Chapter 149

Justin’s POV

I gaped at the audacity of Russo’s question. Then sputtered a response. “Helen hurt me first. I was only trying to help her understand the seriousness of her actions.”

Russo nodded. “I think that might be part of the problem. I think she’s upset you’re treating her like a child who needs to be taught or punished rather than a mate who’s supposed to be your partner.”

“Partners don’t stab each other with poison knives,” I screamed.

Again Russo just nodded calmly and took a step back away from my raging lycan. “Let’s look at this from a different point of view,” he said. “I want you to explain to me how the mate bond works because you’re right. I’m not a lycan. I’m not even a werewolf. I’m not even in a partnership with one of my own kind. So why don’t you tell me in your own words how exactly this is supposed to work?”

“I’m the alpha. She’s my Luna. Her job, along with the job of everyone else in the pack, is to follow my orders.”

“Without question?” Russo asked.

“It wouldn’t be an order if they were allowed to question it?” I shot back at him.

“Okay. So what if you ordered your beta to kill himself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Russo nodded. “The likelihood of you making that demand wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I’m not debating whether or not you would ask your beta to kill himself. I’m asking if your subordinates are supposed to follow orders even when it’s going to harm them.”

I stared at Russo, wanting to find the words to argue, but I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. I’d never even thought about giving any of my subordinates an order which would hurt them. But he was right. As the alpha and as the Lycan King, I demanded complete obedience. What if I did ask them to kill themselves? As the alpha, should I be upset that they didn’t obey? Or, as a friend, should I be relieved that they were willing to disobey some of my orders?

Russo seemed to take my silence as permission to continue talking. “But that wasn’t the answer to my original question, Justin. I asked you to explain how the mate bond between two werewolves works. What is its purpose?”

I thought about this for a moment. Inside, my lycan still panted with anxiety, wanting to rampage and rip things apart. He could have taken over, but I was so focused on trying to think of a way to describe something which was second nature that it was too hard for him to just run off with me.

“A mate is someone that you’re fated to be with,” I said slowly.

“Describe the fate,” Russo asked irritatingly.

I kind of growled at him, just a little one. “I don’t know. It’s like you have to be together. You are drawn like magnets.”

“What’s the purpose?” Russo demanded. “To have superior offspring? To be the ideal couple?”

“Your mate should complete you and make you the best werewolf you can be.”

“Complete you like how?” the fae pushed.

I rolled it over in my mind, trying to find a way to explain it to somebody who was completely outside our way of life. “Like . . . like you can’t have one without the other. Yin and yang,” I said.

Russo nodded slowly, pressing his lips together. “I understand that concept. So Helen should be the other half of you? She should complete your werewolf?”

“Yes. Exactly,” I said. “So why is it so hard for her to understand that she needs to stay safe? That I can’t be whole without her, and all she needs to do is follow my commands.”

“Hmm,” Russo said. “That sounds like a different sort of completing to me.”

I snarled and clenched my fists, drawing blood on my palms again. The first time I’d done it, it had already healed. But now I had fresh wounds oozing blood out of my hands.

“You make absolutely no sense, fae,” I snarled. “How many ways are there to complete someone?”

“Well, the kind of completion that you’re talking about Helen makes her sound like she’s the picture that completes the decor in your living room. You want her to sit there and look pretty like a painting on a wall as if everything else in your life were simply enhanced by the fact that she existed.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” I agreed. “She enhances my life.”

“But that’s not a partnership,” Russo pointed out. “If you had a business partner and all he did was sit around and do nothing but looked pretty in your office, what would you do?”

“I’d fire his ass,” I said.

“Right. Helen’s not a painting. She’s a wolf like you, like a business partner. How is she supposed to complete you if all she does is hang on your wall and look pretty? You should fire her ass for that.”

This drew up a growl that almost resembled a chuckle from me. “Can’t fire my wife’s ass. Especially when I don’t get a second chance mate.”

“Exactly,” Russo agreed. “When you two are fated to be together the way that you are, you can’t go hire a new business partner. So you have to do something to get your partnership functioning again or risk staying estranged for good.”

“Probably,” I grumbled.

“In Helen’s case, what you have to do is show her how to take over a portion of the business and then let go and do something. Stop making her the picture on the wall and start using her the way that a werewolf partnership is meant to be completed.”

Russo eyed me, and I couldn’t quite read his expression.

“I have a feeling that you and your werewolf will feel better once you start treating her the way that she ought to be treated, like a useful partner rather than a decoration,” Russo said. “And maybe a painting was the perfect example because you seem to treat her like just like the painting as if she could be ripped through at the slightest bump. Which, honestly, I find amusing.”

“Why would that be amusing to you?” I snarled.

He laughed. “Because I’ve seen the two of you have sex. You’re anything but gentle with her. If she can withstand all of that pounding and biting and clawing from you while you’re screwing, imagine what she would do with adrenaline coursing through her in a real fight? But you’ve never tried her out.”

“Only I get to put holes in my mate.”

“Well, if you want her to fight it your side and be part of your partnership, then she risks having holes put in her by someone else. They just won’t put anything else in her holes the way you do.”

By this time, I was actually laughing, and Russo shot me a genuine smile.

“I don’t think you’ve been giving you and your lycan’s relationship enough credit.”

I cocked my head at him. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, you can control him better than you think you can.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes he’s completely out of control, and there’s nothing I can do with him.”

“Well, then, how have you kept him under control while we’ve been having this conversation?” he asked. “Because I’ve said things that under most circumstances would get your lycan so angry that I should be half shredded by now.”

I pondered this for a moment. “It was your questions,” I admitted. “I was thinking so hard about the answers to such strange and unusual questions that even though he wanted to rage, he wasn’t able to.”

Russo looked delighted. “See. There. You’ve just solved your own problem,” he said. “The answer was in front of you the whole time. You just didn’t see it.”

“What answer?”

Russo grinned at me. “You and your lycan wanted two entirely different things at this moment. You wanted to ponder my questions, and he wanted to rage. He didn’t get to rage because you stopped calmly to think over the questions that I asked you. I think if you’re calm, even though it may not calm him down, it takes away his ability to run completely savage. I believe in a small measure, during those moments when he takes over, it’s not that he’s taken control, but that you’ve given him control.”