I’m not joking, cupcake, I’m telling you the truth.You have to know.And if you can’t love me for it, then—
The human wouldn’t have that.There’d be some back-and-forth, but in the end, John would turn.He’d be able to smell the human better, the emotions and…yeah, Will was pretty sure there’d be fear, but also admiration.If John picked someone, Will was pretty sure that person would love him.
Will gnawed on his bottom lip.Just like in the stories.Cinderella.Sleeping Beauty.Okay, those didn’t really have a soulmate, just some prince, but…the stories about finding your soulmate, and then when you do, nothing else matters and you get your happily ever after.
Will lay there, imagining it over and over again—telling the truth and being loved for it.The fantasy was enough to distract him from his fear.He feared that if he ever told anyone what he’d gone through, they’d cast him away.Or, maybe not cast him away.He was afraid that they’d look at him but wouldn’t be able to see him.All they’d be able to see was what he’d gone through.
Does that make anyone a bad person?I don’t know.If I’d stayed there then…I wouldn’t have to think about this.Not for the few more years I might’ve made it with those guys.
In the other bedroom, Will could hear what it sounded like to find safety in the arms of another.He wondered if that was something he’d ever be able to have.
He couldn’t not listen.His hearing was too acute, and even when Corvin and Mike were done, Will couldn’t drift off.Confusion, fear, and uncertainty raged in his thoughts like big black clouds, overshadowing everything else.
Deep into the night his thoughts carried him, but at one point, he got up, thirsty.
He snuck out of the room.Will knew that as a siren, Mike was all kinds of dangerous, but at the same time, he hadn’t seen him lock the front door.
I’ll check.It’s on the way to the kitchen.
As quietly as he was able, Will walked toward the stairs and down them.He took in the scents of the house.It smelled nice, just like Peter’s house, but this place had something Peter’s home didn’t.There was a warmth here that came from people sharing the space, making it a home where they loved one another.That love had been so evident in how Corvin had waited for his boyfriend on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in his lap and a smile on his face.
Will hadn’t known something as simple and wholesome as a man waiting for their lover to come home to them still existed in the world.His parents had had it, but Will hadn’t seen it in a long while.
When he got to the kitchen, Will froze, and his heart nearly beat out of his chest.
There, just outside the window by some bushes in the drive across the street, was a loup-garou; one of the pack in his beast form.Will was pretty sure it was Jeff, but he didn’t stick around to get a closer look.
He shot up the stairs and banged on the siren’s door.Mike opened it.
“They’re here,” Will told a very pissed-off siren.
Will was there for parts of the chase, but also not.It was like having an out-of-body experience, except his body kept on moving and acting and doing what Mike told him to do.It was like Will had just stepped back behind the persona of John, and John could handle this shit.
Mike took charge and got them all in the car, keeping the loups-garous at bay with his song.The four loups-garous followed them to where Mike was taking them.
Corvin was still sleep-drunk in the back of the car, but he obeyed Mike, implicitly trusting his boyfriend.Will, on seeing this, wondered what it was like having someone you could trust like that.Someone who told you to leave the house when evil monster wolves were out there, and you did, knowing they’d keep you safe.
It took a while for Will to realize that something else might be going on.Mike had the windows down in the car so he could use his siren power.He’s probably using it on me and on his boyfriend too.If he’s doing that, I don’t feel it, and if I don’t feel it, then being dragged under by a siren can’t really be that bad.Guess I’d take a siren over a loup-garou any day.
Except Mike had Corvin, and Will was just the third wheel with all the baggage.
Even though Will was afraid to die and get the two lovers killed along with him, he remained in the moment while not being fully part of it; probably because of Mike’s song, the melody of which wouldn’t quite stick in his head.Will’s body acted, his mouth made words.It was simply that none of it felt real or like it was happening to him.
“The people after me have dogs,” he told Corvin at one point, and Corvin apparently bought it.
Mike took them to some abandoned factory.It was creepy as fuck, all dark, vaulted ceilings and uncanny shadows climbing up the walls and slinking across the floors.But there was no arguing with Mike.Will—the observant part of himself, the part that had helped him survive—admired what Mike was doing.It was badass.Far more so than those fake hunters in the werewolf movie had been.
Inside the building, they ran through the darkness, echoes surrounding them, Mike’s power keeping them in an iron hold.At one point, Mike left Corvin hidden away in a dark, abandoned room.
If there were someone who’d hide me…if they’d hidden me from Ed then… No.Giving me away was easier.And yet, Will knew that it was what an alpha should have done—keeping all members of the pack safe, making sure they could thrive.He remembered his grandfather.What did I ever do?I told him it was stupid that he made his pack run all their decisions past him, that he’d even demand the right to name the pack members’ kids in this day and age.Guess he didn’t like being called backwards to his face.
The small, obedient wolf part of Will wanted to feel sorry, but the bigger part of him knew he’d been right.And he still felt the same.And I’d call him backwards again.I’d also call him a bad alpha for…giving me away like that.
Mike wasn’t like that.Even as a siren, he was better at protecting than a real wolf.Will respected that, even as the darkness around them filled with the stink of his own fear, with the scent of the loups-garous, and with Mike’s song.
Mike took Will’s hand and pulled him along, still singing.Not just singing.Protecting.
Will got angry, so fucking angry, even as his body shook with the fear of teeth and claws and worse.I should’ve been protected.I should’ve been safe.
