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“Hey, can we talk for a minute?”
Darling looked up and saw Milo approaching while the meeting wrapped up and the pack began to disperse. Their jaw clenched as they saw the downward turn of their packmate’s lips. Between the scolding from David and the humiliation of standing before the pack as a liar and a liability, they weren’t sure they could take another round of judgements on their decisions.
“About?”
“My mate’s with the department and any extra information about this ‘Quinn’ you could pass on so they can investigate might be helpful in tracking him down. You know, beyond what you already said in the meeting.”
They felt their hands unclench. “Oh… sure. What else do you want to know?”
After a solid half hour Darling felt like they’d described to Milo everything they knew about Quinn, his behaviours when he and Darling used to hang out together, changes of habit since their violent dissolution of friendship, every tiny clue they’d picked up in the months of tracking them even down to the brand of edgelord clothing he was currently into. During the debrief the pair wandered to sit at a picnic bench that Gabe had installed for a solstice party one year back when they were both teenagers.
Darling could still remember how they’d felt having to spend solstice with such a large pack for the very first time, feeling too anxious and too overwhelmed to talk to the pack members their age. They could still recall the disparaging looks they’d gotten from the other teens when they’d been caught sitting alone in the shadows, as far away from the party as they could manage and glaring at anyone who came close. If they’d been shifted, they’d probably have looked the part of the ‘dog backed into a corner’ perfectly.
“… ugh he sounds like a real piece of work. I don’t know how you managed to hang around him for so long without wantin’ to knock his lights out,” Milo said. “I hope you managed to get some good hits in at least?”
Darling let loose an empty chuckle. “You bet. Almost got to tear the bastard in two, but I was… distracted. Paid for my distraction with a few broken ribs.”
Milo sucked in a sympathetic hiss and the pair fell silent as the conversation petered to a close. Darling was about to call it a night when Milo began to speak again.
“If you don’t mind my askin’-”
They braced themselves at the hesitant tone that accompanied his words.
“-why didn’t you tell the pack what was goin’ on with Quinn?”
Darling swallowed the lump of emotion that was rising in their throat, silently begging Milo to stop talking. He was unwittingly picking at an old wound that had already been scratched at multiple times today.
“Y’know that any one of us woulda dropped everything to lend you a hand, right?”
They felt something snap as Milo echoed the same phrase David had. ‘You know.’
“Do I really know that?!” Darling yelled, hating the sharp edge of hurt that bled into their voice. “How would I know that, Milo?”
“You’re pack! Pack helps pack no matter what, that shit’s obvious!”
They frantically tried in vain to push down the hurt and anger but it was spilling out of them faster than they could manage. “Oh I’m pack am I? Let’s recap what being pack means for me. Since my family joined the Shaw pack, not one of you actually tried to be my friend. No one here talks to me outside of pack business. They avoid me like I have the damn plague. And I get that the rest of you had the advantage of spending your whole lives growing up together and already had your own circles of friends. But I was a lonely kid who’d just moved states and didn’t know anyone, who had never been in a pack larger than only me and my parents before and who didn’t feel particularly welcome to insert myself into all your little hang outs that I clearly wasn’t invited to!”
“Look I’m sorry that we weren’t exactly rollin’ out the biggest welcome wagon at the time but we were just stupid kids too. You seemed like you were fine on your own, happier even. You never asked to hang out and you were always on the phone with your old friends or wanderin’ off on your own at the first chance you got!”
“Okay so let’s just say we were stupid teenagers who didn’t know better and skip forward to being the adults of right now. After I reported Quinn and he nearly killed my friend in retaliation, and I went all the way to Washington to recuperate after fighting him off all on my own, do you think anyone from this pack ever bothered to check in on me?”
“David said he-”
“David doesn’t count because he feels compelled to take care of people he considers his pack. Aside from my alpha, did anyone else ever once think to reach out to me in the year and a half I was gone from Shaw territory?”
The silence rung in the night air as Milo dreaded the answer. Surely someone had? But the fury blazing in their eyes had his heart sinking to the pit of his stomach.
When Milo finally couldn’t meet their gaze any longer and didn’t respond, Darling continued, “The answer is no. Not even a single fucking text with a simple courtesy ‘are you okay?’. So tell me Milo. How the fuck was I supposed to magically know that anyone from this pack would help me if I asked for it?”
Darling pushed themselves up from the picnic bench and took a few quick strides away, taking ragged breaths trying to get a handle on their temper and creating distance from Milo. The fangs and claws were itching right under the skin and the last thing they needed on this shitty day was to shift because their stupid feelings were hurt and they lost control. They folded their arms in front of their chest to regain the illusion of composure but they had a feeling it just looked like they were holding themself together.
“You all might think I was being reckless but I made the best decision I could! I am well aware Quinn takes revenge on the people closest to his enemies to inflict the most trauma he can and that me being his enemy could have put the pack on his shitlist… but he never attacked anyone from this pack to get back at me, even though he was just in Dahlia six months ago and it’s been two years since we fought. Can you guess why?”
This time Darling didn’t wait for an answer, letting their pent-up feelings steamroll over any response Milo might have voiced.
“It’s because even after the short-lived time we spent as friends, Quinn understands my place in the pack better than anyone actually in the pack. He knows I have no true connections here, no relationships. He thinks he can’t hurt me by using pack members. I didn’t want to risk dragging any of the pack into this mess when they weren’t a target to begin with… so I left. Despite what our alpha may think of that choice, no one from Shaw pack has been hurt from my decision. And now instead of just having to worry about myself, I get to worry about getting a pack full of strangers to fall victim to Quinn’s sadistic revenge killings because they were forcefully roped into my bullshit!”
There were no sobs. No wails that cried out.
But Darling took deep breaths as they let unstoppable tears flow freely from their eyes, clenching their jaw to stop themselves from saying more.
They dared a glimpse at Milo and seeing the remorse on his face and the sorrowful way he sat, they felt the rage surge again but this time directed at themselves. This wasn’t Milo’s fault really – he just happened to ask the wrong question at the wrong time. Pack wasn’t supposed to hurt pack this way. Yet another friendly reminder of how they were never suited to be part of a pack, Darling thought grimly.
“Sorry Milo… I uh… It’s been a long day I didn’t mean…” they tried to back track but found no ways to soften any of the words they’d said. “I have to go. Let me know if your mate finds anything… tell David I’m going home. I’ll see you later.”
And without even checking to see if Milo heard their short words of farewell, Darling ran as fast as they could to get away from the pack and safe at home as soon as possible. They didn’t stop running until they were in the safety of home and couldn’t smell another werewolf on the air anymore. Slumped against their front door, out of breath and feeling their emotions block everything else out like a fog, they knew they desperately needed something to ground them. To tether them back to reality.
Darling was shaking when they pulled up Sam’s number and shot him a quick text with trembling fingers.
Can you please come over?