Comfort the Wolves

10. Bourbon and Red

"She's in there," Alpha snarled, gesturing to the bedroom on Ivan's left.

Ivan nodded, slow. "Should I help her or you?" he asked in an even tone.

Alpha's huge shoulders hunched and he staggered to a pink armchair. He sat and fisted his hands in his wild hair. "Her," he said, his voice bleeding regret and jealousy and hate.

Ivan hesitated on the balls of his feet. He eased his heels back into the plush carpet and took a deep breath. Under the smell of bourbon and sweat, he could smell blood and the babe, dead. He held all the smells for a moment and tried to lace his voice with a calm powerful enough to mask them all. "We'll get through this, Alpha."

His calm barely reached the clawed foot of the armchair and Alpha looked up at him, tortured and angry. Ivan shook his head, letting his influence fall flat between them. He hoped at least his voice was honest. "You're strong enough for this. She is too. This- this isn't the end."

Alpha's lip curled and he clutched the armrest as his claws extended in a partial shift. With a growl, he shooed Ivan to the bedroom door.

The bedroom was wrecked too. But it was a different sort of destruction: all the sheets and the pillows out of place, the curtains torn off their rails, the books run off their shelves.

"Luna?" Ivan tried, stepping around the books. He could smell her, the blood and even some vomit in the bathroom. "It's Ivan."

There was a strangled breath. "Don't call me that," a voice choked bitterly. "I'm no Luna."

She was draped over the gold-rimmed bathtub. All that silken, golden hair strung over her arms and down the pink of her robe. The robe was stained with red around her legs, which were sprawled limp on the floor. Blood was drying on her slim white hands, on her ankles. But it still glimmered wet and clotted on the white tile of the floor.

The light from the ceiling was too bright and white, but Tatiana didn't care. She looked at him with eyes that had lost all the life in them.

Ivan's heart ached at the sight. "Oh, Luna," he said.

The brown-green eyes flickered and her lip trembled. "You're the only one who calls me that, you know?"

He lowered into a crouch before her, slow and careful, the tiles cold on his feet.

She moved an arm, pained and slow, to cinch her robe closed; she was naked underneath. "I hate that title."

Ivan shook his head. "I know, Luna." He looked around. "The pup?"

Her chin quivered and she swallowed, hard. She tried for the cold, bitter voice again, but her words broke. "Flushed down. The toilet." She turned her head away as the tears fell. "Just a little ball of blood, really," she said. "Not a pup."

Ivan nodded.

"Small as a coin," she continued, her face twisting awfully. "But he smelt me out anyway."

"Let's wash you up. May I draw you a bath?"

She shook her head. "I just want to die here. Thank you."

Ivan gingerly moved around her to the sink. He wet a hand towel and mopped down the red fingerprints on the white porcelain. He wiped down the toilet and felt his chest crush and cave at his own grief. A pup in a pack was sacred, no matter who the father.

"If it wasn't his, then it was human," Tatiana said, watching Ivan hesitate at the blood on the basin. "Not a pup at all."

"Doesn't mean it should be grieved any less," Ivan told her, wiping the red from the wooden knob on the toilet's dangling chord.