by Noelle N
"Animal," I repeated quietly, placing my palm softly against his cheek and meeting his heated gaze squarely. Then I reached for his other hand and placing it on my cheek, feeling the warmth of his hand seep into my skin. "Human," I murmured, and smiled, dropping my head lower so that my forehead was pressed against his, our lips a hairsbreadth away from each other until I could taste the sultry heat lingering between us. "Perfect balance."
His gaze softened just fractionally, before his eyes flickered down to my lips, seeing the sliver of a space between us. Heat seeped into his irises in a definitive indication that he desperately wanted to close the gap separating us, and I felt his hand slip off my cheek to rest on the curve of my neck. His thumb traced the indentations on my skin, glossing the faded teeth marks in a way that made me shiver with anticipation, and I let my eyes flutter shut, my fingers tightening against his cheek to hold him firmly into place, felt him lean closer so that he could –
Suddenly, Jed froze.
I felt his fear before I could even see it – the way he tightened his arm around me, every muscle of his body going completely rigid as he pulled away from me. And when he looked at me this time, I could see genuine fear in his eyes.
I didn't know what was happening. All I knew was that fear was contagious – you felt it when someone else close to you felt it, it seeped into you, filled your veins and engulfed you whole, until you felt nothing but numbed with it.
Quickly, Jed tugged me up and began to gather the files in a manner that was swift but silent. I scooped his laptop off the table and handed it to him. Files and laptop tucked under one arm, he reached for my hand with the other and I immediately gave it, following him closely out of the room. It wasn't until we were on the landing that I heard it – quiet but ominous thuds, along with slight creaks of the floorboard that would've been missed entirely had I actually not been listening for it.
I knew that Jed was focused, not on me, but his gaze was fixed on the stairs in an almost distracted manner, and I realised that he was attempting to mind-link the rest of the pack. Then his jaw tightened and, with another gentle tug on my hand, he led me upstairs. It took a tremendous effort to remain as silent as possible – Jed seemed to have been born with a grace that made the most lethal things he did somehow elegant, but I was none of that and I was thankful that I wore socks on my feet to prevent from making any extraneous sounds that would give away our location.
Once in his room, Jed bolted the door shut. His actions were hurried now, almost frantic, and he quickly pushed me into his closet, shoving his laptop and notes on top of the pile of clothes beside me. I was frozen with fear and all I could do was to tighten my grip on his hand when he made to pull away.
"Jed – "
He stilled. For a moment, he just looked at me, his expression a blend of fear and apology. And when he spoke, his voice was infinitely quiet. "Stay in there," he whispered, swallowing hard like the idea of whatever was going to happen terrified him just as much as it terrified me. Then he squeezed my hand in a fleeting, reassuring pressure and pulled away.
I felt the loss of his presence far more acutely than the loss of warmth from his hand, but before I could even register it, he'd shut the door on me. It was just in time, too, because the next second, I heard a loud crashing sound from outside.
They were here.
What had once been Jed's door was no doubt splintered into a million fragments, and a series of growls echoed through the sliver of a gap between the closet doors. I knew without a doubt that Jed had shifted, the sounds of scuffling and painful yelps and vicious snarls a terrifying medley that resonated through the thin wooden doors.
For a moment, everything was frighteningly familiar. It was just like that night I'd been held at Prometheus and Jed was out there trying to keep me safe. Only this time, I didn't have a doubt that he was the one they wanted.
And I couldn't keep him safe.
Dragging in a deep, shuddering breath, I huddled closer against the wall, throwing a couple of clothes over the pile of files and laptop to keep them from being seen. My fingers inched towards the pendant on my neck and I slowly removed it, flipping the blade to the right angle and clutching it tightly in my hand.
The growls and snarls were getting louder, and I couldn't even begin to imagine the fight that was taking place out there. A particularly loud snapping sound, a lethal crunch, and then there was an agonised howl that chilled me to the bones.
Because I felt it before I heard it – a sheer, scorching pain that seared right through me until it seemed like my skin had been flayed right off. Only none of that was tangible, because it was Jed's pain, and I could feel everything he felt, and it hurt. All the pain, all the terror, all the defeat – and I knew without having to see it that he'd been overpowered.
Still alive? Yes, but barely.
This was how it felt like to lose the person you loved most, and it was crushing, suffocating. I felt like I couldn't breathe, sitting there nauseated and drowning in my own fear, knowing the whole time that both our lives hung by the sliver of a thread. I heard an anguished whine in the distance and then there were muffled murmurs, until a familiar voice made me still.
" – wants him back alive. Don't kill him until we're given the signal."
Azazel.
I let out a deep, shuddering exhale at the sound of his voice. I was wrong, yet again, this time to show him mercy where mercy was not needed. The odds that Azazel had been working for Malthus all along had been there, but he could've easily been just a member of the syndicate. I didn't know how wrong I was until now, and now was too late for regrets.
" – can't find her," another person was saying, this time in a rougher voice. The conversation was convoluted, a mess of whispers and muffled words, but I could pick out bits and pieces of it. "Searched everywhere…scent's only faint in here."
"Then look harder," ordered Azazel, "she's in here. They're never far apart."
"We're taking him." Another voice, and there was another pained whine that made me flinch because it was Jed. "Regroup with the rest."
For a few minutes, there was nothing but shuffling, several thuds and murmurs until they slowly but surely faded away. My heart was racing an erratic beat in my chest but I didn't dare to leave. Jed had left me in here for a reason – his clothes were a powerful enough scent to keep them off my track and I felt my chest tighten when I thought about what he'd done to keep me safe. I shifted slightly, settling my back against the laptop and files so that they were tucked safely behind me under the pile of clothes.
Only I'd thought about safety far too soon, because the next moment, the doors had swung open. It felt like déjà vu – and for a split second, it was like I'd gone back in time to when Jed had opened the closet doors, studied me with those intense green eyes and said the two words that pulled me into his world.
But this time, it wasn't Jed but Azazel who stared down at me, a wicked gleam in his eyes and a cruel smirk curved across his face when he saw the terrified expression on my face. "Luna," he drawled, in the same way he'd done when we first met, only I knew without a doubt that there was nothing but lethal intent behind his words. "It'll be a pleasure to finally kill you."
27
FIGHT
The fear was paralysing.
Azazel had become no different from a stranger, a terrifying one who didn't seem to be swayed by any pleading on my part. I bit down on my tongue to suppress the instinctive urge to beg him for my life, as well as Jed's; and instead met his gaze as bravely as I could, my fingers tightening around the pendant in my palm in an effort to keep the silver edge out of his sight.
"Well?" The smirk on Azazel's face widened when he saw how truly terrified I was. No amount of facades I put on could get past him. "Cat got your tongue?"
"Azazel – Adrian." My throat felt like sandpaper but somehow, I managed to force the words out of my lips. Delay time. Wait for someone, anyone, to arrive and change the tides. That was all I could think off
as I sat there, my back pressed against the wall of the cupboard. "Why're you doing this?"
His grin faded and his lips tightened in a grim line. "Jed was never supposed to become Alpha. Claudius didn't want to hand the mantle of Alpha over, and for years, I had my eye on the seat. Then that bastard had to kill Claudius and ruin everything," he snarled, sounding well and truly angered by the thought. "Turns out that selling out Titan to another pack gets you far more money than expected. And you destroy what you can't have."
"You wanted to be Alpha?" I couldn't help but ask, watching him warily and bracing myself for any potential movement on his part. "What about Malthus? Wasn't he next in line?"
"Malthus?" Azazel's eyebrows shot up sardonically. "He couldn't give a shit about being Alpha. All he ever wanted was revenge on Jed for Claudius's death." He shook his head in mocking pity and smirked. "Daddy issues."
"And Spike? Did you have a hand in his death?"
For a split second, he hesitated.
I didn't.
Bracing one hand on the pile of clothes beside me, I launched a swift kick right in the centre of his chest. But his reflexes were far quicker than mine, and he snuck a hand up, wrapping his fingers tightly around my ankle and yanking me to the edge of the closet. I yelped in pain, thrown off balance with the sudden shift in position, the corner of the closet digging into my spine. I pushed myself up, jerking my foot away from his grasp and swiping my knife right across, catching him by the skin on his other arm. The sharp edge drew a thin line across his arm and I felt the sudden splatter of blood across my fingers as he flinched away.
Adrian swore furiously under his breath and grabbed my wrist before I could do anything else. "I knew you'd pull something like that," he hissed, as I futilely struggled against his grip. With his other hand, he yanked me closer to him by the collar of my jumper and pressed his knees against my legs to prevent me from escaping. "But you made the wrong move. And this is going to be so painful."
My heart leapt to my throat at the glint in his eyes, the coldness in them reminding me so much of Malthus's that I felt myself panicking, my breath coming in shallow gasps. "What're you going to do to me?"
He detected the underlying message in my words almost immediately and smirked. "You think too lowly of me," he remarked and shook his head. "I'm nothing like the Neanderthal tribe of Trevinos who get off on their sexual fetishes. Besides, I have a goddess of my own to do with however I please," he added. Then his gaze sharpened and his fingers inched towards my throat. "I'm just going to enjoy killing you."
One second, I was paralysed with fear; and the next, I was gasping, my fingers futilely reaching up to pry him off me. When I twisted my other hand to stab him with my knife, he jerked my wrist aside, slamming it against the side of the closet, the sharp sting shooting through my veins forcing me to drop the knife with a clatter.
My vision began to blur with black spots and I felt my throat beginning to collapse with the sheer pressure, my heart pounding in my chest in an unsteady beat as I tried but failed to drag in a desperate breath that simply wouldn't come –
Then, suddenly, he was gone.
A sharp, pained yell echoed through the room that wasn't from me, but from him. Abruptly yanked away from me, Azazel stumbled onto the ground, gasping as he yanked out a knife that had been buried into his shoulder blade with jerky, agonised movements. And as my vision slowly but steadily aligned, I caught a glimpse of a dark but familiar figure swiftly stride into the room.
"I've got plenty more where that came from." Dimitri's voice was a smooth, almost bored drawl. In the dark, I could see several silver shards that he was gripping in between his fingers. He spun one casually in his other hand and raised it threateningly when Azazel immediately gripped the chain hanging around his neck. "And if you're going to use that ring against me, do remember that I've got one too."
Azazel pushed himself to his feet, half-snarling in some sort of inhuman tone. "Traitor," he hissed, but his eyes were wary, guarded as his gaze swept the room for some form of escape.
"Loyal to no one, remember?" Dimitri smirked, even as his fingers tensed around the knife in his hand. "And you're one to talk."
Without warning, he sent the knife flying towards Azazel. The latter barely had the opportunity to shift just before the knife whizzed past him, lodging itself into the wall directly behind. The sound of bones cracking was all I could hear for a moment as Azazel shifted into his wolf form, but Dimitri didn't let up, sending another knife zipping across the room, this time lodging itself into one of Azazel's hind legs.
Azazel let out a painful howl as crimson blood gushed from the fresh wound, but swiftly threw himself against the window, the sheer force of it making the glass shatter under his weight. Glass splintered everywhere as he leapt from the window on the third floor, but I had no doubt that he could survive the fall. Regenerative healing, fast reflexes, near immortality. This had probably been his escape route all along.
Dimitri had his hand raised to throw another knife, but once he realised that Azazel was probably on the run by now, he lowered his arm and spun around, holding out a hand for me to take. "The first time I saved you, you repaid me by making me slice tomatoes at the diner," he deadpanned, even as he hauled me up to my feet and made sure that I was steady before letting go. "What're you going to make me do this time?"
My fingers gingerly inched up to my throat. The skin was sore there, and I still felt shaken from the ordeal, but otherwise fine. I'd come incredibly close to dying, had not Dimitri intervened just in time. Feeling a rush of gratitude, I offered him a weak smile and said, "I'll promote you to assistant chef."
He shot me a disgusted look. "That's even more work."
"I know. And thank you for saving me," I added gratefully, because truly, I was. Several seconds more and my trachea would've closed up. Dimitri had impeccable timing. He shrugged at my gratitude, as though having someone say these words to him was unnerving, and my smile almost widened at that.
But the moment I glanced around the room, the smile on my face vanished. There was nothing but chaos within the room, like a hurricane had swept right through and left nothing but devastation in its wake. It wasn't until then that I noticed four wolf bodies lying on the other side of the room, pools of blood surrounding them. I had no doubt that these were rogues from Prometheus, and Jed had killed them in his fight earlier.
Dimitri ignored them and simply went to retrieve his knives. "They're dead," he said nonchalantly, as if he'd seen so many deaths before that another one no longer mattered. It probably didn't.
I swallowed and forced myself to look away. I wanted to bury them, wanted to feel sorry for them even, but when I thought about how they had been part of a group that had taken Jed away from me, it was almost difficult to feel anything other than vague sympathy for their kind.
"They took Jed," I whispered. Jed was gone and Titan was without a leader and I was without him. Now that everything was over, the brevity of what had happened came crashing down all at once and it was physically painful. More painful than anything I had ever experienced.
"And several others," added Dimitri, after a careful glance my way.
His unexpected words made me look up, a chill racing down my spine when I suddenly realised that the situation was more severe than I'd ever expected. My throat was dry and my heart pounded in my chest. "What?"
"That's what I heard the rest of them say." He shrugged. "Some screams about how the diner was under attack. Could hear it all the way from my room."
"But you chose to come here?"
"Had a feeling it was really Trevino they were after. Turns out I was right."
He was. My mind was swiftly processing his words. Earlier on, Jed had mind-linked the rest of the pack, but none of them had come and now I knew why – because they were more caught up in whatever was happening down at the diner to realise what was happening to their Alpha. It took a rogue, one who was not linked to Titan at all, to figure out where the rea
l fight was.
And now we were without a leader.
Back when Spike was alive, he had once told me that a Luna was automatically made the head of the pack when there wasn't an Alpha. She had a Beta to back her up, of course, but Titan was now without a Beta too.
I was all on my own.
Shutting my eyes, I took a deep breath and felt. Everything – all the dull throbs of pain in my chest, anxiety tugging on my every nerve and that strong longing slowly but surely ripping at the fissures of my heart. I could feel all of it, but it wasn't me.
It was Jed. I could feel his emotions even though miles separated us; and the fact that he was still alive, still in pain and still thinking about me was enough to send courage surging through me once again as I opened my eyes.
Quinn. Queen.
Now was the time to attach a meaning to my name.
"The attack on the diner had to be a deterrent," I said at last, my voice steadier than I felt. I pulled Jed's files and laptop from beneath the pile of clothes. Once I had them stacked into a neat pile under my arm, I shut the door and averted my eyes from the dead bodies, making a mental note to get someone to remove the bodies later. Picking up my necklace from the floor, I slipped it over my head again and nodded at Dimitri. "Come on, let's go."
Apart from an odd look he shot my way, along with a discreet eye-roll, Dimitri followed me without a word. I picked up what I could along the way – my bag, along with the knife I usually carried around with me in addition to the one I had on my pendant. We made our way to the diner through a different, more obscure route that Jed had once showed me, and we maintained a silence between us, one that was intermittently interrupted by the sound of jarring splicing of metal as Dimitri sharpened his knives. I didn't even know where he got that entire collection – knives that were clearly silver and had matching curved handles; but I didn't want to ask either. All I could think about, really, was that gaping emptiness I felt without Jed.
If Jed's room back at the house was filled with nothing but the musk of death and devastation, the diner was the exact opposite – plain pandemonium and a babble of noise that bordered on hysteria. The diner was lit, and I could see that most of Titan were gathered inside. Harvie and his group of friends were seated out on the pavement and they quickly scrambled up when they saw us.