Chapter Eight

Come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

—Monty Python

 

RYAN FREAKED OUT a bit over the helicopter, which meant he was worried about getting caught. Thomas didn’t worry. Wolf didn’t worry either. They would drag Ryan to safety and kill anything that tried to take him from Thomas. Wolf was more eager over this promise; it was not only to kill but eat them too—for him.

We aren’t eating people, Thomas scolded and ignored Wolf’s rebuttal.

Thomas followed Ryan to the end of the lake the following afternoon, stopping and starting when he did, as if they were playing a game with each other. It was almost like old times, with Thomas doing the chasing and following as Ryan ducked and dodged his advances. Thomas was pleased over things not changing much in all this time.

The mood changed when Ryan lay in the grass, spoke to the sky, and then cried his heart out, wishing Thomas was with him. The grief and anguish that rolled off Ryan and filled the forest were so intense and loud that Thomas suspected even the pack could feel it. This broke Thomas’s heart, and he desperately wanted to shift and go to him. He took a step forward, but his Wolf reigned him back in. They internally warred with each other over the breaking of pack law and banishment.

Banishment as an unmated Wolf would result in Thomas going feral, and no matter who you were, that eventually meant death. Wolf argued they just needed time to sort things out with the pack and council. If they were dead, they’d be no use to Ryan then. The council would likely attack Ryan just to be rid of him—this newcomer who was causing so many problems.

We keep him safe. This is our duty. Wolf made it clear, and Thomas could feel the sadness with which his Wolf spoke the words.

Thomas grieved the decision as he hid in the woods and helplessly endured Ryan in the grassy glen. The stabbing pain of Ryan’s loss was a deep hurt, and no matter what was going on with Tristan Steele, Thomas knew Ryan had truly loved him.

When Ryan left, Thomas dragged himself to the spot where Ryan had grieved and sang out his own pain and loss at losing Ryan all those years ago. That day when his heart broke, and he was dragged—kicking and screaming—ripped from his soulmate.

Thomas slept in the glade that night, reliving the memory of one of the worst days of his life. He and Ryan had been together, inseparable, for three years. The day they came to take Ryan to prison, the guards had told Thomas that they needed him in the kitchen. Thomas was an excellent cook and was often asked to work there. But then Thomas noticed how they all looked nervous and seemed to be keeping something from him.

Then, he knew what they had done. The guards tried to distract him so there wouldn’t be a scene. And Thomas had already been prepared to say goodbye for now to Ryan. They had a plan. They were going to write letters and count the days until they could be together again. Thomas would be transferred to the same prison as Ryan, so it was just a matter of waiting it out. But this—why would they do this? Had something changed? Were they taking Ryan to a different prison than had been previously arranged? Something wasn’t right. The fear that it could be the last time Thomas saw Ryan overwhelmed him.

Thomas ran.

He ran before they even realized what he was doing. Thomas had burst through the doors with two guards hot on his trail. The shock and immediate despair on Ryan’s face only made it worse, causing Thomas to think something was wrong. Thomas desperately attached himself to Ryan to say goodbye and find out if something had changed, but the guards had pried him off and dragged him away. God, it had hurt Ryan, and he had openly and gut-wrenchingly cried as they hauled Thomas across the floor by his arms and legs as he kept screaming.

Thomas had screamed Ryan’s name, and Ryan had yelled his back, begging the guards not to hurt him.

And they had hurt him.

Thomas had lost it, threatening the staff and promising to let his arsonist out to play, something he’d tried to bury down deep inside and never let out again. That strange, almost intimate relationship Thomas had with fire. Thomas understood fire and its need for retribution, but it was a dangerous thing you didn’t just tinker with. And he’d been serious when he threatened to let it out and consume them all.

That was how determined and loyal he was when it came to Ryan. In retrospect, Thomas thought the guards and staff recognized that, but their decision had been wrong. They should have let them have their goodbye and even had Thomas’s doctor there to help with the transition. Sadly, it wasn’t the choice they’d made.

Thomas had sat, dressed in only institution-issued sleep pants, in a padded cell for days on end. Barefoot, shirtless, and cold, covered in bruises. He’d refused to eat. His food dripped down the vinyl walls where he’d thrown it. They only took him out to use the bathroom, for further assessments, and more meds. Every time, Thomas told them he would burn them in their sleep for what they had done. Thomas had gone mental over it—primal and feral—as he knew it to be now. Only, as a half Wolf, it had presented as psychotic back then. The only mental lifeline he’d had were Ryan’s letters, but the first of those hadn’t arrived for quite some time after he was transported.

Wolves typically only feared a few things: rabies, bears, and returning to their primal state. Very few things caused this. Something extreme had to profoundly affect their human self to make the Wolf take over to preserve their life. Normally, they coexisted, working together in synchrony.

They eventually dragged Thomas out of his cell when he could no longer stand on his own after starving himself. Thomas spent three months in the psychiatric medical unit, strapped to a bed, pumped full of a liquid diet, and sedated to the point where he drooled on himself. He’d been heartbroken and out of his mind, the part of him that was vaguely Wolf pushing forward, trying to be with his mate. That part of him had been dormant, content in being with his mate so closely for the last three years.

That abrupt loss had triggered remnants of what his full Wolf would have done. It had only made Thomas more psychotic and distraught. The medical staff could do nothing to help him, so they resorted to drugging and restraining him. It was too dangerous for them, as violent as Thomas had become with anyone who wasn’t Ryan. That time was a hazy blur for Thomas and his repressed other half, a part of him that had been as helpless as his human side and weak physical form.

Thomas recalled lying there with a feeding tube, waste tube, and catheter as heavy drugs dripped into the IV in his arm. He stared at the white tiled wall. The white four-by-four tiles and whiter grout lines stared back at him since he was too fucked up to even move his head and change his view. He could feel the slow tears roll across the side of his face, slight warm streaks he couldn’t even wipe away. Days on end he spent like this, trying to think of Ryan and not the other times in his life when he’d been restrained. To relive what had happened to him after the knots were tied. Thomas closed his eyes.

When Thomas had been finally released back to his regular unit, no one messed with him. They were too fearful of his brand of crazy. The guards shied from him, too, and conducted weekly searches throughout the unit, determined to find every single hidden lighter or match. Thomas’s threat had been confirmed, and they took him very seriously. They’d even banned him from the kitchen.

The guards had escorted him to his new cot, Ryan’s old one, but not for any empathetic reason. Thomas’s top cot had been given to a new detainee. They wanted to have easier access to him if they had to restrain or fight him. Not something guards wanted to do with a difficult resident up on an upper bunk. They put more problematic members on the bottom bunks for a reason. Thomas didn’t care. He’d curl up beneath Ryan’s blankets, and while they no longer smelled like him, having been washed by the staff, this was still where their world had existed, in this bed.

“If you behave, we have letters from Tarkett for you,” one of the guards said.

“We don’t have to give them to you,” the other added.

“Whole stack of them,” the first said and lifted a brow at Thomas.

“I’ll behave. May I please have them?” Thomas asked.

“Tomorrow. If you mind. And I mean not a word or move from you, Mitchum,” the first confirmed.

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said and closed his eyes. “I’ll mind. I’ll sleep.”

“Good, I’m glad we understand what’s at stake,” the first one said, and they left Thomas alone then.