The hero dragging the villain to their death knowing that they'll die too, and being scared to die. So they cling to the only person within arms reach, the villain, as they plummet to their demise.
Summary: Traveling at night is never advisable, traveling alone much less so.
Genre: Horror, Creature Feature
Words: 3119
My lone car traveled down the dark curvy highway road that was slick with the rain that had long since let up, the road stretched far past even the brightest setting of the headlights of my car. If you were to park and stand in the middle of the road, the darkness would seem never-ending on a moonless night like tonight. To me the pine forests on the side of the road felt almost like a cage of claws bearing down on me from all sides, growing up and up towards the endless inky sky.
It was almost impossible to escape them where I lived, just about everyone had trees either in their backyard or on the baseball field at school.
The summer heat had cooled with the night and the rain, but the humidity was constantly fogging up my windows. The car hummed with the thrum of the engine, and looking at the speedometer I pressed on the gas a little more. The speed limit was 45, but on these back roads just about everybody drove closer to 60 than anything else. So technically speaking, doing 65 wasn’t the worst I could be doing, there were never any police officers around here and if there were, the most I would get would be a warning to slow down.
Besides it was late and I wanted to get home before midnight,
The night was peaceful and still, all things considered, not a drop of rain had been seen since it had stopped earlier that day. The new moon was hidden completely out of sight. It was a dark night, with only the lights of the car illuminating the backroads that I was driving on, there was nothing around, nothing for miles and miles until the next town or city. At least that’s where I was heading, I had been driving for miles, with my stuff piled in the back of the car when my gaze shifted from the sight of the endless road before me.
A part of me liked to imagine shapes along the side of the road as I drove, just as I had always done when I was a kid and it was my parents driving. Be it wolves or whatever, it was always something that followed along the car as we drove these long miles. And so, with the methodical shapes of the trees casting shadows, I imagined those shapes again.With only the faintest slivers of the bright headlights of my passing car making it visible in those split seconds.
That’s when it happened.
In one quick second, the front lights of my car shattered, plunging the road into complete darkness as the rough thump and thud hit my car. There was a crunch of metal before I stomped on the brakes, and swerved, making my car come to a screeching halt along what I hoped was the side of the road and not the middle of it.
The scent of burnt rubber assaulted my nostrils.
“ I.. I hit something?” I wondered aloud as the sinking sensation of dread gripped the bottom of my stomach tight as I hastily spun the wheel as I pumped the brakes, steering his car to what I hoped was the side of the road before getting out. Blindly I grabbed for my phone in the passenger seat he nervously clambered out of the car. “Damn it, I hope I didn’t hit something…” I muttered again, of course my car had to break down where there wasn’t any cell reception, not with the cell towers being far from anywhere out in the countryside.
No way to call a tow truck, no way to call my dad, and no way to google how to swap out a busted up tire.
Would I be stuck here until morning? I suppose that I could use my shirt as a makeshift pillow, and sleep in the backseat until I could walk to the nearest gas station. Although a part of me dreaded just how many miles that would be, and how sore I would be afterwards.
Grumbling sourly under my breath I walked all around my car, looking for any sign of what I could have hit. With my phone’s flashlight, I took in all of the damage. The only thing that I saw that could be wrong with the car was the busted front headlights and the brake lights on the back of the car. Along with the shredded front tire that had completely warped the entire rim into itself, it would be almost impossible to drive it without more damage. All of the lights were completely shattered, the bulbs inside reduced to nothing more than just a few shattered fragments of glass and nothing else. The exposed wires hissed and sizzled with a visible red hot glow, still retaining the electricity from the battery that was being pumped to them.
The only thing in my car that gave off any kind of light was the cabin light that had turned on the moment I opened the door.
I sighed to myself, dragging my hands over my face in defeat. Driving at night with no lights was practically suicide, and with a wheel with that much damage… it would warp the whole frame of the car and basically total it.
That much I knew.
Still, I couldn’t push the ever present question out of my head. Just what did I even hit to cause so much damage?
“Momma? Daddy?”
A voice, a soft child’s voice carried out of the dark pine forest on a breeze that felt neither warm nor cold.
My head snapped up in an instant from where I had been investigating the broken lights of my car. Without a moment of hesitation I turned my phone’s flashlight towards the vast expansive forest that I had stopped beside. In that moment my body felt trapped between my lungs which threatened to stop bringing in air, and my knees that suddenly felt like jello.
I hadn’t had many scary or horrifying experiences that I’d willingly subjected myself to, aside from a terrifying ordeal where I got lost during a nature hike that I’d only gone on to impress my favorite teacher. But the sound of someone calling out from a pitch black forest, with no cell service, and no way to drive out of there didn’t fill me with too much confidence. My lungs caught every breath that tried to escape, with the force of a steel wire trap that suffocated poor woodland animals.
A kid… There was a kid out there. I had to remind myself of that, somewhere there was a kid that was looking for their parents and was lost.
Somewhere.
Shaking away those thoughts, I squinted into the darkness of the forest as if that would change anything.
The kid had at least sounded close by, the very least I could do was find them and maybe get them back to my busted car until sunrise and drive them to the closest town. Broken wheel or not. My dad would chew me out for it later, but… well I couldn’t even lie to myself and say that it was worth it.
“Hello?” Cupping one of my hands around my mouth I called out to the looming trees that acted as a wall between me and the unknown child. I cursed the fact that my headlights were busted, if I could at least turn them on then maybe it could act as a beacon for the kid to come towards. But with my phone light it would basically be like waving a birthday cake candle in a hurricane hoping to light the way.
Taking my first steps towards the wilderness, my footsteps let alone my voice shook at the prospect of taking even a single step forward into the intimidating darkness that laid out before me. Phone be damned, the forest really wasn’t the kind of place that I should be wandering around in the dead of the night. But I couldn’t help but to feel the slightest tingling of worry coursing through his veins at the thought of a young kid being lost out there with no light and no sense of direction.
I was at least an adult, even if I really didn’t feel like one right now.
I hazarded a look back at my car, a small selfish part of me just wanting to go back and sleep in the backseat like I was psyching myself up for just moments ago.
So I made a promise to myself.
“Just a few feet from the road,” I told myself, “If I can’t find the kid I’ll turn right back around and go back to the car and wait until morning and… and I’ll call the police the moment I reach a gas station or a working cell tower.” That was reasonable, that made the nervous jitters in my stomach settle down to a manageable level.
I took a deep breath, and readied my racing heart.
Time to be brave.
“Can you hear me, kid? I’m right here, just follow my voice! Can you hear me?!” I tried again as I walked further away from my car, and more into the forest until I was finally toeing the line of trees that separated me from the ditch and the rest of the forest, my flashlight passed over the dark silhouette of the trees all standing in a row like soldiers at attention, and the branches that stuck out like crooked limbs. If I had been hoping to find even the slightest glimpse of where the child had once been, I was sorely mistaken.
I took another cautious step, and the sound of crackling leaves and shifting nettles met my every footfall.
My breath puffed out before me as the chill of the night air sank into my bones, I paused, letting the cold sink into me.
It hadn’t been that cold a few moments ago.
In fact, I was pretty sure that the temperature tonight was at least supposed to be up in the 70’s, maybe the 60’s if there was going to be rain again. I lived in a warmer state, and it was supposed to be summertime. I shouldn’t have to worry about seeing my breath until the latter end of December...
But the evidence of my breath was there and it said otherwise, as it lingered there for a moment before vanishing from my sight.
The plain t-shirt and jeans that I was wearing would be no help whatsoever to the cold that gripped me tighter and tighter, the longer I stayed in one position the colder I would get. There was no telling what the kid would be wearing, or how long he must’ve been missing from his parents either. An entire night in freezing in the woods was practically a death sentence regardless of how young they could possibly be.
This alone forced me to swallow down the chattering of my teeth that attempted to crack my teeth together.
I shook my head, and stubbornly took a step forward. Now there was no way I was leaving this forest until I found them. I could do it. I would find the kid and then get the hell out of here and never come back to this stretch of road with no service and mysterious bumps in the road.
Maybe I should have moved further south, gone to the Bahamas or Mexico. Then at least I wouldn’t have to deal with sudden cold spells in the middle of a stupid forest at night, or if I was, at least I would have a pina colada in my hands while doing it. I trudged forward, internally grumbling taking the place of the fear I had been feeling just moments ago. Being cold had always made me grumpy, and now even more so.
“Hello? Kid? Yell back if you can hear me! I’m right here!” I moved my light in giant sweeping motions again over yet another fallen log, before waving it high in the air in the vain hope that the kid could somehow see me from wherever he was. “Hello?!”
Just a few more minutes, then I would go back to my car, get warmed up and try again after devouring one of the granola bars I had stashed somewhere in the glovebox.
“Momma? Daddy?” The weeping sound of the kid’s voice piped up again.
There again, I lurched forward. The sound of the kid’s voice sounded so much closer now!
Soon I would be done with all of this.
“Momma?” The kid called out again. Damn, he sounded really scared, and my heart panged with how the kid’s voice cracked with each syllable. “Daddy?” They tried again.
“I’m here!” I called out, relief blanketing my voice and filling my body from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair. “I’m right here, just come to me. Follow my voice! I’ve got a car, I’ll get us into town so we can look for your parents! It’s going to be okay!”
I jogged forward a few more feet, my eyes squinted with the direction of the light. I looked for any sign of movement, of a smaller body that would mean that I found a child who had somehow gotten lost in a forest miles away from civilization. My light passed over a few logs resting against an old rotting tree, as I moved deeper and deeper into the thicket.
There!
A small shadow to my left shifted, and I swept my light over to it without thinking much of it. The light beam from my flashlight froze a second too slowly, and the beam of light trembled in time with the shake of my hands as I stood rooted to the spot.
That wasn’t a log.
It wasn’t a log that my light had just passed over, and it wasn’t a log that my light was staying on either.
At first inspection, it looked like a weirdly tall deer statue with gangly legs that someone had carved out of wood and just left here. Except deer didn’t have eyes that looked like… that, or the sharp jagged fur that looked as if it was made out of fresh tree bark. Its slender neck was curved, its face turned away from the light shining towards it, towards the moonless sky. To the point that I would have had to get a ladder just to completely see the rest of its face.
I pointed my light to the side, looking at all of the other weird statues that were littered around the forest floor.
How had I not seen all of them until now? Just how deep into the forest had I gone?
The moment I turned my light away, I heard a rustle. Like someone dragging their feet through dry crispy leaves.
The wooden statue closest to me moved.
My mouth jerkily opened to utter a delayed scream that just wouldn’t happen, and the thing’s disgustingly disturbing mouth did the same. Detaching down as if it were no more than an eccentric puppet held together by no more than just a few invisible lines of fishing string, from it’s normal looking deer mouth, down to its stomach, its whole mouth opened up to to show rows and rows of ravenous sharp teeth the gleamed like starlight with slick silvery saliva that dripped underneath its prone body like a leaky faucet.
My body stood frozen, and when it moved I found myself locked in place, the sheer terror rooting me as still as it had once been. Like I was a scared rabbit watching the jaws of a dog getting closer and closer to my throat.
The thing moved, and it moved in quick jerky sporadic movements as if every twitch was cracking the wooden shell it had used to disguise itself. It cracked its head towards my phone, and the flashlight I had illuminating the forest around us, my hands had remained frozen and fixed in place from the very second I had seen the creature. The beam of light wobbled, allowing me to see slivers of the other statues.
They had moved as well the moment that the light was no fixed on them.
The one right before me moved like the shadows, darting out of the corner of my eyes and out of the radius of the light leaving me surrounded with nothing but darkness. It was by far quicker than anything I had ever seen in my entire life.
And it was coming towards him.
Rows and rows of sharp deadly teeth that would have been glinting in the light of the moon, if there had been a moon to illuminate such a thing’s existence. And a maw… a gaping wide jaw that opened in ways that shouldn’t be and so many teeth shouldn’t be.
Within an instant, my phone fell limply from my hand, as the scream finally released from my stomach up to the back of my throat and out of my mouth. It was bloodcurdling and tore at my vocal chords in a way that was full of every bit of terror that a human could feel. I fell back, my hands scrabbling against the fallen leaves and pine needles that felt like razorblades against my skin. My nails scrambled for leverage to get myself up, I could feel them splintering and breaking down to my nailbeds. I screamed and I screamed, as my fingers became slick with blood, and every attempt to crawl and scramble away fell uselessly short of every hope and dream I had once possessed.
I lost track of myself, of which way I had even come from. I didn’t even know if the way I was trying to run was deeper into the forest or towards the winding road that I had just been driving down hours ago.
I wanted to go back to that. I needed to go back to that.
My phone lay face up, the flashlight muted in a bed of leaves.
I screamed again, feeling my throat clog with dirt, blood, and mucus as my leg caught on something and I felt myself getting dragged backwards. It was a terribly short sound, the kind of sound a caught prey makes in the silence of the woods in where no one will ever hear it.
Not as it should be, at least.
“Mommy? Daddy?... H..ell..o..?” A pause, and then in an adult’s shaky but confident tenor. “Hello..?”
The crunch of bones, and a final gurgling wheezy breath that escaped my lips before...
Tags/Warnings: Hurt/ComfortHurt/, Psychological Torture, Angst, Hopeful Ending, Jax Not Being an Asshole , Jax & Pomni Friendship, and Jax-centric.
Summary: Jax gets sent to Pomni's nightmare.
They were laughing at him.
All of them, all of the people that mattered to him. They laughed, they jeered, and they pulled at him. Tearing into him in a way that truly sunk deep, their fingers all clawing at his fur, prying and pulling until there was nothing left but his soft innards. A sticky mushiness that left him feeling open and vulnerable, he felt fragile and hollow, like he had been scooped out and left agape for every infection in the world to end him all at once.
His mouth didn’t seem to work, couldn’t form the words and didn’t even know which ones to form to make it all stop.
He wanted it to stop.
He did want it to stop, didn’t he?
All of the pretending, acting like he didn’t care which person he was going to lose next.
All of their losses piling like scars beneath his skin, stretched taunt and burning with every reminder of the fact that they weren’t here anymore. The doors with their faces, with a big bold X over it, as if that could erase that they ever existed in the first place.
Who had even started that tradition?
Was it him or Caine?
Did it even matter?
Once they were gone they ceased to matter, just a monster in the basement that wouldn’t be getting out.
All alone in the dark…
“S..Stop.” Jax didn’t know how he found his voice, or why it even sounded as hoarse as it did. Had he been screaming this whole time and not even knowing it? He was tired of this, of this charade. “That’s..that’s enough!”
He scrambled away from the shades of his friends, his skin sloughing off around his shoulders, the bare nerves screaming under the open air. He gathered himself, both physically and mentally as his eyes darted every which way. With Kinger doing his thing there had to be something.. some kind of break in the code, or just something he could do to distract Caine a little bit longer.
“Is..is…” He gasped, his lungs burning with oxygen he didn’t know that he needed, “Is that all you got?!” Jax screamed it, and for once meant it with every fiber of his digital being. For the first time he felt it, hate churning in his guts towards something that wasn’t himself. “Gangle could do better than you ever could, you hack of a piece of sh-”
And just like that, the floor fell out from under him as if it had never existed to begin with.
He was freefalling.
The air felt blisteringly hot and cold all at once as he tumbled head over heels. He wasn’t sure if he was screaming, and even if he was, he wouldn’t have felt that embarrassed about it he thought. Dignity was for people who hadn’t just gotten their skin removed by the people they trusted most in the world. Distantly though, he hoped… he hoped that everyone else was having an easier time, that perhaps his interjection had been what pushed Caine over the edge and that maybe it was just him being tortured.
Nobody else…
Please, nobody else.
His falling stopped with an abrupt jerk that felt like it shifted just about every bone in his body a little to the left. His body slammed into the ground with a thud that rang through his ears and down his spine.
Everything hurt.
It was almost funny how Caine had been so bad at it, at making the kid friendly adventures, but this… apparently he was so good at this.
Torturing them, changing them, and using them.
Jax felt his skin settle, which in irony was a weird thing to feel happen to him. Usually skin didn’t do anything, it was just skin, but over the past few days Caine had changed what that meant for all of them. Skin did things now, it was shaped and molded to however he felt it should be, however it suited his whims.
Jax lifted his head, his dizziness churning his stomach, when…
A scream.
Bloodcurdling, and something that made his fur stand on end.
He looked and he saw.
And just like that, the hope that he had been clinging to for only the briefest moments shattered into hundreds of pieces that tore at his soft insides.
Pomni.
“No,” The word escaped him before he could even think to stop it, he was stumbling to his feet, everything too quick and too wrong. “No Nonononono!” Panic unlike anything before seized him like a viper wrapping around his throat.
Crocodiles, snapping like vicious animals rather than the tame NPCs that Caine had previously made. Sharp teeth digging into her flesh and pulling..pulling.. and pulling at her.
He didn’t care what happened to him.
Skinned, laughed at, exposed…
But not this.
“Pomni!” He screamed her name like it was the only word he knew, and he watched as her head jerked up from between the grip of two crocodiles tearing into her. Tears, it struck him that perhaps this was the first time he had ever seen her cry. She hadn’t cried when he had demanded that she shoot him, and she hadn’t cried when she had gotten here, although he had expected her to. “I’m coming!”
He wasn’t sure what he’d do when he reached her, but he ran anyway.
His feet picked up traction, and he was there before he even knew what to do, but not knowing anything had never stopped him.
He imagined himself with sharp claws, sharp enough to scratch and claw at the things that were pulling, biting, and chomping at his friend. Sharp enough to scrap them, and to make them bleed. Sharp enough to get a good grasp and throw them into the darkness where they had come from. He imagined that he was strong enough to pry their jaws off of Pomni, and strong enough to kick and punch until they were all gone and it was just the two of them.
Just the two of them, shaking and trembling in the darkness of the void with only a single spot light to illuminate where the jester had clearly been dragged from.
For once he allowed himself some grace as he held her, although calling it a hold was being generous if he was being honest. They grasped at each other like they were the last two people on earth, his long arms wrapping around her and tucking in every stray hair that he could find. As if, if he just held her tight enough then the pain that they both experienced could just be washed away in a tidal wave of hurt and comfort.
“Hi,” She hoarsely whispered into his shoulder, every breath a trembling exhale. “Thanks for saving me.”
His fur was damp where her face pressed into him, and he couldn’t find it within himself to tease her for it, if he had any energy left he would’ve been crying too.
Instead he just tucked his nose into where her hair and hat met on her avatar, and sucked in a deep breath pretending that he could smell something other than the ozone of the void.
“Yeah,” He choked out, “No problem, Pom Pom. You.. you would’ve done the same.” It wasn’t a lie, and he knew that it wasn’t. If they were capable of it, she would die for him just like she would die for anyone else stuck here. “I just insulted him so hard he ragequit yah know?”
A tiny snort answered his words, but she didn’t ask what kind of torture Caine put him through. His skin still itched and moved like it hadn’t quite settled into itself, and he had a feeling that she had definitely noticed.
“How long do you think until he notices that we're not in immense pain and agony?” Pomni asked, finally pulling her face away from his shoulder.
Their world rumbled, and Jax winced a dull ache spreading in his ears.
Fandom: Sanders Sides
Summary: Logan has left, he has gone and now he doesn't know what to do next.
The hotel was quiet.
Peaceful even.
The check in process had been easy, and he had smiled when he needed to smile and talked in what had apparently been convincing enough to get a room.
Logan had never stayed by himself at a hotel before, but then again he had also never stolen, run away, and lied like this before either. The room was nice, he had to give it that. But he also was quite sure what to do now.
He had left the others, for the first time…ever. Left them in a way that even Virgil hadn’t done before, he had abandoned them and just… left. Maybe it was just to prove that he could, to see how far he could go without the others’ voices persuading him to come back once again, to see if…
Something, he supposed.
All of it was illogical, he knew that.
That was a hurdle he had long since jumped over before getting to this point, he’s had to deal with that when it came to taking Thomas’ ID and wallet for this very room. Just talking himself up to leaving he had come to terms with this, or maybe he hadn’t. It was an experiment after all, to see…
Something, he supposed again.
His fingers itched to do something, to fiddle with his tie that he was no longer wearing, to look in the mirror and see if he had a reflection, to make note cards, to just do something.
“What do I do?” He asked himself, standing awkwardly in the middle of the hotel room, not sure whether he should sit on the bed or the one chair next to the window. He wasn’t used to his mind being so quiet, without having to fight for control as to what he should do.
It honestly left him a little baffled.
How was he supposed to decide?
If he slept would he just appear back in Thomas’ mind? Probably not, since the receptionist had actually seen him, talked to him, and commented about his lack of glasses on his ID.
So he was… real?
What even was real?
He should cut his hair.
Or.. or
Was this what Virgil referred to as a manic episode?
Logan held himself tight, so tightly that he felt sure that he would bind himself so much that he wouldn’t move an inch.
He was alone, fact. He could do… things, also a fact. His elbows hurt from where he was digging his nails into them, fact.
He should probably breathe, fact.
A deep rasping breath pulled into him with the weight of an undertow of the ocean, and closing his eyes Logan saw only darkness for a moment as he settled back into himself with the certainty that a figment of logic was supposed to have.
Why was he here?
“To test the boundaries of how far one of us can go without negatively impacting Thomas.” He told the wall to his left deftly avoiding looking in the mirror in front of the bed, a lie. A bitter sour one, and even he knew it. He was almost surprised when Janus didn’t show up, all smug confidence underlying with the terror of being known to others than himself. “To…” Logan swallowed thickly, something inside him stinging with a sharpness that came with being hurt.
To see if they’d notice.
To see if they’d care.
To see if…
Logan jerked his head to the side, avoiding the train of thought that came with those feelings. He took in another inhale, and let the air leave his lung with an exhale that took no weight from his shoulders.
He settled on the bed, and with a gentleness he didn’t feel Logan grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.
It didn’t stay on for long, as he set the remote gingerly back down on the side table next to the bed.
“Okay,” He announced to the room, “I’m done.”
The world became awash, like watercolor paints dripping down ricepaper.
It swirled and twisted, until…
He was back.
Staring into the black void that was the mirror hanging in his own room, a mirror that only reflected the ghost light of stars that he would never see with his own eyes.
He checked the watch on his wrist.
Four days.
Four days he had been in here, in his own room playing pretend.
A very convincing lie he told himself.
Standing, he stretched and felt the phantom crack of bones as he readjusted.
Logan walked through Thomas’ mind, retracing old memories like lingering scars. He wandered, looking in on where the others would congregate. The living room where they would watch whatever Thomas had already seen, the kitchen where aromatic smells would bring them out of their rooms for whatever Patton had decided to make for them, and the corner of the imagination that Roman allowed them to join without ever complaining.
They each loved each other in their own way, that should have been obvious enough.
But then… then why did Logan feel so cold when wandering through these places? Why didn’t he feel like he should have? What was so wrong with him that he didn’t feel at peace here?
Everything else was the same, so…
It was him wasn’t it?
Almost as if on autopilot Logan’s body took him to Virgil’s room.
With a knock and a turn of the doorknob he was in.
Virgil’s room was as messy as ever. Hoodies thrown in the corner of the room, whether they were clean or dirty Logan had no way of knowing. A pile of socks, a sewing kit, and other odds and ends littered the floor, just about covering every inch of the carpet in Virgil’s room. Even the anxiety here felt duller than it did the first time. Ordinarily Logan would have nudged some stuff around in an attempt to make a clean patch for himself, or even picked a few things up to neaten up the space.
Now, he didn’t feel the point to.
“Hey Lo,” Virgil jerked his head in a nod as he greeted him from the beanbag, his posture slouched into himself and a controller for some game in his hands as his fingers pressed buttons without ever once looking up at him. “Do you need something?”
Tightness.
Stinging tight pain grasped his throat with the force of being silenced. He would have rather been slapped, hit, or cut.
Anything but this.
Of course they didn’t notice.
His mouth opened, and he found himself almost asking the question that had been gnawing at him since he had decided to do his experiment.
A hot tightness in his throat, scorching that question into oblivion.
“No,” Logan choked out, in a way that he almost hoped sounded normal, but also didn’t.
Night-time is being brushed aside like so much cobweb. The day is wound up and begins even before the last haunted dreams, the last of the fog, those spectral and evanescent residues, have faded away.
Xander is a lone wolf but not by choice, just mere weeks ago hunters wiped out his entire pack leaving him alone in that clutches of the cruel world. He has is now being forced to live evading the and hunters that want to finish him off. He missed the warm feeling of a pack but knew that the feeling could never be his again.
Or could he?
Klyde is the youngest son to the alpha of the Katahdin Forest Pack all he has to do now is find his mate and not chase him off with how stupid he can be sometimes, but it won't be that easy as he soon finds his mate in a sixteen year old werewolf that just moved in. His mate tried to do everything in his power to separate himself from the stubborn werewolf but he isn't that willing to give up on someone so in need of help.
What was he doing here?
There wasn’t anything here that proved that this is where the lone wolf lived. No scent markings, no rug to kick snow off of his shoes, not even a customary wreath on the door. It looked just about as plain and worn as all of the houses did a couple of weeks ago before this new guy had come into their territory.
Klyde would have been wringing his hands had the weight of the pot of spaghetti not been weighing them down. Abe had said that the other wolf seemed to like his lasagna, given that he always got his tupperware back empty and cleaned. So plain red meat sauce and noodles was what he had gone for.
Who didn’t love spaghetti?
But why was he still here?
He should have just left it at his door, and ding-dong-ditched it.
Why wasn’t he ding-dong-ditching it?
“An apology,” His father gruffly said, as he’d had Klyde sit in his office in one of his uncomfortable chairs. “You know the kind Kly, a proper apology for transgressions, intentional or otherwise. Any good alpha should know how to apologize for wrongdoings.”
Right.
Okay.
Klyde swallowed thickly, and rebalanced the pot of now cold spaghetti in his other hand before he reached over to knock on the door before him. There was a long beat of silence, and Klyde was almost hopeful that maybe... just maybe he wasn’t home and he could leave without having this conversation.
Tail between his legs or not.
Of course he couldn’t be that lucky.
The door opened and the other wolf’s eyes narrowed immediately upon seeing him standing there. Klyde could tell that Xander was contemplating just slamming the door in his face, regardless of what he wanted to say to him.
“I’m sorry!” The words burst out of him. He at least wanted to get this part done before the other wolf decided not to listen to him anymore. “What I said and how I said it was extremely wrong and hurtful to you, I don’t know anything about you and I didn’t think before speaking.” Klyde rambled on, thankful that he was at least allowed to talk this much. “You do not have to forgive me or even like me. I just.. I just thought that you should know…” Klyde’s cheeks reddened hotly, “I’D LOVE TO GO AND RUN WITH YOU SOME TIME!” He practically ended it with a shout, before shoving the pot of spaghetti into the other’s arms.
He peered at the lone wolf through his hair, his fingers pulling and tugging at a random loose string on his jacket almost shyly. The lone wolf’s mouth was agape, it very much was better than being called a dickhead if Klyde was being honest with himself.
Klyde cleared his throat, summoning every bit of courage his yellow belly had. “My name is Klyde, I’m from the Katahdin pack. It’s nice to meet you… again.”
One.
Two.
Three.
“Xander,” The other wolf mumbled, readjusting his grip on the pot. “My name is Xander and I.. I once belonged to the Harper Gorge pack.” Another pause, and Klyde watched in real time as this… Xander finally looked at him with something other than the hurt he had inspired the other day. “Do you… wanna share?”
Klyde nearly wept as he was allowed inside and handed a wooden bowl that definitely wasn’t meant for spaghetti.
-----------
“So um…” Klyde scratched at a spot behind his ear. “Am I allowed to ask what you did in your pack before you came here?” He mumbled shyly, “You seemed a little offended when I called you an omega, so I just.. I was just wondering…” His eyes darted over to Xander, who had a complicated expression on his face. “You of course don’t have to tell me anything at all!” He rushed to say, wildly waving his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I mean, you are you and all, and not your position in a pack, and–”
Xander snorted and Klyde felt himself go quiet.
He watched as Xander tucked into himself, Abe’s jacket seeming to swallow him whole in that moment.
“I was almost a Gamma.” He softly admitted, before immediately correcting himself. “I mean, I was the apprentice to a Gamma, I just got through the initiation and everything before…”
The scent of sadness was sour on Klyde’s nose, and he could feel his wolf twist and turn as if it could just peel open Klyde’s skin from the inside. Like some kind of flesh melon ready to burstand out as a full-fledged wolf. Xander’s eyes seemed too far away, too lost in things that Klyde couldn’t even hope to save him from.
He wanted to, but even he didn’t know how to.
Klyde licked his lips and scooted a little closer to Xander before gently nudging him with his knee.
“My mom is gone too,” He softly said, his voice so low that it was almost lost to the hum of the tiny space heater in Xander’s home. “I uh.. I don’t know what happened really, just that she went to visit some family in California and well…” Klyde’s eyes stung before he heavily breathed out of his mouth, “Dad collapsed at a pack meeting about a week after she left and…” He roughly rubbed his nose. “That was.. that.”
Gone.
They’d never even gotten her body back.
“She was supposed to be safe, she even went with–”
Klyde stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he felt it.
A hand.
A hand on his back.
Gently rubbing up and down, leaving a trail of warmth in their wake.
He swallowed thickly and his covered eyes darted over to Xander, where the other wolf had ever so slightly started to lean against him. He felt warm now, the biting cold from outside no more than a distant memory of everything before this one moment. Klyde could only force himself not to speak, knowing that if a single word left his mouth he would surely ruin whatever was going on right now between them.
Instead, ever so slightly… He rested his cheek against the soft downy hair of Xander, only relaxing a tiny bit when the other wolf allowed him to stay.
This…
This was nice.
A connection, a real physical connection.
Klyde sighed happily, and breathed in. The scent of that dried clay was still there, clinging stubbornly to Xander, but underneath it all was something else. Something that was desperately trying to come to the surface, something that reminded Klyde of the maple trees he used to climb when he went traveling with his mom before he had to start school. If it ever became safe enough, Klyde would love to travel with Xander. To see his home, to know where he had grown up, and what made him… him.
As lovely as this moment was between them, he knew that it couldn’t last forever. His dad would expect him back home sooner or later and he would expect a fully written report about how his apology had gone down. Klyde allowed himself one more moment, soaking in this warmth, as he rubbed his cheek against the top of Xander’s head, rather childishly wanting to put his scent into the mixture that the other wolf seemed to acquire. His mother would have yanked his ear for it, for being so weirdly possessive about the scent of another wolf that wasn’t even a pack member.
Xander sighed and Klyde finally pulled himself away.
“It’s getting dark out,” Xander grumbled, his eyes locked onto the tiny window in his kitchenette.
Outside he could see the little flurries of snow starting up, as the wind whipped them back and forth. It was only going to get worse from here, Klyde was sure from what he could remember that the weather forecast had predicted at least 80 inches. By the time he would make it back, his poor paws would be frozen solid.
“Ugh,” Klyde groaned, “Frozen paws for me tonight.” He stretched, no sense in complaining. He was an alpha’s son after all, he could take it. Looking back at Xander he put on his best grin, trying not to reveal his sour anticipation of walking home. “Thanks for hearing me out though after I fucked up, you uh.. you’re a cool dude. I’ll see you in school?” He offered, trying desperately not to cringe at his own words.
Xander stared back at him, something like incredulation written all over his face.
Had he said something stupid again?
It was the fact that he called him a cool dude, wasn’t it?
Who called anyone dude anymore anyways?
“Sor–” Klyde went to apologize again.
“It’s dark out,” Xander repeated firmly, standing up and putting an even firmer grip on Klyde’s forearm. “You can stay the night here and go back after school tomorrow.” He said it like a fact and definitely like Klyde wasn’t going to change his mind. “Lot’s of highschoolers have sleepovers anyways, you can borrow Abe’s phone if you need to call your dad and let him know.”
Klyde could just picture Abe’s look, those crossed arms and that unreadable expression that every adult in his life seemed to have. He could imagine even more vividly the scent of dried clay stuck to Xander that had been Abe’s calling card, he very much did not want to go and tell their pack witch that he was staying the night. He’d probably get turned into a pincushion or something for his troubles or something equally as horrible.
Klyde looked back at Xander, weighing his wolf life in that very second.
Pincushion or frozen paws?
Frozen paws..?
Xander stared back at him stubbornly.
Pincushion…
Klyde whined pathetically, the way he always did when something definitely wasn’t going to go his way.
“Fiiiine,” He pouted, turning towards the scary pack witch’s office. “But I am sleeping on a bed tonight! Even if it's at the foot of your bed!”
------
One phone call later and another day free of being turned into a living pincushion, Klyde was free to go back to Xander’s tiny home.
It didn’t take long to get settled in, borrowing some of the other wolf’s clothes, Klyde tucked in against Xander. The blazing warmth of the other’s skin through the fabric of the blanket separating them practically made it impossible to sleep, let alone keep a single thought to himself. He definitely didn’t think this through, he should have just claimed the couch, as small as it was. At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with.. with Xander being so fucking close to him.
Before he knew it, he was opening his mouth to speak, his eyes focused on the swirling shapes in the darkness.
“So um… what do Gammas do again?”
Xander snorted, breaking the silence.
Klyde had a feeling he would be hearing that sound more often.
Xander is a lone wolf but not by choice, just mere weeks ago hunters wiped out his entire pack leaving him alone in that clutches of the cruel world. He has is now being forced to live evading the and hunters that want to finish him off. He missed the warm feeling of a pack but knew that the feeling could never be his again.
Or could he?
Klyde is the youngest son to the alpha of the Katahdin Forest Pack all he has to do now is find his mate and not chase him off with how stupid he can be sometimes, but it won't be that easy as he soon finds his mate in a sixteen year old werewolf that just moved in. His mate tried to do everything in his power to separate himself from the stubborn werewolf but he isn't that willing to give up on someone so in need of help.
Like many other times, Klyde found himself in a very familiar seat.
When he was a pup he remembered many of days he spent here, waiting for his dad to get out of meetings. Whether it was running from the omegas of the pack that were supposed to watch after him, accidentally getting them into trouble. Or for hiding in the shrubbery too long from his brothers and getting everyone concerned as to where he was. Or just spouting off the exact wrong thing to say when a neighboring pack came over with their own pups during negotiations.
He remembered making lots of other pups howl and cry from the accidental insults, and he remembered lots of evenings waiting right here.
Always right here and the waiting...
Always the waiting.
Shaking his head Klyde combed his jittery fingers through the hair that had fallen over his eyes He stared at nothing as he waited on the bench just outside of his father's office. Straining his ears he could hear him on the phone with Abe, talking about borders and safety and other such things. He could hear the the weary sigh and could practically see the roll of the older man's shoulders as he leaned back in his chair that let out a pained squeaking sound. He could hear the mention of hunters, of...
Of deaths.
Too many deaths.
Stuff he definitely shouldn't be listening in on if he wanted to keep his lunch inside his stomach.
Twisting and untwisting a strand of hair between his fingers. A nauseating cocktail of shame, embarrassment, and guilt burrowed in his chest like a stinging nettle.
He should have known that his father would find out about his little slip up, and even more so that his 'friends' would tattle to his dad.
The stench of hurt from the new wolf clung to his nostril made his stomach flip and not for the first time he felt like he was going to be sick. The scent of sunbaked clay, of cheap coffee and... linoleum? It had clung to the other wolf, and underneath it the smell of something else, something... had hints of rain and smoke. The scent of it had absolutely stupefied him and his wolf to an insane degree. Even now, he felt like he could perfectly memorize exactly what that one lone wolf smelled like and the crinkle of his brow when Klyde had talked to him...
"Stupid... stupid...stupid! " He muttered to himself, plucking at a particularly roughly textured hair on his head. He absolutely should have known from the moment he had seen the smaller wolf, he really should have shoved his stupid words right up his own ass and shut the fuck up. "Stupid words, never working right. I'm always saying the wrong thing..."
The word 'dickhead' rolled around in his mind, a last insult thrown at him by the lone wolf before he had stalked off.
He didn't even know his name, and yet he had managed to piss off a possible new member. What would his mom say? If she'd heard what he had said or even how he had said it? She'd be so disappointed in him, she'd probably get that look in her eyes as she pressed her lips together in clear disapproval. She'd probably have him hunt down that lone wolf, and grovel with apology after apology just like she did to his dad anytime he fucked up.
'Humility is a good characteristic to have.' She'd told their family time and time again, she had never been one for physical punishments as the same with the rest of the pack. She'd always said that those lessons didn't stick around long enough to her liking, that the pain was as momentary as whatever lesson she would try to teach. 'If you feel shame, then there is always more work to be done.'
Klyde could attest to that.
Their encounter, however brief it may have been, burned brightly in his mind.
Maybe he'd get another chance?
Perhaps?
It had been just a few weeks ago that his father's pack had been trying to track the loner scent that had popped up near the border. The whole pack had been on high alert, as the remains of other packs had come flooding in. Many of them fleeing to Canada, like running from a forest fire that had taken over the whole of the United States. His dad refused to speak on it with him, but Klyde always had pretty good ears and Abe's voice was always unmistakable anytime he came down to the pack grounds.
He thought he'd gotten ahead of them... that he'd do something good for once and invite this new wolf in.
Wolves weren't meant to be alone...
"Klyde."
His father's voice jerked him out of his musing, and with wide eyes hidden behind his scruffy hair he gazed up at his father.
His expression was unreadable and the storm of his eyes seemed to say too many things.Klyde felt his stomach twist yet again.
Regardless, he swallowed thickly. "Father." He answered, attempting to straighten up like he had seen his brother's do countless time in their meetings. He watched his father's jaw twitch once and then twice, before a calm, even sigh left him. Even with just that sound he couldn't help but to immediately drop his gaze down to his dad's orange dust covered shoes, dried mud caked all the way up to his ankles.
He sniffed, and that sunbaked clay scent hit him like a train.
He had gone to see Abe.
Fuck.
Shit.
"I can explain," He began in a pleading tone that very much said that he could not explain a single thing. "I just... I..." Klyde's fingernails found a weathered patch on his shirt and dug in. "I just wanted to help." He weakly defended himself, as his shoulders hunched up defensively. "He seemed lonely, and..." And he didn't know how to talk to people that his father hadn't already put in front of him, with the sole task of being his 'friends'.
He felt a warm hand grasp his shoulder, giving it a firm but gentle pat on his back.
Finally something other than shame crawled up Klyde's throat, choking any other word out from existence. A feeling that told him exactly what his dad had told him time and time again, as the youngest son of the alpha he'd heard it too many time to be sane about it. His dad didn't expect anything from him, his brothers didn't expect anything from him, his pack didn't expect anything from him. His mom seemed to be the only person who ever held some kind of standard over him the moment he stopped being a pup.
And somehow that hurt so much worse than any non-existent punishment he would be getting.
"Come and sit in my office son," Vic instead said, giving his son a gentle nudge towards said room. "We'll talk about that later, right now I need to know how much you overheard from Abe and I's conversation. And then I'll tell you what I know about our new friend and where he's staying, so you can go and give your apologies. "
Xander is a lone wolf but not by choice, just mere weeks ago hunters wiped out his entire pack leaving him alone in that clutches of the cruel world. He has is now being forced to live evading the and hunters that want to finish him off. He missed the warm feeling of a pack but knew that the feeling could never be his again.
Or could he?
Klyde is the youngest son to the alpha of the Katahdin Forest Pack all he has to do now is find his mate and not chase him off with how stupid he can be sometimes, but it won't be that easy as he soon finds his mate in a sixteen year old werewolf that just moved in. His mate tried to do everything in his power to separate himself from the stubborn werewolf but he isn't that willing to give up on someone so in need of help.
It took an embarrassingly long amount of time to stop crying in front of Mr. Brown.
Honestly Xander felt like he'd run the man out of house and home with the amount of tissues he had used from the man. Before he had even realized it, the both of them were back in Mr. Brown's office, with a warm steaming cup of coffee in front of the both of them.
The man was quiet for a long time after Xander finally managed to stop crying, with only the occasional sniffles interrupting the silence.
"I was wondering when it would finally happen," Mr. Brown broke the silence, his deep black eyes conveying a single emotion. Sadness. "I figured when you first came here that you musta been runnin from somethin, I also figured ya just needed some time to feel it out, and I dunno... you'd tell me who were runnin from or you'd say somethin about it." He ran his hand through his graying hair, suddenly looking a lot older.
"I figured that just stoppin by would be enough, that is if I wasn't botherin ya." He looked at Xander with deep troubled emotions settling on his face. "It wasn't enough was it?" He asked, something like guilt resting in the deep lines of his face.
Xander felt awful.
He had never wanted Mr. Brown to take the brunt of his personal issues, even if he had personally felt annoyed by his presence at times. The man was nice... weird at time, with how he seemed to look at things, Xander included. But he had put in a lot of effort to make sure that Xander was fed, and had a place to stay when he otherwise wouldn't have.
"I..." Xander rubbed at his eye, feeling one his eyelashes poking his eye making them water even more. "It's a bit hard to explain." He tried to say, looking everywhere but Mr. Brown's deeply upset face.
How on earth was he supposed to explain everything that had happened without telling anything about his werewolf nature, hunters, and the fact that he had traveled over two thousand miles in just a couple of days? The more he tried to even wrap his head around explaining it, the more he felt an upcoming headache breaching his temple.
Opening his mouth to say something, anything really...
Xander felt a warm rough hand on his forearm stopping his words in his tracks before they could even begin.
"Kid..." The man in front of him looked troubled to say the least. "You ain't gotta say nothin to me, I understand it. I'm a stranger, you're in a new place, and you gotta lot to worry about. Just..." Mr. Brown looked like he too was struggling to get some words out, then again he didn't seem like the kind of man to regularly have these kinds of discussions. "Just let me help yeah? You have trouble, let me know. You got some asshat from school given you trouble, lemme know. I uh..." He rubbed the back of his neck again, "I ain't your dad but I... I had a kid once. I know how it goes with you young people..."
Honestly Xander was touched, he really was.
He couldn't tell Mr. Brown everything, but.. but in the very least he had someone he could count on. He wouldn't be alone if it came to dealing with work, school, or anything else that came up. He couldn't replace his parents, Luna knows that he would never even want to try to.
But...
It was nice to have someone who cared.
Swallowing the welling up emotion in his throat, Xander nodded. "Okay," He choked out, his voice hoarse and his throat scratchy. "I.. I'd really like that."
The soft smile that hesitantly crossed Mr. Brown's face felt almost like a reward of some kind, like he was getting closer to how an actual sixteen year old was supposed to be in life. It was almost like he had forgotten, and this.. this was nice, to actually remember that there were other things out there aside from the tragedy that he had been forced to be faced with.
Mr. Brown's giant hand clapped him on the shoulder, "Good," He gruffly said, as if embarrassed by the topic that he himself had brought up. "I know what I said before when you first moved in, but uh..." He cleared his throat roughly, "You.. you can call me Abe."
Abe...
Abe Brown.
Xander smiled, and for once finally felt like he meant it.
"Abe," He tried the name out, and attempted to feel brave for once as he answered. "My name is Xander."
Abe's smile towards him made it all the more worth it.
------------------
"Abe," The gruff voice came from behind the man in question, and turning around the old man gave a grin at the tall man before him.
"Well look what the coyote dragged in." He teased, feeling his younger years fill him at the sight of his friend. "What brings ya to my humble abode?"
He asked, but deep down Abe had a feeling. It was the exact reason the man had come last time, and the time before and before. Being a pack's witch was tiring business, especially when there was new company in town for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, he gestured to the worn out chair that he often used, and instead opted to pop a squat on the footstool next to it.
The man's golden eyes bored into him, his face stoic for half a second before a deep sigh rumbled from his chest.
"What's our... friend's story Abe? He friendly?"
Abe knew what he was really asking, he was asking if it was safe for his kid to be around Klyde. If he was rabid, if he was going to be causing issues or if.. well that hardly mattered. Abe looked at his friend, at the deep exhaustion lines carved into his skin, at the dark bags under his eyes, and at the way his temples seemed to throb. He wished that he could take it all away, that he could just wave his hand, and that some magical spell would make those grey hairs go away.
If only his magic worked like that.
If only.
But Abe just sighed, "He's a good kid," He sighed, his own exhaustion weighing him down. "I think he's from one of those western packs, they've been getting hit with the brunt of the hunter sweeps. Came in covered in mud the first time I met him."
At least Abe hoped that he was from a western pack, if.. if hunters were already this close, then.. then it wouldn't end well. They weren't prepared for this, not for what had been happening in the South or the West. The North and the East had been spared for the time being, and they had taken in as many as they could. But if they were even as close as New York, then... well they would all be screwed.
There was a long beat of silence as Abe patted his friend's knee.
"I had to comfort my son today," He finally sank into the chair, despair warping his handsome features. "Apparently, according to his friends he put his foot in his mouth... again. Said some down right stupid shit this time, that boy..."
"Yeah," Abe agreed, not really wanting to tarnish Xander's pride anymore than it had been wounded. "Real dunce ya got there Vic. But no one said raising the next Alpha would be easy!"
Xander is a lone wolf but not by choice, just mere weeks ago hunters wiped out his entire pack leaving him alone in that clutches of the cruel world. He has is now being forced to live evading the and hunters that want to finish him off. He missed the warm feeling of a pack but knew that the feeling could never be his again.
Or could he?
Klyde is the youngest son to the alpha of the Katahdin Forest Pack all he has to do now is find his mate and not chase him off with how stupid he can be sometimes, but it won't be that easy as he soon finds his mate in a sixteen year old werewolf that just moved in. His mate tried to do everything in his power to separate himself from the stubborn werewolf but he isn't that willing to give up on someone so in need of help.
The days after were much of the same as the days before.
Getting to classes while trying to decipher where on earth he was to go with the poorly printed map they had given him when he'd enrolled while the wolf in his chest sent pin pickles under his skin just about every day. Not to mention that every single time he went into the cafeteria that boy was there with his friend group, and would just stare at him! Stare, until either the bell rang or Xander decided to walk out.
To be honest, it was a little annoying.
He'd had a lot of good things going for him before the hunters had taken it all, but map reading was certainly not one of them.
However, with as much attention he had given to his map, he had been so focused on paying so much attention to his schedule that Xander had failed to notice the student right in front of him until it was too late.
Their bodies collided in a rock hard collision sending Xander tumbling back. Surprisingly the one who he had slammed into remained standing as if Xander had been nothing more than a fly had just swatted off of his shoulder. The boy before him just looked down at him with an expression of pure unadulterated shock, as if it was a surprise that anyone could run into him. The young man in front of him could be considered handsome with his dark wavy brown hair that stayed in front of his copper colored eyes, his figure was tall and lanky in the kind of way that was secretly muscular for a highschooler. But very noticeable, almost demanding attention from everyone.
Xander inhaled without even thinking about it.
His scent wafting off of him was like that of salt and dried pine needles littering the earth, definitely an interesting scent to have but one that told Xander right away that this guy wasn't exactly a human.
Honestly enough, Xander would have been very taken with him if it weren't for what the guy said as he snapped out of his shock and reached down to help him back up.
"Hey," It was the guy from the lunchroom, his shaggy brown hair pushed away from his eyes. "I uh... I just wanted to say hi."
Xander eyebrow shot up as he rubbed the soreness from his nose, "Yeah," He said from behind his hand. "You did that alright." He winced, as far as it came to making friends, it wasn't exactly something he was... good at.
Even before everything, it was his sisters, his mother, and even his father that had introduced him to most of the people around him.
He... he literally had zero social skills to speak of.
Nice.
Luckily the guy in front of him chuckled, scratching the back of his head.
"Yeah I guess I did huh?" A crooked smile appeared on his face, and Xander caught a glimpse of a chipped canine tooth clearly garnered from the roughhousing that he had seen the boy partaking in multiple times. "I'm uh... My name is Klyde, your new right? Kinda rare for someone to join in the middle of the year, right?"
Holy fuck this guy was... a dork?
"My dad said that I should be the one to introduce myself since it can kinda be intimidating for people like you."
Nope, just an asshole.
"People like me?" Xander coldly repeated, warning the boy with his eyes to tread very very carefully with his words. "Like what exactly?" He could feel the energy bustling in his chest, like he and his wolf were playing a game of tug-o-war. His wolf very much did not like how this was going, and Xander...
Well Xander wanted to knock him on his ass.
Klyde shifted awkwardly as he fussed with his hair, putting his fringe back over his eyes.
"An... an omega?"
Rage both hot and cold poured over Xander as he instinctually bristled, had he been in his wolf form his hackles would have raised and he would have bared his teeth at this insolent boy in front of him at the mere idea of being referred to as such a level of pack member. The thought that this guy knew he was a wolf had never even crossed his mind, all he knew was that he was pissed off and he wanted to fight for his very wounded pride right now.
He had been working damn well hard to be a Gamma of his pack, and that was not something to be taken lightly. He had been proud of his accomplishments, the light in his mom's eyes that had reflected his own, the grip of his dad's hand on his shoulder, and the cheering of his little sisters when he'd been named the apprentice of the past Gamma had made him so happy.
He... he...
"I am not!" He hotly countered, had he been in his wolf form his fur would have been standing along his back. He could feel his fingernails itching to grow longer, to slash and bite at something. "I..."
It hit him with the weight of a sledgehammer tearing down a building.
He was an omega.
Without a pack, without territory to return to...
He was a fucking lone omega.
His previous status meant nothing in the face of the facts. He did not have a pack. He was in another pack's territory trespassing like it was no big deal. He was an omega, whether he liked it or not.
"I'm sorry!" Klyde said as if he had also just realized what kind of startling realization this made him come to, and as if genuinely hadn't meant to cause this. "We noticed your new scent a few days ago! I didn't mean it like that! I'm just not used to your scent, and I spoke without realizing, and.. and I'm an idiot aren't I?"
Xander had to give him that.
At least he was self aware.
"I'm very sorry...I just didn't expect another one to be here...and without a pack at that!" The boy ended with an awkward laugh as he scratched the back of his head, before he trailed into even more of an awkward silence.
And he had ruined it yet again...
Those carelessly spoken words were like shards of ice lodging themselves into Xander's heart without a care in the world and he felt every bit of it as he roughly slapped the other's hand away determined to stand on his own.
"I'm new to the area, so forgive me if I don't know all the special bells and whistles..." Xander seethed, before adding "dick head" for flavor. And then without so much as another word, and despite the regret that he could clearly see blossoming on the other boy's face... he left.
Fuck this school, and fuck this guy, and whoever his dad happened to be.
-----------------
He beelined for home, not caring that that he was technically leaving school early. Or that his "parental figure" would be called, or anything at all. He could feel his breathing getting more and more labored as his vision misted up, his bottom lip trembled with the cold air and he ruthlessly bit it to keep it from giving away his weakness. He could feel the hot tears coming, and he would be damned if anyone at this school was going to see him cry during his first week, and he would be damned if Klyde saw him cry.
He was almost there, his new home was within sight.
"Kid?"
Looking up he saw Mr. Brown, and to his horror he felt it finally happen.
The warm collective trails of tears wrecking their way down his cheeks like he was five years old again, and scared of whatever boogeyman was under his bed.
Except there weren't any boogeymen, just hunters and their ceaseless cruelty.
Xander is a lone wolf but not by choice, just mere weeks ago hunters wiped out his entire pack leaving him alone in that clutches of the cruel world. He has is now being forced to live evading the and hunters that want to finish him off. He missed the warm feeling of a pack but knew that the feeling could never be his again.
Or could he?
Klyde is the youngest son to the alpha of the Katahdin Forest Pack all he has to do now is find his mate and not chase him off with how stupid he can be sometimes, but it won't be that easy as he soon finds his mate in a sixteen year old werewolf that just moved in. His mate tried to do everything in his power to separate himself from the stubborn werewolf but he isn't that willing to give up on someone so in need of help.
It hadn't been easy to get used to everything.
It had been a couple of weeks since Xander had settled into his tiny and outdated but comfortable feeling home. During that time he had gotten used to his new job at the gas station near the high school, thanks to "Mr. Brown" of course. It was difficult saving up enough for rent, food, and all the school supplies he had to buy from scratch. His landlord made a bit of a habit of pointing out every time they ran into each other that school would be starting soon, or that winter break was ending and that if he wasn't enrolled yet then he should make haste with it.
The man was almost annoying about it, or at least he would have been had he not come with store brand lasagna every other weekend.
Xander had no idea why 'Mr. Brown' even bothered.
But given that it allowed him to eat something other than the cheap noodle cups he bought from the gas station with an employee discount, he couldn't really say something to his face without coming off as severely rude and very entitled.
As it turned out, school was... school.
Every morning he grumbled to himself as he packed his books and other supplies into his backpack, if Xander had it his way then he'd never go to high school again. He knew that he needed it, that the lack of a school degree wouldn't get him anywhere and that he couldn't always rely on Mr. Brown to get him a job that he otherwise wouldn't have gotten. But it would do no good to have his landlord asking more questions than he already was.
He missed his parents, he missed having his mom's cool hands to wake him up in the morning. He missed eating with his dad at the table, and the smell of his dad's coffee that he sometimes let Xander have secret sips of when his mom wasn't looking. He missed his sisters, and them trying to bribe him to do their homework with their leftover Halloween candy that definitely wouldn't upset his stomach if he ate it.He missed hunting, the raw meat of a kill shared among his pack during the full moons. He missed...
Everyone.
He had no doubt that were it not for his job or for school he would permanently stay under his shitty dusty sheets that he had yet to wash, and mourn the loss of his pack and family until he rotted away. But they wouldn't want that, and he didn't want to disrespect their memories by doing that to them either.
Shuffling past the metal chain link gates of the school Xander huddled into his thin jacket as the chilly winter breeze buffeted against him again and again.
"Fucking ocean air my ass." He grumbled, trying to absorb out some of the warmth from his terrible coffee, that was not doing him any favors.
Maybe it was the weather, or the literal tragedy that he had lived through. But for whatever reason, he had really woken up on the wrong side of the bed today, it wasn't anywhere near a full moon, and yet his wolf felt as nervous as ever, like there were ants crawling under his pelt biting at his skin. Something was obviously bothering him but he refused to let Xander in on it, so Xander let his wolf keep his secrets and finished the last of his quickly cooling coffee. Huffing faintly as he felt his eye twitch and his nose sting, he trudged on to the front office getting his class schedule.
Almost immediately, the moment he had his freshly printed schedule in his hands, his upper lip curled into a sour looking snarl of utter contempt.
His very first class of the day was math, fantastic.
As if the start of his day couldn't get any better.
For the rest of the day, throughout each period of class, lunch, and his breaks Xander felt his wolf getting more and more antsy to the point where it was almost tiring. His leg could not stop bouncing up and down, and a yawn tugged at every other breath.
It wasn't even the full moon yet, so what was his deal? Hell it wasn't even a new moon yet either!
It felt like the rest of the day passed at a snail's pace, like claws dragging along a chalkboard right next to his ears. It was grating to say the least, and it left him feeling more strung out and on edge than usual. He contemplated using his free period to find an empty classroom to just get some shut eye, or to sit his wolf down to have a chat. He hadn't done that for a while, not since... everything had happened, he had just been too busy. Going from work, sleep, and everything with school, and then doing it all over again after it was over.
Maybe he needed to go for a run, he'd promised that he wouldn't hunt in this pack's territory, but going for a leisurely stroll couldn't hurt.
Right?
When the bell rang Xander felt relief wash over him, as he moved to shove everything in his bag and do what werewolves did best in the wild. his legs were aching for something, anything really to release the tension that had been building up all day. And just as he turned to walk away, just then...
Something from the corner of his eye in caught his attention, or rather... his wolf's attention.
And Xander's neck nearly snapped as he turned his head.
There was nothing...
Just a group of boys sitting on desks and loudly chatting and roughhousing with each other as they played cards. From where he was standing, clearly it was some kind of betting game, judging by the bottle caps spread out before the boys that were full of Luna knows what kinds of liquid. There was nothing off about them, just teen boys, doing teen boy things. Even so, Xander could still feel his wolf worming around inside of him, like a desperate feral beast attempting to get out of his cage. Maybe he was... lonely?
The idea seemed ridiculous, and Xander prepared himself to go out to the football fields to slip away for the lunch period.
At least until one of the boys that had been shuffling cards with a cocky grin had noticed Xander's gaze and looked back for a moment too long, meeting his gaze before quickly ducking back down among his group of friends. Xander could hear him muttering something to one of the others in a way that was totally and very noticeable for the group pf guys that he was sitting with. Finally one of the boys with shaggy brown hair that had actually been sitting in his chair properly attempted to turn around, only to be smacked quite loudly on the arm forcing him to turn around avoiding Xander's rather noticeable stare.
Nice. Totally not noticeable at all.
The sensation of ants crawling under his skin only faded once he left school for the day, but even then it was still in the back of his mind like a thorn that had burrowed deep beneath his skin and meat. It was lingering, and he had the feeling that come tomorrow... it would be right back the moment he stepped into that classroom again.
Whatever... he had homework to finish and a shift to get to tonight.
Xander is a lone wolf but not by choice, just mere weeks ago hunters wiped out his entire pack leaving him alone in that clutches of the cruel world. He has is now being forced to live evading the and hunters that want to finish him off. He missed the warm feeling of a pack but knew that the feeling could never be his again.
Or could he?
Klyde is the youngest son to the alpha of the Katahdin Forest Pack all he has to do now is find his mate and not chase him off with how stupid he can be sometimes, but it won't be that easy as he soon finds his mate in a sixteen year old werewolf that just moved in. His mate tried to do everything in his power to separate himself from the stubborn werewolf but he isn't that willing to give up on someone so in need of help.
There was a small quiet town of Blackshore Maine that was very beautiful, the very sight of the quaint town had Xander internally howling with joy. A little blossom of hope unfurled in his chest, like the first hints of spring after a harsh winter.
An odd feeling of completeness washed over him as soon as he had stepped over the town borderline, the scent of a sea breeze in the air felt as though it rinsed him clean of the horrors he had witnessed mere days ago. It, oddly enough felt similar to how being with his old pack felt, it was comforting and just... nice.
Coming from a heavily forested area to the ocean was going to be something he'd have to get used to, but... maybe it would be a good change.
Maybe...
Not wanting the good feeling to go away just yet he clung to it, Xander moved on scouting the town out.
Obviously there was a pack here, places like Maine were often one of the hotspots for other packs to congregate. There would probably be around 3 packs for every heavily wooded state, and those were just the small ones. For the larger ones like Washington, there was no telling how many packs there could be, let alone how many.
The best he could do was to lay a low profile, and wait until he turned 18. There was no way that any job was going to buy that he wasn't anything other than a teenager. He had his mom's height to thank for that. So when he got old enough, and proved that he could hold down a steady job and not hunt in this other pack's land... then maybe... maybe they would allow him to join, that is if they even welcomed loners in their pack. For all he knew the fact that there could be hunters on his tail would be enough for them to chase him off immediately. So keeping that hush hush was probably the best way to go about this.
So... school first.
Disgusting.
The moment he made landfall the high school was one of the first places that he sought out, and in all honesty it didn't look that bad despite it being... well school.
It was a decent size, for being in a smaller state, that much he could tell from the outside at least.
With several large buildings for different classes, and on top of that it looked like it was rather well protected with chain link fences surrounding the entire thing. It took him a while to walk around the whole thing, but he needed to be thorough and ensure that there were no points of entry and no way for an enemy to get in should it come to that.
The mere idea of enrolling just to finish up his last two years made him inwardly groan, it had been awful enough to leave midway through the year. So not only would he most likely have to redo the whole thing all over again, but he would have to enroll himself and talk with school administrators and all of their questions. All while also trying to figure out some kind of job that would let him have flexible enough hours to go to said school.
There would be no parents or pack to pay his rent this time.
That was something he would have to do all on his own.
Walking down the sidewalk he spotted several fast food places with the occasional teenager hanging around, he could smell the smoke of cigarettes and vapes coming off of them from almost a mile away. He chuffed, rubbing his nose at the raw acidic smell that came like a knife of scent right into his nostrils.
Walking past them with a swift pace he almost didn't notice it.
Along the few fast food places there was a closed off area with an old chain link fence housing a small group of empty looking houses whose outside looked as if it hadn't been updated in almost a decade, just about every house had moss covered shingles and looked as if it hadn't been power washed in a decade with how much overgrowth was clinging to the sides. They weren't big houses by any stretch of the imagination, they were more like those tiny barns that he had often seen for sale in the parking lots of hardware stores. They were very small, probably enough to hold a bed and a kitchenette, and nothing more. He'd have to piss outside like a normal dog...
They were small though... so most likely cheap as well.
Very cheap.
With his interest piqued Xander made his way over to them.
After finally finding the main building, which was another hassle in itself to just find the entrance to the damned place. It was almost as if the person who owned this place wanted to make it as hard as possible to even find out where you were supposed to go.
Finally he made it.
"Can I help you?" There was a man standing at the counter, his heavily tattooed arms crossed and his pierced eyebrow raised just a fraction of an inch. Clearly he had been watching Xander struggle and fail to find the entrance door for some time, it only peeved him slightly that the man hadn't offered to help or really do anything.
The man's nostrils flared, as he took Xander in.
He knew that he looked like a mess. From the rain soaked clothes, that clung to him in a most pathetic way, the tear stains that had dried on his cheeks, to the mud caking his shoes. He didn't look that impressed, and he definitely wasn't giving a good first impression to the man at the counter.
Just his luck.
"I um..." Xander's words twisted with his tongue, as his fingers found the hem of his shirt. "The houses, are they-"
Before he could so much as get any more words out, the man interrupted him.
"These are for owning not renting, kid." Embarrassment caked Xander's cheeks and shattered the plans that he had been attempting to make.
He looked... well awful if the up and down look from the owner/landlord was anything to go by.
The man's black eyes stared into him, as if dredging up anything and everything that Xander would attempt to hide from him. The man didn't blink for a long time, and Xander tried to match him, if for nothing else than for his pride. He felt practically naked under this man's stare, and worse than that he felt guilty. For what? He had no idea, but he had the feeling that the man in front of him would sure as hell find something on him.
It was clear that nothing was going to come from being here.
"I'm sorry for interrupting your day Mr..." Xander squinted his eyes at the man's scuffed up and scratched up name badge. "Brown?"
A snort and then a rough laugh huffed from the burly tattooed man in front of him.
"That's not my name, kid." He chortled, as if that was any answer at all. "You going to the school here? You look awfully young to be on your own." His fingers drummed methodically on the desk, the clacking noise filling the silence between them. His eyes momentarily darted down to the man's black nails, they were blunt, and he definitely felt as if they shouldn't have been able to make that kind of sound. He could feel his wolf, trembling inside him like his stomach was about to expel everything out of him all at once.
Xander thickly swallowed, somehow not even knowing the man's name felt even worse than knowing a fake version of it.
"Yeah... I'm going to be enrolling soon, as soon as I can find someplace to stay." He softly wheezed out, he filed his nails against the seam of his shirt fraying it even more.
Every bit of information felt like too much, but this man was an adult and adults had the power to call the police on weird sixteen year olds that looked like they just crawled out of a gutter and survived two world wars. The hunters had connections, and they more than likely knew what he looked like, so if this man called the police...
He'd be done for.
There was a long pause for a moment, and then...
The man finally nodded to himself, and scratched his gray stubbly chin as if deep in thought.
"I've got a buddy at the gas station 'cross the street. He's been lookin' for someone to take the midnight shift, you work there and I'll rent one of the houses to ya. It'll cost ya five hundred a month." The gruff scruffy man finally told him. He eyed him down, with those black eyes of his. "You don't miss rent, and you don't miss school. Ya hear? I don't want no guidance counselor from the school sniffin' all 'round here. Campeche? "
It felt like a dream. A home, a job, and reasonable hours that wouldn't interfere with school too much. Despite everything. Everything that had happened within the past seven days, this... this is what pushed Xander the closest to tears.
"Thank you." He croaked, feeling his eyes misting up already. He could do this, he could actually do this now! "Thank you so much..."
The landlord immediately looked away scratching the back of his head, as if such an intense display of emotion from Xander was too much for him to bear.
"It's fine kid, just...don't go cryin' in my office." He waved his hand, before shuffling away to print something up on his ancient computer and to grab one of the key sets hanging behind him.
Signing the paperwork was as easy as one, two, and three after that.
Giving his information up though wasn't. After he had finished the man leant on the counter that they were talking over and looked at the name that Xander had signed before casting Xander a hard searching stare as he knew well enough that Xander did not previously live in Oklahoma under the name Winston Crews.
It wasn't his real name, it couldn't be his real name.
Not when there was even the slightest chance that 'they' were still out there looking for him. There was no telling what those hunters would do if they caught wind of him being here, or what they would do to get their hands on any kind of information that had his real name on it. 'Mr. Brown' despite being shady as fuck was still an innocent person, and he was basically giving him a house to stay in for a ridiculously cheap price.
He was a good man, despite how he looked at him sometimes.
"So... if your name isn't Mr. Brown, then... What is it?" Xander curiously asked as 'Mr. Brown' walked him to one of the homes.
A loud snort left the man as he slotted the key into the front door.
Xander wasn't exactly sure what was so funny to the man, and he didn't really appreciate being laughed at.
He gestured for Xander to enter, with a thick calloused hand.
"How about this kid." His black eyes looked like a pool at night, and Xander's stomach twisted with anxiety as a crooked grin curled on the other man's face. "As soon as you tell me your real name, I'll tell you mine."
And just like that, the key was in Xander's hand and 'Mr. Brown' was gone. Leaving him alone in a house that was full of smells he wasn't familiar with and a grungy house that looked to be from decades past.
Here he was...
Alone.
A thick deep green carpet covered the floor that smelled of must and mildew. On it rested a good sized loveseat sofa, that looked like if Xander even touched it that it would explode into dust particles. It's back was pushed against the earthy orange wooden paneled wall, something he had only seen in the old magazines his mom had sometimes kept around. In the "kitchen" was a small , a well sized sink right under a tiny window, some yellow chalk colored cupboards next to it, and an ugly dingy yellow refrigerator that only came up to his waist, and next that was the hotplate that sat unused on the tiny counter and a nicely polished wooden table with two matching chairs off to the side folded up neatly underneath. There was one bedroom lofted above everything, giving him an eagle eyed view of everything, equipped with a medium sized bed with thin dusty military green covers and sheets, and an empty mini bookcase shoved against the wall.
And finally...
The bathroom, no pissing outside for him then.
Plainly put... it was the basics, and nothing more.
It was more than he could ever ask for.
For the first time in a week, Xander finally allowed himself to relax as he showered and laid himself on the bed. Nestled under the covers that made his nose itch and his eyes water, he finally allowed himself to cry.
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