Havermouth, Eight Years Before
Heath’s mother was crying.
The sound was quiet, smothered, and yet somehow it caught the ear, the drag of air into her lungs precisely toned to carry through the interior walls of the house, to echo through the ducts, to bounce off the polished floorboards, to ricochet off of the perfectly painted walls.
A beautiful house, filled with beautiful things… And ugly doings.
Heath lay in his king-sized bed, upon Egyptian cotton sheets, staring up at the vaulted ceiling of his room, with his nails digging into the palms of his hands.
“Charlie,” his mother sobbed in. “Please…” She gasped out the word.
“F-k it,” Heath muttered under his breath.
He couldn’t stop his father’s cruelty towards his mother. He couldn’t call the police to stop his father from beating her – that was a worse crime in the pack than beating one’s mate was, as calling the human police endangered the entire pack. He had appealed to the pack’s hierarchy many times to intercede on his mother’s behalf, but what happened in an alpha’s own home was that alpha’s business, he had been told. If Marion wanted to report her husband and mate to the pack, then the pack would take action, but until she did… Well, they could do nothing.
A tear slid down his cheek and he shoved his way free of the bed covers. He dressed in the darkness, before creeping out into the back hallway to the French doors. He was a couple of years off getting his car licence, but that didn’t stop him riding around on his dirt bike. The police would have to catch him in order to arrest him, after all.
He shoved the helmet onto his head and walked the bike across the paved driveway, past the elegant fountain ad sculptured rose beds, and out the front gate. Once he was on the street, he straddled the bike and started the engine, the roar overloud in the quiet suburban area, even muffled as it was by his helmet.
He revved the bike and raced along the pretty jacaranda lined streets, until he broke free of the town, heading out into the true countryside. The night air whipped by him, fragrant with the harvested crops. He turned off into Edison lands.
They had been Cartwright lands, until Jules Edison had married Catherine Cartwright, uniting the two neighbouring properties that had long been in competition. In fairy tales, it would have been a love match, and Catherine had, perhaps naively, convinced herself that it was so, when she had accepted Jules’ proposal.
Jules, however, had one love, and it wasn’t Catherine - it was the land.
Near the new Cartwright house, a sprawling modern structure that had appeared in many Country Home magazines when it had been built twenty years prior, using local stone and floor to ceiling glazed windows that reflect the beautiful fields that surrounded it, Heath killed the motorbike engine and walked it the rest of the way, the gravel grating loudly under the wheels.
He leaned the bike against the wall beneath Cameron’s bedroom window, before springing up, catching hold of the windowsill and lifting onto it, until he squatted, his toes on the ledge, and eased the large glass pane back so that he could step inside.
Cameron’s room smelled like him, the slightly salty, testosterone laden scent of teenage male mixed with cattle and hay, overlaid with the latest Ralph Lauren body spray… Heath breathed in deeply, fighting a groan. It wasn’t right, he told himself. He could breathe in the scent of teenage girls, vanilla and strawberry all day long, without losing control, but the moment he smelled Cameron…
Ah, f-k, he was hard again.
He tiptoed across the room to where Cameron was a monochrome lump beneath the covers. Heath heeled off his shoes and his top before sliding under the sheet. In his mind, they would both be naked, their skin meeting in the dark, but in reality, Cameron wore satin boxers and a t-shirt.
Cameron grunted as Heath laid against his back and reached back to grip and squeeze Heath’s thigh. “Parent’s arguing again?”
“Yeah,” Heath breathed out against Cameron’s shoulder. “Is it alright if I stay?”