To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

Gray sits on Sara’s couch, the woman’s hand gripped tightly in hers. She’d forgotten how much it hurts to do this on her own, and not just physically. She’d forgotten how much she used to hide the extent of the pain, how much effort it took to do it. With Slate, not only was the pain less, but all she had to do was turn her head and there would be someone who completely understood, who literally felt the same things as she did--the pain, the effort it took to stay calm, the conflicting desires of having the base, Darwinian urge to avoid all pain and the equally deep desire to help their loved ones.

Sure, she’d started healing Sara on her own more often recently, but that was only ever once or maybe twice a day to supplement the times Slate came with her. And Slate and Gray liked to stay ahead of the pain and drain it before it had the chance to return full force after the last healing period, so it was never too overwhelming.

By now, late at night, Slate and Gray would have spent over an hour just slowly siphoning off every ounce of pain they could so Sara could sleep peacefully for as long as possible. Today and for the last five days, Gray has been on her own and amongst all the other things going on, no one pays her much attention. They’ve forgotten what she sacrifices to keep their sister, their daughter, their packmate in good health.

It’s amazing that this, being overlooked and taken for granted, used to be her reality all the time and she hardly noticed anything wrong with it at all. Now, after having the unwavering support and acceptance and empathy of someone–someone who advocated for her and never let others forget about her either–she realizes how much she had been cheated all her life. It’s painful to go back to that time, but the thing is, she understands. There are far more important things to worry about, she gets that and agrees that Slate should be everyone’s first priority. She doesn’t want people to take time away from him to pander to her every whim, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel crummy about being forgotten.

And you know what makes it worse? Slate is the person she would have gone to with these woes. He would have listened, given her his undivided attention, given her real, true, rational advice, wrapped her up in the embrace she had come to crave. She’d loved just being in his company for a long time, but she’d started craving just his touch.

And now he’s gone.

Gray clears her throat, but her voice still comes out thick and teary when she asks Zander, sitting on an adjacent chair in Sara’s living room, keeping them company while Jason meets with the alpha and some other pack members trying to track down anyone from the Jackson pack. “Have you been able to get a hold of Miss Audra yet?”

Zander looks up from where he’d been hunched over, elbows on his knees and eyes searching the ground for...anything, his phone clutched in one hand and the other balled in a fist.

“Not yet,” Zander admits. “But if we keep trying, she’ll answer eventually. She wouldn’t leave us if she thought we were in trouble. We just have to give her some time, be patient.”

Gray swallows and avoids eye contact with anyone in the room. She knows what they’re all thinking, she doesn’t have to see it in their eyes. They don’t have time to spare, to just wait. Slate and everyone else insists that the Dreidens want him alive, that they wouldn’t just kill him.

But Gray knows there are worse fates than death.

:::::

It’s the sixth day since Slate was taken and it feels like an eternity. He hasn’t been able to sleep between the feeling that he could be attacked at any time and the pain in his arm. He does discover, however, that while he’s not healing nearly as fast as he would normally, he’s still healing exponentially faster than a human would. Case in point: by mid morning the day after the event, his arm is almost healed. It still aches deeply, but after Slate realized he needed to set the bone, it had started mending immediately.

The kickstart to the healing might also be due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten or drank anything they’d given to him after he smelled barely-there wisps of silver, so it had to have flushed out of his system by now. It has been almost twenty-four hours since the break, and it’s still not entirely healed, but at least it won’t be weeks.

Oddly, the central thought in his mind all night, past the haze of pain or hunger, has been heartache for Raven. He’s never broken a bone, but he’d had plenty of scrapes and bumps that had elicited many tears and days of pain. As a werewolf, there are many things Slate will never be able to relate to Raven about and that’s...painful. Especially because the only person in their family who would have been able to truly empathize died on the very day the six-year-old was born.

While Slate has always held some heartache for Raven and the things he goes through as a human, he hadn’t thought too deeply about the fact that Raven is the only (remaining) human in the family because Raven had always just been...Raven. His status as a human has always just been a part of him, like the fact that he has blue eyes and dark hair and loves building things.

Now Slate is realizing that perhaps, while well-meaning, this was not the best approach. Raven deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated as a human. Slate can easily overlook the things that make Raven different, but the boy will never be afforded the same luxury. Raven will go through life in his pack always knowing he is different. So far, Raven has never expressed any upset or sadness about this, but Slate knows he is perfectly aware that his brothers and sister are stronger, quicker, and heal faster than he could ever dream to.

Slate thinks that it might be time to talk with Raven about these things. He doesn’t want his brother to go through life happy with his lot, until he inevitably realizes later in life that his human traits have just been repressed because they were hardly ever even acknowledged. Slate doesn’t want to make a big deal of it or make Raven hyper aware of all his differences all the sudden, but maybe it’s time to realize that, while things are a certain way on pack territory, it’s really Slate living in Raven’s world. Werewolves exist in a human’s world, not the other way around, and Raven deserves to understand that he is not and will never be an inferior type of human being.

Raven can do amazing things as a human that Slate cannot, and it would be a shame if those things were hidden away simply because Slate never even thought to look for them. Slate is...going to do a lot more thinking about this. It’s too important not to.

With his mind still swirling, Slate hears footsteps down the hall. When he sits up, dark spots enter his vision and he has to shoot out an arm to steady himself on the bed. Something else he has to do some thinking about is the pros and cons of eating whatever the Dreidens offer. He doesn’t want to be weakened by the silver, but becoming nearly incapacitated by lack of sufficient sustenance is self defeating. He’ll have to decide when they bring the next meal what the best course of action is.

Blake swings the door open, letting in a draft of warm air from the rest of the house. Slate holds back a shiver. Being uncomfortably cold has just become another part of his reality, so he usually pays it no mind. The brief reprieve is almost cruel because he knows it will just take longer to get used to the cold again afterward.

“Alright, Jared,” Blake announces his presence with, “it’s time to begin the real negotiations. Say hi to Eleanor.”

Blake makes a sweeping gesture to the woman who has just slunk into Slate’s accommodations. Ordinarily, Slate would let a steely silence speak for him, but this woman is hunched in on herself, arms hugging her middle, and flinches back when she makes eye contact with him. “Hello,” Slate grunts, if only to humanize himself to this stranger who is apparently terrified of him.

“Eleanor,” Blake squeezes her shoulder. “Tell Jared why you’re here.”

Through a curtain of hair, Eleanor glances back up at Slate, unable to lift her gaze past his chest area. “I need you to heal me,” she says quite steadily for the way she’s huddling herself against Blake.

Slate scans Eleanor up and down with more than the cursory scan he’d given her before. She’s young, probably around Forrest’s age, with ashy blonde hair that hangs down to her sternum in straight lengths. She looks...healthy. She’s obviously afraid, but she looks completely healthy to the bare eye. Her curves belie any claim to unhealthy weight loss, and her rosy cheeks and bright complexion all point in the opposite direction of sickness.

Still, Slate stays silent. Blake rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask how she needs to be healed?”

Slate lifts an eyebrow.

Blake’s eyes narrow. “Alright, I’ll make this easy for you.” Then, without warning, he rakes one claw down Eleanor’s forearm, ripping right through her shirt and making her recoil and cry out in pain. “Blake!” She cries. “Why would you do that? It was supposed to be a bluff!”

Blake pets her hair, looking actually regretful for a moment before the mask comes back down. “I’m sorry El,” he murmurs to her. “He’s not going to break easy, we have to be serious about this.”

At this, Eleanor nods shakily as though she understands and accepts what is required of her even as tears stream down her face and she curls her injured arm to her torso as if to protect her injured parts.

“Jared,” Blake barks, almost visibly shaking off any softness. “She needs you. Heal her.”

Then Blake gives Eleanor a little shove to where Slate is still sitting on his mattress, making her stumble forward with a little whimper. Slate lets her approach like she’s afraid he’ll bite if she moves too fast. When she gets within three feet of him, she stops and holds her arm out, craning her shoulder to try to keep her body as far from him as possible.

Slate looks at her bloody arm. Looks at her face. Squints. Looks at Blake. Shrugs.

After a short staring contest, Blake blinks and frowns, utterly confused. “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to look at it at least?”

Slate shrugs again. “No.”

Blake lurches forward and flicks his claws out menacingly. “She’s hurt. She’s in pain. How can you be a healer and not want to help someone in pain? You need to heal her.”

From the way Eleanor and Blake look at each other, he can tell they’re legitimately surprised at his evident apathy. And in all truth...it’s not an act. Sure, he feels bad for Eleanor, he doesn’t enjoy seeing people in pain, but she doesn’t really matter to him. If he could heal her with no consequences, he’d give her relief, but in the end, he just doesn’t...care. She’s not going to die from a scratch and Slate doesn’t doubt she’s capable of slitting his throat and throwing his body in a ditch to rot.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because he can’t heal her. So he keeps eye contact with Blake as he slowly and deliberately shrugs his shoulders with innocent eyes. Blake’s jaw clenches so tightly Slate can almost hear his molars grinding before he growls and looms over Slate. “You’re a rat, not a wolf, and you’re going to be punished for this.”

Eleanor screams in fright as Blake takes Slate by the shoulders, claws digging in deeply, and hauls him into a standing position so they’re face to face. He removes one hand with a squelch as his claws retract from muscle and fat and rears back. This time there’s no Dreiden to hold his little henchman back and the fist connects hard.

The first two punches make only superficial damage. It hurts, but Slate’s taken a few sucker punches before. Then the third one breaks Slate’s nose, and the forth and the fifth come in quick succession and his jaw pops out of place. By this point, Slate’s vision is blacking out, but he still makes no noise aside from uneven puffs of air as his breathing goes ragged from the rain of blows.

When Blake sees Slate flagging, he holds him for a moment longer, claws still embedded in his shoulder, just to sneer at him before throwing him onto the floor and dragging a horror stricken Eleanor out of the room with him. He leaves Slate with a promise, “I’ll be back, rat! Just you wait!”

Slate just lays there on the cold floor for an indeterminate amount of time, resting his cheeks alternately on the cold floor as his face heals. He’s lucid by the time someone brings in his next meal, but he decides he needs to prioritize healing over food right now. The silver would make this last much longer and Slate would like to be healed before Blake comes back for him. Of course, malnutrition isn’t entirely conducive to fast healing either, but it’s better than the silver.

After his jaw fully heals, he slowly levers himself upright and decides he’ll take just a few sips of water, if only to get the taste of blood out of his mouth. After that, he heaves himself onto the bed and finally, mercifully, falls asleep before the sun is even halfway to the horizon.