Damon scrambled to put his clothes on in the morning. Jun was passed out in his cell, both arms threaded through the bars so he could hold Damon close while they slept. Thankfully, he remained asleep even as Damon carefully moved Jun's hand off his waist and rolled to his feet, a pulsing ache in his hips and between his legs a reminder of everything they'd done last night. The still drying traces of Jun's come were an uncomfortable itch at the creases of Damon's thighs. There wasn't really any use trying to clean it up or get rid of the scent now. Between Damon sneaking in here and being locked in for the whole night and Jun being in heat, even an idiot would know what they'd been doing.

He did, however, make sure to carefully reach through the bars and tuck Jun's soft cock back into his pants. Leaving Jun indecent for anyone to walk in on would not only be a shitty thing to do, just the thought of it was making something in the back of Damon's head start going apeshit, like he could rip off someone's head off if they saw even one inch of skin they weren't supposed to see on Jun.

This love thing was scary.

Just as Damon was finishing getting dressed, staring fondly at Jun's puffy sleeping face and feeling unstable, the prison door opened.

It was a tiny female beta carrying a breakfast tray, which she promptly dropped once she spotted Damon standing nonchalantly in the hallway like he belonged there. They stared at each other for approximately five seconds before she turned heel and knocked rapidly on the door that had closed behind her. It opened back up and the front door guard that Damon had sneaked past last night poked his head in, looking bored.

Until he saw Damon, of course, and hurried the female beta behind him. Without saying a word to Damon, he whipped out his cell phone to make a call. Damon, expecting this, just leaned down to pat Jun's fluffy hair (he was still sleeping despite the noise. Heat sex really took it out of him) and walked toward the guard so he could be escorted outside. The guard gripped him hard by the upper arm and practically threw him outside. He stumbled a bit on the grass and winced. The sun was so obnoxiously bright.

Still holding Damon firmly, the guard finally got his call to connect. Werewolf hearing made most phone conversations less-than-private, so Damon could hear that he'd called Peter Reyne.

"What is it?" Peter said.

The guard hesitated. Damon understood. He had to do his job and report Damon, of course, but if he did, he'd have to admit that he'd been lax enough in his duties to allow Damon to sneak into the prison in the first place.

Wow, what a bummer for this guy. Damon was having a hard time drumming up sympathy.

The conversation went about as well as you would expect. When it was over, the guard's face was red, and he glared at Damon like Damon was a spider in his shower that was just outside of killing range. Damon had a brief, unprecedented urge to grin at him like he'd gone feral.

Damon was having a lot of firsts recently. First time falling in love. First time breaking into a prison. First time feeling unhinged enough to take joy in others' misery. All the typical adolescent experiences.

So this is what it means to be a late bloomer.

Damon and the guard waited in total silence. Thankfully Damon hadn't gone crazy enough to start antagonizing the guy. None of this was his fault, really. The only thing he was guilty of was being a bad prison guard. But still, Damon was feeling wound up inside. A combination of nesting hormones and stress was making Damon want to bite something and run off into the woods.

And because Damon had had the privilege of hearing the guard's phone call with Peter, he knew who was coming to get him, and that knowledge was only making him crankier.

When Malachi pulled up in his expensive black car and rolled the windows down, Damon briefly considered pleading with the guard to knock him out so he wouldn't have to consciously endure being in an enclosed space with Malachi for however long it took to drive to Damon's parents' house. Unfortunately, after all the grief Damon had given him, the guard would probably only laugh in his face and ask Malachi to drive ten miles under the speed limit the whole way.

The guard stuffed Damon into the passenger seat and stepped back. Malachi didn't even thank him before making a U-turn on the grass and getting back onto the bumpy dirt road leading back to the pack center.

"You smell like come," Malachi said. Not even thirty seconds had passed.

"You smell like a weak ass piece of shit," Damon fired back.

Malachi hummed, a tiny smile on his lips. This was a fun time for him, clearly. Damon wasn't sure when Malachi's insistence on getting back together with him had transformed into a sadistic compulsion to hurt Damon, but it had.

Although, and maybe this was a strange thing to think, but Damon almost felt...that this had nothing to do with him at all. It started with Malachi wanting to get back together, but recently, Damon felt more like he was just...collateral damage, or some shit.

Really, it honestly felt more like Malachi was out to get Jun. It couldn't be – no. Malachi wasn't in to Jun, was he?

It was a ridiculous thought. Absolutely bonkers. Not only because Malachi had never shown any interest in alphas, but because Malachi had always been the type to wine and dine those he was interested in. Not torture and belittle them. No, that came once he was done with them.

This line of thinking was so crazy that Damon should have just thrown it out completely. But as he sat there, leaning his head against the window, it kept coming back.

Really, Malachi had only started approaching Damon again once Jun was a part of his life. Everything he did, in the name of getting back together with Damon, was designed to piss off Jun as well. Asking to be heat partners with Damon. Showing up at Damon's house to 'convince Damon not to enter a heat agreement with Jun,' conveniently while Jun was there.

Damon was starting to scare himself. So without thinking, he blurted "Are you into Jun or something?" into the silence between them.

Words cannot describe how relieved Damon was when Malachi looked at him like he'd just spoken Latin and eaten a live hamster in front of him. "The fuck? No."

Some of the tension drained out of Damon. He slumped against the seat. "Well excuse me," he muttered sulkily. "I'm apparently driving myself crazy trying to figure out what the hell it is you actually want to gain by doing all this."

Malachi surprisingly didn't immediately fire back with a slimy comment. Several moments of quiet driving noise filled the air between them, until finally Malachi spoke.

"Well, if that's all you want to know. I would have thought it rather obvious."

Damon glanced at Malachi out of the corner of his eye, disturbed. "What?"

"I told you when we met again at my house, remember?" he said, lightly tapping his fingers against the wheel, as if he were driving Damon to school rather than from prison to his parents' house.

"I truly want us to be mated, Damon. I think we could be good together."