When No Doesn't Cut It by Lisa Oliver Read Free Book Online Page A

gotten back to Texas, but it felt like forever.
    Whenever he closed his eyes he could see Scott as he lay there naked on the ground and cheeky as anything on the day Damien had claimed him.  Other times , he saw nothing but the rigid structure of the man’s back, as he had walked away from him that last time.
    He remembered how Scott had offered him comfort when he had wanted it, strength when it was needed.  The man obviously had a sense of humor, and all in all, he would be the perfect mate for Damien.  But Damien couldn’t give the man the one thing he wanted, and Scott had had the strength to walk away.
    Damien had delayed his departure from the Cloverleah pack house for as long as possible the day Scott sent him away.  As soon as Shawn had released him from the energy field he had been caught in, his brain had been assailed with intense sorrow and grief from his mate.  Every part of him wanted to dash up the stairs, pull Scott from his room and take him with him, but he knew he couldn’t do that.  Shawn had threatened him with permanent paralysis if he made one step towards his mate without accepting Scott’s one little condition.
    That grief was so tangible, so permeating, that when it suddenly stopped, while Damien and the others were driving back to Texas, Damien was worried enough to put in a call to Shawn to ask if Scott was all right.  Shawn told him shortly that it was none of his business anymore , but that he had taught Scott how to shield his mind.  Apparently his mate didn’t want to cause him any distress, so had blocked him.
    Now all Damien could feel was emptiness. A deep, gut wrenchingly hollow emptiness. He knew the Alpha challenge day was coming up the following week and for the first time ever it looked like he would lose.  He just couldn’t summon any energy to do anything.  Without his mate he just didn’t care.
    “You look like shit,” Malacai said, stepping into Damien’s private office above the club.
    “Tell me something I don’t know,” Damien replied, shuffling papers on his desk trying to look busy and hoping that Malacai would just leave again. Malacai had been Damien’s second in command for more than fifty years and knew just about everything there was to know about Damien.  But he didn’t know about Scott, because no matter how much Damien wanted to share what happened to him with someone, he just couldn’t, and he had sworn Lucius and Vincent to secrecy before the men had gotten back to Texas.
    “Look Damien,” Malacai said bluntly, “You have an Alpha challenge day at the end of next week and quite frankly you are going to lose if you can’t get your shit together.  Now tell me what is going on so we can fix this, or I am going to have to resign myself to a new Alpha, and quite honestly, I am getting too old to train another one.”
    Leaning back in his chair Damien looked at Malacai.  Like most of the men in Damien’s inner circle Malacai was gay and surprisingly fine looking given how big he was.  Pushing 100 years of age himself, Malacai held the wisdom that comes from age, and Damien had often turned to him for advice that no-one else had been able to give him.  The problem was that Damien knew, as soon as he told Malacai what the problem was, Malacai would give him the advice that anyone else would give him - go and make things right with his mate. It’s what he kept telling himself for goodness sake.
    “I found and claimed my mate,” he blurted out.
    Malacai’s mouth dropped open in shock for a moment, and then quickly closing his mouth again, he took a long look around Damien’s office.
    “Well the chap ’s obviously not here, so how did you fuck it up?” He drawled.
    Damien explained what had happened from the moment he arrived at the Cloverleah pack until the minute he left. He left nothing out , including his despair at being without Scott now he was home, and how he couldn’t think of anything else.
    Malacai sat silently for a moment