Chapter Twenty
Not wanting to burden Michael with the content of his memories, Max did his best to hide the emotions he was feeling, encouraging the omega when he wanted to get answers from his brothers. While he was gone, Max went outside to stretch his legs, piecing through his memories like they were a book he’d read before but couldn’t quite remember all the details. He wasn’t sure how long he was out there when he caught Michael’s scent, tracking the omega to the middle of a garden. Unsure if he wanted company, Max hung back as he called the omega’s name. Michael’s distress was palpable, even more so when he turned to Max, his eyes filled with unshed tears, his face the picture of anguish.
“I have to let them go.”
His sobs tore at Max’s heart as he pulled the omega into a hug, holding on tight. He knew there were no words that could fix this, so he just let the omega cry, doing his best to comfort him.
When his sobs finally eased off, Michael, his cheek pressed to Max’s chest, mumbled something quietly. Max had to lean in to hear.
“… feel so guilty for leaving them.”
“You didn’t leave them, not by choice. I took you, remember? If anyone is to blame, it’s me.”
“But Julian and Claude chose to send me away. That’s the only reason you took me. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Then it wasn’t yours, either.”
“But I could go back, couldn’t I? I could make that choice. But I… I don’t want to. I’m scared to. I’m selfish for thinking of myself and not…”
Max could see the omega was getting himself all tied up in knots.
“You know it’s not that simple. You go back, they won’t let you near your kids. They’ll just hand you over to Virgil and Antoine.”
“But I don’t know that, not for sure. Maybe things have changed, maybe…”
“When the time comes for you and Ryan and Eliot to be together again—and it will come, Michael, I’m sure of it—you need to be whole, to be able to provide them with love, safety, and a home. If you sacrifice yourself now, you’ll just wind up in the hands of people who’ll break you. That’s what alphas like that do. They twist and manipulate you, use whatever they can to hurt you; your kids, Griffin, Andrew. Willingly walking yourself into that situation, now that would be selfish.”
“I’m not sure I can take the guilt,” the omega admitted. “I feel like it’s drowning me.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I know what that’s like.”
“How do you live with it?”
“Over time, it gets a little easier to breathe. It never goes away, you just get better at carrying it.”
The omega went very still in his arms, lifting his head to meet Max’s eyes.
“What did you remember, earlier, when I asked about your parents?”
Max almost took an involuntary step back, thrown by the question.
“I— You don’t need to hear this. You have enough to deal with without taking on my past.”
“This can’t be only one way,” Michael said. “Me leaning on you. You need to lean on me too.”
Max’s instincts were screaming at him to take off, to put some distance between them.
“When you hear, when you understand… it’ll change things. Change how you see me.”
The omega shook his head. “I told you already. No memory is going to change how I feel about you.”
But Max knew he was wrong. There were some things too shocking for people to just accept.
“I killed my own father.”
He just came out with it, laid it at Michael’s feet, and waited.
The omega pulled away to stand upright in front of him, and Max knew the rejection was coming. He couldn’t just stand there and take it, too jumbled, too caught up in old memories, old wounds that felt like they were fresh.
Stumbling back a few steps, he shifted and loped away toward the woods. Michael didn’t call after him and part of him was relieved. He wound up at the bank of a stream, lapping water like he’d just escaped a desert. A distorted reflection appeared over his shoulder, and he jerked around, finding Michael’s ocelot watching him. Max wasn’t ready to talk, not yet. He stalked away, a little annoyed when Michael followed him. He turned around to growl at the omega but couldn’t bring himself to do it, not willing to scare Michael just to prove a point.
Michael padded right up to him, brushing against his fur, purring softly. When Max settled down onto the ground, the omega curled up next to him. They sat there in companionable silence, no tension, no questions, just two heartbeats, two bodies keeping each other warm.
The ocelot fell asleep, curling onto his side and then onto his back, looking so unabashedly comfortable that Max would have laughed if he could. Exposing your belly beside an apex predator? Most wouldn’t dare. He shifted back after a while, sitting propped up against the trunk of a tree, just watching Michael sleep. Both their pasts held horrors but, while Michael had been the victim of his, Max had been the instigator, of some of it at least.
When Michael woke, his tail flicking cautiously, he shifted back too, moving to sit cross-legged opposite Max.
“How did it happen?”
Max leaned his head back, looking up at the sky.
“My dad was alpha of our circus pack. He, um, he ruled with an iron fist. Sometimes literally. My mom took the brunt of it, but I got my fair share of licks. I was never good enough, never fast enough, strong enough, smart enough. And when things weren’t going his way, when the circus was struggling, it would be our fault. My fault.”
Michael’s face had turned down in a frown. “How old were you?”
“Ten, when I killed him.”
“You were defending yourself?”
“Not me, Mom. He went after me and she stepped in so he took it out on her instead. He hit her on the head, and she fell down and just… stopped. But he didn’t, he kept punching and kicking her. I shifted and lost it. The last thing I remembered was going for his throat. When I came to, there was blood everywhere, and they were both dead. I couldn’t live with what I’d done so I just ran. The pack figured it out and came after me, chased me, but I just ran further. I stayed in my shifter form and kept moving. Eventually, I ended up at the cabin. It was years before Parker stumbled across me. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be human. I’d forgotten how to talk, how to live like a person and not an animal. But I thought I deserved it, for what I’d done.”
There were a lot of ways he’d expected Michael to react to his story. He hadn’t anticipated that he would simply move to kneel in front of him and put his arms around him in a hug.
“Thank you for telling me,” the omega murmured. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“Michael, didn’t you hear what I just said? I let my dad kill my mom. I killed him in cold blood.”
“You were ten,” Michael said softly. “Your mom tried to protect you, which is what moms and dads are supposed to do. And you tried to protect her, the only way you knew how. That doesn’t make you a bad person. That doesn’t make you a monster.”
His words were jarring, not least because that was how Max had seen himself for years. A monster, cast out from society to live alone until the end of days. Until Parker had found him and shown him a different path. Which had brought him to the omega currently holding on to him like his life depended on it.
“It doesn’t make me a good person, either.”
Michael sat back, watching him curiously.
“Why did you take the job from Griffin to come find me?”
“I wanted a challenge, I wanted to do something that would make a difference. Nothing I did in Parker’s really felt like enough.”
He was surprised when the omega smiled.
“So it wasn’t for the money then?”
“There was a lot of risk and a lot of time involved. All the money in the world wouldn’t have balanced that out.”
“And yet you still took the job, and when things went wrong, instead of sitting tight or pulling back, you risked everything to get me to safety. I think, maybe, that’s the definition of a good person.”
Max wanted to argue but he couldn’t think of anything to counter with.
“It’s hard right now,” he admitted. “All those memories… they feel like they happened yesterday, not years ago.”
“You just need time,” the omega said. “We both do. Time heals all, right?”
Max wasn’t sure there was enough time in recorded history to heal their joined woes. Did you ever get over the violent death of your parents? Did you ever forget the smiles of your kids?