by Apollo Surge
"You're doing fine," Sawyer said, though a knot of worry sat like a stone in the pit of his stomach. "We'll figure it out."
"I don't think I'm cut out for this," Elliot said, still hiding his face. "I'm a beta. I was a beta. I was happy with that! Even if Duncan couldn't be Alpha anymore, why couldn't the Moon have chosen Mateo or Jacob?"
"Do you really want Mateo in charge?" Sawyer asked, half teasing. Mateo was a great guy, and more competent than he seemed. But he was also kind of a goof and a shameless thrill seeker. Elliot shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe he really would be better than me."
"Well then ask for his advice tomorrow," Sawyer suggested. "If you think he's got the answers, use him. Jacob too. You're not doing this alone. We're all here to support you."
"I'm not sure if Alpha's are supposed to need that much help," Elliot said with a bitter smile. "Doesn't that make me seem kind of… weak? Like I don't know what I'm doing?"
"No!" Sawyer said immediately. "I mean, I wasn't here that long, but Antonia and Duncan definitely asked for everyone else's advice. Like, that's the whole point of living in a group, right? Everybody contributing different skills? The leader doesn't need to be good at everything, just at directing the right people to the right jobs."
"I wish they were here," Elliot said quietly. "Antonia and Duncan. And Henry, and Penny, and Craig and Deidre… I just wish things could be the way they were before…"
"Before I showed up," Sawyer finished for him, guilt squeezing painfully over his heart.
"No," Elliot said, pulling Sawyer closer. "No, no, I wouldn't give this up for the world, Sawyer. None of what happened was your fault. Raven still would have tried to take over even if you'd never found us. The Erlking still would have tried to break free. I'd still be exactly where I am, except I wouldn't be holding the most incredible man I've ever met right now. Frankly, I think I'd be a lot worse off."
He kissed Sawyer softly, brief but full of meaning.
"I love you, Sawyer," Elliot said, and Sawyer's heart skipped several beats. He opened his mouth to respond, but choked on the words that nearly came out, fear paralyzing his throat. Elliot just smiled, and kissed his forehead. "It's all right. You don't need to say it. I can wait until you're ready."
He pulled up the blankets and closed his eyes, and Sawyer lay awake in his arms, wishing he could explain why he couldn't say those words. He felt them, or thought he did, deep down. But he couldn't say them while he was still lying about the pregnancy. And if he loved Elliot and Elliot loved him, how could he risk ruining that by telling the truth?
He didn't sleep much that night, despite his exhaustion, but when he did he dreamed.
He was in the woods on a night with no moon. The darkness was so black he could barely see the trees directly in front of him. He wasn't sure what shape he was in. He seemed to have paws one moment and feet the next, blending into one another seamlessly.
Light cut through the new moon blackness, raising the hair on the back of his neck. Flashlights. Searchlights. Human voices calling back and forth. A memory of fear, of being chased off properties or arrested, spurred him to run, to stay away from the lights. But somewhere along the way things blurred. He wasn't running away from the lights, but running with them, nose to the ground, searching. Something was lost. No, not lost. Stolen.
There was a person beside him, searching with him, tireless and desperate.
"Keep looking," the person begged, their voice as familiar as it was strangely without distinction. "Keep searching. We have to find it! We have to take it back!"
Sawyer tried to look at the person, to remember who they were, but couldn't see their face in the darkness. He couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. Only that their hands were shaking as they clawed their way through the underbrush, heedless of thorns or danger.
"Keep looking!" they pleaded. "Keep hunting!"
"What are we hunting for?" Sawyer asked, trying to get closer to the person, to see them better. But there was a strange distance between them that Sawyer couldn't seem to close, no matter how he ran. The person stopped their frantic searching and turned to look at Sawyer, and Sawyer could see their eyes in the darkness, wide and strange and deep, deep green.
"You."
The dream burst, like a ripe fruit in a closed fist, like a mishandled firework, too close and bright to be safe. It rushed over and around and through Sawyer like water, like light, like nothing he had the words for, then closed around him like arms, holding him tight.
Something whispered in his ear lightning words he couldn't understand but which carved themselves into his soul all the same. Kisses scarred his skin like falling sparks. Pain like burning alive infused him and consumed him, twinned with pleasure so intense it made the pain more than worth the price. He couldn't see beyond the terrible, awesome light that surrounded him like a firestorm, burning his molten eyes to crystal, but he didn't want to.
He wanted to run, but not to escape. He wanted to be chased. He wanted to be caught, and be devoured while burning again. To live and die and live again, butchered and birthed by these same worshipful hands. He felt as though his eyes were open after centuries of half-sleep. He felt whole.
The fire seared the flesh from his bones. His skin sloughed off and there was nothing but gold beneath it. Light radiated from him like a living star. And God the pain was terrible and exhilarating. Someone who loved him with the absolute certainty of the coming winter- of entropy, of the death and birth of stars and the long slow clockwork of the universe- pulled his old skin away and kindled his new body to nebular fire with kisses. And in a terrible, familiar voice, it welcomed him home.
***
He woke with a strangled inhale, the smothered remains of the screams he couldn't voice in his dream. It set off a coughing fit and he rolled away from Elliot and nearly off the edge of the bed.
"Sawyer?" Elliot asked, voice slurred by sleep, but the coughing had triggered Sawyer's nausea and he couldn't answer, falling out of bed and half running, half crawling to the bathroom.
Elliot was beside him a moment later as he heaved over the toilet, rubbing his back and keeping his hair out of the way.
"You all right?" he asked when Sawyer sat back from the bowl, shivering and sweating at the same time. "Should I get Alicia?"
Sawyer shook his head quickly and regretted it when the nausea reared up again in response to the movement.
"I'm fine," he lied. "Just a nightmare."
"That must have been some nightmare," Elliot said with a worried frown, dragging a towel off the rack to wrap it around Sawyer's shoulders. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Sawyer considered it for a moment, his immediate instinct to say no.
"...It was the Erlking," he admitted after a moment. "I've had a few dreams about them since, you know."
Elliot nodded, sitting down against the bathroom wall next to Sawyer and putting an arm around him. Sawyer leaned into the other man gratefully.
"This was more intense than usual," Sawyer said. "For a minute I thought..."
He trailed off, not sure he wanted Elliot to know.
"Thought what?" Elliot asked softly.
Sawyer was quiet for a moment, searching for the right words.
"For a moment I thought I never got away from him," he said, looking down at the mosaic tile floor, tracing the geometric pattern with a fingernail. There was a misplaced tile in the floor. Just one, no bigger than a quarter, just slightly out of place, which skewed the entire pattern around it. Sawyer traced the grout around it, feeling a strange impulse to claw it up. "I thought that everything since then was a dream, or an illusion. Something he gave me to- to torture me, maybe. Or to comfort me. Or to convince me that staying with him was the right choice."
Elliot frowned.
"Have you been unhappy here?" he asked, a quiet hurt in his voice.
"No," Sawyer said quickly. "No, of course not. I've been happier here with you than I've been in
my entire life. It's just..."
He struggled to find the words. It wasn't a lie, living here was the happiest he'd ever been, even with the pregnancy. But still, something felt wrong.
"Sometimes I feel like a mistake," he tried to explain. "Like something went wrong when I was born, like I should have been born somewhere else, someone else, or not at all. I'm not the kind of person who usually believes in like, a grand plan or whatever. But I feel like, if there is a plan, I wasn't part of it. And everything I touch just messes things up further, changes things, gets people killed and lives ruined. Like knocking over dominos."
"Sawyer," Elliot protested. "You're not."
Sawyer held up a hand to stop him, shaking his head.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I know it's irrational. I don't even believe in a plan, remember? Knowing that it's stupid doesn't make the feeling go away. Embracing it doesn't make it go away either. Even living here, with a bunch of people just like me, people who love and accept me, being part of a family- The feeling is still there. It probably always will be. But when I was with the Erlking..."
He hesitated, licked his lips.
"When I was with him, I felt like I belonged."
***
Elliot helped Sawyer back to bed when he was sure the nausea had passed, and they squeezed onto the narrow mattress together again. Elliot's arms were warm and comforting around Sawyer, and he stroked Sawyer's hair until he fell asleep. Sawyer tried to focus on this feeling of safety. This was what he'd chosen. He wanted to be here, with Elliot. He wanted long peaceful summer days and family dinners and holiday nights. He wanted to work in the garden and play with the dog. Cook with Jacob and tell stupid jokes with Mateo and knit with Alicia and star gaze with Paul and love Elliot until it killed him. He wanted to grow old in this place, never running again, and know it was his home forever, with no fear of losing it. The terrible passionate painful intensity of the Erlking could never compare to the gentle, every day peace of living here, no matter how tempting it sometimes seemed. This was what he wanted. This was where he belonged. So why did it feel like he kept having to convince himself of that?
Chapter Eight
The next day was beyond hectic. The new guests were in and out of the house constantly, using the bathrooms and the kitchen. Elliot was trying frantically to find enough food for all of them, and a more permanent solution to the housing situation. The crocodilians were shockingly long lived, longer than the wolf shifters by a good bit, probably due to the natural longevity of their associated species. But most of them had been living off the grid for decades at least. A few had savings, but a lot of that had been eaten up just getting here. They were used to hunting their own food, but there was no suitable habitat for them this far north, and Elliot was reluctant to let them wander around the mountain on their own while they still weren't sure about the fairy situation. Any way you looked at it, the situation was not a sustainable one.
There was also the fact that one of the problems Cuvier had mentioned with crocodilian shifters living together was that, when they were stressed, they fought. And no minor shouting matches either. Knockdown, drag out partially or even fully shifted brawls that would erupt seemingly out of nowhere.
Sawyer and Elliot were bringing a delivery of blankets and bottled water to one of the cabins that afternoon when Sawyer heard the telltale sound of another fight starting. They'd been hearing that distinctive, throaty hiss all day.
He and Elliot dropped what they were holding and jogged toward the source of the sound, quickly spotting the two men squaring off among the tents. They were already partially shifted, looking like something out of an Egyptian mythology exhibit, huge toothy saurian heads on still mostly humanoid bodies.
"Hey, hey, cool it off!" Elliot shouted as they hurried toward the fight, hoping they could stop it before it started. "Come on guys, take a walk!"
A small crowd of other crocodilians had gathered, but none looked eager to get in between the two men. Elliot, fearless or maybe just stupid, ignored their caution and shoved his way between them, a hand on each man's chest.
"Just back off and put away the teeth," Elliot said, his voice ringing with Alpha influence. Which unfortunately meant nothing to alligators. "We can settle this calmly. Just-"
Sawyer heard the warning growls of the two men escalate to a higher pitch and grabbed Elliot by the back of the shirt, yanking him backwards and out of the way just a second before the two men collided like cars on the freeway, teeth and claws flying.
Before Sawyer and Elliot could even recover, something slammed into both of the men fighting, driving them apart, caught in the claws of a massive beast.
Sawyer's first thought was that one of these assholes could literally shape shift into a dinosaur. It was at least eight or nine feet tall and built like brick shit house, its scales like armor plates, its massive teeth gleaming. Sawyer could only stare in awe as the massive creature shook the two fighters like disobedient puppies, snarling in their faces, until they returned to human shape, the fight thoroughly scared out of them. The creature dropped them and, after a moment, returned to human shape himself.
He was still enormous, probably not far under seven and a half feet, and like most of the crocodilians Sawyer was at a loss to guess his age.
"You must be Gustav," Elliot guessed, extending a hand. "Thanks for the help."
"No thanks necessary," Gustav replied, his South African accent thick as molasses. "You were brave to try and stop them. But a word of advice- do not get in the middle of a fight between gators if you aren't sure you can take them both."
"That's good advice," Elliot said with a nervous laugh.
"Try hitting them with something and running away," Gustav suggested. "Gators are fast, but they hate running. They won't waste the energy unless they are very hungry or very angry. If you can get them to chase you they will give up quickly, and usually remember themselves enough not to return to fighting."
"I'll keep that in mind," Elliot agreed, looking a little embarrassed.
Gustav started to turn away, then paused, turning back. "But don't try that if you hear an Australian accent. I've seen Casey and Liam both hit fourteen miles an hour, fully shifted, across flat ground. Their little one, Ruby, is going to be faster than both of them when she's grown I bet."
"I'm not too worried," Elliot said with small laugh. "Fully shifted I can hit thirty-five when I'm trying. Sawyer here can probably do forty."
"Ah, but can you shift before they catch you?" Gustav asked, and laughed when Elliot looked less sure suddenly. Gustav patted him on the shoulder with a hand that looked bigger than Elliot's head.
"We are all very grateful to you for allowing us to stay," he said. "Many of us did not believe we would be welcomed here."
"Really?" Elliot asked, confused. "Why wouldn't we want to help you?"
"Perhaps the rumors about wolf shifters were wrong, or just out of date," Gustav said with a shrug. "But we were under the impression that you were territorial and aggressive, and considered yourselves above other shifters."
Elliot frowned, shaking his head.
"I don't know about other packs," he said. "But we would never turn away a shifter in need. I know Duncan and Antonia, our old Alphas, wouldn't have refused you either."
"Then perhaps those rumors were just a result of jealousy," Gustav suggested. "You have much to be envious of. Protected territory, the favored children of the Moon, and you are never alone, as so many of us have been."
"Maybe it's time to change that," Elliot said thoughtfully. "Alicia's been talking about trying to build better connections with other shifters, making some kind of database. I'm starting to think she has the right idea. In this day and age, with the internet and cellphones and so many ways to find each other and share with each other, there's no reason any shifter, wolf or not, should ever feel alone. No one should ever feel like they don't belong."
He cast a smile in Sawyer's direction and Sawyer smiled back, embarras
sed.
"Well said," Gustav agreed, nodding. "Perhaps it is past time we began recognizing one another as family, all children of the Moon."
They said goodbye to Gustav and returned to their delivery, dropping off the water and blankets to a grateful, exhausted looking couple who were keeping watch over almost all the group's children, who ranged in age from barely walking toddlers to twelve and thirteen years old. Elliot and Sawyer, happy for the excuse to take a break, agreed to help out, sitting in the grass and keeping an eye on the older kids while the under-six's were shuffled indoors for a nap. They kids clearly had plenty of pent up energy after the long road trip, running and shrieking and climbing on anything they could. A few of the oldest sat reading from battered out of date textbooks or arguing over the single shared copy of a fantasy novel that had been wildly popular twenty years ago. They were on very strict instructions not to go beyond the Fae wards but, being children, a few had already tried. Which was why even the older ones needed someone keeping an eye on them pretty much constantly. Sawyer would have thought losing their home and so many friends and neighbors would have made them more sedate, but only the oldest showed any signs of lowered spirits. Kids were tough little things. Maybe they didn't really understand what had happened yet. Or maybe in younger kids the signs of distress were just more subtle.
Elliot chuckled softly beside him, watching some of the six and seven-year-olds play a particularly lawless form of soccer, in which the goal seemed to be just to be the one in control of the ball the longest.
"Do you think our kids might get to play with other shifters like this?" he asked. "I mean, if we ever have them. I know you're not crazy about the idea."
Sawyer contemplated it, watching the kids run across the grass chasing their soccer ball.
"It'd be nice," he said eventually. "Growing up with a bunch of kids who are the same as you. That was one of the worst parts when I was a kid. Just feeling like a freak."