ELEVEN
Elizabeth didn’t have a lot of experience with violence. She had seen a few scuffles in school, had seen a few of the horses get into it with each other at work, and had seen her boss threaten a few trespassers who had been too stupid to realize all he was holding was a pellet gun. But actual violence was a new thing to her.
She cringed and covered her face with her hands as Maxwell shrieked out a yelp, though she lowered her hands after only a second; she wanted to be able to see what was going on.
Mara was the first to collide with him, her teeth sinking into his neck. It seemed all she managed to grab was a mouthful of fur, for the most part, as Maxwell shook her off and bounded backwards a few loping steps, before he turned and leapt, lunging right over Yusuke’s head and landing several yards away. He was already outnumbered, so getting some space between them all was about the only advantage he was going to be able to get.
Or at least that was what Elizabeth assumed, until he abruptly looked straight at her and then bolted right towards her. She began backpedaling as soon as she realized he was coming towards her, as if she might be able to outrun him for even a second.
Whether he wanted to use her as a shield, use her as a bargaining chip, or simply make it so none of them could have her at all, she wasn’t sure, but thankfully she didn’t actually need to find out. With a yowl, Yusuke slammed into Maxwell’s shoulder and hung on, claws sinking in, and he held on tight until Maxwell craned his head back and caught Yusuke by the scruff of his neck to throw him aside.
Yusuke hit the ground and tumbled but bounced back to his feet an instant later to position himself squarely in front of Elizabeth like some sort of wall. He bared his teeth as Maxwell tried to take a step closer, a feline growl rumbling past his throat. It made Maxwell pause for a moment, which was all that was necessary, as that was when Ambrose crashed into the enormous wolf like some sort of speeding freight train. Maxwell hit the ground like a pallet of bricks and rolled, though he scrambled back to his feet before he even fully came to a stop. He wheeled around, teeth flashing, and Ambrose reared back and out of the way.
They got farther away after that, Mara bounding after them, though Yusuke stayed right where he was, planting himself between Elizabeth and the battle. She wasn’t sure whether to start worrying even more or to feel strangely touched by the protection, so she settled for feeling both for the time being.
As it turned out, she didn’t need to worry about Yusuke for protecting her. Ambrose and Mara did a very good job of keeping Maxwell well away from the both of them the entire time. True enough, Mara wasn’t particularly big compared to Maxwell, but she held her own well enough, and she sprang around like lightning compared to the others. On the other hand, Ambrose seemed like a brick wall in comparison to the wolf.
Outmatched and outnumbered on Maxwell’s end, it wasn’t a particularly long fight; it was more a scuffle than anything.
With Mara on one side of Maxwell and Ambrose on his other, they shepherded him across the grass until he was well out of reach of Elizabeth or Yusuke. He looked between them for a moment, ears folded back and teeth bared, before he lunged for Mara first, aiming for the target that seemed to be easier. She dropped to the grass and tumbled aside, only to bounce back to her feet again. He followed after her.
Mara snarled and lunged, only to bound backward a few paces before Maxwell could even snap at her, and she circled halfway around him before lunging again, forcing him to yank his tail out of the way and spin to face her. In a similar way, she herded him across the grass until he bumped into Ambrose and whipped around to face him, staring up in wide-eyed alarm for a split second.
Ambrose snapped, teeth clenching together what seemed mere millimeters from Maxwell’s face, even if they didn’t quite manage to connect. The size discrepancy was causing a few complications.
While, in general, Ambrose’s vastly larger size was a benefit, there were a few setbacks to it. For one thing, Maxwell was fully capable of simply ducking beneath a strike, and when he did, it left him right under Ambrose’s neck, a rather vulnerable part of the body, to be sure. From there, it was simple to simply lunge upwards, mouth open.
Ambrose reared onto two legs to avoid the snap, but Maxwell simply redirected to slam into one of Ambrose’s back legs with his full weight, forcing it out from under him. Ambrose landed with an impact that seemed to rattle the ground. Before Maxwell could make another move towards him, though, Mara bounced off of his side like a kid on a diving board, and she bounded away, barking tauntingly as she did. Maxwell rolled his eyes and lunged for her, only for her to duck under the strike and then surge upwards.
Mara caught Maxwell’s ear between her teeth, and though at first it seemed like a reasonably impractical manner of attack, it made sense soon enough. It kept him distracted until Ambrose was back on his feet, and by the time Maxwell tore himself free, one ear in tatters, Ambrose was charging at him. He snagged one of Maxwell’s legs in his jaws, hauled him off of his feet, and tossed him.
Maxwell landed on the ground with a high-pitched, canine shriek, one leg at an odd angle. He struggled fitfully to get back to his feet at first, only to still with a low whine when Ambrose’s shadow fell over him. His ears laid back in distress, but no amount of groveling was going to help him at that point.
When it ended, it ended very quickly. Ambrose’s front feet landed on Maxwell’s ribs with a sickening crack, and just listening to the way the wolf wheezed after that, Elizabeth was pretty sure that his ribs had punched into his lung. He wasn’t left to suffer for long, though, and Elizabeth was strangely glad of that. She wasn’t going to protest the situation, but she felt no need to be vindictive. She didn’t want it to turn into torture.
(More genuinely, she didn’t want any of them to be the sort of people who would resort to torture.)
Ambrose leaned his head down, his teeth closed around Maxwell’s throat, and then he clamped his jaw shut and ripped backwards. There was a spray of blood, though it dwindled quickly.
Afterwards, everything was still, so much so that it almost felt eerie, considering everything that had been going on just a moment ago. Ambrose simply stepped away from the body and began looking around in bemusement.
It took a moment for Elizabeth to realize he was trying to puzzle out what to do with the body.
Considering Elizabeth had rather limited experience with violence, it would likely surprise absolutely no one to learn that she had no experience with cleaning up after violence. When it came to wounds, there wasn’t much to worry about, as Ambrose was largely fine, and Mara and Yusuke seemed perfectly fine and were content to flop down and rest while Ambrose pondered over the body on the ground.
They couldn’t just leave it there. It was far too enormous to be any sort of natural wolf, and even if it had been the right size, that didn’t get rid of the fact that wolves weren’t native to the area, and so finding a dead one on the ground would likely still attract some sort of authority to investigate the matter, if only to make sure there wasn’t anyone in the area illegally breeding them as exotic pets.
“Is there a pond or a lake, or maybe a river around here?” Elizabeth asked eventually, trying her best not to look straight at the body. That body had been a person once. Not a very good person, but a person nonetheless, and Elizabeth wasn’t quite willing to start judging anyone’s worth or right to live. Not that she regretted his death. She didn’t feel bad. He had kidnapped her, and he had been perfectly willing to kill her boyfriend and her friends. In the end, she was pretty sure he had been willing to kill her too, just to make it so that no one else would be able to have her, like she was some sort of toy to be hoarded like treasure.
She shook her head quickly, pulling her thoughts back on track. Right, she didn’t regret his death, and she definitely wouldn’t miss him, but that didn’t change the fact that someone was dead and Elizabeth was most definitely part of that entire mess.
She could think about that later. There was a body to be dealt with still, and they were still trying to puzzle out how exactly to deal with it.
Ambrose lifted his muzzle and sniffed at the air for a moment, before he dipped his head once in a brief nod. He leaned down and took hold of Maxwell’s body by the scruff of its neck and began dragging it away, heading towards the woods.
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, looking back at Mara and Yusuke. Both of them still looked fine, so she turned back around and set off after Ambrose, following him at a jog as he trudged along steadily. He moved remarkably quickly, considering he was carrying what had to be at least a few hundred pounds of literally dead weight, and if Elizabeth got much slower than a brisk power walk, she started to fall too far behind. Not that she expected to get lost or to be left behind, but considering everything she had just seen, she wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of being alone outside in the dark, and she put on a burst of speed.
It seemed like they kept walking forever, and Ambrose slowed every so often to look back at her. Whether he was making sure she wasn’t falling behind or just checking up on her in general, she wasn’t sure, though she supposed there wasn’t much of a difference between option A and option B, and she appreciated the concern regardless. She was also very glad she had been kidnapped in her work boots, rather than barefoot or wearing less practical shoes, considering she was fairly sure they had already covered over a mile of ground, and Ambrose was still moving.
(Well, alright, she would have preferred to have not been kidnapped at all, but since that option was already off of the table, she was going to look on the bright side.)
Elizabeth didn’t complain. After the day she had been through, a bit of a trek through the woods seemed like small potatoes, and if it meant getting rid of the enormous mound of once-living evidence, then she wasn’t going to object.
Eventually, she could hear water in the distance, either rushing or burbling, though they were still too far away for her to tell by sound just how quickly the water was flowing. Ambrose still seemed intent, though, so she figured it didn’t particularly matter as long as there was enough water to submerge Maxwell’s body.
She looked up as they kept walking, watching the sky through the gaps in the leaves. She could just barely see the sky beginning to take on a dark purple tint as morning began to contemplate approaching. She had been gone for longer than she thought. The stars were still visible, though, and she took a moment to appreciate them. Finally, she could feel her heart rate beginning to go back to normal, slowing at last from the rapid sprint it had been beating at for the last few hours.
At last, as the trees began to thin, the river ahead came into view, the water white and frothing as it rushed through the rocks. Elizabeth picked up her pace again, reaching the riverbank just before Ambrose. She grabbed hold of a narrow, crooked tree that was growing out of the rocks, holding tight to it so she could lean over and peer down at the river. It wasn’t particularly deep where the rocks were, but the water was fast and powerful, and as she looked to the side, she could see that it deepened, and it would drag Maxwell’s body away in no time. By the time anyone found it—if anyone found it—it would be too far away to be connected to their little neck of the woods, and they wouldn’t have to worry about it.
Truth be told, Elizabeth wasn’t even sure if the body would have been a concern regardless, considering signs of an animal attack wouldn’t have been linked back to Ambrose, who looked perfectly human most of the time. But she supposed that it wouldn’t exactly help anyone if people began investigating into the existence of shifters, even unknowingly.
Smaller rocks began to tumble into the water from a few feet to the side, and Elizabeth looked over in time to see Ambrose heave Maxwell’s body over the edge of the bank. It tumbled down the rocks and hit the water with a splash, and the water began to tug at it in an instant. It got caught on the rocks a few times, before it finally plummeted down the short fall and began to wash away in earnest, in a swirl of sodden fur and lingering blood.
With a blustering sigh, Ambrose sat down and then flopped down onto his belly, head hanging over the edge between a pair of rocks. After a moment, Elizabeth followed his example and slumped down to the ground, drawing one knee up. She linked her hands together in front of her shin and leaned her chin on her leg, and she stared at the water as it rushed by like so much foam.
She didn’t even notice that Ambrose had shifted back to his human form until he asked, “He didn’t do anything to you, did he?” When she looked at him, he was sitting cross-legged, his hands resting on his knees, his fingers drumming with excess energy, even if he seemed completely calm other than that.
“Not really,” she replied, shaking her head. “I mean, he knocked me out—duh—but other than that, I just got locked in a closet. I guess he didn’t want to, um…do anything until he knew he was in the clear.” She shrugged and shifted back and forth where she was sitting until she got slightly more comfortable. It wasn’t exactly a train of thought she was particularly keen on following. “It definitely could have been way worse.”
Ambrose was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I can’t imagine how scared you must have been.”
Elizabeth was quiet at first, head cocking slowly to one side as she turned that over in her mind before replying. “Actually,” she finally began, “I wasn’t, really. I mean, a little bit, sure. I got kidnapped. But not much.” She breathed out a quiet laugh and turned just enough to look at him. “I knew you would show up pretty quickly, so I knew it was just a matter of waiting for you.”
Ambrose looked…not surprised, or at least that wasn’t the dominant part of the expression, but he looked taken aback, and it took him a moment to find the words to respond. Even when he did, his response wasn’t exactly eloquent, as he stumbled over his tongue for a moment, just a few senseless syllables tripping out before he closed his mouth again. Finally, he swallowed and tried again, managing a slightly wondering, “I’m going to need to try very hard to live up to that level of faith in the future.”
Elizabeth giggled against her knee. “I don’t think you need to worry too much,” she assured him dryly. “I’m pretty sure you won’t actually need to try to impress me. You’ve basically been doing that since we met.”
The noise that escaped him after that could only be described as flustered, and he lifted a hand to hide his face as he laughed. It took a few moments before he gathered his composure again, and he dragged his hand down his face. “You can’t just say something like that to someone,” he protested, though he didn’t actually sound disapproving. Nowhere close, actually.
“But I like yanking the rug out from under you,” she returned, feigning a whining tone as she did. “It’s so satisfying to see you when you’re taken off guard.”
“You say that like it never happens,” he groused gently as he rolled his eyes, though there was no real heat behind the action or his tone. “It happens all the time. I’m very easily impressed.”
“Well, yeah,” she agreed. “You like me.”
His nose wrinkled, and he tossed a pebble at her. He missed on purpose, but it got his point across either way. “Don’t say that.”
She disentangled her hands from where they were still linked together around her leg, so she could instead hold them up in a placating gesture. “Fine, fine,” she sighed, as if it was such a burden. “I’ll be nice.”
He nodded once in satisfaction before they lapsed into silence, save for the rushing of the water below them. They were both tired, and neither of them were excited about the prospect of walking back, so they lingered on the bank for a while before, at last, Ambrose shifted back to his bear form, got to his feet and stretched, and started meandering back in the direction they had initially come from.
The walk back was slower than the walk to the river, despite the absence of several hundred pounds of weight. The urgent part of the ordeal had been handled, after all. There was finally time to slow down and take a breath without worrying about anything. Considering everything that had happened that day—well, the day before, at that point—Elizabeth almost expected something else to come leaping out of the trees to ruin the morning for them, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain about having a chance to actually catch her breath.
This time, Ambrose walked slowly enough for Elizabeth to easily keep pace with him, one of her hands on his shoulder as they walked, fingers absentmindedly carding through the fur. It was deep enough that her hand disappeared past the wrist if she really let her hand sink into it, and it was softer than she expected it to be. And when she couldn’t quite restrain the urge to reach over and tug one short, round ear, Ambrose didn’t seem to mind, even if he stumbled, mid-step, in his surprise.
The walk back was quiet. Elizabeth didn’t see much of a reason to carry on a conversation in which Ambrose couldn’t actually participate, since she hadn’t been exposed to him in his bear form enough to intuit the finer nuances of his body language. She was not yet well versed in ursine charades, and she didn’t particularly feel like talking to herself while she still had an audience.
Not that it really mattered. The quiet between them was comfortable, regardless of the fact that Ambrose was shaped like a bear.
By the time Elizabeth and Ambrose made it back to the house Maxwell had locked her up in, dawn had nearly given way to morning, and both Mara and Yusuke had curled up on either side of the car and dozed off. Elizabeth couldn’t blame them; they had both had a busy night.
Yusuke’s ears twitched first, and he slowly cracked open one vibrant eye. It took a moment for him to realize what was going on, and then he lifted his head, his ears laying back as he hauled himself up onto all four feet and stretched, front legs reaching out in front of him as he yawned. Mara still hadn’t budged, and Yusuke expedited the process of waking her up by simply sitting on her head and then springing out of the way when she bolted to her feet.
She paused just before she could decide to chase him down, staring at Ambrose and Elizabeth as they emerged from the trees. She gave herself a vigorous shake to finish waking up and then sat down heavily as they finished their approach; then, she got to her feet again and trotted over. She circled around them both, sniffing them vigorously until she was satisfied that they were both more or less alright.
Finally, all three shifters transformed back to their human forms, and Elizabeth looked around at them, silently asking herself when she had become this blasé about naked people. She supposed that was one of the effects of exposure, and it didn’t particularly matter, considering none of them were naked for particularly long. Yusuke tugged open the backdoor of the car and revealed a pile of clothing on the back seat, and within a few moments, all three of them were dressed.
“So, everyone’s alright, then?” Mara asked, hands on her hips as she stepped back into her shoes. “I mean, it looks like we’re all in one piece, and that was definitely a very dead wolf you dragged away, so I’m pretty sure we’re good, but it never hurts to double-check!”
“We’re good,” Ambrose confirmed wryly, already rounding the car to the driver’s side. “And the body’s been dealt with, so I think it’s about time we get out of here; we’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
A chorus of agreements followed, and they all climbed into the car, Elizabeth taking the front passenger seat and Mara and Yusuke taking the bench in the back. Elizabeth didn’t bother to ask how long the drive was going to be, since she would find out eventually anyway, and there were more pressing things to bring up.
They sat in silence for a few minutes before she wondered, “So, how long did it take you all to realize something had happened, and how much did he freak out once he realized it?”
“I did not freak out,” Ambrose protested immediately, far too quickly and far too vehemently, as it only reinforced the idea that he had, in fact, freaked out.
“Oh, he definitely freaked the fuck out,” Yusuke assured her cheerfully. “I think it took like three minutes to realize something happened, since—I mean, you were gone and you didn’t have a car to use, so it’s not like you could have just gone to town or to work, and it seemed pretty unlikely that you decided to go on a walk in the woods alone when you knew there was wolf trouble.”
“Granted,” Mara interjected, leaning up between the gap in the front seats, “he still had me take a lap around the property just to make sure, and I had to sort of hang out the car window on the way here to make sure we were going the right way.”
“You could smell him still?” Elizabeth wondered, bemused. “I mean, I figure none of you were gone for long, but you’d only been away from the house for like an hour when it happened, so you were probably still gone for like another hour.”
Mara waved it off, only narrowly avoiding smacking Ambrose in the ear as she did. “Scents linger for way longer than that. If a few days had passed before we went to find you, that would be one thing, but it was a few hours at most. That’s basically nothing.”
Elizabeth hummed in acknowledgement, though she wasn’t sure what to say about that afterwards, and the car lapsed into silence again. Eventually, Mara settled back in her seat, and soon enough Elizabeth was pretty sure she could hear both of them snoring in the backseat. She thought about just slumping against the door and taking a nap herself, but it didn’t quite seem fair to essentially leave Ambrose alone in the car. She knew he wouldn’t actually mind, and if she mentioned that she was tired, then he would probably actively encourage her to take a nap, but that didn’t make her feel any better about it. So, she supposed she could hold off until they were back at the house to take a nap.
Even so, they sat in silence for a while, fingers linked together on top of the center console. She didn’t actually recall reaching for his hand—maybe he reached for hers—and she was pretty sure it had largely happened on instinct, but she definitely wasn’t going to complain about it.
It was a comfortable silence. Even sitting in a car, it was more at ease than Elizabeth had been all day.
*
Evidently, Elizabeth had been hauled much farther away from Ambrose’s house than she had initially assumed. After two hours in the car, she observed flatly, “I got dragged clear through the city, didn’t I?” and though it was technically a question, her voice was level enough that it sounded more like a statement.
“He was being very cautious,” Ambrose replied by way of agreement. “Not that it did him much good. But yeah, we’ve got a way to go still.”
She sighed and squeezed his hand, and she slid down lower in her seat. From that lower angle, she could watch clouds pass overhead, each one like a delicate wisp of cotton candy. The sky was crystal blue and at its most vibrant, and there were no signs of rain, so at least that was good. There were worse ways to be stuck in a car all morning, and worse people to be stuck in a car with.
(Granted, Yusuke and Mara were still fast asleep, so she supposed they couldn’t have been bad company unless she developed a particular aversion to snoring.)
“I guess we know my house is finally safe,” Elizabeth observed eventually, glancing sidelong at Ambrose. “Maybe I should get someone to help me clear out the path through the woods. I mean, the walk from my place to yours isn’t any longer than I’m already used to.”
“I’m pretty sure I know a couple people who could help with that,” Ambrose returned wryly. “I could probably bribe them pretty well.”
They realized Yusuke and Mara were finally awake when they heard Yusuke observe groggily, “I’m pretty sure we’re being volunteered for manual labor. We should unionize.”
Mara grumbled lowly and promptly fell back to sleep without offering any further commentary on the topic.
*
“We should plan a date night,” Elizabeth decided, after another hour passed. “Someplace with good food.”
“Another dinner date?” Ambrose wondered, raising one eyebrow, even if he didn’t quite turn to look at her. “Are you sure you don’t want to branch out a bit further than that?”
“I have no idea,” she answered pleasantly. “Mostly, all I can think about right now is food. I’m fucking starving.”
Ambrose snorted out a laugh. “We can find someplace to stop for brunch at the next exit,” he assured her.
“I want French toast,” she supplied, shifting sideways enough to lean back against the car door, “or waffles, or something incredibly breakfast-y.”
“That’s very specific,” he offered dryly. “That definitely doesn’t encompass basically every diner or family style restaurant in existence.”
“You say that like I’m picky.”
“Point taken,” he conceded.
Elizabeth didn’t answer for a moment, and when she did, it was to thoughtfully muse, “No drinking dates. Getting buzzed can be fun if the company’s good, but getting drunk has never really been my thing. And considering where we live, I’m not sure if a ‘go somewhere to appreciate nature’ sort of thing actually counts as a date, since we’re surrounded by nature already. Movies, maybe? There’s a theater in town, isn’t there?”
“There’s a playhouse too,” he pointed out.
She wrinkled her nose. “That sounds expensive.”
“…Seriously?” Ambrose sounded faintly unimpressed with the observation. “On what planet is that actually a concern?”
Elizabeth pondered that for a moment, before she shrugged and conceded, “Point taken.” If he wasn’t going to worry about money, she supposed it wouldn’t really make much sense if she worried about money for him. It wasn’t as if money was something he had in a limited supply.
“Why do you two need to be all fluffy while I’m listening?” Yusuke groused.
With her sympathy falling into the negatives, Elizabeth advised him, “Go back to sleep, then.”
*
It didn’t take long before the car was turning onto the next exit, and from there they wasted no time in pulling into the parking lot of the first restaurant they found. Yusuke woke Mara up by gently but steadily tugging a section of her hair between two fingers until she tried to slap him away, and once she was showing signs of life, he informed her, “We’re getting food. Either get up or starve, because we’re not bringing you a doggy bag.”
They filed into the restaurant—it was part of a chain, and it was nothing special, but it was food—and despite the fact that all of them were more than a little disheveled, none of the staff or the patrons even looked at them.
Before long, they were seated at a table, drinking coffee and waiting for their food. Despite Ambrose’s mockery, everyone wound up ordering something that could qualify as breakfast. Elizabeth ate hers so quickly she hardly even tasted it, and it seemed as if no time passed at all before they were all spilling back out the doors and into the car.
Everything seemed a little hazy, in fact, and Elizabeth remembered slowly that she was more than a little bit tired.
Mara and Yusuke were both awake, and they both seemed like they would be awake for a while, so Elizabeth slumped down in her seat and let her eyes drift shut. With those two awake and chattering animatedly, she didn’t need to worry about feeling guilty about leaving Ambrose unattended.
She didn’t even remember her eyes fully closing, yet it seemed as if she was out cold in a heartbeat.