A Season of War: M/M Wolf Shifter Mpreg Paranormal Romance (The Last Omega Book 3)

by Apollo Surge

  Sawyer backed up like he'd been hit, caught off guard. Elliot looked away, jaw tight. The silence rang. Finally Elliot snatched the two remaining beers off the bed and headed for the door.

  "I'll find somewhere else to spend the full moon," he said. "Just get back to the house."

  "Stop," Sawyer whispered, his voice breaking as Elliot reached for the door. And then he shouted it, layered with Omega influence. "Stop!"

  Elliot froze, his hand on the door, unable to move. Shame and guilt washed over Sawyer instantly.

  "I'm sorry," he said, stomach in knots. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

  "Undo it," Elliot said through gritted teeth.

  Sawyer covered his face with his hands, shame squeezing his heart like a vice.

  "Go," he whispered, and felt the command release Elliot. "Elliot, I'm sorry, I never meant to-"

  Elliot shoved his way through the trailer door without another word. It slammed behind him as he vanished into the dark outside, leaving Sawyer alone, crushed under the weight of his guilt and the new, miserable certainty that now it really was over. There was no pretending anymore that it was just something they could talk out. It was done.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He didn't remember leaving the trailer, or shifting. Just running, needing to feel the wind in his fur, to feel like he could escape. The moon was at it its peak but again the wolf mind hadn't taken over, despite how much he wished that it would.

  He didn't stop at the wards, frustration screaming in his veins with the need to run. He leapt over them and flew up the mountainside, fast as the wind and not fast enough. He threw back his head and howled, wild and miserable and utterly overwhelmed.

  "What do I do?" he demanded from the Moon. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"

  The Moon didn't answer, but he caught the scent of frost instead.

  The moon was like a spotlight, illuminating every crevice of the clearing where Nicholas stood, waiting for him.

  "You are ready to take my offer now," the Nuckelavee said, and for a moment Sawyer almost agreed. He would have done almost anything just to be somewhere else, to forget everything that had happened here, everything that would happen.

  "I can't," he said, heart breaking. "I can't do anything. I can't die to save them. I can't let them die to save myself. I don't want to die with them! I don't want any of this!"

  Nicholas reached out, and in a gesture Sawyer was human again, stumbling toward him on bare human legs, white as milk in the moonlight.

  "You will change it," he said, his arms strong and warm as he caught Sawyer and brought him close. "You have the power. All will be as you ask it. Say the words, and I will shake the world to its foundations for you."

  "I don't know what to do," Sawyer sobbed, ignoring the danger in letting himself be held this way. "There's no way to save everyone. There's no right choice. I just want to run but there's nowhere to go! Nowhere I wouldn't know what I was letting happening to them! That it's happening because of me! I'm just so tired..."

  "I will save you," Nicholas insisted. "Let me. Order me. Speak my name and I will do anything you wish. Command me to destroy the mountain. Open the wards and let me in."

  "I can't," Sawyer repeated, shaking his head, shivering in Nicholas's arms. "I can't risk them!"

  "You will save them all," Nicholas insisted, his grip on Sawyer almost too tight. "All you have to do is open the wards. All you have to do is trust me."

  Sawyer flinched, recognizing the words. Fresh misery washed over him at the realization as even this ragged comfort was stolen.

  "No," he said, less to Nicholas's plea than to the very reality he was living in.

  "Command me," Nicholas demanded, and Sawyer shoved him away.

  "No!" he shouted, and in an instant the illusion was shattered and he was a wolf again. The Nuckelavee stood before him, not a man, but a gory monster dragging a length of iron in one of it's too-long human arms.

  "Command me not to harm you," Nicholas said, hefting the length of iron as an icy wind began to grow around them. Sawyer backed away, teeth bared, ears flat to his skull.

  "No!" he said again. "No more commands! No more influence! No more!"

  "Command me to leave!" Nicholas begged, charging at Sawyer with an equine scream, swinging the iron. It smashed the stone where Sawyer stood a second after he leaped away.

  "Never again!" Sawyer insisted.

  "Command me or I will destroy you!" Nicholas warned, swinging the iron again, hooves flailing at Sawyer's head as he darted away.

  "I won't!"

  Nicholas howled in frustration and despair, swinging the iron. It clipped Sawyer, throwing him into a tree where he lay, dazed and hurting.

  "Then I am truly sorry, Black Wolf," the Nuckelavee said, and Sawyer could hear the grief in his voice as he stepped closer to stand over Sawyer, raising the iron bar. "But I am what they made me."

  Sawyer coiled and leaped for the monster's throat.

  The Nuckelavee's flesh tasted like seawater and blood and was hard as ice beneath Sawyer's teeth, but he clung on anyway, digging them in deep as the creature screamed. One of its inhumanly long arms grabbed him and cast him aside, but he was back on his feet a moment later, biting at its legs, tearing at the muscle, hobbling it with a predator's efficiency. He was too fast for the lumbering beast and its heavy iron bar. He leaped at it again and again, tearing at the throat, the eyes, of both the mount and the rider, until blood ran down their faces and blinded them.

  Sawyer realized, as the Nuckelavee stumbled and fell, screaming, the unnatural winter wind matching its shrieks, that he could kill it, easily. Its blood was in his mouth. One more attack and he could destroy it.

  "Please," Nicholas groaned. "Put an end to me. Let it be done. But let me see you first. Just once more."

  It clawed at its own bloody eyes, trying to clear them, and Sawyer's rage and fear were swallowed in pity and guilt. He turned and ran into the trees, leaving the monster behind.

  "Let me see you!" it cried, voice vanishing into the snow. "Let me see!"

  By the time Sawyer left the false winter behind, he was also becoming aware of his many pains and injuries, and the stupidity of having come up here in the first place. Full of grief and self-loathing, he could hardly bring himself to care.

  "This way!"

  He looked up, and saw Jagger clinging to the branch of a pine tree, waving to him.

  "Come along, you stupid mutt! This way!"

  He followed because it was easier than thinking, as Jagger scrambled from tree to tree with furtive glances, muttering anxiously under his breath.

  The mountain spirit led him up toward the peak, but not to it. Instead, he brought Sawyer to the sacred cave.

  "In there!" Jagger said. "It's the only place the protections are still at work. Nothing that isn't a wolf or my own self can get in there."

  Obediently, Sawyer slipped inside, down the narrow passage to the open cavern. The maple was still green, bright and healthy above the pool.

  "What on earth possessed you to be on the mountain this evening?" Jagger asked, following him. "Have you a death wish?"

  Sawyer leveled a slow, tired look at the mountain spirit which was all the answer he could muster. The spirit looked briefly taken aback, then sighed.

  "Ah humans," it said, patting Sawyer's flank. "What wonders you are. Well, just lay here and rest then. You'll be safe till sunrise. I still have idiots on this mountain to protect tonight..."

  Sawyer wasn't really listening. He felt too tired, stripped bare and vulnerable. He lay down beside the water and closed his eyes, praying for nothing but deep, dreamless sleep.

  He was not so lucky.

  "Lost!" cried the ever present figure beside him as they ran through the pitch black forest, search lights behind them. "It must be returned! Lost, lost!"

  Sawyer could feel his headache even in the dream. He was so tired of dreaming this. He didn't even understand what it meant. Running had always been his fi
rst choice when things went wrong. It felt good, and the freedom and the isolation were all that protected him from the pain his Influence caused. But now he was too tired. He didn't want to run anymore. He didn't want to search. He wanted to go home. And at this point he didn't even know where that was.

  "Lost," the figure beside him moaned. "Lost!"

  "I'm not lost," Sawyer griped. "I'm right here!"

  The figure turned to him and as its flashlight beam touched him, he was blinded. Light washed over him, obliterating the forest. His fur flew away like a cloak in the wind.

  "There you are," someone said, gentle and affectionate. "Stay with me. Please, stay."

  "I can't," Sawyer said, grim and defeated. "They need me. The baby needs me. I have to stop this."

  "Who do they need?" the person asked.

  "Me," Sawyer said again.

  "Who?"

  "Me!" Sawyer said in frustration, and heard an echo in his voice.

  He blinked his eyes open. The Erlking stood before him, just as wild and glorious as they had always been. Sawyer, naked and human and vulnerable, stared up at them, feeling the same awe and wonder as he had before, but, strangely, not the overwhelming love, the intense desire to give up everything for the person before him. Next to him stood something else, something that shone too bright and golden to look at.

  "Who is that?" he asked, and heard his voice doubled, coming from the thing beside him.

  "You," the Erlking answered, at the same time also replying, "not you."

  Sawyer's head hurt.

  The Erlking spoke again, in unison this time. "The Moon's secret."

  "I don't care," Sawyer said, hiding his face so that he wouldn't have to look at the overwhelming glory of the King, or the unbearable brightness of the thing beside him. "I don't care what the Moon is hiding. I don't care about any of it anymore. I just want it to be over. I want to stop hurting everyone I meet. I want to stop feeling like I'm constantly waiting for the end. I want to stop."

  The thing beside him spoke as he did, the same words in the same voice. Almost.

  "I want to stop," said Sawyer.

  "I want to run," said the Other.

  "I'm tired," Sawyer said. "I'm tired of running. I just want to find somewhere I can rest."

  "I'm afraid," said the other. "I'm afraid of slowing down. I just want to keep running forever."

  Sawyer had thought those same words before. He'd thought them as he was lying down. He'd felt pulled in two directions then, his exhaustion and his desire two escape equal and opposite. Here they seemed to have split him cleanly in two. The other was him, and not him.

  The Erlking spoke, their voice splitting into doubles and then rejoining, like a stream interrupted by a stone. Like Sawyer was watching two recordings at the same time of the same scene with slightly different lines.

  "You were taken from me/You were offered up in sacrifice. You were bound to the soul of another. The mages slew your ancestor on the mountain/When the sacrifice died you were set free and ran to my arms again. But the cycle must continue. You were reborn into another, always an omega, always a symbol of rebirth and renewal/More sacrifices were chosen, down through the years, to you. And always you came to the mountain again, just as the hunt began. And you died/And you returned to me."

  Sawyer listened, trying to untangle the twin statements in his mind, trying to understand. Were they talking about the ritual the ancient mages used to bind the Erlking in the mountain? He knew the ritual demanded a sacrifice, and he'd gathered it was usually an omega.

  "But I wasn't sacrificed," Sawyer said, confused. "Duncan went in my place."

  Beside him, the Other spoke too.

  "I could not return to you," it said. "Another went before me."

  "The Moon betrayed us," the Erlking continued. "Long have I leant her my hounds, and gathered them back into the hunt at the end of the day. Never before has she denied me one of my own."

  "I was afraid," the Moon whispered in Sawyer's ear. "Things have been too long out of balance. Too long without a Hunt. I saw a future where all my children died screaming. Something had to change. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

  Sawyer reeled, his hands to his head, trying to comprehend.

  "Are you beginning to understand?" the Erlking asked. "Why your soul cried out against the wrongness of your existence? Why your heart longs to run, always? Why attachment felt like imprisonment, why stopping felt like dying?"

  "I was never supposed to be an omega, was I?" Sawyer asked the quiet presence of the Moon behind him. "Was I ever even meant to be a wolf? Or was it all because you put that thing inside me?"

  He could stand to look at the burning thing beside him now. He recognized it. The Golden Hart, burning with incandescent light, stood proud beside him, its horns aflame stretching up to the stars, its eyes open to the vast sparkling depths of space. It was creation and fertility and infinite possibility to the Erlking's endless, inevitable entropy. Lovers and enemies, hunter and hunted, pursuing one another in a cycle that sustained all life in the universe.

  "You were the only one," the Moon whispered. "The right kind of person, in the right place, at the right time. You can restore the Hunt."

  "Everything I've been through," Sawyer said, looking down at the scars on his body. "All the people I've hurt. My mom... You did it all on purpose. You used me."

  "I'm sorry."

  "You're not," he snapped, gritting his teeth, nails digging into his palms. "You don't regret it at all, do you?"

  "I would do it again," the Moon said. "A thousand times, to save my children. But that doesn't mean I do not feel sorrow for you, or lament what must be done. I am a part of you. I have felt your suffering as you did, every moment."

  "But you knew it was serving a purpose!" Sawyer shouted, tasting blood. "You knew I'd be dead in a few years anyway, to serve your stupid plan! All I knew was that it hurt! That that world was cruel and I was a monster and that it would never change! How is that fair? How is it fair to turn me into this and let me suffer and then expect me to die for everyone else?"

  "It is not fair," the Moon and the Erlking said at once. "It is necessary."

  "You're really telling me there was no other way?" Sawyer demanded. "That this – that everything I've been through – this was the only possible way?"

  "I am not all powerful," the Moon replied. "I am not all knowing."

  "Then maybe you shouldn't have been sticking your nose in!" Sawyer snarled.

  "I could show you other futures," the Moon offered. "What your life might have been if I had not chosen you."

  Sawyer shook his head immediately, stomach churning. He didn't want to see that. There was no good option there. Either his life would have been peaceful and mostly happy, and he'd been robbed of it for this. Or he would have suffered anyway, and it was all inevitable, and couldn't even be blamed on what had been done to him. He wasn't sure which would be worse.

  "Just let me go," he said, hanging his head, his anger useless and futile. "I'm done. I'm tired. Just let me go."

  "The final choice will always be yours," the Moon said quietly, and Sawyer scoffed, offended. As though he had ever been given a choice that mattered. He was a lamb up for slaughter, standing at the abattoir doors, being told to choose between a knife and a bolt gun.

  "Stay with me," the Erlking begged. "Please."

  Sawyer turned his head away in silent, guilty refusal.

  He woke from the dream, heart aching.

  Now that he was aware, he could almost feel the Golden Hart within him, it's heart beating next to his, it's frantic desire to run just slightly out of sync with his own feelings. It was so subtle he'd never noticed it before. He didn't blame everything on the Hart. The life he'd lived had made him a runner. It had taught him that nothing was permanent and that attachment only caused pain. The Hart had only reinforced those feelings, as it was now.

  He hadn't been asleep long. Jagger was still standing in the opening of the cave.

 
"Is there another wolf on the mountain?" Sawyer asked him.

  "Aye," Jagger confirmed. "He's not in danger as you were, reeking of magic as you do. The Fae will most likely take him for a common wolf."

  "Can you take me to him?" Sawyer asked.

  Jagger gave him a look like he was about to call Sawyer an idiot and berate him for his stupidity, but when he saw the look in the wolf's eye he nodded.

  "You've a plan then?"

  "Only to run," Sawyer replied. "And to not regret how I spend the time I have left."

  "Can't hold that against you," Jagger replied with an understanding nod. "Destiny is a real bitch sometimes."

  He led Sawyer out into the snow, moving cautiously and quietly down the mountain. Sawyer hung on to the anger, the apathy, to keep the guilt and betrayal and despair from overwhelming him.

  Soon he caught Elliot's scent on the wind, and spotted the big yellow wolf pacing through the trees, nose to the ground following some trail.

  "If you ever gave a damn about me," Sawyer said, turning a yellow eye to the Moon. "If you ever meant a word about not forcing my decision or being sorry or any of it- Wake him now. Give him back his mind. Let me talk to him. If it was all always garbage, then fuck you anyway."

  Elliot paused, raised his head, ears alert, then turned to look at Sawyer. Sawyer saw the moment the intelligence returned to his eyes.

  "Sawyer?" Elliot said, tilting his head in confusion. A second later, Sawyer saw him remember their fight, his body language turning stiff and cold. "I don't know why we're conscious, but we'd better get back behind the wards."

  "No," Sawyer replied. "I'm not going back."

  "What?"

  "I'm leaving, tonight."

  "What about Midsummer?"

  "I don't care anymore. I just want to be happy for as long as we have left."

  Elliot hesitated, his ears turned back, clearly confused.

  "I'm sorry about everything," Sawyer said. "I'm sorry for hurting you. For lying, for hiding things. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I wish I was a different person. A person that deserved you."