What We Left Unsaid

“So there you are!” Ava said in exasperation when she caught sight of the man lounging in the den, pausing where she stood and moving closer to the doorway.

“Go away,” Zacky grumbled in reply, knowing exactly who had spoken even without looking in her direction. She was the last person he wanted to deal with at the moment.

“I heard about your little dilemma,” the woman commented, her tone neither sympathetic nor cruel. She watched as the man before her groaned, remaining where he was on the couch, his eyes closed. As he lifted his hands to rub at his face, she moved into the room, situating herself on the windowsill that was perpendicular, if not a few feet away, from the couch.

“Came to demand I refuse the opportunity, and let Brian be beta, didn’t you? Can’t let me of all things reproduce! And the horror, thinking that I’d be outranking a pure-blood!” came his bitter reply, still refusing to so much as open his eyes and look in her direction, though a part of him was wary of where she had moved to. He’d heard her pass, but as far as he knew, she could’ve been just a few feet away, preparing to lunge.

She wasn’t, though. Instead, she was rolling her eyes at him from her position on the large sill, one of her feet swinging carelessly beside her as she stretched out her back on the wall. She had bristled at his assumptions, but didn’t bother to comment on them, instead yawning audibly to convey her boredom. “You done with your pity party yet?”

“Why the fuck are you here?”

“Mmmm, guess not,” she answered for herself, this time waiting as she stretched out her arms before bothering to reply, knowing he was getting more agitated with every silent second. “I was curious, I don’t know. Heaven knows I’m not here because I enjoy your company.” She paused to listen to his growl, a small smirk slipping onto her lips at the desired reply. “I really am curious, though: what exactly are your plans? There don’t seem to be many available females lining up outside your door.”

“Oh, right!” he barked out a bitter laugh. “What ever shall I do? You’re not as fucking stupid as you come off as, Rinaldi, you know what I’ll have to do.”

“Take a human,” she supplied, clicking her tongue as she considered the thought. As she eyed the tensed male before her, who was very clearly trying to play off that he was relaxed in and not threatened by her presence, she tilted her head in animal curiosity. “What I don’t know is why it seems to bother you so much. I’d thought you liked humans.”

That was when the male decided to blink open his eyes, his murderous green gaze fixed on the cat-like stretching woman. “I don’t have a problem with them. Don’t fucking project shit on me!”

The blonde gave a lazy smile, sending him a glance that said she was anything but sorry. “So why is it, then, that you’re brooding about here when you should be scrounging around out there, looking for the human with the biggest tits or something? Getting to know someone to figure out if they’ll be a good match for you?”

His glare intensified at her first question, before he resigned himself to shutting his eyes again, shifting in his position until he got somewhat comfortable. Doing his best to picture he was talking to anyone else, he debated whether or not it’d be worth it to demand she leave. But, just like he had reasoned to himself earlier, she wouldn’t leave because he said so, and that would only make him appear to have less power than he already did. So he took the bait, knowing full-well what it was. “Because I don’t want a mate, I’m forced to take one. I’m not going to go out fucking scouting. I don’t want to bring someone into the mockery they’ll be faced with; unlike you, I don’t enjoy torturing people like that. So, when I do turn someone, I don’t want to have taken a liking to her or anything, because that’ll sure as hell make me feel a whole lot worse about the situation.”

“Aw, it has a heart,” the woman cooed, before once again rolling her eyes at his dramatics and easily shrugging off his jabs at her. “Is that your only reasoning for your reluctance, then? That you don’t want to force someone into your lifestyle?”

“Lifestyle sure is a fucking euphemism, isn’t it?” he bit back bitterly, but nevertheless sighed and decided to answer her question. “I just don’t want a mate, okay? How fucking hard is that to understand? I don’t want to be tied down to a single woman; I’m not interested in starting a family like Matt is; I don’t want to have to spend time with and take care of someone because I’m suddenly responsible for them; I have absolutely no desire in any of the things that come with having a mate!”

The woman’s expression had morphed into something more calculating as he had snapped every explanation at her, and her eyebrows had arched a bit in curiosity. “But you want to be a beta more than you want to not have a mate?”

“Obviously,” he bit back, “so you can stop crossing your fingers that I’ll just let Brian take the position. Why the fuck are you so interested, anyway? Discussing this isn’t making me as miserable as you might have hoped.”

“That may be, but it sure as hell is irritating you. But I’m not here to watch you squirm this time, I’m here to make you an offer.”

He wasn’t surprised. “Give the title to Brian and you’ll... what? Not return with a bunch of your pure-blood friends to try and kill me again?”

“Take me as your mate.”

“What?” he hissed out, his surprise evident as his eyes flew open, not for a second believing his ears. But, as he took in the sight of the now-slightly-agitated woman sending him a look that clearly said ‘you heard me; I’m not repeating myself’, he realized he hadn’t misheard her. His eyes widened into shock before narrowing in confusion, only to then morph into suspicion and anger almost instantly. Even as her own expression darkened as she was forced to wait for his response, he figured that she was waiting for him to either agree or make some stupid comment about ‘why the hell would I want to do that?’ before she, herself, burst into laughter and mocked him for believing her. His only reply was a very bitter, humorless laugh.

Instantly, he was done sharing the room with her, done with the conversation, and done with her. Getting to his feet and sending the now definitely pissed woman a malicious glare, Zacky started to the door.

Ava growled lowly, correctly assuming that he didn’t think she was serious, and hopped to her own feet. “After the full moon, if I’m not mated to someone else, my pack will either force me to become mated to Alaric, or they’ll label me a traitor; either way, I’m dead within the year,” she explained quickly, watching in satisfaction as the man before her paused in his motions, allowing her to speak even though he didn’t bother to turn back around to face her. “Look, you don’t want a mate and I don’t want a mate, but we both need one, don’t we? Just on the surface, of course -- that way we both don’t have to deal with actually having a mate.”

He remained silent for a moment, and she almost thought he wanted her to continue, but then he just shook his head, barked out another bitter laugh, and resumed walking out of the room.

Ava quickly followed after him, determined to force him to at least answer her. “Damn it, Baker! I’m not thrilled about this either; I’m fucking being pragmatic. You have no goddamn reason to--”

“Not take your offer?” the guitarist interrupted, the annoyed huff of a response enough to prove his guess had been right on the money. He was still pretty damn convinced that she was trying to play a joke on him, because her story didn’t make sense to him: if she had to escape from her pack, she could just run away, or have someone else be her mate; it wasn’t like her only option was him. “Well guess what, Princess? That’s exactly what I’m saying!” he informed her harshly, just as he stepped into the living room where the majority of the others were lounging about. Whatever conversation they had been having immediately died down as they watched him storm in, the blonde still tailing him. “As entertaining as your proposition was, I’d rather be dead, so take your gracious offer and go fuck yourself, you fucking inbred bitch!”

The blonde stiffened, her gaze remaining trained on his back and not on the several other people that had just witnessed the now-very-public rejection. Forcing herself to resist the urge to attack him or embarrass herself further, she settled on sending him a sneer. “Stupid fucking mutt,” she snapped, before abruptly turning on her heel and disappearing back down the hall.

The black-haired man whirled around at the sound of the word, producing the most vicious growl that the youngest pack member had ever heard, his eyes glowing amber in lethal warning. There was no doubt in any of the onlookers’ minds that, had Ava not been out of sight by the time he had turned around, Zacky would have tore into her with absolutely no hesitation and absolutely no mercy. As it were, the frustrated man snatched the nearest item he could find, which just happened to be a rather large and expensive vase, and threw it across the room, not nearly satisfied when he watched it shatter into a million pieces on the wall closest to where the blonde had taken her leave. Then, still fuming, the man threw his elbows into the air and clawed at his hair, before turning sharply and stalking over to the kitchen, his muscles clearly screaming for a fight.

No one moved for several seconds, as if expecting several more crashes to follow, but when nothing seemed to be smashing into any more walls, they all slowly started to relax out of their rigid state. From where she sat curled up into Matt’s side, Katerina turned her wide eyes to each of the men in the room, noting the shared winces that marred both Jason and Johnny’s faces, the arched eyebrows on Brian’s face, and, finally, the disappointed look on her mate’s. Her heart still beating louder than it should have been, she strained her attention and tried to focus on where exactly the angered man had stormed off to, but when she didn’t sense him, she allowed herself to relax further. Having identified what it was that had caused the violent outburst, but not understanding exactly why, she asked in the softest whisper she could manage, “what’s a ‘mutt’?”

“Me,” came the dark reply of still-violently-angry man as he crossed back into the room, a bottle of Jack Daniels clutched tightly in his hand. Giving a bitter laugh, the glowering werewolf ignored the widening innocent green eyes that watched him in fear and rephrased, “or, less specifically, the lowest scum on the face of the planet, in the eyes of the fucking elitists. I’m sure Brian could explain it to you.” As he pushed out through the back door, Zacky bit out his friend’s name, letting the screen door slam shut behind him.

The room was frozen again until Kat managed to shift her gaze back to the remaining guitarist, watching as he instantly bristled under her questioning gaze. “I didn’t do shit; don’t you fucking look at me like that!”

“Gates!” came Matt’s growl of a warning, not taking a liking to the tone that was directed at his mate. Inhaling sharply, he turned to look at the woman seated beside him, a frown tugging on his lips as he tried to think of the best way to explain what had just happened. “I told you there were different ‘types’ of werewolves, remember? There are different kinds of ‘-bloods’. I’m a half-blood, since my father was a full-blood and my mother was turned. Johnny’s a full-blood, even though both of his parents were only half-bloods, because they were still both born werewolves. Matt and Jason are half-bloods, too. And then there’s Brian, who’s what some call a pure-blood--”

“It means that not only am I a full-blood, but my parents were, and their parents, and a bunch of other lineage shit like that,” the guitarist supplied.

“Exactly. Now, Ava is also a pure-blood, but she’s like a super-pure-blood--”

“Think like super-Malfoy family, but werewolves, not wizards,” Johnny added, grinning from ear-to-ear at the fact that he’d been able to help, though he earned a few judgmental looks from the other men around him by doing so.

“...Right, so, it’s ridiculous sounding, we all know -- but that’s because she can literally pull out a family tree that goes straight back to the fucking Roman Empire without being ‘tainted’, even indirectly, by anything non-pureblooded. But then there’s Zacky. His father was turned -- by another werewolf that was turned, if we want to get really fucking technical -- and his mother was human, never even turned. The point is that there is absolutely no connection to any born werewolf anywhere in Zacky’s lines, making him what some call a ‘mutt’. For some fucked up reason, that places Zacky at the absolute bottom of the pyramid for those who rank werewolves, way lower than those who were turned, and, if I’m not mistaken, even lower than humans in general...?” he trailed off, looking to Brian for confirmation.

“Yep,” the lounging man provided, popping the ‘p’ as he did. “Though, there is a slightly logical reasoning for the ranking; it’s not completely random. It’s because, while there’s no respect for turned werewolves in the elitist community, there’s an understanding that, due to the scarcity of born female werewolves, some wolves would have to be turned. So, turned females rank a hell of a lot higher than turned males, because there’s no fucking reason to turn a male... though they’re all really at the bottom with the dirt and shit anyways. So, naturally a turned male mating with a female turned just produces even lower-ranked offspring. But a turned mating with a human -- wait, fuck that; a turned breeding with a human, and not even biting them to turn them? Yeah, that’s a big ‘fuck you’ to the werewolf society, you know, to be given the gift of being a werewolf only to go back to humans? That’s why they’re ranked at the absolute bottom, because not only are they so diluted from interbreeding with humans, but their existence is an insult to the species. Or so the lectures go.”

Matt tilted a bemused head, looking rather interested in the topic. “Did you guys have lessons in this shit or something?”

“All the goddamn time.”

Kat tilted her head, trying to process all of the new information. “So that’s why you’re closest to Ava, then, because you’re both pure-bloods?”

Brian frowned, looking about to argue the point for a minute, but resigned himself to a curt nod of acknowledgement. “We knew each other longest because we both are, so, in a way, yes. Hell, my parents wanted me to take her as a mate, but neither of us wanted that.” He explained, before pausing and narrowing his eyes at the redhead seated across the room from him, quickly deciphering the wary expression on her face, as if she was suddenly self-conscious before him. Giving an irritated sigh, he rolled his eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking in that little closed off head of yours, stop,” he suggested. “We don’t all turn out to be the way we were raised, alright?”

Watching as his mate bobbed her head quickly, suddenly seeming rather relieved, Matt grinned. “Brian’s been our friend for years, love, and he’s known what we are from day one. The point of the story wasn’t to make you feel bad for being at the bottom of some fucking pointless pyramid, it was to explain why you should never use the word ‘mutt’ in the presence of Zacky, even if you’re only talking about a fucking German Shepherd mix or something.”

“Though, Zacky does kind of overreact to the word, to be fair. It’s not really meant as bad as it sounds,” Brian started, only to stop when he watched every other male in the room give him a look. “Alright, it is meant to be as bad as it sounds, but when Ava and I use it we don’t mean it like that.” He was forced to sigh once again when everyone reiterated their pointed looks. “Okay, fucking fine, Ava meant to insult him with it like that just then, but the point is that Zee is the one that takes it more to heart than it should be, especially coming from one of us, because we don’t actually think he’s the -- how did he put it? -- ‘lowest scum on the face of the planet’. It’s just another word in our vocabulary, that we know happens to piss him off.”

“So then you shouldn’t call him it,” Katerina responded simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Brian narrowed his eyes, not liking the definitive tone she was using against him. “To be fair,” he pointed out, “Zacky called Ava an inbred bitch first.”

“And, ‘to be fair’, none of us have any idea what the hell they were arguing over,” Matt added before anyone else jumped in and it became a who’s-side-are-you-on kind of argument, “so let’s just drop it. The only thing we need to take from this is that words can hurt people’s feelings, alright, kids? And, actually, Brian, you need to take this from it too: Zacky’s deadline is tonight, so if he gets drunk and passes out and hasn’t taken a mate by tomorrow morning, you’re up.”

“And tomorrow’s the full moon -- talk about a head’s up...”

“Would you rather me tell Johnny that he can step up if Zacky doesn’t?”

The guitarist frowned, bristling at the very idea. “Wasn’t complaining, Captain. I can work with whatever timeframe you give me.”