by Elle Lincoln
I am not a fucking puppy. I’m a goddess given werewolf and I’m a badass in my own right. Mostly. If given the chance. But my stupid older brother went ahead and fucked that to all hell.
“Alright. Here is what will happen. We will get your aggression out so you aren’t a brooding asshole.” Who the fuck is he to give me any sort of talk?
Screw that, if I want to brood, I’m going to brood. I sneer at him.
The next moment I’m on my ass in the dirt. My jaw aches, my head hurts, and there’s blood trickling out of my nose. I didn’t even see him move. I didn’t feel him move. And my senses are heightened more than any other species.
“What the fuck are you?” I grind out, while stretching my jaw.
He crouches before me, offering a hand. “Fight. And maybe I’ll tell you.”
Hell no. I have some self-preservation. He could kill me with just a look. I get that now. There is no way I want to cross this guy. The flicker of respect ignites then smothers out when I remind myself he just freaking hit me.
“Come on.” He wiggles his outstretched hand, daring me to take it.
I slap mine into his meaty palm and I’m yanked up in a disorienting way that leaves me unbalanced.
“Hit me.” His lips twitch in amusement.
“Fine.” This is just enough to piss me the hell off.
I’m looking for somewhere to hit him, anywhere that won’t break my damn hand, but it’s no use. He’s solid muscle all over. And I swear he’s growing. Thickening. Just who the hell did Killian ship me off to?
I give up and clench my fist and take a swing at his bicep.
I miss. Of course. Because he is too damn fast. No one that size should be that damn fast.
Before I can even turn around and try again, he swipes my feet out from under me and I’m on my back again in the damp grass.
“What are you, an omega?” he taunts.
Yes. I am. I haven’t gotten the chance to be anything but an omega. Shame reddens my face.
Laughter taunts me as another voice interjects into my abuse and humiliation. I decide to just lie here on the earth.
“Oomph, get up kid. I’ll have a go at cha if that’s what ye be needin’.” It isn’t what I need, not at all. I peer up at the redhead, his face jovial and his cheeks flush. At least I’m bigger than this one.
“Have at him, Patrick.” I sit up and watch Balor move to the side.
Patrick extends his hand down at me. This time I take it without thought and try to get one in before anything else can go wrong. I take a swing at his belly. He’s been drinking nonstop since I met him. Surely he is too drunk to fight.
He only laughs and spins out of the way.
I growl. “What the hell?”
“Look, boy. We need yer nose. Not yer muscles. But those will come in handy as well, so best get used to sparring with us old beasts.” He’s got to be the craziest fucker I know, besides the other crazy fucker standing off to the side.
I’m out of my league with these guys. Why wouldn’t Killian send someone older, wiser than me? I grip my hair in frustration. This day is only getting worse.
“What are you even?” I’m losing my control. Fur splits my skin and my snarl becomes something else. Something darker and less human. If I don’t get myself under control soon, I’ll shift, and without an alpha I’m the pup these assholes refer to me as.
I’m nothing more than a child to them. If I lose control, I prove that.
A door slams and the other two men walk out. I can’t look at them for too long because my neck is prickling. Something sits along the tree line. My wolf begs to break free and give chase. To feel the thrill of the hunt and the wind drifting through the coarse hairs of my fur. I’m losing it. Everything in me is straying to a baser need, less complicated and easier. No sorrow or fear, worry or hatred. Just me and the forest. I long to be free.
I’m slipping.
My head explodes and darkness tunnels my vision. My eyes roll to the back of my head and the sweet bliss of losing consciousness takes over. No feeling, no thought, just nothing. But it’s too good to be true. It always is as the pain takes over and my head feels too big for my body to carry.
I’m on my back. Again. I’m really hating this position. All four guys are staring down at me with grim expressions on their faces. I know what they see. The foolish kid who has no control. I’m the bottom of the totem pole. Never given the chance to move up and become something more.
Emotion chokes in my throat. I just want to fit in. Somewhere. Anywhere. I had a home. Dammit, I had a home that we were building, my brother and I.
“Come on.” The one with curly hair reaches his hand down to me. His sea green eyes hold warmth and extreme patience. Patience I don’t deserve. I extend my hand one last time because I’ve had it. Shame burns my face once more.
As soon as I’m on my feet, I walk away from them and enter the tree line. I just need to get the fuck away. I’m still partially naked, wearing only this damn kilt. Who the fuck even wears kilts anymore? Besides the brute behind me? No one, that’s who.
My bare feet hit the littered forest floor. Twigs snap under them, and rocks dig into my flesh and cut the skin like a dull knife. The pain brings me back to earth. Back into my body and the reasons I’m here.
“Are you always this volatile?” Is it too much to ask that they leave me the fuck alone? I peek over my shoulder at the one with a black mohawk who’s talking. I don’t know what the hell to tell him, so I don’t.
Especially not when I see that all of them have followed me into the woods, and they’ve just been silently stalking me. “What the hell is this?” What are they getting at? Why follow me?
“Seems to me like ye could use some stalkin’,” Patrick replies, his arms crossed and his muscles bulge, drawing my eyes. I’m well aware these guys could kill me in an instant if they didn’t need me so bad, or rather my freaking nose.
I’m feeling used.
“Well, I don’t, okay?” I turn back around, flinging branches out of my way and stomping down hard on the forest floor. Each spike of pain soothes me.
“Seems I was onto something when I hit ya.” That deep, rumbling voice belongs to Balor. I don’t bother looking back.
I also don’t worry about agreeing. These assholes are too observant.
“Why are you following me?” I punctuate my words with a heavy sigh, making sure they know how I feel about this. But how do I feel?
“Ye lost a lot.” Patrick’s voice is soft, empathetic.
Why are they being nice to me? This feels like a trap.
“We’ve all been there,” Mac continues the train of thought.
But it isn’t what I want to hear. Not at all. I’m angry inside and it’s festering like a rotten wound. I spin on them and their faces are nothing but completely understanding. “No, you haven’t! I was just getting my life back! I was just finding my place. To learn and be apart of a real pack. To have a family. Sure, I’ve known Bette for years but she didn’t remember me. She had no clue who I was, even as a human. I’ve lost my brother.” I spit the word, making sure they know how I feel about that bullshit too. Because that is exactly what it is, bullshit. “Now, I’m stuck here with you four. I just want… I want.”
A life.
“You don’t know what they made me do.” My voice chokes, the sounds are garbled, and I don’t know if they even understand what I’m saying to them. I don’t even understand.
A long moment passes. The forest envelops me in her warm embrace and I fall into it. My knees hit the dirt and I let my hands sink in, feeling each particle and letting the emotion flee me as she eases my soul. My throat aches and my heart burns with pain.
I’m nothing. Not anymore.
Then their feet surround me. Their forms shadow mine. Each of them moves slowly so they don’t spook me like a scared doe.
“We’ve all been there.” Mac holds up his hands, and before I can even protest, words are flying from his mout
h. He’s sitting to my left. They’ve formed a wall around me. Some standing with arms crossed, deep in thought, others sitting on logs or ground . “I once lost an entire species because I was a young fool. My children.” He rubs his chest like he’s feeling that ache all over again. His eyes appear haunted and lost, a reflection of my soul.
I wish I had paid more attention when they were introducing themselves to Willa now. I’d be a fool to ask him who is he. What he is.
Casseus has a small smirk on his face as he watches the emotions on Mac’s. Then he settles those eerie black eyes on me and explains, “Bette thinks I was a pirate. It’s better she keeps to that fiction. Because the man I was, wasn’t a man at all. I killed to feed my brothers, my sisters. Caught in a storm of crusades. We all play the game. Sometimes we suffer.”
“What happened to your siblings?” Longing for my own spears through my chest.
He just shakes his head and looks off. His nonanswer is enough.
“I’m the last of me kind.” I look over to Patrick sitting on my right. His body is seated on a log as he holds some odd looking creature in his hands. “All because of these little fuckers.”
“What is that?” I don’t like the way it’s eyeing me with intelligence. It looks like a praying mantis, but the colors are wrong. I’ve never seen one so brightly green or that size before. I sniff the air and realize that’s what set me off to begin with. But all the fight has left my body now. All I can do is watch him pet the creature.
“This is an elemental.” The fondness for the creatures is evident on his face. “They are no fairy-tale creatures, but pure magic.”
“Why is it a bug?” Can’t say I’m impressed, but he’s telling me something important so I listen and keep my mouth shut.
“Why is anything what it is? Magic makes rules unto itself. You do well to never touch one.” He looks me in the eye with a seriousness I can only recall my mother relaying to me before her death. “I lost everything for these creatures. I am who I am because of them. Know this, boy, you aren’t the only one who has a story.”
Phlegm becomes lodged in my throat and I can do nothing else but look away. I don’t want to know why he can touch the damn thing and I can’t.
“My story is darker than any shadow.” Balor's voice is strained. Like he would rather do anything else but share right now in our little powwow. “You can learn it over time. But realize we are all broken in some way and that is what has made us the men we are. You have two choices, Logan.”
I nod, my attention stuck to him.
“You either run like a coward and allow fate to swallow you whole. Or you get up, walk back into that cabin, and become the man you want to be. We are here to help guide you, but you alone hold that choice.”
With those words, they all walk away. Leaving me alone in the woods. I sit, for I don’t know how long, listening to the forest speak, and watching those creatures pop in and out of existence. I mull over their words until finally, I get up and walk back to the cabin.
Chapter 11
Bette
Bourbon and Crickets
I watched in silence through the blinds as all the guys take off into the woods, following Logan. My mind is still stuck on the wolf, his brother, and our history. It’s funny how some things come around again. Setting your life off-kilter.
I can’t help but wonder if something set these events into motion long ago. Is it coincidental that Logan and I knew each other as children? Is it just serendipitous?
I pull away from the window. It’s nearly early evening, the sky having faded from brilliance into shadows and darkness. Grandma has already gone to bed after setting out towels and extra toiletries. The guys will be squished into two rooms, but at least it’s warm and there are blankets.
I grab the bourbon and a glass, and head out onto the back porch. As the door glides open soundlessly, the crisp evening air cools my senses. It’s almost too cool to be out here without a jacket. I peek back in and grab a blanket. A plush, grey, furry one that I can wrap myself up in., which I do, and settle into a rocker.
I pour the rich amber liquid into a tumbler and sit back.
It’s the first time I’ve been alone in a while. A small bit of anxiousness flares inside me at that fact. I doubt the guys would have left me alone if it wasn’t safe. Or whatever they needed to talk to Logan about was just that important. His anger radiates from him, permeating the air like thick humidity. Perhaps they can help him through it. One can only hope.
I listen as the night comes alive and crickets sing their song. I hate looking at the bastards, but I love listening to them. Their song soothes something inside of me that remembers rocking here with my mom, just the two of us as the silence crept in around us.
I was never afraid though, not while she was there to pacify me. I close my eyes and inhale, and the memory of her perfume haunts my senses with her ghost. Her love threatens to strangle me across time. The potency of it is almost too much to acknowledge right here. Right now.
“What thoughts drift behind those eyes?”
I startle from my memories, blinking away the tears before they fall, but I am too late. My movement allows one lone pearl to run a rivulet down my face. I cautiously move away as Morrigan leans in, wiping the bead away. Or rather, capturing it, only to study the droplet as she sits back in the adjacent rocker.
“So much emotion sits within.” Her bloodred lips part, and her tongue darts out to lick their plush surface. I wonder for a moment if she will lick my teardrop, but instead her eyes close and her body sways. Long, dark hair cascades over her shoulders then to the side as she loses herself in the moment. “Your mom.” She inhales deeply. “So much love there.”
“Are you… Did you just steal a memory?” I lean forward, feeling as though she pilfered a piece of me, but she merely viewed it.
“No. Just watching it. Feeling it.” Then she licks it and I just shake my head. “In time, those memories will fade.” She leans back, dismissing the entire ordeal.
I’m not quite there yet. I don’t want to lose who I was. I don’t want to lose the things that make me, me and become this cold, unyielding person. Except I think protesting that will only result in dismissal, again. I’ll let her think what she needs to. Picking my battles and all that.
I look back out across the valley below. “Morrigan, why are you here?”
“There are things that need to be satisfied.” I dare a glance over at her. Her dark eyes watch the scenery below in cold calculation, and her head cocks to one side as birds dart in and out of the canopy below. I wonder what she sees there that I don’t.
Then again, I don’t want to know how she sees the world if she is a soothsayer as the guys say.
“We have a plan,” I assure her, odd that I’m comforting this ancient being. “Met your granddaughter.”
I watch her carefully, but she doesn’t even flinch at the mention of Morgana. Nothing, no tell, no twitch of a muscle. It’s disconcerting and makes me wonder how cold she really is inside. Or perhaps just lost.
Where do feelings go when you have experienced every single one over the years? Do you still feel just as much as the day you were born, or does everything become grey and muted? Discolored from the world in which the humans thrive.
We are not that different, the humans and us. If only the old ones didn’t lose their emotions. Speaking of. “How is your search going for the other gods?”
“Foolish idiots.” Odd that this is what lights a fire under her ass. I hide my smirk behind my glass of bourbon. “Daghda is missing. Captured by the Fae long ago. I believe he is still in the Realm but how, I don’t know, I cannot see.”
“Who is Daghda?” Damn, I hope I pronounced that right.
Her smile lights up her face and I can’t help but wonder at the story there. It’s odd seeing happiness tilt her lips into a real smile. “An old man.” She laughs at that. “A good man. Always fought for the right reasons. We need him and I cannot find him.”
“It seems one has set up shop up north. I cannot get close to him to even know which of my many brethren he is.” She practically growls the words, her annoyance evident in the wrinkles that line her forehead. “I only know he is a he because of his son. Who still refused to speak. I have my suspicions though.”
“So, no help there?” I wince at the look of annoyance on her face, again, but this time aimed at me.
“No. He’s playing as a crime lord.” She spits the words.
I scrunch up my face, understanding her predicament. Though, perhaps a crime lord would be helpful.
“No.” I didn’t even voice my thought.
“That’s creepy.”
“Your question was written on your face.” She sighs heavily. “Without Daghda, the others will not band together. They will stay hidden like scavengers. Allowing this farce.”
“Do you know what’s happening yet?” I wonder if she knows the Realm is dying.
“The Realm is dying.” Either she knew or she picked it out of my head.
“What happens if it dies?” I down the rest of my bourbon, shuddering at the burn, and fearing her words.
“At the creation of this world, her mirror was also created, overlaying on top of each other. Humans pollute this world, but the Fae pollute the Realm. It is a cycle of death. But without rebirth, it becomes a true death.” Her words are hardly above a whisper and her eyes once again glaze over, trailing far away.
It isn’t an answer, not really. “What does that mean?”
“If two halves of a whole die, they will become one to survive.” That… isn’t what she just said.
“I thought you just said they will die.”
“I said, without rebirth it becomes a true death,” she corrects me. “Merging will lead to a rebirth.
