Chapter Text
Russell stood back to let Derek and Stiles take a look at Tom’s wound. Tom was sitting on the ground in an open patch of dwindling sunlight with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his hands. His fingers were tangled in his blondish-brown hair, gripping it extra hard as he fought against the unpleasant sensations that were assailing him. Given the fact that the grip in his left hand was weak and his arm trembling, Russell determined that the sheriff was still in need of that sling.
Derek carefully peeled away the bandage at the base of Tom’s neck to get a better look at the injury, while Stiles hovered directly over his shoulder. The two of them were engulfed in the heady musk of sex, which might have been perversely distracting if Russell had not been so concerned about Tom.
“He’s been marked,” Derek exclaimed in dismay. Although they were losing visibility at an alarming rate, none of them had any trouble identifying the savage fang marks which stood out against Tom’s otherwise unblemished skin.
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Stiles asked, his expression dark and serious.
“I only noticed it a few minutes ago,” Russell said defensively. “Try to remember that it was your friend who saw to his injuries, not me. Why didn’t she say something about it?”
“She probably didn’t think that the bite marks were deep enough to mention.” Derek experimentally touched the edge of the inflamed bite mark, which caused Tom to hiss through his teeth in pain. “Sorry,” he apologized quickly.
“Is it deep enough?” Russell demanded to know as he stood there digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands and feeling helpless.
“Tom, can you explain what it is you’re experiencing?” Derek asked.
“I can sense his presence getting closer...” Tom’s voice broke off as he became more distraught. “His scent... it’s everywhere.”
When Tom’s shoulders began to shake, Russell crouched down on the ground beside him. He wrapped his arms around the sheriff and embraced him tightly. Then he placed his hand over the exposed wound and concentrated hard. All he got for his efforts was a cry of pain and Tom fighting against him. Russell quickly withdrew his hand and shot Derek a desperate look. “I can’t take his pain from him anymore.”
“The bite might not have changed him, but it’s deep enough to have formed a link between him and the alpha.”
“How can you be sure how deep the bite was to begin with?” Stiles broke into the exchange between Derek and Russell, looking like he had a theory of his own. “Russell, did you actually see Tom get bitten?”
“No. I don’t know if that fucker bit him before I got there or while I was... unconscious.” With everything else that Tom was dealing with, Russell figured that hearing the word dead might upset the sheriff more. “Like I said, I hadn’t even known that he was bitten until he started complaining about feeling pain there. I assumed that the bandage was covering scratches or an abrasion.”
“Say that the bite was deep enough - in the beginning. A wolf has never bitten a hybrid before so there’s no telling what the results might be. Hybrids supposedly fight off diseases and infections better than regular humans- at least according to Tom - so it’s possible that Tom was able to reject the bite and partially heal the wound. That would explain why none of his other injuries have healed. Because his system is too busy fighting off the infectious bite.” Stiles took hold of the edge of the bandage and quickly pressed it back into place to avoid further complications. “The bite of an alpha is not something you can easily shake off, apparently not even for a hybrid.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” Russell tenderly stroked his hand over Tom’s face, stunned to discover that it was wet with tears. Tom was usually so good at not outwardly reacting to things, not even the discriminatory slurs that he was sometimes accosted with back in Homestead. And he had seemed to be holding up pretty well during the car ride earlier on, despite everything that had happened. What an idiot Russell had been to think that Tom could just forget what had been done to him and move forward. And now Tom was being overwhelmed by that psychotic alpha’s presence and scent, reminding him that he was still being hunted. Max would not stop until he got his claws on Tom again, or until Russell shredded Max into a million bloody pieces.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Russell looked up to find Derek scouting up ahead and Stiles giving him a look heavy with accusation.
“What?” Russell demanded, hoping that Stiles wasn’t one of those assholes who told other men to suck it up and act the part of their gender. Because Russell intended to give Tom as much time as he needed to compose himself.
“You know what,” Stiles replied levelly.
“Am I supposed to figure it out just by looking at your smug face?!” Russell hugged Tom tighter and glared up at the hybrid deputy.
Instead of replying right away, Stiles nodded his head towards Derek. “He seems less jumpy now, don’t you think? It’s very reassuring to know that your mate will always be by your side. Before mating, it’s all words and hollow promises, but afterwards...”
“You didn’t just...,” Russell wildly gestured with his hand so that he wouldn’t subject Tom to the lewd conversation that they were now having. He really needn’t have bothered making the effort because Tom seemed to have withdrawn inside himself to continue to fight a losing battle. “I get that the end results worked out for you, but that’s something that you can’t do over.”
“Which one of you is the romantic?” Stiles asked without amusement. “If it’s you, you’d best get over it. That waiting for the right moment bullshit is so last century. If it’s him... well, I’m sure that a tough jock like you can work up a little magic to get things going.” Before Russell could tell Stiles to go screw himself, the deputy spoke again. “That link that he’s got with the alpha is going to act like a magnet. It’s going to draw the whole lot of those rabid murdering wolves to us, no matter where we go or how well we hide. We’re out in the middle of nowhere with no shelter and no form of communication with the rest of the world. So it’s your problem now, Boy Scout. Do us all a favor and solve it.”
Solve it?! Did Stiles have any idea of what he was suggesting Russell do? There was no way that he’d be able to get Tom in the mood, much less mate with him, under the circumstances. And out in the middle of the forest? There were a dozen reasons why that idea turned Russell off. Ants were at the top of the list. On one tree alone, up to two hundred different ant breeds might be marching up and down the trunk, or swarming at the base. And then there were worms, spiders, snakes, moss, poison ivy... Russell couldn’t just force his mind to go blank and pretend that he didn’t know what creatures also existed on a microscopic level. And what kind of lover would Tom be? Would he be subdued and quiet, as he usually was in his daily affairs, or would he be easily aroused and vocal? Russell sure as hell didn’t want to share the experience with the rest of the world.
“You’ll be doing him a favor,” Stiles persisted when Russell just stared at him.
“How the hell do you figure that?!” Russell asked angrily. That was one fine way of putting it! Russell sure as hell didn’t want to think of the man he loved as a pity fuck.
“That’s not what I meant. He’s losing control, Russell,” Stiles said with an abundance of sympathy. “I wasn’t sure until I saw the bite... But now I know that his concentration is off. He’s no longer absorbing my anger and other negative feelings. A little while ago a powerful force put out the fire inside of me in a very non-passive way. My volatile anger was pushed back and overwhelmed by a whole mess of raw emotions - fear, sadness, shame. Tom isn’t even aware that he’s doing it, but he’s now projecting instead of absorbing. Luckily he accomplished what had to be done, but it’s like he’s flying a jet loaded with some sort of telepathic powers - on autopilot!”
‘For whatever reason Tom Underlay appears to be the stabilizing force of the hybrids. Without him... the rest of the hybrids will end up like they did in every other community in the United States. There will be mass murders, mass suicides, and - in the case of one county - complete annihilation.’
Russell recalled what he had been told by a former military agent who had gone rogue in the hopes of discovering how to stop the invasion of the alien species that was responsible for creating the hybrids. Although there were at least seven other locations that had been targeted by the alien incursion, Homestead was the only one that hadn’t ended up in a bloodbath. It was undeniably owed to the fact that Tom had survived longer than any other hybrid, and on his own. After recovering from a plane crash of which he was the sole survivor, Tom had seamlessly reintegrated himself into society. The cloned version of the sheriff had spent ten years of his existence ignorant to the reality of what he was. But when others of his kind had started to appear after a major hurricane, Tom had begun to purposefully seek them out, soothing their inherent violent tendencies and guiding them on a new path in life.
Only once had Russell witnessed Tom emotionally out of control in all of the years that they had known each other. And that altercation had been entirely Russell’s fault as he had misjudged the hybrid sheriff, wrongfully accusing him of another person’s actions. Even then, the depth of Tom’s despair hadn’t been anywhere near as profound as it was now. If Tom was losing control, what would become of the rest of the hybrids? Without Tom’s influence, Stiles could snap and lash out at someone with that incredible power of his. The deputy already had the anger levels to fuel such an outburst. What if he attacked a civilian?
“If it’ll help Tom...,” Russell began, feeling uncertain and slimy about the whole exchange. While making love to Tom would be in no way a hardship for him, he would only do it if it were absolutely necessary. Because there was the still the matter of Tom overcoming the traumatic sexual assault that he’d been subjected to.
“What will help me?” Tom asked suddenly as he lifted his head up to reveal his tear-streaked face. He sounded desperate for a solution to his physical and mental discomfort.
“Walking faster,” Stiles replied without hesitation. “We’re still about twenty minutes away from the hotel and it’s getting really dark. Windigos don’t glow in the dark so—.”
Derek reacted faster than anyone else, whirling around to give Stiles a startled look that was laced with betrayal. “I thought you said that there wasn’t any windigo!”
“No, I said that I wouldn’t make you sleep beside a windigo. There’s a difference.”
“Enough already!” Russell shouted, having had enough of being left in the dark. “What the fuck is a windigo?!”
“It’s a really big ogre that eats humans and wolves,” Derek said in a fearful tone. “It’ll probably eat hybrids as well.”
Russell almost winced when Tom grabbed onto his left forearm with the hand that wasn’t injured, digging into it with his blunt nails. “There’s no such thing as an ogre,” Tom protested, although the way he instinctively sought Russell’s protection declared that he believed otherwise.
“What makes you think there’s a windigo out here?” Russell leapt right past the stage of disbelief to the defensive stage. He couldn’t afford to remain ignorant of any threats to their safety, especially Tom’s.
“Derek, don’t say it,” Stiles warned.
The deputy and his wolf mate exchanged a long, hard look, before Derek stubbornly turned away and blurted out, “The hotel we’re going to was shut down because three people were eaten by a windigo there... possibly six. Stiles won’t confirm the details on the last three.” That information alone would have convinced Russell to find another location to spend the night at, but Derek wasn’t finished. “Do you have any idea how terrifying a windigo is? If you let it get too close, it rips off chunks of your flesh with its claws and its teeth. It keeps going after its victim until eventually all the bones are picked clean. And the victim is still alive while it’s doing this!”
“Russell!” Tom cut in before Derek could reveal anything further about the windigo’s macabre activities. “I want to go back to the road, now! There has to be something further down. And if there isn’t... we can take turns sleeping by the roadside until someone drives by in the morning.” He struggled to get his left arm back into the sling, until Russell quickly helped him with it.
“Okay,” Russell readily agreed. He would do anything to placate Tom, even if it meant positioning themselves in the most obvious spot for easy detection. It didn’t sound like such a bad idea after he’d taken into account the likelihood of being ambushed in the forest by a flesh eating windigo.
“I’d also rather take my chances with being run over by non-existent traffic than crossing paths with that windigo,” Derek chimed in.
“If one of you jumps off a cliff, will the other two follow?” Stiles demanded. “Sheesh! You think that going back to the road is such a great idea? That windigo is not shy about attacking its prey in the middle of the road. If it strolled right into a four star hotel, what makes you think it’s going to think twice about coming after you in a wide open space?”
“How do you know that it doesn’t consider that hotel to be its nest?” Russell shot back, feeling like it was his duty to steer everyone in the right direction - mainly away from the hotel. “It might have gotten comfortable there after the place was shut down. There could be more corpses there that you’re not aware of.”
“What makes you the expert on windigos?” Stiles challenged. “You didn’t even know what a windigo was up until a few minutes ago.”
“Actually, I’m an expert on animal behavior,” Russell pointed out. “I’ve studied all types of animals - both predators and prey - extensively. Your windigo sounds like an aggressive carnivore that is probably excellent at hunting, which makes it clever, but not highly intelligent. It’s going to remain close to its base of operations, only attacking those who intrude on its territory. Now, unless you tell me that an ogre has a brain that is equivalent to that of a human’s...”
“We’re going to the hotel and that’s final!” Stiles said angrily. “I won’t have my mate attacked by that sleazy wolf just because you think being an animal specialist suddenly makes you a know-it-all on preternatural creatures!” Not giving Russell, or anyone else, the chance to talk him out of it, he took off back on the same path that was leading them deeper into the forest.
“Would one of you please stop him?” Derek pleaded.
“I wish I could,” Tom said apologetically.
“Russell, do something!” Derek urged as Stiles disappeared up ahead.
“I can’t risk making him any angrier than he already is.” Because an angry hybrid often transformed into a homicidal hybrid.
“Stop trying to keep the peace and start acting like the alpha that you’re supposed to be!” Derek growled in irritation. “We all know that Stiles is wrong, but you’re the only one who can force him to back down.” Not giving Russell the chance to get a word in edgewise, Derek continued to emotionally lash out at him. “You’re squandering the powers that were given to you by pretending to be a good little fox terrier instead of a lethal werewolf. I’m sure that when that windigo turns up, Tom is going to prefer to be protected by a vicious wolf with fangs and claws. Not an affectionate lap dog that performs cheap tricks.”
Reeling from the wolf’s explosive tirade and not knowing how to react, Russell could only watch Derek reluctantly stalk off after Stiles. Why had Derek jumped to the conclusion that Russell should be the alpha? While Russell considered himself to be a natural leader and had authority issues whenever he was forced to work under someone else, he thought that alphas were branded such by seniority. But that didn’t make much sense because Derek was submissive to Stiles, and Derek’s eyes glowed an eerie blue color - not alpha red. Russell had seen the reflection of his glowing purple eyes - a color that Derek had failed to provide information on - in the hallway mirror back at Derek’s bed and breakfast. What the hell did purple mean? Could it be a substitute for red?
Derek’s footsteps were fading in the distance, not allowing Russell much time to ponder what he should do. “Tom, take your gun out and stay close to me.” He briefly pulled Tom into a warm embrace and kissed his damp cheek, all the while thinking of how much better off they would be if the sheriff were capable of healing himself. If they mated, Tom would feel more secure, and the bond would surely heal him. It would also silence the whirlwind of emotions that were distorting and inverting Tom’s powers.
Stiles probably had no idea how right he had been about the romantic quip. Tom was the one who loved roses and homemade dinners, and intimate dates down by the lake. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be drawn to the prospect of being fucked inside a windigo hotel.
“I won’t let that windigo hurt you,” Russell promised when it didn’t seem like Tom was willing to move forward. But that promise was all it took to get Tom to compliantly follow him. The sheriff apparently trusted Russell with his safety and his life, which pleased Russell because it meant that Tom understood how deeply he was loved.
“Russ, are you holding back because of me?” Tom broke the silence once they’d cleared the forest and ended up outside the tennis court that time had forgotten.
“What do you mean?” Russell eyed the shredded fence that was strewn all over the tennis court, along with the many punctured fuzz-free tennis balls that littered both ends of it. A mass of crispy brown tree leaves were piled up in one corner, where the wind kept them, and all the overhead lights were smashed. The bare poles that were no longer holding up the fence looked seriously rusted with age and acid rain. However, upon closer inspection, Russell noted that the rust stains looked separate from the poles. What looked like rust... but wasn’t rust? Russell grabbed Tom’s good arm and pulled him in closer.
“Is what Derek said true?”
Russell sighed heavily as they caught up to Stiles and Derek. “I don’t know, Tom. Adjusting to all this crap has just been one major headache. Are you afraid that I’ll become just as dangerous as that son of a bitch who hurt you?”
“No.” Tom paused to glance down at the gun in his hand, no doubt questioning its ability to injure a windigo. “I’m afraid that you won’t.”
Russell didn’t know what shocked him more, Tom expressing the desire to see him become violent, or Tom and Derek ganging up on him separately.
“See!” Stiles called out confidently from outside the large three-story hotel that he was standing in front of. Aside from the chipped white and mint green paint, and the boarded up windows lining the ground floor, Eternal Beacon Hotel looked fairly well preserved for an abandoned crime scene. The pathway leading up to the hotel may have been chewed up by a variety of weeds, and the double front doors may have been sporting an overzealous amount of yellow police tape, but otherwise, it seemed like a fairly normal building. “Does it look like a windigo lives here? Look! All the windows are intact, and the police tape is still sealing the doors.”
“That just means that the windigo is smarter than you’re giving him credit for,” Derek muttered.
“I don’t know about you lot, but I’m tired and hungry. I’ll bet that we can find something to eat in the kitchen, and somewhere to sleep upstairs.”
A nagging gut feeling told Russell that venturing inside the hotel was a very bad idea, but it was now so dark outside that he couldn’t see jack shit without unmuting his glowing night vision. Stiles and Tom had to be as blind as bats outside of the range of the moon rays, which just so happened to be directed at that hotel and nothing else. There’s an ominous omen if there ever was one! They had nowhere else to go, and they had to stick together because there was strength in numbers. In other words, Russell had no choice but to concede that the hotel was the best place for them to seek refuge under the circumstances.
“We’re already here so we may as well go inside.” Ignoring the dirty look that Derek gave him, Russell raised his voice in an authoritative fashion. “But there’s going to be no bullshit with anyone wandering off or exploring on his own. We move as a group. Stiles, you’ve been here before so you can take the lead. I’ll cover the rear. If anyone sees or hears any sign of a windigo, or anything else that we don’t want to be trapped inside this hotel with, they’re to speak up - immediately! I’d rather react to a false alarm than require a skin graft after waking up to find something gnawing on my arm in the middle of the night.” When it looked like Stiles might have an opinion on Russell’s assumed leadership, Russell preemptively shut down his argument. “And no fighting. Like Derek said, someone has to take charge here because all these conflicting opinions are going to get one of us killed.”
Amazingly, Stiles merely shrugged and appeared to calm down after Russell’s speech. “You’ve got the resumé to back up your attitude, I hope...”
“Does working ten years as a senior park ranger in charge of law enforcement, interpretation, park management, and public affairs count? If not, how about five years as a—?”
“The senior park ranger background is sufficient,” Tom said curtly as he cut Russell off. “I doubt that those remaining five years are something that you want to be boasting about, even if you mean to do so facetiously.”
Russell felt his face heat up as he acknowledged that Tom had just reprimanded him for nearly oversharing his dark history. Whether Tom was embarrassed for him or worried about how Stiles and Derek might react remained to be seen.
“I’d like to hear what you were doing for those five years,” Derek said curiously.
“Me too! Especially because Tom has a problem with you telling us,” Stiles chimed in. “There’s nothing like some dark intrigue to lend credibility to your leadership skills.”
“Maybe later. First let’s get inside and see if the power still works.” Russell had already lost interest in telling the tale of his wayward youth. He was now completely focused on finding the right opportunity to form a permanent bond with Tom. Even if it had to happen inside an evil, foreboding hotel.