MetaDeprivation - 25. MetaPrompts 613: Alt1 (MW3)

He jerked out of his sleep as if hit by a bullet. No, because he had been hit by a bullet. In his dream. And years ago in Iraq. On his first tour as a marine as green as the uniform he had worn during boot camp.

“It’s okay,” a deep voice trying to be comforting told him; not that his friend wasn’t trying hard enough. But it seemed his own anxiety had affected the man next to him.

He pushed his head under the warm water to clear his mind. The naturally warm springs made for a fantastic spa up the hills of ShadowLands. They had to run as wolves to reach this spot, kept secret by his pal Burt.

He felt the pain in his shoulder. That’s where he had actually been shot as a young marine. His wolf had never really wanted to heal him as if to punish him for something Prime didn’t know.

“So Will will be taking over?” Prime asked, remembering where the conversation had stopped before he had fallen asleep in the warm water. The water on his too long hair, his scruffy beard, and on his quite hairy chest got cold quickly.

“Yep. He already has pups, so …” Burt dropped his teddy bear head nearly in shame.

Prime nodded. He knew the pain. He had returned to the West Montana Pack at his father’s cremation. But the betas and Zef had made it clear they wouldn’t accept him as alpha. Zef would rule until Seb was old enough to reinstall the Loope line. They were compassionate enough not to kick him out of the pack, but he couldn’t stay there. He had found some unclaimed land further north and lived his eremite life, only once in a while returning to civilization to meet old buddies like Burt. How the big guy could stay as outer circle wolf in the pack that he should be protecting as his alpha’s chief enforcer, he didn’t understand. But every man had to make his own decisions. It was not up to him to challenge anyone about his life choices.

They had met some months ago in San Diego at an event with former marines running for a veterans’ charity, even though neither of them still had the tight marine bodies. As everyone else, they had exchanged their assignments history, companies, battle stories, and where they had gotten which tacky or not so tacky tattoo. When Prime shared with Burt how he had been arrested once for trashing Lucy’s, they realized they would have met if Burt hadn’t been off that day – otherwise, he would have arrested a drunken Prime.

Prime remembered the next day very clearly. He got seriously NJP’d. And after his contract ended, the Corps hadn’t been interested in another stint, forcing Prime to become a civilian wolf again. “Do you think,” Prime suddenly asked, “that our lives could different – if we had just made a different decision in our past?”

Burt looked up. It was obvious he thought that was an unusual, esoteric question from the red-haired wolf. “I guess so.”

“So how do you know this is the real one?” Prime asked.

“There is only one real life.”

“But …” But Prime didn’t finish. He was hungry, but couldn’t motivate himself to shift and hunt. He found an apple in the bag he’d carried up the mountain in his snout.

“What’s on your mind?”

“It was just a dream …,” Prime pushed it aside and bit.

“What happened? I mean Fate sometimes …”

Prime angrily throw the half-eaten apple down the hill. “Fuck Fate. She shot me on my first day of the war. And my fucking wolf behaves as if I had married a cunt.”

Burt lifted his head to expose his neck in submission. He had had enough fights in his life. He was tired. Empty. Empty like a flat tire. He didn’t want to fight with one of the few men he had still in his life.

“Sorry. I dreamed of an alpha challenge. I was fighting an alpha …” Prime mumbled with embarrassment.

“Those are rare nowadays,” Burt commented sadly. His beard had grown too long and looked scruffy half-wet with water and sweat. In some years, when he would have turned gray, he would be Santa – without any need for a wig or an artificial beard.

“But what was worse, some brat shot me afterward …”

“For winning?”

“I guess so,” Prime mumbled. “Maybe it’s just my wolf playing with me … stupid bullet in Baghdad and so …”

“Maybe.”

Prime’s ears pricked up. There was something in Burt’s voice. He wasn’t good at that. He was supposed to be, he was an alpha son after all, but somehow his skills had atrophied when he had started to drink. Getting clean by going cold turkey hadn’t helped. “What do you think?” he tried to be inviting.

Burt took a deep breath. “Sometimes I feel I’m in the wrong movie. I feel I should be down there in the Inner Circle’s house as the CE – with a powerful alpha …”

“You mean not Rory.”

Burt rolled his eyes. Rory, having taken over some months ago because of his father’s untimely death, hadn’t yet grown up. And it was only a matter of time until he would die rotting in a cell because of one of the too many felonies. He had no clue what would happen to the Mt. Patterson pack. He suspected one of the four surrounding packs would swallow them if they were lucky. “Somehow it’s all wrong. It feels like …” Burt rolled his upper body as if he wanted to get rid of something. “Like … like when you wear your sweater the wrong way. Like your sock’s rolling down your calves. Like walking through the empty corridors of your school on a Sunday.”

Prime bit his lip. Burt had rarely been so perceptive. “Since when?”

“Always. No,” Burt corrected. “Since my accident.”

Prime didn’t need to ask ‘which accident.’ Burt had told him how a truck had crashed into his new car on his 16th birthday. While him being a wolf had helped him to recover physically, he also knew that mentally it had changed Burt’s friendly disposition forever. He always was a bit fearful; next to being gay this must have been one of the reasons Will, his younger brother, had aced him. “That sucks.”

Burt just nodded. He had kept this to himself. He didn’t want to come across as crazy. But for the first time, he had sensed Prime felt the same way. Out of place.

“So what do we do?”

Burt shrugged. He stood up trying to take in the beauty of the valley in front of him, grabbing hold of a dead tree trunk. Suddenly, he realized how fat he had gotten. In the water, he didn’t notice, but now, it reaching only to his thighs, he realized and felt ashamed. He looked worse than Warren. He was a fat hairy sloth. Hanging around without direction, growing more wool on him every day. He was a bear as a man, and a poodle as a wolf. He was a failure. “I don’t know.”

“We should have met in Lucy’s,” Prime complained.

“Not my shift.”

“I know.”

“So Zef’s getting married?” Burt asked desperately trying to change the topic. For the worse.

Prime huffed. “Yep, he’s the perfect hetero alpha now. Found himself some bimbo that will spit out pups like on a conveyer belt.”

“Sorry.”

“Sometimes I think he’s really forgotten what happened when we were young …” Prime’s voice was cold.

“You were both pups … it didn’t mean …”

“I know,” Prime barked cutting the conversation short. Maybe he should try to sleep again. Sleep normally made the pain go away. Even if not this time. “And Seb found a female as well.”

“You told me.”

“I guess I did,” Prime whispered. After a while, he asked with resignation: “What do we do?”

“Did VA offer you a shrink?” Burt asked carefully.

Prime sighed. “Yes.”

“And?”

“No,” Prime decided firmly.

“Gotcha. - But maybe …”

“No,” Prime shouted.

“A shaman,” Burt added quickly to pacify the red-haired wolf’s rage.

Prime opened his mouth to throw out the suggestion; but he stopped and thought about it. “Do you have someone in mind?”

Burt sat down again, enjoying the comforting weightlessness the warm water generated. “Yes.”

“Who?”

“A girl I met once in San Diego.”

“You fucked her?” Prime asked in surprise.

“No. Well, she tried to …” But Burt stopped. “Anyway. She’s good. She knew everything about me just by reading my spirit …”

“Wow.” Prime was not impressed.

“What do you have to lose? We can hang around here until our skin falls off all shriveled. And down there they whisper behind our backs about what dirty stuff we did up here …”

Prime growled. “Fine. What’s her name?”

“Nikita.”