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Chapter
Three

Michael watched everything that happened from above, barely abled to watch as the big one treated Blaize so badly. His eyes were flaming and the fire escaped his body through them. His muscles were clenching, making tight fists and lines on his forehead. His wings of fire beat silently in the air, keeping him aloft. He was sure his skin was heated to past supernova right now. He was surprised he hadn’t made the house turn on fire.
Dammit, why didn’t she fight back? She had turned into a completely different person than the woman he’s met early.
He didn’t want to kill anyone here but he needed to get Blaize out of here without her seeing him and he knew that would be impossible without scaring the hell out of her. He wanted to crush down on the head b***h, the biggest threat really. He phased through the roof and flew to the front door, landing on the porch with a loud thud for good measure. Sure enough he could hear the wolves coming this way so Michael went around through the kitchen, going through the wood of the door as to make no noise. He brought his wings into his body so she couldn’t see them. While the Weres were outside, checking the area, he slipped into the living room, jerking Blaize up and covering her mouth. She struggled until she realized it was him. They moved silently together out of sight, upstairs.
They made it into the guest bedroom and he silently closed the door behind them. “What the hell is wrong with you?” She whispered, just barely.
“I just saved you.” He said, big-headedly.
“And what will they do when they realize I’m not there? They will start searching these rooms and they will find us. They will kill you and they will beat me.” She whispered frustratingly, putting her head in her palms. Then she looked up feeling heat close to her.
It was coming from Michael. His fists were clenching hard, which she was sure probably hurt. His jaw was working, surely grinding his teeth. “They won’t lay a hand on you. I promise you.”
“Michael, that’s nice and all but you are just a human. You cannot stop them. Calm down.” She took one of his fists in her hand and jumped back. His skin was burning up. “Michael?” She said, a little shocked. Just then, the door burst open and Malevia and two lackeys leapt into the room.
“Huh, I don’t know how you managed to distract us, baby, but it won’t happen again.” Malevia just then caught Michael in the corner of her eye. “Ah, and I suppose this is the meat you’re working.”
“I’m not—“, Blaize started to say before Malevia tried to strike her in the face with a tight fist. Blaize was more than ready for the hit and had loosened up her jaw.
Michael had promised no one would touch her. He took hold of her fist in his hand, crushing as many bones as he could before his elbow thrust out striking her under the jaw. Her head jerked back and then went slack as her neck broke. She fell loosely to the floor in a clump and already he regretted doing it.
Blaize, watching from the floor was just as astonished as the two other wolves. His skin was flaming red and fire roared out of his eyes.
Michael looked at the other two, daring them to attack. Instead, they turned tail and ran. He hadn’t wanted to do that. He hadn’t wanted to kill but the woman had hurt her. Even now he regretted. But not more than he hated having Blaize see him like this. He turned to face her slowly, more willing to see the end of a barrel than see her expression.
Well, it wasn’t that bad. She hadn’t screamed yet. He cooled down as quickly as he could, extinguishing the flame in him. “Blaize, I—“ he wanted to explain.
“What are you?” She asked, fear evident in her voice.
“I don’t know what to call it. I was a normal kid ‘til twelve and then all of this happened. No one really knows except my family and well, now you.” His head hung low. He was done. No way would she ever see him any other way but that way.
“You… It was… I thought…” Unable to finish one thought, she paused clearing her throat before beginning again. “You were so beautiful, in a scary way but beautiful none the less. It was so amazing to see you that way. I thought you were going to die, Michael.” She leapt up and punched him in the shoulder, hard. He stumbled back into a wall. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” She yelled then pressed up against him, “Thank you,” she said, gratefully, getting up on her tiptoes to kiss him. She backed up and left the room, getting ready to leave.
Michael was frozen in place. It was short, it was nothing, and he’d had steamier, hotter, and sexier, kisses. But she kissed him. And no matter what degree of expertise was in the kiss, it was just as sweet. It got him just as hard. He had to readjust himself before he followed her. It was only a kiss.
He came up beside her in her bedroom. She was packing He picked up the paper bag where he left it. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, stupid. I don’t suppose you think I should stay here and let Kersi come back to tear me into pieces, do you?” She gave him a sidelong look as she pushed some underwear into her large travel bags along with some other clothes.
“Well, if I stayed here with you, you wouldn’t have to worry. I’d protect you, like I said before.”
“Well…” She was unsure whether to leave this god forsaken lonely house or stay and kind of be with someone here.
“What do you want me to do with the woman?” He asked, flicking his head towards the other room.
“Well, I suppose since you are going to be helping out here, you can take her out and dig a grave. You did kill her.” And she was not sad for the world’s loss of Malevia. She was worse than Kersi. But she saw the regretful look on his face and wished he’d taken it back.
When Blaize was still in the pack, Kersi would take her whenever he wanted and that wasn’t so bad since the wolf took over then but after Malevia would come sniffing around. When she was sure Kersi had left, she would torture Blaize. Blaize didn’t fight back. If she had the misfortune of winning, she would become Kersi’s b***h for life instead just occasionally.
Malevia had been so happy when Blaize had been accused of desertion and assault of an elder without intent of promotion. A bogus charge Malevia had made up.
Kersi had forced them to hunt together and Malevia had ordered her to kill a young child. Blaize had refused and they got into a tussle. Actually, Malevia had tried to drag her to the child but Blaize had resisted. Blaize had managed to get loose and run and had gotten far, trying to reach Kersi until Malevia had caught her.
Malevia beat her before the trial and after and took too much pleasure in it.
She didn’t want to say she deserved to die but she was a smudge on the wall of smudges that had just got waxed.
Michael was overly happy for her answer, he barely noticed the dead woman’s weight as he flung her over his left shoulder.
He was near skipping as he left the house. He held his hand out over the dirt in the back yard, lifting it up and out of the earth. He kept the dirt in the air as he placed the woman in the hole, kind of properly with her hands crossed over her heart and he wiped a little bit of blood from her mouth. He honestly didn’t want to kill at all. But he’d lost control. He knew sorry wouldn’t help but he asked for forgiveness from the heavens. He jumped out of the hole and said a few words over her body before he piled the dirt back on her slowly, carefully. He found a large rock and carved the woman’s name in it with a super heated finger.
He knew it was probably more than the woman deserved but he placed the make shift tombstone at the head of the grave.
He hadn’t noticed that Blaize had followed him out there. “Michael, you are too nice.” She said, seeing the tombstone. Lucky b*****d, Malevia was. If it had been her, she’d left the woman’s body to rot and be picked at until her bones where bleached white.
“I suppose.” He said, distracted. His mind was in space, thinking about everything and nothing at all. “I know you are strong, stronger than her and just as quick as any of the others, though I have never seen it. Why don’t you fight back? Why don’t you stand up for yourself?” He stared as her, leaving her only the option of answering him.
“I don’t like fighting, Michael. There no use anyway in the pack. If I lose, I walk away hurt but if I win, I won’t ever get to walk away. I want to escape.” She confessed.
“They kicked you out, why can’t you?” An eyebrow, rose arrogantly as he thought that if he stayed with her, or if she left with him, she would be safe. But why would she leave with him?
“I am banished from the city. I am still part of the pack. They haven’t come here before but I still belong. I am subject to the almighty Kersi and his unwanted ministrations.” She shuddered, hoping he wouldn’t start that again. Even though she had been lonely up here, she’d not missed Kersi.
“I don’t like that you get hurt or raped.” He was heating again, she could feel it.
“I don’t get raped. The wolf in me lets him do it. I can’t help it.” Unconsciously, her arms hugged her body, more from emotional protection than from the cold night. “Kersi may do these things you see as horrid but if not him, then it would just be someone else. And either way, this is the way I have lived for years, and I am still alive.”
“Didn’t you have a mate?” He, wholeheartedly, hoped not. The thought that she already loved someone sent shivers down his back. It was stupid to think that someone as pretty as Blaize had not found another.
“There was one, but we never got that far. I don’t think we would have anyway. He was actually more a good friend now that I think about it.” She may not have seen, but the tension in his back relaxed considerably. “But he didn’t even try to stand up for me as the trial where I was banished. He knew my nature better than anyone. And now he is a hunter who is actually now trying to find and kill you.”
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore.” He said, assuredly. He started back to the house, felt her behind him. “Can’t you make the wolf not be a deciding factor in your life?” He said going up the porch and holding the door for her.
Blaize paused at the stairs up to the porch. “The wolf is me. I can’t not hear it. As long as I am alive, it will always influence whatever I do. It has saved me from so much so I will try to follow it wherever it goes.”
He let go of the door, putting a fist on his hip. “So what happened today? Who was the idiot who decided to go into the city today?” He already knew the answer before her mouth opened by her hurt expression.
“I was stupid enough not to listen to her. See what trouble I am in because of it. Apparently, I realize the idiocy now.”
“What were you doing out there anyway, that cost you all of this?”
She started up the stairs and past him, into the house. She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d felt lonely. That she had needed to see people more than she needed that job with Lana.
“Wait, I’ll answer a few questions now, if it’d make you feel better. You almost asked me where the scars came from.” She remembered the sight the scars that crisscrossed his back had made. “My parents were god-fearing fanatics and when they found out about my ‘powers’ my father whipped me and kept me in the basement while my mother watched, all the while reading from the bible she loved more than me.” He kept the feelings he’d accumulated over that time to himself, kept them out of his voice.
She stopped in her tracks, one hand gripping the hand rail hard. “Oh, Michael. Why do you always have a bomb to drop on me?” Her voice, on the hand, was full of emotions. She turned and he noticed a single solitary tear rolling down her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, really meaning it. He hadn’t meant to bring her down with his past. Or had he? Maybe he wanted to see that reaction from her, some reaction of any kind.
He climbed the stairs, up to her, one step below and she had an inch or two on him. His arms slid around her waist and pulled her closer. He nuzzled the soft skin of her neck.
Blaize exhaled sharply, not used to tender approaches of any kind. The first time and from then on, it had been Kersi and he was not gentle, not caring. But she could not do this right now. Emotions running through her needed to be categorized while she was not being stimulated by anything. She needed to sleep on this, if her body, high on adrenaline, would let her. She put her hands on his chest and moved him away. “Sorry, Michael. I just can’t…” Being so accustomed to being dominated in every way, she thought he would not let her go but he did and that surprised her more than his touch. She had to keep remembering that Michael wasn’t Kersi, and that she did have her own will outside of the shell she had retreated into ever since she had first met this pack.
“Blaize, I don’t want you to think that I’m going to hurt you. I want you to say what is in here,” he placed his palm over her heart. “I want you to spread your wings; I want you to become whatever you want without restrictions.”
“You want too much, Michael. It’s not in me. I am not the person you want me to be. I will always be Blaize who cannot fight back. I know it’s pitiful but it is still me.” She crossed her arms over her chest, covering her soul from his prying eyes. He could see a tear hanging dangerously out the side of her eye and he so wished he could act as though this never happened. “And I think it’s time for me to go to bed. So good night.” She ran up the stairs and closed the door to her room, effectively ending the conversation.
Michael grabbed the brown paper bag off the hallway table upstairs and left the house. He sat on the stairs of the verandah and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t know anyone who mentally couldn’t get away from what was hurting them. And what got him was that she knew what was wrong and didn’t want to try to fix it.
But then he knew he could be a b*****d. He felt as though he was pushing her too far but he wanted inside her mind so much, he was tone deaf to her arguments. He didn’t realize he saw them as maybe the futile arguments she would soon realize was stupid. But they weren’t.
He wanted to help so much, he probably made it worse. He stood and walked. Just walked around the house a few times. Then he realized he had work to do. He needed to get the bag back to base. Janus and Jion would probably be waiting for him. Captain Morgan would expect a call if he didn’t get in. He was carrying precious cargo that could set up Logicorp’s fall, which was what everyone, except Logicorp, of course. He couldn’t leave now. He had to make sure Blaize would be safe but he would have to leave eventually and he hoped that he wouldn’t be leaving alone.