Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (30 page)

The wind shifted--there was the briefest whiff of the scent. It was Dru. It could only be Dru.

Axton could
feel
the hesitation, thick in the air. He stood over Dana's body, tail and ears alert, ready to lunge in any direction.

And then suddenly there was nothing, no scent teasingly on the wind.

Axton kept watch until dawn, and then tagged off with Jack.

The next night, Axton showed up at Dana's with a frown on his face and a six pack of beer he'd stolen out of the communal fridge in the bachelor's house.

"We have to talk," he said, without preamble, setting the beers down on the kitchen table.

"Did you bring me a gift?" Dana asked.

"Great," Jack said, glaring at Axton. "That's just what we need."

"You need to get the fuck back up there," Axton said, pointing, "before everyone gets used to you being gone and Dru kills the shit out of you."

"He ain't gonna," Dana said.

"He was here last night," Axton said.

"Thanks for mentioning it to me when we changed shifts," Jack said testily, while Dana looked stunned.

"He could have just been checking up," Dana tried.

"No," Axton said.

"No," Jack agreed.

"Why," Dana said, closing his eyes, hands at his temples. "Why, why the fuck did I not figure that you two skinny ass hermetic book loving motherfuckers would get along so goddamn well?"

"I don't know, because you're stupid?" Axton asked.

"Speaking for myself," Jack said, "as a skinny ass hermetic book loving motherfucker, I am so damn tired of looking after your sorry ass by now, Dana."

"Yeah," Axton said.

Dana sighed wearily.

"So, what. You grantin' me one last hurrah before you drag me up there by the scruff of my neck?"

"Basically," Axton said. "Yeah."

"I'll go let Dru know that you're coming back in tomorrow," Jack said.

"What?" Dana asked, aghast and looking up. "No."

"Commit to it," Jack said shortly, standing up.

"Did I annoy you today?" Dana asked.

Jack curled his lip, showed some teeth, and left without dignifying that with a response. The front door slammed shut, and the silence was oppressive.

"Awkward," Axton said. "What'd you do?"

Dana shrugged his massive shoulders.

"This and that," he said vaguely.

"You can be nasty," Axton said, scowling, "just for the sake of it. It's shitty to do that to someone who's trying to help you."

Dana squinted at nothingness and shrugged again in reply, then took out a multitool from his pocket and flipped out the bottle opener.

"Gonna keep me company tonight, sweetheart?" he asked finally, since Axton stood grim and silent.

"I've been keeping you company every night," Axton said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Dana popped his lips off the beer bottle he'd had in his mouth.

"I mean like that," he said, gesturing with the bottle. "So we can talk."

"What's there to talk about?" Axton said. "Maybe how you're decisive about breaking my boyfriend's legs but not about avenging your father's death?"

"Low blow," Dana said, but he didn't really sound offended. He'd been progressing to a sort of emotional monotone over the past week, so Axton didn't think the lack of reaction meant much.

"Deserved," Axton said.

"Maybe," Dana allowed, standing up and hooking his fingers in the loops of the six pack. "Outside?"

"You and your fucking fires," Axton said. "Fucking pyromaniac, what the fuck."

"That's not a no."

They went out back.

"What sort of last hurrah is it if I'm the only one drinking?" Dana complained, loud and already halfway to maudlin drunk.

"Someone's going to have to make sure you don't get killed on your last hurrah," Axton said. "And that's me." He'd been nursing a single beer the whole time, mostly for something to hold.

"You could sober up in seconds," Dana said, "fast as you change."

"And maybe seconds are all he needs to murder your drunk ass," Axton said. "Ever think of that?"

"Every night," Dana said.

It was like a rainbow, Axton thought, a rainbow of emotions if all emotions were different colors of drunk.

"The moon," Dana rambled gently, on his back and gesturing at the sky, "the moon, I mean, you ever feel a little betrayed by the moon?"

"No," Axton said. "Why?"

"Because she has nothing to do with you," Dana said. "She has nothing to do with the way we change. It makes me feel abandoned, you know?"

"Did you watch too many werewolf flicks as a kid?" Axton asked wryly. "I never expected that from the moon."

"But wouldn't it be--pretty, if it mattered? Beautiful?"

"Romantic?" Axton suggested.

"Sure," Dana agreed. "That."

"I think I'd gouge my own eyes out," Axton said conversationally, "if I could only go wolf for one night or three of the month."

"Have I ever told you," Dana started, pushing up to one elbow, "that you're better at the wolf part of werewolfing than me?"

Axton tilted his head to the side, looking like he was thinking hard about it.

"You may have mentioned it," he allowed.

"But you ain't better at the whole package," Dana said.

Axton shrugged.

"Matter of opinion," he said.

The fire was low; the stars seemed different.

"You still miss your man?" Dana asked eventually, like it was a normal question.

"Yeah," Axton said.

"But like, maybe a little less?" Dana asked.

Axton hugged his knees to his chest.

"No," he said honestly. "Not any less."

"You still in love?"

"Yeah."

Dana tossed some more filler onto the fire.

"You talk about him a little less, is all," Dana said.

"I have to," Axton said, voice already tinged with yearning. "I have to, because after a while you just--have to live with it." Also, the more he talked about it, the more likely he was to give himself away. Axton didn't want Dana to catch the sliver of hope he could hear slipping into his own voice when he talked about Leander.
Soon
, Axton promised himself, he would make sure Dana was ready soon.

"What would you do," Dana asked, "if I wasn't here?"

"I'd run back to him," Axton said. "I'd run to him and we'd hide together."

"You'd have a hell of a head start," Dana pointed out, "if you left while I was like this, all moping and shit."

"I gave you my word," Axton said, bowing his head. His heart was pounding. How long could he lie to Dana?

"I could still get to him before you could," Dana said.

"Maybe," Axton said. "That's why I wouldn't risk it." Not before the right time. Not before Dana was too busy with running an unruly pack, trying to establish a firm hand. It would buy years, Axton thought, years for him and Leander to pick a place to run away to, to disappear forever, together.

"What would you do if I wasn't here but you still couldn't go back?" Dana asked.

Axton considered the question honestly.

"Go feral," he said finally.

"I figured," Dana said.

Silence stretched out, seeming as deep and endless as the sky, filling up the world. Axton had accepted a second beer. Dana was plowing through his apparently inexhaustible supply of whiskey.

Axton closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Smoke, dirt, grass. A scent that said
werewolf
and
man
and
I know you
: Dana. Wildflowers at the edges, though he had to concentrate a little to pick out the individual notes. It was a beautiful night, and Axton longed, for a second, to forget all his sorrows and just feel how
good
the air felt, how nice the dirt between his fingers smelled.

It was a perfect night, except that it wasn't. Beauty made Axton heartsick--more heartsick than usual. Given Dana's fresh lack of chatter, he wondered if they shared the feeling of wasted gorgeosity. Maybe they had that in common; maybe they could be in sync for that moment.

Dana was his enemy, except for the ways that he wasn't. Dana was the enemy, but he was other things, too.

Why spend so much time protecting Dana, if part of Axton still wanted to kill him? Why install him as alpha, if part of Axton wanted to cut out the middleman and kill Dana himself?

Still--

You could strangle him,
part of Axton whispered.
Go over there, mount him, pin him down
--
he'd let you, hoping for something else--and wrap your hands around that thick neck
...

But no. He didn't actually want Dana dead. He wanted Dana metaphorically neutered; he wanted to strip away Dana's ability to hurt Leander ever again. And he didn't need to kill Dana to do that.

Probably.

It was sad, Axton thought. If he looked at from the point of view of someone who hadn't been betrayed and kidnapped, Dana's life was kind of sad. Dispossessed, dead father, sick mother, constantly worried about upholding a lie...

Maybe they were on the same wavelength after all, because Axton caught the scent of tears. The scent was not salt; nor was it water. Once shed, tears were so small and insubstantial that they smelled of nothing. What Axton smelled was the heady mix of hormonal secretions that signaled that someone was probably about to cry. It made his head feel stuffy in sympathy.

Axton opened his eyes. Once he paid attention to the visual, the scent was lost--he'd only caught it because he'd been focusing so wholly on relaxing, on really listening to what the smells of the night said.

Seeing Dana was enough--he was hunched over, his hair a wild mess that had slipped free of the small ponytail it was usually in, while his eyes stared at the fire and saw nothing.

So many things to feel, Axton thought, and no time to feel them in. Dana needed a friend, and he wasn't the man for the job.

But there was no one else.

"Dana?" he called, softly.

Dana sniffed and shoved a rough arm across his face.

"Yeah?" he asked, voice thick with unshed tears.

"What are you thinking about?"

"It's like truckers," Dana said.

Axton blinked, surprised.

"What is?"

"Gay truckers," Dana said. "It's like gay truckers, the kind that meet up from stop to stop and suck each other off in the cab of the truck and then never see each other again."

"What is?" Axton asked again, still quietly. "Us?"

"Except I wanted to see you again," Dana said, and he dropped his head close to his knees, slumped over with his hands tangled in his hair.

"You did see me again," Axton pointed out gently. "You saw me many times. We travelled together, for a while."

"Ain't the same," Dana muttered. "Ain't never the same as it was the first time."

"It's easy to make the first time with someone a really good memory. It's romantic," Axton said, and then, with a touch of whimsy: "Like the moon."

"No," Dana insisted. "It's like truckers."

"Explain," Axton said, cautious and patient.

"You ever heard of the wasted, lost stops where truckers go to die?" Dana said, lifting his head up. "They just go, stop driving, stop calling, stop everything. Go there to do drugs and go crazy and fuck and just--give up."

"I've read about it," Axton said. "I think
Vice
did a thing on it, years ago."

"It's true," Dana said. "I've seen it. But even if I hadn't, man, you know there's no other way for drifters to end up."

"Are we drifters?" Axton asked, arching an eyebrow. He wasn't. He'd settled in the mountains. He'd nested in LA. Axton was pretty sure he was whatever the opposite of a drifter was. He loved nesting and was naturally inclined towards doing it.

"Me, then, you stubborn son of a bitch," Dana said, and his voice broke somewhere in the middle of his words, and tears threatened again. "Me, fucking me, I always been afraid of ending up like that."

"Why?" Axton asked.

"Because I lied before, sugar, I fuckin'
lied
," Dana said, head in his hands again. "I
do
need it. Always have."

With great and terrible tenderness, Axton, who already knew the answer, asked: "You need what, Dana?"

"Men," Dana said abruptly. "Fucking--I need--I can't just pretend all the time. You're fucking right. Happy now?"

"No," Axton said.

"No
I told you so
?" Dana scoffed, hand pinching the bridge of his nose, then pressing into his eyes.

"I've always been sad for you," Axton said. "Or at first I was angry that you looked down on
me
for knowing it about myself. But I take no pleasure in knowing it's hard for you. Why would I?"

Dana shuddered.

"My whole life--everything I've done--all the awful fucking shit I've seen, as a result--was to get out of here. Not forever; just for a little while, here and there, when I couldn't stand it no more."

"Just for long enough," Axton said softly.

"Each time I've ever left," Dana said, "even when I got shit done quick--I always went and found someone."

"It's hard," Axton said. "I wandered for a while. I know."

"Any fucking one, Ax," Dana said, "hardly anyone as pretty as you. But for a fuck up against a wall, hard and fast and
good
--Jesus fuck, Ax. I'd--"

"I know," Axton said quietly. "I know."

Now Dana was the one that drew his knees up, curling in on himself. His big and muscular body didn't want to become a miserable little ball, nearly fetal. It didn't suit him.

We are so often ugly in our despair
, Axton thought.
Gears turn. The universe explodes. Forests die and water recycles. And we are ridiculous when we mourn, like we're the only person to ever hurt
.

"Send me anywhere, make me do anything, send me into whatever hell, just to get the fuck out for some privacy," Dana said.

"'I'm going to hunt down murderers, I'm going to put down ferals, I'm going to go find anyone you need, if it gets me out,'" Axton said. "Like that, you mean?"