Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (15 page)

Uncertain, Axton stayed at the treeline. Dana motioned him over and Axton edged forward slowly. He wasn't sure what to do.

"Mom, this is Axton," Dana said, gesturing. "Ax, this is mom."

Right. Right. Yeah.

Now Axton
really
wasn't sure what to do.

"Hi," he said helplessly. He'd never had to do this. He had literally never had to do this. How many roving wolves had he fucked in a club bathroom, like he had Dana, and had any of
them
asked him to meet their mothers? No. And while they were in different shapes, even?
Why, Dana
, why, Axton wondered,
why arrange for maximum awkwardness?
Human to human would have been mildly awkward--wolf to wolf would have been better--but wolf to human was worst.

Besides, what was he supposed to say?
Hi, your new mate seems like kind of a dick and your son wants to rip him apart?
No.
Hi, your son and I fucked a lot back in the day and now he's kidnapped me and torn me away from my human lover?
No.

"Pleased to meet you," Axton said instead, because what the hell. There was no point in being rude to Dana's mother. Besides, he'd been raised to be respectful of women in general and mothers in particular.

"Her name is Helen," Dana filled in helpfully, which was bizarre.

"I know," Axton said. Then, for lack of a better option, he nodded and added, politely as possible, "Ma'am."

Jesus fucking christ, the embarrassment was going to suffocate him.

Helen trotted forward until she could sniff Axton's fingers, looking him over. Her eyes, Axton noticed, were the exact shade of clear, icy blue that he was used to; Dana had her eyes. She licked at Axton's knuckles, apparently satisfied, and then returned to Dana, who buried his fingers in her fur.

After a moment of deliberation, Axton closed the distance and sat down next to Dana. He pet Helen's face when she nudged him, absently trailing his fingers down her snout.

"How long has she been like this?" he asked finally.

Dana said nothing for a long time, stroking the part of her fur that was thickest, around her neck.

"Years," he said eventually.

"She doesn't change back?" Axton clarified.

"Hasn't that I know of," Dana said evenly.

Axton nodded and they both looked away, politely.

"Has she gone feral?" Axton asked finally, still looking away at the treeline.

"Now, you don't say mean things about my momma," Dana said softly, scratching behind her ears, eyes downcast and focused on his task. "Not yet, I don't think. Not yet." He moved his hands to scratch under her chin, and Helen's eyes were squinty and blissful. "But who knows," Dana finished, in a whisper.

"What happened?" Axton asked. "I mean, there's usually--something--isn't there? Was it when your dad--?"

Dana shook his head.

"No, after. A long while after. I don't know what happened. I was gone at the time."

"You're gone a lot," Axton said gently.

Dana sniffed, like he was about to--like he had pollen allergies and they were acting up, Axton corrected hastily. The alternative was--no. He wasn't going to consider it.

"Yeah," Dana allowed, and then he tilted his head back to study the clouds for a while.

"You shot me to get me out of it," Axton pointed out after some time. "Have you tried that?"

Helen turned and gave him a languid look, all half lidded eyes.

"You ain't my ma, Ax, in case you hadn't noticed," Dana snorted. "No. I haven't tried that."

"Well," Axton said, and then he gave up and sighed. "I guess I can kind of understand why you shot me, now."

"Yeah," Dana said. He was stroking Helen's flank, since she had stretched out on her side. Words poured out of Dana suddenly, at almost a whisper, like a valve had popped and truth was leaking wildly: "Most packs put down ferals and we aren't alone here, we have borders, and we have envoys that come in to see us now and then, and she didn't wanna stay cooped up in a house anyway--I scouted for this place and I don't think anyone comes here, but it's always, like--what if some asshole violates pack agreements and just wanders in, and what if they see her, and...and I'm afraid of something happening to her."

Axton didn't really know what to say to that, so he buried his fingers in her fur instead.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. It was true.

"The last time I saw her two legged," Dana said, "She was saying bye to me before I left to go on another bullshit assignment. Things had got pretty bad between me and Dru, and she knew I was gonna fight him when I got back, all official like, to lead the pack--I got back and she..."

"I'm sure that's not why," Axton said quietly.

"You don't know that," Dana said. "And I don't either."

"I know that you spend a hell of a lot of time," Axton said, and he leaned forward and flicked his eyes up to Dana's face, holding his gaze, "feeling guilty for things you shouldn't."

"What sort of things?" Dana murmured, and he had to look away from Axton's eyes.

Axton looked at the side of Dana's neck and saw his pulse fluttering there, smelled the sweet anxiety his body was starting to broadcast. Christ, but Dana liked him. It was terrible. Would it give more or less weight to his words?

"Who you are. What you want. Things you can't control," Axton said, "and aren't always bad to begin with."

Dana ducked his head, closing his eyes.

"And you sure as hell don't spend enough time feeling guilty for things you
should
," Axton added, a touch aggressively because he was rattled by how vulnerable Dana seemed, how unguarded, and how emotionally intimate their conversation was.

Dana picked his head back up, eyes sly and amused in that almost callous kind of way that Axton had fallen hard for, long ago.

"Like what?" Dana asked, like he was just humoring Axton.

"Like separating me from the love of my life," Axton said sharply. "Like breaking the legs of my--like breaking the legs of someone innocent."

"Your boyfriend?" Dana said easily. "You still bitching and moaning about your beau? 'Cause let me tell you, I am plain tired of hearing about another man, sweetheart."

Axton blinked, shocked. Had Dana just--really? Did he really think his mother was so far gone that she truly couldn't understand? Axton would have never expected Dana to let something like that slip in front of anyone who could even possibly understand.

"Don't make that face," Dana said, and he was scratching under Helen's chin, since she'd sat up and they were face to face now. He looked just like any other buff guy cooing at his devoted dog. It was weird.

"What?" Axton asked, because: everything was weird.

"Mom always knew about me," Dana said. "She never minded too much. Never told Daddy, either. Don't think she approved, exactly, but Daddy, he woulda--well. I wouldn't have ended up getting off lightly with banishment, is my point."

"Lightly," Axton said sourly, but then he shrugged. "All right."

"I'm pretty sure mom's the only person to ever really love me," Dana said suddenly. "I can't risk hurting her by gunning for Dru. I just can't."

"I loved you," Axton said mildly. "Back in the day."

"Sure you did," Dana said, not uncharitably.

"No, really," Axton said. "God, Dana. I did. You broke up with me and I moved to fucking nowhere to be a hermit. I was just done."

"And then Leander," Dana said, glancing away.

"That was years later," Axton said sharply. "
Years
." He softened. "But yeah, and then Leander. And then Leander was like no one I'd ever met before."

"Are you ever gonna let him go, Ax?"

"No," Axton said simply.

Dana sighed.

"We live a long time," he pointed out.

"I'll live a hundred years," Axton said, "before I forget that man."

"We'll just be hitting middle age," Dana said, leaning back on his palms while Helen flopped down with her head in his lap. "I'm game."

"You're persistent," Axton said. "I'll give you that."

"It's not like I get to flirt with you back there," Dana said, jerking his head towards the direction they came from.

"Flirting," Axton said shortly. "Is that what this is?"

"You know, you're nice to me about everything that isn't this?" Dana said thoughtfully. "Despite everything I've done. You're pissed at Dru on my behalf. You're pissed at me for not accepting myself how you think I should. You feel bad about my position so you respect my authority around other people. You're sympathetic about Ma. But you get thorny about--this."

"Define this," Axton said.

"When I talk about wanting to be with you," Dana said. "Or when your boy comes up."

"I don't hate you, Dana," Axton said softly. "Not really. Sometimes I think I do. Part of me still wants you dead."

Dana smiled, a small and cruel and cold curl of his lips.

"I'm sure you do, sugar."

"But mostly I just hate what you did," Axton said. "There's a distinction there. And maybe it will take me a hundred years to forgive you. But it's what you did that's the problem. Not who you are, inherently."

"I didn't enjoy doing it," Dana said.

"I think you're lying," Axton said.

"I didn't enjoy it
much
," Dana said, but then he added, "No, I did enjoy it some. Afterwards I felt terrible. Only after."

Axton could feel it, feel how Dana was right about him--the conversation did make him prickly. He was still angry.

"He felt terrible, too," Axton couldn't stop himself from saying, "since his legs were broken."

"He fought well," Dana said thoughtfully, not reacting to the ire in Axton's voice. "Don't get me wrong,
I
can hate a person just fine for who they are, and I hate that bastard for having you, for daring. But he fought well."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Axton asked incredulously. "Because it doesn't. At all."

Dana shrugged.

"You could have done worse," he said. "Leander wasn't so bad, for a human."

"You say that now," Axton said, "when I'm far away from him. If he were here, you'd change your tune."

"If he were here," Dana snorted, "he wouldn't last five minutes. I wouldn't even have to touch him."

"Yeah," Axton sighed. "That's true."

They stayed out until sunset, stroking Helen's fur when she nudged them.

When Dana was gone, life was, in a certain way, suspiciously easy. Axton still missed his freedom, his own territory. But sulking around the edges of a pack, carefully watched and yet curiously alone--that wasn't anything new. Being ostracized was kind of familiar and therefore comfortably nostalgic: it was like being a teenager all over again. Axton knew he could live like that for a long time. Even as the son of the pack's alpha wolf, Axton had grown up quiet and isolated. There had been no special status conferred on him just because of his birth, since Axton's father ran a pack with a very flat hierarchy. Most of his childhood had been spent as an outsider in his own pack, and the list of
why
went on and on: he was motherless, his coloration was strange, he spent too much time as a wolf, he changed between shapes in the blink of an eye. At the same time, Axton had never been picked on much, either--and maybe that had been special and to do with his dad. Maybe.

But most wolves didn't physically harm their fringe members. They just isolated them. It was social aggression rather than physical.

So when Axton was carefully maneuvered to the back of the formation each time the pack hunted together, he accepted it as the way things had to be. When he was never allowed to land the killing blow, he understood. No one trusted him.

He didn't care.

Axton had always suspected he was unusual--the urge to be solidly part of a pack didn't sing in his veins as loudly as it was supposed to. His years as a hermit had been some of the best of his life. Isolation hurt other wolves, who craved a pack structure. Isolation hurt Axton some--but it had been the
why
of his isolation that hurt the most. True, Axton had his reasons for distance, because he was too strange and too bookish in addition to being gay, and these things all guided him towards a life with less scrutiny. So it was difficult to say if his comfort with being on the outside was a cause or a result, but either way...

Either way, what Axton yearned for wasn't the acceptance of the pack, but the return of his lover.

In the chill of dawn, Axton woke from bad dreams. In his small room, surrounded by sleeping wolves on the other side of his thin walls, Axton shivered, goose bumps breaking out over his sweat soaked skin.

He dreamed of the basement, sometimes, of hunger so huge it was no longer hunger, no longer a constant gnawing ache, but a darkness that pressed down all around him, and pushed out from inside him, so that his skin was about to snap, popping like a bubble, from the pressure of his empty insides reaching for the empty outsides. Or sometimes he dreamed of the isolation of scent, how the only smells in the basement had been his own, and he had felt terrifyingly alone. He dreamed of losing words like darkness and hunger, he dreamed of losing the name of his captor, then his own name, then the name of his lover. He dreamed of the erosion of memory, but in his dreams he didn't have the calm resignation and the yearning for death that he'd possessed at the time; he didn't have the peaceful determination to die, so losing himself was terrifying. It felt like a precursor to death, like the opening act for a life ending finale, and therefore Axton awoke in a cold sweat with panic jumbled in his throat. Sometimes he startled out of his dreams on a jolt of fear and he still didn't have words--it was like waking from a nightmare to be inside another. His heart jackhammered in his chest and his frenzied pulse panicked at the speed of a trapped hummingbird.

Sometimes Axton tried to cry out, wordless and scared, needing to not die silent. But his body was confused, never sure if it was man or wolf, and so he could never figure out what muscles to move, or which set of muscle memory to trust, and his throat froze up in tortured indecision. He could neither scream nor howl.