Fire Of Love

by Preston Walker

  He knew better.

  Now it wasn’t a chill down his spine but a memory of brutal, ripping claws, scoring through his skin over and over. The sea air suddenly felt hot and humid, like breath panted out at his neck and heels. Fangs flashed, silver as the moon.

  Isaac blinked several times. The memories faded. The vision of the man on the dunes didn’t.

  The end was now. The beginning of the next stage was here.

  He said, “Moody,” and didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice. “Get out of here.”

  Moody whirled on him, his fangs out. Isaac didn’t even flinch, though he was again reminded of that horrible occasion when he had been chased away from his old life. “Excuse me?” he demanded. His hands clenched into fists down at his side, knuckles white from tension. “What did you just say to me? It should be me saying that to you. This is my spot.”

  “Go!” Isaac commanded. Urgency made him act out and he lunged forward, stepped right up into Moody’s personal space and pushed him back. Every muscle inside him was drawn taut from anticipatio,n and he put in much more effort than he meant to, sending the omega sprawling on his ass in the end.

  Moody stared up at him, his mask not just broken but completely gone. His eyes were red with hurt, rusty as a motorcycle left out in the rain. His lips moved with protest, devolving into a grim curse.

  Then, Moody stood up from the sand and took off running. Three steps and he dropped down on all fours into his wolf form. His fur was such a dark shade of brown that it seemed instead to be black, though now it was gone pale gray behind the plumes of dust he kicked up while fleeing from Isaac.

  “I’m sorry,” Isaac whispered. He lifted one hand, still feeling the fabric of Moody’s shirt and the gently-muscled chest beneath. This was for the best, he knew. He hadn’t been ready for a relationship before, not the kind that Moody wanted from him, and now the other wolf would stay away from him for good. He wouldn’t come back a third time. He was smarter than that.

  The wind shifted. Isaac heard footsteps in the sand now, spaced far apart because the person approaching had such long legs. He didn’t look until the man had come up right beside him.

  “Long time no see,” Isaac said, and turned to face his past.

  The conversation which followed was not what he had been wanting. The future still seemed to be holding out on him.

  Abruptly, he wished for Moody.

  4

  Fucking idiot. Fucking loser. Fucking juvenile moron.”

  Rough hands on his shoulders, pushing him, hard enough to leave smudged bruises on his skin. They blackened in minutes, then faded to purple and finally yellow over the course of the next few hours. There was no sign of them now, as shifters possessed an ability to heal rapidly and efficiently in most cases. Still, it was the principal of things.

  “Goddammit,” Moody swore. “I can’t believe I actually fell for someone like him. I can’t believe I told him I loved him.”

  Right now, Moody was trying to compose a poem. He often wrote poetry, had won a few writing contests throughout his school years. The prizes were never anything significant. A certificate printed on computer paper, being published in an article buried deep inside the local newspaper, a gift card for $50. However, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He knew many, many other aspiring writers in his classes would have loved to have the validation that one of those prizes brought.

  Since he graduated high school, he hadn’t tried to enter contests, had never submitted anything for consideration to one of thousands of magazines which published such things. He hadn’t even shown anything he wrote to anyone except his mother, because she was the only one who ever showed support for him no matter what he did. It was difficult to get off the ground when you only had one fan.

  And when that fan was gone, it was impossible.

  But that didn’t stop him from writing. Even when he left home and left most of his compositions behind, he didn’t stop. He stole a pen from the bank and wrote on napkins, pieces of cardboard, or discarded envelopes. Once he was able, he bought cheap notebooks and wrote in those.

  Many of his poems, he was aware, were no good at all. That didn’t matter to him. He needed to do it, needed to have a place where it was just him and his thoughts coexisting without distraction.

  Right now, his current poem went something like this:

  “Throwing shells

  In the ocean

  Is like heartbreak

  One after another, disappearing beneath

  You can’t see them, but

  I know they are there”

  He felt like something was there, some bit of potential which needed to be worked at and refined. If only he could bring that starting idea around to a conclusion, make a finished thought of it, then maybe he stood a chance of being in a good mood today.

  The only thing wrong with that was thinking about the subject of the poem kept bringing him back to thoughts of Isaac. Stupid! Fucking! Isaac! The pushy, no-good, deserting alpha.

  Suddenly, someone knocked hard on his door.

  Moody dropped his pen in surprise, the utensil clattering on the cheap plastic stand which acted as his desk. The pen rolled off the edge and seemed to somehow jump across the floor, vanishing underneath his bed.

  “Goddammit,” he said again. Rising from the milk crate he used as a chair, he went over to the door and pulled it open. The door only rattled in its frame, reminding him that he hadn’t unlocked it. Growing flustered, feeling a little embarrassed at this lapse, Moody unlocked the door and then tried to open it again.

  Abraham Savage stood there in the doorway. The younger brother of Cain Savage, Abraham was only 16 years old. He still lived at home with their parents, though recently he had begun showing interest in life as a biker. Cain brought him to the garage upon occasion, where Abraham generally set about to making as much of a nuisance of himself as possible. He poked his nose in where it didn’t belong, pestered the alphas, stole motorcycles and took them for test drives though he didn’t even have a regular license yet.

  Suffice to say, as someone who had his own bike stolen by Abraham, Moody didn’t like him much at all.

  “What are you doing here?” Moody asked. He tried to stand a little taller. He wasn’t short by any means, but Abraham was like a beanstalk, all height and no substance.

  “Everyone in the whole entire garage can hear you talking to yourself,” Abraham said. His gray eyes narrowed. He spoke with a feminine lisp, what might be called a stereotypical gay voice. As far as Moody could tell, this was how Abraham naturally spoke. It wasn’t a mockery, or a façade he put on to try and appear to be what he thought he should be like. “Swearing. There’s kids out here today, okay?” His voice rose up an entire octave at the end of his question.

  Dogs within a 10-mile radius are howling right now.

  “You’re a kid, Abe. Go away and play with the other brats.”

  Abraham’s face darkened. “Fuck you. I was going to tell you something but you went and fucked that up.” He leaned to the side, peering around Moody.

  Moody leaned with him, trying to block his vision. He might be living in a tiny room in a garage owned by his pack leader but he still considered this to be his room. No one had any right to go poking around inside there without his permission, especially not a jerk like Abraham.

  Unfortunately, he was a little too short to really block Abraham from seeing inside the room.

  “You writing in there? What are you doing, writing a novel? You think you’re Charles Dickens or something?” Abraham snorted, derisive either at the idea of Moody’s writing or writing in general. “Let me look, and I’ll tell you if it’s any good.”

  “I don’t think so.” Moody put himself in the way as the other omega started to step forward, blocking his entrance.

  Abraham looked at him like he was shit on the bottom of a shoe, then reached out with one incredibly long arm and shoved Moody to the side. To do so, he put his hand in the exact same
spot Isaac had.

  Moody stepped back more than he staggered, all the breath gone from his lungs. He tried to pull in air and couldn’t, the world reeling around him in a dizzying spiral. His pulse pounded in his ears. Pressing his back against the wall, he tried to focus. One hand pressed against his forehead, as if he thought holding himself would bring the rest of the world to a halt for him.

  Not now. Not one of these, not now.

  These attacks mostly happened when he woke up and found himself in his room at the garage—and he refused to admit even to himself that he was pretty sure they came then because he still expected to be at home. He still wanted to be at home, convinced that everything was okay and right with the world. However, one was happening now.

  “What the fuck is this? You really are writing?”

  With some difficulty, Moody turned his head to look over in the direction of the voice.

  Abraham stood over his makeshift desk, Moody’s private poems clutched in his hands. “Poetry?”

  “Put it down,” Moody whispered. All of the thoughts he kept to himself, the things he could tell no one else, all there in the hands of someone who would never ever understand.

  Abraham ignored him, flipping papers in his hands, skimming the words Moody spent so much time on. “Look at this emo shit. Throwing shells in the ocean? And this one.” He waved a poem around in the air. The edge of the paper was torn, which it hadn’t been before. “Eternal sorrow like the darkness behind city lights? You really think this shit is worth anything, man?”

  “Put it down!”

  Out of nowhere, he was suddenly so angry that his vision went red and warped. On top of all the terrible things that had happened recently, now there was this. The world was out to get him.

  If he couldn’t take his anger out on the world, he’d take it out on Abraham.

  Snarling, Moody threw himself forward, pushing off from the wall. He snatched one of the poems away, ripping it in half in the process. The red in his eyes only darkened further. Instead of going for the rest of the papers, he thrust his hands out at Abraham and went for his throat.

  The terrible, mocking grin on Abraham’s face morphed into a grimace of terror. He ducked away, surprisingly agile for someone so tall, then lunged towards the open door. “I’m going to tell everyone about your shitty poems!”

  Moody ran out onto the floor after him, quickly catching up. Abraham slid around a makeshift barrier, putting space between them.

  Other wolves glanced over at this disturbance, idle interest sharpening into a need to know what was going on once they realized that two omegas were involved in this little spat.

  “Hey, guys!” Abraham said, waving the poems around in the air. Moody went around the barrier and put his hands up to swat the papers out of his grasp. Flashing that wicked smile again, Abraham suddenly hopped up in the air and tossed all the poems up towards the ceiling. Papers dispersed across the room, fluttering away from their brethren like startled birds. “Everyone check it out! Moody wants to be a poet!”

  “You fucking…!”

  Moody threw himself at Abraham again. The other omega stepped back behind another barrier. Moody didn’t care. He kept going, crashing through the barrier, sending planks of wood and the weight of his own body careening right into Abraham. Yelping, the tall omega fell over and hit the ground.

  Bringing out his claws and fangs, Moody pounced on Abraham and started to slash at him, shredding his clothes, scratching his face and hands and arms as he tried to defend himself.

  Out of nowhere, Moody felt himself being yanked away. Snarling, he twisted around to face this new assailant and found himself face-to-face with none other than Cain.

  Oh, I’m in deep shit now.

  Panting and shivering, trying to catch his breath, Moody felt another wave of dizziness start to overcome him.

  Cain opened his mouth to say something, then abruptly closed it with a snap. His gaze flicked from Moody, to Abraham, who was clawing his way out of the ruins of the barrier, and back to Moody again. “Okay,” he grunted. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “I was just trying to show everyone his poems,” Abraham said. He brushed off his jeans, which were so tight they showed pretty much every detail from ankle to groin. “He was just all shut up in his room, writing like he thinks he’s Edgar Allen Shmoe. I was helping.”

  “Poe,” Moody muttered vaguely, not sure what else to say in this situation. These two were brothers. He was the odd man out, here. Cain was going to favor Abraham.

  “I know who it was,” Abraham said, sounding haughty in the way that only a teenager can be. Moody knew, because he was a teenager himself until recently.

  Cain lifted his hands. They were enormous hands, the sort that would block out the entire world when one came flying at you. “That’s enough.” His voice was deep, an alpha’s dominant command. He didn’t need to speak louder to gain that intimidating edge. Instead, the effect originated from very deep within his chest. “Both of you. Abraham, pick up those fucking papers. Put them back in Moody’s room. Moody, come with me. Let’s talk.”

  Something inside Moody’s stomach trembled. Fear, trepidation. “Why?”

  “Abraham didn’t tell you?” Cain raised one eyebrow, looking over at his younger brother. Abraham wilted in front of his gaze like a flower in the face of fierce heat.

  “Tell me what?” Gradually realizing that he wasn’t the one in trouble, Moody started to relax a little. The quiver in his stomach abated, and his breathing slowed into what resembled a more normal rhythm. Angry red lingered at his peripheral vision, but that was all.

  “Abe,” Cain sighed. “Do you have to keep causing trouble?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Abraham protested.

  “Sure you didn’t. I sent you to fetch Moody for me, and now you’ve caused a scene.” Cain apparently remembered that they had an audience, his own words drawing his attention back to reality. He glanced around the floor. At least ten other shifters sat in various places, none of whom were even pretending to mind their own business. “Show’s over. All of you. Abe? Papers. Now.”

  “Wait,” someone else said. A beta wearing a leather jacket and a sensible haircut stood up, holding her pup under one arm. The pup was in wolf form, wiggling around and waving all four paws, but it couldn’t escape her practiced grip. “I’ll do it. I’m sorry, Cain, but I wouldn’t trust your brother to do anything.”

  Cain dipped his head in her direction. “Me neither. Thank you, Cujo.”

  Cujo flashed a little smile at him, then walked toward the nearest piece of paper. She had been given her nickname because her wolf form’s coloration strongly resembled a Saint Bernard’s.

  Bikers weren’t known for their subtlety.

  “Come on, Moody. Let’s go talk.”

  Moody followed along after Cain, trying to lengthen his stride to better keep up. They went over to one of the large windows on the outskirt of the main floor space, far away from anyone who might overhear.

  “I’m sorry about all that, Moody,” Cain said, looking out across the gray cityscape. “Are you okay? You looked pretty rough back there for a second or two. Did Abe hurt you?”

  Moody shook his head. Doing that made him feel a little dizzy again and he quickly stopped. “I’m fine.” He wasn’t the kind of person to willingly spill his feelings. Maybe once, but not now.

  “Are you sure?” Cain pressed. His voice was anything but rough and deep right now, having grown soft and worried.

  I bet this is how he talks to his mate and child.

  For some reason, thinking about Cain’s family made him feel incredibly sad. His shoulders hunched up and he couldn’t stop it from happening. Wrapping his arms around his chest, he tried to hold in all the words that wanted to come out.

  “You know,” Cain continued, continuing to look at the city, “if there’s anything bothering you, you can always come to me. Or Destiny. You’re just as important to us as everyone else.”
/>   “More important than your own brother?”

  Cain smiled, though the bitter twist of his lips made it seem more like a grimace. “Pack is pack. All are equal.”

  Moody set his hands on the windowsill, trying to see what Cain saw out there. The city belonged to him, so full of life and joy and excitement, but right now it all just looked so bleak. Gray buildings, gray streets, gray skies. What was there here for anyone except disappointment? The beach life was only a façade, a face worn for tourists.

  His thoughts were too confused to make any sense right now. He spoke slowly, trying to put words together as they came out. “You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? I don’t want to take any shit for it. Abraham called me emo. I don’t care. I just don’t want to give people more fuel to despise me.”

  Up until very recently, he would have said the exact opposite. Bring it on. Let everyone give him shit for being emo, for writing, for being sensitive. Whatever. He’d just give it all right back.

  Today, he just didn’t think he wanted to deal with that. He needed to recover from dealing with Isaac.

  “I won’t tell. Except maybe Destiny. I’ll be honest with you about that. If I feel like I need to, I’ll let him in on it. Other than him, no one will hear a word.”

  Smiling a little, Moody nodded. He liked that Cain had been honest with him. It made him feel better about what he was going to say. “Sometimes I have these moments where it feels like I can’t breathe. I get dizzy. It’s like everything’s ending. My mind goes blank. Things get hazy.”

  “Panic attacks?”

  “I guess. They happen a lot when I first wake up. It sucks a lot.”

  Cain didn’t say anything for a minute. The two of them stood together at the window, both of them looking out in silence. “You had one back there when I grabbed you. I’m so sorry, Moody. I didn’t mean to do that to you.”

  “You didn’t.” Moody shook his head. “I was scared about Abe getting into my poems. It’s pretty private stuff for me.”