Page 3 of Fury

Chapter Two

Sawyer jerked forwardand sprang to his feet. One second asleep, the next fully awake and in shifted form.

Jesus H. Christ.

The wolf snarled and snorted a moment before the fur receded, giving way to flesh and bone. Sawyer stayed low to the ground until he was steady on his feet while taking big gulps of clean, smoke free air.

Four days after the incident, the nightmares began. Since then, he woke day after day to the crushing pain of his lungs caving in and his wolf staring at him in the mirror he kept near the bed.

Shifting in sleep was not a common occurrence. It could only be triggered by their fight or flight instinct. Unfortunately, that instinct had been on hyperdrive for far too long.

He pushed his hands through his hair and took more deep breaths, praying for calm.

The fire was over, the damage done. Nothing about that horrific night could be changed. So what was the point of reliving it over and over again? Other than to make himself crazy, that is.

Automatically, he reached for his hip and trailed his fingers through the deep grooves of the scars that crisscrossed his leg from waist to knee. By all rights, that two ton beam should have killed him. They all thought so.

Instead his shifter DNA had gone to work and patched him up as best it could. Shifters didn't often scar. Their accelerated healing had a way of overcoming a lot in a short amount of time.

Except in his case, the damage had been too deep by the time Creed got him free. His memory beyond the searing pain of his body giving out remained fuzzy, which probably explained why he always woke at the same moment in his nightmare.

Sawyer pushed back the memories, stuffing them as deep in his mind as they would go, before he stretched to standing while watching the scars pucker and pull as he moved. They didn't exactly hurt, but he felt the skin try to flex and fail every time he moved. It served as a constant reminder that he was no longer what he used to be.

Whole.

He knew it. And the pack knew it.

In the wild, an injured wolf would trail behind the pack until eventually he fell back and they went on without him. The animal kingdom had rules and they were all about survival of the pack and survival of the strong. The weak always got left behind.

Sawyer took a deep breath, hoping to calm his racing pulse and swiped his jeans from the back of a nearby chair. Shoving them over his legs he reminded himself they weren’t exactly in the wild. They were human, too. At least that's what Dante and Creed kept telling him over and over and over.

They weren't like other species. They had the qualities and DNA of both human and animal, the best of each actually.

Leaving his pants slung low and undone, Sawyer relieved himself in the tiny bathroom. This morning routine where he had to remind himself where he belonged and why irritated him. He wasn't a child who didn't understand the world. He knew the world.

And how every ugly, dirty crevice hid the truth.

Before his brain could suck him deeper into the hole of his self pity, a knock sounded at his door. He turned and lifted the curtain over the bathroom window. Across the horizon a sliver of the morning sun shot a streak of light in his direction. Who the hell dared come knocking this goddamned early?

Maybe he could ignore it. He had no desire to make idle chit chat with any of his pack mates at the moment. Unless whoever it was wanted their face chewed off just for funsies. That he could probably accommodate.

The knocking got louder, more insistent. They weren't giving up.

"Jesus. I'm coming." He crossed the tiny space and yanked it open, nearly pulling it from the hinges. "What the hell do you—"

The angry words died on his lips as he came face to face with Damien, another of the Alpha brothers who led their pack.

"Nice to see you too, sunshine."

Sawyer winced at the words clipped with sarcasm. Smarting off to an alpha often came with subtle and sometimes not so subtle consequences. Such as the nearly overwhelming urge to bow his head. Maybe even apologize. Neither of which Sawyer felt inclined to do no matter whether Damien’s wolf expected it or not. People turning up to check up on him at every turn was getting old.

"You going to invite me in?" Damien asked.

Sawyer hesitated for only a second before stepping back and letting the door fall wide. No, he really didn't want to invite anyone in. His housekeeping skills were shit before the incident at the club, but after they were pretty damned atrocious. The last thing he needed was a lecture—or a helping hand.

"What is that smell?" Damien glanced around his small cabin, his eyes narrowing as he took in the mess.

"I forgot to set the trash out this week."

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