Animal Instinct

by Noelle N

  "Alpha will take everything into consideration," said Adrian, after Jed had mind-linked him. "In the meantime, he suggests that we all head back and get some rest, and he'll give us an answer by tomorrow."

  There were mumbles of agreement at this and everyone slowly began to head home. Dimitri shot me a pointed look before trailing after the others, careful to keep a wide berth from them because of the volatile situation. Adrian was the last to leave and, hesitantly, he clapped Jed on the shoulder in a comforting manner before stepping away. Jed had tensed at the action, but he seemed more at ease around Adrian than the rest and nodded a vague goodbye before tugging me back into the house.

  Once the door clicked shut in place behind us, the rest of the house felt painfully empty. Static silence filled the air between us and it was almost like we could physically feel Spike's absence even here, even in a place where he seldom stepped foot in. But the harsh reality of losing him hung between us like a suspended piece of tattered string that you didn't know how to link back to anything, but it was there and it was painful and it left a gaping emptiness within you for a long while after.

  "You didn't eat at the diner earlier," I said at last, staring up at Jed, whose eyes were shuttered with some frighteningly vacant expression. He looked at me, but it was like looking through me and I tried to pull myself together. "Are you hungry?"

  He shook his head slowly, the action so mechanical that I realised he was in that state where you numbed yourself to everything, and all that was peripheral ceased to matter. I couldn't even tell him about what Dimitri had suspected or what I'd found out after. Jed was tethering on the precipice of his breaking point and I pushed everything else aside and just focused on him for now. Without thinking, I reached over to lace my fingers through his and tugged him closer to me.

  "Come on," I told him, pulling him into the kitchen after latching the door shut, and he willingly followed.

  The moonlight streaming through the windows seemed to bathe the kitchen in an almost ethereal glow, but I tapped the light switch on swiftly because the dark reminded me too much of shadows and death. Sitting Jed down at the table, I began to heat up some leftover food that I'd stored in the fridge. It wasn't long before I'd set out a plate of food in front of him, a half of his usual portion since I figured he didn't have much of an appetite anyway. Jed stared at the plate blankly and I let out a quiet sigh.

  "Jed, you have to eat."

  When he remained entirely motionless, I sighed again and stood up, the chair scraping quietly against the floorboards. With a few steps, I was standing beside him and I didn't hesitate to reach down, framing his cheeks between my palms and tipping his head up so that he was facing me. He seemed to relax into my touch but his eyes were still carefully blank when he met my gaze.

  "Jed," I started quietly, blinking back the tears that suddenly sprung to my eyes when I saw how broken he looked. His eyes slowly latched on mine when I murmured his name, and I saw a faint flicker of recognition in them. Taking that as a good sign, I took a deep breath and continued, "I need you here, with me. I can tell what you're thinking and I know that you have a one-track mind right now that's preoccupied with avenging Spike's death. Almost everyone's thinking it. But this involves you more than anyone else, and before you do anything, I just need you to think about what you're going to do. Are you doing this simply for revenge or are you actually ready to face your brother?"

  He flinched at my words, his jaw clenching as he pulled away from my grasp. His actions sent a sharp, stinging pain through my chest because it felt like a rebuff, but I steeled myself nonetheless and focused on him. He was swallowing rapidly as he averted his eyes from me, and I knew he was just inches away from breaking down.

  Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing. There were many stages of grief – as I knew ever since my grandmother, the only family I had left, passed away. And sometimes, instead of wallowing and spiralling through the different stages of grief, perhaps you needed to hit rock bottom, to sink lower until there was nowhere else to go, before you could gradually pick yourself up and piece the fragments of your heart back together again.

  "I'm sorry Spike died, Jed," I said at last, my voice quiet as I placed a gentle hand against his cheek. "I'm so sorry your friend died."

  For several long seconds, he was completely still. But then I caught the first fleeting glimpse of hurt flash across his eyes, before the blank expression on his face swiftly crumpled into something entirely stricken with grief. It was like finding that trigger where everything he'd carefully put together, all the walls he'd built to shut people out all this while, it all just fell apart and all that was left was him, just him – devastated, frightened, broken him.

  I moved forward before he could begin to feel embarrassed, and he held himself entirely still when I curled my arms around his shoulders. But the moment I wasn't looking at him, I felt him let out a shudder, and then his shoulders were shaking with silent sobs as he wound his arms around my waist and buried his face against my neck. I kept silent throughout, knowing that if I said anything, pride might compel him to pull away again; so I simply angled my head to brush my lips briefly against the top of his head, feeling his hot tears seep into my skin and keeping my arms wrapped around him tightly.

  Because it seemed that when our world fell apart, there was nothing else we could do but hold on to each other and never let go.

  * * *

  When I woke up, it was to the sunlight streaming through the windows, casting soft but dazzling hues on the bedspread and on my face. I vaguely noticed the faint silence lingering in the background; it felt like static, the kind that had you suspended, hanging, waiting, waiting for –

  Then clarity sudden sparked a chord in me and I blinked twice, registering the loss of the body warmth that had filled the right side of the bed the night before. Jed hadn't been able to fall asleep until I tugged him into my bed, and it seemed like it was becoming a habit for us. If he had shifted into his wolf form and slept next to me during that bout of nightmares I had all those weeks ago, then it was my turn to comfort him these two days – tugging him into my bed and curling up next to him until his breaths evened out as he finally succumbed to sleep.

  But his side of the bed was empty now, and I stared at the rumpled sheets for a moment, the lingering indent on the other pillow. When I finally turned on my other side, a slip of paper on the bedside table caught my eye and I reached over, neatly plucking it off the nightstand. The note was short and, in his hurried penmanship, read –

  I'm so sorry, Quinn.

  But this is what I have to do.

  I let a quiet sigh escape me as I turned back on my other side and stared at the empty space, feeling the paper crinkle beneath my fingertips as I held it tight. Titan was officially at war with Prometheus, and I had no idea how to feel about it.

  "I hope you know what you're doing," I whispered, letting my eyes slowly fall shut as I tried to picture Jed next to me, but the air was still and cold and empty.

  24

  GUILT

  Business at the diner seemed to slow to a crawl that day.

  And because the day dragged on, it was incredibly easy to wallow in the aftermath of Spike's death or to worry about the rest of the pack. With half of Titan gone, it didn't even matter that Lorraine or Lance or Adrian weren't there to help. Dimitri and I managed the breakfast, lunch and dinner crowds all on our own; with occasional help from the teenagers who seemed to spend most of their day at the diner.

  "It's a lot better than being locked up at home, scared and staring at the four walls," said Terence, when I thanked him for his help. He and Harvie had agreed to serve the food, while the others took up different jobs – like washing the dirty dishes or manning the cash register.

  "Staring at the four walls has to be better than having to see all your stupid faces," muttered Dimitri, as he passed us, and simply rolled his eyes when Terence flipped him the middle finger. He leaned back on the counter, an aggravated look on his
face as he glanced around at the other kids busy with their respective tasks, mostly because a couple of them were pretty much yelling at each other from across the kitchen.

  "Don't listen to him," I told Terence and gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder. "I know how much Spike meant to all of you."

  "It's impossible not to miss him," Dion said, as he stuck a new order to the tabletop and leaned against the counter. There was a flicker of hurt in his eyes when he talked about Spike but he offered me a faint smile nonetheless, as a vague reassurance that he was coping well. "He was the only one apart from Alpha who actually cared enough about us to teach us how to fight."

  I tried to blink away the mental image of Spike teaching the younger ones, the bright smile of pride on his face when he was satisfied with their accomplishments and the fact that Spike would've been such a fantastic father if only he'd been alive. No wonder Lorraine was so distraught. There were a million and one this-would-be's and this-could-be's that was never going to be fulfilled.

  I took a deep breath and smiled brightly at the two boys. "Well, if you want, Dimitri over there can teach you – "

  "Over my dead body," growled Dimitri, who'd clearly overheard us and was glaring at me with annoyance while I tried my best not to smile. He narrowed his eyes at Terence and Dion, both of whom were staring at him with hopeful gazes. "If you kids want to learn how to fight – you get beaten up. The more beatings you get, the tougher your skin gets and eventually, you learn to block before you can take a hit. Simple as that."

  I shook my head at him because, truth be told, there was no arguing with that logic. It made a lot of sense. It reminded me of Jed, who'd been abused so many times and taken the brunt of it so many times until, one day, he eventually snapped and fought back. And killed. You didn't know how far you could go or what you could be, until you were pushed to the limit.

  But I pushed that aside for the time being and headed back outside to the corner booth that Jed usually occupied. I'd spent the afternoon lull studying more about wolves – actual wolves this time, and not werewolves. Dimitri was right. Werewolves essentially behaved like their counterparts. They had the whole pack dynamics down to a tee, albeit with slight variations here and there. And the brown wolf I'd seen the night before had stood in a way that didn't seem at all passive or submissive in front of Jed.

  I mulled over the situation for a while longer before noticing Dimitri serving a customer out of the corner of my eye. Before I knew it, I was calling him over. "Hey, Dimitri?"

  He set the plate down and turned to me. His eyes immediately zeroed in on the books I was studying and he quickly strode over, gaze sharp and with none of that usual abrasiveness but with plenty of caution in his tone when he finally spoke. "What do you want?"

  "Take a seat." I gestured him towards the bench opposite me. He reluctantly settled down, his long legs folding out of the booth as he braced an arm on the tabletop. "The outlier," I started quietly, and Dimitri quickly cast a swift glance around, a guarded look slipping on his face when he realised what I was getting at. "No loyalties? Or misplaced?"

  Dimitri's gaze sharpened as he quickly caught the underlying meaning of my vague words – is the rogue loyal to no one, or is it loyal to another Alpha altogether? The implications were vastly different – a rogue that was loyal to no one would be a lot like Dimitri. You could keep guessing. You could wait for it to make a move. You could give it a second chance, even.

  But a rogue that answered to another Alpha was a very dangerous one. Especially if the Alpha that rogue answered to happened to be Malthus Trevino.

  "I'm thinking misplaced," answered Dimitri, after several seconds of consideration. He kept his voice low as he continued, "There are not many like me – most find a need to integrate themselves into a pack. It's instinct. Lone wolves are rare and few – "

  "What about Bianca?"

  "Not a lone wolf," Dimitri returned flatly, and shook his head. "Remember how she was so helpless when that happened? She wanted to be part of that pack so much, wanted to be Luna so much, that she blindly walked right into the trap. Lone wolves don't behave like that. They take what they need, take what they can, and run."

  "Run?" My eyebrows rose as I regarded him warily. "You're going to run? Where're you going to go off to – "

  "For fuck's sake, could you not make this about me?" He shot me an exasperated look. "What else do you want to know before I have to get back to the kitchen and hear those teenage girls make hyperventilating noises about how hot Trevino apparently is?"

  Despite the overall sombre mood around, a bubble of laughter escaped me at that and I hastily clamped a hand over my lips. "They say that?" I asked in a conspiratorial whisper as I slowly removed my hand. Dimitri gave me a disgusted look and my smile widened. Really, I was just thrilled that those girls thought that way about Jed, because his was the kind of beauty you couldn't possibly miss. He was silent, but that made him all the more striking. "But it's true, he's absolutely gorgeous – "

  Dimitri looked utterly repulsed. "I'm going to go into the kitchen right now and stick my head into the oven – "

  "Oh, don't be jealous," I cooed deliberately, knowing that my words were only serving to irk him even more, but an irritated Dimitri was actually pretty entertaining. "People talk about you too! The other day, Lorraine's friends were all gushing about you and, I quote, they just wanted to drizzle caramel sauce and whipped cream all over you and eat you right off the platter like the forbidden fruit that you – "

  "Stop – just stop talking," Dimitri growled, looking so torn between embarrassment and disgust that I almost wanted to laugh.

  I bit my lip to stop myself and leaned back. "Alright. Back to the previous topic," I said mildly, feeling the mood immediately spiral back down into something entirely serious once more. "Do you think the outlier is one of – them?" When Dimitri frowned in confusion, I threw another quick, cautionary glance around before lowering my voice. "The syndicate."

  Dimitri shrugged. "Unless you're working together or a person goes bragging about it – " He shot me a pointed look and I knew at once that he was talking about Claudius Trevino, who'd made his crimes fairly known while he was still alive. " – otherwise who's in, who's out – that's all unknown. You know what to look for though, right?" He tapped his index finger twice when I began to shake my head, and my attention was immediately caught by the gleam of metal on his finger. Two green lines winding like snakes wrapped around the ring. "Got it on initiation. Everyone has one."

  I caught his meaning swiftly and nodded. To look for the rogue, to prove to the rest of Titan that one of the monsters was among them the whole time, all we had to do was find the ring.

  The only problem now was convincing Jed that the enemy had been far closer than he'd ever expected all along.

  * * *

  It was dusk by the time the rest of Titan returned but none of the customers at the diner had left since. The sounds of cars revving up the driveway made me glance up, but since the doorway was crowded as people began to stream out, I remained where I was for a couple more minutes to finish up scrubbing out the pans.

  "Go," Dimitri told me, his hair falling stubbornly into his eyes again as he roughly scrubbed the oil stains off another pan. "I've got this."

  "Thanks." I smiled at him and set the pan down in the sink, untying the knot that held the apron around my waist. "When you're done, just lock up the back door and get some rest. I'll lock up the rest of the diner."

  He made a vague noise of agreement. "Tell Trevino I told him so when you see him."

  I was confused for awhile, until I realised that Dimitri was referring to the warning he'd given Jed the night before. You can't, he'd told Jed, when the majority of Titan had pushed for a war in the wake of Spike's death. You're underestimating Prometheus.

  I remembered his words perfectly and began to worry my lip as I looked over at him. It was difficult to stop that sinking feeling of dread from spreading through me. Suddenly, the p
rospect of losing a war seemed very, very real. There was going to be prisoners of war. Injuries. Casualties. Deaths.

  "You really think they couldn't do it?" I asked, at last.

  Dimitri let out a derisive, almost bitter laugh. "I was the Beta of Prometheus, a pack made up of rogues used to spending their entire lives killing in order to survive. What do you think?"

  I fell silent, hardly wanting to answer. I didn't have an answer to that. Of course I knew that Prometheus was a powerful pack; I just hadn't realised how powerful they were. But it made sense, and I hastily headed out to the front of the diner.

  The place now seemed flooded with about half of the pack, but Jed was nowhere to be found. I was about to leave the diner so that I could find him, when the woman standing by the doorway suddenly made me freeze as I recognised her immediately. She was gesticulating wildly with one hand and running aggravated fingers through her hair with the other as she spoke to Brutus and Vaughn, her fingernails a bloodied red that looked a lot like crimson blood, but a second glance made me realise that it was just nail-polish.

  "Bianca?" The word slipped past my lips before I could register it, and they were suddenly all turning to me. Several of them shot me wary glances when they saw me standing by the counter, looking nervously between Bianca and me as though pre-empting that I'd fly into some sort of rage upon seeing her there in the diner. But I was more surprised to see her here than anything else, and I quickly took several steps forward, a relieved smile spreading across my face. "Hey! How are you?"

  The aggravation faded from her features and her lips curled up in a slow, almost lazy smirk. "Quinn," she greeted coolly, only to stiffen when I pulled her into a quick hug. She pushed me away half-heartedly, but the expression on her face was now fractionally warmer as she regarded me. "I see you're still that disgusting, over-affectionate sap I've had the misfortune of knowing," she mused, her smirk now softening into a smile that was almost wry. "Jedediah's been waiting outside pining for you with his sad little heart."