Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  “So what’re you trying to tell me?” his dad said, almost calmly. Only an idiot would have believed it, Mason’s now latent beast’s instincts on high alert in the face of such danger. He catalogued the tension in his father’s jaw, the frantic working of those big muscles, his fangs getting longer, more prominent, fur even prickling across his skin as his eyes blazed silver. “That my… That my mate is a nix? That you… That you feel the same fucking pull you felt for me with…?”

  Mason’s dad couldn’t finish the sentence, and I knew how he felt. Sometimes, it was putting it into words that was the final nail in the coffin. Because that’s what it was for him, what me as an adult could see, what child Mason had no ability to. I was watching someone get cut down, slain before me, his heart breaking into a million pieces.

  Which was perhaps why the dishes needed to follow suit.

  Child Mason watched his dad swipe the same big strong arm that used to hold him tight across the top of the table, smashing the plates into the walls, splattering their contents on the paint, on the carpet, on the furniture beyond. He felt the erratic throb of his mother’s smothered sobs down the link of her hand and experienced the dual tug of wanting to soothe her and his father.

  His child brain saw that there was a Very Big Problem and the adults weren’t doing anything to solve it. She shrieked as his dad grabbed casserole dishes and slammed them against the wall. Pitchers, cutlery, crystal salad bowls. Mason’s dad committed wholesale slaughter of his wife’s entire crockery collection, breaking it as he broke, so he didn’t turn those vicious hands on her.

  “What’s going on?”

  An older man shouldered his way into the room, taking in the three of them with a well-practised eye. The buzz of dominance in his voice, that gaze, I knew what this man was.

  “Neil?” It wasn’t really a question, more a sharply barked command, and the man put the plate he was holding down.

  The look on Mason’s dad’s face, that smoothing down, locking away, hardening and forcing an enviable facsimile of calm over his face. He let out a long shuddering breath before he answered his alpha, the only sign of residual tension, but his words, when they came, were brutal.

  “She’s a fucking nix. Has a mate in another town, thought she’d make me a nice roast meal to break the news to me.”

  Both men’s eyes swivelled around to take the two of us in, the alpha’s and his dad’s hardening and kept on getting harder

  “This true, Jen?” the alpha asked.

  Nix, nix, nix… The word beat like a heartbeat in the little boy, said rapidly in time with his pulse. It was the thing that jumped out at him, the thing that explained this radical departure from the relative peace of their home. His mother was kind, sometimes distracted, preoccupied by things he couldn’t understand, but as long as he was quiet and well behaved, she found him again, sweeping him up in her arms and holding him close.

  His dad was a jovial figure, greeting the lot of them each time he came home with a broad smile on his face, sitting down with a beer at the dining table to hear their stories of what they’d been up to. They sat together, father and son, watching the footy or the news, his dad explaining what was going on, smiling with how quickly his son picked up the rules or the information.

  Mason’s neck must have craned up to look at his mother, wanting an answer too, as her tear-stained, frantic expression swum into view. We watched her lip tremble, her fingers moving to still them.

  “Jennifer?” The crack of the alpha’s will was apparent now, beating down on all of them.

  And her reply? A shaky nod, that was all it took to bring down hell.

  It all moved super fast after that, in a series of blurry jumps where I caught fragments of action—from Jennifer trying to clean up the house and being told to leave it, to leave, to stuff being shoved into bags, Mason looking on as he saw some belongings snatched up, others left to languish. He’s tried to go back, to grab some toys, but her grip on his hand was like iron. He was tugged out the door of the only home he’d ever known to see a dishonour guard stood along each side of the front path to watch them go.

  This, this was the key part of this memory, that I needed to see, because whether he remembered this correctly or not, the people he walked past, all their faces were twisted up into expressions of disgust. No one said anything to them, though there was plenty of mutters and asides as they moved farther down the driveway.

  “Where’s this…other mate of yours?” the alpha asked, his brows drawn down hard. She told him, of course. “Well, I hope he’s ready for you. I’ll have one of the boys drop you and Mason over there, once I’ve called their alpha to let him know you’re coming. I hope whoever he is, he isn’t too attached to the place he’s in, because I know the man well and he won’t stand for this kind of nonsense in his town.” The alpha’s gaze shifted to a man standing to one side. “Bring one of the station wagons around.”

  Mason felt like he’d lost feeling in his hand, but he squeezed tighter as the adults kept doing stuff he couldn’t understand, some men leading his father away, commiserating in the same way they had when the Gregor’s little baby had died. But he wasn’t dead. His mum wasn’t dead.

  But they may as well be.

  The neighbour’s boy, a little older than him, broke away from the crowd, sizing him up the way he saw some of the nastier older kids did before the parents got involved, looking at him, then his mother over with a predator’s eye.

  “Your mum’s a slut.”

  The word hit me as hard as it did the much younger Mason, but we didn’t get to dwell on that, the memory fading, only to be replaced by another.

  A high-pitched scream cut the air, that primal shout of a hungry baby startling a sleeping Mason awake. It was so loud, so insistent, he couldn’t understand why he didn’t hear the clatter of adult feet, rushing to see to it. His brother, he corrected himself, Zachary. Zachary cried and cried and cried, getting louder and louder, so that even when he pulled his thin pillow over his head and clamped it down around his ears, he could still hear it. Finally, when the siren wail got too much for him, he jumped out of bed, opened the door wide, not caring when it slammed on the wall behind, and stomped down the hall.

  Bruce, the man who had taken his mother from his father, his brother’s dad, he had the same idea, it seemed. He hustled past Mason, rubbing frantically at his eyes, trying to clear them until they both emerged into the meagre kitchen and dining room, where Zack’s cot had been set up. Mason’s mum was slumped over the table where they had breakfast, a tall dark bottle next to her.

  “Jesus fucking Christ…” Bruce cursed, picking it up and tossing it in the rubbish before going to pick up the baby. Zack snuffled for a moment, stopping his crying for just a second, but whatever he’d hoped for when his father held him, it wasn’t what he found. The baby began to wail again.

  “Jen…” Bruce said, nudging his mother, but she just rolled soggily, then fell back into her former position. “Fuck, bottles. Where the hell are the bottles?”

  If that was the solution to all of this, Mason knew the answer. He walked over to the sink, piled high with dirty dishes, and Bruce’s eyes followed him.

  “Fucking hell…” the man said, his mouth dropping open. He worked long hours, coming home late at night, so he obviously didn’t see the state of the place, but he did now. “Fuck… What do I…?”

  Zack tried to answer him. He wanted food, warmth, to be held and to be clean, and he shouted that as best he could with the only means he had. Bruce’s eyes zipped between the mound of dirty bottles and the baby and back again several times, until finally, he strode forward, a picture of somewhat comforting resolve until… He moved in close, gesturing for Mason to take a seat before holding out the child to him.

  Child Mason took baby Zack, because that’s what he did. If he said no, if he tried to stop what was happening, then what? It already felt like their lives teetered on a knife’s edge for reasons he couldn’t understand, so what w
ould happen if he made a fuss? Bruce leant down, correcting his hold on the child. “Keep your arm up around his neck. That’s right. He’s a bit wobbly, your little brother. He can’t hold himself up just yet. He needs you for that.”

  Bruce stared into Mason’s eyes. “You’re his big brother, and I need you to just hold him for a tic while I make up a bottle.” His eyes flicked to the sink. “Some bottles. After we get Zack fed, I’ll show you how to do that.” His eyes slid to Mason’s mum’s prone form. “Just in case I’m not around.”

  Mason heard his step-father’s movements dimly, the heavy weight of the baby taking his entire focus, especially when the child stilled, seemingly soothed by the tight hold. Tears lit the baby’s face like tiny gems, but nothing shone brighter than his little eyes. Zack’s bore into Mason’s, the two of them just staring until Bruce broke the spell.

  “You want to give him his bottle, mate?” the man asked gently, and before he could think, Mason nodded. The baby started to squirm and cry again as they worked it out together, but something rose as he got the rubber teat between his brother’s lips. He watched the little guy suck down the milk greedily, his eyes going heavily lidded.

  The memory jumped forward again, showing an older Mason walking through the gate of a school with the slow, cautious steps of a new student. A teacher waved to him from beside the door, gesturing for him to come forward, but before he could get far, some older boys shouldered forward. With furtive looks over their shoulder at the teacher, the ringleader stepped forward.

  “I heard your mum’s a slut.”

  Mason’s hands went to fists, a rage kept down for too long rising in an instant, a snarl forming on his lips. The boys had hit pay dirt, and they snickered in response, right up until he launched himself at them. He swung out wildly, crazily, just feeling the need to kill, kill, kill! He was a can of cola shaken over and over, and these boys were dumb enough to pop him open. One of them went slamming back onto the pavement with a satisfying thud, followed by the lightning fast whip of his fists. People screamed, shouted, cried out, but he kept on hitting, right up until a strong hand grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him backward, still snarling like his beast.

  Or at least that’s what they said.

  “Your son acted like a wild animal!” the affronted staff said in a quiet, still room, all lined up behind a table, Mason, Bruce, and Zack on the other side.

  “Completely unprovoked?” Bruce repeated their words, his suspicion obvious. We didn’t get to hear their answer, the memory skipping to a tired-looking Bruce, soothing an unsettled Zack with pats on his bottom.

  “Well, if you’re gonna get into fights,” Bruce said, “I better make sure you know what you’re doing.”

  The memory shifted now to an old boxing bag set up to swing from a tree in the caravan park, the local kids clustered around to see Bruce stripped down to the waist, showing Mason how to fight.

  I watched him grow, from a little stripling of a kid, barely able to shift the bag, to taller, harder, meaner, making the bag dance as he shuffled around it. Kids wanted to have a go too, but not for long and not while he trained. There was something now to the way Mase walked that stopped that. People pulled away, gave him a wide berth, muttered things once he went past, but not while he was within earshot. But that all changed when Zack went to school.

  He took his little brother up to the preschool gate, saw the teacher with the mumsy frock and the bright smile wave to them, an echo of his own first meeting, but that wasn’t what had the hair on the back of his neck standing up on end. It was the kids from the primary school, the older kids, looking over the fence, clustered in a group, their collective gaze and their pointing fingers making it clear what had their attention. Mason stared, his eyes boring into each and every one of them until the teacher bustled over.

  “Hello, you must be Zachary!”

  Mase’s focus was swiftly drawn away, his hand going to Zack’s shoulder, pushing him forward a little.

  “I’m Zack, and I’m four years old!” he declared, and Mason saw that big infectious smile of his that seemed to soften the hardest of hearts. He watched, waiting to see how the teacher would respond to his brother

  “Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Zack!” she replied with a big grin, then held out a hand to take his.

  Mason let go of Zack’s reluctantly, but he knew this was how it was supposed to be, what would happen if it didn’t. He nodded to the teacher, pulling back, and when they turned to go, he watched the two of them walk inside with the horde of other kids. But when he turned around, he did so to face down the enemy.

  “Got a little brother, huh?” one of the kids from his school said with a slow smile that had my whole body tensing.

  Chapter 42

  “They’ve got Zack.”

  Mason was in high school now by the look of the other kids and the hallways. The messenger who came skidding up to him wasn’t a friend. Mason didn’t even know his name, but that didn’t stop him or others who suffered under the tyranny of the ruling clique from running to him when something was going down. Especially when it had something to do with his brother.

  “They’ve got him behind the bike shed.”

  “Fuck…” Mason growled and then took off at a run, right as the school bell went.

  He was a fish swimming upstream, the student body flooding in response to the sound, but he didn’t care. He tried to weave his body through those walking in, images of just what was happening out at the bike shed flooding his mind, and when that didn’t work, he started to push and shove, force people out of his way.

  Stumbling outside didn’t make anything easier, his arms, his legs pumping as he ran to the back of the school where the bike shed was, throwing himself over the low fence when he saw a cluster of people around the back, hanging in the shadows. But it was the muffled cries that had his head whipping around. He put on as much speed as he dared, feeling the burn in his thighs.

  “Here he comes!” someone shouted. Maybe more was said, but Mason didn’t hear it. All his training, all his calm, cool tactics lost when he heard the ragged shout of his brother.

  It was clear to any who saw what I saw, that Mason had put up with a ton of shit. The trouble was his beast had too. His wolf had seen the family structure he could expect to have around him disintegrate, his home taken from him over and over, his pack, the most important thing for a wolf to have, ripped from him, and all subsequent packs turn on him.

  Like they did now.

  It was hard to see Zack this small, this vulnerable. Especially when a much bigger hand had a grip on his shirt collar, twisting it tight until the little boy struggled to breathe, the others holding him down so his squirms got him nowhere. But not for long.

  Mase, he’d fought these boys before, too many times, so he should’ve had this in the bag. Beat them into submission, scoop up Zack, get him home before Bruce got there, and clean him up before getting a start on dinner. This was a grim routine, but it was one he’d gotten through many times before, so why now?

  Mason carried a predator inside him, just like all of us did. It wasn’t in its nature to lie down, stay quiet, keep the peace, though he asked that of his animal all too often. But it had been swimming up and out of the depths of Mason for some time. As his body grew taller and stronger, so did his wolf, until finally, it couldn’t take it anymore.

  Zack was his pack, and Bruce to a certain extent. One of his was being threatened, hurt. A film of red covered his vision right before his wolf came out.

  The godawful snarl of disgust had everyone freezing still, like bunnies in headlights, eyes slow to slide around as if afraid of what they’d see, with good reason. The huge dark beast of Mason’s wolf stood there, paws planted, haunches coiled, ready to strike.

  “Oh fuck…” one of them squeaked as Mason’s jaws dropped open, sabre-like fangs, a rose red throat, ready to tear them apart.

  “Let him go! Let him go!” one yelped, jerking his body away from
the bike shed and making a run for it, something that tugged at his instincts, but he wasn’t the main prey. It was them, still standing over his brother, his pack, a hand still wound in Zack’s shirt. They were the focus. A continuous snarl rumbled in his throat as he took one step, then another towards the boys. Another’s nerve failed, then another, both boys pelting across the grass leaving him—the alpha’s son.

  “You…” There was a pleasure to be had from watching the little bastard struggle to put words together. “You… You shouldn’t be able to… We don’t shift…”

  Mason put paid to the conversation with a lunge and snap of his jaws. That was it, the boys let go of Zack and then tore away, hoping to get back to school. Mase saw Zack slide down the side of the shed, tears in his eyes but otherwise unharmed, before he took off after the bullies.

  This, this was what he was meant to do.

  Mason could feel it in the animal pleasure that came from running with such an efficient, powerful machine of a body. His paws dug into the grass, sent him sailing over the fence, then after a few more steps, launched him at the alpha’s son.

  This, this was what was meant to be.

  He felt the kid faceplant hard, his paws driving out every gasp of air from the boy’s lungs as he flopped over onto his back, chest working desperately to refill them. Mason was on him in a second, his paws to either side of the boy’s chest, his snarling jaws moving in slowly to the boy’s throat, saliva dripping on the kid’s skin.

  “No… No…!” the kid pleaded, but he wasn’t giving up now, wasn’t going to let this slide. Why the hell had he done so before when he could do this? His jaws opened in a wolfish smile when he smelt the pungent stink of urine flood the boy’s pants and then—

  “Get away from my son, mutt.” His wolf eyes slid upwards to see teachers, students, the principal, and even the alpha himself standing around him, their censure plain. “Get. Away. From. My. Son.”