Instinctual

Chapter 6

Rushton’s paws skidded out on the tiled kitchen floor as soon as Declan put him down, partially because two of the four were slicked with blood, partially because the Omega had to be on his last dregs of strength anyway. The battered little white wolf looked with panic around the room, skittering and cowering away when his blue eyes eventually came to rest on Declan himself, a towering giant as a human right now.  When Marcus’s retreat brought him up sharply against the kitchen cabinets, he smeared blood on them, but also lost his footing and fell with a pained yelp. 

Declan could see that Marcus was trying to back down as if this were a fight and he wanted nothing to do with it.  That was probably why the territorial temper was only grumbling softly at the back of Declan’s head instead of trying to overwhelm him like it usually was around the Omega – from the moment he’d seen Marcus standing there, head down and tail tucked right up against his belly between his legs, Declan’s instincts had recognized that there was no threat to his pack here. Some part of him was still setting off alarm bells, but it was ignorable, especially since Declan had never seen someone cower as much as Marcus was cowering now, the whites of his shockingly-blue eyes showing, ears disappearing against the tattered fur of his neck, tail tucked.  His body had been low, right up until he’d stumbled, and now it was on the floor itself.

It was the saddest f*****g thing Declan had ever seen.

“Shh, hey, I’m not going to hurt you,” the larger man said, stepping forward with hands outstretched and open.  His attempt at being unthreatening seemed to work for a second because Rushton stopped that heart-tearing, intermittent whimpering, eyes fixed on Declan’s face. It swiftly turned out that the Omega was still as scared as before, though: he stopped trying to get up, and rolled tentatively belly-up instead, paws shaking as he tucked them close to his body.  Declan had already been blocking out the smell of abject terror and submissiveness, but now it hit him like clout to the head, and he had to just stop for a moment on his haunches, his entire body constricting.

He felt like a monster.  A bit more of his instinctive, defend-the-pack instinct flickered and petered out, unable to sustain itself with such a non-threat in front of it.

“Declan, what in the world is-?”  Liz had no doubt heard him come in and came into the kitchen only to suddenly sway as if nauseous.  Her eyes fluttered and she brought a hand up over her nose, hit by the rank stench of fear and pain as well – out of all of Declan’s Betas, she’d always been the most sensitive. “Oh, god…” she gagged, even as tears of emotion came unbidden to her eyes. Scents could affect Werewolves that way: just as a pitiable sight could move people to tears, smells this strong were descriptive enough to do the same, and even Declan was having a hard time keeping himself under control.  Liz was almost crying even before her eyes landed on where Declan was squatting in front of a small, badly beaten wolf who was presently bleeding all over their kitchen.  Her eyes widened and snapped up to her Alpha.  “Declan did you-?!”

Before she could finish her horrifying question, Declan was replying, denying, “No, Clarissa did this.  I…” Even now, he could barely believe it. “I stopped her before she could murder him.  I told her to go home and go straight to the basement, where she’s to stay until I say otherwise.”

Liz was still trying not to breathe through her nose, and there was such sympathetic pain on her face that Declan wanted to either hug her or push her out of the room.  “Clarissa did this!?”

“Yes, now please, Liz, I need you to focus – get me the first-aid kit,” Declan forced himself to be calm and commanding, even as he felt rage boil up inside of him at the memory of what he’d seen when he’d tracked down his aunt: her teeth nearly buried in the throat of a Wolf who was barely even fighting back. It didn’t take a genius to see how the fight had gone, with Clarissa suffering from only a few wounds here and there, and Rushton tore all to hell. 

To say nothing of the forced emotions in the air.  Declan admittedly knew very little about the inner workings of Omegas, but he was getting the sinking sensation that Clarissa could do a whole lot more than calm a room.  

Rushton’s sense of smell was clearly just as strong as everyone said it was, because he instantly picked up on Declan’s anger, and started shuddering on the floor.  He stopped showing his belly even as a new wave of emotional scent – hopelessness, helplessness – filled the air and made Declan swallow abruptly.  Liz let out a sob even as Rushton tried to curl up in a ball, his wounds and exhaustion making it difficult. 

“Go!” Declan barked at Liz, and even though he hated being tough with her, it worked.  She nodded with closed, wet eyes and turned blindly as if trying to escape ammonia fumes. She ran into Kobi coming the other way but thankfully took him out of the kitchen with her as she left, the door closing behind her to shut Declan and the foreign Omega in. Declan just caught sight of his other Beta’s usually stoic face sharpen with worry, confusion, and alarm.

Hopefully, the two of them could handle each other.  Declan presently had a different problem on his hands.

Rushton was still trying to curl up and away from everything, but his wounded legs wouldn’t tuck under him, which was a bad sign – but no worse than the amount of blood he was still smearing everywhere, or the level of utter exhaustion he was showing.  He looked filthy from his battle with Clarissa but also had a generally unkempt air about him that made Declan uncomfortable.  He wondered if that was the same response he’d have if Rushton were his, instead of packless.  If this were Clarissa looking so ill-cared for, Declan would definitely be upset, but right now he couldn’t think of his aunt without seeing her poised to coldly murder another Omega.  That thought aside, it was clear that Rushton had been living on the edges of society, his coat dull and worn, his body skinnier than it should have been.

“Don’t you dare bite me,” Declan said steadily but quietly, at the last moment reining in any sort of command – the Omega still flinched and whined, eyes fixed on him and body pressed flush to the kitchen cabinets. Declan fully expected bared teeth and braced himself to deal with it as he reached forward again, some of his instincts prickling at him with renewed vigor. It seemed that his body was demoting Rushton from ‘imminent threat’ to merely ‘undetermined,’ unless some action or other changed that.  But instead of trying to warn Declan off, the Omega pressed his head down against the floor and held miserably, immeasurably still. 

‘I don’t have the energy to fight you,’ his eyes said as eloquently as a worded speech would have. His ears quivered where they lay against his skull; tiny shivers.  He even made a show of tucking his claws in, like someone disarming before a conqueror, and that relieved Declan a bit.  It also made him feel nothing like a conqueror and everything like some sort of brutal tyrant. 

Feeling a bit like a horrible person but not wanting to take chances, Declan’s hand got close enough to wrap around Rushton’s muzzle.  Even as a human, Declan was strong enough to make sure that those jaws stayed safely shut, and Rushton only squirmed and whined a tiny bit, eyes closing like he didn’t want to see what was coming. No matter how many times Declan repeated, “I’m not going to hurt you.  You’re safe,” that didn’t change, and eventually the Alpha just gave up and used his other hand to tug Rushton closer to the center of the kitchen where he could get a proper look at him.  As if trying to do his best impression of a pill-bug or threatened hedgehog, Rushton tried to fold his body up, even when Declan’s knee against his stomach got in the way.  Declan ran his free hand, carefully but unhesitantly, along the little Wolf’s long-bones first, then anything else that could be seriously broken. 

“If you could change back, that would be great,” he commented, not entirely sure that Rushton was still understanding him anymore. He hoped Liz got back with the first-aid kit soon because the Omega was fading fast – if not from blood-loss, then from shock.  At least he didn’t seem to have any broken bones, which meant he could safely change shape. “I’m not too shabby at wolf anatomy, but I’ll be able to see how wounded you are much easier without the fur,” he tried to coax.  “Come on, Rushton, let me help you.”

Beneath his hand, Rushton shook his snout, just a little, in a definite negative. He was sprawled out on the floor now by Declan’s knees, and red was already staining the Alpha’s jeans and his free hand where he’d touched the smaller Werewolf. 

“Rushton… Rushton, I don’t want to order you, but you know I can, and I will if I have to,” he reminded, becoming a little less kind and a little more Alpha-like for the moment.  He hoped that the threat alone would work, but all it got him was a flinch from the snout he was still firmly holding, and a wracking shudder from the ribcage under his other hand.  Declan sighed, realizing that they were just going to have to do this the unpleasant way.  “Change back into a human, Rushton,” he ordered. 

The Omega whined so sharply that it sounded like Declan had punched a dagger through him, and he convulsed in a way that had nothing to do with changing shape, startling Declan.  Before he could do more than stare in horrified shock, however, bones and sinews were stretching as Rushton’s entire body started to realign. It took a moment, because the change was happening with laborious slowness, but Declan realized with sudden regret why the Omega hadn’t wanted to change back – apparently, like Liz earlier, Rushton had changed very swiftly.  And why was he surprised?  If Rushton really had been trying to avoid a fight for as long as possible, he’d probably been forced to take on his wolf shape as a last-ditch defense, with Clarissa giving him no time to think about it.  Sighing, Declan settled back on his heels, watching with a sad, resigned look as fur disappeared to be replaced by nothing but bare, red-smeared skin. It was about then that Declan started seeing something else, too: scars. 

Soon the Alpha had a huddle of bloody, naked, packless Omega on his floor instead of bloody, fur-covered, packless Omega.  Rushton had his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his lips peeled back in a panting grimace, showing the pain he was trying to endure as his body resettled itself into a new shape.  His eyes opened briefly – the same intense blue they always were – saw that Declan was still there, and then closed again with a bright blush of humiliation that went right down his neck and chest.  Apparently too tired to do or say anything, he folded in on himself as much as he could with one slashed arm and one torn leg, blood also leaking sluggishly from a set of puncture wounds between his neck and shoulder. 

Declan found himself staring, not because Rushton was naked, but because so much of that pale, bared skin was littered with scars.  “What the hell…?” he started to murmur, the wind knocked out of him by the sight, and he was too fixated for a moment to realize that Rushton’s shoulders were shaking minutely: he was crying, fatigued and silent, and it suddenly felt as if something had been ripped right out of Declan’s chest. Rushton was beyond finished, but was trying to maintain some control over himself anyway, no doubt out of some twisted hope that it would keep Alpha Declan Fen from going berserk on him.  

“Declan, I’ve got the first-aid kit,” came the voice of Kobi rather than Liz, slipping into the room.  It was the first time that the Beta had a good eye-full of Rushton in their house, and even Kobi’s natural, unflappable calm took a hit by the sight. Not only was there blood, but nudity. Still, he froze only for a second, looking more than a bit sick as his steady brown eyes traced scars that looked like bite-marks along Rushton’s sides and calves – they ranged from fading and old to the gaping wounds that Clarissa had made under an hour ago. Considering a Werewolf’s healing skills, these had to have been serious injuries for the marks to still be lingering.  “Christ,” Kobi swore even as he passed the first-aid kit into Declan’s waiting hand.

“Can you stay and help patch him up?” Declan asked, deciding to focus on the here and now instead of the past painted out in scar-tissue in front of him. Suddenly so many things were falling into place – especially everything Rushton had said about Alphas instinctively hating him, and attacking.  It looked like a lot of them hadn’t stopped themselves at a single punch like Declan had, and it made him furious in a whole new way.  Unfortunately, it also forced him to agree that Rushton had good reasons to be wary and wildly mistrustful. 

Rushton and Kobi both smelled the flash of Declan’s temper, and while it made Rushton choke on a panicked sob, it made Kobi tense on his knees across from Declan.  “Are you going to be able to stay?  With him around, I mean?” he asked, pointedly tipping his chin down towards the smaller man lying naked in between them.

“Yeah, I can handle it,” Declan grunted, grabbing antiseptic and gauze, and then reaching reluctantly for the package that contained sterilized needles and thread.  Werewolves had an impeccable ability to heal themselves, but these wounds were bad, and he didn’t think they had time to just take this whole problem to the hospital across town. “He’s hardly a threat right now, so whatever it is about me that wants to-”  He was about to blithely say ‘kill him’ but the hand he’d rested unconsciously on Rushton’s pale shoulder registered a preemptive flinch, and Declan softened his words, “-Whatever it is that makes me hate him, it’s nothing I can’t ignore now.  I won’t hurt him. We’re going to have to put stitches in him, though.”

“I’m better at it than you.  Can you hold him still?”

‘Bless you, Kobi, for being so levelheaded.’ “Yeah, I can.”

After they bound up two of Rushton’s wounds swiftly to slow the bleeding in the interim, Declan got a good hold on the kid.  By this point, Rushton seemed hollowed out and worrisomely unresponsive – he didn’t react, he didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t protest even when Declan (whom he was clearly most terrified of) flipped him over on his back so Kobi could get easier access to his lacerated left shin. Kobi put a knee over Rushton’s lean thighs, and stuck him with a syringe full of numbing agent, looking tense the whole while in a way that was rare for the usually relaxed Beta. He looked as though he were trying very, very hard to remain calm, so Declan spared a moment to squeeze his shoulder before turning his attention back to the Omega.  Rushton wasn’t unconscious, for all that he seemed to be systematically shutting himself down, and quivered as Declan’s hand pressed against his flat stomach.  “Just stay still,” he suggested, not realizing that he’d made it an order until Rushton broke his silence with a small, torn scream as his muscles visibly locked up.

Declan cursed and nearly fell backward.  “s**t, does this always happen?” he asked Kobi, a bit helpless as to how to deal with this.

Even Kobi looked startled, needle threaded and poised but eyes now wide and fixed on Rushton’s pale, agonized face.  “Not like this,” he replied, struggling to sound like the sensible Beta he was, “I mean, Liz and I weren’t lying when we said he was sensitive to even the slightest command, but it didn’t seem to hurt him before.”

“…Please,” Rushton sobbed, clearly barely getting the words past his locked jaw and pursed, white lips.  Tears were painting renewed paths from the corners of his eyes, past his temples, in his straight brown hair.  He made a little coughing noise that could have been another entreaty stifled in in infancy, and Declan did the only thing that felt right, which was to gently stroke a hand across Marcus’s chest.

“Easy, easy, I’m sorry.  It’s all right. Move if you want to, Rushton.” Declan was careful of his power now, reigning it viciously in, but letting the teensiest bit slip out in the last sentence – which did what he had hoped it would, freeing the Omega from his previous command. Rushton gasped and sagged, like an unstrung bow, and Kobi turned back to his job of sewing while things were still under a modicum of control.  “I’ll hold you still, so Kobi can stitch you up, but I won’t order you,” Declan promised as soothingly as he could.  He imagined he was working with Liz, when Kobi had been in a motorcycle accident a few years ago and had actually been hospitalized, leaving his girlfriend in a panic that had taken a lot of holding and murmuring to calm. It felt a bit… odd, doing the same for someone whom his senses told him was Not-Pack, but he managed. True to his word, Declan also leaned over Rushton to push down on his arms, but he kept it gentle, since the Omega wasn’t struggling.  The numbing agent must have already set in, because he didn’t even flinch with the punch and pull of the needle and thread.   

Thanks to the fact that Kobi liked motorcycles but hated hospitals, he’d actually stitched himself up enough times that this was probably easy by comparison.  He finished admirably swiftly.  “Arm next?” Declan asked efficiently, to keep the Beta focused.  Kobi’s eyes had been drifting to Marcus’s tense, utterly panicked face, but he quickly dragged his eyes back to his Alpha’s.

“Uh…yeah. Yes.  Arm next,” Kobi found his equilibrium again, and at that moment, the kitchen door slid open just a little – revealing Liz. Her face, as it hovered in the doorway, looked red and puffy from crying, and she still couldn’t stand the smell of fear and anxiety in the room.  At the sight of Rushton now human again, and even more helpless-looking without his fur or clothes on, she let out a whimper of her own.

“Liz, sweetheart, go back outside,” coaxed Kobi, his own voice relaxed again. Helping his girlfriend gave him the focus and strength to push down on the tumult of feelings he had to be feeling himself, and just for a second, it was a Beta and not an Omega who radiated calm throughout the room. 

Marcus let out an incoherent little noise of question, eyes fluttering open, but while Kobi was getting up off him to quickly get Liz to go somewhere else – somewhere where she wasn’t going to be in constant emotional pain – Declan knelt by the Omega’s side and shushed him. 

Seeming to realize that he was naked and an increasing number of people were seeing it, Marcus imploded a little, and for the first time, the Alpha in the room was demoted to second-worst-fate while death-by-humiliation clumsily climbed into first place.  Eyes glazed with tears and nose probably getting plugged from sniffling (perhaps enough that he wasn’t smelling Declan quite as clearly as he’d been earlier), the smallest Wolf managed to tip over onto his side again, so the pale, bony curve of his back was to the door, and his body was once again pulling into a fetal position against Declan’s leg.  “M-M-M-” It took even Declan’s sensitive hearing a moment to realize that Rushton’s shaky breaths were slurred attempts at words, falling shakily from his mouth without the strength to really make themselves heard.  “M-Make it…s-s-sto-stop,” he begged without pride or reserve, uninjured arm crooked against his shivering, quaking chest and injured arm almost getting there, bent in the shallow, protective curve of his belly where it continued to try and bleed through the temporary bandages.  Kobi’s needlework, neat and skilled though it was, looked like a bunch of ugly dark insects feeding in a line down Marcus’s shin, and despite all of those things, he was worried about Liz – Liz, who’d just about attacked Rob this morning in Rushton’s name – seeing him naked.

It would have been amusing and endearing if it weren’t so heart-breaking. If this were a situation between pack members, a little nudity wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow, but Rushton was clearly viscerally aware that he wasn’t pack, wasn’t wanted, and wasn’t afforded the usual, affectionate tolerance of a pack-mate.

“Liz,” Declan said, just as Kobi was about to push her out of the room. Liz looked past her boyfriend’s shoulder, and Kobi turned, revealing red eyes on both parties. Declan kept his own gaze firm as one of his hands moved of its own accord to run through Rushton’s disheveled hair. Loose tangles caught on his fingers and parted, creating a gentle tugging that usually calmed wolves of lesser rank than Declan – and it seemed to work just the tiniest bit on Rushton. Just the tiniest bit; he went quiet again.  “Liz, get that bottle of stuff we gave Rob when he had that nasty cold.”

Perking up just a bit, but still looking like she just wanted to take Rushton and put him back together like a dashed puzzle piece whenever she glanced at him, Liz queried, “The stuff that put him on his ass?”

Declan reluctantly nodded.  His other hand had somehow found its way to Rushton’s back, and it was counting jutting vertebrae as it traveled slowly up and down – he wanted to fix things, too, perhaps more strongly than Liz did.  Alphas fixed problems for Wolves of lesser rank than them, and the more Declan convinced himself that this packless Omega wasn’t a threat, the more his urge to make things right reared its head. Marcus was still too tense to have blacked out, and was clearly clinging to consciousness, but he also appeared too wrung out (or tired, or confused) to make an issue of the Alpha petting him. “That stuff, yeah. We still have a lot of stitching to do, and I don’t think…” ‘-Rushton has to be conscious for the whole torturous time,’ his mind finished, but didn’t work the words past his teeth.

Liz understood, though.  She was intuitive beyond measure, and not just when it came to emotional scents in the air. Nodding, she moved to leave… then stopped and whispered something in Kobi’s ear, probably something soothing, because the broad lines of his back relaxed.  Then she kissed his cheek swiftly and left. 

“We should start stitching up his arm,” Kobi said, sounding reluctant but determined as he turned away from his girlfriend and back to the scene of torment on their kitchen floor.  Rushton continued to shiver intermittently, which would have been understandable, considering he was naked on the cold kitchen floor, but both other Wolves flinched every time he shivered because of the way Rushton always tried to stop.  Without clothing or fur to hide it, and also without any superfluous fat on any inch of him, it was easy to see the way his lean muscles and tendons flexed and tightened every time he tried to still himself.

Before either man could work up the energy to continue, Liz returned, and this time she strode right in without pausing.  She did flinch, but was breathing through her mouth purposefully, and handed Kobi the requested bottle of medicine.  It was a simple concoction, with nothing in it of particular note, but it did a good job of pushing everything aside except sleep, so someone ill could get the rest they needed without coughing/sneezing/headaches, etc. The painkiller in it would help in the long-run.  Before leaving, Liz stopped, her eyes taking in the scars like the two men had. Mouth twisting – a bit in anger, mostly in sympathy – she squatted down next to Kobi until she could reach out and just touch Rushton’s shoulder.  “Hey, Marcus, it’s me.  It’s us, Kobi and I,” she soothed hopefully, “It’s going to be all right.”

For a moment it seemed like the medicine wouldn’t be necessary, and Rushton had passed out after all, but in reality he’d just lost the gumption to move and flinch. He did, however, somehow find strength to clear his throat, and laboriously force words up his throat. They fell in brittle, broken pieces out of his mouth, raspy and breathy as a desert wind, “N-N-Nothing…will be all right.” 

Liz pulled her hand back as if Rushton’s skin burned, and everyone could smell it: utter defeat from Rushton, matching his resigned words, and murderous anger from Liz.  Her face was still tear-streaked, but it had set in a lethal expression, and she got up quickly.

“Liz…” Kobi called to her softly, worriedly.

“I’m going to go for a run before I kill Clarissa,” the young woman replied with brutal softness before striding out of the room.

~^~

Marcus was drifting in a haze of pain and exhaustion, and was barely holding onto the desperate little voice that kept telling him to stay awake, when he felt something pushing against his lips that smelled so blindingly like nastiness that it pushed every other scent from his nose.  It shot him into a panic, in fact, because it felt a lot like when he had a migraine coming on and his senses were winding themselves up to their highest capacity. With strength he didn’t know he still had, Marcus lurched back, somehow getting his uninjured arm and leg underneath him. 

‘Get away, get away, get away,’ the mantra picked up speed in his head, and Rushton was too dizzy and dazed to know whether it was a command to himself or to others around him. His lower left leg felt numb, and a hand from behind grabbed at him, but somehow Marcus’s staggering got him upright with enough speed to avoid capture – and made him desperately dizzy, so much so that he staggered and fell again.  He just caught himself on a table, slewed off around it, and followed a chair to the floor.  Of the kitchen around him, he got blurry, imperfect impressions, everything spinning and swaying too much for his eyes to lock on anything before he was sitting heavily on cold tiles again.

A weight suddenly landed over his lap, and a broad torso filled his watery, wavy vision.  “Rushton!” a male voice barked, and at the almost subliminal edge of command lurking behind those words like a swarm of locusts behind a thin screen door, Marcus recognized who was talking. 

No. This could not be happening. Nonononono.  His memories of the past few hours were presently a fragmented mess in his head, glass-edged so it hurt whenever he reached for one to try and decipher it and put it in its proper place, but Marcus then remembered quite clearly collapsing in what had to be the kitchen of the Fen pack. Of all the places Marcus should not be, this was at the very top of the list, right under ‘in the center of an active volcano.’ Realizing that there was precious little chance of him making it out of this in one piece, he did what he could, with an Alpha literally sitting on his thighs and presently grabbing his shoulders.

He got as submissive as possible. 

Head tucked down as if he could make it disappear beneath his collarbones (even though that made his bitten neck scream in pain), hands lifting in feeble, open barriers between them, Rushton squeezed his eyes shut and sunk back against the refrigerator door leaching heat out of his back behind him. He didn’t fight the hands on his upper arms, and focused as much as he ever had in his life on that innate Omega skill. ‘Come on, come on, work, dammit!’ he screamed at the ability in his head, having never been so in need of it.  He felt it turn on in fluttering, fickle spikes of power, like a fire starting and stopping on damp wood – flaring briefly only to die down. It was a pathetic attempt, and Marcus seethed with disgust at himself, even as pain and exhaustion gnawed away more of his ability to think. 

Fen had gone still on top of him, though, kneeling just above Marcus and hands firm but not tightening painfully.  “Rushton, are you listening to me?” he asked suddenly into the stillness and quiet.

It was hard – impossible – not to flinch.  Even as a Werewolf, with a body that was more durable and faster at healing than a human’s, he knew that his spread fingers may as well have been straws before a hurricane, and he fully expected Fen to break a few of them.  “Y-Yes,” he got out as barely a hushed whisper.  ‘Be obedient, Marcus.  Obedience makes Alphas happy.  As happy as they can ever be with you,’ he reminded himself of the new rules he had had to learn since the loss his own pack. 

The Alpha’s sigh rustled Marcus’s hair, warm compared to everything else. “f**k,” Fen murmured, apparently to himself before continuing more professionally, “I’m calm, all right? Or, at least, I’m calm enough that I’m not going to bite your head off, but I need you to take something.”

He sounded earnest… but then again, they all did.  This was their first conversation all over again, but this time, Marcus was too tired to play his part and remind Declan that instincts always won out over good human intentions.  An embarrassing mewling noise came out of his throat in lieu of an answer, before Marcus hid it with a little cough and bowed his head down further.

“Rushton? Marcus?  Marcus, Kobi’s got something, and I need you to drink it. You know Kobi, right? Big softy, hopelessly attached to a redheaded girl named Liz, big enough to pull me back if I did decide to get violent?”

That logic worked more on Marcus than previous entreaties had, and he lifted his head just a little, cracking an eye open.  Declan Fen was still intimidatingly close, with nothing between them to protect Marcus, but a glance over Fen’s shoulder showed that, yes, Kobi really was there, something in hand and a worried, earnest look on his face. Whether he’d be able to pull back his Alpha in case of violence was another matter, still up for debate, but Marcus tentatively lowered his hands.  He also lowered his eyes.  Whatever was going to happen was going to happen anyway, whether he wanted it to or not.

He dropped his hands down defeatedly onto his lap, wondering what Fen’s Alpha instincts took of his picture of abject dejection. Honestly, he wondered what Kobi…and Liz, he vaguely remembered Liz getting in on this, too… thought of their new, supposed friend now, a naked, scared, scarred wreck. If his waspish temper hadn’t turned them away before now, this was sure to, and Marcus didn’t even notice two more tears sliding down from his eyes, coursing salty paths already laid out from previous, pathetic crying.  He was so tired… so done.  If he closed his eyes, however, he imagined he saw his world in burnt-out shambles around him, and so he stayed awake. 

This time, when Declan backed off and Kobi pressed something to his lips, Marcus just took it.  He accepted the glass of water that followed – numbly, like a doll being moved. He knew that both the Beta and the Alpha were staring at him, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was meet their eyes.  The anger would make him panic again, and the sympathy would surely look faked, so Marcus just grimaced and tucked his legs up, hiding his nudity a little. 

And, surprisingly, the two other Wolves in the room left him alone.

Right up until the room started tipping, and shadows started crawling in around the edges of Marcus’s vision, and he realized that he was losing his hold on consciousness.  He flailed, trying to shake it off, but hands caught him and held him still until he forgot how to do that, too.  While startled and confused by this new situation, there was a voice in his head that was also sighing with relief, because the pain was fading, too. 

The last thing he was aware of was the heady smell of Declan Fen wrapping around him, along with the man’s warmth, which… meant he was carrying him? But they didn’t have to move him, did they?  So was the Alpha just holding him? 

That was so ridiculous that Marcus might have laughed, but he finally gave way to sleep then, dark and total.