It's Simply That I've Always Loved You

Chapter 4

When he steps out of Byakuya’s private quarters to retrieve some water, knowing his pack alpha will need a drink when he wakes up, Renji does not expect to turn around only to find a familiar face so close to his own. It’s a testament to her name— Flash Master Yoruichi— that she managed to slip into the room and within six inches of his body without him picking up her scent and being able to react in time. As if reading his mind, Yoruichi smiles slow and proud, her chin lifted in open challenge, but Renji knows better than to pick fights with Byakuya’s friends.

“How is he?” Yoruichi asks, sitting herself down at the table, fingers running through her ponytail and pulling it over her shoulder. “I know he’s probably worn down by now.”

Renji snorts. “You’d think that. By the end of the night he’s exhausted but he’s been holding it together pretty well. I’d hate to know what would happen if it was another alpha, though.”

“That’s why I recommended you in the first place. I knew you’d take care of Byakuya-bo.” Again, Yoruichi appears proud of herself.

The revelation has Renji pausing, his back pressed against the counter behind him as he searches for nothing to anchor himself to the world around him. “You recommended me?”

“Of course I did. Byakuya needed an alpha who could take care of him who also wouldn’t use the opportunity to stab him in the back. There aren’t that many of them that I trust in this pack, which I’m sure you’re aware of.” Yoruichi’s golden eyes flash, and Renji feels the hairs on the back of his neck prick at the sight.

At one point, Yoruichi had been the pack beta, but she stepped down from the position before Renji joined the pack so she could remain with her mate and enjoy a more peaceful life. It doesn’t stop her from keeping her close friendship with Byakuya, and more than once she’s put others in their place for daring to question their pack alpha. As far as Renji knows, Yoruichi never challenged Byakuya for the position of alpha in her time as his beta, which probably made their pack more unusual to outsiders. After all, Renji has no intentions of challenging, either.

“I don’t blame you.” Renji tells her, taking a seat at the table with her. While he has more stamina than Byakuya does in the sex department, the last few days have made his legs rather weak as well. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with him except for maybe you, but you—”

He breaks off as Byakuya’s words about his first heat partner come back to him, the assertion that he would never ask that alpha again because they had a mate. His mouth falls open, his eyes widening as he looks at Yoruichi. Was she Byakuya’s first heat partner?

“You look like you have something to ask me.” Yoruichi purrs.

The tone of her voice is another reminder that Yoruichi herself occupies a strange position in their pack. Despite being a member, she’s the only one of them who can’t claim to be a wolf. When Byakuya was a child, he’d come home with a black kitten in his arms and all but begged his parents to let him keep her, or so Renji has heard. There are older pack members who were at the scene, watched Byakuya take advantage of being a cute little omega who otherwise was very poised and proper and never asked for anything of his own. His parents agreed, and Yoruichi revealed herself not to be a simple house cat but a werecat shortly after. Byakuya’s father was the pack alpha. He’d unwittingly agreed to adopting her into his pack, and she and his son were inseparable growing up together.

“Taicho said he’d had another heat partner before Hisana, but they had a mate and he didn’t want to intrude on that.” Renji scrubs a hand over his face. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

Yoruichi grins at him, showing the tips of her sharp teeth. “It was me. Byakuya didn’t want to go through his heats alone and I was unattached at the time, so I took care of him. I think his parents died believing they’d left their precious omega son in my hands.”