Inevitably Yours

“Michael, people are going to talk,” Quinn said quietly. She was sitting on my lap but wouldn’t look at me. “You called him out in front of two packs, along with their Alpha. People can read between the lines….”

“I’m sorry, Quinn, but I don’t think anyone will understand why. Their Alpha probably does since he didn’t fight me on it. But outside of a handful of people, no one has enough information to make that leap,” I explained. I felt awful because, in my need for justice, I hadn’t considered how she would feel about the way I went about it.

“I just… I need it to be over, M,” she sighed. Her face was buried into my chest now, and her exhaustion was palpable, like she’d been carrying this weight that she just couldn’t anymore. My hands rested on her h**s; I wanted to comfort her but held back until I knew she wanted it from me.

“Quinn, I can’t let him go unpunished,” I tried to explain. “He cannot just walk around the rest of his life like he didn’t do what he did. Justice needs to be serv-”

“Justice or revenge, Michael?” she asked, looking at me for the first time. Her eyes were watery, but her glare was pleading. “I need to move on, M. You did that for me when you marked me, and I need you to do the same. I can’t keep getting dragged back there. I want to stay in our love bubble and be happy with you. He doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe we should let things die down and life reach normalcy before we seek him out,” Eros suggested.

“Agreed.”

I knew this would be a touchy subject with her, but I couldn’t let him walk away from this. It wasn’t happening. “I won’t talk to you about it again unless you ask me to,” I told her. It wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t a promise I wouldn’t find him.

“Thank you,” she told me, kissing me as I felt the hot tears falling from her eyes against my cheeks. I reached up to wipe them away and admired the face of the woman I’d spend the rest of my life with.

“Does Nic know?” she asked quietly.

“No,” I answered. “I would never betray your trust and tell anyone about this without you telling me it was okay or that you wanted me to, even Nic.”

She smiled at me, and I was glad I’d never made those calls to yell at everyone involved. I was right for once; she deserved better. “You can tell her, but just let her know I don’t want to talk about it after, okay? She was asking questions, and I don’t think I can handle telling someone again.”

I pulled her tightly to my chest and rocked her back and forth as my fingers found her hair and massaged her scalp, “You won’t ever have to deal with him again. I’m here now.”

–

I stood in the livestock store pretending to be browsing casually, the adrenaline rushing through me as the day was finally upon me. I would have him in my hands soon; I just needed a few things to prepare for the night. Nic was planning on getting Quinn to bed and then sneaking out to help me. I needed her for a particularly important part of my plan. I hoped the Goddess would forgive me for what I intended to do tonight, but by Goddess, was I going to do it either way. I found what I needed and grabbed it from the shelf along with its accessories.

I walked up to the register, and the cashier laughed as he rang me up, “I bet you have some calves that are about to have a bad night.”

“Something like that,” I agreed. The cashier stopped laughing as he looked up and saw my face. I wasn’t in the mood for humor.

–

As I drove across the pack boundary, I put up my block so Quinn couldn’t link me. I couldn’t have her voice popping into my head during this. I knew how she felt, but this was one thing we’d have to diverge on. If she asked me directly, I wouldn’t lie, but I intended to handle this and let it die forever as she wanted.

I’d already let the Alpha of Wild Paws know I was coming. I got a call from the Alpha of Wild Paws a week ago. He introduced himself as Stanley Wilkes and told me he knew the wolf I was looking for stayed holed up in its dad’s home, thinking none of us would think to look there. Usually, a rogue wouldn’t be allowed to remain in the pack, but after Nic and I looked everywhere for him outside of it, we realized something was going wrong. Alpha Wilkes left him there and told me I could come to retrieve him. He claimed not to know the exact reason I wanted him made a rogue but guessed it had something to do with my mate after my announcements at the Alpha address. He said he would tear apart Stary to find someone if they even looked at his mate wrong, so he understood and wanted to extend an olive branch to start our relationship as Alphas. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and told Stanley I’d let him know when I came to remove the rogue from his pack.

Now, I was sitting outside a familiar house, watching Daphne dig in her purse for her keys. Even with my block up, I could feel Quinn’s unease at me leaving her alone flowing through me. I had to set that aside, and I prayed that she couldn’t feel what was simmering within me right now. Closing my car door quietly, I stalked my way silently across the yard until I was directly behind her. The wind was on my side, so it blew my scent away, making this easy.

As her key entered the door and she began to open it, I leaned down close to her ear so only she could hear me, “Open it slowly. Call your brother out, and I won’t hurt anyone else in your family.”

I could smell the terror, and as badly as I felt for terrorizing someone I had once cared about to get to him, she shouldn’t have chosen to hide him. It’s the same house he already lived in; it wasn’t a good hiding place.

“Jaxx! Uh, come help me with groceries?” she squeaked.

“Hold on,” I heard his stupid voice yell. It felt like a literal flame ignited in my belly, and I seriously considered killing his entire family for a moment. They should have raised him better. “Coming!”

“Oh, hey, I can help too,” her dad called, unexpectedly walking around the corner and appearing in the doorway.

His face blanched when he saw me, and he looked between Daphne to me and back. He did what any father would do, and I’m sure he instantly regretted it. He began to shift, so I grabbed Daphne by the back of the neck and threw her behind me out of the way into the yard so she wouldn’t get hurt. I grabbed her father by the side of his head, put it through their brick wall outside the door, and left him hanging in it at about shoulder height. He’d be fine once he woke up and healed. I looked down at my hands in shock. The last time I’d punched my brick wall at home, I’d only cracked it. I’d just easily put a fully grown male wolf through a similar wall with no problem. Alpha strength was something else.

Daphne shifted behind me, and I turned to meet her stupidity. As she leaped forward to bite my throat, I open-hand slapped her to the ground. She whined like a beaten dog but jumped right back up to try again. Not wanting to hurt her and wanting to test my newfound strength, I stepped past her bite. It left me standing next to her, allowing me to grab her by the nape of her neck and tail. I spun hard and launched her into the air high enough to clear the house. She yelped as she left my hands but cleared the roof easily. I heard a hard impact on the other side, but she didn’t get up.

I looked toward the door and locked eyes with Jaxx, whose jaw dropped after witnessing me launch his sister. He looked at his dad, gently swinging with his head stuck in the wall mid-shift, and then back at me.

“You’re coming with me,” I growled. His fear stunk, even more potently than his sister’s. He turned and bolted, but he didn’t get very far. My foot pushed off the porch step as I went for him, crumbling the concrete below. It felt like he was moving in slow motion, and I grabbed him by the back of his neck to stop him. “I didn’t give you a choice.”

He tried to kick back at me, so with his neck in my grasp, I slammed his face into the wall and ground it along as I used it to wipe family pictures and knickknacks off the wall for several feet. It left a trail of b***d and a torn-up wall in our wake. He spat b***d and a tooth on the floor. “Please, just let me go. Don’t hurt my family.”

I leaned over close to him, “I thought you weren’t scared of me?”

“I was mad and talking s**t. I didn’t mean it.”

“Shhh,” I told him. “There’s no need to explain. I knew you were a b***h already.”

With that, I walked toward the door, dragging him in my hand as he struggled to get free. Once outside, I repeatedly dashed his head into the sidewalk until I heard his skull crack, and he stopped moving. I took out one of the syringes in my pocket and buried it into his thigh, emptying the contents and following it with a second. Werewolf healing required much higher doses than what would put out a human, and this horse tranquilizer was slow onset. I’d gotten them from the vet in Stary, promising her I’d owe her a favor later. She graciously told me she was happy to help her Alpha, and she was sure whatever I needed it for was important. I figured knocking him out before administering the drugs would solve the problem of them taking a while to kick in, and everything was going according to plan. I looked around, and it seemed I had a few shocked onlookers.

I held up the bloody body in my hands to show them, “Just came to get a rogue. Nothing to worry about.”

It didn’t look like it calmed anyone; I’m sure most of them knew the family and disagreed with him being cast out. I didn’t care. If they wanted to protect him, I’d put them in the ground too. I ripped open the car door and threw him into the back, wrapping a chain around him and closing it with a padlock. It would do for now until we got to where we were going.

–

“That’s him?” Nic asked, looking through the two-way mirror at him asleep on the floor in what used to be an interrogation room in our old warrior compound. This part was similar to a human police station with cells, interrogation rooms, and other law enforcement facilities. Stary built a new one when I was younger, but we’d never done anything with the old building. It lay there abandoned. The room was already soundproofed, so no one could hear what happened, even if he screamed to the Goddess. No one was coming to save him.

“Yea,” I answered, pulling out two bright orange tourniquets from my bag. It was time to get started. “Want to help me with this part, or do you want to wait until it’s your turn?”

“Of course I want to help,” she growled, her eyes probably as dark as mine. She was furious when I told her everything, and I didn’t blame her. It had been burning inside me, threatening to consume me for too long. She got here right on schedule, surprising me with her ability to get my mate to cooperate.

We opened the door, and both walked into the room. He was still snoring from the sedatives, and we left him that way until we needed to wake him up. He was in a chair sitting at the metal table they used to cuff wolves to after an arrest. He was bent over it passed out at the moment. I slid my tourniquet up his forearm and cinched it until it cut off the b***d supply. It wasn’t painful enough to wake him up, but what was coming would be. On the other side of the table, Nic did the same. I needed him to survive what I was about to do without bleeding out on the floor. It wasn’t even the most important step. I’d decided that killing him was too swift and lacked any lasting suffering for what he did.

Nic disappeared into the viewing room and returned quickly to hand me Saphir. She was also holding a sledgehammer with an ethereal silver glow. My blessing color changed along with my wolf. I pushed him away from the table, sat him up in his chair, held him up by his throat, and nodded at Nic. She brought the hammer up powerfully over her head and swung it down with a full body arc into his thigh; it was hard to hear his thigh shatter over the eardrum-shattering scream that erupted from him almost immediately after. Apparently, he was more awake than I thought. He grabbed for his thigh, screaming in pain, so Nic threw the hammer over him to me, replacing my hand on his throat with hers. I brought it down to pulverize his opposite femur. Even with our healing, those legs would never be the same, and he wouldn’t be able to escape all night, even if I opened the door and allowed it. I stepped back and observed him. I thought I would enjoy watching him cry, but I didn’t. The rage wasn’t satiated, nor would I be until we were done.

“Glad you’re back with us,” I said flatly, ignoring his shrieks of agony. He was leaned over with his hands hovering over his useless legs. “Put your hands on the table.” He replied with unintelligible sobs and didn’t listen to my request. I dropped the hammer heavily onto the table to get his attention. “I’ve left your shins unbroken. I will happily add them to the list if you don’t comply.” The look of complete and utter terror did send a small amount of happiness through me, but it was quickly burned away again as I picked up Saphir. I’d brought Quinn with me in the only way I could, and she would be the one to exact his punishment. He placed his shaking hands on the table in front of himself.

“Tonight will be emblematical of the pain you have caused the person I care about more than anything in the world. Don’t worry; I’ll explain the symbolism as we progress,” I told him as calmly as I could muster.

“Please, I’ll do anything you want. Just let me-” I open hand slapped him in the mouth to interrupt his begging.

“You’ve not earned the right to speak,” I spat disdainfully. “I hope with your legs broken, you feel the hopelessness of being unable to escape a situation you so desperately want out of but can’t because of someone violently making you stay. See how this works?”

He nodded with tears in his eyes. I would make him understand everything she felt one way or another.

“You have a demonstrable problem keeping your hands to yourself. Do you remember that night that we talked? How you grabbed Quinn to scare her? How you ripped the phone out of her hands? I think we can help you with that problem.”

My eyes briefly flashed down to his hands, and his followed. Realization overtook his face at the sight of the tourniquets. He looked up at me in horror, “No, pleas-”

I brought Saphir down, splitting his forearm in two and relieving him of that hand. His screams resumed, and I waited for them to die, “It’s funny that you say that. Do those words sound familiar? Maybe when you threatened to forcibly mark my mate if she didn’t ‘act right’ after what you did?”

B***d was pooling below his wound, but it was slow and dark, with no arterial spurting. He was going to be fine.

“I was stupid,” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean it. Please, just let me go.”

“Oh, I believe you were stupid, but I don’t believe you didn’t mean it. It’s okay, though. I’m here to help you learn from your mistakes. You’ll bear a different mark to remind you to keep your hands to yourself from now until you die. Well, whatever’s left.”

I brought Saphir down again, easily lopping off his other hand. I was almost tired of the screams; they weren’t the ones I wanted yet.

–

We left him screaming and sobbing as he stared at his arms on the table. I left his hands on the table so he could stare at what he lost; even werewolf healing couldn’t help put him back together. He rocked back and forth in his chair, praying for help that would never arrive. His healing kicked in enough that the stumps stopped bleeding, and he wasn’t shrieking in pain anymore. It was Nic’s turn. Grabbing a washcloth and medical supplies, she walked into the room without me as I watched.

“Hey,” she said quietly, looking back at the mirror like she was sneaking in. ”Are you okay?”

He looked down at his arms and back at her like that was a question he had no answer for but shook his head, “Please… Help me.”

“He’s gone crazy,” she hissed. She approached him carefully with a look of horror on her face. I was impressed with her acting. “I didn’t sign up for this!”

“So, you’ll help me then?” he asked hopefully.

“I’m going to dress your wounds, so you don’t die on our way out, and then we’ll go. He’s asleep, so we have a while.” The look of relief on his face stirred something in me. He was falling for it completely.

Nic walked over and began cleaning and dressing his stumps. She asked him to stand up, but his legs were useless. We knew that would be the case, but she still had to pretend. She helped him lay down on the floor and took medical shears to cut off his pants. They were so bloody and matted to his legs that she couldn’t get them off otherwise. She cleaned his thighs, prodding them to see how broken they were. They were beyond real repair like we knew they would be. She reached behind her to grab the bag she’d brought. In it was a massive dose of painkiller I’d gotten from the same vet.

“You have to trust me,” she whispered. “If I can stop the pain for you, it should help your healing a little.”

“How do I know you’re not going to put me to sleep for him?” he asked distrustingly.

She shrugged, “I’m all you have.”

He took a few moments to gather himself and finally nodded his assent. She plunged a dose of Morphine into his thigh that was strong enough to kill several men and depressed the plunger. Before long, his eyes rolled back, and he was loopy with the anesthetic taking the edge off his pain. It would only be brief. Nic looked down at his boxers, feigning interest.

“So, I know another way to speed up your healing,” she giggled.

“Uh, what?” he asked in confusion, the drugs making him hazy already.

She reached down and gripped his c**k through his boxers, and I watched it rise in her hand, “If I get you off, it should help your healing now that you aren’t feeling much of the pain? We don’t have all night to get out of here, and your legs aren’t exactly working anyway.” He looked around like he expected someone to jump out with a camera, telling him this was all a prank and he still had his arms. “Sorry, I just can’t resist a wounded man sometimes.”

She continued since he didn’t say anything, and she pulled his boxers down, being careful with his legs. He popped free of them, and it was pitiful. Nic closed her hand around it and stroked him a few times before dropping down close, her breath only inches from it, “Close your eyes and enjoy it. It’ll be better that way.”

He closed his eyes and laid his head back expectantly. I’d already loaded my first band onto the prongs of the Elastrator, stretching the thick band open and ready for what was to come. I slipped into the room silently, her hand still slowly stroking and looking up at me to signal that she was ready. In one swift motion, she moved her hand, and I slipped him through the open band and then let the prongs close at the base of his shaft. His eyes popped open immediately in pain, and I punched him heavily to drop him back to the floor. There wasn’t much he could have done to remove it, but he deserved the punch just the same. The band allowed b***d in but not out. My grandma raised goats when I was younger, and we used this to castrate them; it was my first thought when Quinn told me. Usually, you only remove the sack, but I had a point about what we’d just done. Next, Nic helped me slip both testicles through the second band, cinching it around his sack. Now, we just had to wait.

–

The vet said it would take about six hours of extreme pain. To keep him in place, we’d hammered 12-inch steel spikes that I’d blessed into the concrete floor through his arms to keep them above his head. We did the same with his legs, forcing them to stay spread. He’d feel the shame that he’d cause her to feel. We sat in silence, watching the clock as he writhed in pain and his undesirable parts changed color. At seven hours, I figured we’d taken enough time to let the bands do their work. Grabbing Nic, we walked in with Saphir, and he screamed, his pleas falling on deaf ears. He could have offered me anything, but this… This is what I needed. I kneeled, placing the blade at the first band at the end of his shaft. It was still hard and was now purple and painful looking.

Nic leaned down into his ear to make sure she heard him, “Remember, you got hard, so you liked this.” I wanted him to hear his own words and think about them for the rest of his life.

With that, I drew my blade easily across and removed what little manhood the Goddess had allowed him. Regardless of equipment, he wasn’t a man. A man would never do what he did. He started hyperventilating, so I grabbed his sack and pulled it out, laying it along my blade so I could cut away from his body. I didn’t wait; I just removed them with no words from either of us. I had one last thought I knew was f****d, but his legs were already spread. I reached down and grabbed his c**k from where it had been discarded on the floor. Grabbing the hammer handle, I pressed it at his unprotected hole and rammed it into him. I felt him tear, but his screams were normal at this point. I let it sink in ten or so inches into him as he bled around it and begged for death.

“No, Jaxx,” I denied him. “Death would be too easy. You’ll live with this until the Goddess grants you death or you take your own life, whichever comes first.”

I pumped the handle in and out of him enough that I thought he was ready and sufficiently violated before I finally stopped. As I pulled the handle out, he was open enough for my final thought. With some difficulty, I shoved his d**k into his ruined hole, a parting gift that I left inside of him. Even Nic looked disturbed at that last unplanned detail. He turned his head and wretched, throwing up onto himself.

“Go,” I told her. “I couldn’t have done this without you, but you need to be back before she wakes up, so she doesn’t think you came out here with me.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” she asked, looking at him and me.

I nodded, “I’ll be fine. I’ll drop him in the woods somewhere far away from here.”

“I love you, Michael. Let this be the end; leave it all here.” I could feel her hand on my back as she stood next to me, her scent bringing me back from the dark place I’d sunk deeply into. I breathed for what felt like the first time.

“I love you too, Nic, and I will. Promise.”

–

I pulled him out of the car, bringing the plastic I’d taped to cover the backseat with him. He was sobbing uncontrollably, begging me to kill him. He wanted the suffering to end. I kneeled to where he was lying naked and broken on the desolate wooded ground. We were hours from Stary, and there were no packs here, only rumors of vampires.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I promised him. “What you did will leave a scar on my mate for the rest of her life, no matter how much I try to heal her. So, now, you will wear scars of your own to atone for that mistake. You will never come back to Stary or Wild Paws again. You will not contact your family and never let me see your face again.”

He just cried into the ground, probably begging the Goddess to do what I wouldn’t.

“If you even breathe my name to anyone or tell a soul what happened here today, I’ll be back for your tongue. You’ll never speak anyone’s name again.”

He nodded, still not speaking, so I stood up and walked back to my car. As I drove away, I called out, “Oh, and watch out for the vampires here.”

His parting scream finally filled me with the satisfaction I’d been looking for all night. It was finally time to go home to my mate.