A Kink in the Tail

Chapter 44 - Today was the first day of the rest of my life - and it was shit.

This is a long chapter trying to cover everything without doing the normal POV thingy.

It also dawned on me that this chapter and the last might confuse readers who haven't read BtBtB.   SO...if you haven't read Breaking the Bond that Binds you might be a little confused about some of these new characters.  It's too late to change anything now so...just keep reading. it'll all fall into place for you at some point.

Lycans gossip too, look at Barnes, he is the perfect example.  So that evening, gossip having traveled quickly about the day's dramas, in homes and around dinner tables, over drinks, and under the sheets the residents of the Pureblood compound were talking about the events of the day, the Guardians mate and the werewolf.

Certain residents were more invested than others and dwelt on whether they had said too much, maybe said too little, some wished it would all go away, others had expectations dashed... and one, in particular, was very, very angry.

......

To Paul's way of thinking it was very simple, he'd found his mate, end of story. However, things weren't that straightforward. The biggest miscalculation was thinking that Adam would slip seamlessly into his life as the Oegenia Guardian. That they would arrive quietly and break the news to Damien and Virgil over a nice meal and a good bottle of wine. In his mind, he imagined they would be happy for him and everything would fall into place. He wouldn't be alone anymore. He would do whatever it took to make Adam happy.  There would be no more standing on the sidelines watching other people sharing their lives with their mates, for a change someone would put him first.

He poured more whisky into his glass as he stood at the kitchen island. Adam had finally gone to sleep and the apartment was quiet. The space felt different because his mate's scent filled it and for the first time instead of being a place to sleep and eat, it was home. When he thought about the sweet guy sleeping in his bed, who must have felt that he'd had the rug pulled out from under him again, that was being judged and found lacking just life before. Paul promised he'd never let anyone hurt him again.

The day had been a farce from beginning to end, Paul tried to work out which conversation annoyed him the most. There were so many to choose from. Was it the one with Damien, where he had to explain every detail of the mission, from the moment Lewis arrived in Perth until their return? How it had started as a simple surveillance mission and ended up with Lewis and his team hiding out from a group of Homeland assassins. How two humans became aware of the Lycan world and how one of them, to his eternal gratitude, saved his mate from being tortured. The icing on the cake and making the whole story nonsensical was him arriving to personally assess the spiraling situation and discovering the target of the assassination was his mate.

It didn't surprise him that as he told the story Damien's jaw dropped. If he wasn't in the centre of it he would have reacted the same way.

But what had disappointed Paul, hurt him far more than he expected was Damien asking why he didn't reject him. He'd gone on to say that as an Oegenia Guardian, he was meant to forgo that side of his life. If there was a Lycan that should have understood the pain and regret of rejecting a mate it should have been Damien. He had never been angry with his Alpha in all the time he served him, until that moment.

Then..........there was the conversation with his best friend. Actually, it wasn't a conversation. It was one-sided. Virgil was outraged, and Virgil being Virgil didn't hold back. He swore until the air turned blue, and the children had to be dragged off because the more he let fly the worse the language got. Apparently, Paul had broken some unwritten bro law that as his best friend he was supposed to have been informed immediately that he'd found his mate. There should have been lots of intimate detail and photographs if possible, not of the intimacy, of Adam. He sucked the air from the room with his tirade and left Paul dazed as if the Goddess herself had bitch slapped him. Then he stormed off...yelling over his shoulder...don't think I'm finished with you yet. Knowing Virgil better than anyone, Paul knew once he calmed down he'd be onboard with him and Adam, but until then he'd make Paul's life hell.