by Sam Hall
He closed my fingers around the stems and stepped back. “You’re sweet and kind, you seem to accept people for who they are, instead of matching them against some arbitrary mental model and discarding them because they don’t fit. You saw me…in a really weird position. I’m not usually that…out with what I’m into, but when you touched my hand as I explained things, I…” He shook his head. “Everyone told me to be careful, to put up some boundaries and protect myself, but I can’t. That… When we were together, that’s the first time I’ve ever had sex with anyone else, and while it was so fucking hot, it meant more than that for me. I could smell you all around me and you held me close and stroked my hair and your cunt milked the cum from my balls and I felt…home.” I wanted to go to him. From his expression, his heart was breaking. “The Great Wolf steps in sometimes to bring people together, and I guess I hope with all my fucking heart that’s what this feeling is.”
God, I could not keep up with this man. His mind teemed with so much he held back, and then it all came rushing out, leaving me wondering what the hell had just happened. I had no words, but I needed to process a whole other side of him, so I moved closer and just held him.
His hands were slower to mimic mine, but they came to rest on my back, holding me to him, and for a while, that’s all we did—just held each other.
Until he stiffened.
If the last outburst surprised me, the next one floored me.
“Get behind me, Flick,” came his low growl.
37
My eyes shot up to see a transformed Noah hunched over me. His lips were pulled back from his teeth, becoming bigger, sharper somehow.
“Now, Flick!” he hissed, picking me up and shoving me when I didn’t move fast enough. His body transformed from long and lean to somehow bestial as he stood before me.
“You’ve gotta get back to the watering hole. Get to the boys and don’t look back.”
And that was the last thing he said before transforming into a perfectly white giant wolf.
I hadn’t had time to really process the Tirian form when they’d first shown it to me, having just woken up from a mini coma, but I got to now. Because not one but two stood before me. Down the path was a semi familiar sight—a black wolf sitting there panting, its red eyes glowing like hell fire.
Is that you? I asked my beast.
No, and you need to do what your mate says and run, came her terse reply. There is nothing good for you here, only pain and death.
What?! You’ve got to be shitting me. That’s just a dog.
A really big dog that was padding closer with every second, whose eyes burned into mine, whose muzzle wrinkled up to show its very white teeth. Who spoke to me, mind to mind, as I stood there like a bloody stunned mullet.
We’re coming for you, Felicity, it said, the voice inside my head the sound of animals shrieking and houses burning, of whimpers of pain and sadistic smiles. And that boy of yours. Of ours, really. We’ll transform him from that soft little creature…
I was treated to a rapid flicker of images, some stuttering, showing the same few seconds over and over in a loop. Kade with a transformed Rick, his hair close-cropped, a large squarish scar on the side of his head. Kade screamed at the start, trying to get away from Rick and back to me, then he just screamed.
My answering one was caught in my throat, the muscles as frozen as my body’s, unable to let it out nor let oxygen in. Rick brought him animals, the cuter and fluffier the better, his grin growing as they wagged their pathetic little tails or arched their backs, expecting to be treated well. They were quickly disabused of that. They screamed, Kade screamed, everyone did but Rick, who sliced them up with a methodical interest in making them hurt as much as possible. What had been a petty tyranny with me had bloomed into so much more. It continued, on and on, until my eyes ached from watching it, until Kade’s screams stopped and he became a dead-eyed nothingness that transformed when Rick put an older Kade’s hand around the knife handle.
It was the long howl that woke me from my nightmare, my vision snapping to the present day to see the moment the black wolf dropped down into a crouch, right as Noah lifted his head to send up the alarm.
“No…” I whispered, that old habit of keeping my cries to myself for fear of being heard as easy to slip into as an old pair of shoes. He was going to take it all away. He couldn’t let me go, let me find happiness, give my son everything I’d hoped for. He was going to come and keep on coming.
“NO!” I shrieked as the black wolf leapt.
I heard the sound of footfalls behind me but couldn’t look away as the black wolf’s jaws closed around Noah’s beast’s neck. Slamming him down to the ground close enough I could feel the impact, the black beast straddled the white wolf’s body and then thrashed his head, tearing at his throat. Blood bloomed obscenely on the white fur, but he refused to cry out, Noah’s whole body bucking and writhing as he struggled to throw him off.
Then a massive black beast, so much bigger than any of them, slammed into the red-eyed wolf’s side and sent it spinning, a grey and a white one following hot on its heels. Noah clambered to his feet, the movement an ugly combination of scrabbles and leg waving, but he got up, head hanging low and blood dripping with frightening regularity on the thirsty soil.
“No, Noah,” I pleaded, reaching out and touching his wisping fur when he turned to join the fight, now a scrambling, snarling mass of animals. “No, you’ve done enough.”
But he whined, pressing his nose into my palm, and then started to run towards the fray.
You stupid fucking bitch!
The echo of David’s words smashed into me as I just stood there, my eyes blurring with tears, but nothing could take the brutal sound of animals killing each other away.
You stand here while they die.
He’s coming for Kade, and you can do nothing.
They’re fighting for you. You. What a fucking waste.
You’ll never escape him. Never. All of this has been just a pretty interlude, but he’s gonna strike so much harder for escaping him.
Enough! my beast snarled. You let the beasts in your mind tear you in two while he does the same to your mates! We are strong.
No.
We will tear the interloper in two!
No.
He threatens the cub, the pack. Our strength comes from our number.
And as if she was sick of talking to insensible me, I felt myself shoved to one side. My body grew hot, so very hot for a moment, burning until I screamed, but what came out was not from a human throat. We howled, to alert those around of the danger, to throw our spite in the interloper’s teeth. Teeth that were wrapped around the throat of one of my mates and closing inexorably, despite the others tearing chunks from him. My paws struck the ground hard, the powerful muscles of my haunches coiling which sent us sailing forward, scouring the earth as I went and building up speed to a lightning pace, before I sent my body crashing into the red-eyed wolf’s.
I pulled up, panting, listening to the wild music of my heart as the beast went spinning in a mad flail of limbs.
No, Flick! one of my mates called.
Yes, Flick, was my reply as I stampeded on, keeping the momentum up as I landed on the still struggling wolf and my teeth sunk into his flesh. The burning taste of his blood was the sweetest thing, and I had to have more. I ripped at him, effortlessly avoiding his answering snaps, and the best came when I caught his leg in my jaws and whipped my head, the fangs spearing straight through his muscle and into the bone, and the thin lengths snapped moments later.
I saw the wisdom to this when he finally managed to get to his feet. While four-legged animals can get along with three legs, a recently broken third was enough to give me an advantage.
Imagine if we took out the second, an alien thought slid into my mind, revelling in the mental image of the beast that had threatened my mates, pinned to the ground by his own pathetic body. I saw his tail wagging furiously, his ears flat to his skull as
I stalked up to him, my burning venom dripping on the ground as I—
“Flick! We’ve gotta go!”
My head whipped around to see my men clustered around a fallen Aidan, the strangled sounds drawing my attention.
Pathetic. You’ll never make the killing stroke. You’ve not the strength, that monstrous voice snarled inside my head.
“Flick!”
There was something to this decision. I could feel that, even in this instinct ruled brain, one misstep could send us crashing through the ice to drown. But which? This beast was a creature of malice, pure and simple. He knew me, Rick, Kade, and was prepared to do whatever he could to make us suffer. He was a threat, and threats were to be put down.
But my mate… That was no natural sound. He was… My mind refused to make the words, which decided my next action. I came loping back to them, saw that Sen and Peter were in human form, Noah still a wolf.
“We gotta get him to doc, now!” Sen said as Peter cradled Aidan to his chest. And my love, he fought for every breath. I could hear it through the bloody mess of his body. There were holes where there shouldn’t be, blood dripping from him, and an awful whistle of his lungs. “Let’s go!”
We went as fast as we could, but jostling Aidan seemed to only make things worse. I shifted when we got into the car, pulling a blanket over me, but Noah stayed in wolf form, sitting up in the front as Peter and I held Aidan still. His hazel eyes, wide and staring, were the only indicator we had of what he was going through. He couldn’t cry out, groan, or even breathe, only stare, tears trickling out the sides.
“Hang on, mate,” Peter said, taking his hand, my own tears coming thick and fast. “You have to hang on. We’ll be there soon. They’ll make it better, I promise.”
“What the hell happened?” Ophelia asked as we ferried Aidan into the doc’s surgery.
“None of that now,” Hobbes said, bending over my love, scanning him with an expert eye. “Bloody hell. Get the midwives in here. I need anyone with healing experience in here, right now.”
She moved frantically around the room, pulling out equipment and supplies with wild abandon, but I saw the shake in her hands when she pulled on gloves with a cool kind of detachment. I reached across, slapped a hand on her arm, and stopped her from moving, then said, “Take a breath, then proceed.”
She nodded, then moved. My gaze shifted to the proceedings, where she took the wreckage of my mate’s body and tried to put it back together, but all I could see was her tensed shoulders, her teeth digging into her lips, her little sobs of breath.
None of which I could make.
My mind couldn’t, wouldn’t accept what was going on.
Not Aidan, not my mate. I couldn’t be one of those people who have their loved ones torn away from them so soon after finding them. That wasn’t his blood, it wasn’t him fighting to keep breathing. I was wrapped up tight in acres of grey woolly nothingness, putting a million miles between me and them. I was watching this happen on TV, the life of a character I wasn’t really engaging with, who was suffering some awful fate, but I just wanted to get back to flicking through social media, the director having failed to move me.
Then the swinging doors burst open, and the many older women I’d seen at the alpha residence entered the room in a long stream.
“Finally!” Hobbes snapped. “Scrub up and get some gloves on. I need…”
Her voice trailed away as she heard the hum, the sound of each and every woman’s throat filling the room. It got louder and louder, especially when they joined hands, forming an inviolable circle around the operating table.
“Join us, Flick,” Ophelia ordered, taking a spot in the ring nearest the door, a white faced and pregnant Jules at her side, moving to become one with the circle.
“What the hell?”
My head whipped around to see the doctor pulling away from my love, her hands in the air, as if to protect herself. From what, it became immediately apparent. Light poured from Aidan’s body, slowing the drips of blood seeping from him first, his skin growing brighter and brighter.
“You must join us, Flick. You are Aidan’s mate, his anchor in this world,” Ophelia insisted.
“Flick, please,” Peter pleaded, his hands soaked in blood.
The weight of their expectations felt crushing, threatening to hammer me into the ground. What did they expect of me? I could do nothing, was nothing.
“Don’t do this right now, Flick.” Sen’s voice was a whip crack across my already raw flesh. “Don’t get caught up in the bullshit in your head. Just take the women’s hands.”
I stepped back automatically, until I felt hands part to accept me, then each grabbed mine and the world fell away.
It was beautiful here, the blood and pain replaced by golden clouds and radiant light.
“Direct us, Jules.”
My eyes flicked around me at the sound of Ophelia’s voice, and as if summoned by it, they all appeared. Well, they did and more besides. I saw Jules and Ophelia talking animatedly, trying to work something out, it increasingly drowned out by the humming. It rose and rose until it was a physical presence in my ears, pushing against my eardrums, forcing everything out as rings upon rings of women filled the cloud landscape.
And then she came, a massive white wolf, padding forward, her head down and her green eyes burning into mine. She stepped over each ring, so tall she blotted out the light source here and replaced it with her radiance, then came to a stop in the centre of the circle and sat down.
My eyes ached and my head throbbed as if I stared directly into the sun, but I couldn’t look away. I trembled, my body fighting to hold its position, until finally she relented, looking away.
Why have you summoned me here?
Summoned you? I don’t even know who you are!
And yet, you do. Your ears may not have heard the explanations, but you know. So why am I here?
My mate Aidan… Something about my mind balked at this, shutting down, putting up roadblocks, trying to stop me going further. There is only pain there, it whispered. Go no further.
What is this Aidan to me?
Aidan’s hurt, I squeezed out, feeling like my throat, my brain was being shredded. The women came in the room and started humming.
They summoned me for you. To what purpose? I could hear the thinly concealed irritation there, a pulsing need to pull away, walk free of this place and its net of power, to run on the plains.
I…
The red eyed wolf smashing into my mates.
He…
His teeth digging into Aidan’s throat, thrashing around, doing his damn best to tear his life out.
From death comes regrowth, she said sagely, like I was supposed to make sense of that. And that was apparently it, as the wolf got to her feet, readying to leave.
Everything I’d been struggling to keep a lid on came rushing out at the sight of her feet moving.
My thought process was so breathtakingly selfish, it stunned me. Of course Aidan would get hurt trying to look after me. Of course some red eyed fucker of a wolf was pursuing me, ready to steal my child away, to run him through some kind of serial killer bootcamp. Of course Aidan’s blood was drying on my thigh, the red-eyed wolf’s blood on my teeth, making it feel like I’d been sucking copper coins. Of course we would have some kind of metaphysical ritual with magic giant wolves that spouted useless aphorisms.
The white wolf nodded to me, then turned.
“Wait! Wait….” My voice trailed away. My chest heaved as everything faded away, plonking me right back in the room where the guys and Doc Hobbes were rushing around as Aidan’s body fought to stay alive.
And was losing that battle. The tears streamed down my face as I walked through them to his side and saw those same damn staring eyes, all that was Aidan leaching out of them, growing steadily dull.
I’d thought I loved Aidan before, but it was a selfish, summer love of heat and sweetness. I’d wrapped him around me like a warm blanket, used him as
a shelter against the storm of my abuse, and made a nice little home there. And now that was being ripped away. As he tried to protect me, he’d been brought down, and now he needed me to step up and do as he had done for me—give him my strength, commit myself entirely to helping him, knowing I was probably going to fail. The greyness threatened to wrap around me again, insulate me, keep me away from what I knew was going to break me until he was gone.
Not gone, a tiny voice in my mind cried. Never that.
We’d only been together for such a short time, but an avalanche of memories of being with him flooded me. The feel of his hand in mine, taking it when I could bear it and then it never far out of his grip after that. The gentleness when he stroked the hair back from my face and placed a kiss on my forehead as he put containers of food on the table. His patience when he listened to Kade talk on and on about whichever cartoon he was obsessing about now, getting down on the floor and playing pew pew battles with him, much to Kade’s cries of delight. Of carrying him into bed and laying him down. Pulling his hair back into a ponytail as he worked at keeping the house clean. Cups of tea on the coffee table waiting for me. Arms around me, stroking my skin when I could tolerate its touch and then soothing my jangled nerves until they finally stilled.
Aidan was love. He’d grown up in a happy, well-adjusted house and it saturated him, and it was all he could do to just send it back out to those around him. And I couldn’t take that away from my son.
He’ll look after Kade, I told myself through ragged breaths. He’ll raise him well, help him to become a strong man in his own right, him and Peter. Renee’ll step in, be the mother. Fuck, her whole family would cluster around Kade, keep him safe from his fucking father.
