Animal Instinct

by Noelle N

  "Got it." I laughed and nodded at him. "Any other pieces of advice, O wise one?"

  Spike raised his eyebrows and thought for a moment. "Well – that going commando thing Adrian mentioned earlier wasn't completely off the bat," he mused at last, his lips tugging up in an impish grin. "We're werewolves. We shift a lot, get naked a lot, and it's all part and parcel of what we are. So you might want to get used to that."

  "Get used to the fact that Jed's sculpted like an Adonis or get used to the fact that you saying being naked a lot is the equivalent of having sex pretty much everywhere, and that includes the kitchen that you and Lorraine pretty much desecrated?"

  Spike flushed. "Oh, you caught that, huh?"

  "There were scratch marks on the counter where I prepare the food." I shook my head at him in faux-disappointment and pushed the door of the diner open, directing him towards the kitchen. "I expect to see the place scrubbed down and clean before Dimitri comes in and kills you himself."

  Spike laughed and easily caught the cloth that I tossed to him.

  * * *

  It turned out that the perimeter breach in Phobos was more serious than expected, because Jed and the rest didn't return. Not even after dinner, when the usual customers had came and left, and several other patrons had lingered around to wait up. A group of older werewolves were sitting in the booths that they usually occupied, chatting in hushed voices; while the younger ones like Harvie and Dion had marked out their territory by the counter and were playing some sort of card game that involved loud cheering every so often.

  Dimitri was more than aggravated by the noise and all but sneered every time they broke into a resounding bout of cheers.

  "Would you stop?" I shook my head at him in amusement when he shot another glare their way again. We'd pretty much closed shop by now and apart from keeping the coffee pot refilled, there was nothing else left to do while waiting around. Lorraine was counting the day's earnings by the cash register, but I was more than surprised that Dimitri had waited around, even though it was long past his working hours. "You're going to scare everyone off if you keep glaring like that."

  "And there I was thinking that my face would accomplish just that," he deadpanned, tossing the cloth over his shoulder and bracing his arms on the counter where we were leaning against, maintaining a fair distance from the younger ones.

  "I'm sorry for what I put you through," I murmured, fixing my gaze steadily on the counter and scratching out a bit of the surface where the paint had flaked off.

  I could feel his gaze on me for a fleeting moment before he cleared his throat. "Not your fault. You weren't the one who put that blade to my face," he intoned, albeit somewhat stiffly and it was clear that he wasn't used to receiving apologies from anyone, ever. "Besides, I'm used to people avoiding me anyway."

  "No one's avoiding you here – "

  "You're absolute shit at lying."

  " – well, fine, but only because you intimidate them. Lose that scowl. Smile. I'm telling you, if you went out into the city now looking all rugged and abrasive like that, you'd have no trouble at all getting a woman – "

  He shot me a disgusted glare. "It isn't bad enough that you're making me work in a kitchen, now you're trying to play cupid to fix my life?"

  "Don't you want to find your mate?" I stared at him quizzically. "I might be wrong, but I always thought that was kind of a big deal for werewolves."

  He glared at me for a moment longer before tossing the cloth back on the counter. "I'm not having this conversation with you."

  "Fair enough." I grinned, knowing better than to push, and gazed around at the diner. It had become a habit for me to take note of the number of customers left, and I blinked suddenly. "Where's Spike?"

  "What – "

  I held up a hand to stop Dimitri when he started to speak, and turned to Lorraine, who was chatting with a couple of her friends by the cash register. "Lorraine," I called, waiting for her to turn to me before asking, "where's Spike?"

  She raised her eyebrows in confusion before shrugging. "At the bank. Why?"

  I stilled. Call it instinct, call it intuition, but a deep, unsettling dread was spreading through me and I didn't like it at all, not one bit. "Is he at the bank, or did you just send him to the bank or – "

  "I sent him to deposit a cheque for some – " Lorraine trailed off and frowned. "What're you going on about, Luna?"

  "There's a curfew." I struggled to keep my voice from rising in pitch, but already, several people were glancing our way. The teenagers sitting by the counter had stopped talking, and Dimitri had straightened, bracing his arms on the counter behind me. "Jed set a curfew – you don't leave premises past ten. What time did you send him out?"

  She shot me another strange look. "About fifteen minutes ago. It takes awhile to get into the city, but honestly – "

  Reaching into the pocket of my shorts, I dredged out my cell and quickly dialled Jed's number. The call went right to voicemail and when I tried and failed to get through to Adrian's cell, I bit my lip to clamp down on the rising panic surging within me. Lorraine was still going on about how it was safe in the city, but I levelled her a firm look and said, "mind-link Jed."

  She blinked and laughed nervously. "Luna, don't you think you're overreacting just a little – "

  "There have been more perimeter breaches than we can count over the past few weeks and Bianca warned us to stay on the lookout," I returned evenly. "Mind-link Jed."

  "Bianca?" one of the older men I knew as Rowle scoffed, as he sauntered over with two of his friends and folded his arms on top of the counter separating us. "You still trust that bitch? For all we know, she might be the one responsible for the breaches and you're blindly trusting people like her and this piece of – "

  He'd directed his mocking words at Dimitri, but the latter moved so swiftly that he had Rowle pinned down against the counter, one hand twisted behind his back. "I'm sorry," Dimitri drawled, keeping a tight grip around the Rowle's throat, the other locked around the man's wrist to prevent him from escaping. "This piece of what? I didn't quite catch that."

  "Dimitri," I murmured, giving him a subtle shake of my head.

  Hesitation flickered in his eyes for a moment or two, but then he released the man, falling a step back and smirking mockingly when Rowle and his friends hastily backed away. By now, everyone in the diner was focused on the conversation at hand, and I fought to keep my cool in the midst of a tense situation without Jed.

  "Luna," Lorraine started again, shaking her head at me as she lifted her cup to take a drink. "You're worrying about nothing. Most of us head out at night even though Alpha placed the curfew and – "

  But before she could finish her sentence, I'd taken three strides forward to where Lorraine was standing with her friends, reaching up a hand to wrench the cup from her grasp and slamming it down on the counter. The water tipped over the sides, but I couldn't care less and met Lorraine's shocked gaze squarely.

  "I am your Luna," I said, my voice a deadly quiet in the stunned silence. "And you will listen to me and you will worry, not merely because I told you so, but because Spike, your mate, could easily be fighting for his life as we speak and none of us will ever forgive ourselves should something happen to him." Taking a quick step away from her, I turned to the group of teenagers, who were watching our exchange with wide-eyes and slacked jaws, and directed my gaze at Harvie. "Mind-link Jed."

  Harvie nodded rapidly and immediately focused on alerting Jed to the news. Lorraine was fuming silently, looking more than annoyed that I had pretty much rebuked her in public, and after exchanging several hushed whispers with her friends, the group of them headed home. So did several others, and before long, the diner had more or less cleared out – with the exception of Harvie and his group of friends, along with several older werewolves who insisted on staying to make sure that we were safe in the diner.

  I glanced over at Dimitri, who had been silent ever since my outburst but had stayed by my side t
hroughout. "You can go home, if you want."

  "It's fine." He dragged a hand through his hair, even though several strands of it fell stubbornly back to into his eyes and shook his head. "If Prometheus attacks, the fifteen other people in this diner are going to be more than useless and you're going to need someone stronger to fend them off."

  I smiled at him gratefully. "Thanks."

  Dimitri made a dismissive noise in response and leaned against the counter, watching the glass doors with the kind of alert glint in his eyes that I was so used to seeing from Jed. Constant vigilance, trust no one. The both of them seemed to have that in common – perhaps because of their upbringing or the way fate had played out in their lives.

  About ten minutes later, Dimitri suddenly straightened and placed a palm flat on the counter to lob over it swiftly. "They're back," he told me, his posture rigid as he strode towards the glass doors.

  The driveway outside was still dark, but I followed him curiously, the other members of the pack streaming out of the diner behind us. It wasn't until I saw the glinting headlights in the far distance that I realised Dimitri was right. Tipping back on the heels of my feet in anticipation, I held my breath and waited until Jed's car had pulled up into the driveway before I finally let out a sigh of relief.

  He climbed out of the car and, for a moment, he just stood there, gazing at me with an unreadable expression on his face. Everyone else had already begun heading towards the cars that pulled up along the driveway, one of the older women tearfully hugging her mate who'd returned from the journey. Dimitri had stepped aside the moment Jed began to stride towards me; and Jed's pace was rapid, still that shade of undefined emotion on his features.

  "Jed," I breathed, watching him with wide, wary eyes and feeling a tight coil, not of anticipation, but of dread suddenly seize me. "What – "

  But I trailed off when I caught a glimpse of Adrian over his shoulder. Saw him prop the hood of Lance's car open. Heard a terrified wail somewhere in the distance. Then the hood slammed shut as Brutus and Adrian carefully lugged out a body bag, placing it gently down on the sidewalk as more frightened whispers and hushed cries seeped into the silence.

  And suddenly, it wasn't just a tight coil of dread but one that spiralled, flayed, scorched every which way until I felt nothing but a painful, painful emptiness that I'd felt so many times before, but could never, ever get used to.

  "Quinn."

  My eyes flickered up to Jed's when he said my name in a voice that sounded so infinitely broken it almost felt like a part of him had died. And when I met his gaze, I saw that same emptiness reflected right back, one that he too was familiar with but had never and would never stop hurting because of it.

  He dragged in a deep, shuddering breath that seemed to tear him apart from within and said the words I knew would change everything for good. "I'm so sorry."

  23

  SPIKE

  Spike was gone.

  And nothing, nothing could bring him back. I didn't want to hear the specificities or the circumstances surrounding his death; all I knew was that he was gone. He was one of Jed's best friends. He was Lorraine's mate. If he and Lorraine married, he'd be Lance's brother-in-law. He was the only one who could keep Adrian from getting into trouble. He was the stabiliser, the one who balanced off Adrian's and Lance's craziness, the one who made sense when most things didn't.

  And he was my Beta; if a Luna could have a Beta, then he was mine, and he was the person I trusted the most after Jed. He was the one person who had once been human; unknowingly, he'd linked me back to that world, made me never forget it, made me miss it while looking forward to the new one I shared with Jed. He reminded me how different we were, showed me how to be more like them, and he was that and a million other things, wonderful things I knew and could never, ever know because that was all going to be in the future and he was the past no matter how much I wanted him to stay in the present. Not Spike is but Spike was and Spike was gone now.

  Spike was gone now and he was never, ever coming back.

  I was sobbing before I knew it, pressing the back of my hand to stifle my sobs and staring in the bathroom mirror and seeing the puffy-faced, red-eyed absolute mess that stared back. A sudden thud against the bathroom door made me glance up, sobs lodged in my throat as I sniffled again and crossed the threshold to open the door.

  Amidst a haze of tears, I saw Jed's wolf form staring back at me through sombre green eyes. "I thought you were going out for a run," I murmured, instinctively reaching down to card my fingers through his soft, black fur.

  Because it had been what I'd expected him to do. After walking me back home and making sure I was safe in my room, he'd left immediately and I'd heard the back door slam shut with a force that he seldom showed in front of me. I figured that going out, at least for awhile, was what he wanted to do, to be far away from everything here that reminded him of Spike.

  But he was here now, unexpectedly, and I found myself slowly settling down onto the bathroom mat as he curled up next to me, the tip of his nose pressing briefly against my cheek to catch the stray tear that trickled down. He let out a quiet whine, shifting closer when I began to cry harder, because with him, it was just so easy to break down, just as he had with me before, just as I imagined I always would.

  No defences. Nothing but us, just here, vulnerable together.

  "He's gone." My voice caught in a choked sob and I buried my face into his fur, clutching my arms tightly around his neck. "He's gone, he's gone, he's gone. And I-I never even said goodbye. I didn't even – if I'd realised that he'd left, just one minute earlier, I would – " I trailed off brokenly. There were a million and one should-haves here – if I'd noticed earlier, if Lorraine hadn't let him go, if Jed and Adrian and the others had found him earlier, and it went on and on and on. The blame game was endless and maybe we were all to blame, or maybe none of us were to blame and these things just happened and all we could do was drown in the aftermath. I dragged in a haphazard breath and let out an equally broken one and closed my eyes. "Spike's gone."

  We stayed there for what seemed like hours on end. Until I felt numbed all over and the tears had dried on my cheeks and I was exhausted by the sheer amount of grief endured over the course of a single night. Jed had stayed motionless throughout, and I felt nothing but his steady, collective breaths and the warm heat of his body; but the moment I began to nod off, he slowly climbed to his feet and disappeared before I could even register what he was doing.

  Blankly, I located my towel strewn on the floor and tossed it into the hamper. I was just about to get up when Jed came striding back in, no longer in wolf form. It was clear that he'd left just to shift back and put on an arbitrary pair of sweatpants, and he stepped close, sliding his arms around my waist and under my legs to scoop me up. I vaguely registered that he was walking us out of the bathroom, and I soon felt the soft sheets under my back as he laid me gently down onto my bed.

  The room was dimmed with only the bedside lamp switched on, and when I gazed up at him, his green eyes were dull and empty, lifeless, like all the fire in them had been extinguished along with Spike when he died. But it wasn't until I felt him unwind his arms from under my waist and legs that I suddenly, acutely, felt the loss of his warmth, the loss of him and I instinctively tightened my grip around his neck.

  "Don't leave me," I pleaded, painfully aware of how frightened I sounded, but embarrassment was the last thing on my mind at a time like this.

  Jed stilled, bracing his arms on the duvet as he hovered above me, the expression on his face softening just fractionally. He nodded, and waited for me to ease aside on the bed before climbing in himself, turning on his side so that he was facing me. I didn't hesitate to close the distance between us, curling up against his bare chest with my feet tucked between both of his. Somewhere at the back of my mind, it occurred to me that I was breaching territories, treading on new waters with this sudden closeness, but it didn't quite register until we were this close.


  And, tentatively, I felt Jed's strong arms come around me after a second or two, caging me in and pulling me against his chest so that there was barely a sliver of a space between us. He seemed to cling to me as tightly as I was clinging to him, fingers tangling through the locks of my hair and he shifted slightly, leaning down to brush his lips tenderly against my forehead.

  "Never," he promised, his voice barely a whisper in the silence.

  * * *

  Spike's funeral was unlike any I'd ever seen before, if only because it seemed so ritualistic and strange compared to the ones I saw back in the human world. It was familiar, at first – Jed oversaw the whole service as I stood by his side and Adrian standing on his other, Lance several feet away holding a distraught Lorraine who couldn't stop sobbing throughout. Brutus, Giles and two other guys carried Spike's casket to the front of the square.

  Then Adrian said some words – telling everyone how Spike had been found several miles from the city. He'd been ambushed in his car and he didn't even have the chance to shift. He didn't stand a chance against the rogues from Prometheus. Some people came forward to give eulogies and others came forward to place flowers while a red-eyed Lance weakly joked about how Spike would've completely hated it had he still been alive.

  Jed was silent throughout, and I didn't think anyone else noticed the way he was barely keeping himself together. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were stoically, emotionlessly fixed on where Spike lay in the casket and he didn't move throughout the whole service.

  And I didn't hold his hand or touch him or even move closer to him because, sometimes, comforting gestures like these weren't necessary. Not yet. Not when he was already struggling to keep from breaking down, and breaking down in front of all of Titan was the last thing I knew Jed wanted to do.

  He was the Alpha, after all, and you had to be strong when everyone else couldn't be.