He’d wanted so many things once, and none of them had included dying under the paws of Ed and his pack.Will knew he wasn’t strong enough to take on his grandfather, but if he survived this, he would find a way to become someone.He’d become someone who could go back to the fucking pack that had sold him, and he would walk up to his grandfather and he would tell him thathe, Will, had survived all of it.Will might not have been an alpha, but he wasn’t just a thing to be used either, even if being free meant dying tonight.
A small voice spoke up in Will’s muddled thoughts, telling him this could all be worse.With the siren leading him and not leaving, Will could at least be sure he wouldn’t die alone.
They had run through the darkness of the factory, going up and up, and now they were on a metal walkway, with Mike keeping himself between Will and the loups-garous.Like an alpha, protecting the weak.Protecting me.
Only three of the pack were following.Mike had managed to stop one of them on the stairs leading up to the offices.Ed though, he was one of the three coming for them, coming for Will.He was the one in the front, the one whose teeth would be the first to break skin.Will shivered, but Mike kept on singing.Slashes of moonlight fell across Ed’s ash-gray coat from tall windows, and Will saw the loup-garou drool and sneer, eagerness to tear and bite and bleed them in every line of his body.
He’d been much like that in his human form too, only eager for different things, things that weren’t on offer, things he had taken by force.There’d been fists before the grunts of sick pleasure, and Will’s blood on filthy sheets—a token of memories that were harder to keep, even harder to let go of fully.
Suddenly, the feeling of being apart from what was happening went away.Will’s entire focus came back to this one moment.The siren song had stopped.
Ed was coming for him, his sharp claws making the metal walkway sing.Mike, whose lunch Will had inadvertently stolen, was right there in front of him, and he wasn’t backing down.
I want to be like that.I want to be able to face down what scares me.And I want to know that I can win.Will shivered.But I’m nothing like that.Maybe I never was.I’m not an alpha, I’m just angry.But if I ever have a mate, if anyone would want me, I’d protect them.I’d do anything.I’d never let them get hurt, never ever.
Moonlight glinted off Ed’s eyes.Will’s blood rushed loudly in his ears.
“Down,” Mike sang, and Will had no choice but to obey.
Eyes wide with terror, Will watched as the impossible happened.Ed jumped, but he jumped over them.Hitting a window, he broke through the glass and met nothing but a steep fall on the other side.With Mike’s singing to lure them, the rest of the pack followed, and Will watched them jump right out of that window, like lemmings, following their asshole of a leader.Three jumps, and then they were gone.
“Wow,” Will said.It took him a good half a minute to fully realize that he wasn’t going to die that night.That a siren, not an alpha, had done the impossible and kept him safe.
Peter showed up like mysterious, malicious fog to make all the loups-garous vanish.Their kind were sturdy, so the fall hadn’t killed them all, but Peter was not as forgiving as gravity.
With adrenaline still buzzing in Will’s blood, he could barely comprehend what was going on, and before he knew it, he was watching as Mike went back to check on his lover.Then they left, holding on to each other.In love.
I didn’t know jealousy made you sad, but watching them makes me sad.
Before long, Mike’s and Corvin’s footsteps were faint echoes in the large, empty factory.
“You are all right, I take it?”Peter said when Corvin and Mike were out of earshot.
“Yeah.Peachy.”Will took a shaky breath.“Ed’s dead.”
“Yes, all of them are.Good riddance and all that.”Peter showed off a positively wicked smile.“Hmm.I’ll have to ask Pryce for another favor.Oh, the bother.One used to be able to sell corpses to the anatomists, and that was that.Modernity is wonderful, but it has its downsides.”
Will didn’t know who Pryce was or what exactly an anatomist was, but he wasn’t sure it mattered.Or that he really wanted to know.
“I’m sorry.Everyone’s human cover is blown.I…didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“No one’s cover is blown, pup.Be quiet, and watch.”Peter pulled Will along to a balcony that overlooked the ground floor.“He’s going to pop the question.This is so much better than a Valentine’s Day proposal, and this way, I get to watch!”
“Huh?”
“Hush, pup.I want to see this.”
Will followed Peter’s line of sight.Below them, Mike and Corvin stood in the middle of the floor.Specks of dust and dirt caught the faint light, making the abandoned place look almost magical.Mike bluntly asked for Corvin’s hand, and Corvin pretty much jumped into Mike’s arms, giving himself fully.
Something inside of Will tensed.This was not a magical place, and yet, for Mike and Corvin, something magical had just happened.They seem so happy.How can anyone be this happy?
“That’s…nice,” Will said.
Peter rubbed his hands together.“It is perfect.They are like a perfect set of adorable china cups.Or two paintings you must hang together to make their respective colors shine brighter.”
Will shifted his weight from one foot to the other.“Corvin invited me to movie night.”
“And you may go if you behave.”
