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David woke up and for one blissful second didn’t know where he was or what had happened.
“What do you think will happen?” Quinn asked when he knew David was conscious again. “That weak beta of yours will be in charge. They might think you’re dead. We left such a mess on that roadside. They would have gotten to your truck and found the blood. You put up such a fucking fight… I really thought the wreck would take it out of you but I guess you’re alpha for a reason. Still. Three vamps and those broken bones…”
David choked back a shout when Quinn pressed down on his shoulder, sending echoes of agony through his broken collarbone and his left arm.
“Still, they are wolves. Hopeful and dogged,” he smiled when he said it. David heard it and bared teeth at it even when he was too tired to open his eyes. What time was it? How long had it been? Where was he now? “You probably don’t remember the part where we dragged you through the river. Have to lose those dogs…”
“I remember the part where I bit your friend’s throat out,” David mused, voice rough.
Quinn was quiet for a second and it was gratifying. And then he was on him. His fist slammed David’s head to the side, rolling his body and jarring more broken bones. Oh shit. He was really messed up. And he was lying on concrete. He spit up blood and forced his eyes open, staring at a corner of brick walls in a dim room. No windows. No knowing if it was night or day.
“Do you think they’ve told your mate yet?” Quinn asked.
David growled low and used his good arm to push himself to sit up, or at least to try. His chest. Something was definitely wrong. It hurt. It was hard to breathe.
“What will happen when they realize it was me? Do you think they’ll kill my Misfit? I mean, it was their fault.”
Darlin. He meant Darlin.
“Or will they just be banished? Kicked out? Exiled? What do you dogs call it?” He laughed, amused with himself, and came back to David, squatting down close to him. He seemed to notice David’s struggle and decided to help. His hands were on him. Grabbing almost gently now, sitting him up and leaning him back against the wall. Somehow that was worse than when he hit him. Quinn smiled and straddled David’s lap, sitting on his thighs and looking down at him. “I’m going to let them find you when we’re done. I’ve never killed an alpha before. You’re my first,” he said sweetly, fingers tracing a bruise on the side of David’s face. He curled his lip in disgust and tried to turn his face away but Quinn was inescapable now.
“You should have just given them back to me when I gave you the chance, Shaw…” Quinn mused, fingering David’s hair back into some order. “Now your pack will wither. Your mate will mourn. And my Misfit will die worse than if you’d just done as I’d asked. If you’d given them to me, I might have turned them. Now? Now, either their own pack will end them for your loss…or I think we both know they’ll do it themself when it’s all done. They act tough but we both know it’s weakness. They care. And I’m going to make them care so much they want to die.”
“You talk so much,” David ground out, sneering at his nearness and trying not to think about how right Quinn could be.
Fingers twisted in his hair, jerking his head back until his neck strained and he could barely get air. He hated the panic that jumped through his body, the way he tried to shift but couldn’t, not with all the blood he’d already lost and damage taken.
Quinn’s face hovered close. He could smell his own blood on his breath. “I’m going to leave your body in the open to be found. They will all know how you died. They’ll see it. Your mate, my misfit, that pathetic excuse for a beta. I will use you to break everything you loved.”
David shuddered despite all effort. He hurt. He was scared. He missed his family and his angel. He wanted to go home. But he flashed teeth he knew were pink with his own blood up at the vampire. “They’ll rip you to pieces, you dumb fuck.”
Quinn snarled and gave his skull a tug, ripping hair before pressing his face into his neck. His whole body tensed, legs jerking as if he could suddenly muster strength he hadn’t had the last few times this had happened. It was a living nightmare but all he could think was how grateful he was that it was him and not anyone else. Quinn licked his throat, over previous bites, up to a clean spot near his jaw. He hated it. He hated the way his gut twisted and the sounds that gathered in his throat, choking him when those teeth slid into his skin. It wasn’t the pain that was so upsetting, it was the forced intimacy and the helplessness.
How many times had this happened to Darlin? How many times had they tried to pretend they were okay with it and how many times had they felt just like this, unable to escape?
He grabbed at the other man with his unbroken arm, trying to pull him off even when he knew he couldn’t. He was losing feeling in his hands and his legs. His head felt heavy and he couldn’t open his eyes. No. No. Fuck, just don’t die, he thought as he slid toward unconsciousness again. This was awful but he could keep doing it, keep living it, as long as he kept living. He knew Asher would find him. He knew it because there was no way he or any of the others would stop. Milo wouldn’t lose his trail no matter how far the blood suckers dragged him through a river. He was bleeding. His pack would find that trail.
And Asher…
David hadn’t said a fucking word every time Quinn tried to needle doubt about his beta being left in charge. He didn’t argue when Quinn theorized on how Asher would crumble under that weight. He had obviously been watching them for a while, but he hadn’t seen them, not really. He saw what everyone did, that smiling, welcoming, friendly beta. He saw the joking, lighthearted friend to David’s grumpy, serious exterior. And none of that was wrong. Ash was all of those things, but he wasn’t going to buckle under the weight of this nightmare. David hadn’t chosen him as his beta because he was his friend. He’d chosen him because he knew he could do the job, that he could make the worst decisions, and that he would move fucking mountains for their pack.
David lost consciousness again. Out into the black, drifting and hoping he came back.
When he woke up again, he wasn’t sure what had drawn him from that deep and awful sleep. He wasn’t sure until he heard another howl.
He smiled against the stone floor at his cheek. Quinn wasn’t in the room. He could feel his absence and when he strained to listen, he heard screaming somewhere in the night.
Hands rolled David onto his back and he growled, trying to move his good arm to shove the vamp back.
“It’s okay,” Sam said, hurried, winded. “It’s okay. I promise.” His hands were held up, fingers fanned as if to prove his innocence. David almost laughed at that. It wasn’t like any of them had to carry weapons to hurt each other.
“I’m going to get you on your feet, okay? I have to touch, but it won’t hurt—”
David did laugh then, the sound rough and deep. He closed his eyes again. Magic washed through his arm, bones snapping back into place and torn skin healing.
He heard a wolf shifting at the top of the stairs before someone came down and forced his lids open in time to see Asher. His friend’s face was a perfect mask when he walked into that basement, prepared for the worst. When his gaze swept over David, his lip curled in a snarl, flashing blood pink teeth still a little too long. But relief brought him to his knees next to him. He leaned down and David leaned up, their skulls thumping together the same way they would when they were shifted. “Thank god,” Asher whispered, eyes closed.
“Angel?”
Asher laughed low. “Safe. Totally freaking out but safe. I’ve got wolves at the house with them.”
“Quinn?” David asked, forcing himself to sit up now, despite all of Sam’s hissing that he should stay put.
Asher huffed a laugh. “Oh, dead. Very dead. Along with the other blood suckers had had hanging out with him.”
Sam’s hand touched the side of David’s neck and David caught his wrist, shaking his head and pushing it away. The healer hesitated, gaze flicking to the bite marks there. “They’ll scar,” he said and Asher looked concerned too.
“So?” David countered. Darlin had more bite scars than any of them had counted. Well, maybe not any of them. Maybe Sam had counted.
Sam stared back at him, seeming to pick his words carefully. “I can heal it,” he reminded, like it shouldn’t need to be explained further.
David sighed and nodded. He didn’t relent because it obviously bothered Sam to leave it, or because he had any problem bearing the scars. Ultimately, he let Sam heal the bites because he knew seeing them would only drive the wedge between himself and Darlin that much deeper.
It took the two of them to get him on his feet and out of the cellar. The house was somewhere in the woods, now surrounded by wolves, cars, and the remains of vampires. They howled when he stepped out of the house into the light rainfall.
The pack in the woods that night, whether in human or wolf form, moved around him, brushing against him to reaffirm that connection and affection. Reminding themselves he was alive and him that they had come for him—that they were his.
Asher walked him to the passenger side of his truck, but he took another minute just to stand there, breathing clean air under the evening sky.
He stared up at the moon, leaning against the truck. He felt empty, tired down to his core and a little cottony from all the healing magic that had reset and healed his bones. He rubbed the side of his neck. He could still feel tongue and teeth. Could still feel Quinn sucking the life from him.
“Where’s Darlin?” David asked no one in particular.
He saw Sam tense, still standing close by in case David wasn’t doing as well as they thought. Or at least, that’s why David assumed he was standing nearby. Maybe he was close for this moment instead?
The pack had thinned from the clearing, given jobs and orders by Asher or Milo.
His troublemaker shifted from wolf to human when the crossed the grass to him, head down and eyes anywhere but on him. They were shaking. He hoped it was adrenaline and the rush of running here and fighting, but he suspected it had more to do with him and the fear of what he’d do now. Darlin thought they were responsible for Quinn and what he did. He knew his troublemaker would expect to be blamed—would have blamed themself.
They stood in front of him and waited for judgement.
They had blood on their hands and smeared on their cheek and neck, over those rings of scars that stretched from behind their ear down their neck to their shoulder. How many bites? How many times? Did they still feel the teeth the way he did right now? He reached out. Darlin flinched but didn’t move or try to block, eyes closed in surrender. Sam tensed, trying to restrain himself from intervening but David knew he would if things went bad. He was glad for that, even if it would never be needed here—not with pack.
He slid his hand over the side of Darlin’s neck, smearing blood and feeling those scars under his palm. He curled his hand around the back of their neck and dragged them in close. Their forehead to his forehead, his fingers lost in the back of their hair when he cradled their skull. “It’s done,” he promised them both.
Darlin exhaled hard, still so tense. “I’m sorry.”
David shook his head, that contact forcing them to shake theirs too. “The only one responsible paid. Let it die with him. Come home.”
Darlin shook and he knew they were trying not to cry now, swallowing hard like they couldn’t breathe. Yes, they’d been back in town. Yes, they’d agreed to come to pack meetings and even come to some pack get togethers, but he knew they were still one step out the door. And he knew now more than ever that it wasn’t that they didn’t want to be with the pack—it was that they didn’t know how to go back. They nodded tightly and he sighed relief, leaning back and mussing their hair a little more. “Good. Get in the fucking truck.”
Asher was already going around to the driver’s side, having told everyone else to clear out and head home.
David knew many of them would be sleeping in his house tonight. It was more instinct than tradition, something they did when someone was hurt or almost lost. It was a pack thing. He looked to Sam, nudging his head toward the backseat. “Hop in.”
Sam looked surprised for only a second before flashing a tired smile and joining Darlin, climbing into the truck.