This story is fictional, I'm sorry (actually I'm jelous) if it resembles your life in any way shape or form. Constructive criticism is welcome. If gay relationships offend you, then "How did I manage to start reading this story?" is a good question to be asking yourself. However you're still welcome to read it!
This story is owned solely by Gaco and may not be copied by any means by any unlicensed individuals, groups, or organizations.
Copyright 2020 Gaco. All Rights Reserved.
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Chapter 25
I woke the next morning in Bryce's arms, as he carried me up the stairs.
"Morning." I greeted him groggily.
"Morning yourself, sexy beast." He grinned at me.
"Um. Sexy beast?" I asked. "That one's new."
"I figured it fits, after last night." Bryce chuckled.
My eyes widened. Once again, I did not remember anything that happened during the full moon. Less than last time, actually.
"I uh... I wasn't exactly there last night..." I mentioned unsurely. "What happened?"
"I wondered." Bryce laughed. "You were extremely animalistic. Your wolf was incredibly vicious with that guy."
"Neither of us liked him or the things he said..." I said, remembering the previous morning. "He said he killed his son for being gay. Said he enjoyed his screams."
"Wow that's pretty fucked up." Bryce said softly, and let the conversation drop when he noticed I was uncomfortable with the topic.
"What's the plan for today?" I asked as he set me down in the bathroom.
"Shower, planning the attack more, preparing everyone and all of the gear we're going to need, and I have to return to pick up some more supplies from Justin's arms dealer friend." Bryce said as we got into the shower.
"I thought you got everything we needed yesterday?" I asked.
"He had to custom build one of the special requests we asked for." He answered. "He wasn't sure he would be able to finish them in time but he texted me a few minutes ago saying it would be ready by noon."
"And?" I asked, curious. "What's the big secret special request?"
"Grenades made out of silver." He answered, turning to me with a massive grin.
"Holy shit." I answered. "That could be devastating."
"It was his idea, actually, after we explained what was happening." Bryce said. "He managed to guess parts of what was happening when we had to ask a few questions about what we needed. Justin trusts him so we explained the situation and he suggested them."
After we had both managed to get clean, between bouts of grinding against each other in the tight confines of the shower, we dried off and headed back to the bedroom.
"After breakfast we need to go over the plan again." Bryce said as we dressed.
Once we were all settled around the table Bryce began.
"We hit them tonight after eleven. Everyone already knows their jobs and positions. We take out anyone who puts up any resistance. We don't know how many people Seth has with him, but he's come after us twice now and we can't afford to allow him to hit us here again. We're too exposed for a fight in broad daylight, and even at night we would risk exposure even just defending ourselves. We would be completely defenseless if they got smart and attempted to burn down the house with us in it. The plan is to go in with the weapons we have all been training with. We have suppressors, and the area is secluded enough at night that the shots should be quiet enough to not arouse attention. Since I want to make sure we get them all, allow anyone arriving after we've started to get inside the perimeter, but no one leaves. At least one person with each group should stay human the entire time, so we always have someone with comms. I'm guessing at some point Tom and I will both shift to deal with any threat we can't otherwise bring down. Any questions?" Bryce looked around the table.
Justin leaned forward. "What do we do if we lose contact with a group?"
Bryce grimaced. "If it's my group, do not enter the building. If you haven't heard from us after two hours return here to the den. If it's you, John, or Zeke, we go looking."
"Should we take anyone out as soon as they're inside the perimeter if anyone comes in after we've started?" Zeke asked.
"If they act hostile, take them out, otherwise just stay out of sight and observe. I'd prefer not to let them know we're watching the only exit if we don't have to." Bryce nodded.
"What do we do if the police arrive?" John asked immediately after Bryce finished.
"Justin has some security guard uniforms." Bryce replied. "If you can, dissuade them from entering the area. Tell them it's private property and that you have received no reports of any problems. If that doesn't work, use the tranquilizer."
"Anything else?" Bryce asked when no one else came forward for a moment.
Everyone shook their heads in the negative.
"Alright. Tom and Justin are going to begin checking and laying out our gear. I've got to go pick up a package from Justin's still nameless arms dealer friend." Bryce said with a glare to Justin. "Why do I still not know his name after all the money we've given him in the past month?"
"He's a private guy." Justin shrugged. "I figure you not knowing his name is a small price to pay for access to what he sells. I know his name, history, and know he's trustworthy. He'll share more when he's ready."
Bryce growled but said nothing more on the subject. "I'll be leaving soon to pick up the final supplies we need. The rest of you should try to relax or sleep while we wait for tonight."
Everyone stood and left the kitchen leaving Bryce and me alone.
"I'll be back soon, and after tonight we'll have one less thing to worry about." Bryce said, taking me into his arms. "I love you pup."
I grinned up at him and leaned in for a kiss.
"I love you too." I said after we broke the kiss. "Be safe."
He nodded and walked into the garage. A few moments later I heard his car crank and the garage door open. I headed to the basement where I knew the gun safes were located.
"Bryce head out?" Justin asked as I walked up.
I watched for a few moments as he continued to pull rifles out of the safe that was closest to the stairs.
"Yeah, he just left." I answered as I sat down next to one of the towels that were laid on the floor.
Justin handed me a rifle that I quickly broke down and inspected. We continued to inspect each gun we planned to use that night. Just as I was finishing the last rifle I gasped in pain, hand to my chest. I collapsed onto my side as pain wracked my body. The only thing I could hear was my own screaming in my ears as it felt like my chest had been crushed by a truck. I gasped for air unable to breathe as my wolf clawed and tore at the inside of my mind wildly with no clear target. Suddenly the pain stopped entirely.
"Tom!" Justin yelled into my ear and I tried to pull away. "What happened? Are you OK?"
I looked over my body, looking for blood or anything to explain the cause of the pain.
"It's over. The pain is gone. It felt like I was hit by a truck and then it was just..." I trailed off, realizing what else was missing, and the source of the pain.
"Oh fuck." I began to sob as I curled into a ball. "It's gone."
"If it's gone why are you crying?" Zeke asked, and I realized that everyone in the house had come down into the basement.
"My connection to Bryce." I wept as tears continued to roll down my cheeks. "It's missing. I can't feel him anymore. He was the source of the pain. We have to find him!"
Justin put one hand on my chest to keep me on the floor and used his other hand to fish his phone out of his pocket. He tapped the screen a few times and dialed Bryce on speaker phone. The phone rang repeatedly before eventually going to voicemail. Justin immediately dialed back. The entire pack continued to attempt to call as I laid on the floor unable to stop the tears. The emotional pain of our missing link was as bad as the physical pain I was feeling before it was severed.
My wolf demanded we go find our mate and after a few more failed attempts to call I stood and headed for the stairs.
"Woah woah, where are you going?" Justin grabbed my arm, holding me in place.
"I'm going to find my mate!" I growled loudly as I stared at his hand gripping my arm.
"We can't leave." Justin said softly. "We don't know what's happening, we can't leave if we don't know it's safe, or if it's safe to leave the others here."
"Release my arm, now." I snarled and my vision flared red.
Justin snatched his hand back quickly as if he had been burned. I charged up the stairs and made it to the front door. I could feel the house around me shaking. My wolf was fighting for control and my hands were shifting back and forth between human and wolf.
"Tom." Zeke's frightened whisper stopped me when no shout possibly could have.
I turned to Zeke in question, my hand resting on the handle of the front door.
"Don't go." He whimpered. "Please. The last time you and Bryce left and something like this happened... I... I don't think I could go through anything like that again."
Remembering what happened to Zeke when the den was attacked instantly deflated my rage. I noticed absently as I went to pull the smallest of our pack into my arms that the shaking and vibrating of the house had stopped. I suddenly remembered the prophecy that Zeke mentioned the previous week.
"Zeke...?" I began, unsure if I wanted to know the answer to the question I had yet to voice. "What exactly did the prophecy say about the red-eyed wolf, about his mate?"
Zeke shuddered and I had a feeling that he, too, had made the connection.
Zeke pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. It was wrinkled and beginning to become soft as if he had been carrying it in his pocket for weeks. I stared at the words on the page.
Unto the ages he shall return, a wolf with eyes of crimson burn. The scent of chaos in his wake, to bond in love with a cursed mate. From this curse his mate shall be taken, then the beast shall truly awaken. Before they bond do what you must, lest turn the world to ash and dust. Destroyer of Worlds he shall be known, if ye not tear him flesh from bone.
I looked up from the sheet to Zeke's eyes, unable to form words as I contemplated what I had read. I could see in his eyes that he believed Bryce was dead. A spike of anger had me crushing the slip of paper in my hand which had shifted into a massive paw.
"No." I growled finally and the paper began to smolder.
Zeke backed away a few steps and I realized he was afraid of me. The lance of pain this caused in my heart triggered my hand to shift back to human. I had come to see myself as Zeke's protector since the attack. I could not bear to see the fright in his eyes and I pushed down the rage that had been building since I realized the mate bond was missing. I closed my eyes and rubbed at the bite Bryce had given me, the only scar that now marred my skin.
"I'm sorry." I said to Zeke, sadness dripping from my voice as I opened my eyes to look at him again.
I owed Bryce for protecting me from Seth, for giving me a home after I had been turned, and for giving me all of his love even if for so short a time. I knew I was the strongest in this pack now, and I think Bryce knew as well. He would have wanted me to protect his pack, his family.
"Traffic cameras caught..." Justin ran into the room but stopped abruptly and looked between us. "What smells like burnt paper?"
I opened my clenched hand and showed him the blackened bits of paper that were left inside.
"That's... An interesting trick." He said after a moment, rubbing the hand he had touched me with earlier.
"Should I be going to get a fire extinguisher?" He asked, only half joking.
"I'm good." I said calmly, focusing on my new mission of protecting the pack.
"Our wolves." My wolf pushed into my mind with a fierce growl.
I could tell my wolf was still on a knife's edge of rampaging, but he too felt protective over the pack, over our wolves. We agreed to stay lucid, to stay sane, for no other reason than to protect those we both loved as family. Those who no longer had Bryce to protect them.
"What did the traffic cameras catch?" I asked, feeling my teeth with my tongue. There were far too many for my human mouth, and far too sharp.
Justin paused for a moment, grimacing, before deciding to speak.
"It doesn't look good." He started. "A friend with access to the city cameras pulled this video a few minutes ago."
Justin handed me his phone and I clicked play on the video. I watched as a large pickup truck slammed into the front of Bryce's car. I jerked in shock at the violence of the crash. The front of his red car was crumpled nearly all the way to the dashboard. While heavily damaged, the truck fared much better. Two men stepped out of the truck with barely a limp and walked over to the driver's door of Bryce's car and yanked on it a few times before it opened. I watched as they grabbed his left arm, which appeared broken, and pulled him from the car violently. His body was covered in blood and he did not appear to be breathing.
Zeke poked me and I realized that I could smell smoke. I looked around the room and noticed that the small table I was standing next to was smoking, the varnish boiling and peeling back from the faux wood. I took a deep breath and focused on the pack, on responsibility, on family. When I handed Justin his phone, it stuck to my skin where the plastic case had started to melt to my hand. With a hard tug it broke free and took some of the skin with it causing me to wince in pain.
"We should probably get that figured out before you go all pyro on us." Justin said softly, removing what was left of the case from his phone.
"We're still going after Seth tonight." I demanded with a harsh growl. "I have no doubt he was behind that. I won't be able to control my wolf if he doesn't get some measure of revenge."
"Agreed." Justin said. "He is still a threat to our pack and we have a score to settle. I'll get back to work downstairs. See if you can't figure out whatever it is that's going on with you."
Justin walked out without waiting for an answer, which rankled my wolf as he had begun to see the pack structure with me at the top.
"Can I help?" Zeke distracted me from my rising anger.
"Sure." I said, happy he distracted me. "Where do you suggest we start."
"Well, we know for sure that you cause at least two different effects. The first we noticed days ago, your whole earthquake thing. The second just manifested today with your new heat accidents." Zeke said, and I was surprised at how logical he was going about this, as well as how calm he was about the situation.
"Right." I agreed.
"Well, they both seem to be connected to your emotions. See if you can do something. No wait!" Zeke grabbed my hand and pulled me to the kitchen.
He dug around in the pantry for a moment before returning with small tealight candles. He set three of them out in front of me.
"Well? Go ahead and try to light them!" He said with excitement, looking towards me with anticipation glowing in his eyes.
I focused on the candle on the left. I imagined the tip of the wick bursting into flames, and focused all of my will on that thought as I stared intently at the candle. Nothing happened.
"Are you trying?" Zeke said after a few minutes.
I explained what I had been doing.
"Well..." He began. "It definitely seemed to happen more when you got upset earlier. It must require the emotional component."
I focused again on the candle, imagining it burst into flames the same as before. This time, however, I also remembered the video of Bryce's car being hit by the truck and his body being dragged out. It wasn't enough that they had to kill my mate, but they also had to take his body to do god knows what.
"Oh shit!" Zeke exclaimed before dashing over to the sink and using the spray nozzle to hose down the suddenly flaming dish towel that had been sitting on the opposite side of the island.
"Oops!" I said with a half-hearted chuckle.
"I guess that was a little too much emotion." I added sadly after Zeke got the flames under control.
"Bryce?" He asked, walking back over to my side of the island and looking at the three candles that were now lit.
I nodded and blew out the candles as tears came unbidden to my eyes.
"They already killed him." I sobbed. "Why take his body too?"
"Seth's a controlling asshole." He said softly. "He probably wanted proof."
I laid my head in my hands, unable to stop the playback of the video in my mind over and over.
"It's uh... Getting a little hot in here, Tom." Zeke said after a moment.
"Oh. Right. Sorry..." I said, righting myself and focusing once again on the pack, the need to protect them, family.
"You guys are the only thing holding me together." I said to Zeke after I got myself under control.
"If it wasn't for the pack, if it weren't for you stopping me before I made it out the door..." I left the rest unspoken, we had both read the prophecy and knew what the outcome would have been.
Seemingly sensing the direction of my thoughts, Zeke spoke again.
"I did some research on the Destroyer of Worlds name..." He began, seemingly unsure if I would be interested.
I nodded to him in encouragement. I had learned that Zeke was excellent at finding information and doing research.
"I found that it was originally a title given to Vishnu, a supreme being in the Hindu religion." Zeke leaned down onto the island, clearly comfortable in his element. "Well, an avatar of Vishnu anyway, the avatar was generally a force for good. He destroyed civilizations just as easily as he created them anew. He would often appear to fight evil forces, was a symbol of truth, and peace. The writings first appear over two thousand years ago. I'm curious to know which came first, the prophecy or the title for Vishnu."
"I doubt we'll ever know." I said, surprised by what he had learned in such a short time.
"Well, just stop thinking that you are evil or that you are going to destroy the world." Zeke said more forcefully than I had ever heard him speak before. "Justin may not be ready to admit it but I know it already. You're our Alpha now. We need you just as much as you need us."
I pulled him into a tight hug, grateful for both his support and his affection.
For the next several hours I attempted to light a single candle at the time. Out of over one hundred attempts I only managed to light an individual candle a total of seven times. Three of those times I had somehow lit the wrong candle, however.
We decided to take a break and found the entire pack in the entertainment room. Everyone looked depressed and, while watching tv, did not seem focused. The center seat in the couch was empty so I sat down and was pleasantly surprised when Zeke sat down on the floor in front of me between my legs. The other guys who weren't on the couch drifted over one by one to sit in front of the couch as we watched a famous chef berate the owners of a restaurant repeatedly. My wolf pushed for me to say something to cheer everyone up but I was unsure where to even begin. After a few minutes hesitation he raked my mind with his claws making me yelp in surprise. Everyone turned towards me wondering what was happening. With all their attention on me I thought I should say something so they didn't think I was crazy.
"Guys." I began. "Today has been an incredibly shitty day."
Tears began to roll down my cheeks and I was only a few words in.
"I wanted to let you all know how much I appreciate that you are all here, together right now. Just being in the same room with all of you is a balm to the jagged wound in my heart. I feel like half of my soul is missing, but knowing each of you is here for me helps fill that gap just a little."
I laid a hand on Zeke's shoulder as well as Justin's leg, who was sitting to my left and squeezed them both to gather my strength.
"I know Bryce was proud of each of you for the unique skills you brought to our pack, our family. When we would lay in bed at night he would excitedly brag to me about what amazing research Zeke did, or how incredibly supportive Justin was, or even how John kicked his ass at a video game." I continued. "He cared deeply about each of you, and I've found over the past month that so do I. I couldn't imagine my life without every one of you in it."
The guys all nodded in agreement.
"Tonight, we are going to confront Seth. We're going to kick in his front door, wreck his plans, destroy his bastardized version of a pack, and then we're going to get justice for what he did to Bryce. He attacked our pack. He took away my mate, your friend, our family. Tonight, we are going to take away his entire world." I snarled out in anger by the end.
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