Chapter Text
Something was different.
Peter opened his eyes and stared unseeing at the ceiling. The house was restful around him, but it didn’t shake the feeling of something being amiss. If anything, it heightened it, seeping under his skin as a persistent itch he couldn’t exactly locate.
Silently, he pushed himself to sit up in the bed and cocked his head, extending his senses out from the house and into the woods, but he heard no warning calls, no ominous silence, nothing. The woods around the house were calm, filled with the usual sounds of birds and wildlife.
And yet.
He frowned and turned his head a fraction, as if trying to catch a fleeting shadow from the corner of his eye. It annoyed him, the odd sense of something lurking just out of his reach, taunting and calling for him. It made him restless in a way he hadn’t been in a long time.
It would’ve been nice to stay in bed but Peter knew himself too well to try. He would just be annoyed and twist and turn around, unable to relax. So, he got up and stretched, arching his back and neck until he heard a series of satisfying pops, and, foregoing clothes, padded into the kitchen downstairs to start the coffee. The worn planks were warm under his bare feet and they creaked softly when he stepped on the one particular step.
Talia had nagged at him about it the last time she’d come over. Peter hadn’t bothered with fixing it—after all, there was nothing wrong with the floor per se, and vocal floor boards were hardly a thing to fuss about.
Then again, his floor wasn’t the only thing Talia disapproved of.
He left the coffee machine on to do its thing and walked to the door and opened it to let the cool morning breeze in. It had rained at night and the air was heavy with the scent of earth and pine needles. Closing his eyes, he drew a long breath and held it in before slowly letting it out and extending his senses outwards. The woods around his house were heavily warded and he jumped from one rune to another, going over his morning routine with an ease born of years of practice. Everything seemed to be as it was supposed to be until he brushed over the edge of his territory and collided with a presence he’d never felt before.
Peter swayed on his feet as he blinked his eyes open and slowly cocked his head. The presence called for him, pulled him towards the east with an insistent tug that wasn’t to be denied.
”What are you?” he mused aloud.
The woods didn’t answer.
The coffee machine beeped, startling him out of his thoughts. He shook his head to clear his mind, padded into the kitchen to pour himself a cup, and made his way to the porch.
He had built his house at a remote location and the uninhabited woods around him stretched miles and miles in every direction. It was just like Peter preferred. He wasn’t what one would call a people person, and he’d long since discovered he and his Alpha were on best terms when there was enough distance in between them. And by ’enough’ he meant several states.
He lived alone by his own choosing and, contrary to the old werewolf lore, he didn’t go mad without his pack—it was said pack instead of solitude that had the ability to drive him insane. Add in his sister’s ruthless way of leading and Peter’s reluctance to submit to her rule, and the whole situation was a homicide waiting to happen.
It truly was better for everyone that he’d left.
He downed his coffee and returned inside to rinse the cup. After a cursory glance around the house to check everything was as it should be, he walked out and locked the door behind him, dropping the key into the deer skull on the left side of the door. His fingers brushed gently along its curve, the bone silky smooth under his skin. After all these years, the protective runes were practically invisible to a naked eye, but he felt the power of it thrumming just under his fingers.
Peter nodded to himself. As always, the skull would guard his home while he was away.
He stopped at the edge of the porch, raised his head towards the sky, and scented the air. The crisp morning air filled his lungs and he closed his eyes, letting the forest fill him. He stood unmoving, poised for a moment and then lunged forward in one smooth move, Shifting in the air and landing on his forepaws in an almost silent thump.
Shifting had always come easy for him. It was a living, breathing current that flowed through him in an effortless cycle. They coexisted in a perfect harmony, his wolf side and him.
Talia used to roll her eyes and call him a peacock and a show-off, but she’d never had the same fluidity as Peter. Perhaps it was because Peter had never shied away from the fact that he was an apex predator and completely in sync with his wolf side, whereas Talia had preferred the cool and collected humanity. It was odd because of the two of them, Talia was the one more open about her dual nature. Even since werewolves had come out, she’d been pushing for more exposure, for peaceful coexistence, and were-friendly politics. Peter, on the other hand, had held on to his suspicious nature and stayed in the shadows.
Or course, she was also the one running for office, while Peter preferred running in the woods.
Even though it had been more than three decades since his first Shift, it never ceased to amaze him how everything changed. He lost the colors but gained such a vivid world of sounds and scents that he didn’t even miss the colors. In his wolf form, he felt nature on a more visceral level—he didn’t have to think about where to go; he just ran, enjoying the rush of wind through his fur and the crunch of leaves under his paws. Sometimes, he enjoyed it so much that he ended up spending whole days as a wolf, frolicking around like a cub.
But this time, Peter wasn’t enjoying himself. He turned around slowly, going a full circle, pinpointing the pull like a beacon calling for him. He cast one last look behind him, shook himself, and started to run.
The woods knew Peter in his both forms. He’d lived there for almost a decade and dedicated his energy in taking care of his territory, patrolling it for weeks at a time and carving numerous protective and healing wards all around. Over the years, he had pledged himself to the woods as he’d poured his energy in the sigils and the woods had recognized him as its ward and protector. And now, it responded to his urgency, easing his way.
He lost himself in the easy movement, the tireless lope of the wolf, and came out of it only when he reached the edge of his territory. The pull was still there, tugging him forward, but he slowed down and stopped by the border wards, and gave a long, hard look at the looming shapes in the distance.
This wasn’t a part of the woods he usually visited—mostly because it was quite far from his house and because it was too close to the abandoned chemical factories left behind by some human corporation that didn’t want to clean up their own mess.
Peter lifted his snout and sniffed. The air was crisp and clear, carrying just a hint of a tangy sourness from the factories under the lush scent of the forest. The pull in his chest was almost palpable now and his eyes zeroed on a small hill not far from where he was.
There.
The forest around him was quiet, like it was holding its breath. Peter bared his teeth in a silent snarl and lowered down, creeping forward like a ghost, barely making a sound. He inched past the last wards of his territory and flattened himself against the ground as he made his way along a wall of thick bushes and up the hill, ignoring the slight discomfort of leaving his territory behind.
When he reached the top of the small hill, he stopped.
Peculiar.
In the ditch just under the hill was a form that looked like a man. A very naked man.
Peter cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. By the frantic heartbeat, the man was alive even if just barely. Carefully, he scented the air and bit back a sneeze at the thick cloud of chemicals that almost managed to cover a cloying stink of desperation, death, and blood. And something else.
Keeping his eyes on the man, Peter rested his head on his front paws.
It was obvious that the man wasn’t human. The scent was different from anything Peter had encountered before but it was hard to get a good reading from under the mess of everything else. Out of curiosity, he let a controlled sliver of Shift bleed through him, just enough to change his eyes back to human. As the colors flooded back, he watched the man; took in the pale, almost opaque skin and a tuft of dark hair. And blood.
So much blood.
His ears twitched as the man let out a muffled whimper and jerked as if trying to move forward. Peter realized the man must have been crawling for some time if the blood and drag marks on the ground were anything to go by.
He also realized the man was apparently missing a foot.
Before he even realized what he was doing, Peter had started creeping closer. He hardly made a sound but somehow, the man heard him anyway and he swayed as a thick wall of pure panic hit him in the nose.
The man let out a wet, desperate sound. It was more like whimpering than words but the intent was clear: he was begging for his life with the resigned tone of someone who was sure he was going to die anyway.
Peter shook his head to clear it, gritted his teeth, and moved steadily forward.
The closer he got, the better he saw the pitiful stage the man was in. He was far too thin, with an expanse of pale skin stretched over sharp bones, a left ankle that had been gnawed through (by whom?), and the back of his neck torn open and bleeding. Along his spine ran a jagged ridge that Peter couldn’t make much of—there was just too much grime and blood.
When Peter moved around to see his face, his eyes were half-mast, unseeing pools of luminescent gold. He’d fallen silent, his body limp with exhaustion and blood loss. If it wasn’t the erratically beating heart, Peter would’ve thought him dead.
For a moment, he contemplated leaving the man there and going on with his own business. It would be easier and cause him far less trouble. But he knew he wouldn’t do it—the man bore too many signs of abuse and torture and he was running for his life.
And Peter was old enough to remember what life had been when the supernatural creatures had been hunted.
After some calculating and careful planning, Peter decided to stay in his wolf form. He grabbed the man by the hair and started dragging him southwest, away from his territory and towards a stream he remembered passing at some point during his rounds. The hair was filthy and tasted just as bad as it smelled, but Peter didn’t have a choice. The man was naked and dragging him by the hair would do less damage than dragging him by the throat, and Shifting into his human form would be far too risky.
When he finally reached the stream, Peter’s jaw was cramping and his neck ached from the awkward angle. He dragged the man over the bank and into the stream and propped him up so that he wouldn’t drown and Shifted before he started rubbing them clean, trying to get rid of the grime and blood. The man was light and fragile under his palms, a long-limbed form of bones and sinewy muscle, skin mottled with an array of moles. His breathing was shallow and he felt too hot, like he was burning up. Worried, Peter glanced at the mutilated ankle. The wound was likely infected but there was nothing he could do about it now.
When he was done, he held the man upright so that his chest was above the water and let out a claw. He cut a ward on his own chest and used his blood to draw a similar on the man’s skin. He knew from experience that even though the cut on his chest healed in seconds, the ward itself would stay active for a couple of hours. It would be long enough to throw potential pursuers off their trail until they were safely back in his own territory again.
He picked the man up in a bridal carry and followed the stream for a couple of miles before climbing up the bank in a rocky place and headed towards his own territory, keeping up a steady but careful pace. His wards wouldn’t do shit if he acted like a cub and left their possible pursuers an easy trail to follow.
Besides, as soon as they finally crossed to his territory, Peter could pick up speed.
When they reached his house, the man was silent in his arms, barely breathing. As he opened the front door, Peter wished he had better manners than dying after all the trouble he’d gone through to get him to safety.
He carried the man into his bedroom and took a look at his bed. He hadn’t bothered making it before leaving which meant the silk cover was safely bundled on the chair by the wall, but his sheets were going to be ruined.
Oh, well.
Peter sighed and gently laid the man on the bed to wait while he went to the bathroom to get the first aid kit and a stack of towels. And pants.
Being a werewolf meant rapid healing, but getting seriously injured was still annoying. After an especially bloody encounter with a pain-crazed wild boar, Peter had started carrying around a first aid kit wherever he went. Talia used to make fun of him, calling him vain and soft, but Peter didn’t care. For him, it was about practicality: Why bleed all over his clothes if he had a way to prevent it?
Once, when his niece and nephew had argued, Laura had thrown Derek through the living room window which had torn his arm badly. Peter had needed to clean off all the glass shards and bind the sinewy mess of a limb before Derek’s healing had kicked in. After that, Talia never mocked his first aid kits again.
Peter plopped the kit on the bed, spread several towels under the mutilated ankle, and gave it a considering look.
There was a tight string woven out of some sort of long grass around the calf, which was probably the only reason the man hadn’t completely bled out. Using his old belt as a tourniquet, Peter tightened it before he carefully snuck a claw under the grass string to snap it off. The torn ankle started to bleed sluggishly right away, but Peter didn’t stop it, figuring it would probably be good to let the stump bleed a bit.
He kept a close ear on the steady, fluttering heartbeat as he washed the blood away with saline solution and took a closer look at the way the bone had been severed. There were teeth marks all over and the stump as a whole was a complete mess, but otherwise it seemed and smelled clean. Then again, just because Peter didn’t smell a trace of mistletoe or wolfsbane slowly poisoning him, didn’t mean there wasn’t something else slowly poisoning him.
But all he could do was to wait.
By the short inspection, Peter had no idea what animal had attacked the man but whatever it had been, it was quite big. He memorized the teeth marks and made a mental note to look into it later, half-heartedly considering which bestiary to start with. He spread an even layer of antibiotic cream on the stump and bound it with clean bandages. He wasn’t sure what good it did—if the man had the same healing abilities as Peter’s kind, the bandages were mostly to keep the sheets clean and hold the tissue together until the healing factor kicked in. If he was more like a regular human…
Well, if the leg got infected, there was a small chance he’d live.
When he was done with the leg, Peter gently turned the man to his side to take a better look at his neck and back and drew in a sharp breath. The man’s neck was torn open as if something—someone—had tried to claw their way inside. Peter shook his head in disbelief and made sure to clean up the wound as well as he could before treating it with the same antibiotic cream as the leg.
The urgent injuries handled, Peter took a long and calculating look at the man’s back. There was a strange ridge that ran along the spine and thick, white scars right over his shoulder blades that went parallel to his ribs. There was something disturbingly familiar about them, something he was sure he should know.
He frowned and adjusted the man’s position and put a pillow under the injured leg to keep it slightly elevated before covering him with a blanket. He gathered up the soiled towels and bandages and took them outside to the fire pit, poured a generous amount of lighting fluid on them and lit it. The flames blazed high and nearly singed his eyebrows as he watched with a strange kind of satisfaction as the blood was swallowed into the fire.
He stayed outside for just long enough to add wood to the fire to make it look more like a genuine fire pit instead of a place to get rid of questionable stuff. Even though he knew nothing would get past his wards, habit made him take a cursory glance around before going back inside.
Time for more coffee and studying.
Because he had an almost eidetic memory, it didn’t take Peter long to find what he was looking for.
”Interesting,” he murmured, staring at a picture of a man with opaque skin, dark hair, and a ridge running along his spine. The striking difference to the man currently sleeping in Peter’s bed was the fact that not only did the man in the picture have both of his legs intact, he also had wings. Big, dark, leathery wings that rose high above his head, complete with sharp claws.
An incubus.
Peter had a sex demon in his bed.
Considering said demon’s current state, it didn’t sound nearly as promising as one might have thought.
The book stated that incubi were long extinct and since Peter had never heard anyone talking about them, he was inclined to believe it was true. Supernatural creatures tended to stay hidden unless they had a valid reason not to, and sex demons weren’t perhaps the easiest to come terms with by the general population.
So where had this one come from?
And, more importantly, what the hell had happened to him?
He was jerked from his thoughts when he heard a pained noise from his bedroom. When he entered the room, the incubus was barely awake and whimpering in pain. Peter hurried to his side and sat on the edge of the mattress, but when he reached out to touch the injured leg, the demon cried out and tried to curl away.
”Shh,” Peter hushed. ”Just relax.”
His soothing didn’t work out as he hoped: The incubus’s scent went from pain to full-blown panic and he hurled himself to the side and would’ve fallen on the floor if Peter hadn’t grabbed his leg.
Unfortunately, it was the injured leg.
The incubus let out a scream of agony and lashed out, clawing at his chest and biting Peter on the arm.
He let out a startled yelp but didn’t let go. With a growl, he heaved the incubus back and pinned him on the mattress with his bulk. It was an awkward position and probably painful as hell, considering that Peter had jostled the injured leg. But in his defense, he had a mouthful of sharp teeth embedded in his arm.
”I’m not going to hurt you,” he snarled through his fangs which, well, probably wasn’t very comforting.
The effect was instantaneous. The incubus’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open and with a relieved breath, Peter yanked his arm out of harm’s way. The incubus was still gaping at Peter, giving him a very different reason to snarl.
Someone had removed the incubus’s tongue.
Peter closed his eyes and resisted the urge to howl. He wasn’t a soft-hearted man and he rarely felt for others, but this…this wasn’t just random violence. This was torture. This was someone executing extreme brutality on someone and now that Peter knew his houseguest’s species, he had a nauseating feeling he knew why the incubus had run.
With a considerable effort, he forced himself to calm down. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed and said quietly, ”I know what you are. I thought your kind was extinct.”
The demon let out a desolate sound and turned his head to the side. The sound was so painfully lonely that it clenched something inside Peter, made him ache for the man.
”I’m sorry,” he said, even though he knew it was a cold comfort. He glanced at the injured ankle and frowned when he saw they were soaked through. ”Are you in pain?” he asked and then continued, slowly, ”Can you understand me?”
The resulting look he received was full of contempt and despite himself, Peter snorted.
”Good to have that sorted out. Now, I need to change your bandages before you ruin my bed. Please don’t bite me again.”
The incubus gave him a narrowed look that promised nothing. He glanced at Peter’s arm and blinked when the teeth marks had stopped bleeding.
”Yes, well. I’m a werewolf. We heal,” Peter said wryly as he unwrapped the stump. And then he froze.
The teeth marks on the stump looked a lot like the teeth marks on his arm.
He looked from the stump to his arm and then back at the stump.
”Did you—” he asked, swallowed back bile, and tried again. ”Did you gnaw through your own leg?”
The incubus didn’t answer, just stared at him, tense.
”What the hell happened to you?” Peter muttered and shook his head, concentrating on rinsing and re-binding the stump.
When he was satisfied with the bandages, he took a critical look at the incubus. He was still tense but he was also pallid from exhaustion and what Peter figured was quite a lot of pain.
”I can take your pain if you let me,” he said quietly and slowly, very slowly, reached out to touch the incubus on the leg just under his knee. The skin was warm and smooth and Peter thought his fingers curled around the calf quite nicely.
The incubus flinched at the contact but even though he smelled afraid, he didn’t try to get away.
”I don’t want anything from you,” Peter said. ”Just lie still and I’ll take away your pain.” Without waiting for a reaction, he closed his eyes and called forth the pain, asking it to come forth.
At first, nothing happened.
Then it flooded into him, painted his veins black and lit his bones on fire. He grunted at the burning agony from the torn ankle and the throbbing of the neck and felt the phantom pain of the lost foot. There was also a bone-deep emotional pain Peter had no idea how to handle, but he took it into himself anyway, drawing as much as he could and gritted his teeth under the weight of it.
Finally, when he could take no more, he let go with a gasp and opened his eyes and saw the incubus looking at him with his eyes almost closed, high on endorphins.
Peter swayed as he got up and lurched towards the bathroom to throw up. He didn’t remember the last time he had reacted so viscerally to pain drain, and he couldn’t even begin to understand why he did it now. He vomited until he was dry heaving and his sweat mixed with the tears on his cheeks, but he couldn’t get the ashen taste of the incubus’s grief and rage out of his mouth.
Gripping the sink so hard his knuckles turned white, he haphazardly rinsed his mouth and splashed cold water on his face before stumbling into the bedroom. The incubus didn’t move as he crawled beside him and passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow.
He didn’t remember to wonder what had happened to the pulling in his chest.