Chapter 5 #2
A drop of transparent white liquid ran down Tobias’s neck. Alexander averted his gaze and scratched his bandage, focusing on the throbbing stab wound instead.
Tobias resurfaced with a contented sigh. “Thanks for the food. Seriously, my electrolytes feel super replaced.”
Alexander nodded, eyes on the carpet so he wouldn’t have to watch Tobias wipe a hand down his rough stubble.
“You need to be in optimal condition,” he said, and winced. He was aware that he sometimes sounded like a robot. He just said the first thing that came to mind, and the first thing was often very…robotic. Sensible, but robotic.
Tobias snorted, reclining on the couch that had been shoved up against the bathroom door several minutes ago.
“Right,” he said. “You know, you can just say you like me.”
It was meant to be teasing, Alexander knew. But he couldn’t help the fissure of panic that flickered up his spine, like he expected a cousin to be listening over his shoulder, ready to rat him out.
“I don’t,” he said, too fast.
Tobias rolled his eyes. “Come on. Not even a little bit?”
“Nope,” Alexander insisted.
Tobias reached out with his socked foot—the fabric torn from when his toenails turned to claws—and nudged Alexander’s knee. “You used to. When I was Hot Scar Guy.”
Alexander silently cursed himself for that stupid moment of shock. He batted Tobias’s foot away and pushed him back to his side of the couch. “I liked you when I thought you were a civilian. Monsters have no soul. There is nothing there to like.”
Tobias’s smile faded. “What?”
Alexander glared. “You heard me.”
Tobias laughed. It sounded stiffer than last time. “Dude, are you serious? That’s what your family says about monsters?”
“It’s the truth,” Alexander insisted. “Monsters’ souls are dust.”
“Sure,” Tobias said flatly. He rubbed his chest. “Huh. Weird. I don’t feel like my soul got dusted when I got turned.”
“Yes,” Alexander said curtly. “Well. Sorry to tell you.”
Tobias said nothing. His hand moved over his chest, rubbing the stretched material thoughtfully.
“But you did like a monster once,” Tobias said eventually. His socked foot crept forward again, a toe poking out of the claw holes. “Right? That’s why they kicked you out?”
“Don’t touch me with your bare feet,” Alexander barked, shoving his feet away again. “And you’re very adamant to find out why I had to leave.”
“’Course I am. Either you have a heart under all that, or you’re woefully incompetent.”
“Obviously I’m not incompetent,” Alexander said reflexively.
Tobias’s tired face lit up in a grin. “Aha! So you do have a heart!”
He grabbed Alexander’s uninjured shoulder and shook him.
Alexander knew he should have been annoyed, like he was about Donna’s continuous arm-slaps.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about how gently Tobias was shaking him, despite what Alexander would have expected.
Like he was mindful of Alexander’s injuries and didn’t want to jar them any further.
Or perhaps he was cautious of his super strength.
Either way, it took Alexander so off guard he admitted it.
“Yes, okay?” he hissed. “I…I let them go.”
Tobias sat back, his triumph fading into soft surprise. “Wolves?”
“Vampires. Two of them.” Alexander swallowed. His palms were sweating, which was completely irrational. There was nobody in the room with them to tattle to his family or witness his humiliation. But he couldn’t help it. He’d never told this story aloud before.
“Well, one,” he corrected himself. “But they were both vampires when I met them. They said they were killing their sire so they could get turned back into humans. But they lied. One of them was sired by the guy they were going to kill, but the other one was sired by her girlfriend. They knew that she wasn’t turning back.
That I’d have to kill her no matter what. ”
“But you didn’t,” Tobias said.
Alexander shrugged. He hated Tobias’s tone and its quiet, reserved wonder.
As if it was an act deserving wonder and not a moment of weakness that had haunted Alexander ever since.
Sparing that girl had ruined his life. No matter that she’d convinced them they were friends, no matter she had stared up at him with her newly humanized girlfriend limp in her arms, the two of them clinging to each other with more devotion than Alexander knew was possible for monsters.
Alexander would have killed them, if given a second chance. He was almost sure of it.
He sighed, pulling his jawbone knife from his ankle holster and flipping it, a nervous tic he’d picked up in the last few years in exile.
“Of course it had to be a vampire,” he said. “My family hates vampires over all else.”
“Oh? Why?”
Alexander narrowed his eyes. Tobias wasn’t looking at the knife which, now that he thought of it, might have been quite intimidating. He was watching Alexander, his expression deceivingly casual.
“Never mind,” Alexander said.
“No, come on.” Tobias wiggled his toe through the claw hole in his sock, inching it closer to Alexander’s work slacks.
Alexander shoved him away yet again. “Because a vampire killed my brother, alright?”
He sat back, glowering. He expected Tobias to deter the sudden tension with a joke, or change the subject. But when he chanced a look, Tobias was watching him silently.
“Younger?” he said finally.
Alexander paused. He should shut the conversation down. He should check his stab wound—all that lifting couldn’t have been conducive to healing. But he stayed rooted to the couch, ramrod straight as Tobias lounged next to him.
“Older,” Alexander admitted. It came out quieter than he intended: he hadn’t talked about this, either. Tobias had a habit of dragging things out of Alexander that had never seen the light of day.
Tobias tapped absently at the bowl in his lap, his gaze so distant that Alexander wondered what exactly he was thinking.
“I had a big sister,” Tobias said eventually. “She’s dead, too. Died saving me.”
Alexander felt it like a stomach punch, all the wind knocking out of him. It took him several breaths to speak.
“From a wolf?”
Tobias paused. His fingertips tapped the bowl, a tune Alexander couldn’t begin to guess. “Yeah,” he said, eyes downcast. Alexander got the feeling he didn’t talk about this much, either.
Alexander swallowed. “That’s how my brother died. Saving me from a monster.”
Tobias laughed humorlessly. He raised the bowl, making a fake clinking noise as he bumped it against Alexander’s arm.
“Cheers to that,” he said. “Most depressing duo ever. How old would he be now?”
“Twenty-three,” Alexander said, surprised. He hadn’t done the math for years. “What about your sister?”
“Thirty.”
Alexander eyed the family photo on the windowsill, the much taller sister grabbing him in a headlock, both of them laughing.
“That’s a big gap,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.” Tobias smiled sadly, his scar stretching with the motion. “She practically raised me after our parents died.”
“I’m sorry they took her from you.” Alexander didn’t let himself imagine it—freshly turned into a monster, an alpha controlling your life, and being alone in the world on top of it.
No wonder he hated Muzzle. “We’ll kill Muzzle,” he assured Tobias.
“My family are very adept at hunting werewolves, we had top-notch training. It used to be my mother’s specialty—we have wolf skull trophies lining the mantelpiece in the living room.
That’s where she got the jawbone for this knife.
It was a birthday gift, a few years before I left. ”
He held up his knife, admiring the polished teeth gleaming in the hilt. It took several moments of silence for him to realize this, too, was probably deeply threatening.
“My point is,” he said, tucking his knife away. “We’re going to get him back for it. We’ll make him pay.”
Tobias didn’t look at him. He was still staring into the distance, his mind nowhere Alexander could hope to follow.
Then he sat up, catching his bowl before it tumbled down his torso. “I’m beat. Want to stick around? It’s late.”
Alexander wanted to point out that his apartment was a fifteen-minute walk away.
To remind himself that he was repeating the same acts as last time, treating a monster like a person.
But their brief chat was the most intimate talk he’d had in years, and there was a not inconsiderable part of him that wanted to stay.
Alexander started, “I should really—”
Tobias cut him off. “I might go feral for real. Muzzle’s a weird fucking guy. Who knows what he’ll do?”
“By that argument, I should be watching you at all times.”
Tobias winked. “Feel free.”
Alexander considered. Several long seconds passed before he sighed.
“You have some point. Maybe I should—”
A loud snore interrupted him. Tobias had flopped back on the sofa, his mouth lax in sleep.
“Stay,” Alexander muttered.
He watched Tobias’s chest rise and fall, trying to squash the reluctant fondness welling inside him. Then he got up in search of a blanket.