping Ben’s shirt and striking against his skin. It was
only a scratch, but Ben jerked back, terrified. In his sudden
movement, he crashed against a full-length mirror propped against the
work bench. The force of the hook’s impact shattered the glass, and
the shards cut into his hand as he dropped the hook, sending it
clattering to the floor.

Ellen Ginsberg

Ben bit back a cry as the pain surged through his wrist, staring at

the broken shards of mirror on the floor. He could see his reflection,
and Jasper’s, and the pain and hurt and remorse in each. But he could
also see a flash of movement from someone else there, someone
between them.

There was a shadow closing over Ben. It paused behind him, and

Jasper’s expression in the mirror changed from misery to terror in an
instant as Ben heard the scrape of the hook across the floor. Someone
had picked it up. Someone’s shadow revealed it sticking out of the
dead end where a hand ought to be. The shadow of the hook moved
closer over Ben, the dark silhouette of the figure behind him
sharpening as he did, confirming the sinking, dizzying realization that
had washed over Ben even before he turned to meet those pale,
terrible eyes and the sadistic fury buried in them.

He had barely opened his mouth to scream when Pierson raised

the hook into the air, ready to bring it down and pierce him with a
single, sickening strike.

* * * *

Jasper was clinging to Ben as he woke up, his body spooned

tightly around his mate as Jasper came awake with hard, heavy
breaths. Their bodies were hot and sticky, and the terrible sinking
feeling of uneasiness lay wedged between them in spite of how
closely they were pressed together. He could feel Ben’s muscles tight
in his arms, his head rolling back and forth in a silent no as he sucked
in his breath in a sudden single gasp when his eyes flew open.

He was scared. His little mate was scared, but Jasper was scared,

too, scared of him. He wanted to hold him, comfort him, but he
remembered the pain of the scalpel pressing into him and the dull
ache of the silver hook as it was dug out of his back. The memory
washed over him all at once, and Jasper pulled away from Ben,
abruptly.

Ben in the Shadows

Ben looked at him now, eyes wide and frightened, lips drawn tight

across his face as he lay there, naked and shaking. Fear rolled off of
him in waves as he stared across the distance between them. Jasper
wanted to reach across that distance and hold Ben’s hand, stroke his
hair, tell him it was okay, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch him.

Danny and Lars had shared a nightmare, and it had nearly killed

Lars. Jasper had told Ben about it, but once again he and his mate had
thrown caution to the wind, and now there was no telling what
damage it had done to their relationship. They had shared a dream. He
was certain of that. And it had been a very, very bad one.

“It’s okay,” he said, forcing as casual a tone as he could muster.

“You just had a nightmare.”

“So did you,” Ben said quietly.
Jasper didn’t reply. Ben’s eyes raked over him, and Jasper

instinctively shut his own, remembering the glare of that unmerciful
light and those stacks and stacks of secrets he had tried so hard to
keep in the dark. Earlier, he had felt such sweet release when he’d
shared some of those secrets and made his naked body vulnerable to
his mate. Now all Jasper wanted to do was cover himself back up.
“It’s nothing,” he repeated hollowly. “It was just a dream.”

Ben nodded and reached out to touch him, but Jasper pulled away

all the same. Ben watched him with nervous eyes. The hurt in his
expression stung. Jasper swallowed around the lump in his throat,
trying to choke it down, but it stuck fast.

“Don’t you trust me anymore?”
“Of course I trust you, I just—”
“Then why won’t you let me touch you?”
Jasper’s mouth snapped shut. He couldn’t get the memory of that

pain out of his head, and his back was sore and aching. Almost as
much as if it had really been cut open.

Jasper furrowed his brow as Ben’s expression turned dazed, and

he stared at the floor between them. He followed Ben’s gaze to the
spot on the floor, and felt heat rush over his own body.

Ellen Ginsberg

Blood.
Instinctively, he drew his hand to his back, and his breath hitched

as he felt the open wound there, the same place the hook had been
pulled from. He turned back to Ben, forgetting to school the shock
from his face until he saw Ben’s expression change and felt the guilt
and fear that had begun to pulse from his body.

“It’s nothing,” Jasper said quickly. “Just a scratch.”
Ben’s eyes widened at the word. “A scratch,” he repeated. “From

me?”

From the dream, Jasper thought instinctively. He shook his head

as if to chase the thought away, but it stuck, his mind tripping over it
again and again like a broken record. He looked at Ben helplessly. “It
wasn’t from…”

“I was too rough, wasn’t I?” Ben said quietly. Jasper shook his

head fiercely, but it only spurred the hurt in Ben’s eyes. “You’re
bleeding.”

Jasper opened his mouth to protest, but the words caught in his

mouth when he glanced down at Ben’s stomach. It, too, was bleeding,
in the exact spot where the hook had scratched him.

“Ben,” he gasped, nodding to the cut.
Ben looked down, his hands flying to the spot as if he couldn’t

believe what his eyes told him. When he touched the smear of
crimson above his belly button, he winced and Jasper sucked in a
breath.

“I thought we were dreaming,” Ben said slowly, “but we weren’t,

were we?”

Fear stabbed into Jasper at the words, so sudden and razor sharp

Jasper was certain his mate could feel it. It rose from inside him,
swelling and swelling until it seemed to practically flood the whole
damn room. Still, Jasper shook his head as if to dismiss the thought.
“It was just a dream. Why would you think—”

Ben in the Shadows

“You know why,” Ben said. “You were there. Wherever that hook

came from, it was real. It must have been, or else why would you still
be bleeding? Why would I be bleeding at all?”

Jasper turned away from him. Ben was right. He shouldn’t be

bleeding anymore. The tiny scratches he’d left on him during their
lovemaking had healed as soon as they appeared. Jasper had felt them
heal. The great long gashes in his skin now were from something
different altogether. He knew that, but he still couldn’t bring himself
to believe it. “That’s impossible.”

“At the drop of a hat, either one of us can sprout claws and fangs

and turn into huge, hulking wolves. I imagine most people would say
that’s pretty impossible, too.” Jasper had nothing to say to that, but
Ben seemed stuck on the idea. His brows drew together for a moment,
and then he looked back at Jasper. “You’re something else, too,
though, right? What did you say your mother called it?
A…planeswalker?” Jasper climbed off the floor, desperate to get
away from the idea, but Ben persisted. “Can planeswalkers travel to
dreams, too? Like traveling to other planes?”

Jasper felt his wolf prickling underneath his skin. He couldn’t

stand the thought of it, not now. “Shut up!” he growled. When he saw
how hurt Ben looked at his outburst, he softened. “My mother was
crazy,” he said, wincing at the edge of anger that still touched his
voice. “I wouldn’t put too much faith in anything she said.”

“Even what she said about mates?” Ben said pointedly. “About

fate?”

“Especially what she said about fate.”
Ben said nothing, and Jasper stared at the blood on the floor, sick

to his stomach at the lingering memory of the dream. Try as he might,
he just couldn’t shake it away, not while he was staring at the blood
on the floor. “I should get something to clean this up.”

He pulled his boxers on, not caring about the blood that was

certain to get on them, then strode down the hall, leaving Ben behind.

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“I can finish this myself,” Jasper said quietly when he returned

with a towel and knelt down near the mess on the floor. “You should
go to bed.”

“Will you come with me?”
Jasper’s hand stilled on the towel beneath him for a moment. He

breathed in and out, and then looked back up at Ben, finishing in his
task. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

Ben’s face crumpled at that, as if he had been holding back the

emotion the whole time. “So what are we supposed to do?” he asked.
“You can sleep on the couch or in your office or a thousand miles
away, but I’ll still be waiting for you in our dreams.”

“Not if we’re on different schedules,” Jasper said. He’d planned

the whole thing out in his head at the grocery store, right around the
time he’d bought the economy-sized tub of coffee. “I’ll just wait until
you wake up, and then I’ll go to bed, and—”

“How long can you keep that up?” Ben asked. Jasper didn’t

answer him. He hadn’t considered it. “I know how you are. You avoid
things. You pretend that if you ignore them, they aren’t there, but they
are. All those files…we’re stuck with them as long as we’re together.”

A cold chill raced through Jasper at the words. He remembered

the labels, printed so clearly on the files, broadcasting all his secrets
to the world. He had tried to open himself up to Ben earlier that night,
but all the comfort it had brought him was erased by the very thought
of that blindingly bright room, those endless file cabinets, the pain he
felt as Ben cut him open. You’re the one who picked me apart, he’d
told Ben in the dream, with all your need and all your questions. Even
in the dream, the words had hurt coming out of his mouth, but a part
of him still believed they were true. It was painful, opening himself
up to Ben like this. And maybe that was what had started the
nightmares in the first place.

If nightmares were all they were, Jasper reminded himself,

wincing as a fresh jolt of pain shot up his back. Ben had been right
about that much for certain. The pain they felt in the dream, the

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101

injuries—those were real. Whatever the dream amounted to, it had
physically hurt them both. He couldn’t risk that happening again.

Hope surged in Jasper when he glanced up at his desk and saw the

papers he’d been shuffling through. He looked at Ben. “Give me
time,” he said. “Remember how I told you about what I was working
on for Danny? What if I could find a pill to stop us from having
nightmares? I’ll keep looking until I find it, and we can take it, too,
and we’ll be fine. Everything will be okay then. We’ll make love
every night, and I’ll fall asleep holding you. I swear to God, we’ll be
okay.”

Ben smiled at him weakly, and Jasper could feel his mate’s worry

lessen a little with the promise he made to him. For the first time since
the nightmare, Jasper crossed the gap between them and pressed a
kiss to his mate’s lips. Relief flooding off his body, Ben kissed him
back, wrapping his arms around his neck and drawing him closer until
Jasper yelped as those roving hands made contact with the sore on his
back.

“I’m sorry!” Ben said, his hands retreating in a hurry from

Jasper’s back. “I’m so sorry!”

Jasper shook his head, wincing, pulling Ben close to him again, as

carefully as he could. “It’s okay. I know it’ll be okay,” he repeated.

He didn’t know how, but he’d figure it out. Jasper had promised

his mate as much. He didn’t intend on breaking any promises
anymore.

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Chapter Eight

“Open,” Jasper said teasingly, pressing something small and

round against Ben’s lips as he stood behind Ben, covering his eyes
with his other hand.

Ben’s eyes fluttered open against Jasper’s hand, but it remained

clasped lightly over them. Ben tugged at the hand, pulling it down to
see for himself the small blue and red pill Jasper was holding to his
lips. Ben tilted his head up to look at Jasper dubiously as he stood
behind him. “You know, when you said you had something you
wanted me to swallow, this wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for.”

Jasper’s now-free hand slid down Ben’s chest and stomach to the

waistband of his jeans. “That comes later,” he whispered.

Jasper’s fingers dipped inside Ben’s jeans to trace his hip bone,

drawing a shiver from Ben, but he fought it back, pushing his mate’s
hand away. The action made him antsy. “In what fucked-up world is
drugging yourself stupid considered foreplay?”

Jasper’s hand dropped from his waist abruptly. Ben turned to face

him, confused at his mate’s sudden coolness toward him, but in an
instant, he remembered the flashes of their last dream together, flitting
through his mind as if to answer the question he didn’t ask. Ben could
still remember the words printed on those neatly stacked files labeled
JASPER. Drugs I took before clubbing. People I don’t remember
fucking. Ben winced at his own ill-chosen words. “I’m sorry. That
was awful. I didn’t mean to—”

“What?” Jasper asked in a casual tone that hardly reflected the

waves of hurt flowing out of him.

Ben shrugged and forced a smile. “Nothing.”

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103

“Let’s try this again.” Jasper pulled Ben back into his arms,

pressing a kiss to his forehead. Against it, he murmured, “I would like
to fuck you. And then fall asleep with you. And then wake up with
you and fuck you unconscious again. Only before we can get to any
of that good stuff, we need to get one tiny item of unpleasant business
out of the way to make sure our dreams are as pleasant as possible.”
He reached between them and deposited the pill in the palm of Ben’s
hand.

Ben stared at the capsule. For weeks now, it was all he had hoped

for, that magic pill that would suddenly set everything right between
him and his mate. Just one tiny swallow and he’d never have to worry
about bad dreams again. He and Jasper could fuck to their hearts’
content and fall asleep in the afterglow. They could drift into the
black abyss of oblivion where no terrible visions awaited to remind
them of the mess they’d made of their shared subconscious.

Except Ben didn’t want to forget.
All he could think of now as he fingered the smooth little capsule

in his hand were the years he’d already spent on medication and how
much he’d hated them. Pierson’s silver sedatives had kept him from
reacting to what happened to him over and over again, had kept him
from fully processing the shock and horror of the pain Pierson had
inflicted on him. Now that Ben was finally coping with what had
happened to him and trying to recover from it, the last thing he
wanted to do was to numb himself again.

Especially when Jasper was so keen to pretend like Pierson had

never existed.

Jasper closed his own hand over Ben’s, over the pill he’d placed

there, stroking the back of Ben’s hand with his fingers. “Doctor’s
orders,” he said with a smile.

“Not really a fan of doctors,” Ben said quietly.
Jasper’s fingers tensed against Ben’s hand for a moment then

pulled away. Jasper ran his hands through his hair as he retreated to
the bed, collapsing across it. He blew out a long sigh that only served

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to enflame the guilt Ben was already feeling. Ben crossed the room to
lie down next to him. He stroked a hand across Jasper’s forehead,
brushing a dark strand of hair out of his face. Small lines of
exhaustion were etched around Jasper’s eyes, and he closed them
gratefully at the touch of Ben’s fingertips. He certainly wasn’t
sleeping on Ben’s schedule—that much was certain from the fact that
they hadn’t shared any more dreams, but Ben was beginning to
wonder how much Jasper had slept at all in the weeks since that last
fateful nightmare. He looked exhausted.

Ben pursed his lips. “I’m sorry I said that. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine. Stop feeling so guilty.”
“But it’s not fair,” Ben said firmly. “You worked so hard on this,

and I know it’s because you want things to get better, or normal, or
whatever. Anyway, I’m going to take it. I just…need a minute.”

Ben glanced at the pill in his hand again. The second his eyes

settled on it, that same sick uneasiness slid back into his stomach
again, and his mouth closed shut like a steel trap, as if bracing itself to
ward off the unwelcome invasion.

At this rate, Ben was going to need at least two or three minutes.
Jasper sighed, managing a smile. “Take all the time you need,” he

said around a yawn.

Ben smoothed his hand over his mate’s hair, his arms, his back,

and Jasper closed his eyes, his breath evening out. “How much have
you been sleeping?”

Jasper shook his head. “I’m fine. Just working a lot.” He yawned

again.

Ben cuddled against him, closing his eyes. His body pressed

snugly against Jasper’s, and he could feel his scent enveloping him. It
felt good. “You’re pretty cute when you yawn.”

Jasper twisted in his arms, kicking Ben’s leg with his. “I’m not

cute. Fuck off. And I’m not tired.” He yawned again. Ben smirked,
and Jasper’s face reddened.

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105

“You’re cute when you blush, too.” Jasper groaned. “Just go to

bed! You’re obviously exhausted, and it’s a fucking Saturday.”

Jasper sighed, his eyes still closed. “What’ll you do?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Will you be awake?” Jasper’s worried eyes flitted up to meet

Ben’s. His expression turned serious. “Ben…”

“I just want to hold you,” he protested. Jasper pulled himself up

and climbed off the bed, leaving Ben lying behind him. He sat up,
pleading with his mate. “Just five minutes, and then…”

“Do you not remember what happened to Lars and Danny?”
Ben closed his mouth. He remembered. He’d seen each and every

one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies back in Pierson’s lab, and
the story Danny had told to Ben could have come from right out of
one of them. Only a few days after Ben and Jasper’s shared
nightmare, Danny had woken up from his own bad dream to find Lars
lying on the bed, blood gushing from his throat as if some unseen
monster was trying to tear out his jugular. The scenario had not only
terrified Danny, it had effectively confirmed what Ben already
suspected—that whatever monsters were lurking in his and Jasper’s
shared subconscious could kill them if they weren’t careful.

Ben drew his knees up to his chest, hugging them against his

body. Everything he’d heard, he’d heard from Danny or Lars or Alex.
The supernatural travails of Danny and Lars’s relationship was
common knowledge around the house, but he and Jasper had never
talked about it. They hadn’t talked about anything since the
nightmare, had only gone about the business of systematically
avoiding the ever-growing list of topics that caused one or both them
to flush with anger or guilt or shame. Jasper had poured his every
hope into the pill, hoping it would make things better between them,
but Ben wasn’t so sure more avoidance was what they needed.

“It was because of Pierson, wasn’t it?” Ben asked tentatively.

“That nightmare we had, it was because of what he did to me. And
what you did to him.” Jasper’s brow creased with worry, but he said

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nothing. “Look, obviously we’re both screwed up about it, and we
never talk about it—”

“Fine,” Jasper said, his voice laced with exasperation. “Let’s talk

about it. You can tell me how you felt when I killed Pierson, and I’ll
tell you why I haven’t shifted since it happened. Is that what you want
to do? Is that what you think will make things better between us?”

Ben felt his cheeks burning. That familiar lump of emotion had

swelled up in his throat again, and he was forced to shut his mouth
rather than try to talk around it. He couldn’t will it down, as if his
very body protested the idea of talking to Jasper.

In his therapy, he had only once talked about Pierson’s death with

Lars. At first he’d been flippant and aloof. How do you think it made
me feel? He was a psycho. He’s dead now. Good riddance. But Lars,
damn him, had prodded further. He didn’t want to know how he felt
about Pierson’s death, but how Ben felt when he died, that precise
moment Ben had avoided so carefully in his consciousness. The
moment when Jasper had sunk his teeth into Pierson’s throat, when
the only companion Ben had known for most of his young life lay
jerking and bleeding on the floor, and when Ben saw his mate shift
for the first time, covered in another man’s blood. He didn’t say
anything in response to Lars’s question. He was certain his red,
swollen face and the tears sliding down his cheeks had been evidence
enough of what he felt. Don’t tell Jasper, he’d pleaded, and Lars had
nodded. He hadn’t brought it up since then. He hadn’t even insisted,
as per usual, that he discuss it with Jasper. Maybe there were some
things that were better left unsaid.

And maybe there are some things worth fighting for.
He looked into Jasper’s eyes, so dark and intense they were

almost more black than brown. Ben had dreamed of the endless
depths of those eyes even before he’d met his mate. When he looked
into them now, he felt as if those eyes had been made just for him.

Ben took a deep breath and started to speak. “Right up until you

did it, I wanted you to. I was rooting for you. Obviously I was.

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107

Gorgeous man walks into my life and promises to free me from my
troubles? What was I supposed to do but fall in love with him?”

Jasper’s eyes flew up to him at the word love. It was the first time

he’d said it out loud, and even the casual way he’d phrased it had
clearly affected Jasper. “You don’t have to say all this,” Jasper said.

Ben shook his head. “I do. I need you to hear this. I need to tell

you.” Jasper traced a hand up his arm until he found Ben’s hand. He
squeezed it, and Ben braced himself for the hard part. “It was when
you bit into him that things got bad. There was just so much blood.
It’s not like it is in movies, with the slow motion. Pierson was sort of
this awful villain, and you were like this amazing action hero, and I
thought I would want to cheer when you killed him, but instead, I just
felt sick. You were scary, and you were angry, and I knew you were
doing it for me and that almost made it worse.”

Ben took a few shallow breaths, in and out, in and out. Jasper’s

palm was sweating, but he hadn’t let go of his hand. Not yet. That was
good. “I hated Pierson, hated him so much, partly because he hurt me
so much and so often, but partly because he made me think it was
okay, that it was a good thing if it meant so many other people
wouldn’t have to suffer. I was making a noble sacrifice.” Ben’s laugh
was short, disappearing into his throat as if the sadness welling up
there had consumed it in its depth. “I still feel that way sometimes. I
wasn’t happy when he died. I felt awful. I almost ran away instead of
meeting you that night. I didn’t even have anywhere else to go, but
that’s what I wanted to do.”

Jasper’s voice was almost a whisper. “Why didn’t you?”
“The place where you told me to meet you, Ecstasy Rock. It’s the

only thing I remember from before the lab. If you’d told me anywhere
else, I would’ve been lost, but the way you said it, ‘You know where
Ecstasy Rock is…’” Ben trailed off as the words rang fresh in his
mind. “It was a statement, not a question. Like we’d both been
prepared somehow to meet each other. Like this was supposed to
happen all along.”

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He squeezed Jasper’s hand again and looked into his eyes, worried

at what he might see there. He knew he was treading on dangerous
ground here. “I know you don’t believe in fate,” Ben said, fighting to
keep the tears at bay. It was a losing battle. They fell of their own
volition, sliding hot and wet down his cheeks.

Jasper’s arms closed around him, and he pressed his lips to his

temple, leaning close to Ben’s ear. “I believe in us,” he said, his voice
thick with emotion. “That’s enough, isn’t it?”

Ben’s arms reached out to hold him, too, and the pill that he’d

been holding all this time fell from his palm, sliding off the bed and
rolling across the floor. It made a soft plunk as it hit the ground, but
Jasper didn’t seem to hear it as he kept pressing kisses to Ben’s cheek,
his forehead, and the wet hollows under his eyes.

“It’s enough,” Ben choked out.
Each man’s arms grasped at the body of the other until Ben and

Jasper were pulled so tight against each other Ben couldn’t tell where
he ended and Jasper began. Their hot flesh pressed together, and Ben
wanted desperately to shed both of them of the thin layers of clothes
that kept them even infinitesimally apart. Frantically, he began to tear
at his shirt to pull it off, but the soft knock at the door interrupted him.
Abruptly, Ben straightened his shirt, drying his face on the fabric
when he saw Alex standing in the open doorway, his eyes raking back
and forth from him to Jasper, finally settling on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I’m interrupting, but…”
“Let me guess,” Jasper said. “It’s an emergency.”
Alex nodded. “We need to talk.” Ben stared at Jasper’s older

brother. When he’d first arrived, Alex had been jovial and friendly,
but lately he’d seemed increasingly bothered by the way Ben and
Jasper and Lars and Danny had neatly paired off into a foursome that
had no room for the hulking man who spent most of his waking hours
at the gym working out or in the woods, honing his wolf’s abilities.
There was something in his eyes now, though, that bespoke a despair
much deeper than Ben had seen there before. As Alex’s cold, pointed

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109

gaze raked over him, Ben began to feel a little nervous. “Lars and
Danny just came back from the hospital,” he continued, talking to
Jasper but staring at Ben. “They went to see Mom and Dad, and—”

“What happened?” Jasper asked. His voice was raw.
“They’re fine,” Alex said. “I mean, no change.”
Ben released his breath, noting the look of relief on Jasper’s face.

His eyebrows furrowed. “Okay, so what is it?”

“There was someone in the room with them. A visitor.” Alex

paused, his eyes uncertain. “He said he’s a planeswalker.” Briefly his
eyes flashed with flecks of yellow, and he took a slow, deep breath
before he continued. “He said he needs to talk to Ben.”

* * * *

Jasper sat on the couch alongside Ben, but his hand wasn’t

holding his mate’s. Instead, it was in his pocket, thumbing his old
Zippo like it was some kind of precious talisman. It had been over a
month since he’d smoked, but even as he swore he’d left the habit
behind, some niggling voice in the back of his head caused him to
carry his old lighter with him, as if to suggest there was some terrible
emergency looming on the horizon that would make him regret his
decision to quit, make all his old insecurities come flooding back to
him in a sudden, disastrous moment.

He knew what that emergency was now.
Jasper’s life had fragmented irrevocably with his parents’

accident. When Ben arrived, it happened again. Each new event had
marked him, broken his life into another distinct phase that couldn’t
be reconciled with what came before it. The world seemed to shift
underneath him each time, and with each new turn, coming faster on
the heels of what had come before it, he stumbled a little more, felt
himself slip a little farther. And now he felt it happening again, when
he walked into the study and saw this frail, ethereal little being sitting
across from him in the big blue high-back chair, legs tucked beneath

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him, both palms curled around a cup of tea. His name was Jacob
Walker. A planeswalker, if Jasper was supposed to believe what he’d
heard about him. God help him, Jasper did.

Jacob looked just like his mother.
To the average person’s eyes, he was just a small, pale human

being. One whose skin looked like it was made out of porcelain and
who looked like he could be crushed by squeezing him too hard, but a
human being nonetheless. One who sat in chairs and crossed his legs
and brushed his hand across his face more carefully than other people
did. One who seemed at times like the light from the nearby lamp was
shining clear through his body. One who, in spite of his youthful
appearance, had emerald eyes that seemed to see things more
completely than the eyes of others. That was how Jacob looked, and it
wasn’t so strange or so striking. Given her eyes and hands and
curiously delicate frame, that was how Jasper’s mother must have
looked to any ordinary person on the street.

Only Jasper didn’t feel very ordinary anymore.
He took a seat, back straight and still against a couch he’d sat in

countless times before. In light of these new circumstances, though, it
felt new and foreign to him. He wanted so badly to hold Ben’s hand.
If Ben really did love him—and fuck if Jasper knew what love felt
like, but Ben had said it earlier and there were moments Jasper was
certain he felt it, too—it mattered. He wanted to know it now because
things were about to change again, and he was scared.

“First of all, I want to say I’m sorry,” Jacob began. “I know you

probably expected this to come from someone else, someone more
important—”

“We weren’t expecting anyone,” Lars said. “We weren’t even sure

other planes existed. None of us have ever seen one.”

“None of you?” Jacob asked. His eyes flitted nervously over to

Ben, who seemed to shrink under Jacob’s searching gaze. Jasper felt
his wolf prickle underneath his skin as he watched the interaction, his

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111

need to protect his mate overwhelming the dizzying rush that made
him want to choke it back.

“So why should we believe you?” Jasper asked, but Jacob’s eyes

didn’t move off of Ben. “And what do you want with him?”

Now, Jacob addressed Ben directly. “You don’t remember

anything from before you came here?”

“From before I came to the house?” Ben asked. “I was with a

scientist, Dr. Alan Pierson.”

Jacob shook his head. “From before you came to the Earth plane.”
Ben’s eyes widened, and Jasper remembered their nightmare once

more, his mind fixating on that single file marked for Ben. Morgana,
it had said. Ben never knew who his parents were, never knew where
he came from or who he was. That file had offered him a clue, and
Ben had wanted to see it so badly. Jasper remembered now that in
their dream, he had stopped him from seeing it, that he was terrified
of letting Ben go to that file and open it. Jasper’s little scheme to stop
them from dreaming altogether had threatened to prevent Ben from
ever seeing what that mysterious file held within it.

He was about to find out now, though. They both were.
Jacob took a deep breath and began his story. “You came here

from Morgana,” Jacob told Ben, and he glanced at Jasper and his
brothers. “Same as their parents. I don’t know how much they told
you about it.”

Ben looked at Jasper. “Not much,” he said pointedly.
Jacob nodded. “Morgana is the home plane of the planeswalkers.

It’s also home to a great deal of vampires, most of whom used to be
planeswalkers themselves prior to their afterlives. Because Morgana
vampires remember what it’s like to be planeswalkers, the two species
used to coexist peacefully for a while, even though we planeswalkers
are the natural prey for the vampires. However, when the new king of
the vampires, Murdock, rose to power, things changed. It wasn’t
enough for him to control the Bloodlands, the vampire side of
Morgana. He wanted the whole plane under his thumb. Under

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Murdock, the vampire population grew steadily, hunting the
planeswalkers almost into extinction. Only that, too, became a
problem for Murdock. Soon the vampires would run out of blood to
sustain their race. They needed a more reliable source.

“So Murdock made a treaty with the remaining planeswalkers.

Your people, the werewolves, have stronger immune systems than we
do. Much stronger. Because of how quickly werewolves heal, they
make an ideal food source, and Murdock promised the planeswalkers
protection from the vampires if they would start kidnapping
werewolves from their home plane and trafficking them back to
Morgana as slaves. Most of the planeswalkers went along with the
plan. Some of them fled to other planes.” Jacob turned to Jasper and
his brothers again, addressing them directly now. “But your mother
was different. She had fallen in love with a werewolf, your father.
And she rebelled.

“Adrianna and Mitchell Craven started a war between the

werewolves and the vampires. And the planeswalkers were caught in
between. The entire plane was decimated by civil war. The rebels
stormed the Red Palace where Murdock resided and overthrew him.
Eventually, he was killed by his own kind. It should have led to peace
in Morgana, but instead, it’s just anarchy. The werewolves think
they’ve won the war, and bands of them are acting like vigilantes,
roaming the countryside during the day, killing all the vampires they
can find.”

No one spoke for a long time. Jasper had listened quietly to this

description of the utopia he had fantasized about for so long. On this
plane, he and his brothers had been completely alone in their
supernatural abilities, but there had always been the promise of
Morgana. Even when he’d no longer believed in it, the place had
cropped up from time to time in his dreams, a bare glimpse of a
paradise where they didn’t have to hide who they were. It had kept
Jasper going, that impossible dream. He suspected it kept his brothers
going, too. But the description that Jacob had just given of Morgana

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hardly matched the happy fantasy his parents had painted for them. It
was like losing it all over again.

Alex was the first to voice his frustration. “Let them,” he said.

Jasper raised an eyebrow at him, but Alex turned away from it. There
was a fire in his eye that Jasper had never seen before. His usual
jovial demeanor had disappeared altogether. It wasn’t his brother
standing in front of him, but a fierce, beastly warrior. “After what
they did to the werewolves? They’re parasites.”

“They’re parasites,” Jacob said slowly. “And you’re savages. I

know what they did to the wolves. They did the same thing to the
planeswalkers—”

“Before you partnered up with them,” Alex interrupted.
“What they did doesn’t give you the right to—”
“To what? To fight back? To defend our people?”
“Alex,” Lars protested.
“Quit trying to be such a fucking peacemaker!” Alex snapped at

Lars.

“You were upset,” Danny said, glancing at Alex defensively.

Alex’s face reddened as he snorted in frustration. “Lars was only
trying to help.”

“I’m sorry, are you part of this family? Did I ask for your

opinion?”

“Jesus, Alex! What the hell?” Lars shouted.
“Mom and Dad left me responsible for you and—”
“Did they, Alex?” Jasper stared at him hard. “Really? He’s

twenty-eight years old now. He was eighteen when they left. I hardly
think he needed you to look after him.”

“You mean like you did?” Alex shot back.
“And they didn’t leave you responsible for anything,” Jasper

finished. “They just left. Period. End of story. Took a long walk off a
short cliff and…” Ben stopped him with a look. Jasper bit his lip to
keep his mouth shut. “Sorry.”

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“You can’t fight like this,” Ben said quietly. His eyes drifted from

Jasper to the others. “All of you. Whatever you think it’s going to
accomplish…it’s not worth it.”

Jacob nodded, straightening in his chair as he eyed Ben. “It’s like

I said,” he continued. “We need a leader.”

Naturally, everyone turned to Alex. Fucked up as the situation

was, Jasper couldn’t help but think that it made sense. Alexander had
always been the most hopeful of the brothers about Morgana and had
held on to the possibility of its existence long after Jasper and Lars
had abandoned it. Unlike Jasper and Lars, Alex hadn’t gone to college
or worked at anything but a string of temporary jobs that allowed him
an excuse to exercise his overbearing strength and muscle. It was as if
Alex had been preparing for this moment his entire life, knowing that
any attachments he made in this world wouldn’t last long.

Jasper smiled half-heartedly at his older brother. “Well, I guess

that settles it, then,” he said.

Alex shook his head, and for the first time, Jasper noticed how

rigid his brother’s body had been during the meeting, how terse his
expression was. “I told you, I’m not the one Jacob came back for,”
Alex replied. “It’s Ben.”

Jasper stiffened as just like that, the focus of the room shifted

from his older brother to his mate. Ben glanced up at Jasper,
uncertain, before he turned back to Jacob. “But I’m not anybody,” he
protested.

Jacob shook his head. “You really don’t remember anything, do

you? Benjamin Morris. You’re the heir to the werewolf throne.
Royalty on the supernatural planes—and especially to the wolves.
Your parents sent you here to keep the royal line alive. They thought
if they could spare you, someday…”

“Someday someone would come back and restore the monarchy?”

Danny said, raising an eyebrow at him. “Sorry, am I the only one
who’s studied medieval history recently? It’s not like the feudal
system is such a brilliant means of government.”

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115

“Why have you been studying medieval history?” Jasper asked.
“GED.” Lars cleared his throat when the others looked over at

him. Danny smiled sheepishly. Jasper glared at both of them.

“The supernatural planes are different from the Earth plane in a lot

of ways,” Jacob said, regaining the floor. “Things you guys call
superstitions, beliefs, we call destiny. I guess once you’ve
encountered a timewalker, you kind of have to believe in fate.”

“Timewalkers?” Danny mouthed to Lars, raising an eyebrow at

him. Lars caught Jasper’s warning glare and shook his head to dismiss
the interruption.

“The belief in a predestined ruler may be passé on your plane and

in this time,” Jacob continued, “but I assure you it’s a commonly held
belief on Morgana. They’re waiting for you, Ben. And I assure you,
when you come back, they’ll want to hear what you have to say.”

“But why?” Ben asked. “I’m not strong. I’m not smart—”
Jasper shook his head, cutting his mate off. “That’s bullshit,” he

said. “You know it is. You’ve been through more than any of us, and
you didn’t let it break you. You’re stronger than I am, that’s for damn
sure. You’re absolutely unwilling to take orders from anyone,
including me, and you have this idea in your head of how people
should be brave and noble and face their fears and do the difficult
thing. And you know how to handle people. I used to think you just
liked to push my buttons, but I think it’s more than that. You shut us
all up when we were fighting a minute ago, which is actually a pretty
impressive feat considering—”

“Are you telling me to leave,” Ben asked carefully, “or are you

offering to go with me?”

Jacob shook his head. “He can’t. I can only take one person at a

time.”

The room fell silent. Jacob’s words hung in the air like a dead

weight. In the silence, Jasper recalled what Ben had told him before
Jacob’s arrival and remembered the dream he’d had weeks ago. Ben
had believed Pierson when he told him how important it was to

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sacrifice his needs for the greater good. Even in his dreams, Ben
hadn’t been able to turn away from all the hopeful eyes that begged
him to make a sacrifice so they wouldn’t feel quite so much pain. At
the time, Jasper had thought the dream was about Ben’s past with
Pierson, but he wondered now if there hadn’t been a glimpse of the
future in it.

His mate wouldn’t turn away from the thousands of distressed

supernaturals on Morgana who needed him. Even as Ben opened his
mouth to protest, Jasper could see the tears welling at his eyes, could
feel his growing sense of duty and worry, could sense Ben slipping
away from him more by the minute.

“I won’t do it,” Ben said, turning his angry eyes on Jacob. “I love

him. Do you have any idea what that’s worth?”

Jacob shook his head. In a barely audible voice he said, “Not

really.”

“Well, I do.” Ben turned back to Jasper. “You may not feel the

same way about me, but—”

“I do.” Jasper’s heart hammered in his chest, and he cursed

himself for not saying it all the way. He’d kept running the words
over in his head before he said them, but the more he did, the more
certain he became that if any I love yous left his mouth for the first
time right now, he’d break down and bawl like a baby. “That’s why I
think you should go.” Ben looked at him, eyes wide with either love
or betrayal, Jasper didn’t know which. He could sense both emotions
swelling inside his mate and reaching out to him. Ben, too, reached
out to touch him, to rest his hand on his leg, but it was a different kind
of touch this time, not desperate or tender or frightened. It was almost
like a good-bye. Jasper continued. “You remember our dream? That
last nightmare? You reached out for the box that said Morgana. You
wanted to go to it, but I held you back. I wanted to keep you for
myself, but you deserve to know who you are.”

“I’m your mate,” Ben protested.

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117

“And I’m glad you are, because you changed me,” Jasper said. “I

was shallow and selfish before I met you. I’m not like that anymore.
I’m not sure I can live with our happiness if it’s at the expense of a
whole planeful of people suffering. And I know you can’t.”

Ben didn’t respond, and the room was silent for a moment. Jasper

smiled weakly, in spite of the tight lump of emotion in his throat. Ben
pulled his hand from Jasper’s thigh to wipe at his eyes. It was only for
a second, but in that long, silent moment, the distance between them
seemed insurmountable.

Jacob broke the silence. “I don’t know how much time we have

before we leave,” he said. “Fate will call you when it’s time to go, but
the planesgate between the supernatural and the natural world has
never stayed open for long. If I were you, I’d be ready to leave
tonight.”

Tonight. Jasper bit his lip, knowing that a few more hours might

be all the time he had left with Ben. He felt the sadness ebb and flow
between them until he couldn’t take it any longer. He captured Ben’s
hand on the couch and squeezed it. Ben squeezed back.

Jacob watched them. “He’s your mate?” he asked, indicating

Jasper. Ben nodded. “I’m sorry I can’t take you both.”

Jasper’s hand tightened in Ben’s. He breathed in and out a long

breath as he looked around the room. His glance stopped at the empty
space alongside him where Alexander had been standing.

He wasn’t there anymore.

* * * *

Alex couldn’t stand to listen any longer. In the middle of the

meeting, he got up and walked away, following the motion of his feet
out the door and through their backyard and into the woods. He had
spent countless hours there, honing his ability to scent different
creatures, to track, to trace, to test his strength. Not that it mattered
now, he thought as he reached the cove of trees where he usually went

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to shift. He didn’t shift all the way, though, not this time. Just the
claws would be enough.

He felt them, razor sharp and piercing, burst through his fingertips

as he fiercely slashed at one of the trees, leaving long gashes in the
bark in their wake. He stared at what he’d done, regret and shame
instantly flooding his body. Alex had found an outlet for his
overwhelming emotions in the hours of work he poured into his
training, believing that it was best to be constructive, to continue to
work toward the future. That outlet was gone now, and he was angry
and confused and hurt. The rush of conflicting emotions lapped at his
mind like a fire that threatened to consume him, and in his despair he
dug his clawed hand into the tree again, bearing down, digging in as
hard and hurtful as the pain he felt inside his head until he could do
nothing but howl out his remorse. He was moments from ripping the
whole goddamn oak out from its roots, but he stopped when he felt a
fragile hand on his shoulder.

He turned, and his eyes widened when they met Jacob’s.

Immediately, Jacob snapped his hand back from Alex’s shoulder,
dropping it to his side and freezing it there, as if he was afraid to
move it again.

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m not…I didn’t mean to…”
“Spit it out already,” Alex growled.
“I’m gonna go,” he said, quiet and calm. “Yeah.”
Alex heaved out a sigh. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what

you’re worried about.”

“Are you sure? Because you looked pretty pissed earlier.”
“I’m not pissed,” Alex said through gritted teeth. Jacob had taken

to half-hiding behind a nearby tree. One arm hugged the tree close to
him, as if it were a great wooden shield or his only ally. The massive
trunk dwarfed his body. Alex’s eyes raked over him again, this small,
slight man who had so completely demolished his world. He was
adorable. It pissed him off.

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119

“You look a little pissed now, actually.” Jacob swallowed. “Kinda

scary.”

Alex felt his hands balling into fists at his sides. He opened and

closed them to release the tension. It didn’t help. Even now, Jacob’s
presence had awakened every cell in his body, flooding him with a
sense of purpose and hope that he couldn’t quiet down. His mind
screamed at his body to shut up, that there was nothing special for
him about this arrival, but like always, his big, bulky body won out.
For years, his younger, smarter brothers had pitied him, watching him
believe in Morgana and continue with his training long after they’d
given up. They were wrong about Morgana, but right about Alex’s
stubbornness, his desperate need to believe in the supernatural realm.
In the presence of this planeswalker, this small man on a mission from
Morgana, Alex felt alive. Anxious. Excited.

Even his cock was hard.
Alex adjusted himself uncomfortably, hoping he could tamp down

that embarrassing reaction before Jacob misinterpreted it. Or Alex
did. His eyes drifted over Jacob’s thin body again, the slender waist
and hips and chest like an adolescent’s. Just how badly had this
planeswalking fantasy fucked him up? Alex sighed. Even for him, this
was weird.

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” Alex asked, trying to

gather his scattered thoughts.

Jacob’s wide eyes flitted quickly upward to meet his, and Alex

felt himself flush at the need in those eyes. “I have to ask you
something.”

“I thought you said you didn’t need me.”
“Morgana doesn’t,” Jacob said.
“Thank you,” Alex said tersely.
“Not right now, anyway.”
“Keep rubbing the salt in my wounds.”
Jacob furrowed his brow. “What salt?” He glanced over Alex

again. “Are you hurt?”

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Alex groaned. “It’s an expression.” Jacob stared at him blankly.

“Do you have those wherever you’re from?”

“What, like ‘that guy doesn’t know a planesgate from a hole in his

neck?’”

“Why would he have a hole in his neck?”
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Because he’s a vampire, obviously. Get

it?” Jacob was grinning at Alex, but he only shrugged in response.
“Because it’s like, you know, he’s like, so stupid he doesn’t know if
he’s a vampire or a planeswalker...and it’s confusing for him.”

“Um…”
“I mean, you’re half-planeswalker, so…” Jacob’s cheeks

reddened, and his hands flew to his mouth. “Crap. No, I didn’t
mean…That’s not to say you’re stupid or anything. I mean, I’m sure
you’re smart. Your brothers seem smart, so I’m sure you’re not a total
idiot.”

Alex breathed in and out carefully, trying to quiet his rising anger.

He spoke through gritted teeth. “What did you need to ask me?”

Jacob’s blush deepened, and his eyes dropped to his shoes. He

cleared his throat. “Can I…touch you?”

Alex raised both eyebrows at him. It was not what he’d expected

to hear. Where? he couldn’t stop himself from thinking, and his cock
twitched at the idea of it, but he couldn’t very well say that. He tried
to clear the thought from his mind and think of a more appropriate
substitute. What came out was hardly that.

“Why?” he asked.
“I just…I wanted to see if...I had this feeling…” Jacob searched

Alex’s eyes for something. It was unnerving, having him stare into
him like that, like he was trying to see past the pale blue of Alex’s
eyes into the hurt that lay behind them. Alex couldn’t stand it. He
turned away from him. He looked up when he heard Jacob’s
embarrassed voice murmur, “Forget it. It’s stupid. Anyway, I have to
go.”

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Jacob turned to walk away. His delicate shoulders slumped, and

Alex hadn’t missed the look of rejection on his face when he backed
away. He took a few quick steps to close the gap between them.

“Wait,” he said, grabbing Jacob by the hand.
When their skin touched and Jacob’s eyes met his, Alex gasped at

the word that ran through his head. Mate. The word pulsed through
his brain. Mate, mate, mate. He bit his lip as he reminded himself how
quickly Jacob would be leaving him. His thumb grazed over the soft
skin of Jacob’s wrist, and his throat tightened at the unexpected rush
of emotion it brought to him.

“Oh God,” Jacob gasped. The fear in his eyes was as strong as the

fear Alex felt in his gut.

Alex nodded weakly. “What do we do now?”

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Chapter Nine

“What do we do now?”
Ben stared straight ahead as he asked the question, and he got no

response from his mate. Jasper’s hand, lying dormant on the bed
between them, felt like a dead thing in his, but Ben couldn’t bring
himself to let it go. Ben had tried hard to fight the tears that choked
his throat ever since it happened. I can’t take you both. Jacob’s words
still echoed in Ben’s ears, and he could still see the looks on the faces
of the brothers, the way their eyes seemed to plead with him as they
waited for his answer, silently begging for a yes. Even Jasper.
Especially Jasper. He was hurt, and conflicted, and despairing, but he
wanted it. Ben was certain he could feel that.

He ran his free hand over his face, and the tears pooling in his

eyes wet his palm as he did. He wished to God he hadn’t even asked
the question. It didn’t matter how they spent the rest of the night. It
wouldn’t change the fact that it was the last one they’d ever spend
together.

His eyes met Jasper’s as he brought his hand down to his mouth,

as if to catch the sob that was already on its way to escaping. It didn’t.
Ben’s cry came out loud and terrible, a perfect reflection of the deep,
fathomless pain swirling between him and Jasper. Jasper’s arm curled
around his shoulder, and Ben flung himself against him. He clawed at
the soft fabric of his mate’s sweater, leaving all those little
indentations in it Jasper hated so much. Jasper didn’t say a word,
though, only stroked his hair as his chest rose and fell beneath his
body. Ben tried to reach the same steady breathing rhythm, but

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123

couldn’t. That sharp, biting pain of what was looming on the horizon
was still there, making him sob and gasp and hiccup.

He cried like a madman. Jasper’s sweater was covered in snot and

tears.

“I’m going to spend a fortune on dry-cleaning,” Jasper mused, his

fingers lightly scratching the back of Ben’s head.

Ben looked up at him through blurry eyes. Jasper’s, damn him,

were dry as could be. “How are you taking this so calm?” he asked.

“I never liked this sweater anyway.”
“You know what I mean.” Ben breathed several shaky breaths in

and out. When he’d almost managed to take one without choking, he
said, “We’re never going to see each other again.” It was no use
trying to stop the tears. The words escaped his mouth and they started
up all over again.

“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is!” Ben choked out. “Just be honest about it for once. I’m

going to Morgana, and you’re staying here, and—”

“And we’ll see each other in our dreams.”
Jasper had whispered the words so quietly that at first, Ben wasn’t

sure he’d heard them right. He still wasn’t sure when he thought of
the implications. Jasper had been so adamant about taking the pill
before, but now…Ben looked up at him, searching Jasper’s brown
eyes for some hint of regret or reserve, but there was none there. He
had resisted dreaming with Ben for weeks, had evaded even talking
about it whenever the subject threatened to come between them, but
Jasper held Ben’s gaze bravely now, not backing down.

“So what?” Ben asked, his voice cracking. “You’re not scared

anymore? You know what you’re risking, right? Even on another
plane, if we fall asleep together—”

Jasper bit his lip. “I’m screwed up,” he said. “There’s a lot of shit

in my head. And I don’t want it to hurt you, but—”

“I don’t care,” Ben interrupted.
“—especially not after what you’ve been through.”

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“Pretty sure I’m the one who hurt you last time.”
Jasper shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t care. I just want to

be with you, any way I can. And if this is what it takes and you’re
okay with it, then I don’t care what the risks are.”

“But why?” Ben asked. And suddenly, he couldn’t stop from

asking the question. He’d implied as much back in the study, and Ben
had certainly felt the weight of what Jasper meant in that moment, but
Ben needed to hear him say it, just once, before he left. “Why is it
worth the risk?”

Ben’s words were met with silence, and he shook his head,

saddened until Jasper captured it in both hands, holding him still.
“Because I love you,” he whispered.

Ben felt his throat tighten at the softly spoken words. “I love you,

too.”

“And if this is the only way…” In an instant, Jasper’s face

crumpled, betraying the emotion behind his intense stare. His hands
fell from Ben’s face, but Ben pulled him back to him, kissing him
hard and fast and frantic. Jasper pulled away, gasping. “I’m sorry. I’m
so sorry, I just…I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.” Ben shook his head. “Just love me.”
A growl escaped Jasper’s mouth at the words, the same ones Ben

had told him when they first met, and he practically flung Ben onto
the bed beneath him, kneeling over him to rip his shirt over his head.
Ben slid his hands under Jasper’s sweater just as eagerly, his cock
hardening at the smooth, hard ridges of Jasper’s abs. He tossed the
sweater off the bed and sat up, returning to those ridges to suck and
kiss and lick them, his hands desperately fumbling at the fly on
Jasper’s pants.

Jasper moaned as his cock burst free from its confines and Ben

lowered his head to it without even bothering to strip off his boxer
briefs, tonguing the head and sucking the tip through the fabric until
the cotton was wet with his saliva. Jasper sucked in a breath, his
hands running wild through Ben’s hair.

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“Feels good?” Ben asked when he ran his hands up to Jasper’s

waistband to push the rest of the fabric out of the way. He didn’t wait
for a response when he saw the tempting, round curves of Jasper’s
thick cockhead pressing against his lips. He sucked his mate’s cock
into his mouth until it nearly hit the back of his throat.

Pressing his fingers against Jasper’s thighs, he used his thumbs to

massage his balls. Jasper raked his fingers down his back, and Ben’s
moan reverberated around his dick. His hand found his own cock
straining against his jeans and started to rub against it until Jasper
clasped a hand around the back of his neck, pulling his head away.

“Slow down,” he panted, “you can’t let me come yet.”
Ben nodded silently, and he reluctantly pulled away to strip off his

pants. He wanted a taste of his mate, was desperate to get him off, to
feel him jerk and pulse in ecstasy, but he didn’t know how much time
they had. He wanted to feel Jasper inside him before he left.

When Ben was naked, he stood in front of his mate, staring at his

beautiful body stretched across the bed. Jasper’s eyes raked across
him the way they always did when he shrugged out of his clothes, but
his expression was different this time, bittersweet. He held Ben’s gaze
longer, as if he was trying to press the memory of it into his brain and
preserve it. Ben choked back the rush of emotion in his throat.

This would be the last time they made love.
He walked over to him and climbed onto the bed. He lay down

and reached over to brush Jasper’s dark bangs out of his face. He
wanted to memorize his face, too, to store it in his heart forever, but
he could barely keep his hands from shaking as he performed the
gesture. Jasper reached up and captured his hands in his, kissed them.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.
Ben nodded. “I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know.” Ben heard his voice tremble, and he turned away from

Jasper to keep from crying all over again. “I love you, too.”

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Jasper’s hand smoothed a soft path down his side. He traced a line

across every muscle as he kissed his way across his shoulders and
neck. Ben closed his eyes, and he felt another hand close around his
cock. It stroked him slowly, sweetly, and he kissed Ben’s neck and
behind the shell of his ear. He paused to suck that scarred spot on his
neck where Jasper had bitten him, and Ben felt that same insistent,
pounding need that he felt when they first mated, flowing through him
anew. Yours, yours, yours. The thought pulsed through his body in
time to the long, slow strokes of his dick. The heat from Jasper’s body
was all around Ben, making him feel flushed, almost burning as his
need built inside him.

He rolled his head back against Jasper as his fingers stroked the

front of Ben’s throat, caressed his Adam’s apple, brushed his lips. He
opened his mouth as he felt Jasper wrap one big leg around him,
pressing his cock against his tailbone. Ben sucked the fingers into his
mouth, lapping and sucking and licking until he was certain they
would slide inside him.

Jasper’s hand pumped harder around his cock and his hips ground

into Ben as he did. His dick, still slick from Ben’s spit, was pressing
into his thighs and cheeks and crease, and Jasper’s forceful breaths
were moaning his need into Ben’s ear. He pulled his fingers from
Ben’s mouth and slipped them between their bodies, pressing them
into his hole quicker than Ben was prepared for, and he sucked in a
sharp breath at the sudden stab of pain. Jasper’s mouth roamed over
his shoulder and neck, kissing him urgently as he slowed his touch
inside of him.

Slowly, carefully, Jasper dragged those digits in and out, curling

them, scissoring them, stretching inside him and stroking his prostate
until Ben thought he would lose his mind. His hands had wrapped
back around Jasper, their limbs tangling as he fumbled behind him to
squeeze Jasper’s ass or back or shoulders, whatever he could find.
Two fingers became three fingers, and he ground eagerly against him,
wanting to take as much of his lover as possible. Their bodies, hot

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against each other, grew slick with sweat, sliding against each other as
if they wanted to melt and reform as a single throbbing being. Ben
bucked and panted and mewled against Jasper’s touch, his body
shaking and swollen and sore and sick with need.

Suddenly, those three fingers weren’t enough.
“Jas,” he moaned, “I need you.”
Jasper sucked the shell of his ear into his mouth as he pulled his

fingers out of Ben and released his hold on his cock. In that instant,
Ben felt so empty. He rolled onto his stomach and couldn’t help but
hump the sheets underneath him while he waited for Jasper’s hands
on his hips, pulling them up and spreading his legs.

Instead he felt Jasper’s hand tangle in his hair. “Turn over,” he

said. Ben could feel his mate’s short and heavy breaths on his neck. “I
want to see you. I want to see your face. I want to see your beautiful
face.”

“You think I’m beautiful?”
He turned over and looked up at Jasper above him. Jasper didn’t

say a word as he stared down at Ben, running his hands along the
lengths of his thighs to press them up and press himself between
them. His eyes grazed over Ben’s body and back to meet his eyes. He
looked at him as if he were seeing him for the first time, and then he
nodded. “Yeah.” He looked nervous. “I do.”

Ben bit his lip to stop it shaking. He couldn’t keep the quiver out

of his voice. “Then I guess you can have me.”

His mouth opened in a silent scream as Jasper thrust his cock

inside him and begin to piston in and out. At first he closed his eyes to
let the feelings wash over him, the insistent, driving edge of need as it
began to build again, but when he felt Jasper’s hand press against the
side of his face, he opened them to see Jasper’s eyes, wide and intense
and locked on his.

Ben could see his mate’s mouth twitch and open with each

rocking motion of his hips, could see what made him pout and pant
with want. Ben’s cock slapped and slipped along the spaces between

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them, and his balls rocked up and down in smaller and smaller
motions as they drew up tight. One of Jasper’s hands clutched at
Ben’s face as the other clutched against his thigh. Ben turned his head
sideways to lick Jasper’s palm, and he felt Jasper’s thrusts grow
harder and faster and deeper until the tips of his mate’s claws were
pricking at the side of his neck.

Jasper pulled Ben close and kissed him. As Jasper sucked his

tongue into his mouth, Ben felt his own claws burst from his
fingertips, digging into Jasper’s back, making him suck and thrust and
grasp all the harder. Jasper jerked and thrust beneath him, taking hold
of Ben’s arms and holding them down on the bed. He leaned into
Ben’s neck and lapped at his mating bite, then turned to the crook of
his elbow to lick that other place on his body that was tough and
scarred from the myriad injections Pierson had given his wolf there.

Jasper had always ignored it before, that reminder of his former

life, but he licked and kissed it now as if he could suck the scars off
Ben’s body. When Jasper sucked the whole patch of damaged skin
into his mouth, Ben lost control and came across his stomach.

He could feel Jasper shoot inside him even as he rode the crest of

his own orgasm, could feel his seed filling him, could feel the
connection between them strengthen as it never had before. Ben
opened his eyes, and for a moment, he swore he could see himself
staring back at him through Jasper’s black-brown irises. Jasper
pressed a kiss to his cheek and hugged Ben close, keeping his dick
inside him as he cuddled him against his body, leaving it there until it
grew soft and slid out.

Jasper held him for a long, long time, staring at Ben until his

eyelids began to drift closed. Each time they stayed closed longer
before they flitted back open and Jasper’s arms closed a little tighter
around him, as if he was afraid to lose his grasp for even a moment.
Ben felt the curve of Jasper’s arms around his waist and shoulders, the
slope of his thighs tangled in his, the ridges of his bones as he traced
his fingers down his back and pressed a kiss to his collarbone. Each

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129

touch was precious to him. Ben didn’t know how many more he
would get.

When Jasper’s eyes finally drifted closed and Ben felt his mate’s

muscles relax around him, he pressed one more kiss to his lips and
climbed, ever so slowly, out of bed to get dressed.

Even when he’d finished getting ready, Ben stood in the doorway,

watching his mate, his head willing his feet to leave but his heart not
wanting to let go. Then, suddenly, it was time. It was strange. He
hadn’t thought to look at a clock to see how much time had passed.
He simply felt something change inside him, like a flipped switch,
and he knew he had to go.

He turned and took the first step away from the door.
It was the hardest step Ben had ever taken in his life, but he shut

up his heart and screwed up his courage, and soon he took another
step. The rest came more easily, carrying him down the stairs and out
the door to the woods. He shifted when he reached the woods,
running through the forest to a place he didn’t know he was headed,
but a place he knew well nonetheless.

Jacob was already waiting for him when he arrived at Ecstasy

Rock.

* * * *

Cold steel pressed against Jasper’s bare back. His eyes fluttered

open and closed quickly as they took in the halogen glare of the
overhead lights. He raised a hand to his face to shield the light from
his eyes and, squinting, sat up. His feet and chest were bare, but he
was wearing his gray slacks, the same ones he’d had on earlier that
night. He could even feel the weight of his ever-present Zippo in his
pocket. He glanced below him to see what he was sitting on. A metal
examination table, and all around him, clutter. He was back in
Pierson’s lab.

Or was he?

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He swallowed and blinked and glanced around again. It wasn’t the

lab, not precisely as he remembered it in reality. Pierson, he
remembered now, had lined the shelves and the workbenches and the
flat spaces on the endlessly foreboding machines with all manner of
odds and ends from surgical instruments to biological specimens, but
these shelves were neatly stacked with file cabinets and clearly
labeled drawers.

It was the space he and Ben had found in their nightmare.
Jasper rose from the table and walked to one wall. He ran his hand

down each file drawer, reading the subheadings on the cabinets with
his name. People I betrayed while drunk. List of one-night stands and
anonymous partners. Why I haven’t shifted since I killed him. None of
those titles were surprising to Jasper. Those dark thoughts were things
he dwelled on frequently while torturing himself that he didn’t
deserve the love that had so inexplicably found its way into his life.
Absentmindedly, Jasper stroked his shoulder, feeling the scar-tissue
of his mating bite beneath the calloused pads of his fingertips.

He glanced down at the other drawers. The ones marked BEN. He

traced his finger down one and froze as he saw the label. Things he
doesn’t know I think about him. Jasper bit his lip. He left the drawer
closed.

He spun around the room again, and his eyes landed on the stout

television sitting on the workbench, propped up to face the empty
cage Ben was laying in when he first saw him. Ben’s TV.

Jasper eyed the television, then the stacks of files, as if to

determine how best to pass the time. No use torturing himself
anymore by looking at those files, he figured. He flipped on the TV
and waited for the image to clarify as it flickered to life.

“Do you think the boys can ever see us?”
Jasper’s heart stilled at the familiar sound of the female voice

drifting out of the television. Another voice, just as familiar, but
masculine this time, echoed it.

“Don’t know. Depends on how self-aware they are, I guess.”

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131

“Great. Well, then, I can comfort myself that everyone’s okay but

Jasper.”

Jasper bit his lip when he heard his mother speak his name. His

throat suddenly felt very dry, and he swallowed, trying to get the
words to come out. His voice came out only a croak at first. “Mom.
Mom, Dad. I’m here.”

Neither Mitchell nor Adrianna Craven turned a head or raised a

brow to acknowledge him. They were sitting on the jagged rocks just
below Ecstasy Rock, as if they were two tourists taking a break from
rafting. Adrianna’s bare feet dangled into the water below, and she
kicked at the tepid surface of the still water to make a splash.

Mitchell wiped the errant drops of water from his face, giving

Adrianna a playful warning glance. “I’m sure Jasper’s plenty grown
up by now.”

Mitchell smiled at Adrianna, but her face fell. She glanced around,

and for a split second, she turned to face the screen, as if searching for
Jasper on the other side of it. “When is now, exactly?”

Jasper’s brow furrowed as he stared at them, preserved behind the

glass, untouchable. All the same, he couldn’t keep from stretching out
his hand and palming the screen as if to prove it to himself. Here in
this strange dream world, they existed. They were alive. They were
okay. He just couldn’t reach them.

It was just like the first time he’d gone to the hospital to visit,

right after the accident. There they were in their beds, side by side, as
if they were only sleeping. Jasper’s brothers had talked to them, cried
over them, held their hands, but his own desire to do so diminished
with each passing minute. It was useless. The doctors had told them
about the extent of their parents’ unconsciousness. If Jasper had
wanted to, he could poke a pin into either of his mother’s outstretched
hands and she wouldn’t even flinch. She and his father were there, but
he couldn’t reach them. Not like that, anyway. Not in that sterile,
halogen-lit hospital room.

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It was part of the reason things had gotten so bad for him in the

first place.

He’d driven back up to college later that day, not bothering to

stick around Borderland and share any more sad, scared silence with
his brothers. When he arrived on campus, he bypassed the dorms and
went straight out to find a friend of a friend, a guy who had once said
he could get Jasper something to expand his mind.

The guy had held up the little yellow pill for Jasper to see. A

mescaline button, he’d called it. “This will make you see some shit
that is unreal. I mean, it’s like a g-d gateway to another world. No
joke, man. You’ll like, talk to the motherfucking dead and shit.”

Jasper had nodded and paid him the money in exchange for the

pill. He hadn’t found any other planes or worlds or talked to the dead.
He hadn’t found his parents waiting for him on the other end of the
horizon. He hadn’t been able to ask them the questions he needed
answers to or found out if they were okay. He’d tried all kinds of
other drugs, marijuana, opium, LSD, Ecstasy, uppers, downers…they
did different things, but the end result was the same. The more Jasper
had opened himself to “new experiences,” the more those experiences
had left him unsatisfied. And the more they made him hate himself. It
made him want to do more, to escape, and that only stoked the fires of
his confusion and regret. Eventually he’d forgotten why he’d ended
up down that rabbit hole in the first place.

Jasper stared at his parents on the screen now. They stared back at

him through the impenetrable barrier of the glass. They couldn’t see
him, but he sensed that here he might find some of those answers he’d
wanted for so long. He wanted to know why they’d left, and whether
they still thought of him.

“I felt it,” Adrianna said. “That day we left? I know I felt

something pull me toward the rock, even after what happened. I know
I felt a pull. I thought it was fate, leading us there. I honestly thought
we were being drawn back to Morgana, but if it was fate…”
Adrianna’s face crumpled. “If it was fate, why are we still here?”

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133

Mitchell put his arm around her and pulled her against his chest.

“Since when did you start believing that fulfilling your destiny was
easy?”

“This isn’t easy. This is nothing. This is meaningless.”
“Then what are you crying for?” Mitchell brushed a tear from her

eye. “Pain doesn’t destroy meaning. It creates it.”

Adrianna nodded against his chest. She clasped a hand to her

mouth and breathed in and out into it, and eventually she stilled her
tears, waving her hand in front of her face as if to brush away the
moment’s breakdown. “Okay. I’m okay. What I meant to say…” She
wiped her hand on her jeans and sighed. “Before that embarrassing
digression…”

“Embarrassing? In front of me?” Adrianna swatted at his chest

with the back of his hand, but Mitchell continued to glance around
him. “Do you see anyone else watching us?”

“I feel them sometimes. The boys. I don’t know if it’s because

they’re part planeswalker or because I haven’t let them go and they’ve
done the same for me and you. Not that I want them to, but…”

“What would you say to them? If they could hear you?”
Adrianna furrowed her brow. “I would tell them whatever they’re

fighting for, not to give up until they have it. Because the feelings I
have of them, even the difficult ones, are warm and good and loving,
and I know that they deserve to be happy.”

Jasper bit his lip and nodded as he lifted a finger to turn off the

television. He had heard all he needed, all he’d longed to hear for
years. Those words had a profound effect on him. It was as if they
settled inside him, lighting a fire in his belly that overwhelmed the
great icy pit of despair he’d lived with for the past ten years. He
hadn’t let his parents down. He had hurt himself, but he could be
fixed. He deserved happiness.

He glanced again at the file he dreaded. Then he walked to it and

opened it.

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Things he doesn’t know I think about him

I hated him a little when he bit into Pierson. I loved him for it, too,

but it scared me. When I bit him, when we mated, I wondered if part
of the bad feelings I got were because of that fear. He was right when
he said that he wasn’t a hero or a savior. I said I didn’t care if he was
fucked up like me, but I was lying. I did care. I just didn’t want to
believe it. I wanted to romanticize the way that he found me, but the
truth is I wasn’t sure what to feel in the moment. For a long time, I
thought there was something wrong with us because our relationship
wasn’t the way I thought it would be, and neither is he. He isn’t
perfect—

Jasper stopped there. His throat was tight. He wasn’t sure if he

wanted to read any more, but he gathered his courage and forced
himself to go on.

He isn’t perfect, but he’s mine, and he’s real. I know it’s hard for

him to open up, but it makes it more meaningful when he does. I know
he’s fucked a lot of guys, but I know I’m the only one he’s carried to
bed at night and covered up and kissed so carefully. I know that he
used to hurt himself, but it was different when he let me touch him
roughly because I could feel what he was feeling and it wasn’t self-
pity or despair, but love.

I don’t know what the future holds. I have a tendency to believe in

fate and happy endings, and that cheapens my hope for us, but Jasper
has never had that problem. I know he loves me, but want to hear him
say, just once, that we were meant for each other. That fate paired us
for a reason.

Even if it didn’t, I love him anyway.

Jasper swallowed the emotion welling up in his throat and

carefully placed the letter back in the file. It was good to get a glimpse

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135

of Ben, so nakedly, but now he missed him more than ever. He
wanted to get out of there, out of the place that reminded him so much
of Ben. He turned and surveyed the room again. The door to Pierson’s
basement wasn’t a part of this world, and neither was the stairwell
leading up to it. In its place was a crawlspace maybe four feet high.
His wolf could fit through it, he thought, but he bit the thought back,
remembering his reluctance to shift.

He turned away from the crawlspace and saw a broken floor-

length mirror leaning against the work bench. He didn’t know why,
but he was drawn to it. He walked to the broken fixture, but when he
did, he saw the glass that had broken and fallen away from it revealed
what had been hiding underneath it.

Jasper stared in wonder at the bright red door.
Carefully, he pulled away the remaining shards of glass around

the frame. His hand shook as he pressed it to the handle, but it turned
easily and gave underneath his gentle pressure. He walked into a
room so black it at first appeared to contain nothing at all.

Only that wasn’t true.
The blinding glare of the lights from Pierson’s lab shone into the

space, filling the void little by little as he opened the door wider. The
ground under his bare feet was smooth and hard and wet, and another
tentative step brought him stumbling into knee-high water. Rough
water. Running water, like some kind of stream or a river…

Jasper yelped as he felt his foot stabbed by a sharp rock beneath

him. In the dim light from the open door, he could just make out the
familiar scene in front of him, the same scene he had just witnessed
his parents inhabiting through the television, only they weren’t there
now. He could hear someone whimpering though, a ways off in the
distance. Jasper carefully made his way across the river, feeling his
way from rock to rock in the dark as he followed those frightened
moans and frantic gasps of breath. It wasn’t until he was nearly on top
of them that he began to recognize the sounds, and his muscles
stiffened with the sudden force of his realization.

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“Ben?” he called out into the darkness.
For a long, terrible moment, he could only hear those choking,

sputtering cries. Then, finally, a response. “Jasper!”

“Ben!”
Jasper rushed so quickly off the rock that he fell into the water,

and for a moment, he splashed and bucked, trying to find a rock to
scramble his way back onto. Before he could, he felt one hand, then
another, grasp his arm and pull him up. He clung to it with dear life,
and when he righted himself on the rock, he pawed at the warm, wet
body next to him, his heart pounding as his hands recognized the
ridges and curves underneath them as his mate’s.

“I didn’t think you were here,” he said, his hands running over

Ben’s face and neck and kissing his brow. “I didn’t think you were
asleep. I thought you’d left for Morgana.”

Jasper could just make out Ben’s eyes in the light. They narrowed

as if in thought. “Morgana,” Ben repeated.

Jasper nodded. “You left with Jacob.” His thumb rested lightly on

Ben’s Adam’s apple, and he felt it bob beneath him as he listened.
“Or at least I thought you did when I fell asleep.”

“I did. I remember, only…” Ben’s eyes fell and his breathing

quickened. Jasper tried to make out the expression on his face. He
looked scared as his voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t think I made
it across.”

“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his body slumping limply into Jasper’s. “I

don’t remember.” Ben was shaking, and his voice sounded weak. “My
head hurts.”

Jasper pressed a kiss to his temple. It was wet, like the rest of him,

but this was different. Thicker. Sticky. Was it bloody? Jasper kissed it
again and felt the tiny puncture there. If something had hurt Ben, it
should have healed, but his wound was still bleeding. Jasper could
feel the copper taste of blood on his mate’s lips, along with something
else. Something metallic and bitter. Something that burned. He

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137

hugged Ben tighter. “I’ll fix it,” he said, even though he hadn’t the
slightest idea how. “I’ll find a way to fix it. We’ll be okay, as long as
we’re together.”

“We can’t stay here,” Ben murmured.
“Why?” Jasper asked, but Ben wouldn’t answer, only shook his

head violently, trying to pull away, but Jasper wouldn’t let him. “Why
not?”

“Because you’re not alone.”
The voice alone was enough to send a tingle down Jasper’s spine,

but soon it was accompanied by a touch, not of a human hand, but
something sharp and curved and cold. Jasper could feel the cool metal
graze against his skin, but in spite of its temperature it seemed to sear
his flesh. Silver. The metal was silver.

Almost instantly, Jasper’s body responded, tucking Ben into his

arms and rolling away from his attacker into the water. Jasper
splashed and struggled across the rocks back to the lab, pulling Ben
with him. He heard something slice the air behind him, swish, swish,
swish, his attacker grunting with each new effort. As they reached the
red door, Jasper caught his assailant’s image out of the corner of his
eye.

Pierson was behind them, his throat bloodied, his hand missing,

just as Jasper had left him. Only now, Pierson had replaced his
missing extremity. In place of his hand, he wore a silver hook.

Once again, the hook sliced through the air behind him, this time

catching Jasper on the arm, ripping a long gash down his shoulder to
his bicep, and Jasper screamed out. He had intended to shut the door
behind him, locking Pierson out, but the sudden rush of blinding pain
almost doubled him over.

Pierson slipped through the door alongside them, swinging the

hook once at Jasper’s mate, slicing through Ben’s shirt and sinking
into his chest. Ben howled with pain, jerking away to collapse on the
floor. The sight of his wounded lover bleeding snapped something
inside Jasper. At once, his claws burst free and his fangs dropped

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down, and he caught Pierson roughly by the throat, shoving him up
against the wall. Pierson fought to get free, swinging his hook wildly,
but it caught on the side of the wooden workbench and stuck. Jasper
closed his other hand around Pierson’s wrist and held it there fast.

Jasper’s heart raced, and his blood boiled hot in his veins. His

wolf was wild to finish Pierson off, but there was still that niggling
voice in his head and the dizzying sense of déjà vu as his human mind
raced with the memory of Pierson’s murder and all the miserable self-
loathing that came with it.

“Just do it,” Pierson ground out. “Do it like you did before. You’d

like that, wouldn’t you? The taste of blood? All you miserable
monsters and your revolting need to destroy. I tried to make
something good out of you, but you resisted. You see where that got
you? You feel it? Kill me now if you want to, but you’ll never escape
me. I’ll be in your conscience waiting for you with all your other dirty
little secrets.”

“You’re the monster,” Ben said weakly from behind where Jasper

stood.

Pierson laughed. “Look around. You see all these files? Who do

you think they belong to? Not me, not you, him. You know the things
he’s hiding inside those drawers?”

“I know,” Ben said, his voice laced with pain. “I don’t care.”
Jasper’s eyes locked onto Ben’s, and he saw the love inside them,

even as Ben winced, trying to fight the pain of his injuries. Jasper’s
happiness was short-lived, though, as Pierson whispered in his ear,
giving voice to all the doubts and reservations that had gripped him so
deeply in the past month since he’d met Ben.

“He’s lying,” he said. “You know he is.”
“He’s not. You are.”
“Then kill me. Kill me if you think you can stand it.”
Jasper’s grip was tight around his throat as Pierson wiggled to free

his hook. He held it with his wounded arm, and pain pulsed through it
with each jerk of Pierson’s wrist against his hand. How many more

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139

seconds could he hold it there before Pierson wrenched it free? It
couldn’t be many, Jasper thought, but all the same he made no move
to kill Pierson. He couldn’t bring his wolf to burst free.

“You know who hurt his head?”
“You did.”
Pierson smiled. “I delivered the blow, but where did I get the

weapon?” Jasper eyed the hook, his stomach reeling. He had a feeling
he already knew the answer. “Yes, I’ve made good use of it, but it
came out of you. You created it. It’s part of you, that sharp bite of
hatred you’ve always felt about yourself. Or did. Ben tried to free it
from you, but it didn’t go away. He couldn’t destroy it, and now it’s
come back to hurt him. You hurt him. Just like you always knew you
would.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jasper said, but he wasn’t so sure he believed it.

He remembered the dream he’d shared with Ben, that terrible world
between nightmare and reality. Ben had pulled the hook out of his
back, and given the way Jasper felt when it was dislodged, Jasper half
wondered if Pierson wasn’t right. Maybe that hook was his pain, or at
least some psychic manifestation of it.

He turned to Ben, remembering the first words he read in the file.

Ben had hated Jasper when he bit into Pierson. He was afraid of
Jasper’s wolf for what it had done. Jasper couldn’t shift and kill
Pierson again, but what else could he do? Ben was barely conscious
now, and everything in Jasper screamed to save him. He would have
to let go of Pierson to do it, and he would surely kill them both. Either
way, he’d lost the battle. Either way, they were done for. Pierson was
right. It was all his fault.

Devastated, Jasper’s hand slipped from Pierson’s wrist and

dropped into his pocket. It was only an unconscious gesture, a
nervous habit, but he hated himself for it. Even now, he couldn’t stop
his old habits from tempting him into a dull, stupefied comfort he no
longer desired to possess.

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Pierson’s black eyes danced with mocking laughter as he

wrenched the hook free, holding it up to Jasper’s face. It glinted in the
light. “It’s a funny metal, silver. Strong, too. Not much you can do to
destroy it. Once it’s been forged, it’ll nearly last forever.”

Jasper’s hand closed around the Zippo lighter, and he withdrew it

from his pocket. Suddenly, he knew why he’d held onto it for so long,
carried it with him. Something inside him had made him clutch it like
a magic talisman, promising comfort, but it wasn’t his old habit.

It was fate.
Jasper flicked the top open, and the flame danced in his hand.

“There is something,” Jasper said, and Pierson’s brow furrowed.
“You can melt it.”

With a flick of his wrist, he grabbed Pierson’s wrist and shoved it

back onto the workbench, sticking his hook deep into the wood before
he dropped the lighter onto it. The stacks of papers, folders and files
marked with Jasper’s name and Jasper’s former sins, caught fire fast,
and as they ignited, the flames licked at Pierson’s hook. Pierson
jerked and screamed as if it was a living thing inside the fire, a part of
his body burning off.

The fire spread quickly, igniting all the clutter on the workbench

and spreading to the innumerable stacks of file cabinets around them.
Every miserable deed Jasper had done in his life was consumed by the
fire along with Pierson, who screamed as the flames engulfed him
then moved beyond him, spreading to the television and all the
medical machines cluttering the corner.

Sparks shot out, and the smoke that was already swelling in the

room thickened. Jasper made his way through it until he found the
warm body crumpled on the floor. His hand closed on a thick coat of
fur. In his desperation to stay conscious, Ben had shifted into his wolf
form. He whined, lifting his head to look at Jasper. He was stronger as
a wolf, but his wounds weren’t healing. Jasper tried to lift him into his
arms, but he couldn’t pick him up. Ben’s wound was too deep, too
painful. And even if Jasper could lift him, there was no place to go.

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141

Or was there?
His eyes landed on the crawlspace. Four feet. Big enough for his

wolf to fit through, and Ben’s. He made his way to the crawlspace and
threw open the latch, opening the diminutive door.

He turned to Ben. The smoke was thick, and Jasper was wheezing

and choking in it. He didn’t want to say any more than he had to, but
he had to make sure his mate understood. “Come here,” he choked
out. “Please.”

Ben whined. The note was raspy. The smoke had gotten thicker.

He walked a few paces toward the door, stumbling a little, righting
himself, then finally collapsing just a foot before it. Giving over to his
inner beast, Jasper let his bones melt beneath him, felt the sting of his
injured leg as his front paws hit the floor hard. He pushed past the
pain, trotting to Ben as he struggled to get up. Jasper sunk his teeth
into his mate’s neck, grabbing at the scruff to drag Ben through the
last few steps he needed to get out.

With great difficulty, he managed to pull Ben to his feet.

Together, they made it through the opening, gasping great breaths of
fresh air as they stumbled out of the burning, smoky basement and
were swallowed by the waiting abyss.

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Chapter Ten

Jasper coughed and sputtered, trying to take in bigger gasps of

fresh air than his body was prepared for after spending so much time
in the smoky confines of the burning building. His eyes drifted half-
open, but he felt half-dead from lack of oxygen. The searing pain still
shooting from his arm convinced him he was still dreaming, still
asleep, only he wasn’t in the lab or the black nothingness that he’d
found outside of it anymore.

Someone was sitting next to him, or rather underneath him. His

body was sprawled across some uncomfortable, confined space, and
his head was resting on the pressed slacks of a lap that was decidedly
not Ben’s.

Get away from me, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. His hands

flailed, shooting pain back up his arm, but his protest only came out
as a low, long moan.

“Oh my God, he’s awake. He’s awake!”
Jasper wasn’t entirely sure, but the voice shouting with relief

sounded like Lars. He groaned again, and struggled to pull up his
head since he definitely did not want it resting in his brother’s lap, but
when he succeeded in pulling away from Lars, his head smacked hard
onto a smooth leather surface beneath him.

“Ughnnn…” Jasper said with the shock of the pain. He’d been

going for ow, but that was the best he’d managed.

“Are you okay?” Lars asked.
“Can he hear us? Can you hear us?”
Jasper’s eyes opened wider, and he thought he saw Danny in the

front seat. Seat. He was in a car. He was wrapped in a blanket and

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143

lying next to Lars in the backseat of a Jag, his Jag, which Danny was
driving alarmingly fast. If he wasn’t half-delirious, he would swear
the little shit was almost enjoying himself.

He tried to answer, but only wheezed again. A million thoughts

were racing through his head, and he was dizzy from the lack of air.
He struggled to catch his breath, and when he finally succeeded, he
managed only a single word.

“Ben,” he choked out. He sputtered and coughed, but choked out

another two words. “Where’s Ben?”

“He’s at the hospital. We’re almost there. You can see him after

we get you—” Jasper tried to interrupt that he needed to see him now,
that his stupid arm and non-functioning lungs could wait, but instead,
he was seized with another violent coughing fit. Lars looked at him
with concern. “Jesus, take it easy.”

“Can he breathe okay?” Danny glanced over his shoulder from the

driver’s seat. “Should you give him mouth-to-mouth or something?”

Lars glanced down at Jasper, but he managed to lift his one good

arm above him to push his face as far away from his as possible as he
caught his breath again. “Try to kiss me,” he choked out between
breaths, “and I will kill you…” He broke off, gasping, before he
continued, “in your sleep.” He stared at Lars hard as he took three
more breaths, in and out. “Swear to God.”

Jasper breathed hard from the force of the long sentence, but

managed to still his coughing nonetheless. “Forget it,” Lars said,
glancing up at Danny. “I think he’s going to be okay.”

* * * *

Ben’s eyes slowly opened, squinting in the blinding halogen

lights. He remembered bits and pieces of what seemed like a days-
long dream, and at first, the cold rush of panic invaded Ben, and he
worried he was in Pierson’s lab again. He coughed and sputtered, felt
the sting in his lungs when he took a breath, and remembered the lab

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burning down. He shifted uncomfortably and realized the surface he
was lying on wasn’t the cold steel examination table but a thin
mattress covered in cotton sheets he could feel under a scratchy paper
gown. A hospital gown, he realized as he lifted his hand and saw there
was an I.V. attached to his forearm. Then his heart swelled when his
eyes continued downward to his hand.

Jasper was holding his hand.
He was sleeping in the chair beside him, but his right hand was

closed tightly over Ben’s. His left was bandaged and lay in a sling
across his chest. He wheezed a little with each shallow breath, but he
didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. He was okay. They were
both okay. And best of all, they were together.

He squeezed Jasper’s hand, and Jasper’s head jerked up at once.

When his eyes opened and met Ben’s, his throat swelled with
emotion. “Jas…” he croaked.

Jasper bit his lip and nodded. “I’m here.”
Ben hardly had time to sigh with relief before Jasper let go of his

hand and crushed into him, squeezing his sore body in a tight hug
with his one good arm. Both of them coughed, and Ben’s I.V. tangled
around them, and he had to choke out a protest in spite of himself.
“Crushing me,” he said.

“Sorry, sorry…” Jasper pulled away, but couldn’t keep himself

from kissing his brow and forehead, steering just clear of the tender,
searing spot he could feel was wrapped in hospital gauze. He touched
it just once, carefully, reverently, then moved his hand to tousle his
hair and stroke his cheek.

“Geez, careful,” a voice quipped from behind Jasper. “You wanna

send him back into a coma?” Jasper sent a warning glance over his
shoulder, and Ben followed it to see Danny standing in the doorway
with Lars and Alex. He smiled at Ben, walking into the room.
“You’re awake.”

Ben furrowed his brow as the others gathered around his bed,

greeting him like a long-lost friend. He turned to the side of him and

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145

noticed the flowers on the bedside table. They nearly filled the room,
and there wasn’t anyone else in there with him. Either Jasper had
bought out an entire florist during the night, or…

“How long have I been out of it?”
“You’ve been in and out for almost a week,” Lars said. “The

doctor said you had an epidural hematoma from your head trauma.
Alex got you to the hospital right away, but you were only marginally
responsive for…”

“Oh my God.” The medical babble might have glazed over

anyone else’s head, but after years of listening to Pierson, Ben could
understand every sickening word. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and
he could swear he felt the blood draining from his face. The room
seemed a whole lot smaller all of a sudden.

“Yeah, but I don’t think you were too bad off,” Danny said. “You

moved your eyes when the doctor shined the light in it. They seemed
pretty impressed by that.”

“Can someone please explain to me why his eyes were open half

the time?” Alex interjected. “I thought you said he was in a coma.”

“Yeah, but a minor coma, not a coma-coma.”
Alex furrowed his brow. “What’s a minor coma?”
Lars sighed. “Do you mean on the Modified Glasgow scale, or—”
“Shut. Up.” Jasper snapped, glaring around the room at everyone

but Ben. “Everyone.” If that hadn’t silenced the discussion, the loud
growl that emitted from Jasper’s throat would have. “Seriously, do
you think you can maybe not overwhelm him with the grisly details
right now?”

After a few seconds of tense silence, Alex cleared his throat.

“Okay, but since Jacob’s not here, can I at least explain what we think
happened?”

Jasper sighed. His hand was still closed around Ben’s as he

gestured with it. “If you must.”

Ben glanced around him as he digested Alex’s words. “Where is

Jacob?” he asked. “Did he go back to Morgana?”

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“Not exactly. He’s actually down the hall, in another hospital

room. I can have him stop by when you’re both feeling better, if you
want to see him.”

“Why would he?” Jasper asked, an edge in his voice.
Alex ignored the comment, eyeing Ben. “Do you remember when

you met Jacob at the planesgate?”

Jasper’s eyes narrowed at Alex. “You mean when your little

friend went up to Ecstasy Rock and jumped off the cliff with my
mate, knowing full well how incredibly fucking dangerous it was?”

“He already told you that he—”
“I don’t want to hear it right now,” Jasper said, giving Alex a look

that left Ben wondering what the hell had gone on between them in
the days he’d been unconscious and why Jasper was suddenly
referring to Jacob as Alex’s “little friend.”

Finally, Alex turned back to Ben. “Do you remember?”
Ben considered it. He remembered Jacob showing up at the

house…and making love to Jasper afterward, he thought with
relish…but what had happened after that? Ben closed his eyes in
concentration. Finally, he remembered meeting Jacob at the cliff.
Jacob told him that to get across, he would have to take his hand and
jump. They did.

After that, he remembered nothing but the jumbled fragments of

his dream.

“I remember jumping,” Ben said slowly. “What happened after?”
Alex was quick to reply. “I happened. I saw you guys jump, and I

freaked out and went after you. Luckily for both of you, since you
didn’t make it across. Jacob hurt himself in the fall, and we think one
of the rocks knocked you unconscious. When you fell asleep…” Alex
trailed off under Jasper’s warning glance. “You started dreaming and
didn’t wake up.”

Ben’s breathing quickened. That carefully euphemized phrase was

accurate, but the flash of images it called to mind suggested to him
that it omitted a larger truth. He remembered the silver glint of

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147

Pierson’s hook before it bit into his skull, the slice across his chest,
the harsh sting of the smoke as he drew it into his lungs. Jasper’s hand
stroked tenderly across his head, grazing the bandage. Lars had said
he’d been in the hospital for a week now. But if he wasn’t fully healed
yet…

Jasper filled in the blanks. “Something silver must have punctured

your head and your chest to make you hurt like that. Do you
remember anything from your dreams?”

Ben nodded, staring into Jasper’s eyes. “I remember bits and

pieces. It was Pierson that hurt me.”

Jasper nodded, motioning to his arm. “Same with me. We both

had smoke inhalation, too, from the fire, if you remember it.”

Ben searched his mind, pausing over the image of burning stacks

of paper. The files. The files had burned down in a fire. He looked at
Jasper again, studying his mate for signs of change. Physically, his
arm was bandaged and he wheezed a little from the lingering effects
of the smoke inhalation, but something about him seemed lighter than
before, less stormy and more content.

Danny’s interruption broke their stare. “I told you the same thing

happened to Lars a few weeks ago. I used to have these nightmares
about my brother, Thomas, and he tried to attack Lars. In the dream,
he was locked behind a red door.”

A red door. That stirred something. Jasper broke in before he had

time to ask the question on his mind. “The same thing happened with
Pierson in our dream. He was behind a red door, too.”

Ben glanced from Danny, to Lars, to Jasper. “But what does it

mean?”

Lars spoke. “Danny was having nightmares about Thomas for a

long time,” he said. “We think because he hadn’t really let go of his
memory. When he did, the nightmares stopped. When you had dreams
about Pierson, it was because part of you hadn’t let go of him or come
to terms with his death.”

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“Or I hadn’t,” Jasper said quietly. He glanced at Ben, and Ben

squeezed his hand. “I have now.”

“I had a theory that maybe the red door is a sort of gateway to the

afterlife. Another sort of plane, if you want to think of it that way.
Pierson and Thomas were both dead, but you and Jasper and Danny
and I were able to reach them because Jasper and I are part
planeswalker and you and Danny were still linked to them. And to us,
as our mates. In the past, we’ve only seen the red doors in our dreams,
but when you tried to get across the planesgate…”

“Let me get this straight,” Ben said, his mind reeling from the

hoops it was being put through. “You think that when I got to the
planesgate, I somehow got sucked into this afterlife plane with
Pierson, and that’s how he attacked me?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Everyone nodded.
Ben raised an eyebrow. “And you guys came to this conclusion

how exactly?”

Danny smirked. “Let me put it this way. A planeswalker, a

psychologist who specializes in dream research, and a guy who spent
most of college on mescaline walk into a bar…”

“Technically, they walked into Jacob’s hospital room,” Alex

broke in. “And I was there, too. Mostly just to keep Jasper in line,
though.”

Before Jasper could respond to Alex’s muttered comment, Ben

raised a hand as if to wave the explanation away. “Forget it,” he said.
He dropped his hand back down to the bed, where it was quickly
swallowed by Jasper’s. “I think I get the picture.” He had to wonder
about Jacob, though. He had made it sound like things on Morgana
were in need of pretty urgent help. “What happened with Morgana? I
mean…are things going to be okay?”

“I think that’ll have to wait for now,” Alex said. “Jacob can’t go

back while he’s injured, and neither can you. It’s too dangerous to try
again before you’re completely healed, so for the moment, we’re
waiting. Anyway, given what just happened to you and Jasper, it’s

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149

starting to seem like it’s maybe not such a good idea for anyone to go
across without his mate anymore.”

Ben’s heart swelled at the statement. He looked at Jasper, whose

expression betrayed the same rush of happiness he felt swirling inside
him. In an instant, Jasper had leaned in again, wrapping his hand
around the back of his neck and kissing him full on the mouth. His
tongue plunged past Ben’s lips and tangled with his until he heard
Danny’s stifled giggle and Alex’s embarrassed clearing of his throat.

Jasper pulled away, but he left his heated gaze on Ben. Later, it

said, and Ben nodded, smiling a big, doofy smile. “Say again?” he
said to Alex.

Alex looked at the two of them with a little embarrassment. “Are

you guys going to make out again?” Lars jabbed his elbow into
Alex’s side in response to the question. “Ow. Okay, sorry. I said, no
one’s going to take you across without Jasper. Not after what we
know now about planeswalkers.”

Ben raised an eyebrow at Alex. He certainly had seemed to

become the expert in the week since Jacob’s arrival. “Just exactly
how much do you know about planeswalkers?” he said. “I mean, is
there one in particular that—”

Alexander cleared his throat, cutting Ben off before he could

finish the sentence. His face was beet red. “Wow, would you look at
the time?” He had to crane his neck around the room to locate a clock,
and reddened even more when he finally fixated on it. “We should
really get out of here and leave you and Jasper alone.”

Jasper’s hand wandered up Ben’s arm to his chest and began to

trace his collarbone, and his gaze raked over his body. He had hardly
taken his hands off of Ben since their kiss, and Ben had a feeling that
he was probably concealing a hell of an erection in his lap. Kind of
like the one Ben had failed to keep from tenting up the
embarrassingly thin hospital blanket. “Sounds good to me,” Jasper
murmured.

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“Are you kidding me? We just got here. And I brought Jasper

food,” Danny said, holding up the bag of Subway he’d been clutching
since walking through the door.

“Then maybe you can leave it behind on your way out the door,”

Jasper growled.

Danny sheepishly held up his hands and followed Jasper’s

suggestion, laying the bag down on the bedside tray as Lars ushered
him out the door behind Alexander.

“Try not to hurt yourselves,” Danny said before closing the door

behind him, but it was too late. Jasper had already leaned in for
another of those deep, probing kisses Ben had been waiting for,
crushing both Ben’s chest and Jasper’s bad arm in the process. The
action drew a groan from both men, but Ben couldn’t bring himself to
stop. He had his mate in his arms again. This time, he didn’t plan on
letting him go.

* * * *

That first encounter after Ben woke up proved to be a little more

painful than Jasper had anticipated. For one thing, he’d had a hell of a
time climbing over the safety rails of the bed with his bum arm, and
when he finally did almost manage to tackle the gymnastic maneuver,
his other hand, which he’d been using for leverage, slipped and
crushed right against the wounded spot on Ben’s chest. Ultimately,
they had to settle for some awkwardly positioned—albeit extremely
hot—making out and a little mutual masturbation. Things had gone
well until Betty, the head nurse, who was already furious to learn Ben
had been conscious for almost half an hour without her knowledge,
had stormed into the room to check on her patient and learned a great
deal more than Jasper would have liked about what Ben now
suggestively deemed his “bedside manner.”

Ben was discharged three days later, and Jasper took him home,

carrying him—despite his protestations he could walk and despite the

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151

undue pressure it put on his still-healing arm—all the way up the
stairs and into his bedroom.

Their bedroom, he mentally corrected himself, smiling as he set

his mate on their bed. He might not have succeeded with the hospital
bed, but he had a feeling this time, things were going to be
considerably better.

That is, if Jasper could just figure out a way to stop the

uncontrollable throbbing pain that was radiating through his arm after
carrying Ben up the stairs with it.

“You’re okay?” Ben asked, sitting up and crawling across the bed

to him. Jasper winced and nodded, rolling his shoulder to help soothe
his aching arm. “Let me take your mind off it,” he murmured,
fumbling at the buttons on Jasper’s fly to soothe his aching cock.
Jasper gasped as Ben ran both hands lightly up his cock then pulled
back the waistband of his boxer briefs to kiss the sensitive skin of his
hips. That pretty much did the trick. He definitely wasn’t thinking
about his arm anymore.

Jasper pushed his pants down, reveling in the slow, teasing licks

Ben was administering inward from his hip bone. With practiced
restraint, Ben made his way slowly toward Jasper’s rock-hard
member, drawing a sigh from Jasper as his mouth closed along it,
teasing the tip just as he’d tortured the skin around it.

Jasper moaned with bliss at the sensations shooting through him.

“Keep that up,” he murmured, “and I’m not going to make it inside
you.”

“Are you trying to talk me out of this blow job?” Ben smirked at

Jasper as he pulled away from him. Jasper groaned, fumbling to get
his pants the rest of the way off as his mate slowly stripped for him.
Ben had worn a button-down shirt so he wouldn’t have to pull it over
his head, and every torturous button was another opportunity for
teasing. Jasper was so entranced watching him undo those buttons that
he’d hardly thought to take his own clothes off, aside from pushing
his briefs out of the way so he could stroke his own cock. He’d worn

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his sexiest shirt in anticipation of Ben’s arrival, but the V-neck
pullover was hardly practical, even now that the sling was off. Jasper
didn’t have the slightest idea how he was going to get it over his head
without straining something.

Ben didn’t give him much time to think about it though. Now

totally naked and gorgeous as ever, Ben returned to Jasper’s cock,
sucked the tip into his mouth, and licked the slit. Jasper unthinkingly
fisted his hand in Ben’s hair in response, drawing a moan from him as
he accidentally rubbed his thumb over the bandaged area on his head.

“Oh my God! Oh no! I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay,” Ben said, grimacing as he lay back on the bed. “I’m

fine.”

“Damn it,” Jasper muttered, fumbling beside him to the nightstand

where he’d stashed some lube for the occasion. He’d hoped to use it
on Ben, to be as gentle on him as he could their first time back, but
now he wasn’t so sure it was going to work out. He squeezed some
onto his hand and stroked it over his cock, desperate to regain the
blissful feeling that had disappeared the second Ben’s tongue pulled
away from it. He stroked himself with long, needy grasps, but it
wasn’t enough. He wanted Ben’s touch. “I really need to fuck you
right now.”

Ben nodded. “I know.” He reached for the lube and slicked up his

own hand, then started to pump it over his cock as he looked at
Jasper, his face contorting with want. “Believe me. I know.”

Jasper almost laughed with exasperation. “Why does our timing

suck so bad?”

“If we have to jerk each other off again…”
Jasper shook his head firmly. “Not gonna happen. I am getting

inside you.”

Ben’s eyes half-closed, his hand moving faster over his cock.

“Yeah?” he gasped. “Tell me about it.”

Jasper smiled, and his hand slipped over his balls as he started to

stroke himself again. Three days of being relegated to only using their

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153

hands on each other had one upside—it had done wonders for their
ability to dirty talk. “First, I’m going to kiss every single sore inch of
your body.”

“Then?” Ben panted. His eyes fixed on Jasper as he spread his

legs. He squeezed out more of the lube onto his fingers, getting them
good and wet before they dropped between his legs to slicken up his
hole.

“Then I’m going to fuck your tight little hole with my tongue until

I can slide four fingers inside it.”

“How are you gonna fuck me?” Ben whispered. He slid another

finger into his ass, and Jasper moaned at the combined force of his
erotic words and the unbelievable view. “Fast and hot or slow and
sexy?”

“Fucking any way you want it, baby.” Jasper licked his lips, his

slick hand sliding up and down his dick. The pressure building inside
him was insane. He swallowed hard. “Just as soon as I figure out how
to get my shirt off.”

A sexy smile crept over Ben’s lips. “That is…the most adorable

thing I have ever heard.”

“If you ever say a word of this to anyone…”
Ben gestured to Jasper with his hand. “Come here.”
Jasper pulled his pants the rest of the way off then crawled to him

on the bed. Gently, carefully, Ben lifted his bad arm over his head to
slide the shirt off. Jasper bit his lip as the shirt grazed his wound.
Thirty-seven stitches, and Jasper felt every goddamn one as the soft
fabric slid over it. The second Ben had pulled the shirt off, he brought
his arm down gently to his side, kissing the tender spots where his
bicep had been sewn shut.

Those kisses hurt, too, but it was a different kind of pain. Jasper

opened his eyes and glanced down at their naked bodies tangled
together on the bed. He stroked the hair back from Ben’s ear and
leaned in to whisper into it. “Missed you.”

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“Missed you, too.” Ben smiled. “Now what was that you promised

me about kisses?”

True to his word, Jasper laid Ben down on the bed. He kissed his

ears, his hairline, his belly button. He kissed the creases under his
knees and inside his elbows. Finally, his lips trailed down to the
jagged half-circle of stitches along his belly. Six of them. He kissed
each one, drawing a whimper from Ben with each tender touch.

“God, Jas,” he moaned. He moaned again when Jasper trailed

those kisses down to his lubed cock, and in spite of his precision, each
one slid a little down Ben’s shaft from the slickness of the surface.
Ben moaned and bucked into him, trying to get him to take his whole
cock in his mouth, but Jasper pressed him back, gently kneading his
hands into Ben’s thighs, continuing with the slow, languid treatment
he’d started.

“You like?” he murmured, between teasing laps to the tip of his

prick.

“Too much.” Ben’s thighs were spread and drawn up beside him.

His toes were curled into the sheets. “I don’t think I can take it.”

“Tell me what you want.”
“Just fuck me,” he said. His breath hitched when he did, rough

and ragged from the panting, and he coughed a little before adding,
“As carefully as you can.”

Jasper grabbed the lube again, getting himself and Ben ungodly

slick for the act. When he could slide three fingers inside him without
a struggle, he lay down on his back, careful to keep his sore arm out
of the way so it wouldn’t get crushed. He didn’t think his arm could
hold Ben’s weight long enough for both of them to finish, so instead
he turned to his mate and gasped, “Get on. Ride me.”

When Ben slid onto his cock, Jasper had to bite his tongue to keep

from screaming with pleasure. Mindful of their varied scars and cuts
and bruises, he began a slow, careful, pounding rhythm, and soon,
Jasper was jerking his hips to meet Ben thrust for thrust. It didn’t take

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155

long before Ben was bucking on top of him and Jasper had given
himself over to his inner wolf, snarling and growling out his want.

“Oh God, oh fuck, Ben—”
“Jas,” he whined. “I’m so close.”
Jasper nodded. His canines were already bursting through his

gums. He longed to sink them into Ben’s neck, to feel his taste flow
into him again.

“Bite me,” Ben murmured, straining his neck to press against

Jasper’s mouth. Goddamn, it was like his mate could read Jasper’s
mind. Jasper ran his tongue along the spot he longed to taste, and Ben
moaned. “Please, Jas,” he pleaded. “I wanna feel you. Wanna taste
you.”

Needing no more coercion than that, Jasper curled his hand

around the back of Ben’s neck and bit into his mate’s flesh. At the
same time, Ben’s teeth sunk into Jasper’s shoulder, and Jasper felt his
own blood drain from his neck as Ben’s flooded his mouth and
overwhelmed his senses.

He could feel Ben, every bit of him, just as completely as he had

when he’d claimed him, only this was a thousand times better. He
came instantly, jerking and shooting inside Ben just as he felt his
lover’s seed squirting hot against his stomach and chest. Their animal
kiss went on and on and on, until Ben collapsed on top of him and
Jasper drew his good arm around him, stroking the back of Ben’s
spine as he reveled in the feeling, for the first time in his life, of
finally being sated.

There was nothing else in the world he wanted, he thought, as

their breathing slowed and evened out into a single lazy pace.

“I feel different now,” Ben said. “Like we mated again.”
“Better this time?”
Ben gave him a look. “Are you kidding me?”
Jasper smiled smugly. He breathed in and out, deeply. Funny, he

thought. It didn’t sting to take a breath anymore. Tentatively, he
moved his arm, and felt the pain there had lessened, too. It wasn’t a

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hundred percent better, but there was definite improvement. He’d
heard before that mating made werewolves’ natural immunity
stronger, but he’d always figured it was an old wives’ tale…or an old
mates’ tale, he guessed.

He glanced at Ben and cleared his throat. “Um…do you

feel…healed at all?”

Ben furrowed his brow, and his chest, too, rose and fell without

difficulty. “Oh, man,” he said. “That’s really weird. They oughta
prescribe you instead of Codeine.” He laughed. “Better not tell your
boss. He might try to put a patent on your dick.”

Jasper reached up and swatted at his bare ass. “Very funny.”
“What, so now that I’m better, you’re getting rough with me?”
“Are you implying that you have another round in you still?”
Jasper grinned at Ben salaciously, but Ben’s smile had faded.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh no. Oh, shit.”

“What?” Jasper asked, unsure where Ben’s anxiety was coming

from. “You know I was joking about going another round, right?”
That might not have been entirely true, but if it made his mate feel
better, Jasper was willing to tell a white lie or two.

“I’m better. Alex said when I’m better…” Ben trailed off, his

expression darkening. “What do you think will happen?” he asked
quietly, “with Morgana?”

“We’ll find a way for us to both get across,” Jasper said firmly.
“And if we don’t?”
“We will.” Ben eyed him skeptically, but Jasper’s resolve didn’t

lessen. He was thinking of what he’d heard his parents say in his
dream, and the way he’d held onto the Zippo until that absolute right
moment he needed it, and the way Alex had turned up at the rock just
in time to pull Ben out of the water. Even the idiotic twist of events
that had led Jasper to Pierson’s door made sense to him now. He’d
walked a long and broken path to get to his mate, but he was here
now, and everything inside him told him it was exactly where he was
supposed to be. “I know I didn’t believe it at first, and I know things

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157

weren’t easy for a while, but this is fate, you and me. Something will
happen, or another planeswalker will show up, or we’ll find a way to
work it out.”

“Okay,” he said, his eyes shining with love. They’d had that

happy, glazed look to them from the moment Jasper spoke the word
fate. Ben smiled at him. “I trust you.” He pressed a kiss to Jasper’s
mouth. A moment ago, Jasper had sensed fear and worry building in
his mate, but they had disappeared now, as quickly as they came.

“Whatever happens, we can handle it. We’re stronger than we

were before.”

“Right.” Ben smirked, nipping at Jasper’s lip one more time as he

traced the outside of his nipple. “And if we get hurt, we can always
just fuck our way out of it.”

“Not…exactly what I was talking about, but yeah. Sounds good.”

At least, his cock seemed to think so. It was already getting hard
again.

“Ready for that round two yet?” Ben asked, pinching his nipple.

Jasper squeezed Ben’s ass in both hands and moaned out his approval.

It was at that precise moment that the door flew open. Alex was

standing in the doorway, already talking a mile a minute. “Jasper, you
have to get to the hospital, it’s a—oh, God. I’m sorry.” His face
reddened as he stared at Ben sprawled out naked on top of Jasper,
with both of Jasper’s hands covering the globes of his ass. Alex
retreated behind the door, closing it until it was barely cracked open.
“I really didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“So close the damn door,” Jasper growled, scrambling with Ben to

cover them both up.

“I know you think I say this a lot,” Alex began warily from behind

the door, “but I assure you, this time, it’s an emergency.”

“Unless someone is dead or dying, or you miraculously

manifested another planeswalker to take us across—”

“I did,” Alex said. “I mean, there is another planeswalker. And

believe me, you definitely want to see her.”

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Only a moment ago, Jasper’s face had burned with frustration and

embarrassment, but with those words, he felt a chill run down his
spine. Her, Alex had said. A female planeswalker. Like his mother,
Jasper thought. Unless…He shut the thought down, not wanting his
hopes to get ahead of him. Feeling his heart pounding and his breath
stilling in his chest, he glanced at Ben, and Ben squeezed his hand.
That small gesture was enough to strengthen Jasper’s resolve. He
cleared his throat, and as evenly as he could, he asked, “What
happened?”

“The hospital called,” Alex said, and Jasper’s heart skipped

another beat. “Mom and Dad are awake.”

THE END

HTTP://TWITTER.COM/#!/ELLENLOVESYOU

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen Ginsberg is the pseudonym of an Austin-based writer who

has published numerous works of fiction and nonfiction and has had
plays professionally produced in New York, Washington DC,
Chicago, and across the Midwest. She graduated from Truman State
University with her Master’s degree in English in 2010, and moved to
Austin, TX with her husband, who, as a heterosexual male, may
nevertheless be the single most enthusiastic supporter of her recent
endeavors in M/M erotic romance. She loves her readers dearly and
invites them to email her anytime at

ellenginsberg@ymail.com

or find

her at

http://twitter.com/#!/ellenlovesyou

Also by Ellen Ginsberg

Everlasting Classic: Dreamcatcher 1: Danny in the Dark

Available at

BOOKSTRAND.COM