The Werewolf Affair [DeWitt's Pack 14] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (8 page)

Eric came up to stand beside him, only when Phillip looked at him, his eyes were the red color of a vampire.

Back to Ivan, it seemed. “I have noticed something whenever I look at you. Even now I see it, and after walking in on you, I’m positive you are not aware of it.”

Ivan had purposely not mentioned Trevor’s name, glancing over at James and Old Maggie. He was attempting to be tactful, but James still caught it.

“What did you walk in on?”

The leading alpha was only curious, Phillip told himself. Phillip didn’t have to answer, and if he said he’d rather not talk about it, James wouldn’t reprimand him.

He’d wanted to keep what he had with Trevor a secret at first, to keep people from thinking that Helen wasn’t actually his mate and to protect her memory.

Werewolves often waited for their mates because it was considered improper to wed anyone who was not a mate. Things like that only led to complications, and cheating, in the eyes of the wise men and women of each pack.

But she was gone now, no matter what he did. He wasn’t ready to move in with Trevor, but he didn’t want to hide the man anymore either. He wasn’t a disease.

“He walked in on Trevor and myself in his cottage. I’m sure he smelled what we’d been doing earlier.”

James’s dark and crooked brows lifted. “Oh? Well, just do me a favor and don’t let it go on too long. He’s a young werewolf, and I don’t want to see either of you getting hurt when he finds his mate.”

Phillip wet his lips here. Time to confess something that no one in this group knew about. “Trevor is my mate, James.”

Those dark brows went even higher into James’s hairline. “But, I thought with Helen…” He trailed off. There wasn’t exactly a polite way to voice the questions that were no doubt going through his head.

“Oh, shit,” Ivan said.

“Helen and I were never mated. I loved her anyway and sometimes even managed to trick myself into thinking we were mated. We got married and told everyone in my pack that we were mated to make it official. I didn’t want anyone questioning her authority or calling her a concubine.” Or questioning the rights his son had to leading the pack one day. Of course, that was no longer the point, considering Phillip didn’t have a pack anymore. He stared sharply at James at this point. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“You still want to keep this a secret?” James asked.

“What I want is for no one to call my dead wife a whore because we weren’t mated,” Phillip said. He scratched his forehead with his thumb for the outburst, then addressed the alpha again. “People are going to find out eventually. That’s inevitable, and I don’t mind that anymore. I just don’t want this getting passed around until Trevor and I have come to a better understanding.”

Old Maggie frowned at him. Her response was the one that confused Phillip the most. “Perhaps this is the true reason for her unrest. Watching a former loved one mate with another would be quite heartbreaking.”

Something inside of Phillip cracked when the old woman said that. “What did you say?”

Really, he wanted her to repeat it. Because it almost sounded like the wise woman was speaking about his wife in the present tense.

“This is why we brought you here. To explain what Eric and I’ve been seeing,” Ivan said.

Phillip remembered that the man was a medium, and he had the ability to see spirits. “What have you been seeing?” he asked, almost too afraid to hear the answer.

Ivan led him over to the water. Phillip could vaguely recall being here once or twice before, when he was still recovering. This would be the first time he was back here and was still of a sound mind.

Ivan pointed to the water, and Phillip looked into the pool, noticing his reflection, Ivan’s, James’s, as well as Old Maggie’s still-frowning face.

There was another person there that he almost didn’t see. He had to squint before the faded image became clear enough for him to recognize.

He stumbled back when he recognized Helen’s transparent face, standing right next to him. He tripped over his own feet and fell onto his ass, but that didn’t stop him from doing the backward crab walk just to get away from what he’d seen.

Ivan stared down at him with a pitying expression. “I figured you would be able to see her through the water. This is a spiritual place.”

Phillip shook his head. “She couldn’t have…She’s a ghost?”

Ivan nodded. “I’m sorry. I haven’t really spent any time in your company before, so I never noticed her, but now I do see her. She’s pretty much with you wherever you go.”

“Why? What does it mean?” Phillip asked. He finally managed to get to his feet and dust himself off. He looked around, as though expecting to see her, but of course, he couldn’t.

She was there. He couldn’t see her, but she was there.

“She’s haunting you because she’s stuck here. We need to help her to cross over to the next life, or she’ll become a violent spirit and never leave.”

Phillip had wanted to walk back to the pack on his own after the news had been given to him. He needed a chance to think about what he’d just been told, and he replayed the conversation in his head.

“What’s been keeping her here? Why can’t she move on?” Phillip had asked the medium vampire, a note of desperation in his voice.

At first he’d assumed that it had something to do with Sammy. That perhaps Helen was worried for the safety of their son, and that it was an omen for terrible things to come.

No, that hadn’t been the answer he’d gotten at all. He had to run his hands over his face. What he’d heard had nearly made him sick.

“She’s here because of you. She follows you wherever you go, so you are the cause. Something you’re doing is chaining her here.”

He’d wanted to throw up at the thought of his deceased wife watching him having sex with Trevor. It must’ve shown on his face, because Old Maggie had commented on his green complexion.

“Perhaps we should bend him into the trees to keep him from vomiting in the pond. The spirits might not like that.”

There had only been one spirit in particular that Phillip had cared about, and he was torn between the urge to just shout out how sorry he was and at the same time start screaming out his defense.

She was dead. Gone. He might still be feeling survivor’s guilt, but he wasn’t doing anything wrong by being with Trevor. The man was his mate, for God’s sake. He liked Trevor. He hated that his wife was watching them while the two were being intimate, but how could her spirit blame him for following what nature wanted for him?

There had to be something more to it. Helen wasn’t the kind of woman who would do something like that, hold that kind of grudge.

Phillip shivered as he walked back to the cottages, and the lights from the windows were soon visible in the distance. Trevor would be where those lights were. Would he be waiting up for him? Did Phillip even have the heart to go to him at this point?

Phillip and Helen had spoken about what they would do if either of them ever found their true mate.

In the beginning, whenever one of them wanted to have an adult conversation on the subject, it usually ended with someone crying, a lot of yelling, and getting a whole lot of nowhere on the subject.

Then they’d started to make progress, and they really learned how to speak to each other about what could possibly happen.

Phillip had been hopeful. He’d thought that perhaps his mate would understand and be willing to share in some sort of polygamous relationship. There were some leading alphas who practiced that when they fell in love with people who weren’t their mates, after all.

He didn’t want to be a possessive jerk about it either, and though he hadn’t been keen on the idea at the time, he’d even offered to share himself with whatever male Helen mated with as well.

She’d been firmly against the idea until she became pregnant with Sammy. After that, it became a matter of protecting Sammy’s right to inherit the pack, or at the very least, not be seen as a lesser member because his parents had been going against the rules when they’d conceived him.

Sons of concubines weren’t exactly respected.

That alone meant that it wasn’t his relationship with Trevor that was causing her to haunt Phillip.

“Do you know? Can you tell me anything?” Phillip had prompted and then explained what he and Helen had agreed to just to give the medium something to work with.

“Well, if it’s not an issue of jealousy, then it’s because you haven’t let her go.”

“What?” Phillip had asked, frowning.

Ivan had to explain further. “If you’re absolutely sure that it isn’t the relationship itself, that you’ve mated with Trevor, then it’s because you’re keeping her tied to you with your inability to let her go. You’re the one who hasn’t moved on yet.”

And just like that, Phillip had known the vampire had hit the nail on the head, because he hadn’t let her go. She was still in most of his thoughts every day. He struggled to keep her out of his head while he was inside of Trevor.

It was him. He had to learn to let her go to set her free. He had to move on or else she would become a violent ghost, as Ivan explained it.

She was doomed if she had to wait for Phillip to stop loving her. What an unfair thing to expect him to just switch off.

It was incredibly selfish of him, but he went back to the house where he knew Trevor was waiting for him. The pull to his mate was strong, so strong that he couldn’t ignore it.

He needed comfort. He wanted to fight some hunters, but getting inside of his mate was just as appealing, even though in all probability they would just spend the night talking about what Phillip had learned. Just seeing Trevor would be enough to settle his inner demons, for now.

Still, his need for the touch of his mate, and for that comfort he wanted so badly, was so great that if Trevor so much as gave him any small hint, any subtle suggestion that he was desiring Phillip as well, Phillip would jump on the chance to take it.

If not, well, the most he was willing to do was just be near him, maybe hold his hand, offer a chaste kiss. If Trevor didn’t offer himself, Phillip wasn’t going to ask, but if he did…

“Helen, I hope to God you’ve been closing your eyes and looking away, because I can’t keep away from him right now.”

* * * *

Trevor jumped when he heard the door opening. He stood up from the couch and looked down the hall. Phillip sent him a limp wave.

“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, keeping his voice low and staying by the door. “I didn’t want to wake your roommates. Figured they’d be back by now.”

They had come back, and since it was late, they’d all promptly gone to their own bedrooms. Trevor was still airing his out, but he was pretty sure the others could still smell the sex that was lingering around his door.

He’d bribed them to leave for a few hours. It didn’t take a genius for figure out what he’d been doing.

“Yeah, they did. You can come in, you know,” he said, waving Phillip over.

Phillip took off his shoes like a good guest and walked over. The television in the sitting room was on but was silent as the infomercials ran on late-night TV.

“What happened?” Trevor asked when Phillip sat down next to him.

The man clasped his hands together between his knees. He looked so worried.

“I think it was obvious that the vampire medium would’ve known about us after he walked in on us, but that wasn’t why I came clean and told James and Old Maggie about us.”

Trevor’s eyes widened. “You mean―”

“They know we’re mated, and I plan to let the pack know about it, too. James has promised me that no one will so much as whisper anything negative about Helen. He knows many of the alphas and omegas personally, and I know some of them, but others are either new to this way or life or still have their thinking trapped in the old ways.”

Phillip took in a deep breath. “I don’t want to hide you. I might not be ready to fall in love with you, but it isn’t right that I hide this from the others. Christ, it’s only been a couple of days and I can’t even keep to my own vow of silence.”

“What about Sammy?” Trevor asked. He didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t been entirely aware of the possibility of members of the pack speaking ill about Phillip’s dead wife because they hadn’t been mated. Now that he knew, he also wanted to know if this would impact that child.

“Since I’m no longer running a pack, it hardly matters if the alphas know he’s not my real heir. Maybe he will be considered my true heir now that I’m mated to a man, and reproduction is sort of impossible at this point,” Phillip said with a crooked grin.

Trevor returned that smile.

“Does it bother you at all, that I’m a father? You’re awfully young to be taking on the responsibilities of a child. I barely know how to care for him myself.”

“Oh, well.” Trevor should’ve seen this question coming. He didn’t know why he was unprepared for it. “I never thought about it, to be honest.”

“It doesn’t scare you that I come with a baby? Eventually I’ll learn how to take care of him, and he’ll be living with me. Are you sure you want something more with me?”