Hours. Lake had been gone for three hours longer than usual, and the man was as punctual as he was cruel. Something was wrong.

John prayed that if it involved Peter, Lake wouldn’t come back at all. When the door opened that night and Lake staggered in, John froze. The Alpha was alone, as usual, and he was injured. The way he stood made it obvious. His right hand was stretched across his chest, buried underneath his jacket as if he was clutching his heart. Blood had already soaked through the front of his shirt. He took a jerky step forward and stumbled another three before throwing his arms out to catch himself on the floor.

For a moment, John couldn’t move. He was stuck, like someone had zapped him where he stood. The door was still ajar, but Lake had men everywhere, always. Cameras. Gates. Running, even with Lake momentarily incapacitated, was foolish.

Killing him, however…

He was bleeding and badly injured. Mortally, as far as John knew. He eyed the knives in the wooden block on the counter and it would have been so easy to grab one. To use it to finish the job someone else had started.

Lake was weak. Vulnerable, the way John had been as the Alpha tortured him. As he’d broken bones and taunted and made him cry out for Peter, just to hurt him.

Yes, he might have done more. He might have been crueler. He might have been almost kind in rare moments, due to some ulterior motive John had yet to uncover, but he also might have released him. He might have recognized that Peter had spared his life six years ago and had the decency to move on with it, but he hadn’t. He’d hunted them down like dogs and he deserved to die like one.

John had the knife in his hand and only partly remembered taking it out of the block. He wondered if it mattered. He gripped the handle, his teeth gritted as Lake’s eyes met his. They were so blue, so full of knowing, so at peace…

“Go ahead,” the Alpha said, falling to one elbow as he clutched his chest. His voice was gruffer than ever. Straining just to breathe. If it hadn’t been his heart that was hit, it was his lung, filling up with blood. “You will not get another chance.”

“Who did this?” he demanded. If Lake and Peter had fought, and Lake was still alive…

No. He wouldn’t let himself go there.

“Peter,” Lake rasped, his head rolling to one side so he could have a better look at John. Even now, even with him bleeding out and John holding a weapon in his hand, Lake was the one in power and he knew it. He had the information John’s very sanity depended on. “He is alive, but not for lack of trying to get himself killed. As for him sparing my life, we are even.”

There was bitterness in that confession, as if Lake hated himself for the act of mercy as much as he hated Peter for his.

John’s heart dropped from his throat and he breathed. He also gripped the knife tighter. This was it. His chance to see Peter again. His chance at revenge. His chance at escape.

He dropped the knife, or maybe it fell from his hand. Either way, he rushed to the Alpha’s side and forced him down onto his back. “Help!” he cried, knowing one of the omnipresent guards would hear. Bastards. “Call the doctor!”

The confusion on Lake’s face lasted only until the pain overtook him. John pulled his shirt open and saw the bullet hole a few inches south of his heart. Definitely his lung. It wasn’t a fatal injury, not if he was intubated fast. Not if the doctor was close.

John pulled off his shirt and balled it up, holding pressure on the wound. “Don’t move, you son of a bitch,” he growled as Lake’s hand tried to close around his wrist in a seemingly automatic response to the agony.

The guards rushed in and one reached for John. He stopped the Alpha short with a venomous glare. “Do you want him to die?” he spat. “I said call the fucking doctor.”

The guard seemed as bewildered as Lake was, but he rushed and left the other one to guard their prisoner turned medic. It was another five minutes, give or take, before the doctor rushed in and pushed John out of the way. It was just as well. Beyond slowing the bleeding, he didn’t know much what to do. He didn’t even know if Lake was going to live with treatment and he told himself he didn’t care.

If he did, it was certainly only for Peter’s sake. Even if the Alpha hated him, even if there was too much betrayal and blood between them to ever forgive on either side, he was the closest thing Peter had to family. The closest thing in this world he had to home.

John owed him nothing, and he was certain that his impulsive mercy would be punished severely, but he was no killer. Lake could take his freedom, his life, his hope, but he could never make him that.

Lake’s men moved him to the bedroom as the doctor worked to remove the bullet. For hours, Lake groaned in a drug-induced stupor from whatever the doctor had given him. Hours later, John sat at his captor’s bedside while the man’s guard looked on. The doctor had announced that he would recover with rest, and John still wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Part of him felt like a failure. Deep down, he knew he’d done the right thing, even if Lake was too twisted for it to make a difference. It took two days for Lake to even begin to regain consciousness. John watched him in morbid fascination and wondered if the Alpha’s close proximity had somehow twisted him as well.

It just didn’t seem possible, no matter how much he stared and waited and listened, that this man who muttered Peter’s name in his sleep could be the man who hunted them down without remorse. The man who would not stop as long as they both lived and breathed.

Then again, he couldn’t understand himself, either. He told himself that even if he had availed himself of the opportunity to take Lake’s life, the guards would have retaliated by killing him. It made sense logically, but it didn’t satisfy his guilty conscience.

Guilt for thinking of killing Lake. Guilt because he hadn’t. Guilt for not being able to escape and return for Peter. Guilt for separating him from his brother, from the man who’d been his soulmate before John ever came along, even if it was in an entirely different way.

Things had been so much easier when all he had to feel was pain. When the guilt was Peter’s burden to bear, not his. He felt it changing him, staining him more with each day that passed, and he wondered if this was how it happened. If this was how you lost your soul, by giving in to the weight of that guilt one day at a time, one moment, one thought.

When Lake’s eyes opened, John stared into them, watching apathetically as the Alpha regained consciousness. As his helplessness faded and he returned to the state John was used to, his hand jutted out to grab the beta’s wrist. He was still not fully conscious, but John flinched, ready to be reacquainted with the more brutal side of his nature.

Instead, Lake froze and his eyes widened as he seemed to remember where he was. He looked at the guard, then at John and released the beta’s hand. If John hadn’t known better, he would think he saw remorse in the Alpha’s expression as he sat up slowly.

“Leave us,” Lake growled.

It took John a second to realize he was talking to the guard. The man hesitated before his boss bellowed, “Now!” and he quickly rushed from the room, far more afraid of the threat Lake posed to him than whatever imaginary one John posed to the Alpha.

John swallowed hard, prepared for anything as the Alpha sat up and stared at him like he was trying to peel back his skin and bone and look into his soul. Anything other than the words, “You saved my life.”

At first, John didn’t know how to respond. “Technically, the doctor did that. I just bought you some time.”

“You could have killed me.”

“Your guards wouldn’t have let that happen.”

“You could have, all the same.”

John clenched his jaw. “Does it make any difference?”

Lake searched his face, like the beta’s motivations were as perplexing to him as they were to John. “I am beginning to understand,” he said quietly.

John frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

The Alpha said nothing.

“Okay,” John muttered, feeling like he’d at least earned the right to speak without walking on eggshells. “Then you can at least tell me the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“Why you’re still keeping me here. Why you have Peter running around doing your dirty work, and why you went from keeping me in your tool shed to treating me like a new pet.”

Lake was staring at him again, and John was sure answering his question was the furthest thing from the Alpha’s mind.

John frowned. “You were never going to let me go, were you?”

“No,” Lake said quietly, to his amazement. Even more shocking was the guilt in the Alpha’s voice. Was it even possible? John had finally come over to Peter’s side, to believing that the Alpha was beyond such qualities. Was he just trying to confuse him? Perhaps psychological torture was his new tactic. “I was not.”

It took John a while to decide he was grateful for the answer. Even if it only confirmed what he already knew. “I guess I’m not surprised. What, you just wanted to wait as long as possible, to make sure that Peter knew what he was missing? So the loss of his mate and child would be even more profound?”

“I was not going to harm the child,” he said quietly. “When Peter chose you, I lost the only family I have ever known. I would have raised it as my own. Living without you, living the life I have known, that would be his punishment.”

“I see,” John said. Bile started to rise up his throat. This time, it wasn’t just the morning sickness.

Lake’s eyes narrowed. More curiosity and confusion. “You smell of pain rather than fear. Grief.”

“How could I not?” John snapped. He saw the surprise on Lake’s face, but he continued anyway. The Alpha had asked, and unlike Lake, he would answer. “The man I love can only be truly understood by one person in this world, one person who knows the hell he’s been through, and you’ve decided he can’t have us both. That instead of coming through it together, he either has to give up everything and remain in that hell with you, or be punished for choosing to spare your life.”

Lake’s blankness was gone. John knew he was angry, but if he was going to die as soon as his child was born anyway, he figured he may as well let him know the truth. “You think this will be the end of your revenge, but it won’t. He will never let you take our child. You’ll kill me and you’ll have your ‘fairness,’ and then Peter will avenge my death. He’ll kill you and himself in the process, and you’ll finally have succeeded in making him into the monster you want him to be. Because you’re too much of a fucking coward to see that his mercy doesn’t make him weak. It makes him stronger than you. Strong enough to love you as his brother, after everything you’ve done, whether he realizes it or not. But that’s not enough for you, is it?” he asked bitterly. “Because you’re the one who made him choose. You’re the one who turned your back on him. Your game, your rules. Everyone else just has to play by them, don’t they? And in the end, you can console yourself by pretending like it’s fair when you’ve been loading the deck the whole time just to maintain your precious control.”

If Lake Kristoff had ever been told off in his life, it was clear from the look on his face that it was not often. Or at all, in the event that the one telling him off wanted to continue living afterward.

John couldn’t bring himself to regret saying any of it, though. After everything Lake had done to him, to Peter, the truth was a wound that needed to be opened. He wasn’t even sure that any of it had gotten through. The way Lake was looking at him didn’t give him much hope.

“Get out,” the Alpha said quietly. His tone was so calm, John was certain he’d heard him wrong.

“What?”

“You heard me,” Lake muttered. “I’m done with him. With both of you. It’s obvious that you’ve changed him beyond reparation. The guard will take you to the city, you’re each other’s problem from there.”

John’s throat tightened as the Alpha spoke. He knew this was as close as Lake would ever come to letting himself show mercy. The closest thing to an act of love his jet black soul would allow him with his ego intact.

He stood before Lake could change his mind. The Alpha was sitting up, refusing to look at him. John lingered, reaching out with a trembling hand that had only begun to heal the right way, and touched the Alpha’s broad shoulder.

Lake flinched, as if the touch wounded him more gravely than the bullet. He didn’t look up. “Go,” he spat without half the venom there usually was in his words. “Before I remember who I am.”

Something about those words broke John’s heart when all he wanted to feel toward the Alpha was hatred. He turned to leave, and the guard who stopped him at the door relented after a few curt words from Lake.

John was still convinced it was a joke. Maybe another cruel game Lake had decided to play with him. Even as the black limousine pulled out of the driveway and he watched the forest passing through the darkly tinted windows, he was convinced that the Alpha behind the wheel was going to brake at any moment, take him out of the car, and end his life.

Or at least take him back to that shed, which he was still convinced he was trapped in every time he woke in the middle of the night in a bed more comfortable than the one he owned back home. The posh, bizarrely pampering treatment he’d received for the last few weeks had done nothing to heal the trauma. If anything, it amplified it in comparison and fueled the confusion that made each breath a chore that seemed barely within his reach.

Lake was his tormentor. His only companion for months. He was both the man he hated and the man he pitied. The one who’d imprisoned him and the one who’d set him free. Was there anything about the Alpha that was not a grotesque contradiction?

As the city finally came within view, John began to feel the Alpha’s grasp on him loosen, invisible yet no less real. Something told him he would feel it long after Lake was a distant memory, and he was only beginning to hope that his release was not just part of a mind game.

The car rolled to a stop on a dead end street on the outer limits of the city. The driver reached for the glove compartment and John flinched, but instead of a gun, he pulled out John’s phone and wallet, offering it to him.

The beta took his things, his hands still trembling and stiff. The brace the doctor had given him was helping the bones set and heal, but it hindered his movements considerably. He waited and stared, expecting some threat.

“You waiting for something?” the Alpha asked impatiently.

John quickly reached for the door, surprised that it was actually unlocked. He shoved his things in the pocket of his coat and took one step away from the car, then a few more, quickening his steps before he dared to look back.

The car was still just sitting there, but when he looked, it pulled away. He turned and ran toward the nearest building, seeing the lights of a coffee shop up ahead. He didn’t stop running until he found a crowded, well-lit area full of passersby who were looking at him like he was insane.

He took out his phone and put the chip back in, relieved it still worked. Of course there were missed calls and texts and other notifications, and he tried not to think of how Lake might have used it to draw Peter to some random location only to frustrate him over and over again.

He dialed his mate’s number and he’d never heard anything sweeter than the sound of Peter’s voice, raspy with pain and fury. He thought Lake was tormenting him again. John closed his eyes and his words kept getting choked out by the relief, along with everything else he’d suppressed because he had to, in order to survive. “Peter,” he breathed. “It’s me.”

The Alpha didn’t say anything. Not at first. His labored breath betrayed his shock. He couldn’t believe it, and neither could John.

“Where are you?” he finally asked. John had never heard that tone before.

John looked up at the sign lit by a street lamp, gathering his composure. “I’m at the intersection of Ninth and Cattleboro. I’m alone, I think. I —“

“I’m coming,” Peter growled. John could hear people with him. Those words released something he’d been holding off for as long as he was Lake’s prisoner. He sank against the building and started sobbing without making a sound, ignoring the looks he was getting from people on the street.

When Peter’s car screeched to a halt, nearly taking out a motorcycle parked on the curb, John got to his feet. It felt like a dream, and not in a good way. In a way that made him feel like as soon as he took a step toward Peter, the Alpha was going to be replaced or simply gone, and he’d wake up and realize he was right back where he’d started.

Peter’s arms wrapped around him, but John couldn’t feel it. His mind wouldn’t let him believe this was real, because if it wasn’t…

If it wasn’t…

God, he needed it to be. He fell apart and he didn’t even care that Peter was crushing him too hard to breathe. His tight embrace, painful as it was, was the only thing keeping the broken pieces together. The Alpha was talking, asking him questions and stroking his face and looking at him worriedly as he waited for answers that never came and then gave up only to crush him again.

John knew he needed to answer something, but it was a struggle to remember what Peter had just asked him. Something about whether he was hurt. No, not now. Not in any way that mattered to him more than what was happening.

Peter rushed him to the car and into the back seat. Someone else was in the driver’s seat now and John thought it was Jayce, but all he could do was focus on Peter. The Alpha was still holding him and his scent and his warmth were finally starting to make it sink in that he was real.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Peter whispered. “I’ve got you.” Over and over. John must have voiced his fear without realizing it, or maybe his mate just understood.

He still felt like he was detached from his body, viewing everything that was happening remotely, but he was himself enough to speak and be aware of what he was saying. He looked into Peter’s eyes, the Alpha’s distress and relief and anger peeling off him like smoke. “He let me go,” he whispered. It was a question.

Peter’s eyes made it clear he lacked the answer. He just held John closer and stroked the hair that had grown out to the point of irritating him as it constantly brushed his jaw. He held him and John was never letting go.