Instinctual

Chapter 12

Marcus felt comfortable and warm in a way that went beyond skin-deep, and for a moment he burrowed deeper into blankets and pillows, not realizing that they didn’t smell like him.  That startled him a little bit, but only enough to half-open his eyes, because the scent literally wrapped all around him seemed to have taken all of his fear, wariness, and panic and spirited it all somewhere far away.  Lying there and still breathing slowly, each blink slow and torpid, Marcus belatedly recognized the most prevalent scent as belonging to Declan – although he was smelling Liz, too, and Kobi more faintly. In fact, his feet were unexpectedly warm, and when he unconsciously stretched a leg out to seek that heat, he felt something solid.  That finally made Marcus’s head jerk up, looking towards the foot of the bed and finding himself looking at a russet-furred she-wolf that could only be Liz.  Her ears were turned towards the door, however, and Marcus came the rest of the way awake with an almost painful snap as Liz transformed suddenly back to a human girl again. 

“Come on, Marcus, you’ve got to wake up, sweetie,” she turned on her knees to say to him, only then realizing that he was awake – or, at least, mostly awake. His brain stubbornly wanted to cling to the sensations of safety that came with dozing on what was undoubtedly Declan’s bed, but the rest of Marcus’s common-sense was screaming for just the opposite, which was causing something of a mutiny in his head. The more he woke up, the more he remembered who he was, and that this wasn’t his pack.  He jumped a little as Liz’s hands came into contact with his upper arms, and she immediately pulled back with an unaccountably sad look flicking across her face. 

Then she tipped her head and looked off at nothing for a moment, a sure-fire indicator that someone was communicating with her telepathically, and Marcus felt an unexpected spark of jealousy flare up before burning out again. Even as the feeling faded, it left behind a little burn in his soul that he knew would be slow to heal.

“Sorry to wake you up, Marcus, but Declan’s on his way back.” Perhaps seeing something on the Omega’s expression, Liz hurried to reassure, “It’s nothing bad – not for you, at least.  How about we got to the kitchen and grab some food, okay?”

Liz didn’t touch him this time, but as she slipped off the bed and Marcus followed, he saw her eyes slide to his arm.  The sleeve of his borrowed shirt had ridden up in his sleep, he realized, revealing pale scars.  He quickly pushed the sleeve back down, but made no other comment, aware that most of the Fen pack had already seen all the scars he owned anyway.  There was a rebellious little impulse to say he wasn’t hungry, just to exercise his right to say no, and prove (if only to himself) that he still had some control over his life.  The grumbling in his stomach was more insistent, however, and he ended up simply nodding, “Sure.  Sounds great.”

The smile he got in return was a little bit distracted, making Marcus itch to ask what exactly was going on, but when he saw Kobi outside the bedroom door, he closed his mouth again.  The two Betas were radiating a sort of nervous energy that Marcus didn’t know how to interpret, but at least it didn’t seem directed at him. “Marcus and I are going to make sandwiches,” Liz murmured to her boyfriend, stroking a hand down his bicep. Kobi’s muscles were subtly taught where he had his arms folded, and his eyes were looking off deeper into the house, where a tentative sniff from Marcus revealed Clarissa and Rob to be. Just the reminder of them made the Omega shiver, but then Liz backed up to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll join you guys, if that’s all right,” Kobi decided, and while Liz brightly accepted his company, Marcus could sense that her bright attitude was strained.  Still, the presence of the Betas on either side of him balanced out the sense of impending danger, because after their talk in the back of the truck…  Remembering how he’d broken down and given up his tale so easily, revealing a story that he’d been holding so close for years, Marcus blushed a humiliated red. At the same time, however, he felt something relax in his chest, like a wound that was finally, finally, sealing up just the tiniest bit.  It was as if something inside of him had been broken horribly and had healed crookedly, but Declan had been the one to break the bone again back in the hunting cabin – a painful event full of fear, tears, and complete resignation that also had allowed the healing to start again.  Maybe that was why telling his story the second time had been easier.

That, and he’d been plied with food.  The reminder made Marcus want to groan in embarrassment, but even now he was about to be coaxed into acting companionable again with the promise of filling his stomach, so he just gave up.  He was starving still, and there was no point in denying it even as he reflexively caught the loaf of bread Liz tossed at him.  She herself grinned and began digging around in the fridge for mayonnaise. Kobi, who always looked so large compared to her, bent carefully around her so that he could quickly and deftly retrieve a container of sliced meat, knowing exactly what he wanted and where it was, while Liz rummaged more haphazardly.  The broad-shouldered Beta had an inexplicable ability to down-play his size somehow, and Marcus’s spine barely even tensed when he found himself standing next to Kobi at the kitchen counter, putting together the rudimentary components of a quick meal.  Liz provided idle chatter in the background that only felt a little bit forced, and Kobi answered in kind, his words brief and quiet but also steady and friendly. He didn’t touch Marcus unnecessarily, and somehow that seemed to be the greatest gift of all, because the Omega was starting to remember falling asleep against the larger man. It was all very fuzzy, emotions and tears fogging up the memory, but Marcus desperately hoped that either it was all a dream, or no one would bring it up if it really had happened.

He didn’t quite dare ask how he’d made it from the back of the truck to Declan Fen’s bed. 

Marcus’s sense of smell was acting up a bit by the time the three of them sat down at the table to eat, but it wasn’t bad enough for him to put down his food. The combined scents of cheese, ham, mayonnaise, and bread all buffeted his nose a bit, but he stubbornly kept eating until another scent caused him to lift his head.

“What is it, Marcus?” Liz asked, putting down her half-eaten sandwich, too. She and Kobi were eating more slowly, and with a distracted air that said it was mostly a reflex that had nothing to do with hunger, like Marcus’s eating did. 

“Declan… Fen is coming back,” he said, identifying the smell instantly, although this time the amber-and-cedar scent of him was tangled up in something toxic, a burning, acrid smell that Marcus didn’t need to think on much to know was anger.  He felt his breathing pick up a bit, heart tightening, although he forced himself to stay calm as he asked tightly, “What’s going on?  He’s pissed.”

Both Liz and Kobi startled a bit, but their own attempts to smell what Marcus was picking up were in vain.  “You can smell that?” Kobi finally asked, clearly surprised. 

Marcus just nodded.  He remembered explaining to Liz and Kobi how his senses were slowly degrading, like wires being stripped of their protective coatings, but he didn’t really want to go into detail now. 

With no more information forthcoming and Marcus’s question still hanging in the air, Kobi and Liz exchanged torn looks.  Marcus huffed a little breath of frustration out of his nose before finally breaking the silence himself, “Look, if he’s coming in hot under the collar, I don’t want to be here.  I shouldn’t be here.”

“Marcus, Declan isn’t going to hurt you,” Kobi said back with a fervor that surprised Marcus – a surprise that expanded into wide-eyed shock when Kobi looked him in the eye and went on, “Declan’s coming back to banish Clarissa and Rob.”

~^~

Marcus’s throat was dry and the sandwich he’d eaten was sitting like a lump of lead in his stomach.  He couldn’t honestly say if he was more shell-shocked, disbelieving, or scared out of his mind, but most of those feelings converted to a morbid sort of awe when Declan finally reached the house and stalked in the door.  ‘Stalked’ was definitely the right word, too, or ‘prowled’ – some verb that described predatory motions.  Declan was fully human, but somehow there was still something wolfish clinging to him, making his eyes seem sharper and his posture more intimidating. The Alpha didn’t even spare a glance for Liz, Kobi, and Marcus (who were now standing at the edge of the kitchen, too tense and watchful to eat) but instead turned his flowing, padding footsteps towards the wing of the house where Rob and Clarissa were still confined. The utter intentness in Declan made Marcus shiver, and he was wordlessly glad that those gold-brown eyes hadn’t turned his way. 

‘He’s going to banish them. Members of his own pack, whom he’s probably known for years,’ Marcus repeated to himself numbly, barely believing it, ‘I was wrong.  He’s not choosing them over me.’

There was a bit of a verbal scuffle, and Marcus chose not to listen to it too closely – although he flinched and pulled back when he felt commands ripple through the air, right out of Declan’s throat.  Kobi’s hand caught him and kept him from tripping on himself, his broad hand warm on Marcus’s right shoulder-blade even as Liz cast Marcus a sympathetic look as she shifted closer to him.  The Alpha’s orders must have been for silence, but they must have also been fairly specific, because when Declan returned to the living room with a mute Clarissa and Rob in tow, Marcus didn’t feel the telltale tightening of his own throat that would have come with such a command.

Declan’s expression was stormy, and as foreboding as thunderheads rolling in, but after merely meeting Kobi and Liz’s eyes – and perhaps communicating telepathically, because Marcus thought he felt a faint buzzing in his head, even if he couldn’t pick out words – he turned his back on them to face the two disgraced pack-members.  Declan was standing firmly in the center of them all, physically embodying the divide that had been created.  “You know I’m angry,” he said, but in a voice so calm that it barely sounded angry at all.

Face purpling with far more obvious fury, Rob opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a choked puff of air.  It was strangely satisfying to see, even as Marcus felt a chill at the memory of the Beta commanding him into stillness. 

“You also know what you’ve done.  Rob, I went back to Marcus’s apartment – I could smell you all over it. This is your last chance to give me a good reason as to why that is,” Declan went on, still with that terrifying calmness, finally allowing, “You can speak.”

Now that he’d been given the chance, Rob didn’t seem able to find the words. That, more than anything, no doubt sealed his guilt, even before his expression morphed into something trapped and furious.  “I did what I had to do!” he exploded.

The wrath in that sentence had Marcus’s tensing, hands coiling into fists, but to Declan, it was nothing but a puff of meaningless air – he didn’t budge. If Marcus weren’t still smelling that burnt-forest smell off him, he’d think that the Alpha wasn’t angry at all anymore.  “Fine,” the Alpha said levelly, “Then I’ll just do what I have to do.”  With nothing more than that, he turned to his pack’s Omega, “Aunt Clarissa.”

The command of silence had apparently be rescinded from both of them, because the older woman – with a brief flick of her shrewd eyes over Declan’s shoulder, right to Marcus – began speaking without further prompting, “This isn’t like you, Declan.”

“I rather think it is.  You’re the one who’s not acting like the aunt I knew.”

It was eerie, hearing two people talking in such hauntingly flat, calm voices, soothing and steady as mountain lakes.  Somehow, it was worse than if they’d been screaming at one another, or tangled in a mess of claws and fangs, because at least that would have been expected – normal.  It was like watching lightning scrape the ground right in front of you but never hearing any thunder.

Meeting her nephew’s eyes levelly, Clarissa went on, unperturbed, “How much time have you been spending with him?  With the Omega?”

That finally got through Declan’s armor, and his shoulders twitched. “Enough to hear the truth from him.”

“But you can’t know that,” Clarissa shook her head, and Marcus felt his stomach sinking to the level of his heels, “You can’t tell if he’s speaking the truth, Declan, no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise.”

The muscles of Declan’s back were tautening beneath his shirt, visible to those standing behind him.  “That doesn’t change what you did, or make it right.”

Clarissa didn’t even bat an eye.  “His powers are out of control, Declan.  I don’t know what he’s convinced you of, or what you convinced yourself of, but he’s degrading slowly.”  Marcus flinched, beginning to feel panic rising like water around him; soon it would be up to his neck and drowning him.  There was a look of such pity and sadness on Clarissa’s face that Marcus made a choked little noise.  “I can see now, Declan, that you want to keep him,” Clarissa went on, and her eyes slid once again past her nephew to the other Omega standing stiffly across the room. Her gaze seemed sympathetic, but with a flat sort of sheen like a dead thing, or a reptile – a cold marble beneath a pretty gloss.  “But whatever he’s making you feel now-” She stressed the word, making it something insinuating, something ugly, and for no reason at all, Marcus suddenly felt… dirty.  His hands unclenched but his shoulders rose even as the sense that he’d done something deeply and morally wrong continued to grow.  “-It won’t last.  His abilities to manipulate emotions are caught up in the same downward spiral that his natural senses are, and he won’t last much longer.  I’d guess a few months, at the most.  Really, Declan, what I was trying to do was a mercy, by putting him out of his misery.  It will only get worse.”

It was at this point that Marcus realized that her words were poison. She was the one manipulating emotions, even as she directed the attention to him.  Marcus felt his own helplessness and frustration condense into anger, but in the second that he pushed aside his hesitancy and fear – and opened his mouth to speak – Clarissa noticed, and suddenly her gaze sharpened.

The subtle fog of emotions she was projecting  became a torrent, even worse than what she’d hit him with out in the woods, with only the trees for company.  It was a testament to Clarissa’s skills that no one else in the room seemed to feel anything, but suddenly Marcus was being speared through with terror, fear, loss, hopelessnessdreadterrorlonelinessRAGE.

The last one was his.  Marcus’s defenses had cracked and fallen beneath the onslaught of the older Omega, but hadn’t been snuffed completely, his empathy rallying just enough for one strike – like the death-throws of a wounded prey-animal.  Marcus was barely aware of hearing himself scream, or of his knees cracking hard against the floor as he collapsed.  The emotions were blotting out everything, as if he were at the heart of the sun, and his own emotional backlash was a blind throw. He only knew that it had worked when Clarissa’s emotional onslaught dissipated, leaving him crumpled on the floor, deaf to all noises but the rough sounds of his own lungs inhaling and exhaling.  It sounded ragged; everything else sounded muffled, like his ears were stopped up. His other senses were no better, and it took a moment for Marcus to realize that it was his mind as a whole that was doing this.  The shock of the attack had driven him inside of himself, and it was incredibly unsettling to realize this even while his thoughts stirred sluggishly. 

Somewhere in there, he felt afraid that he’d broken something – not something physical, although he could have done that too when he had fallen, but something less tangible in the drawn-out seconds that it took for his senses to reconnect with his brain again.  Slowly, he became aware of a hand on his shoulder, shaking him, while another cupped his skull, which ached.  He thought he heard raised voices, and a second later knew that he smelled bright and brilliant fury, and had a dazed moment where he wondered if he’d caused that. He hadn’t managed to use his Omega powers properly in what felt like forever, and even before then, he’d never been trained enough to do anything but calm a room.  As he finally cracked his eyes open to find himself staring up at Declan’s worried, handsome face, Marcus was further confused – because while the Alpha did smell a bit angry, it wasn’t him who was screaming…

“You b***h! You did that!  You spineless, amoral snake,” Liz’s ranting voice sounded vicious, and Marcus tried to turn his head to look at what was going on, but the back of his skull sent a poignant throb right into his back-teeth and down to his neck.  He winced and stopped trying to move about, even as the heat of Declan’s hand sunk further into his scalp from where the Alpha’s fingers were buried in his hair. “Do you seriously not have any shame? Or do you think we’re stupid? Did you seriously think you could hurt him like that and no one would notice?”

Mind still foggy, Marcus was still pretty sure that Clarissa’s plan had been to blame Marcus’s sudden collapse as some sort of fit that had nothing to do with her, but apparently that plan had gone up in flames. Belatedly, Marcus realized that part of this might actually be his fault, because Liz was shockingly angry, and if Clarissa was trying to use her powers to calm the Beta down, it wasn’t working. Marcus tried to twist around on the floor again to see what was going on, and this time Declan’s other hand joined the first in keeping him still – this time cupping Marcus’s jaw. “I… I think I did this,” the smaller man tried to explain, the words feeling cottony in his mouth but coming out clearly enough, “Like Clarissa did… I made Liz angry like this.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to say that,” Declan countered, low enough for only Marcus to hear as the larger Werewolf crouched over him and watched the proceedings over Marcus’s head, “I’m pretty sure Liz got worked up all on her own.”  Gold-brown eyes looked back down again, brows knitting with worry, “You do realize that you cried out and then started seizing on the floor, right?”

Marcus blinked.  Oh. No, he hadn’t known that – except for the part where he was on the floor and a lot of him ached, throat included. He subtly flexed his joints, testing whether everything still worked.  It seemed to, albeit painfully.  His psyche also felt absolutely shredded. 

“And then suddenly you stopped moving and snarled, and it was my aunt who shrieked, so Liz put two-and-two together.  I’m pretty sure that you didn’t manipulate any of that,” Declan assured, even as he split his attention between Marcus and the rest of his pack. 

Clarissa finally found her tongue, but she sounded frazzled and hoarse as she snapped back, “I was proving how broken he was!  How unfit to be part of any pack!”

“No, you were breaking him.”  And then there was a c***k of skin-on-skin, and an aborted yelp that sounded like it had come from Clarissa. 

The only way Marcus really had to judge the situation was the look on Declan’s face above him, and right now, the skin around his eyes tightened and his jaw clenched, but the Alpha otherwise did nothing.  In fact, he looked away even as he called out calmly, “Kobi, you good?”

Marcus hadn’t even thought about where the other Beta was – or Rob, for that matter – but he heard a low, steady growl that was so low it shook his sternum. Since Declan didn’t flinch, it must have been a positive response.  Declan’s hand started pushing Marcus’s head forward, and the Omega was distracted from everything as his head protested.  He hissed between his teeth and half-lifted a hand even as his chin was pressed to his chest, and Declan leaned further over him to presumably get a better look at his head.  “Not bleeding. Kobi must have managed to catch you a little bit.”

A happier-sounding growl emanated from the other side of the room, if growls could be construed as happy. 

The warm palm slid down from Marcus’s skull to the back of his neck even as Declan exhaled quietly out his nose in relief, expression softening just the tiniest bit.  “Your neck all right? You’re moving a bit, so I doubt that you broke it.”  Fingers idly massaged alongside the knobs of bone at Marcus’s nape, and it did a lot to ease the ache he was feeling all down his spine, although he still felt like he’d been pummeled inside and out.

“I feel like an all-over bruise,” he ended up responding, even as he reached up to rub his neck himself – then realized that that would mean touching Declan’s hand, paused, and dropped his arm again to rest on the floor. “Sorry,” he sighed, realizing that he kept ending up like this: in a wreck, on the ground. 

“Do not apologize,” Liz’s voice was like a whip-c***k from across the room, and even Declan’s head jerked to look her way.  Marcus finally rolled over enough to push himself shakily onto his hands and knees and see Liz boxing Clarissa into a corner – another corner of the room was occupied by a human Rob cornered by a lupine Kobi.  Clarissa had a look of shock on her face and a hand on her cheek, not quite hiding the redness of a palm-print.  Liz was looking over her shoulder at Marcus now, her green eyes so intense that it was like looking at fire through two emeralds.  “You did nothing wrong, Marcus, and the only people who should be asking for forgiveness don’t deserve it.  Declan.” Her eyes flicked over, and became… almost pleading.  This was her Alpha, and no matter how furious Liz was, it wasn’t her place to pass judgment, but she ached to do so nonetheless.  “You said you were going to banish them.”

“Banish?” Rob exploded, momentarily forgetting the three-hundred pounds of wolf in front of him, “What archaic crap is that?  You can’t seriously banish us.”

“I can,” Declan answered, hand dropping at long last from where it had still been resting across the back of Marcus’s neck, “and I’m going to.”

Clarissa’s eyes widened still more with understanding.  “This is how you’re going to avoid the law – how you’re going to keep the police from getting involved and finding him,” she spat, jerking her chin in Marcus’s direction and making him flinch. 

“Don’t presume to know what I’m thinking, Aunt Clarissa,” replied Declan in that scarily calm voice, “Clearly, it’s been a good long time since you understood what I was thinking, even if you apparently are quite good at affecting it.”

The female Omega pursed her lips until they whitened, but said nothing.

“Clarissa Fen, Rob Karly, for your actions against my will and against the harmony of this pack-” Declan began to intone, all of that foreboding and thunder-less lightning finally reaching a peak – the storm was breaking upon them.

Clarissa began to panic.  She was about to become what she’d been persecuting, a packless Omega, and her gaze was horror-filled as it fell on Marcus once again.  It quickly snapped back to Declan as she shrieked, “What I did was for the good of the pack!”

“-For committing acts no human or wolf should enact against another without conscience-” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

“I was protecting myself!  He could have taken everything from me!” his aunt continued, growing more desperate – and perhaps more truthful as her other options were being stripped away. She lunged at the Alpha, but Liz was there, and the two women struggled, but Liz was a Beta and therefore naturally stronger.