Chapter Nine
Kyle was sore, but it was a good kind of sore. A nice throbby, groany sort of ache. He stretched his arms and wow, there was some tension. Good, nice feeling. Kyle burrowed back into the bed and then it hit him.
Mate.
He had Mated with Xander last night. That was…interesting. He was pretty sure he was happy about that. Reasonably sure. Kinda.
Xander hummed and rolled over, bumping into Kyle and resettling aroundhim. Kyle smiled against his will—okay, so Xander was a bit adorable. Just a little.
Xander snuggled a bit more.
Awww.
Wait—no. He had to sort out how he felt about this. A cute, snuggly boy in his bed? Not helping.
Well, technically, not his bed, and Xander was more than boy-sized…
Right. Introspection.
He liked Xander. A lot. He'd liked Xander for a while. So that was good. Xander seemed to like him too, and that was good. Actually, Xander seemed to have gone from zero to cuddly in a half-hour. He knew he should see something wrong with that, but he couldn't. All he could see was that he belonged now.
He had his Mate and his Pack, and he was supposed to be there. This was a Good Thing.
Kyle now felt free to curl back around Xander. Warm, comfy Mate. Definitely a Good Thing.
"Hi," whispered Kyle.
Xander cracked an eye open and made a vague gesture at Kyle. "Mmmrff," he said.
Kyle's smile broke out again. He was flooded with warm fuzzy feelings. Sleepy Xander was just so cute!
He kissed his Mate's shoulder and slipped out of bed. Xander might be fantastic, but he had to pee like woah.
He stumbled out into the main room, not even bothering with pants. He was sure there was a bathroom around here somewhere. Kyle glanced around the main room and saw a pleasantly naked Heidi and Rhonda entwined on the couch.
Bathroom? Bathroom.
He emerged feeling much better. Pants? Pants were not something he wanted confining him right now. Kyle continued his naked walk back to the bedroom when a thought occurred to him.
He looked around the room again. Rhonda. Heidi. Xander in the bedroom.
Where was Tor?
"Hey!" he hissed, trying to wake up the girls, but not his Mate. No, his warm, perfect, wonderful smelling, pleasantly aggressive….
He was back. Unfortunately, the girls mumbled, but did not wake up.
"Rhonda," he whispered, getting closer. "Heidi!"
Still nothing.
He gave up and went over to shake them awake. "Guys, seriously, wake up!"
At this, Heidi pried her eyes open and gazed blearily at the one part of his anatomy that was eye level with her.
"Penis! Penis! What is it doing there?!"
Okay, so maybe pants would have been a good idea after all.
Rhonda woke up with the shouting, and Kyle could only assume that Xander had too, which was just great. Just perfect. Thanks a lot, Heidi, for ruining the morning after snuggle with your penis fear.
Naturally he kept these thoughts to himself. What he actually said was more along the lines of a yelp.
"God, Kyle," said Heidi, finally recovered from waking up to the wrong sort of dangly bits. "Put some fucking pants on!"
Kyle snorted. "As if you're one to talk, little miss no shirt, no pants, no admittance, over there."
Heidi looked at him with bafflement for a moment, before realizing that she too was naked.
"Oh."
"Yeah," said Kyle, still self-consciously covering his crotch. "We're all in the naked club, whoop-dee-doo."
"Sorry Kyle," said Rhonda, "but I'm not sure I like your whoop-dee-doo." She then proceeded to burst into giggles and bury her head in Heidi's back.
Bitch.
Kyle caught sight of a Xander head out of the corner of his eye. Yup. Looked like happy morning after cuddling was now over. Grrr.
Xander stalked over, paying no heed to his own nudity, and somehow it seemed less funny when he was involved. Alpha's nudity seemed natural, not weird. Kyle felt suddenly better about his own lack of pants, and straightened up. The girls had finally stopped giggling, so he could at least focus.
"We're missing one," said Alpha, looking around the room.
"That's why I woke them up," explained Kyle, in his best you-know-you-love-me voice. "To find out where Tor is."
"Umm," said Heidi.
"Well," said Rhonda.
Both of them seemed a bit more hesitant when actually faced with grouchy Alpha and a potentially missing Pack-mate. Served them right.
"He went to go get food last night," said Rhonda. "I don't know if he came back."
"Yeah," said Heidi. "Come to think of it, he's been gone a while. It shouldn't have taken him this long. Plus he would have hurried."
All Xander had to do was raise an eyebrow.
"Umm," said Heidi.
"Well," said Rhonda.
"You two wanted to have sex," said Kyle. Really, it was pretty obvious, what with the nudity.
"So Tor is still gone," said Xander.
"Probably?" said Heidi. "He didn't interrupt us, so I would assume so."
"Not good," snarled Xander and began stalking around the room, like it was a cage and not a reasonably nice living room.
"What's not good?" ventured Kyle, hesitantly approaching his mate.
"Missing pack members two days in a row."
"Huh?" said Rhonda.
"First Kyle and me, then Tor?" said Xander, running his hands through his hair and twitching slightly with controlled frustration.
"You think it's them again," said Kyle.
"I think," said Xander.
Well that was just plain bad. Sure, they hadn't done much to him really, though he could probably thank Xander for getting him out of there before that eventuality. Still. At the very least, they did not seem to have good intentions. Willow and Buffy might be technically good people, and they might even have good intentions, but this was the third Pack member they had taken. They were planning something.
He didn't like plans. They didn't usually work right. He knew from experience too. In retrospect, stalking Xander was a really crummy plan.
"We need to get him back," said Xander.
"How?" said Kyle.
"Sniff."
Kyle was lost again. Kyle was, in fact, even more lost than he had been during sex. At least then his confusion could be considered cute innocence. Now it was just him being obtuse. That didn't mean he understood, though. No amount of hoping could make it so.
"Sniff?" said Kyle.
"Use your nose," hissed Rhonda.
Oh. Okay, yeah, that was a little obtuse of him. Damn. They might be Mated, but Kyle still wanted to prove himself to Xander. He wanted to prove that he was a good pick, and that someone else wouldn't have been better.
Somehow, he didn't think that plan was working. Not that Xander was giving him any hints either way, and he knew Xander wouldn't (couldn't) cut and run from him, but still.
Grrr.
"Are you sure we can do that?" said Heidi.
"Yes," said Alpha, and that was it. They would sniff for Tor and they would find him. There were no other options here.
Xander pushed open the front door and started sniffing. Kyle considered pointing out to him that they were all naked and it was four in the morning, but reconsidered. He probably didn't want to interrupt Xander right now.
Besides, he had absolutely no desire to put his clothes back on. He wanted to run, to chase, to be free!
Where the hell had that come from?
But he did want that. He wanted to chase after Tor and tear into whoever had taken him because Tor was his Pack-brother and they deserved to die for challenging that!
Kyle growled low in his throat, and the growl was picked up by Heidi and Rhonda. He could sense that they were thinking and feeling the same things as he was. They all looked to Alpha for direction, and he turned back at them, smirking.
That damn smirk again.
Xander rested his hand on Kyle's cheek, and then nodded. They were off!
They were running through the streets of Sunnydale, utterly naked, and Kyle had never felt so alive! He could feel his Pack around him, could feel Tor somewhere up ahead, and let those instincts guide him. He was free.
They tore through a graveyard and he leapt over gravestones like they were barely even hurdles for him. He was perfect, fit and ready to chase down game. He could almost smell the high grasses of the savannah. The wind was warm and dry and he was right where he should be.
Kyle yipped and the others yipped with him. His Mate was there, telling them where to go, and he followed, like a good Pack-second. They were almost to their lost Pack-brother.
He ran forward and kept pace with Alpha, who grinned at him and barked his approval.
They dashed forward in the pre-dawn darkness and he realized vaguely that they were entering the Sunnydale zoo.
That was weird.