Somehow, the night went on. The two of them stayed in bed, cuddling and talking about the future without venturing into anything too serious. Making plans at a time like this seemed futile and unadvised. All the same, they talked about what might come after all this was over.

Neither of them knew when this would be over.

Rowan had a feeling it would be by the end of the week, if not by the end of this very night. There was enough evidence to bring his boss down, to hold him in jail if they managed to catch him. When they managed to catch him. Things were coming to a close, the seconds racing by towards the finish.

The cops outside watching the house gave no sign that trouble was near. Evening headed steadily towards true night, and then midnight was upon them. That was about the time when Derrick fell asleep, his head lolling forward to rest heavily on Rowan’s shoulder. Rowan caressed him, taking in his scent and just generally enjoying the feeling of his new mate pressed up against him.

As Derrick’s breathing deepened into the true, slow rhythm of deep sleep, Rowan slid his hand up his shirt to stroke his stomach. With his sensitive fingertips, he detected the faint, rounded swelling he thought he’d seen before when Derrick walked into the school.

No matter how much I try to come to terms with the fact that I made this, that this is mine, I just can’t.

All of this was still so new. Everything was changing and this situation just wasn’t conducive to clear thinking. He wanted to come to terms with all of it, to start getting excited about the fact that he would have a son or daughter in only a couple of months. He wanted to have looking forward to the future be something that he did constantly, instead of in rare moments like this when everything was just right.

Sighing, Rowan stared up at the ceiling. Restlessness settled in his spine, at the nape of his neck and down to between his shoulder blades. Holding still like this was about to drive him crazy. He should have been out there in the middle of the search for Mr. Storm, should have been doing what he could do bring all of this to an end instead of just waiting it out like some useless pup.

Maybe if he got up and paced a little, he could blow off some steam and get some rest. Or he could turn the TV in the living room on low and watch some bullshit program until he got tired. When he woke up in the morning, all of this would be over.

An inch at a time, he untangled himself from Derrick and then bunched up his pillow and covers against the omega’s side so his presence wouldn’t be missed. He stood by the edge of the bed for a moment, looking down at his mate’s sleeping face. His curls were outlined in silver in the dim light filtering in through the bedroom window, making him seem angelic.

A tremor of love ran through his body, making his heart clench tight in his chest. The feeling was so good it was almost painful.

“I’ll be back,” Rowan whispered. “Don’t worry. I’ll just be in the other room.”

Derrick sighed in his sleep as if he’d heard him, and Rowan smiled. He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his mate’s forehead, then crept out of the room.

There was beer in the fridge, he remembered as he walked down the short hallway, and his tongue cramped in his mouth with thirst. It was a different sort of thirst, the desire for a beer. There was an edge to it, a need that went deeper than simple survival. Rowan wasn’t a huge drinker and never had been, but now he quite suddenly wanted that beer. It would help settle his nerves, and then maybe he could get back to sleep.

The beer was ginger beer, nabbed from the Liquor Depot. It wasn’t half-bad and that was why he’d kept it around. Beer by itself could be nasty, but the sharp, aromatic edge of the ginger somehow mellowed everything out and made it almost decent.

Padding quietly to the fridge without turning any lights on, Rowan fetched his beer and then unscrewed the cap. He walked back into the living room, searching for the TV remote out of the corner of his eyes as he raised the lip of the bottle to his mouth. Fizzing, sweet beer touched his tongue…and then he lowered the bottle, because he had just seen something, and he wanted to get a better look at it without a huge dark bottle blocking out the middle of his vision.

He could see the cop car outside, through the living room window. The interior was dark and the windows were tinted, making it borderline impossible for him to see through to the two police officers within. They were mere smudges, dark on dark, meaningless shapes behind the glass.

Rowan set the beer down on the windowsill, not even really noticing when he missed and the bottle crashed to the floor. The bottle didn’t break but beer splashed out, wetting his feet. He didn’t move.

And the cops weren’t moving either.

No, he thought, not even knowing what it was that he was denying. Cold dread prickled at his spine, reminding him of when he was younger and someone would shove a handful of snow inside his shirt. You felt the cold before you even really felt it, your body anticipating the shock before your mind even had time to register what has happening. Then you tried to get it out but it was already melting, trickling icily down your back.

It was the same sort of feeling he’d had when he was in front of that pizza place, looking at Derrick sleeping behind the wheel.

If the cops had fallen asleep, they were pretty shit at their jobs. They had looked so competent, so fierce, but Rowan knew enough by now to realize that people were more than his first impression of them.

Lifting his arm over his head, he waved at the still forms of the cops.

They didn’t move.

That horrible dread told him they weren’t just sleeping.

Rowan looked over towards the bedroom, where his mate was sleeping so peacefully. Fear nipped at his spine, melding with the dread, but then both sensations were tossed aside by something much fiercer: anger. Red rage nipped at the corners of his vision, threatening to overcome him. He held it back, knowing that he would need to be able to think on his feet now and the anger would only dull his perception of things. God, but it was so hard to force himself to stay calm. That wasn’t what an alpha did. Calm was for omegas, who had their alphas wrapped around their little fingers and could talk them down at will.

No goddamn way was he going to get Derrick involved in this. He needed to do it on his own.

He stood watching the cops for another few moments and they still didn’t move. He waved both arms now. No reaction.

Shaking his head, he went over to the front door and shoved his shoes onto his feet. They were still tied and it was hard to cram his feet in them, the material bunching uncomfortably and digging into his ankles, but he ignored it. There wasn’t time to untie them, then tie them up again.

Grabbing the doorknob, he put his shoulder into it and threw it open. At least, that’s what he almost did. He remembered his sleeping Derrick at the very last second and stopped himself. Pulling in a deep breath, he gripped the knob so hard it hurt and then gently opened the door.

The night air was very cold, a shock when compared with the sleepy warmth of the bedroom. Rowan shivered, hunching up his shoulders, and then started across his little stretch of lawn. Dead grass and scattered leaves crunched softly beneath his feet, the only sound in accompaniment to his rapid breathing. Curls of smoke hung around his face, drifted back past his cheeks whenever he exhaled into the night.

He and Derrick were supposed to stay inside at all costs until the morning. That was their part in all of this, so they would be out of the way if and when Daniel Storm decided to make his appearance. Because of that, the cops should have been yelling, gesturing for him to go back inside, or forcibly guiding him to do just that.

They didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. They were just silent silhouettes, mute and immobile.

Rowan came at the cop car from the side. They were parked on the street a little ways down from his trailer, which would allow them to easily see anyone approaching.

Correction: which should have easily allowed to see anyone approaching.

Both men were dead.

Rowan’s shoulders slumped, but he didn’t feel any real surprise. He had known this would happen, had sensed that this was exactly what had happened ever since he realized that they were being so still.

Their windows were down so they could listen to the surroundings as well as see, but something had apparently gone wrong. Their expressions were so relaxed, so peaceful, that it was clear they hadn’t even noticed anything was about to happen.

One of the cops had a small knife protruding from the hollow of his throat. The knife must not have formed a seal this time, so blood had spurted from his arteries, hitting the dashboard and creating a deep puddle on the floor. His clothes were soaked, drying blood covering his badge. His eyes were open.

The other cop only had one eye open. The other had a knife in it. The blade must have punctured through the thin wall of bone that sits behind the eyeball, bursting out the other side and into his brain. He would have died instantly. The blood which covered half of his face looked black in the night, but his nametag was still in plain sight.

Joseph, it said.

“Sorry, Joseph,” Rowan whispered. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, stepping away from the police cruiser. Despair pulled at him, threatening to drag him down a dark rabbit hole to a world where nothing made sense and everything was terrible. He fought against it and opened his eyes, turning around just in time to hear the first footfall as someone approached him from behind.

Of course it was Mr. Storm. There was no one else it could have been.

The man twirled a knife between his fingers, expressionless, almost bored-looking.

“Boss,” Rowan said. Hot, burning spots of red pulsed in front of his eyes, throbbing in time with his rapid heartbeat.

“You didn’t think I would just go away and leave all these loose ends, did you?” Mr. Storm shrugged. The knife paused in its twirling and he clutched it in one hand, the blade poking out through his fingers. “You’ve been snooping. You know I’m not the kind to leave tracks.”

Quite suddenly, Rowan was just as exhausted as he was furious. “You didn’t need to kill them,” he said. “It’s just needless death. You know you’re going down anyway, you sick fuck. You think anyone here would ever do business with you after a track record like this?”

“You’re naïve.” Mr. Storm shrugged again. Rowan never realized how much he hated that gesture. A shrug was the fuck-you of body language, casting aside your opinion. “I’ll go somewhere else. My connections are far and wide. It would be almost too easy for me to set up in another country. Child’s play. But first, I have to take care of you. You hideous, monstrous freak. Did you kill Gavin?”

“No,” Rowan said. He hadn’t directly killed Gavin, though he had no idea whether or not his former co-worker would die of his injuries. “Even if I did, it’s not the same. You fucking killed three people for no reason. Maybe more I don’t know about.”

Mr. Storm didn’t move at all as Rowan advanced a step, then two more. He looked as calm and relaxed as a man could be, as if this was a tea party instead of the scene of a murder. “You think you’re so different from me? You knew all along what I was doing. You were under no illusions about that. Have you suddenly had a change of heart? Gone all soft?”

“No,” Rowan said again, realizing that this was true even as it came out of his mouth. “I didn’t spy on you because I grew a moral compass. I don’t give a fuck about what people do in their spare time. They’ve got their struggles, I’ve got mine.” His thoughts raced, pounding around inside his skull just as fast as his heart was hammering in his chest. He struggled to keep up with them, to put words to what he was feeling in a time like this where it was now or never. “I didn’t care what you were doing. I just wanted to be with Derrick. This is what I had to do to be with him, and I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of that.

“But I’ve got a big problem with you killing innocent people for your own gain. Sick. Fuck.”

“No one in this world is really innocent, August.”

Rowan thought of Derrick, sleeping so peacefully in his bed. He thought of his unborn child, still so tiny and unformed. “You’re wrong.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

Mr. Storm threw the knife. It was such a rapid thing that Rowan hardly saw it, a mere flick of the wrist. Silver flashed through the air, coming at him quicker than any human could ever hope to evade.

Rowan was no human.

He let go of his rage, fury burning hotter than any flame as it consumed him from the inside out. Everything seemed to slow, time becoming a series of snapshots rather than a series of flowing seconds. He saw the knife, saw it twirl. He saw Mr. Storm, grinning wickedly, confidently.

He saw his own hand, lifting up to block the knife.

And then the knife was in his hand, the blade protruding through his palm while the hilt jutted out the back. Blood blossomed in twin rings on either side of his hand, trickling down his muscles, between the tendons in his wrist.

There was no pain. Not yet. Adrenaline was surging through him, blocking out all but the most important things.

Grabbing the hilt of the thin little knife, Rowan pulled it out of his hand and tossed it aside. Blood flowed freely now that he’d removed the seal, streaming to the concrete sidewalk, but he didn’t notice.

He didn’t bother to check if there was anyone else around. He would leave that job to people like Melody, who dealt with situations like the one he was about to create.

Rowan shifted, and hit the ground running on his enormous paws. The wind flattened his fur against his body as he ran, bounding over the distance between himself and the man he hated with a furious passion. His right front paw squelched on the concrete with every step but that was an insignificant detail, readily tossed aside. His eyes locked on Mr. Storm’s throat. His paws thundered against the ground again, his muscles uncoiling as he leapt.

He hit the man and they went tumbling down hard to the ground. Mr. Storm lifted his arm up in front of his neck to protect himself and Rowan bit that instead, shaking his head around with all his might. Flesh tore violently underneath his fangs, ripping away from tendons and bone. He was very aware of something repeatedly puncturing his flank and shoulder, a series of burning hot spots forming on his pelt and deep inside his muscles.

Stabbing me.

Rowan lifted one hind paw and used his dull claws to rip at Mr. Storm’s abdomen, feeling skin part under his attack. He wanted to spill guts, to disembowel, to murder just like this man had done. It would be only fair.

As he was stabbed again by the needle-like point of a throwing knife, high up on his shoulder and dangerously close to some important things, the wolf inside him reacted. It wanted to kill but it also had a sense of self-preservation that the human half of his mind had currently lost.

Pushing away from the man, Rowan landed on all four paws in his lawn. Something gave. He didn’t know whether it was his gouged paw or something that had been stabbed, but he staggered and collapsed in the grass.

It was only the work of a moment to start rising again, but he caught a glimpse of silver out of the corner of his eye and paused.

Mr. Storm was up on his knees. His ruined arm was tucked against his bleeding stomach, looking very much like a piece of chicken that someone was in the process of eating. In his other hand, his good hand that he had been using to stab, he didn’t hold a knife. The knife was on the ground beside him, cast aside in favor of a little pistol.

Rowan barked out a laugh at the size of the pistol. It was so fucking tiny. It looked like a weapon that would have belonged to a Barbie doll, if the company who made her suffered a temporary bout of insanity.

But, very, very deep in the back of his mind, he was afraid. Guns were deadly no matter the size. And he could tell that this pistol was trained on his head. He would die instantly, missing out on the life that he had only just begun to look forward to. He wouldn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

“Say goodnight, you fucking freak,” Mr. Storm choked out. His voice was heavy with pain, but his finger tightened easily on the trigger.

Rowan’s eyes fluttered closed, accepting the fate that was coming in his direction.

But, just before he closed his eyes, he saw a blur of fur that looked as if the night itself had turned into a wolf. Glossy, dark fur, swirled through with marbled silver-and-white, streaking across the road like a comet.

Derrick leaped.

He’ll never make that, Rowan thought, though it was all happening so fast that he didn’t even really have time to form words. He didn’t have time for anything. All he could do was watch.

He shouldn’t have doubted an omega.

Derrick slammed into Mr. Storm, sending them both tumbling across the ground. The man cried out in agony, the gun in his hand clattering off down the street.

Tumbling, Derrick rolled to his paws and then staggered, hitting the concrete awkwardly. Rising up again, his head shot out and he grabbed the gun in his jaws. Whirling around, snarling, he jabbed the pistol at Mr. Storm. He couldn’t fire it like that, but the threat was enough.

The man turned, fear finally glistening in his gaze, and Rowan was there on his other side.

The message was clear. He had lost.

Thank you, Rowan thought, aiming the words towards Derrick. Thank you, thank you. I love you.

I love you, too, Derrick responded.

Maybe it was only wishful thinking. Or maybe he truly did hear Derrick’s voice in his mind. Anything was possible when you were a wolf.

“You’re fucking freaks,” Mr. Storm said. He sounded sullen, like a child who hadn’t gotten his way.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren rang out, approaching.