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Leaves crunched underfoot as Liam twisted in Isaac’s grip, his fully extended claws sliding easily through the older’s clothes and skin. The muffled grunt of pain above him was the only acknowledgment that he had hurt him at all. Heat surged through his veins again, anger bubbling viciously close to the skin, searing his nerves, redoubling his efforts to wrench himself free. Every fiber of his body was screaming, on fire with the furious ache to tear something apart. To break something, to feel anything give way under his claws or fangs, or break itself trying. Maybe then the world would stop spinning and his heart would stop hurting.
A new snarl ripped from him, ricocheting through his rib cage, tearing out of his throat with such force the taste of copper lingered on his tongue. His wolf thrashed in turn, howling so loud he swore his brain was rattling in his skull. The tickle beneath his skin grew, the wolf in his surging foreword, thrumming in his veins with a now-familiar howl, near to bursting through the surface.
Still, the arms around him stayed strong, hooked beneath one of his own and valiantly holding onto the other wrist. Blood, warm and wet and sticky, ran liberally from Isaac’s arms to his, soaking into his shirt, sliding down his skin and splattering onto his pants as he spun in his hold. Claws bit through his shirt, hovering scant fractions of an inch from digging into his side, just barely above where Theo’s claws had bored into him.
His growling pitched up, dissolving into a whining shriek. The claws protruding from his hands, the ones coated in his alpha’s mate’s blood, were responsible for hurting Theo. Not just in the scuffle in the living room, but back months ago.
The fight drained from him as he hiccuped his way through pulling in a new breath. Shakes and shivers overtook his body, throwing the entirety of his weight on Isaac, knees buckling.
“I, I almost…Isaac, I almost killed him,” he said, ungentle sobs wracking his body.
“Liam, it’s okay. He’s fine, it was just a scratch,” Isaac cooed, the hand on Liam’s wrist releasing, coming to cross over the other, supporting his chest. “You did good.”
A new series of whines pulled Liam to his knees, rendered boneless against the onslaught of images. The chimera laying on a concrete floor, chest bloodied, rising and falling in an erratic rhythm, as he stalked towards him. His wolf crazed, out for blood in a way he had never felt, driven mad by the wolfsbane, pushing him so far under he hadn’t put together who he had been standing over, claws raised, till just a few minutes ago.
The soft scent of honey filled his nose, another warm hand pressing into his arm, sinking around him. “It’s alright. You’re both okay.”
“No, back, back be-before, when they had you ‘nd me. I…I almost, I-I had my claws up, and-and I was gonna do it,” his sobs intensified. “God. He, he said I didn-didn’t have to stop. He was gonna let me.”
Liam twisted, slipping from Isaac’s arms into Scott’s, burying his face in the warmth of his alpha’s chest. His hands clawed at the shirt beneath them, though the points had dulled, giving way to the blunt bite of fingertips biting through the cotton. A pained, too human, growl rumbled, stuck between his lungs and ribs, pressed out as his heart twisted.
“Scott, I almost, it was so close,” he shuddered again.
“But you didn’t,” the alpha murmured, gently wrapping his arms around him.
As he guided Liam’s head to his neck, another memory flashed through his head. One of safety and warmth, when he had been frozen to the bone, scared and dying from wolfsbane. Scott was there. He found him, pulled him out, and held him close, hugged him till his body reconnected with his soul or his brain or whatever. The iron grip squeezed around him, holding him together until he could do it himself, just as he was now.
The whole of Liam’s body shook as round after round of shuddering sobs and heart-shredding wails wrenched out of him, broken off only as he gasped for breath. His lungs burned as much as his throat, barely getting any air between bouts of near-wordless screaming into both Scott and Isaac’s chests, but there was nothing he could do. As every tremor-filled cry petered out, another rose behind it, creating a near wave-like cadence to his sobs, a rise and fall, an unstoppable cycle.
Black crept in, dragging his eyelids down as his voice disappeared, throat long since raw and bloodied. The warmth of his alpha surrounded him, overpowering the stench of fear and pain he knew was rolling off of him, slowly fighting its way through the frantic shrieking of Liam’s wolf, settling the poor beast. Gentle hands held his head securely to Scott’s chest. The world narrowed to the cocoon around him, Scott and Isaac, alpha and his mate. Warmth and safety. Warm and safe.
“You’re safe, Liam. He’s safe, too, I promise,” Scott said softly into his hair. “You’re both safe.”
It was the same thing over and over, a mantra the older wolf was clearly trying to impart. Logically, it was true. They were both at the lake house, both safer, but it still felt like Theo was a thousand miles away. His chimera was still missing, lost in his idiosyncrasies as opposed to his own head now, but lost all the same.
Lost, just like the one puzzle piece outstanding in Liam’s jigsaw of a life.
He shuddered, curling weakly into his alpha, chasing the comfort. A blanket of exhaustion crept over him, weighing down his eyes and slowing his breaths, relentlessly tugging him down into the depths of sleep. Before fully settling beneath the weight of sleep, a too rare, a smile, brighter than the full moon, crinkling in captivating green eyes, seeped into the blackness. His chest clenched, wondering if he will ever see it again.