Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (31 page)

"Anything is easier," Dana said, tremble in his voice, "than facing the shame at home."

"I never hated myself that much," Axton said.

"It's a gift," Dana agreed.

For something to do in the resulting silence, Axton stood up, stretched, and fed some dry branches to the fire. Then he sat back down to wait.

It was weird, how you could get what you wanted, and if it came way too late, you felt nothing like you thought you would. Getting what you thought you wanted when you stopped wanting it was fucking awful.

Axton took steady lungfuls of night air--

There. More hormones.

Dana's eyes watered and he looked away.

"Always wondered if he knew somehow, if they all knew," he said, in a ragged voice. "If they all knew I was a--a fucking cocksucker, whenever I left home. And they knew, and maybe that's why he could do that, why he could kill Daddy and take over and they just
let
him."

"Dana..." Axton said, uncertain.

"If I hadn't been away so much, if I hadn't been off
sucking dick
whenever I got the fucking chance--" Dana choked for a second, "maybe I could have fucking
been
here when Dad needed me."

"I don't think that's true," Axton said, soft and quick. "I mean, of course Dru's going to strike when you're gone. You're a very capable fighter and you're incredibly loyal and you loved your father--"

"So I'm off, sucking dick, fucking in dirty club bathrooms," Dana said, with a forced and manic cheer, "then I finally get back home and, boom! Shit's gone to shit. Daddy's dead; Dru's in charge; Ma's shacked up with the new alpha; the pack did nothing for me."

"It doesn't matter why you left home," Axton said, "and you couldn't have known. How could you have known? And would it have made it any better, if you'd left for some other reason? No. Plenty of young wolves run the errands all over. Dru would have got your dad alone eventually."

"No," Dana said, in a small and broken voice. "It was worse. You wanna know why?"

"Might as well," Axton said.

"I came back home with fuckin'
stars
in my eyes," Dana said. "I came back with
butterflies
where my guts should be, all that shit. Wondering, hoping that I'll run into the guy I met again. Already imagining our fucking
future
together, maybe I bring him back here--" Dana wiped his eyes, because he was crying, tears running freely down his cheeks, "because he's an exile, right?"

"Oh," Axton said, suddenly understanding. "Oh, no. Dana. Don't--"

"So I'll give him a
home
," Dana said, body and voice shaking, "because he's lost and hurt and I'm just achin' to save him from that. And hey, we can't get married or nothing but maybe it can be an open secret, everyone knows but no one says anything, right? Because I only hated myself a little then, Ax, you gotta understand. Only a little, compared to now. And I fucking
loved
you." Dana gulped in a huge, shuddering breath and seemed like he would shake apart. "I loved you since day one."

Axton bowed his head. He had tried not to, because it seemed like the least he could do was bear full witness to Dana's grief. But he could not feel the full weight of Dana's despair and keep looking at him.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Dana made a gurgling sound that might have been a laugh.

"You were right, Ax," Dana said, "when you said that love makes me weak."

"I didn't say that to hurt you," Axton said.

"Yeah, yeah, you did, honey," Dana said.

"I didn't say it to hurt you like that," Axton said. "Not about--us, not about your family."

"Maybe I do want Dru to kill me," Dana said, voice soft and speculative and slurred with tears. "Maybe under the full moon, tonight. Long as you're here to witness."

"No," Axton said. "I wouldn't let him."

"But then it comes full circle, sugar," Dana said, voice low. "You see me at the start of this tragedy. You see me at the end. It all wraps up."

"It doesn't have to be a tragedy forever," Axton said.

"For at least a hundred years, last I heard," Dana said.

"Don't make your sexual identity crisis and you family politics be overshadowed by me," Axton said. "No matter how much you think you--"

"No!" Dana said. "Don't you see? You blind, sweetheart? It's all the same thing. The same big, sticky, sickly sweet thing. Guilt like gobstoppers."

"I don't see," Axton said numbly. "I don't want to see. Dana, I'm sorry--"

"So sorry that if I stumble over there and give you a sloppy kiss, you'll let me?" Dana asked.

"No," Axton said, and he lowered his eyes again, his full lashes casting half-moon shadows on his skin. "I'm sorry, Dana, for everything. I'm sorry for everything that's happened to you. I'm sorry I didn't understand before; I'm sorry we didn't talk about it back when it would have helped. And I'm sorry, but I'm still angry at you."

"That how it is?" Dana whispered.

"That's how it is." Axton looked up, eyes catching the dying embers of the fire. "I'm sorry. But that's how it is."

And Dana crumpled then, like a crushed soda can, which was a surprise because Axton hadn't thought of Dana as holding himself together. But he must have been, because he fell apart, choking back a sob and curling up on the ground, no longer upright. He shook and he was trying to stay quiet but so many wet, strangled sounds squeezed out from him and escaped into the air--

Axton bit his lip, and stood.

"Come on," he said, dropping to his knees by Dana and tugging on his arm. It was the first voluntary physical contact he could remember making with Dana that wasn't a bite. "Let's get you inside."

Dana whimpered, shoved himself up, and threw his arms around Axton's thin waist, turning his face away, still shaking. Axton hesitated for just a moment, and then, with a sigh, wrapped his arms around Dana in turn and curled over him, shushing him, whispering sweet reassurances--
it's all right, Dana, come on, I got you, it's okay, you're fine, get up, let's get you to bed
.

And eventually, Dana nodded, and Axton helped him stagger to his feet. Axton's shirt was soaked through with tears and snot on the side, sticking to his body. Another shushing sound, and he maneuvered Dana's arm across his shoulders so that they could stumble into the cabin together. Dana sprawled out on his bed and Axton tucked him in, smoothing the covers over his chest, pulling them to Dana's chin. Then he exited the bedroom, closed the door behind him, and let himself into the kitchen to sit at the table and wait for sunrise.

Night ticked by and Axton sat motionless, lost in thought but still alert; his body trigger happy and ready to jump at any unusual sound or smell. But nothing came, and Axton was left alone with his thoughts.

He ought to feel sympathy, Axton figured, and he mostly did. Axton supposed that maybe he should feel touched or honored or at least somehow saddened at the tragedy of the great love that could have been. Maybe it would have been normal to feel conflicted, or yearning.

But all Dana's pain reminded him of was his own, and worse--all of Dana's despair just reminded him of Leander's raw and desperate screams when he was begging Axton to not leave.

Axton sat and waited for dawn and did not blink.

Years, he had waited years for Dana to bare his soul like that. And now it had happened; now he'd seen it, and it changed nothing. He was still going to manipulate Dana into a dangerous situation. He was still going to break his word and run as soon as he could.

Leander had shown him his heart so
easily
.

Everything carries me to you
, Axton thought.
Everything
.

When the first rays of sunlight kissed the sky, Axton rippled in his seat in front of the kitchen window, and then he threw back his wolf's head and howled, in greeting, in despair, in closing, in opening, in fear and hope and loss and love, forever, amen.

There was no chance for sleep, and Axton didn't even try. He swapped places with Jack and then threw himself to the dawn, running through the woods until his flanks heaved with the effort of his speed. Animals startled from his path and birds burst out of bushes and Axton drove himself forward wildly, with none of his usual grace or stealth. He could not out run his sadness; perhaps he could out run Dana's. What a stupid, cruel world it was--people could love you and you could love them and still nothing functioned as a whole and everyone was hurt. Legs were broken and fathers were murdered and hearts were killed and crippled and
still
the world turned, because nature was beautiful and timeless and beyond you, gorgeous, uncaring, eternal.

That was not how Axton usually felt about the world at all, but he flung himself over a steep ravine and barely made the jump to safety, landing in a half fall with two legs twisted under him. Heedless of pain, momentum drove him forward, and still Axton ran.

He bayed his grief, low and deep, as a warning that unfurled before him.

When he skidded into Helen's territory, he stopped, panting so hard his body seemed ready to burst, eyes rolling back in his head. Helen appeared from behind an outcropping of rock and looked at him steadily. She trotted over, nose twitching. Axton knew his emotions were rolling off him in waves, probably strong and sharp enough to hurt as the scent was inhaled in. He stood stick straight, trembling, as she sniffed him delicately. Maybe she would understand, or maybe she would lunge for his throat for invading her territory while mad with regret.

Her tail swished, distressed in sympathy or in threat--

She lunged, but away from him, and glanced back at him. They tore through the forest together, never hunting, never snapping, but wild in their grief and desperate to drive themselves forward to exhaustion. Her pain was her own and Axton did not know the depth or source of it; she did not know the source or depths of his, either. They did not need to know the details, because they both knew that they shared the same tidal wave of fear and loss and pain.

They ran until Axton could run no more, until he flung himself down on the ground, unable to go on. Helen collapsed beside him, panting just as heavily, and the whites of their eyes showed. There were no words; they could share no words between them in their wolfish shapes even if they had wanted--even if Helen would have still understood, which Axton still wasn't sure of. But they understood each other just the same, and in time they quieted and curled up together, shivering as if from the cold. Axton whimpered, lost and soft and scared, without meaning to, and Helen nuzzled against him until he pressed his face into the soft fur on her neck, breathing unsteadily.

She smelled wild but comforting, all wolf with the scent of berries she had crashed through lingering in her fur.

Axton had not been held by a mother for--

Axton couldn't remember the last time he'd been held by a mother. And for a werewolf he was, in some ways, still so very young.

He wanted to tell her Leander's name; he wanted her to know that he was desperately in love with a man who he had left in pieces. He wanted her to know, to maybe understand, the great gulf in his heart. He wanted to apologize to her for hurting her son, however inadvertently, and he wanted to tell her that ached for her, for her chosen isolation that everyone else took for madness or feebleness.
I know what it feels like
, he thought, heart throbbing,
I know why you did this
.

But he could not tell her without a voice; and he did not need to tell her with words, because she understood.

Exhausted, trembling, feeling the rush of emotions that had seemed so distant since he came back from his own feral state--

Axton buried his face in Helen's fur, and, guarded by the mother he'd never had, he slept.

Life went on. Dana managed to pull himself together and resume his normal duties; Jack was busy warily watching and mediating when necessary. No one had the time to pay Axton much mind--he was still sought out and checked on; people made sure he was
around
…but no one objected if he spent, once again, more time wolf than man. Even Dana didn't mention it when they crossed paths, though his eyes betrayed him with a flicker of longing, sometimes. Axton suspected that confession embarrassed Dana, or, perhaps he had in fact decided to wait a hundred years before pushing the subject further with Axton--or if not a hundred years, then at least a few months.

Every other time that Axton was in the kitchen at the communal house, there was one particular werewolf who was eating. He was young and lanky and constantly had the front half of his body stuck inside the fridge to scrounge for food, so Axton came to think of him as Fridge Guy. Axton supposed that he had once been as Fridge Guy, constantly stuffing his face with any and all food available.

Actually.

Axton supposed he still was like Fridge Guy, just he didn't feel as comfortable in this house, with that fridge. For all he knew, Fridge Guy was his age or older. It was so hard to tell, with wolves. Dana had a decade on Axton, and they had gone years into their on-again-off-again entanglement without figuring out their age difference.

"Salami?" Fridge Guy offered, when he emerged.

"Sure," Axton said, from his place at the table, plowing through a plate of frozen waffles. They were soggy. He had microwaved them. He was considering eating the next box of waffles while they were still frozen. Surely, the structural integrity of those would be better, and he could spread more peanut butter per waffle before everything crumbled.

Fridge Guy handed Axton a fat stack of sliced salami, and then sat across him with a pile of sliced cheese stacked on top of his own salami portion.

They ate in silence.

"Waffle?" Axton offered. "They're soggy."

"I love soggy waffles," said Fridge Guy.

"Cool," Axton said, sliding his plate over and getting up.