His Soldier {Boy x Boy}

Chapter XXXII

[Ethan}

I seemed to have been in a daze the rest of the time I was there and I would've felt bad for being so out of it had everyone else not been the same.

After my mom and dad got over the initial shock, we just kinda sat there in the gazebo and listened to Denton, Terrace and Hitch explain the whole experience since we had gone.

Terrace had to pause frequently to catch his breath. The dreams still haunted him even when we wasn't asleep. Mary seemed to know something was wrong because she sat still in my lap, her small hands wrapped around the arm that wasn't holding her.

I closed my eyes as Hotch's gentle tone carefully recalled what he remembered. Certain things still caused Ace to seize up or one of us to feel a horrid sensation in the pit of the stomach. Their voiced tangled together and drew out to a low hum as I tuned the words out. My awareness was focused on Mary and the heat coming off of my parents on either side of me, their hands gripping the sleeves of my sweater tighter as the image my friends painted only grew more vivid.

An argument sparked over a few details that didn't sit well with Denton's father and I opened my eye to see Denton already looking at me. I glanced down and noticed his actual hand tracing over the glove. They didn't believe him?

"This is madness!" Alpha Fredrick spouted, angrily running his hand through his hair. Denton's mother tried to calm him but the older man was far too furious. "Witches and whatnots- in those quantities?! And they had the technology to repair your arm?!"

Terrace had to hold back a venomous look, glaring down at the ground. Past that, the guilt was clear and flowing freely in his mind.

Hotch was soothing him as best as he could and Sage's eyes were obscured by his hair.

"With all due respect," I started, locking eyes with Denton but directing my words at Fredrick. "Are you, perhaps, calling us frauds? Liars?" I switched my gaze to the alpha, angrily staring me down.

I was tired, so tired.... I could not bring myself to care about his energy pressing down, suppressing me as an order to stay out of it. Perhaps it was the amount of time I had away from alpha's other than Ace and Denton, or the time separated from my wolf form. His power slid off of me in resistance.

Mary's grip loosened on my arm and I used that time to use my hand to rip off the eye patch. It was grotesque and absolutely repulsive. The only reason I didn't have to have the flesh that had been infected removed was because of the witches. There were a few tiny runes that traced my eye socket, slowly but surely healing the flesh. The eye is gon but at least I could have eye lids again.

"Are you calling me a liar? What does that make your son?" My eye burned with the exposed air and the stinging intensified with every second. I had to look away at a certain point as the stinging caused a massive headache to shoot up my spine.

However, I could see a little from my good eye as I replaced the eye patch. Denton was removing his jacket and his gloves, exposing the metal appendage he now called his own.

The room fell silent as the quiet him of mechanical whirring was now audible as clothes no longer muffled the precise workings. He carefully removed the arm at the elbow, handing it over to his father.

"Dad, am I a liar?" Denton pushed the metal hand into Alpha Fredrick's arms. "Tell me this was all a dream or a nightmare." His voice was firm but the emotion was there.

Fixing the eye patch back on my head, I held Mary a little closer and shut my eye. No matter what I did, I could still see the death in Denton's eyes in that cell, how he had just given up and lost purpose. Even if it was a nightmare, that look is unforgettable.