For the Sake of Peace

Part Three: The Trouble with Unforgiving Lycans…

The next night Soren wakes up. His brown eyes slowly flutter open and realizes that he’s snuggled into someone’s side. Startled, he turns and realizes that Raze is asleep next to him…untransformed. The memories of the prior night return and he flushes though if it’s from anger, shame, or arousal he can’t tell. Slowly, he untangles himself from his husband’s side and gets up. He only gets halfway across the room before a familiar voice says, “You’re pissed.”

A highly bitter laugh escapes him. “Pissed? That, Lycan, is an understatement,” he retorts more harshly than he means to.

“You know if we are married couldn’t you make an attempt to call me by my name?” Raze asks sitting up and looking at him.

“Fat chance,” Soren responds as he walks into the bathroom. “YOU are going to have to replace that door, Lycan.”

Raze rolls his eyes. While he doesn’t completely blame Soren for his reaction, he isn’t keen on dealing with a husband who avoided him like the plague, either. “You DID enjoy last night, don’t try to pretend you didn’t!”

“If you don’t want me to shoot you, I suggest you NEVER mention that again!” Soren snaps before he steps into the shower and turns the water on. All he wants is to get cleaned and try to forget. He desperately wants to forget all about what happened. The hot water pouring down him relaxes his tense muscles and he sighs resting against the shower wall. He knew he should be making more of an attempt to be friendly to Raze. The Lycan really didn’t deserve his anger and bitterness as he had been pushed into the same sort of relationship as well. ‘Great,’ he thinks, ‘I’m pitying the creature out in the bedroom! Gods, this isn’t my century!’

He loiters in the bathroom for as long as he can before exiting wrapped in merely a towel. He had forgotten to bring something to wear into the bathroom before hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Raze staring at him and bristles. “Do you have to look?” he snaps.

“We are married,” Raze responds calmly though there is a hint of a smirk at the corners of his lips.

Soren hisses between clenched teeth as he quickly searches for something. Unfortunately for him, that involves bending over so he does as quickly as possible to keep from having to endure anymore teasing from his husband. He walks back into the bathroom and makes a great effort to change without Raze seeing him. Finally, he walks back out. “You can do what you want…I need to walk,” he tells him before walking out of the room glad that Lucian and Kraven kept their words and the door is unlocked. He heads down to the lobby of the hotel and stops. “Gods, can’t you go away?” he asks seeing both men.

“Where are you going?” Kraven asks.

“Out,” Soren says heatedly, “I need to get away from him for a while.”

“You’re running.”

Soren glowers. “I am NOT running! I just need some time by myself!” he snarls.

“That’s running from you.”

“No, it’s trying to get over being molested by a large wolf! I will come back…my honor gives me no other choice!”

“You’d better or you’ll be hunted down,” Kraven tells him.

Without answering, Soren sweeps out of the hotel. He was going to kill that vampire…he really was. ‘Bastard, you make everyone else pay and you get off scotch free,’ he thinks viciously, ‘I am NOT doing this anymore…I CAN’T do this anymore.’ There was really nothing left of him to give, he realizes. He’d done EVERYTHING he possibly could and this was just too much. Oh, he knew he’d go back, there was really no running from his obligations and he was just too damn tired to care. Centuries of deception took a lot out of a person’s soul…and what little of his still remained was shattering under the pressure. He wanders down the dark streets needing the solitude for a while. He wasn’t hunting, no he had a store of cloned blood as he hated all the drama of chasing down victims. The entertainment wore off after a few centuries.

His feet take him down darker alleys than he’d normally go while at night though he’s too tired to care about that…or the fact that he’s unarmed. It doesn’t take him long to remember that times were still dangerous, however. Getting slammed into a dumpster brings that home quite well. Stunned, he still manages to dodge the next blow and faces his attacker hoping that it’s human. An aggravated sigh escapes him as he realizes that the scruffy figure standing not three feet away…was a Lycan. “Is this absolutely necessary?” he intones irritably, “Lucian will NOT be happy to find you assaulting me.”

“Lucian is a fool to think that you creatures will EVER keep your word! How he can let you off the hook so easily is disgusting! You enslaved us!”

“I’ll admit that it wasn’t fair to you, but this is not the way to settle this. I’m not responsible for any decisions made by the elders. I am trying to RECTIFY their mistakes. Stop attacking people who agree with YOU!”

The Lycan sneers. “As if…you don’t know what it’s like to be a slave, Vampire!”

Soren bristles. “Then you know NOTHING about me!”

The Lycan laughs unpleasantly. “Did I hit a sore spot, Blood?” he sneers.

Soren begins to truly start worrying about the situation. He was unarmed dealing with a Lycan who seemed intent on doing him bodily harm. “Look, I really don’t want to talk to you…I have enough problems as it is so if you would be so kind as to leave, I’d really appreciate it.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Blood, but you…you are.” The nasty smile that accompanies this freezes Soren’s blood. This was definitely not good. The moment he sees the gun, he goes into complete flight mode and sprints out of the alley. Gunshots echoing behind him make him speed up. He feels the bullets graze him and knows that if he doesn’t get out of the middle of the street he’s going to be shot. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a fire escape. Deciding to take his chances, he races to it and hurriedly starts climbing. It gives the Lycan less of a chance to hit him and he manages to make it to the roof. Without pausing, he races across it and lunges to the next one. He was going to have to find out who the psycho was before he decided to try that again. ‘Why can’t my life EVER be easy?’ he wonders. He halts on top of a building that had none near it. He looks down and wonders if he could possibly make it without hurting himself. Sighing, he realizes that he’ll have to backtrack but as he turns around, he sees the Lycan coming closer. ‘Dammit,’ he thinks, ‘Oh well, I just hope I don’t hurt myself.’ Without waiting longer, he leaps from the building. He lands hard on the ground and his leg gives out sending him to his knees. A groan of pain escapes him. ‘Great…this is going to end well,’ he thinks getting to his feet and trying to hurry down the street wounded.

Behind him, he hears the sound of four feet hitting the pavement. ‘Shit, he’s transformed!’ He hurries down the street though he highly doubts that he could outrun the Lycan in his current condition. He could barely outrun a Lycan when he was at his best. He is within eyesight of the hotel when he’s tackled. He hits the pavement hard and a pained gasp escapes him. Low growling from the Lycan above him tells him that any sudden move on his part was going to end up with his throat ripped out. Soren keeps still and wonders if he was still going to die. Feeling the muzzle of the Lycan at the back of his neck startles him. ‘Great, I die within eyesight of the damn hotel…this is pathetic…’ he thinks.

However, before he can know what it briefly feels like have his head severed from his body, the Lycan flees post-haste. It doesn’t take Soren long to figure out why. “Dammit, Soren, can you not get yourself attacked?” Kraven snaps hurrying up.

“Don’t insult me,” Soren snarls as he struggles onto his feet.

“You should have been armed, idiot!” Kraven snaps.

“I said DON’T insult me!” Soren yells furiously before giving into one of his lesser evil temptations and punching Kraven right in the face before limping right into the hotel. He hopes he broke the idiot’s nose. It would serve Kraven right for doing this to him in the first place.

He realizes the stupidity of walking the entire way to the room when he gets there and almost collapses in the doorway. Raze is nearby and is the only reason he doesn’t land flat on his face. “What happened?”

Soren would tell him to mind his own damn business by his aching leg makes his temper shorter than normal. “One of your friends decided that they didn’t want to let the feud die and tried to maul me!” he snaps, “I jumped off a building to get away from the idiot and hurt myself only to get tackled in front of the hotel after the idiot transformed…now if you don’t mind, I’d like to sleep this off so help me to the bed and don’t touch me.”

Raze doesn’t even respond to his biting words, merely does as bade helps him to the bed. He cannot, however, resist tucking the blankets around him. Soren is too tired to glower at him but as he’s drifting off, he can almost swear he hears Raze murmur, “I’m glad you’re alright, Soren.” He’s asleep before he can think more about it.