An Eye For An Eye

Soixante-Neuf

It wasn't morning. Even though the curtains were closed, I had the feeling it wasn't near sunrise. At first, I had thought it was. It wasn't unusual for Deuc to be out of bed before me but the room didn't seem bright enough.

Deuc came back into the room, still shirtless though he had removed the blood stained trousers he had been wearing. He sat on the edge of the bed.

“Are you going to lie down?” I asked after a while. It seemed like he was thinking. “What's wrong?”
“We shouldn't have been ambushed.”
“You couldn't help that, everyone thought it was just Mark,” I said as I leaned over and reached for his hand, making sure I stayed under the duvet. It would come with me if it needed to.
“It was something I should have prepared for, this is the second ambush I should have guessed or known about and prepared for.”

“You couldn’t have known, Deuc,” I insisted. “Please, get back in bed at least. It’s not even close to morning.” He seemed hesitant but he did return to lying under the duvet. I held his hand again, snuggled in close.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I keep waking up.” I closed my eyes, I wasn’t sure how to help him with that.

“Any reason in particular?” I asked.
“Other than the events of yesterday?”
“Yes,” I said. Yesterday probably brought up what happened in the summer. “You can talk about anything you want to talk about.” He sighed. And for a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to say anything.

“I feel… helpless. I shouldn’t feel like this, I’m an Alpha of a werewolf pack. My injuries heal, I do have a strange sort of sight and yet… I seem to keep getting injured when I think I’m doing what is right.” I let him continue talking. “I tried to fix things and that resulted in pack members dying and I’m blind. I try to deal with this and Tasha and Jake and I… we almost died. Tasha was worse than I was.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what those wendigos did.”
“They knew most of us were out of town, that’s why they started killing. And I couldn’t even deal with it properly, Liza. Things haven’t been this bad since my uncle was the Alpha. And that was almost a decade ago.” I could hear the defeat and disappointment in his voice. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. I’d never seen him in such despair.
“You still managed to deal with it,” I said, trying to remind him that they had done what they had meant to without any of the pack dying.
“Not last time, last time Gerard killed some of us, and I killed two of my own.”
“In self defence,” I said. Deucalion said nothing.

“Deuc?” I asked. He wasn’t asleep, I could hear his heart beating quickly in his chest, even though I was only lying next to him.
“I did take their power,” he said. “I felt it when I killed them. I became stronger, even with the lost strength coming with the pack being smaller. And that still wasn’t enough.”
“You said yourself, one wendigo is as strong as an Alpha,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else I could say. “And you and Jack and Tasha and Jake managed to kill three of them. They can’t hurt or murder anyone else now.”

“And if Gerard Argent comes after us? What then?” he asked. “What happens then, Liza? Because next time he won’t just kill the pack members and blind someone, he’ll cause something much bigger and much worse and we can’t begin to prepare for that, not with how I am.”

“You learning to use that white cane is just the beginning of preparations. Someone will notice if there’s hunters in town. Charles is at a law firm, Jack is from a notorious criminal family. Someone is bound to notice new people and mention it, if it does ever happen,” I said. Part of me was trying to be optimistic, hoping that something more large scale between hunters and werewolves wouldn’t happen. But, knowing Gerard, it probably would eventually happen. “And that’s if he even tries to bother, he might not. He might bother one of the other packs or he might move to a different part of the country. Hell, he might get in a car accident, he’s a horrendous driver, there’s a reason me and Chris had our own cars and drove ourselves whenever possible.”

Deuc chuckled. “I almost hope something as mundane as that kills him.”
“And he can’t ambush anyone anymore. I hate that he did it to you but now a lot of people know, Talia, Ennis, Kali, their own packs. Any other werewolves they’ve talked to probably know that Gerard has ambushed you under the guise of a peace treaty so now no one will ever trust him or risk something like that.” I rolled onto my side and put my hand on his cheek, turning his head so he was facing me. “Even if he tried it again, it would never work. No one else can go through what happened to your and your pack.

“Besides, if none of that had happened, I’d still be a hunter and would have never known you,” I said. I kissed him and he kissed back. “And I’m glad I’m here, with you as my boyfriend. I’ve realised that some beliefs I had were completely wrong and can finally live a life that I want.”

“You almost died,” he whispered. “Because we went on a date.”
“But I didn’t and it wasn’t because of our date, it was because Gerard is a fucking bastard who decided to shott his own daughter with a crossbow,” I said. I could hear the bitterness and venom in my own words and Deuc smiled slightly at me. I let out a laugh before saying, “At least now I can write some near death experiences pretty well.”

“That is not what you should take from that,” he said seriously with a shake of his head.
“What? I’d rather be scared of being alone and good at writing near death experiences than deal with nightmares and things,” I said. My writing had become a way to deal with the bizarre emotions and experiences in a way I could control.
“You were good at writing anyway.”
I smiled. “Thank you, mon cheri.”

I snuggled in even closer to him and he didn’t seem to mind. His heartbeat was slowly down though, and I was fairly sure that was a good sign.
“While I wish we had none of the horrible consequences, life doesn’t really work like that.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Deuc agreed.
“But that doesn’t stop up from remembering the good that’s come out of it as well. It doesn’t get rid of the bad but it might just make it more bearable.”

“You make everything a lot more bearable,” he said with a chuckle. He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Thank you, my love, for letting me talk.”
“It’s the least I can do. But I am ready to fall asleep again, good night, Deuc.”
“I think it’s technically ‘good morning’,” he said and I smiled.
“Shush,” I said with a slight shrug. Sleep was calling me to unconsciousness and whatever dreams that might come with it. “Just… please try to sleep.”
“I will.”