To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

“We can’t keep doing this, Dad!” Asher cries out. “We’re losing him, everyday we’re closer and closer to losing him.”

Gray can see that Alpha Atwood has tears in his eyes already and compresses his lips in the face of his son’s terrified outburst. “I know, Asher,” he says quietly. “But we’re doing all we can.”

“So our best is just spinning our wheels and making phone calls? Slate deserves more than that.”

“Asher,” Alpha Atwood stands up and gets in the way of Asher’s anxious pacing. “Son. Look at me.” Asher looks up at his father with red rimmed eyes, all the petulance of a young man who’s been burned down down to a young boy again. “Slate deserves the world. But all we can give him right now is our sincerest and deepest efforts to get him back. That is literally all we have to offer. And if that means being on phones all day, then we’ll be on phones all day.”

“There are only so many numbers to call, Dad.” Asher lifts one hand and tugs on his hair with a fist. “What happens when we run out?”

Alpha just shakes his head and pulls his son in for a hug. Gray looks away, feeling like she’s intruding on an intimate scene between father and son. She has found herself tonight spending the evening at the Atwood home with all of the Atwoods and both of her siblings. All of them had come together for dinner. There’s still the gnawing feeling of something–someone–missing and it’s a mostly quiet affair, but it’s comforting just to be around all of them. All her favorite people in one room.

With one notable exception.

A few days prior, they had all gathered, much like today, to have a meal together on Thanksgiving. Not to have Thanksgiving dinner, mind you, because they were just postponing that until Slate was back with them. The most talk of gratitude there had been was when Alpha Atwood said a few words before they’d started the meal about how he was grateful the Holts could be there as a loved part of the family and to prepare for the chaos that a real Atwood Thanksgiving would offer. His eyes still didn’t twinkle like they would have a few weeks prior, but they looked less dead. It was a good day, in context.

Now, following today’s dinner, Sara has taken her two youngest siblings back to her house to play candyland while the rest of them keep brainstorming ways to find Slate. It seems like the only thing they know how to talk about anymore. What they’ve been doing is scouring their phone books for even the barest of contacts with the Jackson pack or the Dreiden pack, or really any pack in western Canada, where they’re comfortable assuming Slate is or is near, at least.

The problem is that werewolf pack networking isn’t really...a thing. Usually, a pack is familiar with its surrounding entities and maybe in brief contact with more far reaching packs. Wider than that...packs are hardly even aware of each other. If, for some reason, Alpha Atwood had a reason to contact a pack in, say, New York, then he would contact the easternmost pack he knows and ask them for the easternmost pack they know and so on and so forth until he reached his final destination.

Basically no communication happens internationally, so they’re working against hundreds of years of tradition trying to infiltrate Canada’s packs. Particularly that region, where packs are...savage. They’re corrupt and bloodthirsty and dangerous in every way. In theory, Gray and her siblings should have plenty of people to contact from their old pack but, in reality, there’s no one they really trust who they still have the means to contact. If the wrong people get the wrong information, they could just be bringing the war to their front door where Gray is, leaving Slate to find a way to survive on his own.

As werewolves, they’re also not used to going through law enforcement to solve any of the problems that arise amongst themselves. Reporting Slate as kidnapped would elicit a lot of questions and they’d have to completely fabricate any sort of motive, all this not even touching the load of garbage that they’d have to wade through when Canadian officials inevitably became involved. If enough crap was dug up about Slate’s abductors, the federal government might even get involved.

The general consensus is that the Atwood pack still thinks they can find and rescue Slate before anything productive would happen with law enforcement. Plus, that way they don’t have to play by human rules all the time. A little maiming never hurt anybody as long as they deserved it.

Still, the going has been slow. Gray almost feels a physical ache when she thinks of what Slate might be going through at any given moment. Sometimes she wonders if it is physical, a product of their bond as True Mates.

It hurts in a whole new way to think about their bond. Gray feels like such a failure as a mate. The way Slate had looked at her that day, the last day, haunts her dreams almost every night. She had spent so long proving to him that she is different, that he doesn’t need to treat her like he does his family, that she doesn’t need protection.

But in that moment, she saw all that progress crumble. She knows he had seen that glimmer of relief in her eyes when she realized Trenton and Kyle didn’t know she was the healer. But Gray wasn’t relieved that it was Slate and not her, she just wasn’t thinking that far. All she felt in that moment was relief that she was safe--it just took her a moment too long to process that that meant Slate was unsafe.

When they get him back, she’s going to spend as much time and energy as it takes to regain the trust he had given her like the gift she knows it was.

“Can’t we…” Forrest is saying to the floor, shaking Gray from her thoughts. “Can’t we just go up there and see if we can find someone in person?”

Jason shakes his head sadly, putting a comforting hand on Forrest’s shoulder. “We wouldn’t know where to start, who to trust.”

“But what harm can it do to just ask if someone knows anyone named Dreiden?”

Gray is the one to shake her head this time. “Things don’t work like that up there, where we came from,” she nods to Alexander and Aria, huddled next to her. “They keep information on lockdown unless they implicitly trust you. And you’ll look incredibly suspicious just for knowing their name, as a foreigner.”

“Well what other options do we have?” he looks up with glassy eyes.

Gray meets Alpha Atwood’s eyes. “How about...how about if we don’t have anything new by the end of the day tomorrow, then we’ll…” she gestures to herself and her siblings, “we’ll call some of my father’s friends and see if I can at least get some gossip about what’s going on in the pack without giving away too much information.”

“But you have to stay anonymous, they can’t know where you are, not after everything you left behind,” Asher frowns, distraught.

Alpha Atwood rubs his eyes as he speaks up. “Then I’ll try. We’ll think of a reason the alpha of an American pack would have to contact Alpha Jackson’s pack.”

Before discussions can go further, Alexander gasps and jumps to his feet. He’s staring at his phone in shock and awe and there may be tears of relief brimming in his eyes. “It’s...it’s Miss Audra, she just texted me back!”

Gray isn’t the only one to burst into tears at the first piece of good news they’ve heard in weeks.

:::::

The first time someone opens the door after a week of solitary confinement, Slate musters up a modicum of gratitude. He only had about a day and a half’s portions of food left. He thinks it was probably Thanksgiving sometime in the last week so he was really contemplating eating all of it today in celebration. Some feast, he thinks, looking at his granola and dried fruit as the door opens and light streams in.

“Jared!”

For a moment, Slate almost looks around to find Jared, before he remembers it was the stupid name he had stuck himself with at the beginning of this whole mess. In total, he estimates he’s been away from home for close to a month. Feels like lightyears.

For as little concern as he had spared for the affliction of solitary confinement, it had been more difficult than he anticipated. Slate is kind of a loner by nature, but not...like that. It was entirely silent. He couldn’t even hear anyone else in the whole house. Slate would first play tic tac toe on the ground with himself before it would ever occur to him to speak to himself, so it had been him and his carefully regulated breathing together in that room for a week.

He’d had a lot of time to think, though he mostly tried to keep his mind blank out of self preservation. He thought about Raven some more, about Sage and how he’d be coping with what would feel like yet another loss to his already abundant abandonment issues, how much they would let Forrest be involved in his search, how much time and energy Asher must be wasting just trying to find Slate in his mind, and Sara...a lot about Sara.

She’d be in her third trimester of pregnancy by now, barely past the age of viability for a fetus to survive. He prays desperately that she doesn’t start labor anytime soon for many, many obvious reasons.

Slate has to ignore the fact that his abduction is doubtlessly causing her to feel potentially dangerous levels of stress, just for his own sanity.

A voice clears its throat pointedly, startling Slate with its loudness in the silence. He shakes himself and sits up, finding Dreiden and Blake both standing in the open doorway tauntingly, daring him to try to make a break for it. Slate marvels at the fact that he still has the energy to be so utterly unimpressed.

“You’re alive? Well done,” Dreiden says as though he expected Slate to have figured out how to suffocate on nothing or trip and irreparably bash his head or something. “How was your time alone?” Having learned that Slate can outlast anyone with silence, he continues undeterred when he doesn’t even change his expression. “I can only assume it gave you ample time to think and ponder our generous offers.”

Slate blinks at them. Shrugs in that purposeful, defiant way he has. “Shall I remind you how simple this could be?” Dreiden presses. “All I need is for you to heal for me, Jared, do what you were born to do. No harm will come to you if you comply. You will have all the food and water you desire, a comfortable living space, entertainment--anything you desire, as long as you obey. Isn’t that a tantalizing offer?”

“You think you can feed and water me like a caged animal and I’ll do tricks for you?” Slate croaks dryly, having to stop and hack into his shoulder to clear the irritation in his throat from disuse of his voice.

“You’re not looking too hot there, Jared. Need some water?” Blake taunts, holding a bottle in one hand while the other stays suspiciously behind his back.

Slate clenches his jaw with the effort it takes not to glower at him. Slate’s pride can take a lot, but a month of having arrogant men flaunt their authority and power over him gets grating after a while. Still, he says nothing.

Blake rolls his eyes and tosses the water bottle at him. “Whatever, wolf. I hope you enjoy your poison,” he mutters.

Dreiden cuts a hard stare at him before turning back to Slate, who wets his parched throat with the water. “Is this you refusing? Because I’m prepared to force your hand one way or another.”

Slate lets a frigid smile warm his face. “Try me.”

Dreiden sighs and flicks a hand at Blake. “Get someone to grab the table and chair.”

Moments later, the door opens once more and hands transfer a metal table and chair to Blake’s hands, who surreptitiously tries to hide the shiny cleaver Slate had caught sight of behind his back. Slate feels a chill go up his spine. The presence of a knife isn’t surprising at all, but the fact that it’s a cleaver tells Slate that this might not be a simple slice and dice session. He might not have had those sips of water had he seen the cleaver before.

“Beautiful,” Dreiden smiles as Blake sets up the chair, but oddly sets the table aside, against the wall. “Shall we begin?”

Blake sets the cleaver down on the metal table with a clatter, probably something that is supposed to drive fear into Slate’s very soul, or something. Slate feels dread and anticipation, he’ll give him that, but not necessarily fear. It feels like watching someone die. It’s so indelibly painful to watch it happen, to wait for the end, but a part of you just is just ready for it to be over so their suffering can stop and you can start to grieve. If Blake could just get to the maiming bit of tonight’s performance, Slate wouldn’t have to keep anticipating the pain and just start to let it heal.

Probably a bit of a dark example, but Slate is, understandably, in a dark mood.

Blake opens the door and yells something down the hall, but Slate’s focus is now drawn on the ropes Dreiden had summoned seemingly from thin air that he begins to wrap around Slate and the chair he’s been shoved onto. The ropes loop around him over and over and over until the pressure is enough that he can’t take a full breath. His torso is tied to the back of his chair and his arms to the arms of the chair. His legs are secured to the legs of his chair, so the only joint he can really move is his neck.

Slate thinks for the millionth time about punching Dreiden’s face in, but especially when he knows for certain that there are other people in the house, it would be a suicide mission.

Simultaneous to Dreiden stepping back to admire his work, Blake reenters the room with a whole slew of torture instruments, most of them knives, but Slate thinks he saw a lighter in there and some duct tape. They’re getting into the classic torture mindset, he sees. Brilliant.

Color him unsurprised.

“Remember, Jared,” Dreiden leans down to say directly into his face. “You can make this stop at any time. We’ll make you break, wolf. You’re just prolonging your suffering.”

Slate swallows so he won’t spit in the man’s face.

“Today,” Blake grins at him, hefting a knife in his right hand and approaching with a ridiculous swagger, high on the adrenaline of causing another human immense pain and agony, “is the day I am going to make you scream.”

Slate grins toothily once more. “Try me.”

And try, they do. They start with superficial wounds, as if testing him for pain tolerance, though they should know his is sky high, by now. They paint lines down his arms, puncture the meaty part of his bicep. They trace the scars on his face like they’re being clever. They cut an X over his heart, carve some word into his abs around the ropes, probably some inventive slur or something. Through it all, Slate just picks a point on the ceiling to stare at and breathes. It hurts, yes, it stings and aches and burns unbelievably, but he doesn’t scream. Tears prick his eyes from the sharpness of the pain more than any sort of despair, but they don’t fall.

Which is not to say he’s a statue. He may be strong, but he’s only human. He gasps and wheezes when he can’t pull in a deep enough breath and occasionally groans, but he manfully does not scream. These prosaic, villain archetypical torture methods don’t deserve it.

Slate comes back to his body a bit when he feels the warmth of human skin reprieving the bite of cold steel. When his eyes focus again, Blake is in front of him studying his face, gripping his jaw with two fingers hard enough that he’ll probably leave bruises.

“You know,” he says, staring at Slate’s cheek intently, “we’ve never really discussed this.” Blake gives the scarred side of Slate’s face a couple pats. “Your beauty marks. They don’t come easy to us werewolves, so I want to know--how’d they do it?”

Slate blinks.

Blake rolls his eyes. “Who scarred you, wolf, and how did they do it?”

Slate squints.

Blake huffs. “Are you going to make me guess at everything? You’re only giving me more material to work with, you know. I’m not quite sure you’ve got all your marbles in place up there.” He pats the top of Slate’s head this time, though it’s more a procession of brain rattling thumps than pats.

“If Alpha Dreiden will let me, I think I’d like to mark up the other side of your face, just for symmetry’s sake. But that will be for another day,” Blake decides, straightening from where he’d been leaning down in Slate’s space.

“For now, I know something that will leave a mark for sure.”

Blake had left the cleaver on the table for the whole session so far, something Slate had been acutely aware of. Now, he lifts the whole table, only a rectangle of about three feet by five feet, with all the implements still clattering around on it as it’s toted around. Slate watches with slitted eyes as he puts the table flush against the arm of Slate’s chair. Slate lowers his head and takes shallow breaths around the ropes. When Blake starts to untie the arm right next to the table, Slate slants his eyes over to watch more carefully.

Once the arm is untied and lying limply, all the energy sapped from the body it’s attached to, Blake puts it on the table and picks up the duct tape. First his wrist is mummified before it’s strapped to the table with several layers of tape. His forearm just under the elbow gets the same treatment until Slate’s fingers start tingling with lack of blood flow.

When Blake tapes up all his fingers except the pinky, Slate skirts his eyes over to the cleaver and thinks he might know where this story is taking him. Blake sees him looking and grins. “Starting to get the picture, wolf?”

Once the table is cleared of weapons except for the cleaver, a lighter, and a set of pliers, Slate starts to really process what is about to happen to him. The scars on his face, at least, are purely cosmetic now that they’ve healed. This though...this is going to affect function and capability, maybe even quality of life. If Blake does what he thinks he’s going to do, Slate will be irreversibly changed. The body of a werewolf can survive almost anything that isn’t a death blow, but it can’t regrow fingers.

For a person whose body had been completely smooth and free of blemish his whole life, becoming gruesomely scarred and potentially losing a finger--holy hell, it’s still setting in--in the course of only a few months is beyond jarring.

When Blake picks up the cleaver, he hefts it in a hand comfortably before giving Slate a friendly punch across the face. “Hey. Pay attention. I swear, you’ve got the self preservation skills of a lemming, wolf.” He shakes his head, giving Slate a sardonic stare. “Look, I can see that, for whatever reason, this whole refusal to heal is very significant to you. It’d have to be for you to have survived three and a half weeks in this cute little circle of hell we’ve constructed for you. But even for the most significant of causes, everyone’s got their breaking point, wolf. I’m telling you now, I’m a creative guy, I can figure out how to make you sing.

“But today,” Blake grins, “today isn’t about making you sing. Today is all pleasure, wolf, I can’t tell you the joy that will fill my black soul when your screams of agony reach my ears. So, I’ll give you one last chance--do what my alpha wants, or I’ll take the fingernails of the other ones too.”

Slate closes his eyes, not caring to see the look on Blake’s face any longer. Slate isn’t sure if it literally gives Blake pleasure to see him in pain or if it’s just a front to break Slate down even further, but even the idea is so vile. Not even feral animals kill or cause pain because it’s fun. But apparently some humans, werewolves, do. Blake probably has a wife or girlfriend, maybe kids, a dog, a nice house--his neighbors might never even know a monster lives next door because no one thinks that way. Even if they thought Blake was rude or lazy or mean, they would never guess the man would be coming down almost daily to torture a man held hostage, having done no harm.

This is not normal. This is not okay. This is...this is hell.

“Alright, then, how about we go with the nails first, hm? Wouldn’t want you to pass out after the finger and miss the encore, so we’ll just serve it as an appetizer instead.” Blake nearly sings. “Good thing I brought the pliers too. Almost left them at home when I just got struck with inspiration, you know? To think, you almost missed out on this little jaunt. Would have been a shame.”

Slate keeps his eyes closed, even when he feels Blake adjusting his hand, twisting his thumb almost to the point of breaking to flip it nail-up. When he feels the arms of the pliers take hold of the nail, he automatically tenses every muscle and stops breathing in anticipation. When nothing happens, Slate exhales and tries to convince his muscles to--

Agony.

How could one describe what it feels like to have one’s fingernails ripped off? Slate now has first hand experience and he still has no words. He has run out of synonyms for pain to describe his experiences with. The thing is, nails aren’t just sitting on smooth skin, they’re attached to the nail bed, which is full of little blood vessels. It’s not as simple as giving a hard pull and voila, the torturee is down one fingernail. Maybe Blake, with his heightened strength, could pull a nail off in one go, but the pliers just don’t have enough grip for that, so it’s...slow. The nail is lifted, wiggled back and forth, and almost gently coaxed out until it’s loose enough to yank all the way off. Slate wants to shiver from the creepy feeling of blood pooling around his fingertips.

As the other nails come off, one by one, Slate keeps his eyes closed and his head tilted toward the ceiling with absolutely no expression on his face, save for the clenched jaw and gritted teeth he can’t help. If Blake wants to have fun on this jaunt, Slate is going to make him work for it.

Once all the fingernails of his left hand are pried off, Blake claps his hands and rubs them together. “Now to the main dish. Ready?” Blake asks with a wolfish grin.

Slate shrugs in that way he has that definitively communicates his opinion of his captors’ intelligence and his utter lack of fear of them.

Blake is well used to this look, but his lips still give a little irked twist before he huffs and braces one hand on Slate’s left wrist, poising the knife above his pinky. Slate’s eyes flick to the blade once more, and he swallows hard when the thought occurs to him that this knife is not near sharp enough for this. This isn’t going to be a decapitation, this is going to be a hack job.

“Let me hear that pretty little scream and I might go easy on you,” Blake advises smugly.

And with that, Slate learns what it’s like to irrevocably lose a part of yourself, literally.

After the shock of the first hit wears off, Slate doubles over as much as he can at the sheer volume of excruciating pain. Slate’s hunch over the ropes on his chest quickly proves to be effective in all but completely suffocating him, so he has to straighten even though all his instincts are telling him to protect the vulnerable parts of his body.

Go somewhere else, go somewhere else, you’re not here in a basement, you’re not being tortured, you’re somewhere--anywhere else.

Slate desperately searches his mind for a safe space to sink into, desperate to escape this dingy room. Distantly, he hears Blake cackling, feels blood spray onto his hand, his neck, his face, probably all over his clothes.

With every ounce of strength he has, Slate throws his energy out into the abyss, trying to find Asher anywhere. Slate couldn’t say how long it takes, whether it’s seconds, minutes, or hours, but eventually Asher finds him. Time becomes nothing to Slate, only escape matters.

Slate? Slate, are you okay, what’s going on? Are you--ah! Asher cries out in pain.

Slate abruptly realizes how stupid this idea is and tries to desperately draw back all his energy, but Asher doesn’t let him. Somehow he holds on. Slate at least manages to cut off the flow of all emotion, allowing only enough of a crack so that he can still speak and hear Asher.

Slate, Slate, answer me!

I’m here, Slate gasps. I’m okay, Ash, I’m here.

Don’t lie to me, Slate, Asher grinds out. You are anything but fine. You’re in pain, you’re always in pain now, but this was...this was beyond anything I’ve felt in my life. Slate, what’s happening to you?

I can’t talk about it right now, Asher, Slate tries to say calmly, but it comes out high and thready. Just talk to me. What’s going on in the pack?

Slate--

Asher, Slate interrupts with the intention of scolding, but gets interrupted himself. For a moment, Slate swears he can hear the cleaver crush a joint in his finger and out of sheer desperation, Slate gasps all in a rush, Take me somewhere Asher, anywhere. Take me away from here.

The voice that comes out of him is nothing Slate recognizes. It’s pained and...and young. Slate can’t remember the last time he felt or looked or sounded young. The thing is, it’s not a scared sound, because Slate was rarely scared even as a child. But he craved comfort. That’s all he has ever wanted, comfort and a safe place to rest. But to Slate, comfort and safety don’t come from a cozy blanket or even a roof over his head, because he has never cared about things. He cares about people. His comfort and safety come from people, not places or things. That’s all he ever wants, and yet never knows how to ask for.

But right now, Slate needs Asher to be his safe place, and no one has ever heard Slate better than Asher.

Without another moment of hesitation, Asher whisks Slate away to a time long before Slate really understood how dark the world could be.

When his vision swirls dizzyingly before landing on the familiar sight of the farmland, he swears he can smell the fruit, the rich soil, his family. And there they are, there’s Slate and Sara, looking to be around ten and twelve-years-old, walking next to Mom, who’s pregnant, must be with Sage if Slate has guessed ages correctly. For a moment, Slate is confused when Mom turns around and beckons to him, “Come on, Ash, don’t be a slow poke!” Then he realizes this memory isn’t his, it’s Asher’s and he’s seeing from his point of view.

Slate feels the familiar warm feeling of joy that he has felt from Asher via this very connection that he knows pairs with a bright grin. It feels like years since he’s seen that smile, but he still has every crease and dimple of that expression memorized. He knows Asher better than he knows himself, most days.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

When Mom smiles back over her shoulder, Slate nearly cries. It has been years since he’s seen that smile and he feels every single one of those years acutely.

Asher gallops onward until he crashes into Slate, who balances him easily, only to elbow him in the side nearly hard enough to knock him over all over again. “Slow poke,” Slate smirks. “How’re you supposed to impress Erin if you can’t even keep up with a pregnant lady?”

Slate feels Asher’s pout, but focuses more on the indignant squawk coming from Mom. “Nice one, dufus,” Sara mutters in Slate’s ear, poking him in the cheek.

Slate shoves Sara off, muttering back some other childhood insult that Asher doesn’t hear over Mom demanding, “And what exactly do you mean by that, Slate? Are you insinuating that I’m slow?”

Slate winces, exchanging glances with Asher. “Of course not, just…”

“Just what, son?” Mom presses sternly.

When Slate starts to cower in the face of his usually excitable mother, Asher notices a little crack in Mom’s facade and hides a smile behind his hand. Mom was the only person Asher had ever known who could really fluster Slate and she took advantage of it. Gleefully.

Finally Mom gives in to the smile that was trembling the irritated slant of her mouth and bursts into laughter, one hand going to rest on her belly and the other to ruffle Slate’s hair. “Well,” she says through lingering laughter. “I may not be the fastest or strongest, but I’m still powerful. You kids might have some advantages over your human peers, but humans can wield just as much power as you if they know how to use it.”

Slate had no idea how much their mother was enduring back then, but rifling back through memories now, he recognizes how much slower she really was when she was pregnant with the younger three. She tried to be off her feet as much as possible, but with multiple kids already, she had to be mobile most of the time. Slate has memories of her ankles being swollen like baseballs and their father massaging her feet while she tried not to grimace on the couch.

She was just human, but she was incredibly powerful in her own right. In fact, that just might be where Slate gets his pain threshold from. She’d gone through her own systematic torture--though less gory than Slate--for nine months. Six times. Slate feels so weak with so little nutrition, but his mom could hardly keep anything down for most of her pregnancies while also having to sustain a little life. If she could do that, then Slate can do this.

She’d had migraines that knocked her flat out on the worst days, her back was in near constant pain, the discomfort was endless--but she did it all for her family. Just like Slate.

If she could bear that pain for all of them, then Slate can do the same.

The memory fades away and Slate’s mind is his own again. Thank you, he tells Asher, though what had been a hazy fog of pain is becoming sharper and more intense already.

Anytime. Anything you need, Slate, please, please, ask. I just--I miss you.

I know, Asher. I miss you too. Everything will be alright.

Asher starts to say something else but Slate is distracted by the snick! of a lighter being ignited and a wall of pain shatters the fog altogether. He groans with the force of it.

“Ah, you’re still there, huh? I was beginning to think you’d finally cracked and we’d have to put you in a white room somewhere. You’re just in time for dessert.”

“What?” Slate slurs, aware of Asher still in the back of his mind.

“Time to cauterize the wound.”

Slate barely has time to completely shut down the connection between him and his brother before a whole new kind of pain envelops his entire existence and he learns what burning flesh smells like.

He screams.