24

kestrel

"CLEMENTINE, OPEN THE door," I said for the eighteenth time.

She was done answering, though.

First three times, she'd spoken up and said that she needed some space, to leave her alone, and then—when I didn't stop trying to get her to let me in—she went quiet.

"Clementine, just…" I lay my hand on the door and then my cheek, and I stayed there, feeling like I was going to lose my mind, fall apart, scream.

Paladin appeared at the end of the hallway.

I pushed off the door and went for him, clenching my hands into fists. "No one else came after her?"

"I had to deal with Red and Griff," said Paladin. "Lazarus is down there taking first watch on the two rooms we stuck them in. We all have to take a turn, so you want second watch or third?"

"How much of the night is even left at this point?" I had no idea what time it was.

"It's actually not even midnight yet," said Paladin. "I told Red's guys to get to me before nightfall, and they did. Well, mostly." He shook himself. "Where is she?"

I gestured. "She won't open the door."

"Right," muttered Paladin. "Okay, well, then we leave her be. "

I felt like my chest cracked open. "You think she's done with us?"

"Did she say that?" said Paladin, looking worried.

"No," I admitted. "She said she needed space." I hunched up my shoulders. "So, of course, I kept banging on the door she'd shut and locked."

Paladin grinned, touching my face. "My Kestrel," he said.

I both liked and disliked that. I jerked away.

"Sorry." He put his hands in his pockets. "I didn't mean it like…"

"It felt patronizing," I muttered.

"And you've been patronizing me for years now," I said.

"No," I said immediately. But he wasn't wrong. It was true. I had. It was only that—

"It's okay. I wanted it," he said. "Maybe I still want it." He let out a breath. He took his hands out of his pockets. He walked down the hallway and gently rapped on the door Clementine had closed. His voice was soft. "Hey, sweetheart, I want you to know we're going to be just down the hall, me and Kestrel. Well, we're subbing out on watches, but there should be two of us in there at all times, so if you want to come out and find us at any time, you can. If not, if you just want time alone, I get that."

"Paladin, tell Kestrel I'm sorry," came her tiny voice. "But I'm just trying to go to sleep right now."

"Sure," he said. "Sleep, sweetheart."

He ran his fingers over the door, almost regretful, and then he came back to me. He nodded at an open door, which was across the hall from this built-on hallway.

I hesitated, and then I let him lead me in there.

The room had a couch and a TV and one of those big beanbag chairs.

Paladin pushed me back onto the couch, settled on the floor in front of me, and started undoing my zipper.

"What the fuck?" I gasped, reaching down to stop him.

"Please?" he said, looking up at me. "For me. I need it."

For whatever fucked-up reason, his saying that made me really hard. I let him take me out. "It's just, Paladin, this last couple days, everything that happened, especially to Clementine, it feels wrong."

"Wrong to feel pleasure when other people suffered, you mean?" He kissed the tip of me and then began to loosely run his hand over me.

"Maybe," I said. "Wrong to be turned on after Clementine… I keep thinking about it, whatever they did to her."

"Yeah, but things like that have happened to us," he said. He sucked the head of me into his mouth.

It felt good. I let my head lay on the back of the couch and moaned softly.

He licked the sensitive spot right behind the head of my cock. "When bad things happen to me, I need you, and you know this."

I reached out to caress his face. My fingers brushed the shell of his ear. "It's fucked that we do this, Paladin, though."

"No, it's good," he countered. "Now tell me what I want to hear. You know what I want."

I sighed, shutting my eyes. I continued to toy with his ear. "Sure, sweet boy." It did make me so goddamned hard, after all. "You want me to tell you none of it happened?"

"I…" He sucked my cockhead, thinking about it. "No, I can remember. It doesn't have to erase things this time. Just the other stuff." He licked me all over, and it made it hard to think. "I need your cock, Kestrel. I need it."

"Yeah, you do," I agreed, affectionate, still toying with his ear, brushing his earlobe. "My cock will fix you right up. Just suck it nice and deep, Paladin, and you'll feel better, I swear." We'd done shit like this before, sometimes. I didn't totally initiate it, not exactly. I don't know. The first time, I'd been comforting him, and it had somehow gotten sexual, and I didn't know where the idea came from that if he sucked me off, he'd forget—was it mine, was it his? It was hot .

We both liked it.

I suspected that there was harm in saying it. I knew it was bullshit, after all. There were no healing powers in my penis or my semen. I definitely could not make him forget traumatic experiences by coming down his throat. Sucking me off was really much better for me than him, had to be. So, this was just me using him for my pleasure and lying to him that it was for him.

Except he knew that, deep down, I think.

He moaned around me.

I toyed with his earlobe. "That's better already, isn't it, pretty boy?"

He moaned again.

"You know what you need to do, sweet baby, is take it much deeper than that, all the way down your throat. The deeper you can take it, the more good my cock will do you."

He gagged himself.

I made a gurgling noise myself. Fuck, that was good.

"That's right, just like that," I said. "This is for you, Paladin, so take your time with it, suck it good and hard and keep nudging the head into your throat. That'll be real good for you if you do that."

He came up off my cock, kissing it all over, breathless. "C-can it help with everything?"

"Everything," I assured him.

"Even that I fucking let them have Clementine? That I was going to leave her here for recon? That I was—"

" Everything ." I thrust into his mouth.

He moaned in relief, sucking me frantically.

We did this after he was raped once, and I told him sucking my cock would make it so he never thought about it when he got hard. I doubted it worked, not really, but it was like a spell or something, some sort of little ritual we did.

And if it could work for him, maybe it could work for me, too.

Maybe if he sucked me hard enough, it would mean I didn't have to feel guilty about still wanting Clementine even though she probably never wanted to be touched by a man or a werewolf ever again. Maybe when I came in my pretty Paladin's mouth, it would mean that I was absolved for that dirty and awful desire to want to continue, always to continue, to soil her. Maybe it would mean it made sense that I loved her and I wanted to desecrate her. Maybe—

"Your cock is such a good cock," Paladin crooned.

"Just what you need, baby," I told him. "A good cock to suck. Suck it nice and hard, sweet boy, you know what to do."

"Touch myself?" he said, licking a stripe up from the root to the tip of me.

I considered. My instinct was to always give him permission to come, but sometimes he wanted me to punish him by withholding his orgasm, and when I got it wrong, I felt bad. I needed to read his mind. What did he want, actually? Release or denial? "Yes," I said decisively. Fuck it, I didn't care if he did want denial. That was bad for him. I would convince him to take his pleasure, too. We were in this together. If he was making me have a fucking orgasm on this day of all days, he was having one, too, damn it. "You need to come to wash it all away. That'll seal it, Paladin, make you all better. Your balls are all tight, aren't they? Don't they need to be emptied out?"

"Fuck yes," he gasped, scrabbling a hand inside his pants to find himself.

He was much less good at giving a blow job while he was touching himself, but then I figure that's a universal attribute. It was fine, anyway, because I wanted us to come around the same time.

"That's just what you need," I whispered to him. "Rubbing your own cock and feeling mine between your lips. Once it's done, there's no more worry or guilt."

"Fix me with your good cock," he muttered.

"All fixed," I said. " All fixed, sweet boy."

We came at almost exactly the same time.

lazarus

PALADIN SMELLED LIKE Kestrel when he came down to relieve me for the watch .

I rubbed my thumb over his lower lip. "You were busy."

"I'll suck you, too, right now," he said, mischievous, "if you think you won't be too distracted to watch the doors." He nodded at the two rooms where we were keeping Red and Griff. They were both locked up in there with their mates, and everything was completely confusing.

"No," I said. They were always doing that, the two of them. We'd go through some weird, harrowing ordeal and they'd be fucking like rabbits immediately afterward. I needed, you know, time.

"Yeah, okay." He kissed me, though, and sent me off.

I would have talked to him. I needed to talk to him. Everything was fucked right now, and I didn't know which way was up or where we went from here. But I was too exhausted at that point to talk to him.

"Kestrel's in a room at the top of the stairs," he told me. "I told Clementine two of us would be there if she needs us."

"You found her."

"Obviously," he said. "I would have come down and told you if she was missing or something."

Would he, though?

But I had figured she was all right. I'd figured she needed some time, some space. Hell, I wouldn't blame her if she left. No reason for her not to cross right back over that wall and go back to her life. This, out here, it could not be worth it to her. I sure as fuck wasn't going to be the jerk who tried to convince her that she should stay or that she should let us comfort her or anything like that.

Obviously, though, I didn't want her to leave.

I remembered earlier in the day, when I'd been convinced we could all run off together, but when I'd told her our plan—that we'd all go further into the wilderness and start over?

She hadn't reacted with words, but I'd sensed it in the way she got tense.

Her answer to that was no.

She was probably leaving.

Sure, when she got free from here, after being gang raped, she was freaked out. Sure she slept on my chest, in my arms, for hours, because she hadn't known what else to do. But now, she had to see us for what we were. Her captors. Just as dangerous to her as any other wolf.

Mated to us or not, she was a victim out here.

"Right, okay," I said to Paladin. "Well, I guess I'll go up there then."

"Get some sleep," he said. "There's a big bean bag chair that's big this way." He gestured out long ways. "I slept on it. It's a decent bed." He considered me. "You're taller than me, but…"

I was a lot bigger than Paladin in general. Bigger shoulders, bigger hands, just… bigger.

But I was tired as all fuck. I could sleep on a bean bag chair. Whatever.

I trudged up the stairs, yawning.

She was standing in the hallway when I got up there.

"Clementine," I said, stunned.

"Hey," she said. "Kestrel's asleep. I didn't know where you and Paladin were. I was thinking about going looking for you guys."

"We were switching off the watch," I said. "We put Red and Griff in separate rooms down there."

"What about their mates?"

"Oh, the mates opted to stay with them," I said. That made zero sense to me, though.

"Okay," she said, nodding.

"You got a place to curl up and sleep?" I said.

"Yeah," she said.

"Okay, good. Just relax, okay? Get some rest. Is this the room?" I pointed. "I'll be in here on the bean bag chair, and if you need anything—"

"Come to my bed?"

I hesitated.

She seized my hand. "Just come on, Lazarus," and she yanked on me.

I was too startled to fight.

We got back to the room, and she shut the door and climbed back into the bed. She patted the space next to her. "Lie down."

Tell her no , I admonished myself.

"Lazarus that bean bag chair is not big enough for you, now lie down ."

Damn it all to hell. I tugged off my shirt and crawled into the bed with her. I was still in the sweats we'd gotten from Liam's place, no boxers.

She lay her head on my chest, and I put my arm around her. She pulled the covers over us. "Turn out the light," she said, and she yawned.

I turned out the light.

She squirmed in against me.

I got a fucking erection. Inwardly, I swore at it, angry, helpless. Hopefully, she would not notice. I couldn't help it, anyway. I wasn't going to do anything with it. I didn't even want to do anything with it.

She ran her hand up and down my chest, sighing.

This did nothing to stop my cock from being so hard.

She kept doing it. Every time she trailed her hand down my chest, it went lower. She touched my stomach and then lower than my stomach, and I tried to reach out and stop her, and I didn't do it. What the fuck was wrong with me?

Eventually, she had her hand on my dick. She found it all hard and ready for her, and she made this happy little noise in the back of her throat and wrapped her little fist around it and squeezed. "Hi there," she breathed.

"Don't do that," I choked. Stop her. Remove her hand from your genitals, for fuck's sake.

She let go of me. "Oh. Sorry." She sounded really embarrassed. She scooted away from me, to the other side of the bed. Now we weren't even touching.

Fuck!

I needed to say something to reassure her, so that she knew that I wasn't rejecting her, but that also I was not in this bed with her to take sexual advantage of her the night after she'd been violated. I tried to think of the perfect thing to communicate both of those things, but what I actually said was, "Why would you do that?"

She laughed that same laugh she'd laughed downstairs on the porch—harsh and bright and bitter.

"I'm sorry," I said immediately. "Fuck, Clementine, I am so sorry."

"You're always sorry," she said darkly.

I pushed aside the covers and started to get out of the bed.

"You're leaving now?"

"I knew it was a bad idea to come in here," I said in a gruff voice. "I don't know why I did it at all."

"Don't," she said. "Don't go. Stay, please."

I hesitated, half in the bed and half out.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I guess it was fucked-up of me, but I just thought… I thought it would help. I thought it would help me feel better about it. I just want to blot the whole thing out, like it didn't happen, and if you… if we… I would have asked Paladin, because he was the gentle one, but then Paladin isn't the gentle one, and… I'm sorry. Just stay, though, please."

"‘It' means…" I couldn't say the words out loud.

"Yeah," she said. "It does mean that."

"You could, uh, you could talk about what happened to you."

"I don't want to."

"Fair," I said. I settled back into the bed. "I get that. I, uh, don't totally like to talk about things like that either."

"Right, because it's happened to all of you out here," she said, rolling over to look at me.

"Me less," I said. "I'm older and bigger and it works for me. It's a protection in and of itself. I use that, when I can, to protect the others."

"But it has happened."

"Not, uh, not in wolf form," I said. "Not more than one at once. Not when I'm, you know, in your body. There were times I didn't fight because I needed to let people do things to me or else, you know, I didn't have a place to stay or food or shit— "

"Jesus," she whispered.

I rolled over to face her. "Yeah, it's been bad here." I surveyed her. "Still, whatever you went through—"

"You've all had it worse than me," she said.

"What the fuck? No, we have not."

"You shifted into an animal, did violence to people you cared about, were shunned from society, sent to a hellscape of monsters who used you and hurt you, were forced to live in this trauma world where you barely even can survive, and all the time, every full moon, you lose control of yourself and are compelled to go and do sexual violence to women, which probably makes you feel guilty and confused. You're victims and perpetrators all at the same time. Hard to know how to feel about any of it, I imagine."

I swallowed. "Okay, yeah, but… there are compensations. Being a wolf, it's awful, but it does mean you're really fucking strong and terrifying."

"You have power," she whispered. "I'm powerless."

"Not powerless," I said. "You have power over me ."

"Manipulative power," she muttered. "Like Paladin was saying."

"No," I said. "I don't feel manipulated."

"Never mind," she said. "This isn't helping. What would help is if I could just climb up here, straddle you, and ride your hard dick. Can I?"

My dick, somehow, was still hard. "No!"

She was hurt. She tucked into herself.

"That's not actually going to help," I said gently.

"It would so," she said.

I mean, it seemed to work for Kestrel and Paladin, so what the fuck did I know? Maybe I even understood. If she took control of her sexuality, if she could choose what she did with her body, if she could give it to me instead of letting someone take it against her will, maybe that made her feel strong or healed. Maybe that gave her back her agency. "Okay," I said. "Maybe. But I can't ."

"Oh," she said in a different voice.

"I don't know why, and maybe it's dumb— "

"No, you don't have to do anything at all," she said. "I didn't mean to pressure you. If you don't want to—"

"It's not that I don't want you ," I said. "Do you get that? Because you're perfect. Everything about you is perfect. It's just about timing. It's… not now."

"What about…? Snuggling? Like we were? Is that okay?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes, as long as you don't mind."

"No, of course I don't mind," she said and dove back into my arms.

I held onto her for dear life, clutching her against me, and she was pressed up into my erection, and these jolts went through me, but weirdly, they didn't feel sexual. They just felt like safety or home or something, like acceptance and goodness and love.

My eyes stung. "Why?" I said. "Why don't you want to leave?"

She laughed. "I can't leave anymore, you dumbass."

"No, you fucking can. You should, even. We're— this place —it's bad for you."

"It's worth it," she said, snuggling into my chest. "You're worth it, Lazarus."

Fuck that. Fuck that bullshit. How could she even say that? A tear slid out of one of my eyes, into the pillow. I hoped she didn't notice.