Love Like War (LGBT) ✅

Chapter 1

1.

Sometimes, Aiden hated Tristan.

It was usually a fleeting emotion, gone just as quickly as it had come, but there were other times when he wanted to do nothing other than wring his neck and watch him choke. He'd resisted so far, a testament to his almost dangerous self-control, because finding another partner that trusted him as infallibly as Tristan did would be an impossible feat. That wasn't to say they didn't have their fair share of arguments because they did, and mostly about silly things: the last Pop-Tart in the box, the radio station that played in the car or whose fault it was that the gun wasn't loaded with silver bullets.

And it was always Tristan's because he was the type of jackass who liked to keep them on their toes.

He wasn't, though, the type of guy who'd abandon ship without telling him first. After all they'd been through, and all they'd sacrificed, they were bonded on a metaphysical plane and that wasn't something anyone could just turn their back on. Which left only one simple explanation: he was dead, six feet under and pushing up daisies.

And what kind of sick bastard did that to someone?

When they'd set up the terms of their partnership, it'd been under the assumption that they were both as likely to die as each other. It was fair and no one would get left behind but Tristan had gone ahead and broken that trust without a second thought. The betrayal cut sharp, even though he knew he was being wholly unreasonable about it all but, more than anything else, it distracted him from the worry gnawing in his gut and the hopelessness of not being able to do anything—as if he was seventeen all over again.

"He might not be dead," Callie said, as Aiden had gotten up to pace for the short length of the room for the umpteenth time. "His phone could be broken again."

"What's stopping him from getting to a payphone?"

"Small towns in the middle of nowhere don't have great reception."

"Which is why he called us twice on the first day and gives us radio silence for the next three?"

"Maybe he's busy trailing someone, you know he can't call you then."

It was plausible—Tristan had said it was a research trip, after all, to while away the time as they waited for Aiden's wrist to heal—and Callie seemed to believe it but he'd always known their brother better than she did. He'd call if he was going to have to stay for longer than two days, regardless of whatever crappy coverage he was dealing with, and he'd tell him not to come despite knowing that they would. They were a team like that, so intertwined and wholly dependent on each other that it hurt to breathe without him.

"Why?" Callie asked suddenly, looking up from cleaning her favourite knife, the one that had decapitated a werewolf from twenty metres away. "Why do you keep insisting he's dead?"

"Assume the worst, right?"

She narrowed her eyes, catching onto something in his voice. "You're lying."

"It's a little unnerving how you can do that."

"Some people think it's unnerving how I can kill someone with a pen."

He laughed. "Want to try it?"

She didn't wait, the knife quivering in the headboard of the bed before he'd finished speaking, and he grinned because this, this, was familiar. They'd sparred enough times to know each other's weaknesses and strengths: Callie was fast but didn't have much strength while Aiden used charms and guns because he'd never been a fighter, not in that way. Unlike his siblings, he didn't have a killing instinct but he'd saved their asses more than enough times to make up for it. Point was, he knew the score here, and he knew he couldn't beat her.