Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate (3 page)

Theo Greenleaf,
Zeki thought, and nearly squirmed in his chair. Names had power, and that particular name had driven Zeki crazy for years. He’d had one class with Theo, AP English his senior year, which Theo, a junior, had been taking because of his advanced test scores. Zeki had managed to avoid speaking to him for the entire school year despite the perfect opportunity. He’d elected to sit in the last row as usual and sneak peeks at the back of Theo’s head rather than approach him.

They’d known each other, or known
of
each other, he supposed, like all the kids in town did. But they hadn’t run in the same circles. Zeki hadn’t had a circle, and Theo, despite his looks and his name, had steered clear of the popular groups and spent most of his time reading or hanging out with his pixy friend and a few others.

Then Theo had apparently stayed in Wolf’s Paw and become a fireman. A
fireman
.

Zeki stared until his eyes burned, and not once did his heartbeat slow. Theo raised his arm as he said something Zeki couldn’t hear, and another firefighter tossed him a sponge. Soap bubbles came with it, splashing up his arm. Zeki shut his eyes. No, he told himself, he was not going to lose it in front of everyone. He’d left town as that confusingly ethnic, magical human kid who’d blushed every time he’d so much as thought of Theo Greenleaf. He was an adult now, an adult with too much experience to react this strongly to the sight of his high school crush wet and getting wetter.

He opened his eyes again and heaved a breath when the female werewolf who’d wiggled her ass at the crowd slid closer to Theo and spoke into his ear. Theo shook his head at whatever she said, and she playfully flicked bubbles in his face.

Zeki half frowned, but then Theo turned his head in a way that was almost bashful, and Zeki caught a glimpse of another soft smile. Zeki sighed for his tingling extremities and the hot tightening deep in his belly. The past five years hadn’t made him immune to that smile.

He could have cursed himself for not approaching Theo in high school. He should have done something to get Theo to notice him while they’d both been shy teenagers. Now he’d stand no chance at all.

“You all come here every time?” Zeki asked the others with him, who answered in grunts that seemed affirmative. He resisted the urge to also ask if they came for Theo Greenleaf. Some of the people on the patio were old enough to be Theo’s parents, but many of them were younger. One of them
had
to have tried some of that silent, long-distance werewolf flirting with Theo. Hell, Theo’s boyfriend, or wife, or mate, or whatever they called it, could be on this patio right now.

Zeki furrowed his brow, thinking of Wolf’s Paw’s strange courtship rules. He didn’t know if Theo had chosen a non-were for a partner. Weres were allowed to show interest in humans and other non-weres, but it was up to the other person to follow through and make the first real move toward a date or sex, whichever was wanted. He suspected it was supposed to counteract the way werewolves could sometimes be too sure of themselves. Wolves had all that instinct, scent or whatever, telling them this human would be good to fuck or date or settle down with. Meanwhile, as far as the human knew, a total stranger came on to them or proposed marriage. Waiting for the other party to decide was supposed to ensure no one felt pressured, even accidentally, by overenthusiastic, physically intimidating werewolves.

But if the interest was between two weres all bets were off. Zeki had no doubt all kinds of information was being exchanged silently between the firefighters who were werewolf and the weres at the café, since werewolf language seemed to be partly nonverbal. Maybe Theo was smiling for the benefit of his special someone. That female firefighter could be with him for all Zeki knew.

He felt like he had after taking the first bite of his sugar cookie, as if he’d found something good but was already sad because he couldn’t hold on to it and had no one to share it with.

There was no shame in Wolf’s Paw, or, at least, not in a crowd of horny coffee drinkers enjoying a free show. They all already knew what Zeki wanted. No point in hiding his curiosity. “So,” Zeki drew out the word while they all watched firefighters bend over and scrub gleaming chrome. “Is he with someone?”

His stomach flipped again. His feet and hands still felt hot, like magic at work when Zeki wasn’t casting a damn thing.

Again the weres around him sighed. “No, sadly,” one answered in words.

Those had likely been sighs of longing, so Zeki went with his next question. “He’s available?”

“No,” he was told, by a werewolf not sitting anywhere near him.

Confused, Zeki turned. The first werewolf took a moment to consider him. “How long have you been gone?” She said it significantly, as if something had happened in the past that Zeki should have remembered.

“About five years.” Zeki zeroed in on Theo across the street and kept him in view. The other firefighters were attractive, but Zeki was no longer interested in anyone but Theo. It was high school all over again. “I did come home once, for a week, but I was working on a research project and barely left the house. Mostly I studied and trained and worked. Gotta pay the bills, and my dad works overtime during the big holidays, so there wasn’t any point in coming home for them. Anyway I didn’t want to come back until I was—” He cleared his throat. “Why?”

“So you weren’t here,” another werewolf remarked knowingly, then leaned in to speak in a whisper. The others leaned in too, as if they all couldn’t hear pins drop on a crowded street. The werewolf dropped his voice even lower. “Theo Greenleaf had a mate.”

Zeki’s chest, his lungs, seemed to momentarily seize. He sucked in a breath, but it only made it worse. It was like something went wrong internally, something not exactly painful, but big, big enough to squeeze his heart against his ribs until it felt like it stopped beating. It wasn’t in his imagination, judging from the sudden blinks and series of concerned looks shot his way. He took another, longer breath and stared at the back of his hand, focusing on the patterns of ink in his skin.

After a moment he nodded to show he was all right. “He
had
a mate?” His thoughts were stuck on that word. He raised his head. Theo was concentrating on his work, but he could have been listening. He could know he was under discussion. This would hurt him if he heard it. Mates, and everything that meant, were very serious indeed to werewolves. Zeki didn’t pretend to understand the concept, and werewolves had never explained it to him, but he knew it was complicated, a relationship not unlike a marriage, only more immediate. Supposedly werewolves could smell their future together, or something, the second they met their mate. Matings didn’t happen to every were, but they weren’t especially rare either. One day a were would get a whiff of a happily ever after, and they’d know they’d found their life partner, or, as he’d once heard it, a life partner better for them than anyone else.

But even a mating was not a guarantee of happiness. Even mates could die, leaving their surviving partner in a situation similar to that of a human who had lost a spouse of fifty years.

“Oh, Theo,” Zeki said, while Theo kept his head down and ignored more gentle teasing from his coworkers.

Theo hadn’t been friends with Zeki, but he hadn’t been friends with the jerks who’d messed with Zeki either. Theo had been oblivious, but never deliberately mean or cruel. He didn’t deserve the kind of loss he’d suffered. Zeki didn’t want to think of the guy he’d crushed on in high school, the guy with his face buried in fantasy and science fiction novels half the time, being destroyed by grief.

“But he found someone at least,” he murmured. It didn’t make him feel any better.

The others shook their heads before he was finished speaking. “No, not even that.” Their leader, at Zeki’s right, looked from side to side before coming in closer. She was barely audible to his ears. “His mate
rejected
him.” Her voice trembled with what could have been fear.

“
What
?” Zeki embarrassed himself with the shocked screech. He settled back down, eyes on the werewolf next to him and not on the startled firefighters across the street. Zeki was a disciplined wizard now. He wasn’t going to get indignant and angry on behalf of a were he’d only spoken to once. He waited to go on until the fire department was again pretending they didn’t know they had an audience on the patio. He was furious for unknown reasons. “That never happens.”

“Oh it happens,” the male werewolf on his left informed him, a touch bitterly. “Why, the other week the sheriff went into Robin’s Egg’s café and….” He went silent with a grimace, as if what had happened with the sheriff was too painful to even be mentioned. Zeki vaguely recalled the old sheriff but then remembered his dad writing to him and mentioning a younger deputy had taken over a few years ago. Whatever. The sheriff’s heartbreak didn’t interest him. Theo’s, on the other hand, had apparently been something his father hadn’t felt the need to mention.

“What did Th—” For some reason Zeki couldn’t say Theo’s name out loud a second time. “What did he do?”

“Disappeared for a while. Stayed at home, among family. He was such a young thing, always so sweet-natured.” The first werewolf now unexpectedly sounded like a disappointed mother. “Came back a few months later, finished school. He took some classes at the community college in Carson, but his heart wasn’t in his studies anymore, poor child. He became a firefighter this past year.”

“He volunteers, you know.” This time the sigh from the weres was definitely one of longing. Zeki made a face none of them saw.

“All that free time,” another offered in the same tone. All of them were broken up about it. All of them would likely have leapt at the chance to soothe Theo’s wounds.

The male werewolf spoke again. “His cookies are to die for, never too sweet. You can buy them here, in the mornings, unless he’s been….” The were paused to make a gesture Zeki assumed meant “out fighting fires.” “But he bakes so much that more often than not you’ll end up with some for free. He gives them away. I’d marry him for his peanut butter and jelly bars alone.”

“He bakes?” That was something Zeki hadn’t known, or wouldn’t ever have guessed, about Theo Greenleaf. Writing, teaching, he might have expected that. Not heartbroken baking firefighter. Although now that he had the thought, it made Theo seem even more perfect than Zeki had once imagined he was. He stared hard at the curve of Theo’s spine. “And he doesn’t date anyone? At all? Ever?” Zeki tried to keep what was left of his dignity. “I mean, I’m not staying in town long, probably. Just for the summer. I’ve got to see how the festivals have taken off. Catch up with my dad. That’s all. No longer than that.” There were bubbles in Theo’s hair, resting on top of his head like a crown.

The first werewolf gave a doubtful snort. “You could always try. People usually do, especially during tourist season. So far he’s shown no interest in any of them, not even in something casual.” Zeki couldn’t tell if she wanted him to try or not. Her statement probably would have discouraged someone else. Zeki mostly thought that those other people hadn’t tried hard enough. Theo Greenleaf was practically begging someone to love him.

“It’s like he got rid of that part of himself,” someone lamented.

“Give it time,” someone else butted in, as if irritated with the lot of them for gossiping.

“Time?” The first werewolf scoffed. “It’s been over four years! I’m genuinely worried.”

“Hush,” that other werewolf snipped at her.

Theo’s shoulders seemed to draw back and go rigid with tension. The woman at his side stiffened as well. The weres around Zeki continued to bicker.

“It’s no way to live,” one of them fretted aloud, “even for a broken were.”

“He is not broken,” the male were at Zeki’s left almost growled. “Weres who have lost mates are not broken. If he’s broken, then the sheriff is broken, and the sheriff is
not
broken.”

The other wolf spoke again. “The sheriff is in denial. He’s broken all the same. As soon as that Littlewolf boy moves on, you mark my words, we’ll have lost a sheriff. We’ve never had one like him. It’ll be disastrous when he’s gone.”

“He’s stronger than that, and so is Theo.” The argument was getting intense, as if more was at stake than Theo’s or the sheriff’s happiness. “Why, look at all he does.”

“Screw that. Look at
him
,” someone from farther away called out. It felt like a nice way of telling them all to shut up.

Zeki scowled, at them, at the female firefighter at Theo’s side, at the town in general. But he kept his voice low. “That’s not right. Theo should be… Theo should be something more than that. Not falling victim to some instinctual nonsense.” He ignored the bristling from the weres around him. “How good could the instincts be if they led Theo to someone who rejected him? I thought the name Greenleaf alone was status to weres. And his… everything else.” Looking at Theo took his breath away, and that was without knowing he volunteered and baked and fought fires. “He should be happy, alone or not.” Preferably not, preferably with Zeki. Which was a stupid thought when Zeki wasn’t going to stay in Wolf’s Paw.

The first werewolf tossed her head. “He’s never shown any interest,” she repeated stubbornly. “Not even in the tourists here for sex.” She leaned in. “Rejected too young,” she confessed unhappily. “There’s a reason teenagers aren’t supposed to become aware of their mates until they are older. Too young and everything gets confused. I don’t know how it happened. He shouldn’t have been able to tell until his scent settled.”

A lecherous voice broke in. “Well, he’s all man now. The sheriff too.” Zeki glanced over in time to see a man waggling his eyebrows. He did not seem put off by all the lost mate gossip. He must have heard it a thousand times before. The weres clearly enjoyed the story, despite how, or exactly because, they feared it happening to themselves so much. The human man met Zeki’s stare. “It’s not fair, both of them being off the market now. But at least we get to watch.”