Packless Monsters

Chapter 36

 "Love, why do you keep doing this? We're all worried about how hard you're pushing yourself," Loki's voice was heart-brokenly worried as he carried you to bed Tuesday night. You'd fallen asleep on him after dinner because you'd insisted on forcing yourself to stay awake after a grueling day of attempting to be human so you could visit with your family. You'd all realized that while you claimed you were human for two weeks, that was a lie. You were actually running on less than human. You realized it after following Pepper around. The wolf was such a part of who you were that her loss left you weaker than even a normal human. You hadn't realized it at the compound with the wolfs, or living with the college students who were always a mess of exhaustion. Spending time around normal people drove the difference home.

"I miss the others too," you murmured, snuggling better in his arms.

He sighed in loving exasperation. "Werewolves," he sighed softly, still with the tone of loving exasperation. "Of course you need their company too to be happy. Very well," he resigned himself with the knowledge that he'd be stuck carrying you to bed.

He didn't complain Wednesday or Thursday. He let you visit the others and fall asleep watching a movie with them, then picked you up from on top of whomever you'd been cuddling when you dozed too far off to tuck you safely in his bed in his shielded room. Thursday, Thor actually picked you up off of him to hand to Loki.

*

"Love?" Loki's voice and a knock on the bedroom door woke you Thursday night. No, that wasn't right. Loki's voice itself wouldn't be enough not in that politely quiet tone. It was the mix of that soft polite question and the dissonance of the just too hard knock on the door that woke you. Also this was his room. He knocked before entering yours, even if he didn't actually wake you when he did. He never knocked on his, even when you were sleeping alone in here.

"Loki?" you asked as you sat up, already on edge just from his one word.

"Come open the door, love. The shield is keeping me out," Loki's voice, but not an answer, not really. Something was just off about his words. You automatically reached under your pillow and drew the dagger that lived there, even as your legs swung out of the bed on their own. There were daggers hidden all over Loki's room.

Your mind finally picked up on what was wrong with what he'd said. His shield kept everyone out but himself and you. There was no way his shield would keep him out.

Whoever that was, it wasn't Loki.

You grabbed your phone from the nightstand as you unconsciously took another step towards the door. "Jarvis, intruder," you whispered to the phone, even as you took yet more steps toward the door. You couldn't let your family face an unknown intruder without as much warning as you could give them. So you trusted in Loki's shields as you made your way to the door, knowing that this was stupid, but you couldn't just hide and not to something.

You carefully stayed firmly on your side of the threshold and grabbed the door handle, swinging the door toward you and taking a step back. You were careful to stay within Loki's shield, a hand on the dagger behind your back. It definitely was not Loki on the other side of the door. It was a wolf, a strange wolf you'd never met. He smelled like magic and you fought back a sneeze just at his presence. You'd heard of wolves with actual magic, but hadn't actually met one. You opened your mouth to scream, but he was faster. "Quiet. Do as I say. Come with me." he ordered firmly, his voice no longer Loki's, but filled with a compulsion spell.

You knew enough about magic from the magic that the pack had and from spending time with Loki to at least have some idea how to deal with it. You fought the compulsion, though your body took a step forward. And another, despite your fighting. You wondered where your family was briefly, Jarvis would have told them by then, but less than a minute had passed "Come!" the wolf ordered more firmly, the compulsion in his voice wrapping more firmly around you.

You took a single step toward him, staying just on your side of the shield. You had allowed your body the single step. You needed help and you had to break the compulsions. You drew your free hand across the blade at your back while you took that single step, the pain breaking through the wolf's magic, even as your blood flowed from the wound. "LOKI!" you shrieked as you backed into the room, grabbing for the door to slam it before he could order you forward again.

"Stupid girl!" the intruder snarled. He couldn't get through Loki's shield. You tried to slam the door, but you moved too slow. Your less than human reflexes were too slow, especially when you were so used to the speed of the wolf. The intruder raised a gun you hadn't even seen him draw and fired it before you managed to get the door closed. You heard the soft pop and stumbled backwards, surprised more than anything at the dart sticking out of your stomach. Loki's shield only kept people out apparently.

Until you felt the fire of the silver needle and shrieked at the drugs in the dart that were laced with silver. Werewolves metabolized drugs too quickly for them to be useful, especially for incapacitation without adding silver to the mixture. You stumbled, swaying as you felt the drugs burning their way like fire through your system.

The world started turning black and you fell, forcing yourself to fall backwards, to make sure you stayed in the room behind the shields.

Shit. You did not want to be unconscious right now.

Except that Loki appeared behind you, catching you before you hit the ground. Only a minute had passed since your warning, if that. Loki held you to him with one arm, keeping you on your feet while he threw magic at the intruder. The rest of the team poured out of the elevator at the same moment. You wrapped an arm over Loki's shoulder, letting him take your weight and support you.

"He's a wolf," you managed the words, though they were slurred in your mouth. It was important that they knew. They had to fight a wolf carefully. You were losing the fight against the drugs fast. The dose must've been for a full wolf, not whatever metaphysical shit had left you weak and worse than human.

Loki repeated your words so the others could hear, then turned his attention to you, trusting them to battle the intruder. He looked at your hand first, seeing the blood, but that wasn't enough to get you in this state. "Love, what's-?" he cursed when he saw the dart and ripped it out of your stomach. "Stay with me. Give it a minute. The drugs will be out of your system soon," he bid you, shaking you a little to try to keep you awake.

You managed to shake your head. "Silver," you told him, your eyes were refusing to stay open, or they were too filled with the darkness around you that you couldn't tell if they were open or not. "Call Samuel. Antidote." The amount of silver he'd just shot in you would probably be poisonous to you on a normal day. With your wolf out of commission, it was worse, potentially lethal.

Your knees buckled and you collapsed into Loki with no more warning than that. "Y/N!" you heard Loki's shout. It had to bad for him to use your actual name, but you couldn't help anymore. The darkness of unconsciousness swallowed you without another thought.