loving you is a losing game

He might not’ve been raised with technology around – the village, the pack, his own home, about as primitive as you could get in the supposedly modern world of England – but Grey’s fingers were rattling over the keys with a certainty born of practice. It was easier to keep certain parts of his business offline but you couldn’t bury everything in this day and age. The website brought in clients, the discretion promised by it kept them. A man who could keep his mouth shut, no matter what happened behind the doors of the Grey Haven. Bodies buried, lips kept zipped, noses not dipped into things unless they mattered. And she did.

Teeth raked over his lower lip as he kicked back in the banker’s chair in his office. That surface class hiding what lay beneath. Something it seemed that Tanner DeLuca hadn’t learned. Maybe if he had he’d have been strolling around still, instead of stuck behind bars, hopefully left there to rot if he anything to say about it. Grey tugged his lip free with a faint smile, blue eyes narrowing at the article that drifted down the screen under the tap of an index finger on the down key. No guards coming running as the man fell to his knees in the cell, white globs of mistletoe spewing out of his throat, the wire tight enough around the fingers of the figure suddenly sharing the cell to cut deep but not as deeply as it would in Tanner’s throat. The least he deserved for the marks he’d left on Destiny’s body and mind. A weight off of her that the courts were going to cave at some point and let that filth back out into the world.

Grey stopped tapping, his thoughts drifting off as he stopped focusing on the black text on the screen. It had always been about him before. Getting stronger, keeping the pack off of his back, making sure that what Leah had started didn’t get finished by whoever the Alpha sent out in retribution for the death of his daughter. Well, the bitch he had claimed as his daughter when it was the sullied blood of his own emissary in her veins. Leah was gone but the threat she’d posed was still there, just as sure as Tanner was behind those bars and the druid who’d damned his family in the first place were.

A long breath slipped out as he reached for the glass of Glenkinchie at his elbow. Despite the ritual he’d performed to mark them, they were still out of sight. There, just at his fingertips. Just beyond his fingertips. He sipped, set the glass down again to start another search, this time closer to home but the phone he’d set on his other side started to rumble.

All it took was a single glance at the screen to reveal who it was. Not Cat at the front desk, not some client trying to scrounge up a favour. Destiny.

Dark brows drawing together he glanced at the corner of the screen as he picked the phone up. They hadn’t planned any training tonight but that didn’t always mean anything. The longer this had been going on the less it had stuck to that ‘strictly educational’ planned ahead timetable. Invitations extended, needs taking the place of requests, more given than he’d ever expected to at that first agreement to play Henry Higgins here. Grey’s frown grew at the message, muscles in his jaw bunching tight as he tapped his thumbs over the screen in that rapid tattoo. ”I’m home. Just come on up when you get here.” Just enough of a hint of what he’d felt radiating from her the night of the storm for him to glancing warily back at the screen, the article still frozen there. Had Tanner somehow been freed without a single report of it slipping out?

Setting the phone back down Grey reached slowly for the laptop again, hesitating only a moment before he shut the browser down. If he was it would only hasten things, the man’s end coming sooner than any of them had likely anticipated. He shut the laptop down for good measure, gently closing the lid and nudging it aside on the table. Glass in hand he headed for his work room. If Tanner was free he wanted to be ready for it.

Secured behind the barely cracked down he didn’t hear the gentle buzz of the phone, the announcement of Destiny’s arrival from Cat. The quiet ding of the lift had his head lifting from where he had the bowl of mistletoe on the table, notes spread out beside it like some sort of secondary school science experiment. Blue eyes cut to the door, the form that drifted into view through that gap making him move before her voice even croaked his name out. Grey rounded the table, heading towards her with his brows already beetled. Something was off, something that had concern rising the way it had at her apartment.

She was flying across the room at him, living up to the Tinkerbell moniker, or she would’ve been if it wasn’t tears shedding from her instead of pixie dust. He caught her around the waist with one arm, holding her close as the other hand was already coming up, fingers nudging her hair back so he could see those big blue tear filled eyes. ”I’m here.” He let out a long breath, his thumb finding her cheekbone, fingers curled along the line of her jaw. ”Always for good reason. What’s happened?” Studying her face, Grey shook his head. His gaze tore away, raking up and down her, another sweater, a skirt, no outward sign of anything other than those tears. ”No apologies, alright? Was there news? Did they let him out? I swear if they did…” He’d tear him apart, bare handed, the power he’d been born with and had honed with sacrifice after sacrifice enough to break the man who’d tried to break her. That fierce look was held back for now, his lips a thin line before they pursed to touch to the top of her head though.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1030

Fate had never looked kindly on him. It frowned, it scowled, it slapped down like a cat’s paw, tossing the last of the Maddoxes around with that strange delight in seeing him struggle. His dad had always blamed it on them, the unidentified druids who’d damned them to start with. It was bullshit, all of it, he’d thought his old man had just been cracked in his grief, numbing it all with bottles of booze until he’d shook with it all. But that was the bullshit. Something had marked them, the inedible ink used by them. It remained to burn in the pit of his stomach as she stumbled in. The one thing he’d believed existed outside of it. Grey caught her in his arms now, feeling what had radiated from that message vibrate harder now. A string plucked, the sound an uncomfortable squeal in his ears. That cat’s paw again? Not just playing with him now but her too or her own uncomfortable grip in Fate’s claws.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about it, hadn’t been since what they’d had shifted subtly aside, onto boggier ground, when he’d reached her place to find her run through with fear, cracks he hadn’t known existed emerging like crazing on that porcelain surface. Now they ran deeper, his fingers doing a piss poor job of holding them together as Grey slid them into her hair. Croaking out his presence, something closing clawed fingers around his throat, squeezing until it felt like he’d bleed as she looked up at him.

Tears filled her eyes, magnified that blue until it was the sort of summer sky that made poets’ hearts ache. Words spilled from her lips, a shaky explanation that gave away almost nothing. His thumb pressing lightly on that arc of bones he tried again to wheedle it out of him. Tanner released, the idiots in California setting a monster free … only for him to die if he made it here. Hands that had cracked her snapping and popping like dry twigs before the rest of him joined it. A man broken one small piece at a time until there wasn’t even enough left to pity.

Grey’s own brows furrowed as she croaked at him. A muscle twitching in his jaw as he drew back from the kiss he pressed to the top of her head. His thumb slid lower, a gentle pressure until the tip of her chin to lift her head a touch more. ”Tanner. Did they even bother to call you or was it another announcement on the news.” It struck him too late that the articles he read would’ve had it splashed all over them already.

Destiny was already shaking her head, leaving his own confusion gathering tornado fast in the pit of his stomach. What other nightmares did she have in her past that she hadn’t told him about? It wasn’t like he’d spilled all of his own, if the finger came out of that dyke the spill would be toxic, pushing her away from him with the wash of it all. He tried to push that thought back, his touch gentling, skimming down beneath her jaw, skimming her pulse until it ran over the edge of a flush beneath her skin, like she’d gotten all heated up, colour lightly blooming. ”Always picking up strays,” he muttered lightly, not wanting to disturb the story. She’d picked him up under darker circumstances. ”You lured her in with muffins and pixie dust?” A rim of grim humour to his words that bled away as he felt her take that shaky breath. Tension bled back in then.

His thumb dropped a few more millimetres, fingers skimming with it, fitting over that flush on her throat almost perfectly. The round splotch darker than the rest, his hand flinching away from it just as her eyes met his and Grey heard the one word that could shatter the cracks that ran through him. Gut burning, he forced himself not to tighten his own fingers on her. ”No,” he growled. He wanted to tear away from her, to stalk across the room and holler out his anger but he could see the cracks in Destiny already too close to the surface. Trying for gentle but probably falling short, he was using his thumb to try and ease her face back out from his chest against as she sought comfort in it.

Bile burned in the back of his throat, power sizzling under his skin until he heard a cloud of crows outside start to screech out the tension from him. ”I don’t know how … she was gone. I dealt with … did she do this to you? Did that bitch lay her hands on you? Fuck.” The word snarling out before he was pulling back then. The glass that had been on the side snatched up, tossed across the room to shatter against the door of her work room. ”I bet that son of a bitch did it. A mark for a mark. Where did she go?” Grey looked back at her, his shoulders tight, his hands shaking as he wanted to lay them back on her. Gentle and soothing, pulling her in until that vulnerability was shielded, hidden from anybody who would lay their hands on her again. All that was in him wanting to protect all that was in her..

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 901

Her blood had been on his hands as he’d scrambled back home. Mingling with the slick of his own. Blood finding blood he’d supposed, although in the case of the Maddoxes it had been a matter of blood spilling blood for generations. They’d called it damnation. The curse laid on by a family who’d believed themselves above them, reneging on a deal, putting that stain upon their minds. It had been in Leah’s, something in her head shattered just as much as his father’s had been. A psychotic China doll who had come to slaughter him as he’d walked home. The lamb had turned though hadn’t he. Thrown the wolf clear with that wash of power that wanted to rise now. Grey’s jaw tightened with the memory, Leah speared on that branch, the curse that had killed dozens of his family before their time coming to take her too, through his hands. It hadn’t been the end of it, the pack wouldn’t stop coming for him until he’d sacrificed every last one of them, but it should’ve been the end of her.

The handprint on Destiny’s throat, the mention of the message from his sister, changed everything he’d been so sure of. He wanted to pull back, to shatter things until her could shatter Leah’s body, wanted to step in just as much. Hands that trembled with that sickening mix of rage and concern should’ve risen, easing the pain from those bruised tissues the way she had done for him when Destiny had healed his burns. Drawing it out of her until nothing of Leah remained. Grey tried, his touch soft on her face while everything inside burned but failed – and snapped.

The word was out, the finger that had held back everything he hadn’t been ready to tell her pulled from the dyke, before he could bite it back. There weren’t many people who got close to him, he’d intended it to be that way, and those that did and saw, their opinion changed. He’d seen it in their eyes as he started to string them up for the sacrifice they were making. In their eyes he was something like Leah, monstrous and vile. In Destiny’s eyes it had been different, despite all of the poison that’d seeped into her own life. Grey had tried to help pull her out of it, to purge him from her life, but now Leah had brought it back.

Grey could see the change in her but the dam had given way and he couldn’t stop himself. Snarled woods, that quick slap of anger as he’d snatched the glass up and thrown it. The shower of glass and liquor across the wood wasn’t enough. He twisted back, looking at her with that sick feeling growing in his stomach as Destiny wrapped her arms around herself. Sorry, he was sorry, but he couldn’t get the words out.

Destiny stepped back from him as he started to pace. Grey dragged his hands down his face the muscles seeming to stand out like wires under his skin, stiff, taut, ready to spring again in another burst of what wanted to bubble up inside. Was she scared of him now? Like he’d been hiding the monster beneath the good guy surface – not that it was entirely untrue – but with her maybe there’d been something more than that monster alone. Not cowering, that would’ve hurt somehow, but still quiet, meek, like something inside of her that he’d been pushing to come out since that first night had disappeared back inside.

Grey grimaced, hand dragging down his face as he sank teeth into his lower lip. Footsteps rapid as he paced back and forth. He looked at Destiny and shook his head, his eyes hard. ”I told you I was here looking for someone, something. They marked us generations ago and they’re not done yet. I took one step towards them, gave them a taste of their own medicine and they do this … bring back the one person who could cut me down.” The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Bring Leah back for her to take him out, stamp her out and it was done, all of their blood gone.

Heat seemed to rise in Destiny’s face, something bolder taking that meek woman’s place as he watched her. His hands were constantly on the move, every part of him needing to shift, to do something for those marks that were on her now. Grey’s gaze fixed on those marks on her throat, still so red against her skin. He should go to her, close his hand over her throat gently and heal but what emerged was a groan, threatening to choke off into a growl. ”But she was here. She tracked me here and she came to you because she knew I’d see it. She knew about you.” Not an accusation but so dam obvious his sister was here, that she’d watched, waited for him to be alone. That cowardly bitch.

Swallowing hard, Grey looked away. His jaw felt tight enough to shatter teeth and bone. Nowhere for all of this pressure to spill out now, even though the torrent of words had. Too much stoppered up still that would only dissipate with her dead at his hands again. He was stronger this time, he’d sacrifice her like the rest, drink in that power. ”You wanna hear my sad story? About how my old man couldn’t keep it in his pants?” How he’d been so deep into his insanity that he hadn’t seen what sleeping with the Alpha’s wife would do to all of them. Blind to all those ripples spreading out.

No, he hadn’t been the same. He’d seen the darkness in this town and he’d believed he had its measure. What a fool he’d been.

Destiny retreated now, moving away from him. Not sure if she was afraid anymore, he turned back, went still. Emotion stripped away from his face, like a mask being slipped into place, hiding that twist of turmoil inside. Not looking at him, just croaking out those words. Would she do it again? Retreating to her apartment, tugging the curtains closed against it all while she shook inside. ”Why?” he rasped. ”You’re running from this?” From him. Another painful twist. ”Why didn’t you stand up to her? We’ve trained. You know how to defend yourself. You’re strong enough for this but you let her hurt you.” An accusation in his words now while something screamed in his head that she needed to be protected. He’d done it once, fighting off that invisible monster all the way across the country, had wanted to see her do it for herself because there was more strength there than he’d ever seen in anybody else in his miserable life.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1135

The line that divided his life there from the one he’d built for himself here had been scored into the ground dozens of times, starting with that first. Soaked in the blood that had swum dark and corrupted in his family’s veins for generations. With each threat sent his way he’d carved it deeper, starting with that first. His hands had shaken as he’d stood in the kitchen, her blood and his swirling down the chipped sink. Then Grey had known that the Alpha wouldn’t stop. His dad had been killed for more than one reason and it wasn’t going to end an eye for an eye.

Not even if Leah tried for it now, doing worse than just squeezing the life half out of Destiny.

It wouldn’t end. Leah would keep coming, chipping away at who he was and what he had now out of that sick need to punish him for the circumstances of her birth. There was no denying that something of his father was in her, that madness carved as deeply into her sick head as the rest of them. He’d hidden it all from Destiny so she wouldn’t see that in him. His sister had seen something there though, a soft spot to jam a claw into to tear him wide open again when her literal first attempt had failed. She’d taken his dad, for what worth the man had been, and now the threat to take what he had left was standing out like a beacon in the fingermarks on her throat.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from them, as though they were fingerprints squeezed deep into his chest. Leah reaching out here, just when he’d marked the druid couldn’t have been a coincidence and at the end of the day he was gonna lose everything he’d scrabbled together since he’d fled that farmhouse. Grey breathed hard in and out through his nose, an enraged bull snorting at that red flag, knowing it shouldn’t charge but unable to help itself anyway. Anger at her, at himself pushed him and he saw the way each step landed on Destiny.

It didn’t matter that none of it was aimed at her. If he let her remain that soft spot Leah would continue to press it. What was she gonna do if he didn’t go running scared? At best turn her against him, further shattering what had been between the two of them with the truth about who he was and what he’d done. At worst? Leaving her on his doorstep, broken, bloody, the way he’d left Leah, a cat’s plaything presented for its owner. A gift, the same he’d given her.

The thought alone left him nauseous. None of this had been intentional but he’d let himself bathe in that fairy dust for once, falling under its sway and now there was so much more to lose than his hotel. He could get that back, it was all just money but there was no replacing people.

Grey sucked in one of those breaths as Destiny knuckled the tears from her face. He wanted to turn into her, to promise her safety as he swept those tears away but it was more fuel for the fire. Bigger smoke signals to let his sister know she’d gotten exactly what she wanted. Push her away and she’d be safe, push her away and there was no need for Leah to touch her. Another woman in his bed, one that hadn’t made it any deeper into his life than anybody else ever had. Held at an arm’s length because that was all he was capable of doing. He gritted his teeth as he turned to her, slammed that mask into place.

Leaving would’ve been the best thing for them both but it would’ve been Destiny slipping back into that place she’d been in when he’d found her. She was capable of so much more, deserved so much more than what he’d brought to her. Grey tilted his head, shrugging while he dragged his hands over his face again. ”She got her hands on you. We practised a dozen times to stop anybody doing that. You’ve got it in you to make sure she doesn’t have the chance to do that again. You could’ve put her down before she got a grip.” Still he was stepping in, hand rising, falling. His heart was already in the grip of something more powerful in his chest, aching with the crush of it – the fear.

Despite everything she’d gone through, Destiny hadn’t had it in her to be afraid of his sister and Leah had known it. Easing her way into a conversation with the sort of frothiness she’d never possessed in her life. Aiming to put Destiny at ease, knowing that light was there in her after everything. ”She fooled you,” he ground out between his teeth. ”You didn’t see past her being friendly. You can’t do that, not with her. She’ll sucker you in and she’ll tear you apart.” For kicks, just to fuck with him. And when she’d threatened him, Destiny had run straight to him. Upset and needing him, maybe trying to protect him, to heal him the way he should’ve been doing her.

No, she hadn’t. He wanted to tell her, to tell her he was proud of her standing up to him but Grey couldn’t push the words out. The tears were coming fast, each weighing on his own chest until he felt like he was gonna drown in them. Grey tried to swallow them back, stepping up to her now but not touching. Hands curling at his sides as his expression edged itself with a coldness that echoed that barrenness in his chest she’d started to bring light to. ”I trusted you with more of me than anybody had but it’s not enough, is it? You wanna hear it all Destiny, sad, mad, bloody? He was crazy, they all were and in the end it cost him everything. You wanna hear about my parents? They’re dead, both of them, the only blood I’ve got left I thought was gone. For good, for your good. He sabotaged his marriage with her mum, put a target on his back for it, killed my mum with it. Years in the house listening to him rant, thinking the whole time that it was just the bottle. It wasn’t. It was her, it was them, it was all of them getting in his head, twisting him. It’s in her too. In me. You want that in your life? You’d have to be crazy to.” She wasn’t though. She was the one who bore scars for having seen and she still believed there was something in him worth believing in. Worth caring for.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1131