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The full moon dipped beneath the horizon at 5:33 A.M., leaving the pack to struggle home before their energy failed them completely.
The six of them were splattered head to toe with mud, with twigs and leaves caught in their hair and clothes, but none of them made a move to clean up when they got back to the apartment. They all went directly into the den and collapsed into a dog pile of tired bodies, not to stir for the foreseeable future.
Shiro was the first to get up, as always. Keith was momentarily jostled awake as the pack rearranged themselves to adjust for Shiro’s absence, but toppled back into darkness before anything registered in his brain.
The next time he awoke it was to a square of sunlight from the window falling directly on his face. On his right was Hunk, snoring loudly, and on his left was Lance, already frowning in his sleep as he prepared for his scheduled complaints of how dirty he always got after turning. The others had already left the den.
Keith groaned as he stretched, joints cracking, and grimaced at the soreness of his muscles. After knocking one of Hunk’s hands off his ribs and Lance’s sprawled legs away from his own, he climbed to his feet and picked his way across the blanket strewn floor, out of the room. He didn’t bother stopping to change out of the baggy clothes he wore for full moons or to shower off-- instead he obeyed his growling stomach and followed the smell of cooking food into the kitchen.
Shiro was standing at the stove, clean and dressed with his back to Keith, dutifully cooking up a veritable mountain of food for his starving pack. Matt leaned up against a nearby counter, chugging a mug of coffee. Pidge was nowhere to be seen, but he could hear a shower running.
“Morning, Keith,” Shiro said without looking up. Keith responded with an unintelligible grunt and staggered over to snatch a strip of bacon from the pile, devouring it in two bites. He reached for another, only for Shiro to playfully smack his hand away.
“You should clean up before you eat.”
Keith growled in answer, making Shiro laugh.
“Use your words, bud.”
A whine rose in his throat, but with difficulty he bit it back. “Pidge is in the shower,” he grumbled, “and there wouldn’t be any hot water anyway.”
Matt finished his coffee with a gasp and a cough. “You can at least wash your hands,” he said, setting his cup pointedly in the sink. Keith pouted, but Shiro wouldn’t be moved, and after a moment of stalemate he relented and went to the sink to scrub the dried mud from his palms.
By the time he finished to Shiro’s satisfaction they could all hear Lance starting to wake up, and bringing Hunk with him. Two pairs of footsteps proceeded down the hallway (which Keith barely noticed-- he was totally focused on piling as much food on a plate as possible) and someone banged on the bathroom door.
“Pidge, hurry up! I’m disgusting!” Lance’s voice rang through the apartment, the shrillness making Keith cringe.
Pidge’s response was something along the lines of, “Fuck off!”
Lance laughed, and a few seconds later he emerged into the kitchen with a yawning Hunk in tow. Keith had already moved and squeezed into one of the chairs at the tiny dining room table. For some reason, instead of just going to the stove and taking a piece of bacon like Keith had, he went the opposite way and tried to steal one of Keith’s.
Keith snarled the moment his fingers came into view. Lance laughed again.
“Down boy,” he chuckled, and Keith snapped his teeth. Lance always joked about Keith being the “feral” one of the pack, and though it mostly just annoyed him, Keith would admit he sometimes, very occasionally, played up the act.
Lance retreated, still chuckling a little to himself, and Keith could already hear the clicks and clanks of spice containers hitting each other as Hunk took it upon himself to improve Shiro’s cooking. Keith ate, gradually beginning to slow down as he refueled all the calories turning had burned, and tried to commit the scene of the idyllic kitchen to memory.
Pidge had just emerged from the shower. All of their scents now mingled together in a sea of contentment-- the smell of pure rain and sea salt and rich dug earth and cinnamon and cloves; some muted under the cover of the grit from the night before but still coming through. It was a little past eleven in the morning, everyone was alright and not hurt or upset about anything, there was plenty of food-- the perfect post-full-moon morning.
Faintly Keith detected a noise outside their front door, a footstep, and said instinctively, “Someone’s outside.” Then he raised his head and caught the rich floral scent floating through the wood and relaxed. “It’s Allura.”
A moment later there was a prim and proper knock.
“Don’t answer that!” yelped Lance, “I can’t let her see me like this, I haven’t even showered yet!”
“I can hear you,” said Allura through the door. Pidge and Matt practically bent double with their laughter at Lance’s bereaved expression, and even Hunk spared himself a little chuckle as Shiro went to admit their guest.
Allura swept inside with almost supernatural grace. She wore one of her customary flowing pink sundresses, and her silver hair cascaded down her back, the color a contrast to her youthful face. The magic that always surrounded her made shivers crawl over Keith’s skin, but somehow the sensation was anything but unpleasant.
She paused a few steps into the kitchen and wrinkled her nose.
“Ah yes, I forgot. Wolves use the moon as well as witches.”
Lance flushed uncomfortably, his scent tinging a bit more salty than sea. Allura, blind to this change, proceeded into their small living room and invited herself to sit. After giving Lance a quick pat on the shoulder, Shiro went to join her.
Hunk and Matt moved to comfort him, Hunk with genuine kindness and Matt with well meaning jokes, but Keith was more interested in what was going on in the living room; Allura rarely came over unannounced. Leaving his mostly empty plate behind, he followed after Shiro.
“-- what’s up?” Shiro was saying, “You don’t usually just come over.”
“It’s important.” Keith couldn’t tell her emotion through her scent the way he could with other wolves, but he could tell she was serious by the floral scent growing heavier in the room, almost completely overwhelming Shiro’s. “During my ritual last night, I saw some strange omens. Omens of danger, followed by images of wolves.”
“And you think that meant us?”
“I fear so, yes.”
Shiro was quiet for a moment, though Keith could tell through the shift in his scent that he was worried. Then, “What should we be looking out for?”
At that Allura’s voice wavered. “I’m not sure,” she admitted with a glance away from Shiro’s eyes, “I just know that something is coming. You must be careful.”
Shiro sighed. “It’s hard to be any more careful than we already are without knowing what we’re up against.”
“I know. I wish I could help more.”
Keith drew back and returned to his chair. Lance had disappeared (probably slipping off to have a quick shower before Allura left) and Pidge, Matt, and Hunk were seated at the table as they ate their own breakfasts.
But Keith found that he wasn’t all that hungry anymore.
The bad thing about having a pack is that you can never hide your emotions from them, ever.
Even so, the others knew Keith, and took his bitter scent and dark expression as cues to give him space, which was appreciated.
He spent the next few hours in the room that had been designated to hold his and Shiro’s things. There were beds in the rooms as well, but mostly just to keep up their cover if someone had a classmate or something over. The majority of the time they all slept together in the fourth bedroom; the den.
He showered and finally changed out of his baggy clothes, all while his mind turned Allura’s warning over and over, trying to figure out what she could’ve seen. Maybe there was another pack encroaching on their territory-- but after a few minutes he dismissed that as a possibility. If that were the case they would’ve noticed the night before.
The only other possibility that entered his mind was one he tried his best not to think about. No use jumping to conclusions and freaking himself out in the process. But still, he wondered.
After several hours of this Shiro finally pinned him down, pulling him into the den for one of his Discussions.
Most of the time Keith appreciated having a leader than was more bark than bite. This was not one of those times.
“What’s going on?” Shiro asked, sinking to sit amongst the blankets while Keith remained stubbornly standing. “You’ve been skittish for hours.”
Keith shrugged. His fingers curled and uncurled into the sides of his shirt. Every time that one thought he’d been trying to avoid flickered across his mind Shiro’s eyebrows would twitch, and Keith knew that he was probably filling the room with the smell of bitter bakers chocolate, but he couldn’t really control it.
Finally, after a standoff with Shiro’s painfully concerned expression, Keith cracked.
“I heard what you and Allura talked about,” he admitted, and Shiro went very still. “I’ve been trying not to think about it, but do you…. Do you think there’s a chance it’s…”
Shiro understood immediately, his scent becoming cool and soothing as he held out a hand for Keith to take, pulling him down to sit beside him.
For once he let himself be coddled, leaning into Shiro’s side and letting him wrap an arm around his shoulders.
“It’s unlikely,” Shiro said in a gentle tone, rubbing Keith’s arm. “And even if it is, we know how to blend in, right? To lay low?”
Keith nodded, but his heart wasn’t in it. Shiro gave him a squeeze.
“It’ll be ok, Keith. Whatever Allura saw will probably just blow over, and in a few months we’ll forget all about it.”
He wasn’t too sure about that, either. But he was still tired from the full moon, and he hated how it made him feel to think about it. So he nodded again, and sternly told his brain to quit being so paranoid.
Shiro, as it turned out, wasn’t always right.
Shiro and Matt were the only members of the pack that had full time jobs. The rest of them had part time jobs while they attended the nearby community college. Monday was two days after the full moon, and though they were all a little grumpy and sore still, they trudged off to class grateful that at least it hadn’t been a school night that month.
Keith had three classes on Monday and Wednesday, more than anyone else, so he usually left before any of the others and took his motorcycle to school, also returning last in the evening. For the most part he was a good student. He paid attention in class and took his notes and just generally tried not to call attention to himself. But that day going to school was a tense affair-- he could feel the gaze of every other person like spiders crawling over his spine, and he barely kept himself from bristling if someone even so much as breathed on him.
No paranoia, he told himself sternly, no. Bad brain. Bad.
As hard as he tried, by his second class he was still buzzing with apprehension, and he noticed a million little details that he’d never seen before. Like how the windows didn’t open from the inside. How the professor always insisted on having the door closed. How the room was too small for all the tables that had been shoved in it and made it hard to move around.
Most of all, he noticed that guy.
That guy wasn’t all that noticeable at first glance. Tall and thin and pale, but not too tall or too thin or too pale. The only thing that really drew attention to him was his blonde hair that fell to the small of his back, and the fact that he liked to stare at Keith.
Maybe that wasn’t quite fair. After all, for the last several weeks Keith had dismissed it, telling himself the guy was just a daydreamer and Keith just happened to be in his line of sight most of the time. But today the gaze made the hair on the back of his neck prickle, and when Keith snuck a glance the man’s blue eyes were cold and hard.
A shiver ran down his spine, but he turned back to the front when the professor started class and tried to forget about it. Even if the worst had happened, even if there were hunters in town, the worst thing he could do was tip them off. He had to act normal, even if every instinct he had was telling him to run.
So he sat in his seat and took his notes and watched the clock count down, only his bouncing leg revealing his anxiety.
After class he took a long winding route to his next one, glancing over his shoulder and watching shadows on the ground, but no one seemed to be following. By the end of his last class he was mostly relaxed, though that same threatening thought of “what if” circled still in his mind.
He undertook the long walk back to the parking lot with a mix of eagerness and dread dueling in his stomach. He still looked behind him as often as he could without looking strange, but still found no hints of pursuit, so when he finally got to the row where his bike was parked, he allowed a slip of concentration long enough to tug his riding gloves out of his backpack.
And of course, at that moment, something collided with his shoulder.
Keith sucked in a quick breath of surprise and nearly gagged at the scent that flooded his throat. It was the smell of cleanliness, though not soft like soap or shampoo. This was harsh and sterile, like unscented hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol.
“Oh!” exclaimed a voice while he reeled. “Excuse me! I’ve dropped my books, if you could just hold this for a moment while I--” The person squatted down, shoving something into Keith’s free hand as they did so, and instantly icy pain flared up his arm.
A hiss was the only sound that escaped him. Whatever the object was it was round and made of metal, about half the size of his palm, and he didn’t dare let go of it lest he give himself away, but he also didn’t want to burn more of his hand, so he held it flat and tried to breathe through his teeth.
The adrenaline was beginning to make his head spin by the time the person straightened up.
“Sorry again, I’m so clumsy,” they said with a chuckle that sounded like it was supposed to be self-deprecating but came off a bit sly instead. Then they reclaimed their medallion (or brooch or pendant or whatever it was) and strode off at a quick clip, leaving Keith trembling in the middle of the scorching parking lot.
He made it the few final steps to his bike and sat down hard on the ground beside it. Nausea tickled the back of his throat-- fuck, he hadn’t felt pain like this in years, not since--
He froze.
Not since… nine years ago.
Keith’s eyes dropped to his palm. Though he had to blink away the static over his vision at first, the injury soon became clear. A perfectly round, angry red burn, already beginning to blister. A silver burn.
Frantically, he searched his memory for a detail of the person who had ran into him, any clue as to who it was, and finally one came to mind. Blonde hair.
This time he did throw up.
Keith staggered through the front door of the apartment nearly forty five minutes later. It had taken much longer to drive home with his injured hand, since he had to pull over every few minutes to let the pain dwindle back down to a bearable level. He was bitterly exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to slump into the den and sleep for the next fourteen hours.
But the moment the door shut behind him his pack began to pop out of adjoining rooms with concerned faces-- undoubtedly able to smell his distress as soon as he walked inside. In seconds he was surrounded on all sides.
“Keith, what happened--”
“What’s wrong--”
“Are you ok--”
“Are you hurt--”
“Dude, you’re so pale--”
The slurry of voices wasn’t helping. Recoiling from their worried hands, he let out a pitiful whine-- not one of his playful pouting ones, either.
Immediately Shiro stood straighter, and in a commanding tone he barked, “Everybody back up.”
The rest of the pack instantly retreated a few steps, and Keith took a few deep breaths, willing the panic in his chest to recede. He’d kept his hand curled close to his chest, and of course Shiro noticed.
“Is something wrong with your hand?” he asked, oh-so-gently, and reluctantly Keith extended his arm and uncurled his fingers.
All around the circle expressions darkened. Shiro didn’t need a say a word before Hunk was bustling off towards the kitchen for the first aid kit, and Shiro drew an arm around Keith’s shoulders to pull him into the living room to the sofa, the rest of the pack following like a bunch of ducklings.
They settled in around him without thought. Close enough to be comforting, but not enough to smother. Shiro on his left, cradling his burned appendage, Matt on his right in the process of reaching up to rumple his hair, Pidge kneeling anxiously at his feet, and Lance a few paces away, arms crossed with tension.
“Is this what it looks like?” Pidge asked in a low tone, and Keith gave a silent nod. Before any of them could question him further Hunk barged back into the room and shoved through the circle.
“What are we dealing with?”
“Silver burn,” answered Shiro, making Hunk frown. With a muttered curse he began to dig through the first aid kit, and Shiro turned his attention back to Keith. “How did this happen?”
Haltingly, interrupted by winces as Hunk cleaned and bandaged the burn, Keith recounted the event in the parking lot. The explanation didn’t seem to bring any comfort-- in fact the others only looked more confused and concerned as he went on.
“Who in the hell just carries around pure silver jewelry anymore?” Pidge demanded. Keith gave only a limp shrug.
He felt Matt shift as he and Shiro exchanged a look over his head. They were all thinking it, he could tell by the cloud of anxious scents hovering around them, but none of them wanted to say it.
Hunk finished bandaging Keith’s hand and smoothed his thumb lightly over the gauze. Accompanying the motion was a wave of soothing aroma-- deeply dug garden earth. It loosened some of the tension lingering in his muscles.
After a moment of silence, Shiro took a breath.
“What did he smell like?”
And just like that all the tension was back, and not just in Keith. The entire pack was practically turned to stone. They all still had nightmares about the scent of the masking agents hunters wore, how it foretold pain and loss on the wind. None of them wanted to think about that again, least of all Shiro who wore the burn of silver on his face, but they had to. And Keith, already knowing the answer, felt his guts roil again.
“Clean,” he said, nearly in a whisper, “too clean. Like rubbing alcohol.”
Shiro, despite his efforts, shuddered visibly. He wasn’t the only one, either.
“So it is hunters, then,” murmured Matt, his hand fisting on his knee.
“That’s what the data seems to suggest,” said Pidge. She fidgeted a bit with her glasses, but was otherwise still.
Hunk’s scent wavered. “What are we gonna do?”
“Run like hell?” said Lance, bitterly, and beside him Shiro’s scent sparked with ozone.
“No, if we run it’ll only confirm their suspicions.”
“So what do we do?” Matt asked.
Shiro’s expression was grim. “We stay and try to wait it out.”
Pidge inhaled sharply and cried, “You want Keith to go back there?”
Then they were all talking at once and Keith’s head spun, vision going to static. All of their scents were so distressed, so angry, and it burned his nose and down his throat like it had a few hours ago, like it had years ago, following him out the back door and overpowering the smell of the sand under his feet and his own fear--
He squeezed his eyes shut, scrubbed his uninjured hand over them, and blurted, “I’m gonna throw up.”
There was a few seconds of silence, and explosion of chaos, and someone shoved the living room dustbin into his lap just as he retched.
Not much came up save bile. He came out of it pale and trembling, coated in cold sweat. Matt was still beside him, holding his hair back. Both Pidge and Hunk had vanished from the room, though Pidge was just on her way back in with a glass of water in her hand. Lance stood back from the couch, wearing a slightly alarmed expression, and Shiro was right there in front of him with concern rolling off of him in waves.
“S-sorry,” he stammered, but Shiro just shook his head and reached up to brush his bangs away from his forehead.
“It’s ok, Keith. I won’t make you do anything you can’t handle.”
Keith frowned, going to copy Shiro’s head shake before knowing what he was denying or remembering that Matt was still holding his hair.
“No, you-- you’re right. If I disappear from class he’ll know, and you’ll-- you’ll all be--” an unexpected tear found a way down his cheek and in moments the trash bin was gone and everyone (including Hunk, who must have still been in the hall) had crowded onto the couch with him, like they could use their own body weight to squash all of the fear out of him.
It almost worked-- his breathing slowed down, at least.
All around him were calming purrs and rumbles, ruffled scents settling in an attempt to bring peace back to the pack, and Keith couldn’t help the way he melted into them.
“Everything will be alright,” Shiro was saying from somewhere in the pile, “we’ll all be ok.”
Keith tried his best to believe him.
The pack spent the rest of that night in the den, tossing around ideas and possible plans. The one they eventually settled on was to lie low, for now, and see how the guy acted. If he vanished or started acting suspicious, they’d leg it.
That’s not to say that they weren’t all immensely freaked out by the idea of hunters on their doorstep. They were. Keith was reasonably sure that the only reason he slept that night was sheer exhaustion from the burn.
He only had one class the next day, which thankfully was sandwiched in the middle of Lance and Pidge’s schedules, so that he didn’t have to go there or back alone. Even so he kept a sharp eye out for the mysterious person from the parking lot. There was no sign of him, not even a glimpse of blonde hair.
Wednesday morning came with an air of unbearable trepidation. Shiro nearly decided to be late for work so that he could take Keith to school, but despite his nerves Keith insisted on going alone. After all, any different detail could tip the hunters off and trigger an attack.
So Keith left the apartment early and walked to campus, only barely keeping himself from jittering right out of his skin, and went to class as usual.
He didn’t dare turn around as the other students began to file in behind him. He kept his eyes locked firmly on the board and didn’t look to see if the blonde guy was there.
The professor entered and closed the door behind him and Keith didn’t turn.
Class begun and Keith didn’t turn.
The clock above the whiteboard counted five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and still he didn’t turn.
Finally, after half an hour, with sweat rolling down his neck and his leg bouncing incessantly, he rotated his head juuuuuuust enough to glance out of the corner of his eye.
And there, prim as you please in his regular seat, was the man with the long blonde hair. Only this time, unlike every other time Keith had looked in his direction, he wasn’t staring. His focus was entirely on the lecture, and even when Keith turned to him more fully his gaze didn’t waver.
He released a long, slow breath, and cautiously let himself hope that the blonde man wasn’t a hunter after all; just a germaphobe human with silver jewelry. Or if he was a hunter, that they’d successfully fooled him into thinking that Keith wasn’t who he thought he was.
The pack was pleased with this news when he arrived home that day, and as the days wore on they gradually began to drop their guard again. Allura came over to visit several more times in the following weeks, each time without more ominous half-formed warnings, and slowly but surely the aura of tension that had been filling the apartment was beginning to dissipate.
It was almost the next full moon when it all came crashing down.
It was Tuesday, and Keith was about to head home after his one class of the day. He scrolled idly through his phone as he made his way through the parking lot; he’d been running late that morning and gotten a rather shitty parking spot, all the way in the far back corner away from the building.
His phone vibrated in his hand as a message popped up.
Hunk: what do you want for dinner tonight?
Keith made his usual answer.
Keith: whatever is fine
The ellipsis bubble appeared, probably Hunk typing out a snotty reply about how unhelpful Keith was being. Before the message could be completed something-- well, it felt like something stung him. There was a sharp prick on the side of his neck and his free hand automatically flew up to slap at whatever bug had decided to chomp on him, but he didn’t find a bug to squash.
Instead his fingers met something metal. His eyes widened just as the chill began to settle in.
It was so cold, the type of cold that burned, crawling from the puncture to swallow up more and more of his flesh.
He stumbled into the car beside him with a dull thunk he didn’t hear. His head whorled, his vision spun, and his phone tumbled from his seizing fingers.
The next thing Keith knew he was on the ground, watching shadowy figures gather around him. One of them shifted and a hand landed on him-- he instinctively snarled and snapped his teeth, but the hand didn’t retreat, and more came to join it. More and more hands on him, he’d lost count, and then he thought he was being lifted but things were too blurry and he was too cold to be sure.
His muscles were tightening like rubber bands until he couldn’t move at all, and the ache forced a whimper from between his teeth.
Then it got dark, and he wasn’t sure of anything for a long time.
“How much was in that dart? I thought you said you wanted him alive.”
“I know what I’m doing, Zethrid.”
“Alright, alright, just checking.”
The voices swam to his ears from somewhere far away. It wasn’t so cold anymore, but everything ached, even his skin ached, and there was an odd pin-pricking pain in his wrists and around his throat that made him groan.
“Awwww look, the little puppy’s waking up,” said a different voice, high pitched and sickly sweet. Someone raised his chin (they must’ve propped him up against a wall or something) and light burned his eyelids.
“Open your eyes,” said the voice who had snapped at Zethrid. A female voice, even and hard. Not knowing what else to do, Keith obeyed.
He was on his knees, a woman with bobbed black hair and a sharp chin kneeling in front of him. In the back of the room-- the dark, windowless room-- were two more women. One tall and broad, more muscled than Shiro, giving him a look that was a combination of a scowl and a sneer. The girl at her side was half her size, petite, with a braid that fell to her waist.
“Good morning, puppy,” she said cheerfully. Keith managed a growl, and she clapped her hands in delight.
“Ooooooh, I love it when they’re feisty.”
The bigger woman, assumedly Zethrid, barked a harsh laugh. But the one before him merely clenched her jaw and stood.
Keith, gradually coming back to himself, gave his wrists an experimental tug. They were bound tightly behind him, secured to the wall he could barely brush with his fingers, and when he pulled the pin-pricks went deeper. He bit back another noise as blood leaked down his wrist. When he looked down the same cord looped around his throat (also tied to the wall) gouged into the skin.
It was barbed wire.
They’d tied him up with barbed fucking wire.
“Don’t struggle,” said the serious woman. There was only a single light bulb in the room, and it cast her long shadow over Keith. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”
Keith, with great effort, swallowed another growl in favor of words.
“What do you want?” His voice was heavy and grating, and when he swallowed he did it gingerly, careful of the threat of the barbs.
“You know exactly what we want.”
Somewhere out of sight a door slammed, and in the back right corner a pair of legs appeared, descending a staircase he’d only just noticed. Another woman, a hood pulled over her eyes, and behind her a man.
A man with long blonde hair.
Keith grimaced to himself. He was a hunter, and Keith was utterly screwed.
The serious woman backed away to join the others and the man stepped in front of Keith. Keith narrowed his eyes and bared his teeth in a silent snarl, but he didn’t seem intimidated in the least. He just tilted his head.
After an excruciating moment of silence, the hunter spoke.
“How many of you are there?”
Keith kept his snarl, but his heart began to beat faster in his chest. They were looking for the pack. He couldn’t let them find his pack.
“None,” he spat at the man, “I’m alone.”
The man looked at him for a moment with an unreadable expression, then smiled a cruel little smile. A shiver ran down Keith’s spine.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, somewhat incomprehensibly, and Keith frowned in confusion. He continued without pausing for an answer. “I’ve heard the effects of wolfsbane can be quite uncomfortable for your kind. Even fatal, right?”
Keith couldn’t answer. His throat was tight.
“So, if I were you I’d start considering your answers a bit more carefully.” He moved forward a few steps and knelt to be at eye-level with his prisoner. His grin was as cold as the poison in Keith’s veins. “I’d hate to have to go that far.”
Keith knew that was a lie. Hunters were ruthless. That night, nine years ago, they’d killed someone who didn’t even have what they called the taint, just to get to him. A child no older than ten.
“I’ll ask one more time. How many of you are there?”
Keith’s heart pounded in his chest. The hunters eyes were like icicles, filled with a kind of fury that had only been compounded over years and crystallized into something impenetrable.
His human side screamed at him to do anything he had to do to live. Shrieks of survive.
But his wolf howled protect.
“I told you. I’m alone.”
The man's smile dropped like a stone. Climbing back to his feet, he looked back at his accomplices and barked an order for a syringe.
The woman with the hood (who had, Keith now noticed, been standing at a wheeled table in the back of the room) handed the syringe over filled with a lavender liquid.
“Lone wolves don’t last long,” the man was saying while Keith tried not to panic at the needle in his hands. “A ridiculous lie, really.”
Needle prepped, he began to approach. Keith started to struggle, only to immediately stop at the reminder of the barbs entering his flesh.
“I haven’t hurt anybody,” Keith said, barely keeping the animalistic whimper out of his voice. The hunter just scoffed and grabbed a handful of Keith’s hair to drag his head aside. “Wait, stop, don’t, I haven’t--”
The pinch of the needle above the cut of the wire on his throat stopped him short. It only took a few seconds before the cold returned and stole his breath away. His muscles tightened and seized and relaxed at random, and his attempts at deep breaths only made the wire dig more into his throat.
The hunters stood back and watched, the one with the braid with obvious delight, the big one with a smile of gleeful malice.
The shadows closed in. He couldn’t see through the darkness but their expressions were superimposed on the back of his eyelids. Nausea pressed at the back of his throat.
He had no warning before someone was pulled on his hair again, and he whined. His answer was a dizzying slap.
“Where is your pack?” hissed a voice in his ear. Keith shook his head, and was shaken in response. “Where is your pack?”
“N-no pa-ack.”
The antiseptic smell was everywhere. It was inside him, burning, and he gagged. He heard a sound of disgust.
“Narti, another dose.”
“N-n-n--”
The needle returned before he could get the word out. Keith thought he heard a whining sob leave him, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Aw, look at him squirm,” said the sickly-sweet voice. “Silly puppy, he’s just gonna cut himself up more.”
He knew. He felt the barbed wire tearing his skin. But he couldn’t help it. The wolfsbane wouldn’t let him be still.
Someone kicked him in the ribs. “Stop that whining, mongrel. You won’t find any sympathy here.”
He was so cold. He wanted a hug. From Shiro, or maybe Hunk. Hunk gave the best hugs.
“Where is your den?” came the next question with another kick. He whimpered. “That’s not an answer, mutt.”
The next kick landed more firmly on his ribs, knocking free any breath he’d managed to collect in his lungs. He was shivering all over, shredding his wrists and the soft skin of his throat even more. Blood ran slickly over his skin.
“Where is your den?”
Keith shook his head again. Even if he wanted to answer, he probably couldn’t form words.
He could feel the stirrings beginning in his chest. His eyes were probably glinting gold, and a scrape on his tongue said his teeth had lengthened into fangs.
“Narti!”
Another injection went through him like white fire, and this time he couldn’t hold back. He howled in pain; the sound rang through the room until a hand slapped over his lips.
“Careful!” someone cried, “Don’t let him bite you!”
At this point any biting would’ve been from the purely accidental gnashing of his teeth. He thrashed against his bindings, never minding the pain, and didn’t notice when his cries died down to more whimpering and the hand pulled away.
He was freezing from the inside out. He was so tense he was practically seizing. Tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. God, it hurt.
Eventually things began to lessen, just a bit, and when the muscle spasms eased two pairs of hands pulled him upright from where he’d toppled over.
One of the hands was bunched in his shirt at his left shoulder. It stayed there to keep him up as the man asked his next question-- all Keith heard was a dull buzzing. He couldn’t see much in the darkness and shadows, but there was the faintest outline of an arm.
Keith didn’t think. He was beyond thinking. His wolf was in control.
He turned his head and bit.
His sharp canines sank into flesh with horrifying ease and blood coated his tongue. It lasted barely three seconds before someone hit him and forced him to let go, but still his inner wolf snarled in satisfaction.
“Damn mutt!” the man swore at him over the concerned voices of the three other women. He kicked him again, and though Keith still flinched and recoiled, he didn’t regret his bite. “You don’t know what you’ve done!”
For a minute or two the voices retreated, leaving Keith shivering and unsure in the dark, until the man’s volume rose again and he heard what was being said.
“Acxa, muzzle him. His pack will come looking eventually.”
Keith’s heart kicked into overdrive; when he felt hands he yelped and snapped his teeth at them, threatening to bite again, but Acxa was quick and cautious and before he could do anything about it there was chill metal pressing into his cheekbones and the underside of his chin. With a few fast snaps of her fingers Acxa tightened the straps behind his head, pulling his hair roughly in the process, and his jaw was clamped shut so tightly his teeth began to ache immediately.
He whined and growled and shook his head, but all his struggling accomplished was more torn skin from the wire. Her footsteps retreated along with the others.
There was the sound of many feet tramping up the stairs, then a door slammed, and the silence fell like a ton of bricks.
And all Keith could do was kneel there and shiver, and bleed, and pray his pack wouldn’t try to find him.
Pidge always knew when Lance got home almost a minute before he opened the door. Not only because his voice was loud, but because when he was content his sea salt scent hit harder than a tsunami. So she didn’t jump entirely out of her skin when the door to the apartment burst open. She only jumped a little bit.
“Good afternoon, Pidgeon,” he said with faux formality, “how are you this fine afternoon?”
“I was doing fine,” she huffed, “until you came in and broke my concentration.”
He knew she was exaggerating her exasperation, so he merely gave a good hearted chuckle and trudged past her spot in the living room to dump his school bag in his room. On the edges of her mind Pidge processed the noises of him puttering about, exchanging greetings with Hunk who preferred to do his schoolwork in there rather than the living room.
Rather consumed in her work, she didn’t notice anything amiss until both of their scents soured half a second before Lance stuck his head out into the hallway.
“Hey, Pidge?” he called, “Has Keith come back from campus yet?”
Pidge’s fingers paused over her keyboard, and her eyes flicked to the time in the lower right corner. She hadn’t noticed it, but it had gotten late, almost five p.m.
Keith should’ve been home by three.
Her stomach instantly twisted into a knot. She didn’t need to answer, Lance and Hunk both detected it when her scent went bitter. She heard Lance telling Hunk to try calling him, but Pidge had the worst feeling that he wasn’t going to answer. Without taking her eyes from the screen, she groped with a numb hand for her own cellphone.
It rang three times before Matt picked up.
“Hey, Pidge, what’s up? You don’t usually call while I’m working.”
Pidge took a deep shuddering breath. In the background Hunk’s voice went up an octave when Keith’s phone went straight to voicemail.
“Keith hasn’t come home.”
Half an hour later Shiro was pulling into the campus’ west parking lot with squealing tires. They all piled out of the mini-van and stood for a moment, blinking in the light of the setting sun. Heat rolled off the asphalt in visible waves, but still Pidge shivered, sick with apprehension.
Then she caught a whiff of woodsmoke and something in her brain clicked.
“You got something, Pidge?” asked Matt, and it was all she could do to nod before setting off at a quick pace. Technically Keith had the best senses out of all of them, but she was a close second, and the others followed unerringly behind her.
She followed the scent of smoke across the parking lot, towards the back. She was within sight of the sun glinting off of Keith’s motorcycle when the scent suddenly changed, spiking from comforting warmth to bitter, harsh chocolate that soured over her tongue.
Pidge stopped dead in that spot. At her feet lay a phone in a familiar red case, and when she picked it up the screen was shattered.
Behind her, Shiro growled.
“It was hunters,” Pidge breathed out, breathing in the slightest hints of rubbing alcohol underneath Keith’s distress. She didn’t realize she was shaking until Matt pulled her into his side and held on tight.
“Think you can follow it?” Lance asked from behind her.
Pidge nodded without thought. There was no time for self doubt-- Keith was on borrowed time.
“It’s gonna be a trap,” said Hunk with a faint whimper.
Shiro’s voice was hard when he spoke, “Then we’ll be ready for it.”
In the bright sunlight, Pidge shuddered down to her toes.
“You know what has to be done.”
Kneeling on the floor before him, Narti gave a solemn nod without raising her eyes. Her hand had been bandaged but they all knew it was a wasted effort. There was no preventing the taint from infecting the blood once it had been introduced.
And the only cure for the taint…
“You accepted the Burden. And now your Burden has been lifted.”
… was death.
“Your Burden has been lifted,” murmured Acxa, Ezor, and Zethrid in unison as Lotor reached out and pushed Narti’s hood back from her face. Her eyes were clear in the moment before she closed them-- no tears, no fear, no reluctance.
His hand didn’t shake as he raised the pistol and pressed the barrel to her head. He didn’t hesitate before he pulled the trigger. He didn’t jolt or jump at the rapport of the bullet or the slumping of her body to the floor. He didn’t grimace at the spray of blood.
Ezor was in tears. Zethrid’s cheeks were dark with rage. Acxa simply stared, expressionless. Lotor tucked his pistol back into its holster and turned sharply on his heel to face them.
“We have work to do.”
The scent led them to a small house in a nearby neighborhood; the low-rent student housing type. Shiro parked a block away and they all piled out with grim expressions and clenched fists. Shiro could already feel his wolf instincts beginning to pull against his ribcage, making his eyes glint ever so faintly gold.
Most of the time he resisted the pull. He was afraid of the things his wolf could do if he let it take over the way it wanted, and even on full moons he fought to keep himself in control.
But now? Now he would let the wolf have its pound of flesh and whatever else it wanted if it meant saving Keith.
“We have to play this safe,” he said, against all of his wolf instincts. “They’ll be waiting for us-- They’ll have traps set up.”
“So what’s the plan?” asked Matt. Behind him Pidge was shifting anxiously from foot to foot, and Lance and Hunk were casting furtive looks up and down the street.
“You and I’ll go in and try to find any traps. Lance, Hunk, you two wait outside the front door until you hear fighting. Pidge, you stay here with the car and watch them. Once they go in, you can come too, got it? They don’t know how many of us there are; we can catch them by surprise.”
He was answered by a round of solemn nods. Pidge cracked her knuckles.
“Alright, lets go.”
The four of them crossed the street with tightly restrained gaits, wanting to run but unable to risk drawing the attention of the neighbors. There was no question of which house it was-- the whole place reeked of rubbing alcohol. And underneath, if his senses weren’t betraying him, Shiro thought he could detect the faintest scent of bitter chocolate.
They were cautious as they crossed the lawn, but as of yet nothing leapt out at them. They made it to the door unaccosted and Shiro ever so gingerly tried the knob. The door was unlocked.
He waved the others back. When they were a few safer steps away, he pushed the door to swing open and sprang to the side. He barely avoided the darts that came spewing out of the doorway.
“Shit,” Lance breathed, nudging one of the darts where it had imbedded itself in the lawn near his feet. “These guys aren’t fucking around.”
With clenched jaws and tensed muscles, Shiro and Matt moved forward into the belly of the beast.
The living room was dark, all the shades drawn. Fortunately their eyes could pierce through the gloom, picking out locations here and there where metal gleamed and tripwires waited to betray them. Even more distressing than the traps was the smell-- here even the antiseptic scent was being completely overwhelmed by Keith’s distress. Keith’s pain. It was enough to drive Shiro to distraction, but still he kept tight control over the wolfish instincts clawing at his insides.
Not yet, he chanted to himself as the two of them headed towards a door on the far side of the room that the smell seemed to be emanating from. Not yet.
It felt like years before they reached it. Cold sweat beaded at Shiro’s brow and ran down his spine. He motioned for Matt to stay put for a moment before pushing open the second door, also deliberately left unlocked. It revealed a staircase descending into darkness; Shiro plunged forward without hesitation.
There was no light in the basement. Thankfully he didn’t need it to discern the form of Keith, half crumpled and half kneeling against the far wall. His scent was thick in the air, all pain and fear with an undercurrent of something sickly that Shiro didn’t have time to puzzle out.
He took a step forward and Keith’s head snapped up.
His eyes gleamed gold, clouded over, and they widened to the size of dinner plates as Shiro rushed over to him.
He fell hard to his knees. Up close he could see (and smell) the blood and the cold sweat, and the metal clasped over his cheekbones. A growl rose unbidden in his throat.
He’d been muzzled. Like an animal.
Shiro’s hands shook as he reached around for the muzzles straps. Keith’s eyes shone in the dark, bright with pleading and desperation, and Shiro’s wolf howled and clawed at his innards, trying to escape.
Not yet. Not yet.
The muzzle came free and clanged to the floor.
“Shiro, you gotta run,” Keith was blurting seconds later, “It’s a trap, they’re waiting for you, you need to run!” His voice was hoarse, a whine winding through the words. Shiro rumbled to calm him as he reached to undo the bindings holding him to the wall.
“It’s ok,” he murmured, “I know it is, I know.”
Keith panted and leaned his head on Shiro’s shoulder. His skin was clammy and cold, and he shivered violently as Shiro tried to untangle the strange wire around Keith’s wrists. Something pricked his finger, and rage rose along with realization.
Barbed wire. Christ, hunters were monsters.
Keith whimpered as the wire was pulled away. Shiro rumbled again, trying to soothe as much as he could of the pain. His hands moved up to deal with the makeshift collar, and when he leaned in to peer over Keith’s shoulder he was hit by the sickly scent all over again.
Keith must’ve smelled his spike of anxiety, as he said, “They gave me wolfsbane.”
Shiro’s gut lurched. He wanted to comfort him, reassure Keith that everything was gonna be alright, but his wolf was howling up his throat, choking him.
Wolfsbane. God.
He wrenched the wire free from Keith’s throat, inciting another pained yowl. As he gathered him into his arms he thought he detected a noise-- footsteps overhead.
Then: “Shiro, we’re out of time!”
Then followed a crash, a growl, a war cry, and chaos broke out on the floor above. Shiro rose to his feet with Keith clinging to his shoulders; the front door crashed open and Lance and Hunk’s voices joined the clamor.
He turned to the stairs. Keith was a warm, heavy weight against his chest, bitten back whimpers and whines sounding in his ears. But as he began to mount the steps Keith squirmed.
“Just leave me,” he said, to Shiro’s horror. “They’re gonna catch you, you’ll be hurt, I can’t let you get hurt.”
Shiro gulped. Keith had already given in to parts of his wolf, to the instinct to protect his pack. He wasn’t thinking straight. Shiro was dangerously close to following.
He didn’t answer, and a moment later they emerged into the slightly brighter first floor, where things had well and truly gone to hell.
Furniture had been knocked all around, lamps shattered and leaving glass shards embedded in the carpet. One of the blinds had a claw mark torn through it, leaving it hanging in tatters and allowing a single beam of late afternoon light into the room.
To the left, at the entrance to the kitchen, Lance was grappling with a woman with a long braid that whipped and snapped behind her as she moved. Matt and Pidge were working together, darting around an absolute tank of a person who wasn’t quite quick enough to keep up. And somehow Hunk was holding his own against two assailants, one of whom already had a claw wound on their arm that dripped blood onto the carpet.
Shiro, still carrying Keith in his arms, chose that one to charge, a man with long blonde hair.
Shiro’s right shoulder hit him right in the center of his back, sending the hunter stumbling forward, fighting to keep his balance. Before he had a chance to recover Shiro shoved Keith’s limp frame into Hunk’s arms.
“Take him!” he roared, and spun to face his opponent.
Hunk fled from the building.
Hunk’s jostling pace was painful. The wounds on his wrists scraped against Hunk’s shirt, leaving blood smears, and his stomach whirled in protest.
The world was still a maze of shadows, but he heard the movement when Hunk slid open the door on the mini-van. He was deposited onto the row of seats, then Hunk’s body heat disappeared and panic spiked his heartbeat.
Hunk returned before he had a chance to cry out. Keith couldn’t distinguish his face, but saw a pair of golden eyes, and the scent of hot desert dust told him exactly who it was.
“I’m gonna clean your wounds,” Hunk said above him with an angry edge to his voice, “it’s gonna sting.”
It did sting, but that wasn’t the reason for the distressed sound he made.
“The others, they’re gonna kill the others.”
“No they aren’t,” replied Hunk in a softer tone. “Shiro will protect them.”
Keith couldn’t help writhing as Hunk continued to clean and bandage his wounds. He felt sick, and his wolf was screaming and filling his veins with adrenaline.
Protect, protect, protect!
The shadows were beginning to lift. The orange of Hunk’s headband came through first, then the blue sky behind his silhouette, the trees lining the road the car was parked on.
Hunk had just finished sticking bandages to Keith’s throat when his head jerked up. Keith heard it too-- footsteps pounding on asphalt, coming in their direction. But Hunk smiled.
Keith caught the scent. Ozone, salt under the sun, hot cinnamon candy, smoke from a forest fire.
Shiro came into view first. His hands and his shirt were spattered with blood, and more was smeared over his mouth. His eyes glittered.
“Let’s move!” he barked, and in seconds Keith was being shoved further into the car, Hunk climbing in behind him. Lance and Pidge scampered into the back row and the door slammed shut. They lurched forward and the smell of burning rubber filled the air.
They’d… they’d made it. They got away.
Hunk cradled Keith’s head in his lap, brushing his sweat stiff hair off his forehead. His eyesight blurred with exhaustion and a chill wracked through him.
“Matt,” Shiro was saying, “call Allura and tell her to meet us at home.”
No one asked why. Matt just did it. Keith’s eyelids fluttered.
“Hunk, how’s he doing?”
Hunk lightly jostled his head, forcing him to open his eyes with a brief whimper.
“Not so good,” was the reported answer. Everything was spinning. His muscles burned with fatigue. But when he tried to close his eyes Hunk jerked him again. “You should stay awake, Keith.”
He groaned and tried to turn away. They’d gotten away, everyone was safe, he didn’t have to protect anymore, so why shouldn’t he be able to sleep? He’d done his job, hadn’t he?
“Just a few more minutes till we get home,” Hunk was saying, seemingly from far away. “Just a few more minutes, then you can sleep, ok?”
Keith wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it. Even now his eyelids were fighting to close, but all the same he gave Hunk a weary nod. He could try, at the very least.
“I think I bit one,” said Lance, in a voice low and trembling. “I can-- I can taste it.”
“Don’t think about it.” That was Pidge. “Not now, we’re not safe yet.”
“What will they-- do you think they’ll kill her? One of their own? Because of me--”
“Lance,” Shiro snapped from the driver's seat, making him fall silent, “Pidge is right, we’re not out of the woods yet. I need you to keep it together.”
Keith barely detected the sound of a shaky inhale.
“Right. Yeah. Panic attacks later.”
“Look, there’s Allura’s car!” cried… someone. He wasn’t sure who. His ears were kinda ringing.
The van gave a hard jerk and the tires squealed, and a second later Shiro was slamming on the brakes and everyone was scrambling. Keith couldn’t keep track of any one person, it made him too dizzy, but he recognized Shiro’s scent when he was scooped up by him. Ozone laden clouds, the moment before a lightning strike. He closed his eyes against the jostling movement when Shiro started moving and only knew of Allura’s approach by the sound of her high heels and her heavy floral scent.
“Allura--”
“Matt told me; get him inside.”
If walking had been jarring, climbing the stairs was an earthquake. Every impact on the concrete rocked through Keith’s head and made him ache all over; the chill felt like it was coming from inside him, seeping out through holes made in the bone.
The next thing he knew he was being laid down on a pile of softness, dropped into an ocean of familiar, comforting scents. He knew without having to open his eyes. They were back home. In the den. Safe. Surely now he was allowed to sleep.
Voices murmured overhead, and then a strong arm was braced under his back, making him sit up, and he let out a tired keen. He was so cold, why wouldn’t they let him sleep?
The voices kept talking as something was pressed against his lips. Keith turned his head away. The person he was leaning against made an unhappy noise, and he felt the breath over the side of his face as they began to speak.
“Keith,” they said, and through the haze he recognized Shiro’s voice. It was always Shiro, always there when he needed him. “You need to drink this, ok? It’ll make you feel better.”
He mumbled a protest, but Shiro didn’t relent.
“I know it’s hard, but you have to. Please.”
Well… if Shiro said so…
The cup was pressed to his mouth again, and this time Keith reluctantly parted his lips. At first the liquid smacked sour and he flinched, nearly choked, but at Shiro’s urging took another gulp. That one went down easier. His tongue tingled for a moment, then a sweet aftertaste. Warmth began to kindle in his belly, fighting back the chill from the wolfsbane, and with a sigh of relief Keith’s taut muscles went limp.
Shiro made him drink the entire cup. And then, only then, did he let him return to the comfort of the blankets and give him permission to slip into slumber.
“What are we gonna do now?”
Shiro looked over the faces of his exhausted pack, all covered in bruises and smelling of dried sweat. Copper tinged Shiro’s teeth, like he’d been sucking on a penny, and soon the taste would make him feel nauseous, once he slowed down enough to think about what he’d done.
Now wasn’t the time, not yet. Keith was out cold, swaddled in as many blankets as they could manage, beginning his recovery from the poison. And they had, in the worst case scenario, four hunters after them.
And they all knew hunters were relentless.
He swallowed hard and tried to ignore the taste of blood. “We need to leave. Soon, before this turns into a news story.”
“Or the hunters come looking for revenge,” Pidge muttered darkly.
“That too.”
Allura regarded them all solemnly. “I’ll do what I can here to cover your trail. But you shouldn’t stay for much longer. My magic cannot hide you completely, or forever.”
So it was that their pack piled into the van under a nearly full moon, carting as many boxes and bags stuffed with all they could carry, Keith bundled up and laid out across the middle row with Shiro’s lap serving as a pillow. But before he even got into the car, after lingering to give a sad goodbye to the home that had served them for so many years, Allura came up to him and pressed something into his hands.
“Keith needs to keep taking this once a day,” she said with a firm furrow to her brow, “a few swallows, until it’s all gone. Understand? It’s the only way to make sure the poison leaves him completely.”
“I understand. Thank you, Allura. For everything.”
For a moment her eyes softened, and the tiniest hint of a smile played over her lips. Her hair hung like a silver curtain in the moonlight.
“Good luck, Shiro.”
They burned the bodies as the moon dipped below the horizon. Lotor, his throat torn clean open by one of the wolves jaws, staining the carpet with a massive blot like ink. Narti, with her serene face and one bandaged hand. And Ezor, whose last words still played through their heads.
“Please, Zeth, please, don’t let me turn into one of them. You have to do this.”
Zethrid was still trying to conceal her sobs. But all Acxa felt was the same unending resolve, curled ever tighter and harder between her lungs.
They stood there in the forest clearing as the sun rose, feeling the heat on their necks as the fire at their front burned down to ashes and cracked bones. Then they buried what remained, working in utter silence except the sound of spades in the dirt.
Finally, when they’d finished, Acxa produced the two shot glasses and bottle of bourbon they’d salvaged from the wrecked house before fleeing. She filled both and held one out to Zethrid without a word, and she took it.
For a moment Zethrid stared at it, then murmured, quieter than a leaf rustle, “For Ezor.”
Acxa swallowed. “For Narti.”
Together they downed the shot. It burned going down and burned in her chest, but she relished the feeling as best she could. Then she let the shot glass drop from her fingers and turned on her heel, not daring to look back at the rough graves.
“Come on,” she said, and tried not to hear Lotor’s voice echoed in the words, “we have work to do.”