Chapter Nine
Ronan was waiting for him in the woods.
“Mark thinks you broke him.”
Griffin slowed to a stop and leaned against a tree, struggling to catch his breath. He could feel his hands shaking, his heart thumping.
“I’m not sure Mark is far wrong. Saying his name aloud… it did something to him. I just don’t know what.”
“Will you go back in there?”
From the way Ronan’s arms were folded, Griffin could tell the alpha wasn’t happy with how this was playing out.
“Not right now,” he said. “Later. I left my bag behind. And I… I need to make sure he’s okay. The look in his eyes, the sounds he was making, I’ve never seen that before.”
Ronan looked at the ground. “We may still need to face the reality that he’s not salvageable. I know you feel he’s made progress, but if something as simple as a name sets him off like that…”
“Not a name,” Griffin said. “His name.”
It had been clear that the alpha recognized it but also very strongly rejected it.
“Can you imagine trying to come back after becoming so lost inside your own mind?”
Ronan shrugged, still not making eye contact.
“I saw it once, at the training school. A guy gone feral. He was just eighteen, he’d been on the fighting circuit less than a year. Something happened, and he just… snapped. I saw what he was like, Griffin. There was no coming back from that.”
“Knowing what I know about those training schools, I’d wonder if they gave him a fair chance at recovery.”
Ronan rubbed a hand across his eyes.
“No, you’re right. They were probably more worried about their own liability, about the next fight, and the next set of trainees. Expending too much time on a feral was probably seen as a waste of resources.”
“Well then, I intend to make sure Beau gets every chance that young man didn’t.”
“And if he can’t be rehabilitated?” Ronan pressed. “You know this is no life for man or shifter, chained to a wall and fed scraps.”
Griffin didn’t call Ronan out on the picture he painted.
“You know me well enough to know that I keep my word. If it comes to that, I’ll deal with it.”
He didn’t want to contemplate having to kill the alpha, but it was at the end of a long list of choices. He hoped, against hope, that they wouldn’t get there.
He went back in the early evening with more supplies but paused at the door to the cottage, finding the alpha curled up asleep inside. He didn’t stir as Griffin moved around the room, as silently as he could, grabbing his discarded bag and setting out the extra food he’d brought. The water had been spilled at some point, so he replaced the empty bottle with the new one he’d brought, packing the empty away in his bag to take back to the house. At any moment, he expected Beau to wake and come at him, but the alpha slept, his breathing unnaturally deep. Griffin grew almost certain he wouldn’t wake even if he were to shake his shoulder, but he wasn’t brave enough to try.
He returned to the house, enduring a restless night of tossing and turning. Rising early, he went to the kitchen, eating a quick breakfast while preparing food for Beau. It was earlier than he usually visited him, but after what had happened the previous day, he couldn’t stay away for long.
The walk through the woods was almost as nerve-wracking as the first time. He had no idea what he was going to be facing. The same ‘Beast’ from a few days before, sharing an orange with him, or the snarling, angry alpha who chased him away yesterday.
There was no sign of Beau outside of the cottage. Griffin went as far as the point he knew Beau couldn’t pass with his chain and sat down, taking out the food and setting in down beside him.
“It’s Griffin,” he called. “It’s just me. Are you coming out to say hi? I have peaches, they’re good.”
There was no answer, not that he’d expected one, but neither did Beau appear in the doorway. Concerned but cautious, he started walking toward the cottage, listening, and scenting. He needed to be ready to run.
He got all the way to the door without anything happening. Standing at the threshold, he waited for his eyes to adjust. Beau was there, in the same spot he’d seen him the previous evening, but he wasn’t sleeping. Instead, he was sitting up, his back to the wall, his gaze on the ground.
Griffin took a single step inside then folded to his knees on the ground. See, he wasn’t a threat, Beau didn’t need to chase him away.
“I brought some food,” he said softly, noting that the food from the previous evening sat untouched where he left it. “And some water.”
Beau acted like he hadn’t heard him, but Griffin caught the minute tensing of his muscles at the sound of his voice. He was listening alright.
“I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. I’m sorry if I pushed too hard, if I caused you pain. I just… I know there’s someone in there, beyond the anger, beyond the fighting instinct. I want to help you be that person again. I want to free you from the chains. And I don’t just mean the ones wrapped around your ankle, I mean the ones wrapped around your mind. Convincing you that the Beast was all you are, it was a terrible thing to do to you. It’s harmed you, and it brought you right to that marketplace where we found you, where those men were about to—”
He couldn’t go on, turning his head away as tears came to his eyes.
“I’ve been where you are, molded into something else, told I could only be that one thing, trapped inside someone else’s expectations. But I broke free, I escaped, and I became something more. You can, too. You don’t have to be the Beast anymore. You can be the person you were before, only different.”
The picture from the file came to his mind, of the smiling little boy with blond hair and striking blue eyes.
“You can be Beau again,” he said, looking back to the alpha, feeling a few errant tears escape and trail down his cheeks.
Beau was looking at him again. There was no violent reaction to the sound of his name, just a muted flinch as the alpha stared him down. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, holding eye contact with Griffin.
The alpha opened his mouth, and Griffin clung tight to the hope that something had gotten through.
“Why, Griffin?” Beau asked, looking lost. “Why?”