Animal Instinct

by Noelle N

  Katya was right – I didn't know better.

  "Hey," Spike nudged me, clear concern laced in his features as he stared at me. "You alright?"

  I dragged in a deep breath and looked at him. "Do you think they're right?" Spike opened his mouth and I hastened to add, "and be honest, please."

  He hesitated for a moment, then sighed. "I agree that Bianca might not be the best person to trust," he admitted, reaching for the note that Giles had left behind. "You never can tell with her. The first time she came to Titan land, Alpha gave her a place to stay. But the option to be a part of the pack never opened to her, the way it was for me. I don't think Alpha trusted her very much and I think there's every reason to trust him."

  I fell silent. How could I argue with that logic? Because when put like that – I did trust Jed. Far more than I would ever trust Bianca; since he'd never given me any reason to think otherwise.

  "Nevertheless – " Spike continued, when he noticed the uncertainty on my face. "I don't completely agree with everything Katya said. You're a good Luna, regardless of what she, or anyone else, might say."

  "I'm not too sure about that," I mused wryly, even as I felt my shoulders slump with resignation. "Adrian didn't seem at all pleased the other day when he heard that I wanted to visit the graves of those rogues. And I haven't exactly been taking on any duties yet; maybe Jed doesn't trust me to – "

  "He doesn't want you to take over anything until you're ready," Spike corrected swiftly, nothing but absolute sincerity on his face. "You're compassionate, kind and far more receptive to us than most humans are. Not many would be so open to the idea of werewolves, or mating, or living in a pack the way you are. And you saved Lorraine." I glanced up at him in surprise and he smiled. "She told me what you did that day before you were captured by Prometheus. If you'd just ran ahead like she told you to, you would've been safe. Instead, you turned around to help her and that's how we lost you. You're brave and selfless. That's why you're the Luna of our pack."

  I couldn't help but feel a rush of comforting warmth sweep through me at his words. Lorraine had been my first friend, Lance was funny and Adrian was the overprotective Beta who always watched over me. But Spike was quickly making his way up the ranks to the one person I trusted and who understood me the most, apart from Jed.

  "Thank you," I smiled warmly at him. "Can I make you my Beta?"

  Spike laughed.

  * * *

  It didn't escape Jed's notice that I was far quieter than usual when he returned that night. After biding their goodbyes, Katya, Giles and Spike all left, the latter of whom paused by the doorway to inform Jed about some things in hushed whispers. Jed threw a quick glance over at me before looking back at Spike and nodded. Once Spike had left, Jed shut the door and dropped his bag down on the couch, before staring at me expectantly.

  I didn't have to be a genius to figure out what Spike had told him. After all, the tension hadn't ceased all day, even after Giles had brought Katya back and we'd all lazed around and watched a comedy flick together. I bit my lip and met Jed's gaze. "Spike told you about what Katya said?"

  He nodded, his lips flattening in a grim line and he looked aggravated by the information. This was something I was quickly learning about the hierarchy within Titan. Jed clearly wouldn't stand for anyone insulting or even thinking less of me.

  "She's right," I admitted, slowly getting to my feet and stepping closer to him. "I'm not – ideal as a Luna, really," I added, when he began to shake his head. Swallowing, I dragged a hand through my hair and continued, "I – I get scared a lot and hesitate a lot and…I don't really know how to do things for the greater good. I'm more likely to risk the safety of everyone just so I can save another person – that's the kind of decision I'd probably make. Even though Spike says that I'd be a good Luna, I'm not sure he's entirely right. I was even about to trust Bianca because of that text I sent you earlier – and I would have, if Katya and Giles didn't talk me out of it." I let out a sigh, averting my eyes from Jed even as he took a step closer to me. "I just – "

  The words trailed off when Jed unexpectedly slid his hand up to my cheek the next moment. I felt myself instinctively leaning into his touch, feeling his warmth like a soft comfort against my skin. He tipped my head up slightly and I blinked, pleasantly surprised when I felt him lean in and press his lips gently against my forehead. My stomach tightened deliciously at the contact, however feather light it was, and I wanted nothing then to reach for him, lean in closer, never let him go.

  His breath was a caress on my skin when he finally pulled back, his eyes soft as he gazed at me. "I believe you," he whispered, his voice barely audible in the silence.

  My eyes widened, even as my chest fluttered as I heard him speak to me once again. "You believe me about Bianca?" I clarified, feeling rather stunned when he swiftly nodded. "But…no one else does – except Spike, but even he has his reservations…" I trailed off, meeting gaze again and seeing nothing but seriousness in his eyes.

  So he trusted me just as much as I trusted him.

  The realisation came just as swiftly, and I exhaled, feeling but resisting the urge to pull him into a hug. But I didn't want to scare him away, not when he was slowly but surely beginning to feel comfortable around me. "Thank you," I said instead, a smile stretching across my face as I looked up at him, then fell a step back as I glanced over at the kitchen. "Are you hungry? I saved you some dinner."

  He nodded, but I didn't miss the way his eyes flickered over to the bathroom.

  "Go ahead," I told him easily, gesturing him towards the bathroom as I turned to head into the kitchen. "I'll just heat up the food for you."

  He nodded again and went to his bag to take a new set of clothes. While he took his time in the shower, I reheated the takeaway I'd been saving for him. Giles and Spike had wanted to take Jed's portion earlier but I'd pretty much watched over it like a hawk would over its nest, and thankfully, Jed's food had escaped their insatiable appetites unscathed.

  When Jed was done, he found me seated on the bed. His food was on the coffee table and I gestured for him to take a seat. His lips twitched when he noticed the notepad and pen next to his plate, and I smiled, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear before setting the letter Bianca had sent me on the table. Jed was eating, but he paused when I pointed to the name in the letter, his gaze automatically darkening.

  "You don't know him, right?" I clarified.

  He shook his head, but he gripped the fork in his hand so tightly that his knuckles were almost white. I knew that his reaction wasn't because he knew the man, but because my capture by Mattheus Norvil was all he could think of.

  Instinctively, I reached across the table and slid my fingers gently across the back of his hand. He stilled for a moment, but it was a pleasant surprise when he seemed to relax after that, like my touch had calmed him down. "It's okay," I said, before letting out a quiet sigh. "I've seen him, though. And he's – " I kept my eyes fixed on the way my fingers were brushing arbitrary patterns across the back of Jed's hand, because I knew that if I shut my eyes, it'd all come rushing back. " – he's a monster."

  Jed suddenly pulled his hand away from me, and his action made me glance up, startled. But he was already reaching for the notepad, his jaw clenched and eyes shuttered with pain as he wrote three words across the paper:

  I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so

  I stopped him then, gripping the tip of the pen tightly to prevent him from writing any more. He paused, eyes flickering up to meet mine apologetically and I shook my head. "Don't write that. Because it wasn't your fault," I told him gently, tugging the pen away from him and setting it down on the table. "There's only one monster here and it definitely isn't you."

  There was a pause and I didn't have to look up to know that Jed was waiting. I knew that he'd listen to whatever I had to say, but saying it just seemed so difficult at that moment.

  "When I was captured, the man let me wander the place," I started quietly. "His guards
didn't have a problem with me so long as I didn't try to escape. Then I came across this room. And it was – " I swallowed, blinking hard at the memories that blurred my vision. Focused solely on Jed instead, the way he was patiently listening and giving me his undivided attention. " – it was terrifying," I admitted, after a lengthy pause. "It was a dark room and it reeked of blood. There were…bondage equipment and dead women, dead girls and – I don't know how they got there or how long they were in there, but they were all dead, except for Bianca, and I – " I pressed the back of my hand against my cheeks to wipe away the tears. Jed was frozen, his eyes wide and posture rigid as he listened to me. " – they were tortured, Jed, and I couldn't save them and I can't get them out of my head – "

  I stopped when I suddenly noticed the expression on his face. It wasn't a look of revulsion or horror from my revelation. He looked stricken, and his eyes darted to me for a quick moment before he got to his feet in jerky, erratic movements. I stared at him in alarm as he grabbed his bag and began to pull out a large white folder.

  "What're you doing?" I asked in confusion, my earlier distress momentarily forgotten thanks to his puzzling actions. Pushing myself off the bed, I sidled closer to him when he opened the folder, laying the contents out on the table. "What is this?"

  I didn't miss the way his hand was shaking when he held out one of the papers to me. Unsurely, I took it from him. It took me several minutes to scan through the information and when I was done, all I felt was a cold, sinking feeling of dread that made me nauseous.

  "This is a list of missing women and young girls," I said at last, feeling my head spin with horror and disbelief. "It dates back to more than fifty years. Are these women all lycans? From the different packs?"

  He nodded, before reaching for the pen and notepad, and wrote:

  Been trying to find them, but no one knows where they went to.

  "Of course." I shook my head, feeling a shudder rip through me. "The man who captured me had hid these women in the basement. I bet the whole pack didn't even know that they were there the whole time."

  Jed nodded again, before flipping over the paper to show me a second list. This one was condensed, some of the words so foreign that they sounded strange on my lips. "Azazel, Dimitri, Malthus, Orcus, Raum, Tamiel, Xaphan," I read aloud, before noticing the header and looking up at Jed. "They're the ones you suspect?"

  Jed simply held out another piece of paper to me. I took it, only to realise that it wasn't a paper but a faded photograph. At first, it seemed normal, just two men grinning widely for the camera. But the second I recognised the man on the right, I flinched and dropped the photograph.

  "That's him," I whispered, my eyes wide as I felt a familiar panic seep in. Jed seemed to notice and he held out a hand, his green eyes steadily fixed on me. I didn't waste a second slipping my fingers through his before looking at Jed. His expression was strange, an odd mix of resignation and guilt and pain all at once. "Do you know him?"

  Jed averted his gaze from mine and reached for the paper, scribbling a name across almost haphazardly:

  Mattheus Norvil

  Then he paused, fingers gripping the pen tightly as he shut his eyes for a moment. And when he finally opened his eyes, there was nothing but a deadly calm as he rearranged the letters of the name into a new one –

  Malthus Trevino

  19

  HAUNT

  The silence between us was deafening.

  Nothing that happened so far had prepared me for the startling truth, so when it finally hit, it was like a crashing tidal wave that swept through and obliterated everything within. Feeling a shudder rip through me, I looked up at Jed. His eyes were still fixed on the words, like he couldn't quite believe that he'd written them down, deciphered the code, figured it all out.

  "Malthus Trevino," I started haltingly, hardly able to keep the tremour out of my voice. "That's your – "

  Brother, he wrote, shoving the paper close to the photograph and drawing a haphazard arrow to link the word to the person in the picture. Then he drew another arrow pointing to the man on the left, and added, father. Claudius Trevino.

  "The brown wolf," I murmured slowly, as realisation dawned on me. For a moment, it felt like I was transported back in time to the night I first met Jed. His green eyes glittering in the dark and crimson blood staining the snow. The sickening crack of the other wolf's neck. "That was – the wolf you killed, wasn't he?"

  The action was swift, but it was impossible to miss the way Jed flinched, his fingers curled tightly around the pen. He gave a fleeting nod, but looked so guilt-stricken that I felt my chest tighten as I watched him. So he'd killed his father. It was something I'd suspected all along, but I was also fast realising that in a situation like this, everyone's moral compasses seemed to be blurred.

  "I'm not mad," I assured him softly, sliding my hand across the table and tilting it with my palm facing up. It took him several seconds to shift closer, his eyes darting up to scan my face intently before he finally skimmed his fingertips across my palm, letting his fingers intertwine with mine. I brushed my thumb gently across the side of his hand, before looking at him. "I've heard the other werewolves talk about your father. He clearly – wasn't doing a good job, judging by the way they speak of him. Is that why you wanted him gone?"

  He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on me throughout, his gaze fixed on the expression on my face, searching, finding – something, I realised. He was bracing himself for the inevitable disgust or condemnation that he would see, that he'd probably seen from anyone beyond Titan-land.

  But I had none.

  The first two pieces had fallen into place, and I suspected that there were many more to come. I'd always known that Jed had a complicated family background, from the moment those rogues had stepped into the diner and accused Jed of killing his family, along with innocent women and children.

  But what if Jed had killed certain members of his family because it was necessary? Because they were the threats? Because they, not him, were the ones who had captured and killed the innocent women and children?

  " – the dates." A sudden thought occurred to me and I dragged the list of missing women over. The dates were set in chronological order and I pointed to the first one. "That's dated back over fifty years ago. Your brother wasn't the first person who did this, was he? It was your father."

  Jed lowered his head and I watched as the slight bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed, as though the action alone was painful to do. Then he flipped over to a new sheet of paper and began writing:

  I was sixteen when Claudius told me about the initiation. A rite of passage. I thought it was just the usual turning into werewolves. But he drove me several miles out to an abandoned warehouse. Showed me a room with two bound, naked and gagged women. Put a whip in my hands and told me I could do whatever I wanted with them. That's when I realised it wasn't an initiation. It was a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.

  It was frightening how these were merely words on paper, but each one felt like a stabbing shard of splintered glass that drove right through me. All I could think about was a young Jed; innocent, helpless, terrified. Forced to do all kinds of depraved things by a man whom he'd probably spent his whole life trusting.

  Jed was still writing, his grip unsteady on the pen, but he seemed adamant on getting it all out. So I didn't stop him, reading the words as quickly as he wrote them, feeling a sheer agonising dread lodge deep within my chest the more I read.

  Malthus was in the same room. I could hear the screams of the girl he was torturing. I could hear him laughing. And I wanted to leave but couldn't, because Claudius was bolting the door shut. He wouldn't let me leave. He swore that this was how a young boy became a man. A man with Alpha-blood running through his veins, a man with power, a man with a legacy. His legacy.

  This revelation was more than he'd ever written before, but it shed light on a matter that had always remained dark all this while. If I'd thought that finding out about werew
olves was like discovering a new world, this was far worse. It was like stepping into a dystopian one, and Jed was the sole survivor in such a twisted legacy.

  I was once terrified of Malthus Trevino, back when I'd first saw the room with dead women. And I had every reason to be. But this terrified me more. Because Claudius Trevino made monsters in his own image.

  And what happened when you didn't want to be made into one of the monsters?

  Suddenly, I knew, and then I wasn't just terrified. All the memories came rushing back, all the pieces just slotted back into place, one after another. Why Jed never spoke. Why Jed lived in isolation. Why Jed avoided physical contact.

  They broke him.

  "Claudius locked you in," I murmured unsteadily, lifting my eyes to meet Jed's. He was watching me intently and he was frighteningly calm, as if the past no longer affected him anymore. Either that or he was numbed to it all and that alone was haunting. "He locked you in and – your brother was there? And he didn't let you out, did he?"

  Slowly, he shook his head. But it was absolutely impossible to miss the way a shiver wracked through him, a flicker of pain glimpsing his eyes before it was all gone in a flash. My breath caught in my throat and it felt like a different kind of heartbreak altogether, because he wasn't breaking my heart. No, it was more along the lines of feeling some inexplicable form of pain for him. For all the things he'd had to go through, alone, and he was just sixteen and couldn't do anything to stop it from happening.