Wonderland Ch. 08B

Author's Note: I want to thank my editor, Mikothebaby. You're a lifesaver, chica! I made changes to the chapter after her edits, so any mistakes you see are most likely mine. Enjoy everyone!

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Thatcher heard her screams and felt his entire being turn as cold as the world around him. The armful of snow he had been packing away for their snowball fight fell to the ground as he processed the sound over in his mind.

Tempest was well-known for her screaming laughter, but after all the weeks in close quarters with her, he now knew the difference. The resounding silence around him just confirmed his initial shock. Tempest was in trouble.

Taking cues from the direction the scream had come from, Thatcher followed his internal compass, turning to his more animal nature to both distract him from his anxious human counterpart and to get a more accurate reading on her location.

He had only gone ten yards when the smell of rotten fruit mingling with Tempest's natural perfume of sunflowers sent another burst of anxiety through Thatcher. Hurrying now, he held on to the scent like a bloodhound and jumped through the trees, his eyes restlessly searching over the monochromatic landscape.

When Thatcher came to a fallen fir reeking with both scents, he peered over and felt his heart catch in his throat as he stared down into the hollow in the earth below him.

A Raspan, hoarding its pile of yet-to-be eaten dead carcasses was fixated on its new prey – Tempest. Her face was pale against the blackened earth, her green eyes large in her face, her little chin trembling as she silently cried. Her eyes never left the Raspan as it swayed in front of her, testing her resilience.

This Raspan obviously wanted to hear her screams.

That couldn't happen.

Thatcher's change was instant since the beast had been lurking so close to the surface for far too long. His spine arched and his fingers dug deep into the thick trunk of the fir as the transformation from human to mutant began. When he opened his eyes again, the world around him bombarded his delicate senses. He could feel the scours of Raspans' beneath his feet and palms, hibernating away until the freeze was complete. He could taste Tempest's fear and hear the excited heartbeat of the Raspan, the other male's thoughts in constant chaos as the Raspan tried to concoct the best scheme to kill the human girl in front of him. His eagerness for further evolution clouded his thoughts and senses until it was too late.

Giving over fully to his animal, Thatcher watched his descent into the burrow as though seeing it through someone else. He saw his red eyes lock with the Raspan as he made a physical barrier between the beast and the innocent, barely hearing Tempest's gasp of surprise at his silent intrusion.

The Raspan took in its new opponent seconds before Thatcher grabbed its large head by the fluted ears and jerking it up and to the left, the resounding snaps and crackles of the head disconnecting from the spine almost disturbingly loud in the surrounding quiet.

The Raspan fell with a sigh to the ground, scattering the mangled skeletons of its previous prey across the earthen floor, the bones splintering under its weight.

Only after Thatcher watched the crimson glow fade from the Raspan's eyes did his transformation begin to wane, the abrupt return to his usual form leaving him temporarily hollow and disjointed from reality. Shaking off the feeling, he turned to Tempest slowly.

She stared up at him with glassy eyes, tears rolling silently down her face. The look speared Thatcher straight through his soul, bringing him back to his body completely with a resounding mental crash. He took her into his arms and drew her close to him, breathing in her natural scent in both relief and fear.

"I had to kill him, Tempest," he murmured into her hair, his voice ragged with emotion. His fingers of his left hand dug deeper into the soft strands to hold her close. "If he had woken the others, this could have ended in a bloodbath."

Tempest clung tighter to him, rubbing her tear-stained face into his jacket. "Take me home, Thatch," she shuddered, her fingers gripping the fabric of his jacket tightly. "Please," she begged.

Thatcher obeyed without question. Scooping her up into his arms, he turned her head into his chest.

"Keep your eyes closed," he told her. She nodded and put her arms around his neck before burying her face into the warm confines of his jacket, her wet eyes flushed against his collarbone. Thatcher kicked off the ground and used the walls to zig-zag up and out of the burrow. He walked a couple of feet away and set her against a large fir tree.

"I need to cover this up, okay?" he said quietly, brushing the hair from her face. Tempest, with her eyes still squeezed tightly shut, nodded quickly.

Unable to help himself, he brushed his lips over her forehead and tugged up her jacket hood before finishing the job at hand.

Standing at the edge of the burrow, Thatcher looked over the oval-shaped confines to make sure no other victim was somewhere in its midst.

Sensing nothing, he turned back to his work.

Thatcher closed his eyes and tamped out his thoughts swiftly, allowing his magic to build up within him again. Focusing only on creating a permanent grave for the creature, snow and earth began to accumulate slowly around him before funneling itself into the oval-shaped hollow.

Using a layer of earth, he created a barrier to keep the scent of the dead Raspan contained and hopefully to cover up the beast forever.

When the task was done, Thatcher walked over the efforts of his magic to test its strength. It was as though the burrow – and the Raspan – had never existed.

Satisfied, Thatcher turned back to Tempest, who was still huddled up beside the huge fir tree, and gently picked her up and cradled her in his arms.

"You can open your eyes now," he murmured, smiling a little when she opened one eye first, like a child would, before blinking them both open. She eyed him and swallowed hard.

"Thank you," she whispered softly, the green of her irises bright against the bloodshot whites of her eyes. Thatcher could only nod, his own emotions getting the best of him.

As he walked the two of them back towards the house on Bella Lane, Thatcher was beginning to realize that wherever Tempest was concerned, he would be much too involved. His mind spun with the all the ways his attachment to her could go wrong, of what Tze'sic would do to him when the Ancient discovered that he wasn't alone in the mating race.

Thatcher's chest tightened instantly. Mate? Where in the hell did that come from? He shook off his thoughts and adjusted Tempest's hold in his arms, angling her away from him slightly. Swiftly, he called up his beast as he had every day for the past month, feeding off the beast's lack of humanity to shield himself from the girl he was carrying. If Thatcher couldn't feel, he couldn't be tempted to care. If he didn't care, Tempest would be safe. Her safety was all that mattered anymore.

He eyed Tempest when she began to shift uncomfortably in his arms. She had noticed the change, she always did.

"Don't do that," Tempest whispered suddenly, her hands on his face. Thatcher was drawn back to her once more, his eyes unable to leave hers. "You're pushing me away again," she sighed when he said nothing, tears filling up her eyes. "You've done it for weeks now. And...and I don't like it. Not at all, Thatch."

Thatcher stopped walking. Suddenly the overwhelming need to run swept over him, the urge to flee from this horrible feeling in his stomach making his breathing heavy and his knees like jelly.

"Thatcher, what's been going on with you?" she asked, her gloved fingers catching his face so he couldn't look away. "You've...you've been quiet. You don't smile, you don't joke...you can barely even look at me. You don't even call me 'kitten' anymore," Tempest whispered.

"You said you hated when I called you that," he said robotically, mentally kicking himself as the aching feeling in his stomach moving upwards and into his chest. Thatcher set her down on her feet quickly, ignoring the teasing scent of Tempest's skin and the tight grip on his windpipe. The feeling that everything was falling apart around him grew, and fast.

"Oh Thatcher," she sighed, shaking her head sadly. "I didn't mean that."

Thatcher took a step away from her when she took a step forward. "And if I hurt your feelings during our 'talk', I wasn't trying to. I just wanted to make a point, Thatch. I'm so scared that after all of this, I won't be me anymore." She eyed him curiously when he took another step back. "What are you doing?"

"Keeping a distance," he answered throatily, meeting her eyes and instantly wishing he hadn't.

"Why?" she asked, anger creeping into her voice, her green eyes flashing darkly. "What did I do to make you hate me so much that you can't even stand to be next to me?!" she demanded, her voice breaking at the end as tears began falling down her cheeks. "Am I no longer good enough to be your friend, Thatch? Is it because I'm human?" She hesitated, her breathing shaky. Suddenly, her eyes flashed, as though she had an epiphany. "Or is it because I belong to Talon?" she whispered, her eyes trailing over his face.

In that moment, Thatcher's thin veil of control splintered. Like exploding glass, his thoughts, his emotions and his sanity shattered. Through a kaleidoscope of images, Thatcher lived through the next few minutes in bursts of cognizance, where his memories and long buried secrets took hold and spewed forth, connecting him to another energy. The only thing he could make sense of was his hold on Tempest, his anchor in the turbulent sea of his disjointed hysteria.

When he came to, Tempest was crying in his arms, her grip around him strong and firm. Her bare fingers were stroking his hair gently, her hat and gloves missing. The two of them were knotted together under the canopy of a nearly bare fir, surrounded by branches that had been ripped from the tree. He blinked once to clear the fog from his mind and looked down at Tempest. She was all color and light, a vivid contrast to the dull grey world around him. Her hair was like rivulets of blood on the snow, and Thatcher watched as his pale fingers broke through the crimson puddle as he held her close, trying to connect the dots. He let out a shaky exhale as he realized what he had done.

His already fractured mind had broken, completely. His magic had always managed to pull him through anything, but those four words "I belong to Talon" had been overkill. For far too long he had been cold, feeling nothing but the winter around him. Then Tempest literally crashed into his life, his being, and he didn't know how to deal. His magic and beast couldn't deal. But why? Why was Tempest so important? Why couldn't he just leave her as easily as Tze'sic had?

The answer came to him swiftly, the blow to his psyche almost crippling.

"I love you, Tempest," he whispered hoarsely into her hair, tasting the salt from their combined tears. Tempest shook fiercely beneath him, still lost in the throes of his magic, her fingers tightening their hold in his coat. Burying his face deeper into her hair, Thatcher breathed her in again. "Always," he sighed.

To Thatcher, the confession was like a relief. The moment he had given in, his magic had calmed and his beast had faded into the recesses of his mind, anxious for rest. Smiling a little at that, he turned the two of them upright, not relinquishing his hold on her until her sobs had faded.

He wasn't sure for how long they stayed in the snow like that, but when Tempest whispered she was cold, the sky had begun to darken into late afternoon and the world felt colder than it ever had before. Thatcher bundled them up again before carrying Tempest back to their home, both of them silent as they became lost in their thoughts.

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As Thatcher went to get a hot shower, I curled up under my bed covers, unable to get the events of this afternoon out of my head.

When Thatcher had lost control – it had been terrifying. The power that exuded from him had smothered me completely, taking control of me as easily as a puppeteer could pull a wooden toy's strings. I had never felt anything like that before. I had never seen "magic" out of control.

An image of Thatcher's glowing golden eyes as he stared down at me sent shivers down my spine. The memories and images that he had sent me in those minutes I had been held victim to his gaze had answered all the questions about Thatcher I had ever had.

Most of his memories had been about a human girl, Emma Baker. She had been tall, blonde, and as "sweet as honey", according to his thoughts. Thatcher had never known someone that kind. With Emma he had had been so sure she loved him completely, so sure of them, that he gotten in his head to expose what he really was to her, believing entirely that she would accept him anyhow.

And she had.

They had married and did all the things normal human couples did, including starting a family. Six months into the pregnancy, Thatcher's son had decided he wanted out. After clawing his way through her uterus, he ate away the flesh of her stomach and passed out from exertion, which was how Thatcher had found the two of them when he came back from the grocery store.

Thatcher had buried his wife in an unmarked grave outside of Omsk, the broken form of their son interred beside her. That same day, he left Russia and he had never spoken of his family to anyone. He had never felt the stirrings for a mate, too afraid of the consequences. Thatcher had allowed himself to grow cold to protect what sanity and humanity he had left.

But it was the memories of his early past that had the most profound effect on me. The memories of his childhood in the Resistance camps had been cruel and harsh, a test of survival both mentally and physically. He had spent so much of his life alone, surrounded by those mostly afraid of him and his magic than anything else.

When the war had broke out, the Resistance camps had been under direct attack. When they were discovered, Thatcher had been taken hostage by his own people, the Raspan's, and tortured for information. I quickly wiped the tears from my cheeks at the broken bits of his memory from that time, feeling the pain he had undergone just briefly, but that was enough. How he had survived, I don't know.

Thatcher had been released nearly a year later in the dead of winter, forced to survive in an old bear cave and nurse himself back to health. He emerged the following spring and headed to the tribes of the humans, living among them, watching them grow and evolve into what we were today, still always alone. Emma had been able to heal most of these past wounds and cure him of his loneliness for a time, but not completely.

Then he meets me on his personal mission to destroy his father's tyranny and apparently, I got under his skin. How a bumbling, shy girl like me could affect someone so deeply, I'm not sure. But for the first time in Thatcher's life, he feels human; normal. To know he can feel because of me is a frightening concept to digest.

I've never put much thought into love before. I've never known the connection between two people that transcends all else and to be honest, there has always been a part of me that doubted I ever would. I mean, I grew up with parents who kept me informed about their lives through emails and over burnt dinner (unless I was cooking). I didn't have any friends because for some reason I was too weird, or too nerdy, or too not-like-everyone-else. My social skills are basically nondescript. When I was ten, I had already come to the conclusion that I would grow up as the "old cat lady."

Then, a Gargoyle chases me out of a castle and binds me to him, making me actually worry about someone other than myself for the first time in my entire life. And then a hybrid curiosity in the form of a Gothed up biker falls into the mix and now...I don't know what to think anymore

I put my head in my hands at the sound of Thatcher's shower ending, swallowing hard. Tears coated my palms and I quickly brushed them away, inhaling a ragged breath to calm down.

Suddenly the mattress dipped in and soft hands pulled mine away from my face. "Tempest?" Thatch murmured with concern evident in his voice. "Why are you crying?"

Christ, what a loaded question.

"Because I'm afraid," I choked out, not lifting up my chin. "Because I'm confused and angry and jealous and hurt and..." I cut off, shaking my head. "I hate feeling like this. Like I have no control over anything."

Thatcher chuckled and gently pulled me to him, his body warm from the shower. "Tempest," he sighed, "you can't control everything. It doesn't work that way."

I nodded, swallowing hard as he cradled me to him. "I know," I whispered, too tired to argue his point. I dug my fingers into his t-shirt to keep him close, closing my eyes when Thatcher gave me a soft squeeze.

"You will," he agreed quietly.

A few minutes later, when my tears had stopped, I asked, "Are you going to stay the night?"

Thatcher lifted up chin with his fingers, his eyes a warm brown and a soft smile on his face. "Do you want me to stay?"

I nodded.

Thatcher opened his mouth to speak, but a loud buzzing cut through what he had to say.

Both of our eyes strayed to the cheap disposable phone on my bedside table. Thatcher jerked across the mattress and gripped the phone, his eyes wide in his face as he read the ID of the caller.

Flipping it open, he pressed the plastic hard to his ear. "Bayothet?" he demanded.

I watched as the brown in his eyes slowly darkened to black, the color draining from his face. My mouth went dry as Thatcher moved to the edge of the bed, his back to me, and every muscle in his body went stiff. Not once did the hum on the other end of the line let up.

"Alright. I'll call you," Thatcher said finally, his voice cold and snappy.

"Shit," he hissed, snapping the phone shut. He stood up swiftly and paced, his hands threaded tightly in the dark strands of his hair.

I watched him for a few seconds before finally he faced me. "What happened?" I whispered.

Thatcher swallowed hard. "The Final Eden, the last sanctuary for the victims of my father's tyranny, has been destroyed. Completely. My team arrived in time to see Fuyher leave the cavern. He left no survivors."

My heart sank completely and my stomach caved in. "What about Talon?" I choked, holding the fabric of the bed tightly in my fingers. "Is he okay?"

Thatcher kneeled down in front of me, his hands covering mine. "Talon and Fuyher fought – Fuyher got significant damage, but Talon was..." he hesitated, his eyes looking over my face. "He's in a coma, Tempest. He won't wake up."

I felt like I had just been kicked in the stomach. The hollow, aching feel that Thatcher's words left behind took my breath away and I struggled to stay focused. "I don't understand," I bit out.

"That pain you felt all those weeks ago...that had been from Talon fighting Fuyher. You felt the aftereffects through the bond. If it wasn't for my tea, you'd be in a coma just as he is."

I jerked away from him then, narrowing my eyes as I looked at Thatcher. "If it wasn't for your tea?" I repeated slowly.

Thatcher nodded, guilt flashing across his face. "Ancient blood is potent," he said carefully, cringing a little as he spoke. "And my blood specifically can heal. Tempest, when I saw you laying in a heap beside your bed that night...it scared the shit out of me. I just...I just wanted to help you."

"And the tea?" I bit out, my hands clenching into fists.

"I added my blood into the mixture," he explained slowly and gently, as though soothing a rabid dog. "At first you couldn't even drink it because of the taste, but now...now you're used to it."