Runt [ManxMan]

Chapter Twenty-Six

Someone was yelling.

Mason wanted to tell them to stop, but everything hurt, and he couldn't find enough focus through the pounding in his head to form words or even open his eyes. He'd tried, when he'd first started to wake, but even the dim light had been enough to send searing pain through his head, so he'd shut them again and kept them that way.

He remembered most of how he got here, remembered the sharp prick in his neck that had sent him to sleep, remembered seeing the alpha pass out just before him. Had the rogues taken them, then? And why was there yelling? Didn't they know it was rude to make so much noise when someone was in this kind of pain?

Though it was decidedly more rude to grab that same person by the hair and yank them upright against both their will and the bone-deep ache, but that was what happened anyway. Mason finally found his voice but not his words, only a sharp yelp followed by pitiful whimpers as he clawed at the hand holding him up, trying to force it to release him, to no effect.

Sounds became clearer, and Mason recognized the person yelling as Dax, though he was far enough away it was clear the alpha was not the one holding him up by his hair. Not that he would have expected that to be the case, the alpha had never been violent with the omega, not even the night of the full moon, when he'd done little more than block Mason's path and had done nothing to harm him.

"Put him down! He's just a kid, he didn't do anything wrong!"

The hand holding him gave him a hard shake, and he cried out in response, stilling his efforts to get free and going limp, finally opening his eyes and blinking past the sharp pain. It took far longer than it should have for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

He saw Dax first, pressed against a set of bars a few feet away, just out of reach. He was dirty and naked, with a cut across his left cheek and claw marks across his torso, though he didn't seem bothered by the rather minor injuries.

The alpha was tense, clutching a bar in each hand so hard his knuckles had gone white, and though Mason had rarely seen any emotion on his face, the alpha was certainly not stoic now. His teeth were bared, the canines slightly longer than would be expected, even from a wolf in human form. His eyes, too, had changed and seemed to glow, the usual hazel darkened to alpha brown.

Mason was distracted by another voice, this one closer, though he was still dazed enough to miss what was said. He turned his gaze to the body attached to the hand holding him up. At first, he didn't recognize the man, only saw pale blonde hair and dark eyes, a stocky, muscular body with thick arms that held the tiny omega up easily. But there was something about him that was familiar, something that tingled at the edge of his mind and refused to be denied. Something about the shape of his eyes, the angle of his jaw, the set of his nose and lips... it all reminded him of...

Chase. And his own face, the few times he'd bothered to look in the mirror.

Then this man was his father. The man who had given him life, then threatened to take it away, driving his mother to flee with her three children, only two of whom actually managed to escape this man, the man who had tormented Mason's earliest memories, driving him to forget everything about his old pack, even the mother and sister who'd given their lives to save his. And if this was his father, standing in front of him holding him up by the hair, that meant this place must be...

His old pack.

Seventeen years he'd been running from this place, even when he didn't know what he was running from. He'd believed his deep-seated hatred of packs was because of what he'd seen them do to other rogues, from all the things he'd imagined they'd done to Chase when they'd taken him from Mason, but that wasn't the whole truth. He'd hated packs before then, feared them even, the very idea of them more than enough to terrify him, and all of it was because of this place.