Too loud.
They were being too loud. Anyone leaving the dance hall late or checking on livestock would be able to hear them, and Ender’s Ridge didn’t take kindly to fighting amongst their own.
Any moment the parsonage door could crack open.
“Nathan, don’t—” Decker warned. His teeth pricked at his lip, aching and hungry, mind narrowing to the blood-soaked ground. “Please—”
Claws slashed across his chest and Decker hissed, catching himself against the chapel wall.
Nathan retreated, a growled laugh rumbling deep in him. “You can’t save him.”
Wounds would heal. Decker would heal. Nathan wouldn’t.
Not when Decker was through with him.
The last bit of Decker’s resolve slipped through the sharpened tips of his fingers.
As long as he could stay between him and Laurie.
Reprieve only lasted a brief moment before Nathan lunged at him again and Decker met him just as viciously, catching his wrists as he slashed towards him.
“Nate—” he tried one last time through gritted teeth, his fingers crushing the tendons in the other man’s wrists as he held ragged claws away from himself.
Nathan snarled in answer and left his muscled throat exposed for one crucial moment.
Decker struck.
Thesnapof Nathan’s neck chased his last howl down the alley. With one rabid slice of Decker’s fangs, the vein burst and scarlet splattered across the parsonage door, soaking Decker’s hair as he kneeled over him.
His nails sunk into Nathan’s neck, drowning in the heat flaring across his body like fire. In the back of Decker’s blood-fogged mind he thought perhaps this was a terrible mistake.
Losing his sense in copper and warmth, Decker clutched him as he drank, and drank, until the wolf’s lips leached grey and his misshapen body went cool.
When the liquid slipping past his lips also cooled, he leaned back onto his heels, dragging in deep breaths.
Decker’s body lit up with crackling lightning.
Chest rose and fell, the gashes forgotten along with the line across his cheek.
The parsonage door creaked behind him.
His head swiveled. Through the red haze, a faint figure stood at the doorstep, hand pressed over his mouth.
Another heartbeat.
The beast’s body lay cold and still as he rose to his feet.
“Decker.” The figure’s shaken words were nearly lost in his frantic pulse, heart full of fresh blood.Humanblood.
He stalked towards him, tongue flicking out and collecting the drop of life lingering on his lip.
The slight figure shrank back from him, the blood across the door now coating his hands. He scrubbed them against his white shirt and never took his eyes off Decker.
One step back and I could never touch you. Not unless you wanted me to.
Chapel. He was in a chapel.
Decker faltered, fog thinning with every breath.
