What We Left Unsaid

“I thought I’d find you up here.”

Heaving a little sigh, the burly man continued on his way across the shingled surface, gaze quickly flickering over the shorter man, who was sitting on the edge of the roof of the house, a half-empty bottle of liquor hanging from his hands. It occurred to him almost immediately that it hadn’t been all that long since he had stumbled upon the exact same scene, only this time, the alpha had absolutely no idea why his beta was sitting there and drowning his sorrows.

He dropped down beside the already-drunk man with a little sigh of exasperation, silently extending a hand and waiting until his friend wordlessly handed over the bottle. They’d been through this little song and dance enough times to know how it was going to go down, and Matt was sure that neither of them were looking forward to it. But it needed to be done, and as long as that was the case, he was sure as hell going to be doing some drinking of his own. One deep swig later, and he handed the bottle back. And just sat there, saying absolutely nothing and simply staring off into the sky with the other man.

Who, he knew, was not nearly as patient as he was. “So... what’s up?” the guitarist drew out after a moment, the tone in his voice making his lack of interest in the conversation very obvious.

The vocalist only shrugged, taking another minute to stare at the night sky before turning his attention back to his friend. “Funny, I was wondering the same thing,” he told him, lips twitching when the man beside him groaned. But his amusement was short-lived, because it wasn’t very easy to forget exactly what had happened earlier, and he knew that he’d need to actually ask the question if he ever wanted the answer. “Come on, Zee; I know something’s up with you. What happened tonight, huh?”

“You could fucking smell it, Shads; don’t pretend you need a recap.”

As his friend tossed the bottle back and downed a fair amount of the brown liquor, the larger man could only frown. Of course he had been able to smell it, and he had understood that it was what had set the more volatile man off, but what he hadn’t been able to understand was why it had. And, at the rate his friend was drinking, he wasn’t entirely sure that he would be getting an answer to his question. “Zack, she was aroused. She’s alive; that’s going to fucking happen at some point or another. It’s not like that’s something she can control, Man. It’s ridiculous--”

“Yes, it’s ridiculous that I got pissed off and stormed out of the hot tub like a three year old throwing a tantrum. You’ve made me realize the error of my ways. Happy?”

Eyebrows skyrocketing, the alpha raised a hand and ran his palm over his face. Yeah, something was definitely up with the beta, and that probably wasn’t the first bottle he had opened. Blowing out a slow breath, he could only purse his lips and try to figure out how to respond to that little outburst. Of course, the shorter man certainly had stormed out of the hot tub earlier exactly like a three year old having a tantrum -- for Christ’s sake, he had stopped mid conversation, turned and stared at his mate, growled more viciously than he had in a long while, and then somewhat childishly splashed the lot of them as he got up and stormed away cursing and growling! -- but Matt was completely sure that the man didn’t really think that was what he had done. He was sure the man felt completely justified.

“Really, Matt. Mission accomplished; you can go. Good chat.”

“Zee,” he started after a moment, trying to tread carefully. “Come on. You know you can talk to me, and you know you need to talk to someone. You almost told me something yesterday morning, but then you didn’t, and I didn’t push it. But I’m pushing this, Man, because something big is obviously going on with you, and you’re my best friend, and I want to help! Or, at least... listen. Talk to me, Man. You got really upset tonight... just, help me understand why.”

There was a long silence as the guitarist only took another deep swig from the bottle, appearing as if he was just going to resort to giving him the silent treatment in response. But just as Matt was about to open his mouth to say something else, the other man beat him to it. “She wouldn’t even look at me.”

“What?” the alpha found himself asking, brows furrowed together as he tried to follow along. His friend had spoken on an exhale, and it seemed to be more than a comment on a whim than an actual answer to the question.

After another deep sip from the bottle and a little cough that followed, the beta’s gaze was locked harshly out into the night sky. “When it was happening,” he added in elaboration, “she just fucking lied there, turned her head away, as if I was that fucking repulsive to her.”

It took Matt a good moment to understand that his friend wasn’t speaking of earlier that night, in the hot tub, but of the night he had taken Ava as his mate. It took him even longer to figure out how they had suddenly jumped to that particular memory. “So...” he started, brow still furrowed, “you’re upset because you think she’s not attracted to you, but to... Brian, I’m guessing?”

“I’m not upset about it!” the Italian muttered bitterly, before cursing and hanging his head for a second, undoubtedly because he realized exactly how upset he sounded just by saying that. “I mean,” he stressed after a second, lifting his head up again and glaring out at nothing, “I don’t give a fuck about that! I just can’t stand the fucking idea that I’m never going to be good enough, just because I’m not a fucking pureblood!”

“Good enough?” None of this was helping with Matt’s confusion even a little bit. “I’m sorry, Zee, but I’m not following. Do you want her to like you? Or is this just a rivalry thing with Brian? Or...? What am I missing?”

“I don’t care if she likes me,” the man answered with a harsh little laugh, before waving his hand drunkenly and shaking his head all of a sudden. “No, actually, it’d be fucking fantastic if she did like me, because that’d be entertaining as hell to mess with and make her not feel good enough for once!”

“So this is still about revenge,” the vocalist concluded, frown deepening as he let his gaze flicker over his friend. It was always about revenge when it came to those two. “I thought you were over that?” he asked, earning a dark glare almost immediately in response.

“How can I be over something that I’m reminded of every fucking day?”

“That is complete and utter bullshit, and you fucking know it!” he growled in response, before quickly raising a hand in surrender and taking a deep breath when he realized exactly how off-topic that was about to take them. He wasn’t about to let the guitarist do what he always did and lead the conversation away from where it was supposed to go. “Just, help me understand how you haven’t gotten your revenge yet, will you? Didn’t you get her back enough when you took her? We’ve all seen the marks, Zacky; you obviously weren’t gentle. And I’m willing to bet, from what you just said, that you didn’t give her any comforts or--”

“She’s not a human; she wasn’t going to fucking break,” came the bitter response.

And he only sighed, tilting his head back a little bit as he gave it a small shake of disappointment. "I should punch you in the face," he mumbled under his breath, and if the beta heard him, he didn't show any signs of it. Rubbing his palm into his forehead, the vocalist tried again: “She’s a woman.”

There was dissent in the guitarist’s green eyes as he opened his mouth to make what was surely going to be some smart-assed comment, but it seemed that even when drunk, Zacky was smart enough to know better than to say whatever he was going to say about the woman Matt considered a sister. Instead, the drunken man rolled his shoulders in a dismissive shrug and turned back toward the sky. “She’s a bitch.”

The alpha didn’t even blink. “Your bitch, now,” he acknowledged with a shrug of his own, “and all I’m saying is, shouldn’t that be enough? You’ve marked her, you’ve degraded her, you’ve embarrassed her, and you’ve hurt her. What more revenge could you possibly need?”

“You’re making it sound like I fucking raped her! She was a willing participant, for fuck’s sake!”

“And you’re making it sound as if sex is a fucking chore! As if she doesn’t deserve to enjoy it!”

“It’s not my fucking fault if she can’t get off because I’m the one there! It’s not my fault if I’m still not good enough to warrant any of her fucking attention, just because I am what I am!”

Matt’s jaw practically dropped to the ground. “Holy fucking shit! You like her!” The quickly calculated mask that fell over the guitarist’s face only made him more sure of the fact. And suddenly, his annoyance with the whole situation and all of the drama was transformed into pure amusement, and he couldn’t help but bark out a quick laugh at the priceless moment. He’d known the two betas being mates was going to be entertaining! “That’s why you hate her, because you fucking liked her!”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh my god! This is so fucking great!”

“Shut up, Matt!”

But the alpha was having entirely too much fun to listen. “What,” he asked with another laugh, "did you write her a shitty love song and she crinkled it up or something?”

”Bingo!” the dark-haired man shouted bitterly, apparently having realized the conversation wasn’t just going to drop away like he might have hoped. With a sigh, he took a long sip out of the bottle and ran a hand over his face, suddenly appearing much less angry and much more depressed. “Except, it wasn’t a love song; it was a note she watched me put in her textbook. And instead of crinkling it up, she sent her brothers to meet me instead, and they tortured me with silver for four fucking days.”

“Oh fuck!” As quickly as it had come, the larger man’s amusement vanished, his lips dropping fro the grin he had been sporting and his eyes flashing. He instantly knew exactly what his friend was saying, because he and Jimmy had been the ones that had found Zacky tied down to a table in a shed at the edge of the property, barely alive, covered in unhealed wounds and burns, and in so much pain that Matt had been forced to knock him out in order to move him to safety. He’d never told them anything about it. “That’s what fucking happened? Zacky! We thought you were grabbed by hunters! If we had known it was those assholes, we could have--”

“Done nothing!” the bitter man interrupted. “No one in the pack would’ve cared, and you couldn’t have taken them on yourself without getting the entire pack trying to kill you, too.”

The alpha’s frown deepened, but he knew his friend spoke the truth, and he didn’t think lightly of the fact that he had been willing to never say a thing to any of them in an effort to protect them. Forcing his eyes closed for a moment, Matt reached over and stole the liquor bottle and took his own long, deep sip from the thing before roughly handing it back. This was a lot to process. Tentatively, he opened his eyes and stole a peek at his still-brooding friend, who was simply staring off into the night, undoubtedly facing down the ghosts from his past. “They did that to you?”

The man gave a single, slow nod in response.

“Drake Rinaldi did that to you?”

He gave another nod. “And Toni, and Rick, and Axel, and Junior. Drake did the most of it, though, yes.”

”Zee--”

“Don’t, Shad’s. It was years ago, I’ve never talked about it, and I don’t want to start now. Don’t ask me anything more about those four days, and don’t fucking ask me if I’m okay.”

It was the larger man that nodded that time. And he didn’t say anything -- not for a good amount of time, not until the one question in his mind started to burn. “Are you sure Ava had something to do with it?”

“I’m sure, Matt.”

But the alpha couldn’t really wrap his head around that, because he simply couldn’t picture his Ava being behind a plot like that. He just couldn’t imagine it. “I mean it, Zacky. Are you absolutely fucking positively sure that she was involved?”

“I didn’t mail the goddamn letter to her, Matthew!” Zacky growled, clearly not pleased by the line of questioning. “I handed the note directly to her. She fucking saw me put the note in her European History book when she was standing not even ten feet from me, and she arched one of her stupid fucking eyebrows at me when she saw it. And she was there when they--”

“She fucking watched them torture you like that?!” he couldn’t help but interrupt, murder in his hazel eyes as he shook with absolute fury, just about ready to get to his feet and hunt her down himself.

But his beta only sighed, head dropping a bit. “No, she wasn’t there then. That would have been ‘improper’ for a lady such as herself to witness. She was there several times after that, though, when they showed up to make sure I hadn’t forgotten their little ‘lesson’. They wanted to kill me, Matt, and they would’ve done it after a few more days of... fun if you and the Rev hadn’t found me when you did. But the fact that I escaped only pissed them off more, and they came back to remind me all the time.”

He had calmed down a little bit upon realizing that his newest packmate had not been there when the worst of the torture had been administered, but he still wasn’t happy with what he was hearing. Of course, he had known that the Rinaldi brothers had enjoyed using Zacky as a punching bag from time to time -- nearly all of the purebloods in the pack had -- but he hadn’t realized that Ava had been a part of that. That little detail had never been revealed to him. And, as much as it pained him to hear what his beta was saying, Matt only dropped his head into his waiting hand, wincing and taking another deep breath. “What did she do?” he asked, even though he already knew that he wasn’t going to like the answer. Though, he wasn’t entirely sure why he knew it, because he shouldn’t have been able to guess anything she did or didn’t do, not when he clearly didn’t know her like he’d thought he had.

“She just stood there and watched, mostly, never flinching or looking away; just watching. Sometimes she’d grin at her brothers, sometimes she’d tilt her head and look right at me. Sometimes her face would have no emotion on it, sometimes she’d be smiling. But she was always watching; she’d never glance away even for a second. She’d yawn after a while sometimes, tell them she was getting bored or that she was starting to worry they’d never be able to rub the filth off of them if they stayed much longer. Oh, she could fucking look at me then, when her brothers and their friends were laying into me, but she wouldn’t even glance in my direction when I was taking her."

“Oh, fuck,” the larger man repeated on a sigh, still not removing his face from his hand. When he had tracked the guitarist up onto the roof, he had only assumed something was mildly agitating the man, or that he and Brian had gotten into another fight or he had gone off and done something stupid to provoke Ava because he learned she had been misleading him... He hadn’t realized how deep the problem really ran, and he hadn’t realized exactly how bad things really were. He hadn’t realized exactly how much he really fucking hated Ava, either.

He loved her like a sister, he really did, and that wasn’t something that just vanished, but dear god, he was pretty sure he wanted to strangle her, too. The woman he loved like a sister was strong and independent to the point that it was a problem, she was quick to anger, slow to forgive, secretive as hell, a bit of a snob, cold and abrasive at times, and very much a manipulative genius. The woman he loved like a sister was far from perfect, but she wasn’t this. She wasn’t an elitist who wanted to watch people suffer because of some stupid label that was thrown on them at birth, she wasn’t heartless.Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to think she was, because she was that fucking good at manipulating people, and had managed to fool all of them for so many years. Or maybe Zacky was just really, really drunk.

But he knew that wasn’t the case, and he knew that this was not something Zacky would speak of lightly. It had to have been something Zacky knew for a fact to be true, and it must’ve been something he’d struggled with day after day. Because he hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t gotten pissed and thrown it in her face, he hadn’t made smart little hints under his breath, and he hadn’t dared to whisper a word of it to any of them, even when the entire pack was in the middle of an argument that completely centered around their disagreement over Ava herself. Zacky’d kept quiet.

“Do you... do you still like her?”

The Italian man took a break from his chugging of the whiskey to let out a bitter laugh in response. “I fucking hate her! Any fucking feelings I had for her died years ago, the second she sent her brothers after me. Yeah, it fucking pisses me off that I’m never going to be good enough, but it’s the principle of it all. I don’t actually five a shit about her.”

“I get it.” For the first time, the guitarist’s reactions to his mate actually made sense and seemed logical. “God, I wish you had told us about this, Zee! Maybe you’re right and we couldn’t have done anything, but maybe we could’ve. Or, I mean, at least we would have known. We should have known; we had a right to know about--”

“You all love her,” the man interrupted softly. “I couldn’t tell you that it had been her and her brothers, because there was no way in hell I was going to let you guys get hurt in my battle. I tried for a while to get you guys to see through her shit, but you all love her. She’s your family, and--”

“She’s not family, not if this is who she really is. Zack, we loved who we thought she was. But now... Family doesn’t have family tortured and try to have family killed. I don’t know what she is, honestly, because this is all just so hard to believe! I mean, I don’t think she’s ever had a problem with me, or the Berrys, or Jimmy!” the larger man rambled slightly, before cutting himself off when the man beside him barked out another bitter laugh and downed another large gulp of the amber liquor.

“She’s so fucking hypocritical about that, isn’t she? For whatever reason, she’s fine with all of you and every other halfblooded werewolf, but me? No, she’d rather watch me get beaten to a pulp. Or maybe she’s not fine with any of you, and has some bigger game going on that I can’t even see through, who fucking knows? But do you understand now, Matt? Do you get why I had to take her? Why it had to be so rough?”

“Yeah, Man, I get it. The only thing I don’t understand is why the hell she was up for the whole thing. I mean, I know she wanted to escape from the pack, but she had other options besides you. She could’ve turned somebody, she could’ve fucking ran away. But she went to you.”

The guitarist sighed his agreement, his shoulders rising and falling as he wondered over the exact same thing. “Believe me, it doesn’t make any fucking sense to me either. She might have meant it as a joke, I don’t know, but she’s definitely not getting the last laugh on that. Don’t waste your time trying to figure it out, Shads. We’ll never really know. All we do know is that Drake showed up a few days later, she’s got fifty million dollars of his in her bank account, and she’s currently in a position to render me essentially immobile by just forgetting to make the damned tea on time.”

Matt was shuffling to get to his feet almost immediately. “I’m going to go and fucking figure out what the--”

“No, you’re not!” the other man fiercely objected, his drunken reflexes surprisingly good as he tossed a hand out and caught the alpha by the wrist before he was able to stand. “You’re going to pretend this conversation never happened, and you’re going to let me handle my business.”

“This is bigger than you, Zacky,” the vocalist tried to explain as he looked back down at his friend. “I know why you didn’t tell us before, and I can understand why you might not want us to know now, but this isn’t a little incident that we can brush under the rug. This isn’t something that I can just pretend never happened!”

”No,” the beta contradicted, “this isn’t something you have any say in. For fuck’s sake, Matt, you weren’t the one strapped down to that table all those years ago. That didn’t happen to you, it happened to me; don’t you think I should be the one to decide what happens with that information?”

“But you just told me this, and--”

“And I already regret that mistake. Please, Matt; I’m fucking begging you here. Let me handle this, just... I know you might not be able to keep this from Kat, but, the guys... This is my story; let me decide when to tell them. Please.”

He couldn’t say no, not to that, not when his friend was looking at him with desperation in his eyes. How could he? After all, it wasn’t his story. So, with an audible sigh, he settled back down onto the roof, reaching with his non-restrained hand for the bottle. “Alright, Zee. I won’t say anything to anyone but Kat -- because I can avoid it for a little while, but I can’t lie to her. And I promise she won’t say anything, either, when I eventually do tell her. But, Zee, the others need to know, because if that fifty million dollars could be what I think it could be...”

“I know, Matt, I know.”