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Fated [BlueAmbient & crypticpieces]

The moment Liam’s weight leaves the bed and the mattress moves, Brennan’s head comes up, instantly wide awake. His eyes turn, searching for Liam, and he releases a soft breath when he spots him. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?” A quick glance out the window tells Brennan he’d gotten no more than four hours sleep. Coffee would be necessary..

Brennan stretches, then stands. He’s still wearing the same clothes he’d put on the night before, but that doesn;t seem to matter to him. Arms above his head, the shirt rides up, showing off a couple inches of toned stomach. Then his arms drop, a heavy breath leaving him. “Well, shall we get breakfast? I can take you to the showers afterward, you know, since I kind of dragged you through the dirt for several feet last night.” Brennan appears bashful at that, a small smile on his face. “Do you have any food allergies?”
 
Liam had been watching Brennan closely for any sign that he’d wake up, so when he did, the hunter exhaled, defeated. “For someone who spent at least some of the night on the floor, you’re really…” Something. “Sure,” he finally got around to answering as he sat down at the desk to tie his boots, “I sleep best when I’m surrounded by the enemy.”

He watched Brennan for a moment, not sure if he could justify any observation that wasn’t critical. Liam’s eyebrows rose. “Did you? I must have completely forgotten.” He hadn’t, he just liked the sarcasm. “No. You’re not going to kill me with nuts and shellfish, if that’s what you were worried about.” Liam stood, content to leave the vest, the holster, and his jacket where they were as though he was at least convinced he wasn’t leaving if this particular wolf was going to keep an eye on him. “Are you going to ignore yesterday?” Liam didn’t want to define what particular part of yesterday he meant because it was still absurd. “I’d like to know because the whole surprise announcement of what you think… I don’t want to go through that again. Either get it out of your system now, so I can tell you that’s insane, or we act like that’s not a crazy thing you said.” Those were Liam’s options for dealing with what he refused to acknowledge as real.
 
Brennan grins when told Liam doesn’t have any allergies, making his way to the door. “Why do people always reference nuts and shellfish? There are so many other allergies out there.” Brennan’s hand lands on the doorknob, but he stops when Liam brings up the ‘surprise announcement’. He’s silent, staring at the wood of the door. When he turns around, his lips are pressed into a thin line. One hand rubs the back of his neck.

”Liam, I wouldn’t lie about something like that. A wolf finding a fated mate is a very serious thing. Normally, it’s a connection between two wolves. But very rarely, it can happen between other species. The last known wolf to have a human fated mate was thirty years ago.” Brennan takes a step toward Liam, half reaching to him before he stops. “Liam, you are my mate, even if you don’t want to be. But I will not force myself on you. Mating is a sacred thing among wolves. I won’t do anything to you that you don’t want me to do. But I can’t let you leave until the week is up. I just hope that you realize my Pack is not dangerous.”
 
By the time Brennan turned around, Liam already looked tense. He would have preferred ‘yes, we’re going to ignore it.’ Apparently, they weren’t going to, and he regretted having brought it up before he’d had any caffeine. The step toward him made him twitch, tension a little more firmly fixed. “I’m not…” He exhaled even as he moved to get into the other man’s space so they could finally get out of this room he’d been in for too long, which meant brushing by the wolf. “I’m not afraid of you or what you will or won’t do. Don’t be ridiculous.” It was sweet for him to be reassuring, but Liam really hadn’t been worried about that particular aspect.

“You could be wrong,” he offered as he opened the door and slipped into the hall, turning as though he needed to make sure Brennan was coming. “If you’re not wrong—even though you are—that makes you, what, defective?” Or it made Liam defective as a human, but he wasn’t going down that rabbit hole yet. “And you could let me leave, but you’re choosing not to, so here we are.”
 
Brennan almost grabs Liam’s arm as he brushes past, but instead follows him into the hall. The comment about being defective makes his eyes roll. “I’m not defective, Liam. Matings between wolves aren’t always oppsite sex. We have a handful of same sex pairings in this Pack, too. Just because I got a human mate, doesn’t make me any less a wolf. Sometimes it happens, it’s just.. rare.”

Brennan takes the lead, guiding Liam to the ground floor and into the kitchen. “For the safety of my Pack, I can’t let you leave, Liam. It’s not just because you’re my mate. I need to figure out how to get your hunters to leave us alone. And I need your help to do it.” Brennan moves to one of the fridges, rummaging inside. He pulls out a carton of eggs and margarine, then goes to a cupboard and takes out bread. “Eggs and toast good for you? Jerry’s not awake atthis hour, so if you want anything else, you’ll have to wait for Pack breakfast. I’m not much of a cook.”
 
Liam followed, passingly interested in the quiet of the house and the way the stairs did or didn’t make sound if he stepped on them. Some parts of being a hunter didn’t turn off after so long of making them a habit. The kitchen was impressive and pulled Liam’s attention away from the conversation long enough to appreciate the size. “Yeah, I didn’t imagine you were keeping me because you think…” He couldn’t associate himself with the term, it rattled at the very core of who he had become.

He wasted no time in taking the bread away from the other man. “You might not be, but I am. I’m not letting you wreck breakfast, if this is going to be the high point of my day. Sit down. Don’t be a pest. If you’re worried, no, I’m not going to try to stab you with anything in the kitchen. Although, if you weren’t worried about it, maybe you are now.” Liam smiled faintly to himself as he familiarized himself with the kitchen. “Being a hunter doesn’t pay well, but kitchens are always hiring,” he explained as he worked through the process of setting up coffee. Coffee first because it had to brew, then they could deal with food.

“I usually work at that place on the main street in town.” The restaurant, Flame, was one of the two high-end restaurants available to the residents. Liam didn’t like sharing that information. He hadn’t intended to, but it came out before he could recall that he shouldn’t mention it because they weren’t friends and they weren’t going to be. “The hunters aren’t going to leave you alone,” he said, turning the conversation sharply back to the more pressing matter.
 
Brennan rolls his eyes again as Liam takes away the bread, setting the egg carton on the counter by one of the stoves. He leans against the counter, watching Liam move around. “You couldn’t even if you tried. Faster reflexes, remember?” Brennan grins, waving one hand in the air as if that explained everything. He listens to Liam talk about working in a restaurant, and from the location description, has a good idea of which one. Maybe after all this blows over, he’d take Sam, Chelsea, and Eli to eat there.

Conversation goes back to the hunters, and Brennan sighs, hands pushing through his red hair. “I have to try, Liam. I can’t keep moving my Pack. We lost half our numbers in a territory war a while back, and have been chased out of homes six times since then. My Pack is starting to fall apart, and this was our best shot. The next available open land is three days away.” As soon as the coffee is ready, Brennan grabs a mug and pours himself some coffee. He doesn’t add anything to it, and doesn’t wait for it to cool. He takes a gulp of the steaming hot liquid, sighing contentedly. “We can’t keep moving, we have children to think about, and two of our women are pregnant. One’s due next month, and the other in three.”
 
Liam focused more on the work than on what Brennan was doing, but he set a pan down harder on the stove than necessary, which proved he was still listening. The hunter insisted on actual butter, and went so far as to toast the bread on the stove because toasters were notoriously finicky. While he watched over the eggs, sizzling quite contentedly in their pan, he folded his arms over his chest and leaned one hip against the counter to finally look at Brennan. The corner of his mouth quirked up at the way the other man drank his coffee.

He glanced back at the still cooking food and moved to retrieve his own cup, which he also put nothing in but did resist drinking it immediately. “You have to. If you want to have a chance, you have to move, and now… They’ll keep coming for you because you know where they are. They won’t risk it. The women and kids don’t matter to them. I would have killed that woman last night.” Liam wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Evelyn, but he did with Brennan, which was something he didn’t want to analyze. “If you go now, this week, then you’ll be ahead of them. They think you’re just going to keep me here, so they won’t expect you to run. That’s as much help as I’m giving you,” he decided as he found silverware and plates to place the eggs and toast onto, passing one to Brennan. “Run.”
 
Brennan is growing frustrated with this line of conversation, and it shows in the tension in his shoulders. When Liam hands him a plate, his fingers brush the hunter's hand. "No, we're done running. Peace is not impossible, Liam, and I'm going to prove it to you." Brennan moves to sit at an island counter, and as he starts eating, he changes the subject with a certain finality.

"We do run training spars with the older kids in the afternoon, and of course the adults. All the kids get homeschooling, but it's not kept to a strict schedule like human schooling. The basics are taught, of course, but we encourage individual interests." Brennan licks his lips, smiling at the good food. "Things like human histories are touched on, but they're not held to quite the same overpowering importance as humans do. Our own histories are important, too, but not as convoluted and complex as human histories."
 
Any contact left him too aware of Brennan, but he cut the flicker of recognition short in favor of rolling his eyes at the idea that he was going to change his mind about the possibility of peace. Even Liam was glad to move on from the point of contention. It didn’t seem like either of them would suddenly have a change of heart.

Liam flipped off the stove, moved the pan to a cold burner, and carried his rapidly cooling coffee and plate to the island. He dropped down into a chair next to Brennan because he couldn’t be bothered to be prickly enough to sit away from the other man. “What happens when it’s not enough? What if they want to go to college or be doctors or—can werewolves be astronauts?” His brow furrowed and he pulled the crust off of his toast to eat the insides before eating the discarded edges. Liam was adamantly curious, not invested. “Aren’t you ever bothered about all the things they won’t be able to do because of what they are?” Plenty of people couldn’t do plenty of things because of who or how they were. He was a very good example of that, but that was a line of thinking that made him tense and distracted from the dissection of his food.
 
Brennan grins, then licks his lips and swallows the bite of food in his mouth. "You think there isn't any wolves out there doing exactly those things? I'm not about to out any to you, but there's wolves everywhere, more than you think. Not all wolves live in packs. Many of them, while technically forming a pack, live separate lives, and only interact during full moon ceremonies." Brennan pauses, looking down at his plate. "Some have lost their mates, and I know a few who found new love, though less intense, with humans. Those ones went to great lengths to make certain they didn't birth offspring."

Brennan falls silent as he finishes his meal. "Half wolves are dangerous for us. Not that they're any more dangerous than a full wolf, or a hunter for that matter. It's more like, they can't control when they change forms. Wolf history shows its always at random times. Half wolves don't have the instincts to control their inner wolf. Half wolves are a big part of the reason wolves got put on hunters' hit lists."
 
Liam stared at the plate, carefully not reacting to the possibility that werewolves were everywhere. Rampant. “That’s horrifying.” With his fork, he nudged at the border of his eggs before abandoning the effort in favor of his coffee. “So we—you—are defective after all. If one of us were female and I believed you about,” he made a vague gesture between them, “this, then we shouldn’t have kids because they’d be dangerous.” Cup in hand, Liam peered at Brennan. The slight twinge of something like remorse at pressing the other man wasn’t something he wanted to entertain, but he still felt it. “Guess we’re awfully lucky being who we are then.” Lucky was a relative assessment.

He couldn’t keep doing this. Liam slid out of the chair, set his coffee down, and took his plate to get rid of everything he couldn’t think of eating now. “I don’t think that was the glowing endorsement of wolves that you hoped it was going to be. Now I just feel paranoid.” He paused at the sink, setting the dish down for a moment to glance back at Brennan. “Is there a point for you in having a mate?” Despite the phrasing, which was more a product of his frustration, the question itself was sincere
 
Brennan finishes his meal, shaking his head. "If you were female, I'd simply do my due diligence and bring up the conversation of which of us would get sterilized. Personally, I'd rather it be me. The recovery time in males is far shorter than in females." Brennan speaks as though sterilization is a perfectly normal thing. "As it is, being that we're both men, there's nothing to worry about. Unless you're not biologically male? Which would be fine if you weren't, bit I have a pretty strong feeling you are. You smell very male."

Brennan sits at the counter a moment longer than Liam, smiling slightly. "It's called honesty, Liam. I can't gain your trust if I'm not honest. And even among hunters, there's a lot of misinformation. For example, silver kills us, wolfsbane does not. Wolfsbane only kills our wolves, which leaves us, for all intents and purposes, human, just like you."

Brennan stands and cleans up his plate, then stands in front of Liam, very closely. "Everyone wants someone they can spend the rest of their life with, Liam. Wolves just have the luck to have our mates chosen for us. It's the kind if connection any normal person craves. Intensity, but also security. Warmth, and someone that will challenge them, not just someone that will follow their every command."
 
Liam’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t say I was the girl in this imagined world in which we weren’t having kids, thanks. It could have been you, and I’ll remember next time to specify. And stop smelling me.” He realized that the order, given to a werewolf, was absurd, but the whole thing was a bit absurd. They didn’t belong together, Brennan seemed intent on making him an ambassador for werewolves to the hunters, and the wolf had no sense of personal space. Liam couldn’t quite tell if the situation with space was because Brennan was a werewolf or because he thought Liam was something he wasn’t.

The stern, unrelenting look Liam cast up at Brennan was out of a stubborn resistance to being bothered about the lack of space. “You’re very sentimental about it,” he pointed out. “You think you have someone who wants you dead. I guess there’s a sort of security in that.” Liam abruptly turned to wash the plate he’d originally left to ask the question about mates. He had to learn to stop asking about it, but the panic it threatened to induce made it difficult. “So you could be human, or human-ish, if someone smothered you in wolfsbane. Permanently?”
 
"Can't help it, you smell amazing." Brennan smirks but he doesn't back up. Instead, he sets his hands on the counter to either side of Liam while the shorter man tries to focus on washing the plate. "Technically speaking, yes. But it would take a long time of dosing, and most wolves notice their wolf has gone quiet before irreparable damage is done. And smothered isn't quite the right word. Wolves have to ingest wolfsbane. Oh, and it's very bitter, so unless it's well hidden, it's usually pretty obvious."

Brennan lowers his head, nose brushing the top of Liam's hair. He inhales, shudders, but maintains control and sighs. He'd made a promise to take Liam back at the end of the week, and as much as it would pain him, Brennan would keep his promise. But until then, he intends to cement everything about
this boy into his memory.
 
Liam’s breathing turned slow and intentional. By the time Brennan had stopped speaking, Liam simply let the water run and stopped moving. “I know it’s bitter,” he remarked quietly. He knew because it was poisonous to humans too and setting up those little bombs the hunters had used in the forest meant that he did have to be somewhat careful. “Brennan,” Liam warned without his voice getting any louder than before.

A moment later, Liam had dropped the plate in the sink and turned back as though he might remind the wolf that they weren’t even friends. The plate made a sound, but it didn’t break. His hands set just inside of where Brennan’s own were on the counter, the hunter managed to look up, but whatever he’d intended to say temporarily failed him. Technically, he had been aware of how close Brennan had gotten, which meant very little when faced with the reality of him. “It can’t be that exciting.” The deflection came only after several seconds of just staring. “At least get me the rest of the dishes, like the pan, so we’re not torturing anyone else who wants breakfast with a mess.” Liam should have shoved the wolf back, or tried, it didn’t seem like Brennan could be pushed anywhere if he didn’t want to be. Liam also should have snapped at him for doing exactly what he’d been told not to do. He did neither, in the same way he hadn’t shot Brennan.
 
Brennan's name, spoken in warning, falls on deaf ears. Brennan is distracted again by Liam's scent. Even the dropped plate doesn't catch his attention. When Liam turns to face him, Brennan's eyes are burning golden, his stare filled with a focused intensity. His face, having been leaning over Liam somewhat, is less than six inches from Liam's face. Muscles are jumping in Brennan's jaw, and it's clear he's having some kind of internal struggle. It lends weight to his claim of Liam being his mate, this seeming difficulty to control his need for proximity.

It takes a moment for Brennan to process what Liam had said, and by that point, they'd been standing face to face for two minutes. Brennan blinks, but the golden glow doesn't leave his eyes yet. "Yeah.." It's the only word he breathes as he moves away, gathering the dishes still on the island counter, and the pan from the stove. He sets them on the counter beside the sink, but keeps his coffee mug, filling it again from the pot.

Brennan stays there, some feet away from Liam, as though needing the space to regain control. In truth, his inner wolf is howling, bouncing around in his mind in frustration that is translating to the exterior as tension in Brennan's shoulders. He changes the subject to try and calm his wolf. "Most of the pack won't be awake for an hour or so. I could give you a tour."
 
Staring up at a werewolf had never been high on Liam’s must-do list. He was relatively sure that if he did keep a list like that, the experience wouldn’t even enter into the top one hundred. Even further down the list, somewhere near the dregs, was ‘forget why supernatural things were bad to begin with.’ Something like that sat around the same line item as ‘become a serial killer.’ Neither seemed very probable, but being so close to the wolf didn’t exactly conjure the fear or annoyance it should have. Liam certainly felt something, but it was bound up with everything else and it adamantly wasn’t attraction.

It was only when Brennan stepped away that Liam’s shoulders went down, tension rushing out of him. He turned back toward the sink to complete the task that he’d nearly forgotten about. At least the process is easy; if he were asked to accomplish something that required any thought, he’d be too distracted. It was a week. He could survive whatever this was for a week. A week was nothing.

The offer of a tour was enough to get him back on track: being here could be useful when he was returned, although he suspected the tour was another way to try to endear the wolves to him. “I’m not missing the chance for the previously mentioned shower. After someone decided to try to drag me through the woods like their favorite dog toy…” Liam set the cleaned pan he’d used to the side. “Afterward? Yeah, sure.” He glanced back at Brennan, who looked significantly more controlled than he had, but who was definitely not relaxed.

Liam kept the smile carefully hidden, and turned back to dry the dishes and put them back where they’d come from. “Full tour or the limited, very safe version reserved for people that could kill everyone here? Just curious about what I’m getting into.” In putting the silverware away, Liam considered the knives, even the forks, and their usefulness, but he pushed the drawer closed, reserving the thought for later.
 
Brennan watches Liam move around, not for concern of what sharp objects he might find, but more in a sense of fascination at how  domestic the hunter looks in the kitchen. The quip about dragging Liam through the dirt makes Brennan give the shorter male a bashful smile. "Shower, yes. We can do that. I mean, you can do that." The image that flashes through Brennan's mind makes them flicker gold again for a moment.

Brennan clears his throat, leaving his once again empty mug beside the coffee pot. "This house is highly defensible, Liam. A full tour isn't going to change its security. And in case you're interested, the bullet proof glass in the windows isn't a security feature. Even young wolves have incredible strength compared to humans, and kids like to throw things. They don't always have great aim."

Brennan grins at his own meaning, then shakes his head. "Come on, you'll probably feel better after a hot shower." Brennan waits a moment to make sure Liam will follow, then leads the way out of the kitchen. He turns at the stairs,walking down the hall to the back of the ground floor. Another turn leads past a room with four each of laundry washers and dryers. Beyond that is two more doors, one on either side of the hall. Almost like a gym or restaurant, the doors are marked with little gender signs. Brennan turns into the mens'.

Inside, it looks like the sort of bathrooms one would find at a gym, but bigger. There's a wall of counter and sinks, a long mirror horizontal above it, right beside the door. The wall to one side has cubbies with various family names; despite it being communal, there is organization to show what belongs to who. To back wall is eight large stalls, doors open to show shower/tub combos and a small dressing space with a bench. The wall opposite the cubbies has 6 toilet stalls.
 
With space, Liam narrowed his eyes in an unspoken warning at the misstep and correction, although the flicker-spark of gold that changed Brennan’s eye color was more pleasant than he was willing to admit. At least the few scarce references to that werewolf trait didn’t seem to be incorrect. Time and again, the wolf seemed to confirm that emotion triggered it. It was that very observation, firmly rooted in research and study, that kept Liam from scowling. Honestly, there was nothing nice or good about the bizarre behavior of supernatural things.

Liam wasn’t going to argue about what would or wouldn’t change the house. After all, Brennan was right, him knowing the layout would only change how the hunters approached it or how they addressed the issues that might prevent them from easily accessing it. That left him to follow, peeking in doors, like the laundry, that happened to be open. It was strange to see how wolves lived. In theory, Liam understood based on observations after they were gone or during a raid.

He read the names attached to the small spaces, not bothering to try to retain them, as he passed by. It did feel a bit like a gym locker, which he hadn’t been in since he was in high school. When there were no more names to be read, he moved to sit at a bench in the dressing area, to loosen the laces of his boots and drop them off. “I don’t know what I expected,” he started, “but this probably wasn’t it.” Mostly, he was surprised because the hunters didn’t live this way. “Tour-y comments about the men’s bathroom? I’d also take directions to shampoo and a towel, barring any interesting commentary about the room.” It occurred to Liam that Brennan, who couldn't be relied on to not go on smelling him after being explicitly told not to, wasn't the best guard in this situation, but he'd all but abandoned the idea that at least this particular wolf was going to leave him to his own devices.

In unbuttoning his shirt, the writing in black ink just under his left collarbone was visible: ‘And death shall have no dominion.’ The font wasn’t ornate, it simply existed in a neat, small print, the only tattoo anyone would find on him. Just over where his heart would be were white, scarred, vertical bars, as though something had sunken in and raked down. Otherwise, Liam was all lean muscle and sharp angles, but otherwise devoid of marks, which was, in itself, interesting for a hunter.
 
Brennan chuckles when asked for tour-y comments, and directions to shampoo and towel. He walks over to the cubby marked Taylor, pulling out one of the fluffy white towels at the back, as well as the shampoo, conditioner, and body wash bottles. "It's more convenient to have bathrooms like this, easier to share cleaning duties. The towels are all the same, and as they get washed, every cubby gets four. Everyone has their own soaps. Since you're my guest, and my mate, technically you'd share my cubby. And my soaps, since you don't have any here, obviously."

Brennan leans past Liam as the shorter man takes off his shirt, to set the bottles on the edge of the tub. His eyes are immediately drawn to Liam's bare torso, to the tattoo'd script and the vertical scars. Without thinking, his right hand reaches out to trace the scars with his fingertips. "What happened?"
 
“Yeah, I’m still not your mate.” Evidence suggested otherwise, but Liam needed the evidence to take a long walk off of a short dock, so he had to keep denying it until he could sort out the way to go back to a time when he wasn’t attached to a werewolf. However, it wasn’t a huge announcement. He’d said it enough in the last little while that now it was more of an obligatory correction that snuck in amidst everything else. “And you’re pretty liberal with definition of ‘guest.’”

Liam was quick to grab Brennan’s wrist, holding firmly but not hard. He didn’t prevent the man from making contact, but that was as far as it was going. The blue gaze turned up toward the wolf and a second later he smirked. “I’ll trade you. Tell me about how you got your most painful scar,” because Liam had seen that there were more than a few to choose from, “and I’ll tell you what happened.”
 
Brennan blinks and lifts his hazel eyes to Liam's face when the shorter man grabs his wrist; his fingers don't wrap around completely Brennan's wrist. He meets the smirk with one of his own, fingers staying in contact with Liam's chest. "My most painful scar, huh? Physically painful, or emotionally painful?"

Brennan gently pulls his hand away to reach above his head, over his back, and grab the back of his own shirt, pulling it up and forward. He leaves the fabric on his arms, though. First, he turns his back to Liam, looking at the boy over his shoulder. "The one that follows my spine was a silver knife from a hunter when I was eighteen. He caught me alone on a patrol, and laughed while he carved the knife through my flesh. Even with my advanced healing, it took a month to heal from that."

Brennan turns forward again, fingers indicating the scar at his hip. "This was more recent, two months ago. Pack war, we were getting chased out. I got impaled to a tree by a garden spade in wolf form, and had to watch my father fight with the rival Alpha. In a last bid, my father dragged the Alpha into our burning Pack House moments before the building blew up." Brennan's face is pinched in emotional pain as he speaks, pulling his shirt back over his head and letting the fabric fall to cover his torso.
 
The question of which type of painful only earned a wink because Liam had phrased the bargain in a way that would be open to interpretation. If nothing else, he was beginning to accept that Brennan wasn’t another dumb animal. The scar at the wolf’s back was interesting in what it could say about werewolves and silver if a hunter didn’t actually make a kill, but it was the scar at the man’s hip that made him set his teeth down hard against each other. Sitting as he was, Liam had clasped his hands between his knees, and he watched the emotion embed itself into Brennan’s expression. For several long seconds, Liam didn’t say anything, torn between offering sympathy and treating the information as a weapon.

When Liam stood, he’d decided on neither. “When I was—I don’t know—fifteen or sixteen, I knew a kid who found a book that he shouldn’t have had: the Enchiridion Infernalis. But, teenagers are idiots, right?” It was then that Liam realized he didn’t like this story. He couldn’t recall the last time he told it, and now that he’d started, he found it harder than he imagined. “He gets a group of us to go with him to ‘test it out.’” To keep himself distracted he sheds the rest of his clothes, leaving them on the bench while he turned the water to the shower on. “He follows the instructions like any teenaged boy, and for the first few minutes, it’s fine—as fine as summoning demons goes when the day before you didn’t know anything supernatural exists.” Sticking his hand under the water, Liam tests the temperature and waits to check again. He decidedly doesn’t look at Brennan.

“When it goes wrong, Malphas—the name of what the kid summoned—burns the kid from the inside out. Tarin’s dust in seconds, like he wasn’t ever there. Everyone else is running, so I grab the book to try to get rid of the demon, which…” Liam shrugs and checks the water again. “Anyway, he grabs for me, sinks his claws in, and pulls down.” Without further explanation, he steps into the shower.
 
Brennan can see the muscles in Liam's jaw jump when he tells the story behind the scar on his hip. He's silent as Liam starts talking, listening raptly even as his hazel eyes roam Liam's body as he undresses. Brennan doesn't hide his gaze, but he respectfully keeps his hands to himself now.

When Liam stops and steps into the shower, Brennan sits down on the bench, folding his arms over his chest. "Demons are a nasty bunch, especially without appropriate warding circles." Tales of humans summoning demons reach even the ears of wolves, and adults use those tales to teach their pups to keep away from such magics. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Liam. That's.. A very unpleasant introduction to the supernatural."
 
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