17. Deacon
Chapter 17
Deacon
I’ve been camped out at the Wisconsin house on a bender. After almost three weeks of people-ing nonstop, Henri scheduled me a break. A break that, after a week in close quarters with her, I had no choice but to take, or I’d keep pushing more of those ‘no touch’ boundaries like I already did in DC.
I don’t usually get high just to get high. It’s a secret I’ve guarded close to my heart for a long time. These ‘benders’ I send myself on aren’t even all that dramatic so much as they’re a vacation from everyone else’s problems, being free of the responsibility of answering when someone calls. This time, I did thoroughly enjoy recreational drug use to take the edge off and distract myself.
But this morning, the alarm for the calendar on my phone says that it’s been four days since we returned home from Washington, DC, and that means I’ve got three days to get myself ‘presentable’ for pretty much anything else Henri can come up with for me to do.
Sober adjacent, I’ve spent the day digging into Henri’s past. Adam, Cade’s favorite keyboard warrior, may have accidentally gotten her passwords, stored in her online computer profile, for her personal social media profiles loaded onto my laptop. Best ‘accident’ ever.
Henri’s personal profile has her adopted parents completely muted. They’re still ‘friends,’ but they don’t see updates or anything about her.
I read the conversations where the messages said they weren’t treating Nathan fairly. But I’ve made myself a Henri communications expert, and those words weren’t from her, not entirely, that’s for sure. Word choice and comma usage are all off. Sure, it could be that she’s grown as a writer, but it doesn’t feel like her.
The messages from her account go on to say that if they can’t support her with him, then she can’t talk to them.
Henri’s adoptive parents still haven’t given up. If they’ve sent her a hundred messages, they’ve sent her twenty thousand, asking to talk with her. They’ve sent life updates and pictures of the two of them together. They made it incredibly easy for me to track and store their address and telephone numbers.
Maybe she just needs a new voice of reason? Someone Nathan can’t shut out.
It’s now almost eight in the evening, and my wolf is finally perking back up. I’m pretty sure I’ve drank more water than I ever have. The refrigerator, stocked when I was putting an online grocery order in while stoned, is full of delicious and surprisingly rather nutritious items.
But I don’t argue with myself on it. Stoned Deacon making responsible choices is a first.
Pulling out a flank steak and some peppers, I start debating fajita bowls or burritos.
My phone dings.
Dealer 3 (Minne):
Saw you’re doing all the socialite shit now. Are you still partying too?
I groan looking at his message. I’d been avoiding that dealer’s particular style of suppressing my wolf. My usual micro-dosing has been a cocktail of a variety of substances that I’ve tested, measured, and experimented with to determine my tolerance.
But maybe getting back into opioids would be better for my time in isolation, my retreats, where I let everything purge out of my system and give my brain a full break. Opioids make him the easiest to suppress entirely. There aren’t any accidental breakthroughs of my wolf and gift. When I’m micro-dosing and with opioids, it’s the closest to feeling like I did when Revecca borrowed my wolf and gift. My wolf snarls at the idea.
Well, if you’d pull your weight and keep the ancestors at bay, this wouldn’t be a problem, I remind him, to which there is no snarky reply.
We can’t protect her if you put me away. He thinks of Henri and the rave before going into a montage of all the times she’s looked adorable.
Setting my phone down, I vow to revisit the discussion when I’m fed and not making rash decisions hangry.
There’s a knock on the front door, and I leave the kitchen island to look at the view screen of the security system. Should probably turn the notification sounds back on or at least route them to my phone. Pushing the buttons, I turn on the volume first before looking at the door.
A knock comes again as I flick the camera over to the right one.
Henri’s on the other side of the door with her arm around herself. Something doesn’t look right .
Abandoning the security panel, I run to the front door and yank it open. “Henri, what’s wrong?”
“I just. I’m.” She starts and stops.
Putting my hand on her shoulder, I pull her inside and close the door behind her.
The scent of copper hits me.
Henri’s bleeding. Actively bleeding.
I feel like I look the way Cade did when they told him Thalia was missing. That frenzied, heartbeat-in-my-ears-and-eyes-wide, panicked look.
Gently, but no less frantically, I drag her into the kitchen. I walk backward, trying to see if she limps or anything. There’s a slight hitch in her step, but nothing screaming she needs a doctor.
She’s a wolf. She’s a wolf, I remind myself again and again. There’s nothing he could do to her that her body can’t heal on its own.
Fear gets the memo and leaves the forefront of my brain. Anger, however... He’s here to stay.
I pull her flowy shirt off the top of her head. Bruising, no blood. I turn her around in a full circle. No blood.
She objects. “Deacon.”
I toss the shirt on the floor and strip her dress pants off. Where I find the source of the bleeding. The snarl coming from me echoes in the house. It’s not a lot of blood, but it’s my sensitivity to it because it’s hers.
Henri flinches, turning her head away from me and squeezing her eyes shut. I stifle the growl that continued to take up residence in my throat and respectfully, but begrudgingly, take a few steps away from her.
I try drawing a deep breath, but it doesn’t calm me down. You can’t inhale, exhale this sort of anger out of your system. Homicide can’t be stopped with therapeutic breaths .
He fucking hurt her. My wolf slams against my surface, trying to get out. He hurt her. She is pack, we have to fix this .
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he hurt her like this. It’s probably because of me. It’s been one abuse after another, and I anticipated that this could happen after DC and... And what? She would have gone home to him every night, no matter what I said.
What am I supposed to do? Sleep outside their house in the event he hurts her?
I stalk back across the house to my bedroom, into the adjoining bath, and open the first aid kit. Closing it, I walk back to the kitchen with it. Anger and rage brewing in my mind make it hard to sort ideas. The wolf, loud and demanding to take and kill, isn’t helping.
When I return, Henri is trying to pull her dress pants on. My snarl stops her dead in her tracks. The smell of her fear has permeated the house, and it stops me.
“Fuck,” I hiss, forcing everything brewing inside me deep down.
Everything gets shoved down until all that’s left is the snarling wolf.
I set the kit on the counter near Henri and walk past her to the refrigerator.
Pulling open the sliding drawer to the freezer, I take out the bottle of vodka, and by the time I take my third swallow, my wolf stops. I’m not ‘calm’ by any definition of the word, but I won’t fly off the handle and kill someone in a blind rage, again.
“I’m sorry” are the first words out of my mouth.
Henri’s still fearful. She’s still not looking at me.
It’s for the best. She doesn’t need to like me. I shouldn’t want her to like me.
I don’t know why I bothered grabbing the first aid kit. I can’t tend that kind of wound. There’s nothing in that kit that will help how brutally he took her. But I left it out for her anyway if she wants it.
“I will kill him, Henri,” I tell her.
“You can’t. Deacon, promise me you won’t.” Henri draws a deep breath.
Shaking my head, I answer, “I can’t promise that, Henri.”
“I can go. I’ve a little money set aside. I just felt safe coming here. I’ll go to a hotel tonight. I’m sorry to have bothered you. But you can’t kill him.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Henri.” I hate that I sound like a possessive Alpha wolf, but the truth hurts. “If you leave, I’ll go kill him, and I don’t have the perfect way figured out yet.”
“Deacon, he’s human.” She sits on the stool, and the grimace that accompanies the movement indicates she’s still in some sort of pain.
That face stays with her long after she’s settled. Emotional wounds from that sort of violence last longer.
I manage to refrain from asking what Nathan did so I can avenge her properly, but apparently I can’t refrain from being an asshole. “Henri, I don’t have any problems killing humans. I don’t have any problem killing wolves. The moral compass that guides most people does not guide me. I don’t see the world as this magical place where life is sacred or precious.”
Henri’s eyes are watering again, and it’s clear she’s hurting. Sitting here telling her how I’m going to slaughter him won’t help her.
“After the first time you came here, to be safe away from him, I assumed that if it got bad, you’d come back. In Lena’s bedroom, there’s a bunch of new clothes. I washed them. There are fresh towels in her bathroom.” I fight back my rage that’s boiling again and keep my voice level. “Go get yourself cleaned up.”
Fuck. I sound like an asshole .
I focus, trying to be softer. “I’ll make some food for us.”
Henri walks away with her head down and shoulders slumped.
The rage is almost choking me. After the door to Lena’s suite closes, I go into the utility room and close the door. It’s one of the few rooms with total soundproofing. I grab one of the spare sheet sets off the shelf before turning off the light and screaming into the abyss.
I scream until my chest heaves and I’m not sure I can make any more noise. Now I know what Ezra means when he says that the worst part of standing there through Dinah’s abuse was knowing he could have fixed it but was asked not to.
How do I balance the pain she’s in right now with the guilt she’ll feel when I kill him? Is there a mathematical equation I can apply to this? Is there some sort of law of diminishing return that will make this all... make sense?
I throw the sheets into the washing machine and start it before going back to the kitchen. I’m not quite at the level of numbness I need to have to hold it together for her. So, I pour vodka over ice and add a splash of orange juice for color.
How many times can I do this before I finally snap?