POV - Elias
I couldn't stop hitting him. Every punch, every kick felt like a ton of bricks off my chest. I was finally making him pay for everything!
Then something shifted. He screamed and called me Master with real fear of me. I looked at what I had done to him. He was covered in blood, every inch of him bruised, cut, busted.
That's when Beta Scott tackled me, locked my arms to my chest, and dragged me out of there. Behind me, Kyas still screamed at his Master, gone insane.
Just as we got outside, I felt Alpha's power hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking me and Beta Scott to the ground. I heard a loud command from Alpha, maybe trying to bring Kyas back from wherever I had sent him.
Beta Scott took me to the pack hospital.
"Why are we here, Beta?" I asked.
He looked down. "Your hands." He said.
I looked down at them. They were, bruised, broken in places, and covered in blood. Kyas' blood. I never even felt it. I hurried to a sink and threw up. I tried to wash his blood off my hands, but it wasn't working. My hands wouldn't work.
They took me into an emergency room, where nurses took a bedside x-ray and told me to wait for the doctor. Then I saw Papa come in with Kyas, struggling with his limp form, and they put him on a stretcher and rolled him into the same room as me, on the other side of the curtain. His white shirt was nearly completely red, his shoes streaked with it, still dripping.
I couldn't look at him, and I couldn't stop looking. Then I couldn't see him beyond the curtain. I heard them over there with urgent voices saying medical stuff I didn't understand. The curtain pulled back, and Papa stood there.
Oh, Goddess, he's going to kill me.
"Papa, I'm sorry!" I yelled.
He came in, gently took my hands, checked me all over, put his hand behind my neck and gave a hard kiss to my forehead, and then went back to Kyas.
The doctor came in to work on my hands. Seven finger bones, nearly all my knuckles, and three wrist bones were broken, and some had to be rebroken as the accelerated healing made them set wrong.
I was numb, I didn't feel any of that. Not even when they wrapped them. Kyas didn't make a sound. I listened as hurried, urgent voices slowed to confident ones. And soon after, I heard him say, "I'm ok, Papa." In a quiet tone.
I let out the breath I didn't know I had been holding. I hadn't killed him. A nurse called Papa away, who closed the door as he left, and it was just me and him.
I went around the curtain and went along the wall away from him. They had replaced his bloody clothes with a hospital gown. Small cuts and bruises were already healing, and others were so big they would take days.
"Hey." I said quietly.
He jumped, turned toward me, held out his hand to ward me off. "No! Wait, please!" He begged.
I quickly held up my bandaged hands. "Hey, hey, easy, I'm not going to hurt you, I'll stay way over here."
I waited until the panic left his eyes, and he put his hand down.
"I'm so sorry, Kyas." I didn't know what else to say.
"Thanks, I'm sorry too." He said.
I couldn't believe he said that. "What?"
"I made you do it." He said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Trying to save you from yourself, but mostly to save you from me." He said.
"I don't understand." I said.
"Elias, that night in your room scared me. It scared me how much I really mean that promise. I was afraid that if something else happened, the gamma side of me wouldn't just hurt you. Elias, I could really kill you. I can't stand the thought of doing that to you or to Papa and Mama." He said.
I stepped back.
"So, I thought that maybe if I got you to vent your anger and resentment on me, it would help. You've bottled it up inside, and it's tearing you up, and..." He trailed off.
"And?" I asked.
"Our bond hurts. It's black and festering," he said, and put his hand over his heart, "and it's right here, and hurts every day worse than all of this." He indicated his whole body.
"Kyas, why didn't you stop me? I could have killed You." I said, saying the terrible thing out loud.
He gave a sad laugh. "Oh, trust me, if there's one thing I know for sure it's that I can take a good beating. Plus, Papa and Beta Scott wouldn't have let it go that far."
"Physically maybe, but you went to a bad place in your head, I saw it, it's what made me stop." I said.
He nodded. "I needed to go there. It's the only place Alpha can command me not to kill. So you will be safe from me." He said.
We stood there silently.
"So, your confession wasn't real?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Mama said nine minutes, and you were first. I didn't do any of what I said, but in truth Elias, some of what I said could have been true. You have cut yourself off. The openings were there for the taking."
"Well, I believed you, enough for..." I gestured toward him and he flinched. I hate that.
He nodded. "Copied the style from the bad guys in the movies. A mix of all of them."
"I'm really sorry, Kyas." I said again.
"You can make it up to me, you know." He said.
"How?" I asked.
He put his hand over his heart again. "Make it worth it." He said.