Chapter Text
“We’re waiting for Neil.” Nicky explained to the guard, as the team waited for their resident rabbit to make it out of the showers.
Alarm bells had been screaming in the back of Andrew’s mind since the end of the game, but he figured that they were at least somewhat due to the fight that had broken out with the final buzzer. He should be at ease now that his people were safe in the changing rooms, but his instincts started going haywire when the two alpha guards had entered the lounge.
Usually Andrew did what he could to press down his insticts. Scent patches kept his feelings hidden from those around him, and his own sheer determination to ignore his inner alpha was usually enough to keep it in check. Tonight, instead of keeping with the rutine, every modicum of instict in his body screamed to him that something was wrong.
The feeling only heigtened when, seconds after, Neil appeared in the room.
There wasn't anything starkingly different from how he usually looked. Same trash clothing he’d worn since he’d arrived at Palmetto. Same mousy demeanor, like he wanted to bolt. Andrew perked up suddently, as a small realization jumped to the forefront of his mind. Neil didn’t just look skittish; he looked tense.
If Andrew didn’t know better, he’d even think that Neil looked down-to-the-bone terrified.
As usual, Neil was wearing his military grade patches and on the strongest suppressors he could take safely. Most of the team even believed that he was a beta with his lack of any scent. But Andrew knew better. And he was certain that underneath it all, Neil's scent must have been putrid with terror.
Andrew took three steps to close the distance between the omega and himself and for a second he had to hold himself back from the instinct to bury his nose into Neil’s neck. His inner alpha screamed at him again as Neil's eyes fixed on him full of something close to grief. It took him effort, but he pushed down the sudden need to peel off Neil's scent patch and burry himself in the crook of his throat; to scent him where Andrew’s mark lay hidden.
The sensical part of himself knew that the mark had been a mistake. If anything, it made him hate Neil even more for having so much of a hold over him that one heat spent together left them with a mating bond. The more animalistic part of him however was pleased every time he remembered that no matter what, Neil was still his. He hated him.
“Thank you.” Andrew could see the dread colored in the icy blue of Neil’s eyes, next to something that he refused to examine in that moment. Neil wasn’t usually good at lying, at least to Andrew, but it was the first time in months that Andrew felt like he couldn’t read Neil like the open book he had become to him. Something was wrong, and Neil’s words were not matching the melancholy of his everything else.
“You were amazing.” Andrew had to stop himself back from taking a step back in surprise. There was more that Neil wanted to say to him, that could feel even with how the scent patches they both had to wear now to hide their marks subdued their bond. Andrew wanted to punch him in that moment, maybe knock some sense into him to stop acting strange - like he was saying goodbye, but the guards were starting to push everyone out of the doors. The answers would have to wait for the bus.
His focus shifted away from Neil the second the first bottle collided against Aaron’s face. Andrew didn’t think he’d ever stop regretting that.
After the riot died, the instigators having been taken by police and the more severely wounded by ambulances as well, almost all of the Foxes were accounted for. Wymack was able to get the information for the hospital the girls were taken to with minor wounds fairly quickly, and everything was supposed to be fine.
Everything was supposed to be fine, except that Neil wasn’t there.
Wymack entered the bus with a grim expression, and Andrew stood the moment he realized that Neil wasn't following behind the coach. The few injured foxes had been taken to a local hospital, but no one had information on if Neil had been hurt during the riot or to where he could have been taken. Andrew interrupted the rest of whatever Wyamck was saying by walking past the man and off the bus entirely.
Every word out of Wymacks mouth only solidified the cold feeling of wrongness that had been prickling at him since the locker room into an icicle piercing right through his chest. He could hear shouting at him, but paid it no mind. The frantic steps behind him told Andrew that at least Kevin had decided to follow him out. The crowd was almost completely gone by that point, the only remaining stragglers being those being pushed into patrol cars.
Andrew felt the bond pulse and, almost on instinct, drew a hand to the scent patch covering the bitemark on his neck. Before, in the locker room, the bond had felt stilted by the patches, as if a blanket had been thrown over it. Now, it felt distinctively far away, like he could feel the sudden distance between Neil and himself like a physical pull.
He couldn’t recognize the direction, or any way to find where Neil had gone, only that the distance was growing by the second. Andrew wanted to growl but suppresed the need to as his fangs elongated ever so slightly.
Andrew knew it was futile with how many measures Neil took to hide his scent, but desperation was a powerful thing, so he turned his nose to the wind trying to find even a wisp of Neil’s scent. The pounding scent of anger, blood, and leftover aggression in the air was overpowering everything else. Still, Andrew continued with the sisyphean task of smelling the air in search for a scent he knew wouldn’t be there.
Beyond the patches. Beyond the supressors. Beyond the nauseating smell of violence in the air. Andrew could feel right to the marrow of his bones that Neil was fading. That he was too far away from him to be found.
“Andrew!” Kevin shouted from a few meters in front of him, his tone filled with urgency.
Andrew ran to where the taller beta was standing and his balance seemed to shift under him at the sight of where Kevin was pointing. In the middle of the ground, trampled by the chaos, laid Neil’s now dust covered bag and his Exy racquet. Andrew picked up the equipment bag, feeling the familiar canvas under his fingers as cold dread fell down his shoulders.
He followed Kevin to the bus in a tomblike quiet, and he could see how the man's knuckles had turned white from the grip he kept around the ruined racket.
The silence once they entered the bus with their findings was sharp enough to cut diamond. Andrew wanted to scream but the tension around him constricted his lungs too much to be able to get anything out. He growled under his teeth before realizing why and lifted his gaze to find Nicky trying to carefully take Neil’s bag from his hands.
His cousin let go of the bag the moment the sound came out of Andrew’s mouth, and Andrew noticed the rest of the Foxes around him take a tentative step back. All except for Kevin. Next to him, the striker continued to shake like a leaf, not even Andrew’s rare display of his animalistic side enough to break him out of his trance.
Andrew pushed past the Foxes and sat down on his usual seat, setting the bag down so that he could look through it. He wanted to turn back time, to return to before the game, to when the Foxes had left the bus at the rest stop and, for a few minutes, he and Neil had been alone. Andrew remembered the way that Neil had lowered his scent patch only for a moment, the feeling of Neil’s nose against the mark on his neck. Neil’s blue eyes as he stared at Andrew from the seat in front. The weight of Neil’s lips over his for the single moment they had kissed on the bus, before leaving to join their teammates and stretch their legs.
Andrew opened the bag and rummaged through it with indistinct care, folding the clothing back to place it on the seat next to the bag. Placing the equipment carefully over it as well. Only when the bag was finally empty Andrew could feel the weight of something else in an outer pocket.
He felt his blood turn cold, mirroring the glass screen of the phone in his hand. Andrew touched his fingertips to the plastic with a looming feeling of dread. Neil would never leave his bag and racquet behind, that had been something that Andrew knew for sure, but this cemented every last worry he had into something heavier. Neil’s phone was in his pocket when they left, it was alway in his pocket, even when turned off.
Andrew knew this because Neil had promised him that it would be.
If Neil’s phone was in the bag, it was because Neil had placed it there. Had left it where Andrew would find it.
Kevin let out a strangled laugh from behind him, and when Andrew looked back at him: he saw that the striker had finally looked up from the racquet. That his gaze was fixed on the phone in Andrew’s hand.
Andrew’s alpha screamed at him to do something, anything. He knew now that Neil was in danger and his anguish was a physical thing around him, like a thorn-infested vine hugging him tighter and tighter. Neil hadn’t left, Riko had taken him, and nothing mattered more to Andrew in that moment than getting back what was his.
Andrew unlocked the phone, still ignoring the choked sounds of Kevin’s panic behind him. Everything seemed normal, it was Neil’s phone, familiar to Andrew since he had been the one to set it up. Andrew opened the messages, expecting to find only the Foxes’ conversations that Neil had mentioned before, but a different text stared at him. The number was hidden but the “0” felt ominous on the screen. Andrew looked for more messages, but if Neil had received any others, they had been long deleted. He checked the call log next, and although he knew that the contact on top should be his own, an unknown number stared at him through the screen.
“Baltimore?” He whispered, looking at the area code. The rest of the Foxes were hovering around him in a sepulchral silence unfamiliar for the lot. Kevin was the only exception, and while he previously was muttering something akin to the start of a panic attack, his breathing closed to stop at Andrew’s words. Kevin knew something, and he was terryfied by it.
“I don’t have time for this, Kevin.” Andrew growled again, this time a conscious choice. It had the desired effect as Kevin shrunk down at the sound and Andrew couldn’t help but notice how his head had started to move as if to bare his neck. “What do you know?”
Kevin looked at him with eyes filled with grief, surprisingly similar to the expression Neil had worn in the locker room. The look of someone already mourning.
He didn’t say anything, but in his eyes Andrew could see that whatever it was that he knew, haunted him profoundly. Andrew’s body acted before he could think and his hands wrapped around Kevin’s throat and he used the mixture of Kevin's surprised and his own impulse to push the striker back against the wall and keep him pinned there.
“Who took him?” Andrew asked, his now fully elongated fangs bared, “Did Riko do this?” He could feel someone try and fail to pull him off of Kevin, earning only a teeth-bared growl in response. This was all alpha fury, and Andrew relished in it.
“Father,” Kevin wheezed out, fighting Andrew’s hold as much as he could with his hands.
“Andrew" Coach's voice reverberated loudly across the bus as he projected it. It wasn't a command, yet, but there was the anticipation of a threat under it, "if you don’t let go he can’t tell you anything." Wymack stood directly behind him, and Andrew begrudginly softened his hold of Kevin’s throat, settling with only pinning him against the wall.
“Tell me.” He growled again as Kevin wheezed, trying to catch his breath.
“If someone from Baltimore took him,” Kevin’s voice was hoarse with the strain of breathing, “then we should assume that his father has him and that's he’s probably already dead.”
“Neil’s father is the one who is dead,” Andrew answered with anger in his tone, his usual attempts at apathy thrown out of the window the second Neil hadn’t gotten back on the bus. “What do you know that I don’t, Day?!” His fingers tightened for a moment around Kevin’s neck in warning, and if their strength wasn’t enough to sever their deal then he would be surprised.
“Neil’s father is alive," the beta said, "the Butcher of Baltimore,” Kevin stopped speaking after that, like that was enough to fill the rapidly emptying chasm his words were creating in Andrew’s chest.
“Who?” One of the Foxes asked and Andrew's head whipped back with his fangs still bearred. He had somewhat managed to forget about the team waiting behind them, and, as lucidity settled over him for a moment, he could smell the confusion, urgency and anxiety clouding the air on the bus.
“Neil is our friend too,” Matt said. He was the only other alpha in the team besides Coach Wymack and Allison, but she had been carted to a hospital somewhere.“ And the girls are at the hospital alone. I understand how you are feeling Andrew but we have to-”
Andrew’s scent soured with rage and he was ready to jump on Boyd as well before Wymack spoke, “ENOUGH.” Wymack’s alpha voice echoed the command across the bus. It wasn’t enough to get Andrew to bare his neck to the older alpha, like he noticed his teammates starting to do, but it did settle him from his live wired rage to something calmer and simmering.
The coach stood between Matt and Andrew with an undistinguishable look on his face. The usual no-nonsense glare was present but Andrew noticed the exhaustion under it. Wymack was terrifyingly good at controlling his scent, but Andrew imagined if he hadn’t been doing it, then the smell of despair currently being held back by his patches would cling to the coach’s skin as well.
“Minyard, just let us go to the hospital and Kevin can explain on the way, but we do need to pick up the girls.”
“Fine,” Andrew huffed, moving away from Kevin, finally. The shape of Andrew’s hands was quickly imprinting into his skin with angry bruises and Abby moved forward to check him out.
Andrew sat down in the seat in front of Abby and Kevin as the bus started to move away from the parking lot. He needed to wait until Abby was done with Kevin to ask him his questions, and the lack of Neil next to him carved a hole in his chest that got deeper with each passing secnd. Now that his fury had somewhat settled, the sorrowful feeling of distance between him and his mate felt heavy like an anchor.
Unconsciously, Andrew brought a hand up to his neck. He could feel his bond almost pulsing inside of him. His inner alpha waling at him in desperation.
Mating, Bonding. It was never something he thought about much. Andrew had resented his presentation ever since it happened. Alphas, omegas, bullshit. Second genders were not absurdly rare, but also not a given, and Andrew presenting had been a cosmic joke in a life already filled by too much shit. Alphas were supposedly strong, dominant, powerfull; what good had it done him to present as an Alpha when he had still been nothing more than powerless as a child against those who’d wanted to harm him.
He’d presented while locked up in juvie, his first rut a miserable stint in solitary so he wouldn’t kill his cellmates as his instincts kicked in for the first time. He’d spent three days in pain, clawing at the skin of his arms and screaming until his throat had gone hoarse. Then came scent patches, and special separate classes to control his instincts, scent and aggression. How dens worked, and how he had to be careful while he was there so that he would not turn his cell into one or he would be in physical pain after leaving.
His second gender only served to continue to fuck him over. It didn’t matter when Nicky was getting beaten, Andrew was a young alpha who had clearly no control over his instincts, so now lets get him antipsychotics and suppressants. Keep him manically happy, make sure to suppress his instincts and his alpha and his scent as if that wasn't painful and unnatural. It's okay, everyone will be happy that way and Andrew Minyard will get to be a normal person. To others, no actions were his own; nothing he did mattered since it was always his alpha acting for him.
Andrew had been sober picking up Neil from the airport, and for once the rolling wave of nausea didn’t matter as much as the way his interest picked for a moment at this mysterious liar who was showing up to fuck up his life completely.
Neil was meant to be nothing more than a mild inconvenience, much like the rest of Renee’s Foxes were. Discovering the illegal suppressants was more than mildly dumbfounding, and, to Andrew's drug-addled mind, close to tragically hilarious. Andrew only needed one look at the fucked up drugs Neil was injecting into himself to see how close to his own they were, only lacking the mania inducing anti-psychotics the court had added into the mix for him. He understood what Neil was doing to himself and hated him all the more for it.
Andrew hated his designation, but he hated the suppressants more. He’d had almost four years with his designation before they had been prescribed, and the jarring and sudden lack of it had felt as physical as the loss of a limb. Even his own body felt foreign with the sudden lack of his own scent around him. When the last of his clothing and his room lost the remaining scent a part of him even mourned it.
After Eden’s, it had been the first thing Andrew asked him, surprising even himself. He needed to know, needed to understand. How could someone choose for himself the torture that had been forced on Andrew?. According to Neil, he hadn’t. The familiarity of that only made Andrew hate him more. The sob story of a child who had no other choice but to force himself onto helish medication (that god only knew how he got his hands on) as soon as he presented as an omega alone and on the run. After all, if he didn’t have any instincts to grow into, then they couldn’t hold him back.
Promising Neil protection was a mistake, and Andrew knew that from the start. Beyond just the sheer stupidity of that too-rabbity Fox, incapable of staying out of trouble enough to give Andrew or the other Foxes any peace of mind, there was something dangerous about Neil Josten's blue eyes that looked at Andrew with the grief of someone much older. Something about his scent, lemongrass and salt. A fresh scent that somehow made Andrew understand why people felt the need to be covered in someone else's scent.
Seeing Neil after Easthaven, his alpha honestly awake and present for the first time in years, had felt almost as dizzying as withdrawal. With a single salute and the promise that he was real, Neil had gone from interesting to outright dangerous. Andrew hated how much more he wanted. He wasn’t someone who wanted, had learned the inutility of that feeling as a child longing for safety, for love and protection.
Neil was quickly growing into a tumor, but it was supposed to be something removable and killable. Neil was going to be gone by the end of the year, according to himself. Neil didn’t swing. Neil was only one more thing Andrew wasn’t allowed to want.
Neil wasn’t supposed to look at him that way outside of Eden’s that night, the night Rolan slipped up and Andrew confessed. Andrew wasn’t supposed to kiss him; Neil wasn’t supposed to like it. Andrew was never meant to know how Neil’s lips felt or how he tasted. Less of all how he smelled.
Neil’s scent was the last secret that he kept. Even after Abby had gotten him off the illegal suppressants, Neil still was able to get his hands on the military grade patches needed to hide his scent completely and pass off as a beta. It wasn’t immediate, but after a few days of clandestine kisses while hidden away from the Foxes, Neil had taken a hand to his neck and pulled back one of his patches completely.
From the first moment he caught Neil’s scent, Andrew knew that it was a problem. Just a whiff was enough to make him want more. He craved the smell of him, and everything it implied. Andrew had buried his nose in Neil’s neck only moments after the smell of his pheromones had reached him, inhaling deeply only to turn around and leave down the stairs back to his dorm. Neil had gone after him, trying to hide the souring of his scent at the rejection, only to find Andrew struggling to bring his fangs back in, already dripping with venom.
That should have been enough to either scare Neil off or force some sense into Andrew so that he could say goodbye to Neil and wall him off. Instead, a January filled with Andrew lying through his teeth that they were nothing while his alpha felt alive like a livewire every time Neil touched him turned into a February where Andrew knew how Neil sounded as Andrew took him apart little by little with the melody of Neil’s pleasure surrounding him.
“My heat is coming up,” Neil had said one day while on the roof as if it was nothing, “It should start on the last Saturday of the month and last three or four days. Abby already said she’d cover for me and say I got sick like she did last time.” Blue eyes looked at him, failing their attempt at disinterest, but Andrew refused to meet his gaze.
“I thought you were on suppressants,” he answered noncommittally, looking straight ahead at the sun setting behind the horizon. He took another drag of his cigarette and waited.
“I am not,” Neil answered, “Abby threatened to blood test me monthly and tell Coach if I didn’t give the illegal suppressants to her.” Neil stayed silent for a moment, the look on his face telling Andrew that he wasn’t done, just looking for the best way to say the next thing. “When the season started and I had to get the blood test done, Abby told me that taking those suppressants ever since I presented and not ever having a heat in five years had a good chance of fucking up my body permanently. That the first heat cycles before reaching maturity are how your inner omega develops and you grow into your instincts or whatever.”
“I had sex-ed class,” Andrew said simply.
“Well I didn’t,” Neil bit back. “My mom was a beta and my alpha father hated omegas, so when I ran on my own and then presented all I knew to do was pretend it wasn’t happening. I didn’t know what a nest or scenting was until I got here. I thought that everything my father said about omegas in heat being desperate whores was true.”
“I still don’t understand how any of this is my problem.” Andrew tried, and probably failed to hide the ire that Neil’s words caused him. Neil talked very little of his parents, the most that Andrew knew of them was that they were dead, leaving Neil to become a runaway from the yakuza as a child with what his father had stolen, and that not all of Neil’s scars were from a life on the run. Andrew for a moment wished for a way to bring Neil's father back from the dead just so he could enjoy killing him himself.
“I want to spend my heat with you,” Neil said, as if he wasn’t asking Andrew for the world. “You can say no if you want to, and you don’t even have to have sex with me during it if it would be bad for you.” Andrew arched an eyebrow as he stared at Neil, “But I think that even if you don’t, I want you there. I was miserable last time. I was in pain and alone and even with all of the comforting items and medicine that Abby could provide I still hated it.”
“What makes you think I would be any different?” Andrew lit a second cigarette and inhaled the smoke until it was almost too much. “I already told you I am not your answer.”
“You smell nice,” Neil said in an almost-whisper, letting the words hang in the air between them like a confession. “I never was interested in anyone before, I didn’t lie at the start of the year when I said that I don’t swing. And I like how it feels when you touch me. Even if you don’t fuck me I really want you there, and if you do want to fuck me then you can, cause I do want you to, but only if you want to as well.”
“I need to tell Bee that you are an omega,” Andrew answered, finally meeting Neil’s eyes, which stared back puzzled, like he felt betrayed but also knew Andrew enough to understand he had his reasons. “This is not something I can even start to consider as if it was nothing. I will not tell her anything else.”
“I understand,” Neil said. “I want this to happen, Andrew, I really do, but only if it doesn’t make things worse for you. You can tell Dobson if you need to, but only that.”
“Only that,” Andrew answered, his cigarette had burned entirely without him taking another drag, so he lit another one and motioned Neil to leave the roof.
Bee was surprised, but helped Andrew walk through the possibilities, through his triggers and the ways he could prepare himself so that he wouldn’t spiral. For the three weeks between that conversation and Neil’s heat, he’d kicked Aaron out of their sessions and spent them talking to Bee about Neil.
The reality was, Andrew knew that while it was true that just his presence in the room would probably make it easier for Neil, his alpha hated the idea of not doing everything he could so that his omega, Neil would be okay.
Neil’s heat ended with matching mating marks on both of their necks. It was stupid, insane even, but Andrew’s alpha still purred with pride at the sight of it, and Neil had stared at it with something close to awe. Andrew allowed his instincts to guide him to his mate and stood behind Neil in silence as he brought soft fingers to the scabbed over mark.
“I like it,” Neil said, and Andrew’s alpha preened like it was praise, “I should hate it probably, and I’m smarter than this, but you are a part of how Neil Josten is the first time I've been real. I like having something to make me permanent, like I can stay.”
“Will you stay?” Andrew hated the vulnerability of the question, even when his expression didn’t betray anything. Still, neither he nor Neil were wearing anything to block their scents, so he could feel the way his scent tinted itself with fear. Fear that even after this, after their promise, after their truths and secrets, Neil would only be one more thing that Andrew lost.
“I want to stay,” Neil turned around and faced Andrew directly, his scent didn’t change, but something in Andrew knew that Neil was close to grief. It would take a while for two liars like them to become used to the bond that connected them with shared truth.
“Then stay,” Andrew moved to Neil’s neck again, grazing his teeth over the new mark and inhaling Neil’s scent softly, letting it imprint into his mind. “Stay here.”
In the end, Neil hadn’t. He was made entirely of lies, but Andrew knew with too much certainty that the almost-devotion he had looked at Andrew with that day when he said he would stay wasn’t one. If anything, that made things worse. Ultimately, it had been Andrew who failed him.
Andrew sat in silence as Kevin started his story. He told them about a boy who arrived at Castle Evermore looking like fear was the only thing he was. Short, quiet, looking exactly like his father. He told them how that same kid had played alongside Kevin and Riko, and had seemed more alive on the court than anyone Kevin had ever seen before. Kevin told the foxes how the three of them, still too young to know the violence that their parents and carers had used on them until then, were brought up to the East Tower to see a man get torn apart by Neil’s father.
Kevin said that Neil had held his hand, squeezing as if trying through their touch to take Kevin’s fear away. All while he stood in silence and kept his gaze fixed ahead on his father. The only thing to show for his own horror being the fear reflected in the ice blue eyes of the man in front of them.
Andrew took one of his knives out of his armbands and held it as Kevin explained how the reason Neil was there in the first place was to see if he had the potential needed to be raised in the hell of the Nest like Kevin. Andrew dug the knife into the seat next to him, staring at green eyes, when Kevin told them how Neil had been sold.
“Nathaniel was property of the Moriyamas when his mother stole their millions and ran with him” Kevin’s expression shifted at his own words, like someone who’d tasted something sour. “Neil discovered it during the fall banquet. He decided to stay until spring and then turn himself in to the FBI.”
Kevin’s gaze fixed on Andrew finally, filled with insurmountable grief. “He told me that he would turn in everything he knew about the Moriyamas and his father, even if it got him killed.” He took a deep breath and as if he was trying to will the air entering his lungs to hold him together, he added: “You were always going to lose him.”
Andrew started to rise, decidedly in the direction needed to throttle Kevin again. Boyd moved at the same time, ready to stop him, even though his scent was as filled with anger as Andrew’s.
In the end it wasn’t necessary. Andrew fell to his knees before he could reach the striker, agony exploding from every nerve ending in his body.
He could hear a wailing scream in the distance, but the ringing in his ears was too loud to care about it. Nails dug into the skin of his neck as he fought against his scent patches, and the noise of surprise around him at the mark present was unimportant as Andrew dug his fingers into it. His alpha screamed, tormented, as Andrew realized what this unmooring feeling meant.
Somewhere, too far away for him to reach, Neil was dead.
Nathaniel came back to himself painfully. It took him a moment to register his surroundings fully as his eyes opened, but the surprise was immediate when he realized he wasn’t in that basement anymore.
That night flashed through his mind. Lola’s laughter, the smell of burning skin, the feeling of his skin splitting under his father’s blades. Towards the end he saw his father fall. He was vaguely aware that another voice had been there, that his father had not fallen and had rather been taken down. Still, by then he’d already felt too far from his body from the blood loss to notice.
When Nathaniel lost consciousness, he was sure it meant the end.
Nathaniel finally opened his eyes, and blinding white light seemed to surround him completely for a moment. He recognized the space around him as a hospital room, and took stock of the many different tubes and wires that were currently connected to him. He tried to move his hands so that he could pull them out, but they were stopped by the familiar, and crushing, feeling of handcuffs around his wrists.
He was on the start of panic when he noticed the other people in the room with him. Standing on the far wall was a doctor. She was probably an omega, based on the soothing scent she was releasing, and Nathaniel hated how much it worked as he started to settle. Sitting each to one side of the bed, were two men that he had never seen before, but could tell were feds with one look.
“It’s good to see you’re awake,” one of them said, “We thought you weren’t going to make it for a moment there last night.” He looked at Nathaniel with an analyzing look, like he was a puzzle to be solved. “I am Special Agent Browning, this is my partner Special agent Towns. We hope you can answer some questions for us.”
“Why am I handcuffed?” Nathaniel asked.
“We are sorry about that,” Towns answered, “but we weren’t sure you were going to cooperate without them.”
“I won’t answer your questions if you don’t give me one truth first,” He said, quickly growing uncomfortable with their presence and the unmoving doctor. “There was a riot last night, I want to know if my team is okay.”
“Out of the eighty six wounded, three were your teammates,” Browning replied, “All of them were taken to a hospital and treated for minor wounds. They were brought in for interrogation after we recovered you from the house, but were placed on a plane back to South Carolina after we determined they weren’t aware of your real identity. As soon as you get discharged we are taking you to a field office so you can tell us the full story, then we’re placing you in witness protection. If you don’t cooperate, they can take you to prison on several counts of false Identification to start.”
Nathaniel thought of the foxes, of Andrew. He could feel the lack of his mate by his side like a missing limb. He looked back at the year behind him and knew already what his answer to the agents was. “I want to see my team.” Nathaniel pulled on the handcuffs, if bandages weren’t covering his wrists, he would probably be splitting open the skin.
“I am sorry but we cannot let you do that.” Towns answered. “They are back in Palmetto by now. The Minyard kid fought back hardest but in the end left with them as well.” Nathaniel knew that the words out of the agent’s mouth were a lie. The foxes would have no choice but to leave on behest of the FBI, hell after learning the truth about him they probably had done so willingly, but Andrew would never leave without him.
“I know that my team is still nearby,” Neil said, “Even if the others were ready to leave, Andrew would not leave without me, and they can’t leave without him.”
“Andrew Minyard thinks you are dead,” Browning looked sternly at him, “the rest of your old team does as well. We need them to believe that to keep you safe.”
“I am not telling you anything until I see my team.”
“Nathaniel,” Browning looked at him, losing patience by the second. “Lola Malcom and her brother are still at large, they made it out of the shootout.” The blood running through his veins turned cold as terror set inside of his chest. “We are pulling every resource at our disposal to find her but until we do that you being dead is all that is keeping her from going after your team and your mate to draw you out from hiding.”
“We need to place you in WitSec so that she cannot find you again, is our only chance at finally taking down the Butcher of Baltimore.”
“The Butcher of Baltimore is dead,” Nathaniel said, more to remind himself than anything else. He had seen the bullet lodge itself inside his father’s skull and the memory of it was sure to bring him peace for years to come.
“Yes but his associates are not.” Towns added, “and neither is his operation. We want to dismantle it completely, take into custody every single person ever responsible for the butcher’s power.” The agent handed Nathaniel what looked like a newspaper clipping and he stared at it with a mix of open mouthed surprise and horror. “This was printed this morning.”
A picture of him mid exy game, face alight with joy sat on the middle of the page. Next to it, his father’s old mugshot stared at him and Nathaniel replayed his tormentor's death in his mind again to ward off the fear that still creeped into him at the sight of him.
TRAGEDY IN BALTIMORE: EXY RISING STAR DEAD AT 19.
STARTING STRIKER FOR THE PALMETTO STATE FOXES NEIL JOSTEN, WAS REVEALED LAST NIGHT TO BE THE PRESUMED DEAD SON OF BALTIMORE BASED BUSINESS MOGUL NATHAN WESNINSKI.
IN THE EARLY HOURS OF YESTERDAY MORNING, THE FBI CONDUCTED A RAID OF WESNINSKI’S HOME AFTER HIS RELEASE FROM A STATE PRISON IN SEATTLE, WHERE HE HAD SPENT THE PAST TWO YEARS ON COUNTS OF TAX EVASION. FOLLOWING LEADS OF NATHAN’S INVOLVEMENT IN ORGANIZED CRIME AS THE CALLED “BUTCHER” OF BALTIMORE.
NATHAN’S WIFE MARY AND HIS ONLY SON NATHANIEL, HAD BEEN REPORTED AS MISSING IN 1999 AND SEVERAL THEORIES HAD POINTED TO WESNINSKI BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR DEATHS. WHILE THE RAID DID UNCOVER ILLICIT ACTIVITY IN THE HOME, AND LED TO NATHAN WESNINSKI’S DEATH IN A SHOOTOUT, IT WASN’T THE ONLY THING THE FBI FOUND.
NEIL JOSTEN, THE ELUSIVE STARTING STRIKER FOR THE PALMETTO STATE FOXES, HAS BEEN MAKING NEWS ALL SEASON AS THE BOTTOM TEAM IN THE NCAA CONTINUED TO SURPRISE EVERYONE WITH THEIR PRESENCE AND PERFORMANCE IN THE SPRING TOURNAMENT. RECRUITED AT THE LAST MINUTE FROM A SMALL TOWN IN ARIZONA, JOSTEN HAD FAMOUSLY LEARNED THE SPORT IN ONE SEASON, AND HAD BEEN PERSONALLY RECRUITED BY “PRINCE OF EXY” KEVIN DAY. THROUGHOUT THE PAST SEASON, JOSTEN ROSE QUICKLY TO STARDOM, ONLY BEING SURPASSED IN SEARCHES BY RIKO MORIYAMA AND THE AFOREMENTIONED KEVIN DAY, WHO ARE ARGUABLY THE MOST FAMOUS PLAYERS IN THE SPORT TODAY.
JOSTEN HAD BEEN MISSING SINCE THE RIOT THAT ERUPTED IN BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY AFTER THE FOXES’ WIN, WHICH HAS ALSO NOW BEEN DECLARED AS A SETUP BY WESNINSKI SO THAT JOSTEN COULD BE TAKEN WITHOUT ISSUE. ACCORDING TO THE STATEMENT RELEASED BY THE BUREAU, NEIL JOSTEN, WHO WAS THEN IDENTIFIED AS NATHAN’S SON NATHANIEL, WAS TAKEN TO THE BALTIMORE RESIDENCE AND TORTURED BY HIS FATHER FOR AN UNKNOWN AMOUNT OF TIME. SINCE NATHANIEL HAD BEEN PRESUMED DEAD FOR THE PAST EIGHT YEARS, THE AGENTS WERE NOT LOOKING FOR HIM DURING THE RAID, AND AFTER THE SHOOTOUT WHICH ENDED NATHAN WESNINSKI’S LIFE, FOUND HIM IN THE BASEMENT WHERE HE HAD ALREADY DIED TO HIS INJURIES.
NATHANIEL HAD APPARENTLY SPENT THE TIME HE WAS PRESUMED DEAD ON THE RUN FROM HIS FATHER, THE ALLEGED “BUTCHER OF BALTIMORE”. NEIL JOSTEN ONLY THE LATEST OF HIS FALSE IDENTITIES, WAS RECRUITED ALMOST BY CHANCE BY DAVID WYMACK’S TEAM, AFTER HIS HIGH SCHOOL COACH SENT IN A TAPE OF HIS PLAYING, AS WELL AS HIS SUSPICIONS THAT SOMETHING WITH HIS HOME LIFE WAS AMISS, AS JOSTEN APPARENTLY CHOSE TO SLEEP AT THE SCHOOL’S LOCKER ROOMS WHEN HE COULD.
THIS PUBLICATION REACHED OUT TO THE PALMETTO STATE FOXES AFTER THE TRAGIC NEWS BROKE OUT BUT ALL REFUSED TO COMMENT. THE FOXES’ “MIRACLE SEASON,” AS THEY CONTINUED TO RISE AGAINST ALL ODDS AND PREDICTIONS, HAS NOW COME TO AN UNFORTUNATE END, SINCE JOSTEN’S DEATH PULLED THEM BELOW THE MINIMUM PLAYERS REQUIRED.
Nathaniel moved his eyes away from the paper in his hands, which had been wrinkled almost beyond recognition under his grip. He saw how it continued but couldn’t bear to read any more. “What is this?” He asked, his voice shaking. His eyes burned but no tears formed and the air around him soured with the scent of his sorrow.
“We gave authorization for that to be released yesterday,” Towns answered. He looked at Nathaniel with something akin to empathy. “As of two days ago, Nathaniel Wesninski is dead. We understand that this is difficult, but if you can’t help us then your father’s people will find you eventually and finish what he started. You and your team will be targeted then, and we won’t be able to get you out a second time.”
“We know this was an abrupt measure,” Browning had apparently given up on his bad cop persona, though Nathaniel still didn’t trust him. “But our priority right now is keeping you safe from the Malcolms, and your death was the only way to do that.”
Lola’s laughter as his skin burned flashed through his mind. In his imagination, Andrew’s face in a pain filled expression replaced his own and the idea of it was enough for bile to rise up his throat. “Will Andrew be safe if I do this?” he asked, “can you truly promise that?”
“Your former team has been assigned a detail until the end of the year,” Towns answered, “nothing so far indicates they are in danger from retaliation but they’ll be protected until the end of the year just in case. You will be given a new identity and re-located within the US until your father’s people no longer pose a risk to you.”
“And that’s it?” Nathaniel felt a tired sort of resignation fall over him, a second coat over the pain already covering his body like a blanket.
“There is one more thing,” Browning looked uncomfortable, for the first time not meeting his eye. He gestured to the doctor who’d been listening to their entire exchange, “But we wanted to wait until you understood what would happen next. Doctor if you please.”
“Hello Neil, my name is Tracie Mancourt. I also work for the bureau, Witsec more specifically, and I will be the doctor in charge of your case.” Nathaniel was almost struck by that name on her mouth, grieving the boy who he almost became. He didn’t doubt that she was another one of the feds, but the omega doctor had spent the entire conversation releasing calming pheromones. Nathaniel trusted her almost without wanting.
“Why are you assigned to me?” He asked, feeling the exhaustion of the conversation pull at him. His mind was wrapping around the fact that he would never see Andrew again, and grief had started to make a home in his chest.
“I am an Obstetrician specializing in male omegas,” She answered with a cautious smile. “When you were admitted, the hospital ran a pregnancy test as is protocol for anyone who can carry.”
A new fear made home in him as Nathaniel predicted the words that followed. “
“According to hormone levels when you were admitted two nights ago you are pregnant Neil, though it is still too recent to show up on ultrasounds” The doctor continued, “We ran some repeat testing today to confirm it, and it showed that pregnancy is definitely progressing.”
The face of Nathaniel’s mother, mouth open in fury as she beat his teenage self bloody for one kiss flashed in his mind. He tried to bring a hand to his stomach, the handcuffs keeping him from doing that. The idea of a pup growing inside him filled him with fear and abject horror. Something else laid alongside those feelings, something entirely more alarming.
The warm feeling of Andrew's bond settleing into his body during his heat. The nights in the rooftop. Andrew's lips on his. The smell of smoke and wood. Andrew.
Andrew 's pup as well.
“I will go with you,” He almost whispered. He imagined himself on the run. If Lola was truly still out there, then Nathaniel would have to return to who he was before Palmetto. Back to ephemeral names and an existence without identity. He imagined a child, his child, condemned to the same fate he had been, but all the more smaller. Born into blood and fear.
Nathaniel thought of Andrew, alone and afraid in the foster care system without anyone willing to listen.
“I will go into Witness Protection,” He looked up and stared the agents down. “But you better make sure that you keep us safe, and burn all of them to the ground.”
“I am glad to hear that Nathaniel,” Browning replied, Towns nodding alongside him.
“We will leave now so you can rest,” The doctor said, “throughout your relocation process I will continue to be your doctor, and will be located in the same town to continue your care until the birth.” Her words rattled inside him with the weight of them. “I guess congratulations are in order as well.”
Nathaniel looked at the agents as they left the room finally. In silence he mourned his mate. And Allowed himself to bid Neil Josten a final goodbye. He was determined to protect his pup, and to do that leaving Neil behind felt like a small price. Even as grief rattled his very bones.
Sleep was easy to find with the exhaustion in his bones. For the first time, but not last, Neil dreamed of Andrew. Golden brown eyes and his mate’s scent which he would one day soon forget.
