They swung open the cage door, cattle prods at full power, humming with electricity. The man lazily lifted his hands in surrender. "Now, now." He said softly. His voice was like velvet. "No need. I'll do as you please." The man in the cage said, his...
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The blood rush in his head was deafening. His scalp still tingled from where her slender fingers had tugged at his hair, and his breaths came short and fast, as if the air he breathed wasn't good enough after having shared a breath with her.
Kiril flew down the stairs, his hands a trembling, twitching mess shoved deep into his pockets. He wanted nothing more than to turn around; to rejoin his body to Theophania's. He knew exactly how he'd do it, too. The harsh eagerness with which he would claim her.
"You two would make quite the match, although, I must admit, I don't know how werewolf-lycan pairings work. The sex would be... complicated." Ivan's laughing words were a sledgehammer to the warmth of his thoughts. His heart dropped into his boots, and he felt the color draining out of his face as his skin chilled.
Kiril turned on the redhead, and found him smiling stupidly at his own thoughts. Ivan hadn't seemed to notice the chill that had crept over the lobby of the apartment building, despite the wood stove that blazed in the corner of the room, nor the frozen demeanor he had taken on.
So he took it upon himself to make him realize.
Kiril wasn't fond of the same violence his brothers deigned to use, but in that moment, with the fear of being realized upon him, those baser instincts surged forth.
In a split second, his hands were on Ivan, snatching him so hard by the front of his shirt that it ripped as he wrenched him forward and threw him to the ground. Kiril followed him down, pinning a knee into Ivan's wiry chest and pressing down hard enough to send the wind gushing from his lungs. His teeth were bared in a feral snarl that remained silently tucked behind his lips. One of his hands wrapped around the man's lower face, covering his mouth.
"Never speak of it again," Kiril commanded, his grip tightening over Ivans jaws.
The man raised his hands palms up and shook his head as best he could with the grip on his face. Still, Kiril knelt on him, shoving him into the ground as if he could bury him and the openness of his heartache right there. He wondered if killing Ivan to keep his attraction to Theophania a secret would have been a worthy trade.
Then, he decided against it.
Ivan spoke as soon as Kiril let go of his face, rushing out in a low, squeaking tone, "I didn't mean anything by it. It was just a stupid joke. I thought it would be something happy to talk about. Really!"
A door opened on the floor above them, and he could hear footsteps coming down the stairs at a slow, plodding pace.
In one quick movement, Kiril righted himself and adjusted his jacket so that it sat properly against his chest. "Happiness is to be saved for victory," Kiril murmured in a quiet tone. Then, he offered the man a hand.
Ivan looked hesitant at first but took it. Kiril hauled him to his feet. "Victory has a cost. I have a task for you, Iodina.
—
Kiril knelt in the snow, the cold biting at his knees. Before him lay a pair of graves. One was neatly adorned and scraped free of snow and mud and pine needles. The second, no one would know about had they not known the Morozov family history, for it was unmarked and unmaintained.
The first belonged to their father. Their mother, who had died a decade earlier, was buried first, twelve feet deep into the frigid ground, unmarked except for the stone that sat above their fathers grave, emblazoned with his name alone. Their father; or, what little they could salvage of his ravaged body, lay six feet down, above their mothers body.
It was customary for mated pairs to be buried side by side. Vsevolod had never put much stock in their more modern pack traditions, though. Said they had been made by weak leaders. So their mother lay beneath her mate, as she had been beneath him in life, unmarked and unremembered by everyone but him.
The second grave was empty, and unmarked. Really, it wasn't a grave at all. It was an empty plot of land that Kiril had chosen to remember her by, because his brother had never let him know where her remains had been discarded after her body had been brutalized and half burned in the midst of their fathers rage after the night of the ceremony. If Vsevolod had buried her at all, he'd never given anyone the satisfaction of knowing where, and never would.
"Mischa," Kiril breathed, his breath clouding on the air as he ducked his head.
Her grave remained unmarked, even here in the clearing of the dead, because their father had forbidden ceremony to the girl who had killed their mother. For some time, Kiril had obeyed that rule, letting all written evidence of her existence be destroyed, even after his brother had killed their father and taken on the mantle of alpha.
No longer.
The thorns of the blue rose caught his fingertips as he settled it onto the mound of dark earth. Snow lay scattered around where he had scraped it off. "I'm going to fulfill my duty to you. To you and all others who have been dragged to this hell."
A breeze gusted through the spruce trees that surrounded the clearing and sent a shiver down his spine. The cabin at the edge of the field creaked and groaned, but he knew it to be empty.
He'd made sure it would be before he visited this place, for he trusted not even his grandmother to witness his declarations. No one but Ivan knew of his plans, for he'd needed to send the redheaded man to warn the dimwitted brother.
"I have found someone just like you, sister. You would admire her."
Kiril raised his face to the dark sky, where the stars twinkled above like pin holes showing glimpses of the true world. "I'm going to free her."
Finally, he closed his eyes, feeling gently for the mental walls he'd placed around his memories. Ever so carefully, he lowered one of them, and felt the warmth of spring on his face once more, and the hum of a long buried voice.
A smile faintly crossed his lips. The first he'd had in a very long time. As he smiled, he dragged his fingers through the mud, and wrote Mischa's name. The first time it had been written since her death. Perhaps the last place it existed in the world at all.
