Valek
This is a problem.
I have no trouble fighting. Fighting is simple. I'm good at fighting.
I enjoy fighting.
But fighting someone I care for? Someone loved by the only person I might be capable of loving?
That is considerably more complicated.
Wraith charges without warning. The impact drives me backward into the medical center’s brick wall hard enough to knock dust from the mortar.
My skull snaps back.
My hands come up automatically, forearms crossing in front of my face. Wraith’s fist crashes into the guard with a crack that rattles my teeth.
“Stop!”
Ivy’s scream cuts through his growl.
He swings again.
The blow catches the outside of my left arm and smashes it into my cheekbone. Light bursts across my vision. His eyes burn feral blue through his choppy dark hair, but he isn’t looking out through them.
The feral thing inside him is.
The next punch comes low.
I see his shoulder rotate and tighten my abdomen an instant before his fist buries itself beneath my ribs. The air whooshes out of me. Wraith grips my jacket and slams me back into the wall.
The brick bites through the leather.
I could end this.
His throat is open. His right knee is carrying too much of his weight.
Whatever they gave him has disturbed his balance, and his left hand is twitching every few seconds.
One strike beneath his ear would collapse him.
A sweep and twist would put him on the ground.
If I break his elbow, he can’t hit me with it—
“Val, don’t hurt him! Please!"
Well. There goes that plan.
Wraith swings again. I catch the punch on my crossed forearms, absorbing it through my shoulders. The force drives my spine back into the wall.
He follows with another.
And another.
Each impact travels down to my elbows, grinding the bone, raining blows down on my head and arms. My fingers start going numb. His scarred fists are opening between blows now. He'll wear himself out eventually.
Hopefully before my brain scrambles.
His fist hits my ribs. Pain blossoms along the old knife scar between them. My breath catches, but I keep my eyes on his, searching for Mikhail beneath Wraith.
His knuckles clip my jaw.
Again.
A strike pounds against my sternum with more shove than snap.
Weaker.
Wraith snarls and grabs for my throat. His fingers close around the collar of my jacket instead, tearing the leather as he tries to haul me away from the wall only to drive me back into it.
"I liked this coat," I tell him, annoyed.
It was my second favorite. And the one I liked best is ruined in the woods by the pack house somewhere.
He doesn't respond, of course.
His breath comes in violent, uneven rasps as tremors roll through his entire body. It isn't rage now. Perhaps it never was. It's exhaustion, pain, ferality taking over on a biological level.
And all because he thinks I mouthed off to Ivy.
Sweet, even now.
He is so very much like Ilya.
I watch his pupils. His breathing. The tremor in his left thigh. How his right boot scrapes backward across the concrete to correct his thrown balance.
I've done this dance before.
His fist strikes my crossed arms and slides away.
He sways.
I move fast, my left hand catching his wrist. I step inside his reach, turn under his arm, and drive my shoulder into the center of his chest. His size makes moving him like trying to redirect a falling wall, but his balance is already gone.
Momentum takes care of the rest.
I twist, slam my forearm across his upper chest, and drive him backward.
Wraith hits the brick wall with a thunderous crash.
He snarls in my face, drowning out Ivy's shouting.
One of his hands grips my throat. The other comes up to hit me again, but I trap the wrist against the wall and pin it beside his head. I brace my forearm beneath his scarred collarbones, using my full weight and leverage to keep him there without pressing against his damaged throat.
He surges forward.
I hold.
The wall groans behind him. His sharp teeth snap shut inches from my cheek, exposed jaw muscles flexing as the sound in his throat drops into something deep enough to vibrate through my bones.
His blue eyes blaze into mine.
I lean closer, close enough that my mouth is beside his ear.
“Poidyom, Mikhail,” I say quietly, choking the words as his fingers dig tighter into my throat.
Let’s go.
For one ugly second, I expect him to tear my face off.
Then his eyes flicker. The blue fire in his eyes gutters down. His pupils widen from feral pinpricks, recognition crawling back into them as his body gives one enormous shudder beneath my arm.
His grip loosens around my throat, his chest heaving against my forearm. His gaze drops from mine to the swelling cheekbone, the blood running from my split lip, and every inch of damage he takes in makes his shoulders sag with shame.
His hand falls away from my neck and his other wrist goes slack in my grip.
I release it carefully. He circles his fist against his chest.
I'm sorry.
He can’t even look at me.
I ease my forearm away from his collarbones and take one deliberate step back, watching him. He remains against the wall, shoulders curled forward, hands hanging open at his sides. The knuckles on his right hand are split and bloody.
Mostly with my blood, I suspect.
“It’s fine.”
He circles his fist again.
Sorry…
“I saw you the first time.”
Ivy rushes between us the second there’s actual space, twisting left and right like she can’t decide which battered alpha requires attention first.
"Calm him down, I'm fine," I tell her.
She makes an exasperated sound and turns to Wraith, her hands hovering near his exposed face before landing on his chest instead. "Look at me. Hey."
He does, barely.
“You’re okay.” She presses her palm over his sternum. “Val’s okay too. Everyone’s okay.”
Well. Technically.
I touch my lower lip with two fingers. They come away red. The cut isn’t deep, but my mouth tastes like iron and it's already beginning to swell.
“He hits harder than Whiskey,” I muse, swiping the rest of the blood away from my lip with my thumb and licking it clean.
Ivy whips around. “Are you hurt?”
“Not especially.”
She leaves Wraith to catch my jaw and turn my face toward the sunlight. Her eyes narrow at my cheekbone, then my lip, and my throat, where I'm sure the marks from Wraith's death grip are already darkening.
"The fuck, Valek, your lip!"
Wraith makes a miserable sound behind her.
I glance past her. "Well, you asked me not to hurt him."
“I said, ‘Val, don’t hurt him.’ I didn’t say, ‘Stand there and let him punch you through a wall.’”
“That distinction would have been useful earlier.”
She stares at me.
I stare back, offering a smile that stings.
“You take things too literally,” she grumbles, but her thumbs stroke lightly over my jaw as she releases me.
"Americans just don't say what they mean," I reply, rolling my shoulders.
She rolls her eyes at me before returning to Wraith to take one of his scarred hands. He folds around her immediately, gaze lowered, massive shoulders still trembling with the aftermath.
"Come on." I straighten what remains of my jacket. "Before someone comes looking to see why they heard a warzone."
I lead them around the medical center. Or rather, I lead Ivy, and Wraith follows her, keeping his hood up and his head down.
I block any view of him with my body. With his slouching, we're around the same height.
I can tell he wants to fuck off to the back of the building again, but if he tries it, we'll just have to have round two right here in the lot.
"Just have one thing to take care of first," I say, going to the rusted brown sedan parked a few spots from Wraith's SUV. The rear bumper is held on with wire and the passenger door is blue, not brown, but much to my delight, it drove like a dream.
She looks at the car. “The fuck, Val?”
“What?”
"How did you buy a car that fast?"
"I always bring cash on a road trip.” I pull the folded motel receipt from my jacket and fish out a pen. “You never know when your card won’t work.”
“You bought a whole fucking car."
"You told me to hurry, love."
I brace the receipt against the rusted hood and write in large block letters.
FREE TO A GOOD HOME
I pause.
It lacks warmth.
I add a large smiley face beneath the message, circle it twice, and tuck the sign beneath the windshield wiper. Then I open the unlocked driver’s door, toss the keys onto the seat, and close it again.
Ivy looks from the sign to me.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She presses her lips together. “That smiley face really sells it.”
“Thank you. I thought so, too."
We cross to Wraith’s SUV. I unlock it and open the driver’s door before pointing toward the rear seats.
“Sit behind me in the back with Wraith so he doesn’t change his mind and try to throttle me.”
Wraith’s head drops lower.
Ivy squeezes his hand. “He’s kidding.”
I'll let him believe that.
Wraith signs another apology, smaller this time, and climbs into the back with Ivy. She immediately tucks herself under his arm as he folds his enormous body around her.
“There’s camping shit in the back of the SUV,” she tells me.
“Perfect. Because there’s actual shit under the bed in the motel.”