POV - Kyas
'Chaos! Stop me!' I sent him.
'Nope,' he replied,'we made a promise.'
This was the first time I ever tried to fight the gamma instincts, and I tried to hold back what I knew I was about to do. I was about to hurt him.
I had managed to pull the tick back twice, but not to stop Chaos and ME from moving toward his room.
I got to his room and was about to break it down again, but I tried really hard not to do it.
Let's Ask him first! Make sure it's what we think! Make sure we're not wrong!' I sent Chaos.
Chaos controlled the shift for me, 'Fine, ask him.' Chaos was ready to go for him too.
I knocked. "Elias, open the door, I need to ask you about something!" My voice is a mixture of panic and resolve.
He hurried to open the door. I fought to stay out of his room.
"What?" He asked, wide-eyed.
"Elias, I need to know why you left the kitchen. Please tell me that it wasn't because of me." I said. Inside, I was begging him to say it wasn't, but outwardly that was not in my tone.
He turned away from me, moving away from the doorway. "I'm sorry, Kyas, but every time I see you or hear you, I can't stop thinking about what I did to you. I had to get out of there."
I took a step inside.
"The knife, Elias, why didn't you put away the knife?" I asked. I really wished he hadn't blackened the bond. If he knew how much I was holding back…
"The knife? Uh, well, I was planning to finish after I was sure you left. I just set it down so I could pick up where I left off." He said, clearly unaware of his own danger.
I lost one tick of the shift.
"Why is there a rule to always put knives away, Elias?" I asked.
"Why, did something happen? I was going to be right back." He said, confused.
"Why do we put knives away when we aren't using them?" I repeated.
"So they don't get lost, and other reasons, but I was coming back, I just needed you gone." He said.
I let go, quit fighting. "It's to keep people SAFE, Elias! Remember them? OTHER people?" I yelled. "Not just me, everyone!"
I threw a punch that knocked him down.
"It's so little girls like Mindy Sparks can't get hurt by a knife You were supposed to be responsible for!" I yelled as I kicked him. Hard.
"Kyas," he groaned, "I didn't know!"
I kicked him again. "Yes, you did! You know the rules, you know why! It's so this doesn't happen!" I pulled him up by his shirt to his feet so I could gut punch him. He fell back down.
"You did it again, Elias! You put yourself first! Thinking only of yourself in the moment and what You wanted!" I shouted. I went in for another kick, but he got me first, aiming a kick to my ribs, then sweeping my legs, knocking me to the floor, too.
He rolled on top of me, fisting my shirt. "I thought you were still afraid of me, coward, flinching at everything I do. You know I can fuck you up!"
I rolled us again, this time I was on top, and punched him in the jaw.
"Nothing comes before the pack, not even fear of you, and not your selfishness either! I made you a promise. I told you what would happen if you did it again." I said, deadly serious.
"Yeah," he said, "But I'm not some bitch-ass slave boy that doesn't fight back!" He yelled and rammed a headbutt that broke my nose.
I rolled off him and stood, holding my nose for a few, and then glaring at him. "For the people you refuse to see and for little Mindy Sparks, I'm fighting back now!" I lunged at him.
We fought all over his room, wrecking anything that wasn't nailed down. At one point, Elias called for Ethos, who I saw in Elias' eyes was about to come forward.
I met his eyes. "Don't. " He backed off.
The fifth time I got to my feet after a groin shot on him, he stayed down. I was about to keep kicking, but I remembered why I was doing this. Why I needed to make him see.
I reached down and grabbed the back of his shirt, used it to drag him out of the room. He tried to fight, but his position gave him no leverage. I dragged him down the stairs and through the kitchen doors. I hauled him to his feet and showed him Mindy's blood on the floor, the knife surrounded by it.
"This is why we have SAFETY rules, Elias. Why we fucking put away the damn Knives!" I knocked him to the floor again, into Mindy's congealing pool of blood.
I grabbed his shirt again and dragged him out the back door and across the lawn to the hospital. We were both beaten and bruised, and the looks we got from pack members said they were horrified.
I dragged him to Mindy's room, outside it, to the window. I hauled him up, twisting his arm behind his back, and pressed his face to the glass.
"Look at her, Elias." I said menacingly into his ear. "Look what you did to that poor baby girl because you were only thinking of yourself. We've been trying to get through to you, trying to show you why you can't put yourself over your pack. YOUR pack, Elias. Your pack needs you to care about them first. Mindy needed you to stay and not run off. Mindy needed you to put away your knife. Mindy needed you to keep HER safe."
I dropped him on the floor by her window.
"You should stay here and tell that baby's parents why she didn't matter to you, their future alpha. Then we can discuss which of the two of us is really the coward."
I aimed one last kick at his head, but before it got close, all of the muscles spasmed HARD in the whole leg, making me scream in pain, and sent me sprawling to the floor beside him knocking the air from my lungs. Holy Goddess of Mercy that hurt. I tensed as I realized what that meant. I would have killed him with that kick. I would have killed my brother. Goddess, I hated being right about what I was capable of. Now, thank the Goddess, I can't.
From the floor, we both saw the heads of about eight doctors and nurses entering the view of the white ceiling above us. Dr. Andrews and Dr. Collins had needles in their hands.
"Are you two done? Or do we need to use these?" Dr. Andrews asked.
I looked over at Elias, who was looking at me, then back at the doctor, and we both shook our heads. "Done." I coughed, finally sucking in air, holding up my hands in surrender.
Dr. Collins jabbed me anyway. "Ow!" I whined. Dr. Andrews didn't jab Elias. I looked back, and Dr. Collins shrugged. "Alpha's orders."
Whatever was in it didn't knock me out, but my whole body went numb and wouldn't listen to me. We were both lifted onto stretchers and rolled away from Mindy's room, back to the same double room as before, this time, they didn't pull the curtain. I was cuffed by one hand to the railing of my stretcher. For safety they said. I didn't protest. We both watched each other as they tended to our injuries.
Eventually, the numbing started to fade, and I got the pins and needles all over. It's not as bad as beestings, but it was twice as annoying.
"I'm sorry, again, Kyas." Elias said.
The shift ticked forward. Truth.
"I hope so. I'm not. Promise made, promise kept." I said.
I saw him shiver at my words. "How do you do that? Be all... you, and then switch gears like that?" He asked.
The shift ticked back. Gamma answer not needed.
"That's exactly what it feels like, shifting gears, only I don't really control it. It's the gamma part of me that protects the pack. It gets super intense sometimes when anyone in the pack is in danger. Including danger from you, including keeping you safe, and including danger from me." I explained.
The hospital doors opened, and stormcloud Alpha walked in.
"What the hell happened, Kyas? What did you do?" He demanded.
The shift ticked forward twice.
"I kept my promise. I showed him again. You weren't here." I said. "I kept that promise too."
Alpha looked me dead in the eye.
"Was it necessary?" He asked. I knew what he meant.
The shift ticked all the way back. Yes, it was.
I looked down. I couldn't meet his eyes. I scooted as far back on the bed as I could, and I pulled my knees up to my chest. I nodded. "No regrets." I said.