The Symbiotic Law

By Lia Cooper

No family skeletons stay buried forever....

Ethan Ellison thought that the hardest thing after figuring out he was soul bonded to a werewolf would be letting the guy down easy. He wasn't prepared to open his door and find his Uncle Eoin standing on the other side, sporting a fresh shiner and a warning about Ethan's estranged father Alexandre Pelletier. Turns out his old man wants the Medusa's curl bloodstone Ethan inherited from his mother bad enough to send masked hitmen after it.

Pat Clanahan hoped that now, with everything out in the open, all he had to worry about was introducing Ethan to the pack. But Seattle is no longer safe and if Pat wants to make sure nothing happens to his mate, he'll have to follow him around the world in a desperate bid to stay one step ahead of Pelletier's men.

But Ethan and Pat are detectives, and neither of them is good at leaving a case unsolved. What is the Medusa's curl? Why does Pelletier want it? And can a mage and a werewolf find enough middle ground to finally fall in love in the final installment of the BLOOD & BONE TRILOGY!

This story contains explicit M/M content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lia Cooper
• Release date: Jan 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311953582

Lia Cooper

Lia Cooper is a twentysomething native of the Pacific Northwest, a voracious reader and an enthusiastic writer. She wrote her first short story when she was seven. THE DUALITY PARADIGM is her first published full length novel.She enjoys binge watching shows on Netflix, all-but-living in her local coffee shop, and drinking americanos. Lia cheers for the Chicago Blackhawks, rereads Pride & Prejudice every year, and is still bitterly disappointed over the cancellation of Stargate Atlantis (shhh).The complete BLOOD & BONE Trilogy now available!

Book preview

THE SYMBIOTIC LAW

Blood & Bone Trilogy

Book Three

Lia Cooper

DISCLAIMER This work contains language and sexual content that may not be suitable for readers under 18. This work contains EXPLICIT SEXUAL  MALE/MALE CONTENT. Not your cup of tea? Don’t read it. Otherwise, please enjoy.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SYMBIOTIC LAW. Copyright © 2015 by K C Rumsey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission.

Cooper, Lia (2015-01-08). The Symbiotic Law, BLOOD & BONE TRILOGY BOOK THREE. The Spec Press.

All rights reserved.

To all the readers who took a chance on my debut series.

To Kim for sticking with me through this very rocky journey and encouraging me to keep going through every writer’s block.

To NaNoWriMo for inspiring me to write The Duality Paradigm, which really should have been the end of it, but apparently I have no control over how long it was going to take for Ethan and Patrick to fall in love.

~Lia

Previously…

Ethan stared out his balcony window until he heard the front door close. He felt sore, but more than that, his stomach wouldn’t stop jumping around, excess adrenaline still flooding through his veins.

He shivered and dug out a soft, long-sleeved shirt and put it on.

It was the middle of the afternoon. So far he’d watched a man get put in the ground and had his suspicions confirmed: fucking werewolves.

Ethan rubbed at the ache in his chest and startled when someone knocked on the front door. Well, hammered might have been a better description. It was too soon to be Patrick returning with their food.

He checked the peephole and jerked back. The door wasn’t even locked; it swung open.

Uncle Eoin? he asked, his voice pitched up in shock. His mother’s brother stood on the other side, disheveled, dirty, and with purple bruises under his eyes. Eoin had a fat lip and a cut across the bridge of his nose, crusty and only half healed. He smelled like the sea.

Ethan. Thank the goddess.

CHAPTER ONE

…I wish there were some explanation I could give you to make you understand why I have to leave. But the simple truth is there’s nothing simple about loving someone.

Love is a complex alchemical reaction produced in mammalian brains to ensure the continuation of the species. Once that biological drive is satisfied—it’s quite like a curtain being drawn back.

Love will never guard your back. It will lie and cheat you.

In the ruins, the only thing you can do is run before the rocks fall. One day,  you’ll see this for yourself.

Deirdre Ellison

1994

#

Ethan’s uncle stumbled inside the apartment, one hand falling heavily across Ethan’s shoulder and squeezing hard. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his dark hair lank and slipping free of its tie.

What the hell happened? Are you okay?

I’ll be fine. Eoin waved his concern away. I sent you a telegram. Several, in fact. When I didn’t hear back from you I feared the worst.

I haven’t had any messages, Ethan said, leading him over to the kitchen table and pulling out a seat.

Eoin dropped dropped into it with a squelch and watched Ethan as he grabbed the stack of junk mail he’d left to pile up.

What’s going on? You look— Ethan’s words dried up at his uncle’s wan face. A shiver raced down his back.

Eoin gave a low, wry laugh and pushed his hair off his face. He had green eyes like Ethan but his coloring was darker, tanned and wind burned, hair like a raven in a ponytail, with callused hands.

I don’t suppose I could get a drink of water?

The mail slipped between numb fingers. Ethan grabbed water and a granola bar for Eoin and sat down in the chair across from him.

Thank you.

What’s going on? he asked again.

I had a visitor, down in Auckland. Not a very friendly fellow, let me tell ya. He was looking for something of your mother’s.

Dread curdled Ethan’s stomach. Without his leave, his eyes darted past Eoin’s shoulder to the empty kitchen drawer.

Eoin’s eyes narrowed. You know what he was looking for.

Maybe? Who’s ‘he’?

Didn’t get a name. His uncle crammed the end of the granola bar in his mouth and crumpled up the wrapper. Some sort of retrieval specialist.

He leaned over the table, eyes intent on Ethan’s face.

Was he here?

Christophe’s face flashed across Ethan’s mind but he took in Eoin’s scrapes and couldn’t imagine his ex being responsible for that kind of violence. Christophe never lifted a finger if his mouth would do the trick.

I don’t know.

Eoin hummed to himself and sat back. Oh, I think you’d know if t’were the same fellow. He was looking for a stone. Your mother kept it on a pendant chain.

Ethan swallowed down bile and nodded.

A bloodstone, he said flatly.

His uncle’s eyes worked over his face for a long, tense moment before he said, That’s one word for it. So, he did come here first?

Ethan pushed back his chair. It might not have been the same— He gestured at Eoin’s face. His uncle grimaced and touched a finger to the cut on his nose. I had a friend, a former friend, from Toronto show up a couple months ago. He said he was looking for something called a bloodstone.

Did you give it to him?

No. I didn’t have it.

What? Eoin demanded. The dining chair screeched across the wood floor.

At the time. It was at the jeweler’s.

This news seemed to settle Eoin, who sat back down and finished his water.

But you have it.

Yeah.

This friend, what’s his name?

Christophe Granger.

I don’t suppose he told you what he wanted with it?

Ethan shook his head. He hesitated before he blurted, He said my f—father sent him for it.

Ethan watched his uncle’s expression collapse on itself, grim and dark under heavy brows. He fanned out his junk mail across the table while he waited for him to say something. It was all bills and ValuePaks and advertisements for Domino’s Pizza.

I was afraid…. Eoin stared at a scratch in the wood grain under his hands. He sighed and grabbed Ethan’s wrist, holding it tight. You might have fooled your friend Granger but you won’t be able to fool this fellow. He didn’t seem to be the sort that’s easily dissuaded from a task.

But you—

Ran away by the skin of my teeth. I put sail to wind and came straight here. I had hoped that you’d get my message and be long gone already.

Ethan frowned. I don’t understand. If they don’t think I have it, which they must if they went looking for it from you, then why— He stopped at Eoin’s guilty expression.

Your Uncle Liam’s boy—Aiden—he might have let slip something about you inheriting everything. Whatever you convinced your friend Granger to believe, I wouldn’t count on this retrieval man to take it at face value. He was a professional. And if there’s one thing you can say about professionals, they don’t leave loose ends to amateurs. That’s what makes them professionals.

But we don’t know that, Ethan protested. His bare feet were cold and his shorts slid down uncomfortably low on his ass. He still smelled a little like sex despite cleaning up and Pat—no, Clanahan—Clanahan would be back with their take away any minute.

You willing to take that chance?

I have a job, I can’t just leave. Shit, I’m a cop. If this guy attacks me I’ll throw him in a holding cell. Ethan stood and started pacing across his kitchen, agitation making his stomach jump and fresh sweat break out under his arms. His heart beat too fast to be comfortable.

You can’t stay here, Eoin protested, his voice grim. It grated against Ethan’s skin. Men like this don’t work inside your legal system.

You’re saying I should be afraid of a shadow that attacked you? That might not even come here? Not going to happen.

I didn’t think you’d grow up to be such a foolish boy.

Foolish? Me? Ethan laughed, if you could call the ugly sound coming out of his throat a laugh, and slapped the table between them.

He watched Eoin retreat into himself. Catalogued his weathered clothes, dirtier and more torn than they usually appeared. He hardly knew the man—hadn’t seen him in years, not since late fall ’07 or ’08; he couldn’t even remember exactly.

Eoin, like the rest of the family on his mother’s side, preferred to come and go with little warning or fanfare. They drifted across the world on their boats and barges at the wind’s decree, never settling in one place longer than a season. Nomads, gypsies, wanderers, whatever you wanted to call them, people that Ethan didn’t bear much resemblance to. Despite living in a city surrounded on two sides by water, he hadn’t been out on a boat since—well, since whenever Eoin’s last visit had been.

He looked at his uncle now, the shadows under his eyes, the way his shoulders tensed up around his ears and his fingers gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. He didn’t know this man, not well at least, but he knew what fear looked like.

Eoin was worried. Worried about Ethan’s safety. The concern both grated and soothed a tattered edge in Ethan’s brain.

He blew out a frustrated breath and sat back down, reached his hands across the wood, fingers held loose.

I can’t just pack up and disappear. I have responsibilities, he said.

Are they more important than your life?

Whatever you think is going on, my life’s not on the line.

You sound very certain.

I am.

So certain that your father won’t… Eoin grimaced.

He hasn’t so far.

Ah, but you used to be a child, that always affords some protection. Now you’re a man with something he wants badly enough to send someone halfway around the globe to get it. You think he’ll stop at asking you? At threatening? Perhaps. You would know better than I.

Eoin’s words squirmed in the back of Ethan’s brain where a healthy fear of his biological father—none other than Alexandre Pellatier, the patriarch of the oldest magical family in Quebec—slumbered. The decade since Ethan had run away from Alexandre had done little to squash the instinctive recoil he felt at just the insinuation of his name.

He’d be a liar if he tried to argue that there was no truth in Eoin’s argument. Alexandre Pellatier had not risen to his position of power through niceties and being soft. He was hard, the unbending steel rod running through the spine of their family, holding most of the wizards along the Eastern Seaboard in his grasp. All of it smoothed over by impeccable manners, money, and the irrefutable veneer of politeness.

The clock in the hall ticked off the seconds, loud enough it sounded like the crash of brass symbols reverberating in Ethan’s head. He dug his fingers into the table.

There’s nowhere for me to go.

Eoin scoffed and stood up with a soft groan. He stood in front of a small mirror hanging on the wall and tugged on his hair. Broad fingers combed through the dirty strands, braiding them into something resembling order that he tied off with a few nimble motions. Satisfied, he turned back to Ethan.

What are you talking about? You’ve got a whole family. We’ll look after you. He made a sharp, impatient gesture. Well, don’t just sit there—pack a bag, and don’t forget the stone. The faster we put a little distance between you and this city, the easier I’ll be able to close my eyes again.

Ethan stumbled into action. Jeans and T-shirts went into a duffle bag with his bathroom kit and a clean pair of socks and underwear.

With care, he emptied the bottom of his closet, worked loose the floorboard covering his hidey-hole and pulled out the jeweler’s box holding the bloodstone pendant. Touching it made his skin crawl so he shoved it to the bottom of his bag and piled his shit back up until it didn’t look like anything of any importance had been taken from the room.

He found Eoin washing his hands in the kitchen, a plastic bag containing the meager contents of his pantry hooked in the crook of his elbow.

Do you have it?

Ethan nodded mutely.

Do you have a coat? Get it. Never go anywhere without a coat. Except maybe a desert, but even then. Eoin sniffed and wiped his hands off on his torn sweater.

Ethan figured it was less hassle to just do what he said rather than protest. He tripped over a stack of books on the floor. There were three volumes, two from Jansson that he hadn’t had time to read before the older man’s murder. On a whim, Ethan grabbed those and stuck them in his bag along with his clothes. He had no idea where Eoin planned on taking him or how long his uncle would deem it too dangerous for him to come home.

He bored easily. What if there was no television wherever they were headed? Ethan shrugged off that gloomy thought and grabbed his coat off the hook. It had a layer of dust along the shoulders that made him sneeze.

Satisfied now, Eoin led the way downstairs.

We’ll have your car.

Where are we going?

His uncle ignored the question. He pressed Ethan back from the front entry and slipped out the door first. After a thorough check of the hallway, he stuck his head back in and grabbed Ethan by the elbow, hustling him down the street to the parking garage where his Audi sat under several tons of concrete, Hondas, and a small fleet of Toyota Priuses.

You have to tell me where I’m driving us to.

Eoin pulled out a battered smartphone from his pocket, the Otter case showing significant wear and tear along its rubberized edges. He flicked through a couple pages while Ethan sat, one hand flicking his keys while his eyes catalogued the pedestrians walking by—hoods up and shoulders hunched against the rain but nary an umbrella in sight.

Head south.

Care to be more specific?

King Street Station.

Ethan frowned but stuck the keys in the ignition and whipped them out of his long-term parking stall.

#

Patrick Clanahan, Seattle Police Detective, werewolf, recently well-satisfied male, bounded up the stairs to his—what should he call him? Lover? Partner? Mate? His own version of it’s complicated, let’s put it that way—a bag of takeout dangling from one hand and an impulse six-pack of beer swinging from the other.

To be honest, he all but whistled coming through the unlocked door. He’d left his—his Ethan well-fucked in his bedroom and now he returned triumphantly with dinner and beer and they were going to give this thing between them a go. It wouldn’t be easy—Pat wasn’t an optimist on a good day, but better trying together than crashing and burning on their own. Right?

Of course, whatever good mood he’d been nursing since picking up their food around the corner evaporated when he shut Ethan’s door and took stock of the silent apartment. The very empty, silent apartment.

The beer clanked against the kitchen counter.

Pat held his breath and strained his werewolf hearing, desperate to be proven wrong, but his initial stock of the scene remained true. Ethan wasn’t in the apartment.

Anger rushed through Pat’s nerves, and he dropped the bag of dim sum, uncaring that it landed on its side, spilling dumplings and packets of dipping sauce everywhere.

Ethan had promised—! But no, he hadn’t promised anything outright, had he? Pat racked his memory. The other man had said they would try—but his exact words hadn’t been anything strictly binding, just the word of a magician. What stock could you put in that?

Pat snarled and slammed his fist down on the counter, making the wood groan and the beer bottles rattle.

Promise or no, Ethan had said he wouldn’t run away again; Pat hadn’t inflated that fact in his head.

On the heels of the anger, shame and guilt tried to rear their heads, sending his heart beating triple time in his chest, thundering in his ears and pounding hard against his chest until his body began to ache with it.

Had it been a ruse? Or just cold feet? Did he so misjudge their coupling—god, had it only been an hour ago that he’d had Ethan on his back, buried so far inside the other man, Pat cleaving to him in slippery desperation—that Ethan felt the need to sneak away behind his back?

The self-flagellation might have continued ad nauseam if at that moment the front door hadn’t swung open, distracting Pat from his black thoughts. His senses snapped to attention and zeroed in on the figure standing on the threshold: dark jeans, work boots, black shirt, and leather gloves, sunglasses, and a nondescript baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He smelled like bitter herbs, salt, and gunpowder.

Something about the combination made the hair on the back of Pat’s neck stand on end and he tensed, mouth open in a snarl of shiny white teeth—too sharp to belong to any human man.

The man turned to Pat, one hand coming up quick and sharp, and the next moment several hundred volts of electricity shot through Pat’s chest. He convulsed and staggered against the counter, only just keeping his feet under him.

He snarled and tore the TAZER leads out of his shoulder and jerked the gun out of his assailant’s hand. Pat didn’t waste time on a strategy or thought. He barreled into the other man, sending them crashing to the floor.

Pat’s fingers tingled with the change, bones rearranging themselves into heavy, clawed fists as his jaw lengthened the extra inch necessary to accommodate his predator canines.

He took a fist in the gut and scrambled for the upper hand. He boxed a little to blow off steam but Pat was a werewolf first and he’d never feel as comfortable fighting in his human skin as he did in his wolf one. Still, he had heavier bones, inhuman strength, and a good dose of displaced rage on his side.

The other man’s head made a satisfying crack against the floor and his body slumped, going loose with unconsciousness. Pat forced his hands to uncurl from around the man’s throat. He sat back on his haunches, chest heaving, breaths puffing out short and hard from the adrenaline. His nose ached and blood dripped down the lower half of his face, but he could already feel the cartilage healing itself.

A quick check of his attacker’s pockets revealed a glaring lack of identification or wallet—just a business card, the logo faded almost beyond visibility and crumpled with dirty folds. Ethan’s address was written in neat capitals on the back.

Pat fumbled out his cellphone and took a picture of the card, which he sent to his partner at the Seattle Police Department. Sabira Mallory called him back almost immediately.

Is this about our case?

That was fast, Pat said.

I was working on my report, so I can give it to Captain Augustas on Monday. You didn’t answer my question.

It’s not. I have a situation here.

Where’s here? Mallory’s tone was never anything but strictly professional. Her accent, displaced Notting Hill with a Lebanese twist courtesy of both her parents’ influence, always sounded smooth and intelligent. Never a hint of judgment or submission such that her words worked equally well to gentle upset witnesses as well as command sketchy informants. Nevertheless, Pat swore he could hear her—

Are you laughing at me? he demanded.

I’m working on a Sunday. Do I sound like I am laughing to you?

He grumbled until she interrupted him with a firm note of warning.

What kind of situation, Clanahan?

A guy without ID just attacked me in Ethan’s apartment.

This would be Detective Ethan Ellison’s apartment, yes?

Yes, he said, the word coming out of his throat strangled and low.

I see. Do you want me to come over?

A rush of gratitude flushed Pat’s chest. He was lucky the Captain had put him with Mallory, who if nothing else, never seemed rumpled by his bad moods and had never given any indication that she cared one way or the other that sometimes he turned into a giant grey wolf and ran around under the full moon with the rest of his family every month.

Do you mind? I may have, uh, knocked him out? So, it would be good to have a witness.

Mallory clucked once under her breath and he listened to her lock up her desk. Don’t do anything rash. I’ll be right over.

Yeah, okay. Thanks. He ended the call and trained an ear to check the strange man’s pulse: steady and slow, definitely down for the count. He might have felt guilt about it, but there wasn’t any blood and the guy had attacked Pat first.

He stood and brushed himself off.

The kitchen table looked like a small hurricane had ripped through, papers, advert inserts, and unopened letters scattered across the surface and spilling onto the floor. There was an empty glass and—Pat followed his nose and found an empty Nature Valley wrapper on the floor. It didn’t smell like Ethan when he picked it up. It smelled damp and salty. Not unlike his attacker, but deeper. This smell had to be so ingrained on its owner as to leave a trace on plastic.

Pat shifted through the mail with one eye on the man on the ground. Mallory would take at least thirty minutes to get there if she’d been at the station. He had some time to snoop around.

Worry itched at the back of his thoughts. Maybe he’d been too quick to judge Ethan’s disappearing act.

His fingers ran over the thick yellow card stock customary of the Telegram Office. It was strange enough to catch his attention. Pat fished out the message—mostly illegible, it looked like someone had dropped it in a puddle and tried to dry it off by rubbing it off against something nubbly. The words fear and compromised didn’t sit well in his gut. Not with a nose full of unfamiliar scents.

The longer he stood there the clearer the smell of assailant and another person’s sweat diverged. There had been a second man smelling like the sea in the apartment between Pat’s going out for food and coming back.

On a hunch, he checked the pockets of Ethan’s suit coat—not the one he’d worn earlier to Erik Jansson’s funeral, this one smelled musty like it was past due for the dry cleaners. He fished out a pair of handcuffs. They had sloppy runes carved around the cheek plates, after market embellishments he’d bet Ethan did himself.

Pat wrestled the unconscious man into a prone position and cuffed his hands behind his back then he ran out the door.

A wolf had several advantages over your average human. But the teeth, sense, strength, all of those were just the physical side. His mother always said a wolf’s greatest asset was their heart—their instincts—and both of his were making his gut churn, propelling him back down the stairs and into the street.

Breaks squealed, a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye. Then the world tilted on its axis as something knocked him off his feet.

#

Shit!

Ethan slammed the brakes but it was too little too late. Clanahan-fucking-Clanahan slammed into the Audi’s hood and rolled off the side. Terror made his heart seize and for a second Ethan couldn’t breathe. The next minute he was out of the car and rushing around to the werewolf, pressing shaking hands against his shoulders.

Relief tasted sweet and sour on his tongue when the wolf groaned and opened his eyes. His body uncurled from its protective sprawl and he sat up.

Ugh, what the hell…

Fuck, I’m sorry. What the hell were you doing? You just ran out into the street! Ethan said, hiding behind accusation to cover up the very real worry pumping through his veins.

You didn’t have to hit me with your car, Clanahan protested.

"I didn’t see you! You just poofed right in front of my car."

Ethan slipped his hand under Patrick’s elbow and helped him stand up.

"Well, what were you doing in your car in the first place?" Clanahan demanded.

He had a smudge of dirt along one perfect cheekbone and his dark hair fell across his forehead. He looked sweaty and disheveled and beautiful enough to make all of the air squeeze tight in Ethan’s throat. He coughed to cover his reaction and took his hands back.

I— Ethan had no response. He looked around for Eoin to back him up. How did you tell your maybe-lover-possible-werewolf-soulmate that your uncle showed up on your doorstep with dire warnings about mysterious retrieval dudes and possibly homicidal estranged fathers about ten minutes after said werewolf had finished fucking you up the ass? There was just no good way to explain that, okay?

Ethan knew

Reviews for The Symbiotic Law

[Estarianne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting series, with a lot going on in a pretty complex environment. I have almost given up on it a couple of times because I honestly don't find Ethan very likeable at all (he is supposed to be kind of self-absorbed, but the pattern where he gives in to everyone except Patrick is annoying, and he doesn't seem to care about Patrick at all through about 75% of the trilogy). Patrick I liked, he was flawed but had a conscience. I think maybe the ending to this was a little obvious in general if not in the details, but that's normal.