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It was a sad fact of a monster hunter’s life that a lot of the time you woke up in pain. Sometimes a lot of pain. Enough that you wanted to go right back to sleep.
On the upside, though, if you were waking, it meant that whatever it was hadn’t killed you yet.
Elsa swam slowly back to awareness. Something … awful … had happened to her side. Something down there was pulsing in agony. A bit of her wanted to flinch, to try and curl onto her other side away from it, but training kicked in where instinct didn’t, and she stayed still. Trying not to twitch. Trying not to breathe.
Where the hell was she? And what the fuck had happened?
She could feel … leaf mould? Tickling her neck. She’d landed on enough forest floors to recognise it. And she could feel weight, warmth. Something draped over her. Tucked in at the sides. Her skin prickled, a wave of awareness, anxiety, sweeping over her. Those two things didn’t match. A cover and a forest floor. One or the other would have made sense. Not both. Never both.
If she was still lying in the woods, wounded by a monster, there shouldn’t be anyone to put a cover over her. There should never be anyone to cover her. Elsa only ever hunted alone.
And if it was someone else, some stranger who’d found her …
Well. No time like the present to deal with it. She shifted. Just a little. Just enough to lift the hand closest to … whatever the hell was wrong with her side. Trying to cover it, surreptitiously, underneath whatever … blanket? coat? … was covering her. Spreading her palm slowly over … over a wound. Heated. Sticky, through something that felt like a hasty bandage. She spread her hand over it, bracing it, her other hand bracing her, and opened her eyes in the same motion as shoving herself, hastily, to sitting.
Hastily. Overly hastily. Her head spun, a sickening lurch of nausea, and she swayed sideways over the wound, nearly going right back down again. Someone cursed, startled, somewhere close to her. And then there were hands grabbing at her shoulders.
Instinctively, Elsa tried to raise an arm to knock them away. The arm that was pretty much the only thing holding her up. She realised it was a bad plan even as she did it. As usual, she realised too late.
But she didn’t hit the ground. She didn’t jar or tear the wound still braced beneath her other hand. The hands around her shoulders yanked her forward, someone’s chest already moving to meet and catch her, and suddenly there was a body sliding around her. Curling her in, catching her against them. Him. Against him. There was a voice, in her ear, muttering anxious imprecations.
“No, no no no. Elsa. Elsa. You’re okay. It’s all right, you’re okay.” An arm reached up, curled around her head. Hugging her quellingly. “Don’t move, okay? You’re all right. Well. No, you’re wounded, but it’s okay. We have you. You’re safe.”
She’d only ever heard that voice once before. Just once, one night. It shouldn’t have been enough to recognise him. She’d only felt his body once, curled around her under significantly worse, or at least weirder, circumstances. She shouldn’t have recognised that either. But somehow, she did.
Even before something huge rumbled questioningly beside them.
“… Jack?” she managed, hoarse half with pain and half with disbelief. “Ted? You … What the hell are you doing here?”
Wherever … Wherever here happened to be. Her head hurt, she was realising. Almost as much as her side. Shit, she better not have a concussion. Or worse. She was pretty sure she would have remembered anything that led to meeting them again. Or should have. But all she knew was that she was in a forest, and something had clearly hit her, and hit her hard.
It could, in theory, have been them. Jack. Ted. If Jack had been transformed, or if Ted had decided he didn’t like her anymore. But even as the thought floated up, it sank back down again. They wouldn’t hurt her. Not like this. And if they had, she wouldn’t be hurt, she’d be dead.
Ted, definitely. She’d seen what he did to people. If he’d decided against her, she’d be so much charred bone and ash by now. And Jack’s wolf would have left her in a lot more pieces.
No. She’d been hunting something, she must have been. And she must have been hunting it badly. Enough to get caught pretty badly in the side, and … knocked out?
There were … flickers there. When she tried to focus on it. Pain. She remembered pain, the shocking, breath-stealing, all-encompassing wave of it. Something entering her side. Something picking her up by it. Goring her. Shit. There’d been pain. And then … a roar? A yell? Confusion. Something had happened, and she’d come loose from … whatever had impaled her. And then … nothing much. Darkness. Flickers of motion. Sounds all around her.
Light? She had half an impression of something bright. Searing. Like an explosion.
Or … like Ted. That thing Ted did. On something … big.
“Hey,” Jack said, brightly and anxiously. He leaned back a touch, let her head lift from his chest a little bit. A hand came up to brush her hair back from her face. So he could see her. So she could see him. “Hey, Elsa. You’re awake this time, huh? You know who we are?”
Trying to raise a sarcastic eyebrow hurt. Elsa did it anyway. “No, I don’t know who you are,” she said snippily. “I’m just calling out random names.”
He laughed. Startled. Relieved. There was worry creasing his brow. And … blood. Bruises. That wasn’t make-up around his left eye in the firelight. It was blackened all by its lonesome.
Elsa frowned at him, and started trying to lever herself away.
“No,” Jack said immediately, trying to reel her back in with the arm around her shoulders. “No, no, stay put. You’ve got a hole in your side. Stop moving.”
Ted rumbled agreement above him, one massive hand inching forward. Hovering a little bit away from her, like he was … hesitant, or afraid, to actually touch her, but definitely ready just the same. Elsa stopped moving. Not because she was afraid, not even of that massive hand, but just because …
It was odd, that was all. The … immediacy of their concern. It was … strange.
“… What happened?” she asked. Demanded, really. She didn’t sit up, but she fisted a hand in Jack’s shirt. Slow, not hard. Just enough that he’d know she was there. “Why are you ...? You weren’t here. I know you weren’t here. I wasn’t with you. What happened? How did you find me?”
She hadn’t seen them in months. Honestly, she hadn’t really expected she’d see them at all. Ever again, really. A once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience, their last meeting. And a pair of monsters really shouldn’t be hanging around with the last Bloodstone.
So how had they found her? Just … Just in time. Judging by her fragmented memories. By the hole in her side. They’d found her just in time, or she’d probably be dead right now.
But how?
Jack winced, a little bit. Tried to smile at her, queasy and sheepish. Elsa squinted at him. Narrowed her eyes dangerously, her knuckles curling in the thin material of his shirt. He looked away and scratched at his neck with the arm not holding her up.
“Well,” he said. Convincingly. “We just, you see, we happened to be in the area? There were rumours, you see, about something big, and we happened to be concerned, and then we heard there was a hunter, and then … Well. Then we entered the woods and I …”
He trailed off nervously. Almost ashamedly. And Elsa didn’t move, but she did … straighten. A bit. Just enough.
“You?” she prodded, but it didn’t come out quite like she’d intended. She’d meant it to be harsher. Demanding. He’d clearly expected something harder too. Suspicious. Maybe she was just tired, too tired and too hurt, but it came out … softer. Instead. Curious, not distrustful. He blinked, and turned back to look at her.
Elsa stared straight back at him. Her chin started rising, instinctively defensive, before she managed to pull it back down. He blinked again, and softened completely into a strange, wondering smile.
“I … I caught your scent,” he said softly. A faltering explanation, waiting for disgust, or alarm. “I … I knew it. Remembered it. I knew it had to be you in here. And then, there was blood. And I knew you had to be in trouble.”
And there it was Elsa’s turn to blink. To … To sit back, and consider that.
Her scent. He’d … smelled her. Across a forest? And he’d known her. Remembered her. After all this time. All these months.
Decades of training said she should find that alarming. Terrifying. He was a werewolf. And he had her scent. He could find her across an entire forest. Hunt her down across the world. There were stories like that. Hunters who’d made enemies who would find them anywhere, hunt them down, and never, ever give up. It was the stuff hunter nightmares were made of. She should probably be alarmed by it. She should probably be afraid.
Instead, she was remembering that other night. That other meeting. She was remembering the last time she’d felt his body curled around her. His nose in her hair. At her wrist.
She remembered asking ‘does it work’. And the desperate, broken pause before he’d answered ‘once’.
Now, she thought breathlessly, giddily, he could probably answer ‘twice’.
“… I guess it does work, then,” she said, with thick, almost hysterical humour. Enough, just enough, to maybe disguise the thing beneath it. The distant wonder. “Remembering me. I guess it worked?”
Jack made a sound. A startled huff. Half a laugh. “Yes,” he agreed. Rather wondering himself. “Yes, I suppose it did. Better, ah. Better than I thought. Better … than I would have expected.”
Ted made an odd noise there. A sort of rumbling sigh. Disbelief, Elsa thought. An audible rolling of his eyes. She laughed. Barked it out, quick and rough. And then winced, and curled her arm tighter at her side.
Jack curled her tighter too. In the same moment, the same breath. His expression tightened into a frown, and his hand brushed over hers. A graze of his fingers across the back of her hand, clutched across her wound.
“We almost weren’t in time,” he whispered. Tight. Angry. “You almost died, Elsa. You were caught on its tusk when I found you. If we hadn’t been coming …”
“I’m all right,” she cut him off. Now harshly. Abruptly. Nope. None of that. “You said it yourself, Jack, I’m fine. I’m alive, and everything else will fix itself later.”
Faster than it used to, too. The Bloodstone, for all its bloody and heavy history, did have that much going for it. If you survived the initial hit, the stone would get you back on your feet in no time at all. She hadn’t realised quite how much benefit it gave its wielder. No wonder her father had lasted as long as he had.
Jack didn’t know that, though. And Jack wasn’t mollified.
“Elsa,” he said. Low and sharp. “Elsa, if I had been even a second later …”
“But you weren’t,” she said. Sitting up. Fully, under her own power, advisable or not. She pulled herself laboriously out of his arms and sat up. The effort made her head swim. She felt something creaking and wet above her hip. Jack made a noise, a stifled shout of angry despair, and Elsa grinned sharply at him, pressing her hand against the wound. He’d let her up, she noticed. For all his anger, he hadn’t actually fought to restrain her. “You weren’t late, Jack. You were right on time.”
He must have been. Or Ted must have been, anyway. It wasn’t the full moon. She didn’t remember much, but she thought she remembered that. It hadn’t been the full moon. So Jack …
She frowned again. Her thoughts sharpened. And her senses, too. She ran her eyes over him again. Focused, this time. Intent. Bruises around his eye. Blood. He hadn’t been wolfed when he’d … arrived. He couldn’t have been. And that thing had been more than enough to kill her.
“… Jack,” she said. Slow and dangerous. “Jack, tell me you didn’t fight that thing. Tell me you didn’t come running out of the bloody trees and fight that thing.”
He was a basic human without his wolf. Mostly. More or less. Enough that one blow of those shock sticks had taken him out, when they hadn’t so much as dented his wolf form. Although … he’d just been hit by the Bloodstone, first. Maybe that had weakened him. Maybe he did … He had to have some benefits in human form? Surely. He wouldn’t have braved an estate full of bloody hunters out to kill him unless he had something going for him. Right?
Who was she fucking kidding. Of course he bloody would.
He glared right back at her. His arms half moved, as if to cross themselves in front of him, before he pulled them back. They were knee to bloody knee, still, sitting in the dirt, the coat or blanket or whatever it was still puddled around them. He should have looked ridiculous. He did look ridiculous. For some reason, though, the last urge she had was to laugh at him.
“You were already on its tusk,” he growled, his make up standing tight in his skin. “It was already killing you, Elsa. I couldn’t wait for Ted to arrive.”
Ted made a warble, there. Half exasperated, half apologetic. He wasn’t slow, Elsa knew, but he was a little bit lumbering. It took him a minute or two to build up momentum. And she was getting the impression that Jack absolutely had not waited. At all.
“So what did you bloody do, then, hit it with a stick?” She sounded incredulous. Too incredulous. It had to be hurtful. She didn’t mean for it to be hurtful. But seriously. What did he do?
“It worked!” he shot back, immediately, and she nearly cried at him. Nearly brained him out of pure despair. She hadn’t been serious. He actually hit it with a stick?!?
And weirdly, she could picture it. Not remember it, she’d been too lost in the wall of agony. She only had flashes of motion and noise and pain in her head. But she could imagine it. Picture perfect. He’d have come barrelling out of the trees. Shouting. Roaring. She half remembered the roaring. She’d presumed it had been Ted, but maybe … maybe not. He would have stopped, just to take the picture, just to make it make sense, and then …
He'd have run straight at it. She hadn’t a doubt. He’d have run straight at the bloody thing, and he’d have hit it with whatever he had to hand, just to get its attention, and then it would have hit him back. Throwing Elsa away in the process. It would have … It would have hit him back.
She was moving before she’d even thought about it. Raw instinct. Entirely thoughtless. She was grabbing for his shirt. His arms. His sides. Trying to find the hurt. He twitched. Half leaped back in his seat. Ted made a noise of warning, discontent, startled and upset. Elsa ignored them both. She drew both hands down the entire length of his torso, patting desperately, searching for wetness. For wounds.
It was only when he froze. When she felt the startled tremors under her hands. That she realised … quite what she was doing. She froze too. Stilled, her own wound throbbing a warning at her. Not as desperately, though, as the tiny voice in the back of her brain.
The one pointing out … where her hands were. Frozen around narrow hips. Around the warm, startled body beside her. The man. The warm, startled man beside her.
Jack was wide-eyed, when she chanced a look at him. A fraction of a glance. He was frozen, and wide-eyed, and staring at her.
She snatched her hands back. Tucked them in her lap.
“I was just, um,” she started. Uselessly. No real way to bloody explain that, was there. “I was just …”
“Yes!” Jack agreed. Nodding rapidly. “You were just, um. Yes.”
Ted facepalmed. Actively facepalmed. And honestly, right now, Elsa felt like joining him.
“I was checking for wounds,” she said stiffly. “On you. Because you … Because you charged at a bloody monster that can kill hunters, with a stick, and you’re not in your wolf form. That’s. That’s all I was doing.”
And it was. Or it had been.
Until she realised the warmth of him beneath her skin.
Look. Look. She was tired. She was hurt. And pretty much every sensation she’d ever had of him had been confusing, to say the least.
He’d smelled her. He’d remembered how she smelled. And she’d … remembered the feel of him. His body, around her. The human one, first. And the wolf one, later. Crouching over her. Death incarnate. And … waiting. For her. For what she’d do.
Her palms felt hot. Branded. His face, before, familiar even through the twistings of the transformation. And his hips, now. His waist, his body. Startled and trembling under her hands.
This was blood loss, right? This was insanity brought about by blood loss? Or the concussion?
And not at all … by the knowledge, the sensation, of a man willing to die for her. A stranger, wounded and feral, waiting, patiently, for her to decide how she would touch him. Whether she would wound or … something else.
She hadn’t been thinking about it for months. No. Definitely not.
“I …” he started. Slowly. Cautiously. Still staring wide-eyed at her. “I’m … all right. Elsa. I’m all right. It threw me into a tree, that’s all. I’m a little bit sore and, maybe, a little bit less pretty for a while?” He chanced it, clearly hoping for a laugh, and the snort bubbled up before Elsa could stop it. He smiled, wider, and touched … touched her shoulder. “I’m fine. Trust me. Ted arrived. Came stomping through and saved us both. Picked the whole creature up and fried it for us.”
Rrrrr, Ted rumbled. Emphatically. He reached down, those massive hands, and wrapped one determinedly around Jack’s shoulders. Both of them, easily fitting into a single palm. And the other …
He wrapped it around her. Her shoulders. Warm. Woody. Gentle. He gripped her, firm and gentle, and shook her gently along with Jack.
Chastising. Like shaking two idiot puppies. And relieved.
He had to put up with a lot from Jack, Elsa thought. Much as Jack had to put up with a lot from him. She remembered him, in the crypt, moaning about an annoying pain in the ass, about family, that he always had to save. He’d walked alone and unarmed among hunters, into the Bloodstone bloody Estate, in human form, to try and protect Ted. And, clearly, the instinct was returned. It seemed there weren’t a lot of things Ted wouldn’t fry to protect Jack.
Or … Or her? Sometimes. He’d fried at least two things now to protect her. This monster, at least half for Jack. And … Verusa. Right at the last. Her own stepmother, ready to kill her for letting a monster go. Letting Jack go. And then …
One Ted. Very angry. And suddenly Elsa was the last combatant standing.
She blinked up at him a bit. In wonder. In some strange, distant sense of wonder. She lifted the hand off her wound, sticky where it was seeping through the bandage, and rested it lightly on the great green fingers. Ted almost flinched. Startled. Confused to be touched. Like Jack. Like the wolf Jack, with her hand on his cheek, and the human Jack. With her hands around his waist. How many people touched them without hurting?
As it happened, she knew the feeling.
“… Thank you,” she said quietly. As seriously as she’d ever allowed herself, while they froze, and stared at her in startlement. “I’m sorry. I get … I’m a bit grumpy when I’m wounded. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Thank you both. For. For coming to rescue me.”
It wasn’t a normal thing. Not for anyone trained by Ulysses or any of his ilk. That type of hunter, as Jack had called them. The ceremony wasn’t the only time it was every hunter for themselves under her dad’s philosophy. Being … rescued. Protected. It was strange feeling.
Not an unpleasant one, though. Not one would she … would mind getting used to.
“… No problem,” Jack said, still hushed and wondering, and grinning in surprised delight. Smiling warmly at her, while Ted squeezed her gently in his hand, wobbling her a little from side to side. “No problem, Elsa. Any time.”
And she believed him. And it was reassuring. Warming, in some odd, undefined way.
But it was also, looking at the black eye and the blood still crusted on his face, just a little bit terrifying too.
Okay. That was probably enough of that, right? Blood loss would only cover so much.
“I don’t suppose either of you know where we are?” she asked, trying to straighten up a little bit more. Wincing, desperately, at another wet sensation at her hip. Both of them caught it. Both of them twitched towards her. She grumbled, and lifted Ted’s hand carefully off her shoulders, before pulling up her shirt to get an actual look at the wound. It was … not great. Bloodstone healing aside. “I feel like we should get medical attention, maybe? The Bloodstone will only do so much, and I’m not sure how much werewolf healing covers either.”
She looked up, and Jack was looking at her, soft and fond. She half flinched, and instinctively moved her shirt to cover the wound again. To cover the vulnerability. As if that was the bit of her that was vulnerable to him. He wasn’t going to hurt her, that was the problem. But hunter instincts tended to only steer in certain directions.
“… It covers some,” he said, as soft and careful as ever. His eyes were creased and shining gently at her. “I heal a little faster. Until the moon, and then I heal a lot faster. That’s two weeks away, though, so it’s not going to help too much in this situation.”
Ted rumbled at him again. As disgruntled as Elsa, it sounded like, with his propensity for getting injured when his wolf couldn’t help him. She grinned faintly, and nudged a woody leg in commiseration. Ted flinched again, and stared down at her in amazement.
God. Okay. Moving swiftly on, before the feelings became fatally catching.
“Okay. I think … I think I remember where we are. I’ve got a safe house not too far away. Jack, are you mobile? If Ted … If Ted could maybe carry me …?”
She trailed off. She hadn’t entirely intended to ask that. It had popped out, instinctive. Walking on this sort of wound wasn’t good and wasn’t fun, but she’d done it before. She’d done a lot of things before, all by her lonesome. Yet somehow, ten minutes into knowing them, some bit of her felt like …
Like she could ask them anything. Ask them to carry her. And they wouldn’t find it unreasonable.
Not that they’d been hiding it. Jack, anyway. If anything, it was the opposite that he found unreasonable. The first time she’d had a proper chance to talk with him, he’d all but bullied her into letting him treat her leg. So this wasn’t … out of left field, or anything.
Except for the part where she asked for it.
Except for how it clearly delighted him.
“Of course!” he said, getting to his knees. Beaming brightly at her. “I mean, I assume, Ted? It’s not a problem, is it?”
Ted grunted. His hand was already back around her back. Bracing her gently, the thumb careful over her wound, as the other hand scooped her under her legs. Some bit of her, some remnant of training, whispered that she really should be terrified. She’d seen these hands melt a man’s head. Sear a woman to cinders. It should be worrying to her, to have them wrapped around her. But it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.
“Come on, then,” she said. Exhausted, and only half from blood loss. Less than half. Although it probably was still a large factor. “I’ll show you the cabin. There should be tea, at least. And coffee. And a fully stocked first aid cabinet.”
It was ridiculous, how much they visibly perked up at that. At ‘coffee’, she was pretty sure, not the first aid cabinet. Ted rumbled in pleasure around her. It was, to put it lightly, an odd sensation. Jack grinned openly, stooping, with a grunt, to gather the coat and their other few bits and pieces. Effects. They didn’t have much, although Elsa supposed a lot of that was because they’d come barrelling out here.
She hoped, anyway. And tried not to think too hard about why that might be.
God. She was exhausted. Truly, now that she was thinking about it. Letting herself feel it. The wound throbbed. The Bloodstone, around her neck, throbbed with it. Healing it, maybe. Or protesting the monsters that surrounded her. For their part, despite what had to be ugly memories for both of them, they ignored it. Even Ted, with the bloody thing in his arms. Maybe she shouldn’t have made him carry her. But she was, abruptly, tired.
“Just point us in a direction, Elsa,” Jack suggested gently, appearing beside her and Ted. “A direction and a distance. We can wake you then if we get confused.”
Wake her. Like she was falling asleep. Except she was. And, fine.
Let’s be carried home by a pair of lovely monsters, hmm?
“That way,” she said, pointing. “About six miles. Try not to break the bloody door in, will you?”
Jack grinned, and Ted rumbled teasingly around her.
“We’ll do our best,” he said, like a man who hadn’t already taken explosives to what had technically been her garden. “Not to worry. Go to sleep, Elsa. We’ll see you safe until morning.”
And the problem was, she didn’t doubt him.