This was the only ass-chewing I have ever received that didn’t involve any words.

Trowa stood before us with feet shoulder-width apart and arms crossed. The scowl on his face would have had many a drill sergeant’s eyes full with tears of wonder. His visible eye was bright, nearly blinding in its intensity and more detailed than I had ever seen it. As I craned my neck to look up at him I realized that his anger made him seem miles tall, which added an omnipotent weight to his non-words. The bit of moon showing over his left shoulder reinforced the feeling.

Heero was collecting what little of the Hai-Uri was left into one of the infamous Glad Flex garbage bags. Heero’s car waited off to the side. Trowa didn’t want to move me until Sally looked me over and gave the all-clear. He was afraid of causing permanent damage. Considering how I kept wriggling and jiggling, I knew that all of my bits were functioning as they should... but whatever. Trowa would not be swayed until the good doctor said as much.

Howard and I were sitting on the ground, glaring up at Trowa like sullen children. Howard had his arms crossed and legs splayed with a scowl of his own, while I laid back on my elbows to help alleviate more of the pain from my hip. The pain was finally bearable, but that didn’t mean I’d be up to skipping to the car. We were filthy; we had dirt on our faces, clothes, and under our fingernails. I could feel the twigs in my hair and snorted at the bits in Howard’s. Somewhere along the way I lost a boot, and both of us had the remains of cupcakes around our mouths. That last bit certainly completed the ‘sullen children’ image.

“...”

“I know Trowa, but my uncle and I were more than capable of--”

“...”

“We had it under control! We turned the son of a bitch into bacon bits, didn’t we?”

“...”

“I am a grown-ass man! I don’t need permission to--”

“...”

“What?! Now, that’s just a bunch of bullshit. You know what? Kiss my ass, I’m not doing it.”

“Duo,” Heero broke in, voice exhausted. “Please. Trowa is right. You need to have adequate protection, and part of that protection includes you doing what you are asked to do.” He stood up, tying the bag closed. “First the Hunters, then the shape-shifters, and now this.” He gestured tiredly at the ground. “This is spinning wildly out of control, and you are not helping the situation running off like this without adequate protection.” He gestured towards Howard. “What if your uncle was killed trying to protect you?”

I sat up in terror, my heart skipping all sorts of beats. I didn’t want to think about Howard dying, period, let alone dying for me. I clutched at my chest at the thought, then hissed and clutched at my hip. I had put weight on it in my distraction.

Howard stopped glaring at Trowa to glare at Heero. “Kiss my wrinkled ass! I do what the fuck I want. You think I don’t know the risks? Shit.” He turned to Trowa. “I could get killed in a car accident driving to the grocery store. Does that mean I shouldn’t drive?” He turned back to Heero. “That’s not a good enough excuse not to help my nephew.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. Howard was the fucking best.

“We are not saying that you are not to help Duo,” Trowa finally spoke, voice smooth and easy. His anger was still there, but it was now banked instead of boiling. “We are saying that the best way to help him is to do what we are asking you to do. When you or Hilde leave for work, errands or entertainment, we are to shadow you for your safety. If we give you an instruction, follow it without question even if it makes no sense to you. If whoever this is has made it this far, then they already know where you and your family live. Hiding is out of the question, but being smart about this is not.”

I pouted. So did Howard. Sullen children indeed.

“Duo.” Trowa’s banked anger rose again. Not as high as before, but still enough to be impressive. “Not only will I not kiss your ass, I will put my foot up your ass if you ever do something this stupid again, Primus or no.” He seemed to grow again. “You have to start thinking about others besides yourself. Wufei may be the Packmaster, but you are his Primus. That makes you essentially his second-in-command. Act like it!”

Furious, I rose up to my knee on my good leg in order to keep my hip straight and stress-free. I hissed in pain as all of the weight to my knee dug into the rocky ground and made me wobble. With my balance off, I was forced to put my hand to the ground to relieve the balance issue. This also made me seem like I was doing some weird-ass yoga move. “You can’t expect me to act like one when I’m not treated like one!” I snapped, pointing my finger at him. It would’ve been much more powerful without the yoga pose, though. I was sure. “You guys constantly keep shit from me!” I opened my hand, palm up. “If you won’t tell me, how am I to be informed of what’s going on, huh? An eight-ball? Tarot cards? What?” I threw my hand into the air in exasperation. “This is not the first time I’ve bitched about this issue.”

Trowa was silent for a moment. In that silence Heero walked up, stopping to stand beside Howard. “He is right, Trowa,” Heero said quietly. “If there was something you felt you should know and you did not, you would find your information in whatever way you could. Duo is no different in that than us.” Trowa grunted. Heero turned to me. “Trowa is right, too. Duo, you have to think about how your actions will impact the Pack. Before Howard called, everyone was tearing the city apart looking for you, afraid you had been taken by the shape-shifters. Several of the cubs were almost run over by an eighteen wheeler.” My eyes widened in shock. “They are fine,” he broke in before I had a panic attack, “but all of this could have been avoided if you had simply left a note or called to say who you were going to be with and where. You are our responsibility, but you are not our prisoner.”

“And I still got attacked anyway,” I said to myself as I laid back down on the ground. The yoga pose was too hard.

Heero shrugged. “Which was why we were worried. We knew it was very likely you would be.”

I rolled my eyes up to Howard. “I guess I did need protection after all,” I told him, recalling my ‘I didn’t need protection’ comment from this morning.

He shrugged. “You always will.” He scratched the inside of his leg. “Trouble haunts you Duo, like nothing I have ever seen.”

“Yeah,” I said, blowing out air through my puffed cheeks. I glanced back up at Heero. “Are you sure the cubs are okay?”

He smiled. “They were well enough to give the driver the finger and yell obscenities.”

I snorted, but it sounded tearful even to me. I felt like a fool. “I’m such an idiot,” I whispered, then immediately pointed at Trowa and yelled, “Shut up!” before the words could even leave his mouth. He didn’t say a word, but the smirk on his face said it all. Heero snorted and Howard chuckled. The angry atmosphere vanished right as Sally’s headlights shone through the trees.

Just like that, I was forgiven.

***

Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be so easily forgiven at home.

When we pulled up I could sense that everyone was really, really cheesed off at me. As they should have been. If Howard or Hilde had gone off without telling me where and for how long, I would’ve had an Amber Alert out faster than you could say Shiner Bock. So, I was perfectly willing to accept whatever bites they were going to take out of my hide. That completely changed however when Trowa had to reach in and lift me out. Once out, the bandages that Sally had wrapped around my upper thigh and waist were in plain sight. That sent the werewolves into a frenzy, as now they were also cheesed off that I had gotten hurt.

Nothing was broken or torn thankfully, but the Hai-Uri had run into my leg with such force it nearly yanked the ball joint out of my hip socket. The strain on the tendons, ligaments, muscles and bones was causing inflammation. The inflammation caused stiffness and pain. Lots and lots of pain. I couldn’t wait for the steroid shot to kick in. Fuckin’ hell. Next time the son of a gun could have my leg. It’d probably hurt less.

Heero tried to calm everyone down as Trowa carried me to the house. Looking over Trowa’s shoulder, I could see Howard had already pulled into my driveway and was climbing out of his truck. Sally had pulled in right behind him and was making sure he got inside the house okay. It didn’t seem as if Hilde was home yet. With that weight off of my chest I faced ahead of me to see Quatre standing on the stairs, face full of concern as he twisted his hands in anxiousness. He was dressed in his usual attire, but he was disheveled in a manner that I was not familiar with. Neither was Trowa. Concern rolled off of him for his lover. “Quatre?”

The shape-shifter’s head snapped up. Even though he was looking at us, I felt that his mind was somewhere else. “I thought I’d lost you,” he told me quietly. “I thought they came again and snatched you out from under my nose.” Without another word he turned on his heel and jogged up the stairs. He held the door open for Trowa as he carried me in.

Guilt blossomed in me all over again. Of course. Quatre was the only one home at the time I left. It would automatically fall on him to ensure my safety. “What did Wufei say to you?” I gasped as a thought occurred to me. “Did he lay a hand on you?!” I started fighting my way out of Trowa’s arms. Naturally I got nowhere, but it was the attempt that counted.

“Nothing, and no,” Quatre told me with a weak laugh. “Duo, stop before you break something.” I held still with a pout, and Quatre laughed again. “There was nothing he could say to me that I already hadn’t thought to myself,” he said, sobering, “and he has yet to raise a paw against me. Even though this time I deserved it.”

“Quatre--”

“No, Duo. I heard you leave. I just couldn’t bring myself to care.”

...And then I went on and nearly got killed. Yeah. Good job, that one. Well, whatever guilt I was feeling Quatre probably felt double. With a wave of my hand to say that I didn’t hold anything against anybody, Trowa made his way up the stairs towards the bedroom. Wufei had not been seen by anybody but he was in the house somewhere. I knew that that didn’t bode well for me. If Wufei wasn’t out having someone’s ass, it meant that I was in Trouble with a capital T.

Damn. I was so tired of being in the dog house.

Quatre followed us up and held the antechamber and bedroom doors open. Trowa situated me in bed while Quatre made sure everything I could possibly need was within arm’s reach. I was in no mood to eat anything, but my blond buddy made sure I had enough caffeine and snacks to last me on a trip to the moon. Sally popped in soon afterwards to make sure I was as well as I could be, and then the three of them left me to my own devices. I managed to get through an episode of Family Guy and The Boondocks each, two Dr. Peppers, a bag of Certs, a pack of Twizzlers, another bag of Certs, and that weird-ass Chanel Five commercial with Brad Pitt before I passed out from exhaustion.

I didn’t know if it was because of the Hai-Uri, but I briefly dreamt of a firefly that had the power to spread disease through its bite. It then turned into a grotesque, hunchback human that also turned into a beautiful, long-haired man with soft brown eyes and a warm smile.

***

“Duo.”

My eyes snapped open. The room was pitch black, which wasn’t unusual. Sometimes the clouds hid the moon so well that light didn’t come through the skylight. Tonight seemed to be one of those nights. “Wufei?” I turned my head to the left in the direction of his voice.

He was silent a moment. “Just what. The hell. Did you think. You were doing.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Yep. Wufei was fuckin’ furious. “I was trying to help.”

“Help how? By touching something else that will shock you? Incapacitate you, maybe?” I felt a rush of air, and then I felt his breath against my face. His voice was a harsh whisper. “Possibly kill you?”

I swallowed hard. That hadn’t occurred to me. Shit. I really, really didn’t think this through. “There was a shape-shifter there. I felt him.” I winced, realizing that that wasn’t going to help my situation at all. “He didn’t attack or anything though. Just watched sometimes. The rest of the time he left. Don’t know where to.” He didn’t respond. “Wu, unlike you I can’t see in the dark.”

Lightening fast the bedside lamp came on. I had to blink a few times to adjust to the light, and when I did I nearly gasped. Wufei’s voice did not match the rest of him. He sounded pissed, and I was sure he was pissed. His eyes though, screamed his terror. He was pale. It wasn’t obvious, but the faint tremors were noticeable enough. I had really done a number on him this time. “Wufei?” As I sat up he stood up. I reached out to take a fisted hand but he took a step back. Startled and slightly hurt, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I took another breath. Wufei took a couple too, and by my fifth breath his hands at least loosened. “Wufei, I screwed up. I know I did. And I know the cubs almost got hurt and you probably bailed on your client when someone noticed I wasn’t where I should have been... I’m sorry. I realize I wasn’t thinking and I’m sorry.”

He stood there in silence a moment. A really long moment. Finally, he sighed and gracefully plopped down on the bed. His gaze was so intense, I felt as though he could see through me to the wall. Again, he was silent a long time and I was getting sleepy. After a shorter eternity, he stood up. “Wufei?”

“Do not ever scare me like that again.” Without another word he walked from the room.

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I laid back down and stared at the skylight until the sun came up.

He didn’t come back.

***

Things settled down over the following week. It helped tremendously that I didn’t venture further than the living room, and that was probably why everyone’s stress levels were low. Things were hairy the night before last when another Hunter was seen snooping around my house, but thankfully Howard and Hilde weren’t home and Heero... er... ‘took care’ of the problem. That made me happy. After the horror of the Hai-Uri and the still unidentified shape-shifter, I was in no mood for driving out into the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night to bury a corpse among others in a hidden Hunter cemetery. Yeah. I would’ve been asking for it.

This also gave me ample time to get quite a bit of research done. Despite recognizing a Hai-Uri, impundulu, and other creatures on sight, I really didn’t know anything about them. It would’ve been cool if all of the details of a creature downloaded into my brain like their names did, but I guess that would make it too easy. So between some old, old books of Wufei’s, the Creature Catalog and Wikipedia, I was learning quite a bit about the creatures I had come across. Unfortunately, the information I had gained didn’t have any practical application. It was enough to drive me crazy. I wasn’t any better off knowing!

At least my hip had completely healed, thankfully. I was two limps away from Sally forcing me into a wheelchair.

Wufei has calmed down quite a bit too. Turned out that he had left to find the mysterious shape-shifter. There were points where the Shifter’s scent was very strong, but then it would disappear at one point only to reappear at another. It didn’t leave a trail, exactly. This lead Wufei to believe that the shape-shifter was an avian or winged-type animal of some sort. Made sense, especially since I kept feeling him leaving and coming back. On the other hand, hydrogen cyanide has a half life of one to three years in the atmosphere. Although Darlian poured it over the ground (especially around my shack where he killed Harvest), some of it has deteriorated and some of it has not. Unfortunately, this made trailing me and other things by smell inconsistent. The werewolves would have a sudden case of olfactory fatigue and be unable to smell anything for nearly an hour, allowing the trail to go cold. It’s happened several times already. (Fortunately for me, it happened while we were playing Paintball).

It was just after lunch. I was sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop, ready to slam my head against the table in frustration as another thought lead to nowhere. There were too many unknowns that didn’t seem to connect to each other, and I was tired of trying to piece them together. Sighing hard enough that it blew my bangs away from my eyes, I gave into temptation and let my head bang against the table, once.

Quatre was watching General Hospital in the living room. He glanced at me. When he didn’t see blood, he went back to his show. I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t tempted to jump off of the roof in order to save my sanity.

Pulling my leg up on the chair, I wrapped my arms around my knee and sighed again. There was too much going on: the Blue Mummy, the Hunters, the shape-shifters with the wizard and impundulu, the Hai-Uri, another shape-shifter... fuckin hell. This was an absolute nightmare.

About to scream, I roughly stood up and made my way to the refrigerator. I needed a beer in my system now, or else I was going to lose it like Mariemaia did when Trowa deleted her episode of iCarly before she had a chance to watch--

“DOWN!”

I started to drop to the floor as the top half of the refrigerator door exploded. Milk, orange juice, beer, eggs, sushi, salad, ice cubes, and lord knew what else rained down on me. Unfortunately, I was focused on getting down instead of covering my head. The handle of the door shattered in such a way that I got smacked in the face, but I didn’t let that stop me as I rolled underneath the kitchen table. The delayed blam of the bullet was as telling as thunder after a lightening strike.

“STAY THERE!” Quatre shouted as he pulled what looked to be an AK-47 from either out of thin air or out of his ass. Not sure which, didn’t care which. He punched through the window with his fist, stuck the barrel through the hole and started firing away. I gaped. I knew that that glass wasn’t regular glass. That window was made from the same material as helicopter windows, and Quatre punched through it like he was Rambo in the mood to kick somebody’s ass. My BFF was such a fuckin’ stud.

Speaking of helicopters... I heard what suspiciously sounded like one getting close. I heard more gunfire in conjunction with Quatre’s, and knew that the Maguanacs were defending us as well. My mind was whirling. These weren’t the Hunters. These were those shape-shifters that hunted Heero and I before, except this time Heero wasn’t here. Did they know that Heero was at work? If not, why not? If so, they weren’t after him. If not him, were they after me? If so, why me? Or was there a separate attack happening at Heero’s job?! No one was there to help him! “Oh god, Heero!” I yelled, at a loss to do anything else.

A stray shot hit one of the chairs, turning it into kindling.

Cursing vehemently, Quatre ran from the window to the refrigerator. Yanking off what remained of the doors, he then ripped everything out, including the shelves and the partition that divided the frig half from the freezer half. Yanking the cord out of the wall so hard it sparked, Quatre kicked the table from over me to replace it with the refrigerator. I curled myself into a tight ball and flinched as it crashed around me, muffling the noise by half and sending me into semi-darkness. The sound of my hyperventilation and shaking limbs drumming against the floor only added to the chaos happening around me, as did the gunfire, the sounds of heavy objects crashing and Quatre’s yelled cries of, ‘Annihilate them!’

***

Holiday Inn has really come up in the world.

The decor was elegant but not stuffy, a perfect balance of attractive while inviting. I appreciated the earth tones that were relaxing but that didn’t make me feel like I was in a room of mud. The bed and sheets begged me to crawl in and stay a while, and I very nearly gave in to its pleas. Instead, I thought it’d be a better idea to sit on the corner of the bed overlooking Helotes with the sights of the battle passing across my eyes and echoing in my ears.

Especially the end.

Quatre, the most furious I had ever seen him, was literally ripping off the heads of the shape-shifters the Maguanacs drug from the downed helicopter. Through a large enough gap between the floor and the refrigerator, I could see that one of the Shifter’s could see me. Eyes ablaze, he kept screaming the same phrase over and over again, gesturing angrily with his head towards me as he screamed at Quatre in his language. Quatre looked at him in confusion, before laughing harshly in his face. He said something back that had the creature pale before Quatre used a claw to remove his head from his shoulders. Yeah, could’ve done without that.

Anyway, it was obvious that they were talking about me. When I asked Quatre about it though, rather than lie to me he refused to answer. I could only assume they were saying something derogatory about me. Hell, wouldn’t be the first time. Being human was on par of a cockroach, and that opinion wasn’t going to be changed overnight... or possibly ever. Still, I kept saying the phrase over and over again in my mind, committing it to memory to ask someone who would be willing to tell.

Or, I could start following Trowa’s advice and act like a Primus.

Two knocks broke the silence. There was a pause, and then another two. Right on time.

A handful of steps took me to the door. Squinting through the peephole, I made out Rashid’s grave face. With a happy sigh, I let him in. “Thanks man.”

He didn’t reply, just gave a sharp nod as he brought my pizza over to the table. “Right here?”

“That’s fine,” I said, reaching into the mini-frig and grabbing a coke. “Want a drink?”

“No thank you, Primus.”

I grabbed a plate and sat down, piling it high with pizza. Pepperoni Lovers, yum yum. “Rashid,” I said, and felt weird doing so. There was a tone in my voice that usually wasn’t there, a tone that demanded that he get whatever I wanted done.

He had been turning away when I stopped him, but I felt his surprise that I was being so assertive. He watched silently as I sprinkled red pepper flakes over my food. “Yes, Primus?”

I didn’t know whether to look in him in the eye or to act as though what I wanted to know wasn’t a big deal. In the end, I went with dinner. Hell, I was hungry. “Those shape-shifters... what were they saying to Quatre? What did Quatre say back?” I took a bite. Heaven, pure heaven.

“They were asking him how did he do it.” Rashid mimicked the sound of the shape-shifter’s voice. “ ‘How do you do it? How do you make him serve you?’ We didn’t understand who he meant at first, until we saw him looking at you. Quatre laughed, and told him that they had it backwards. It was not you who served him, but he who served you.” He sighed wistfully. “The agony on that Shifter’s face brought me great joy.” He beamed.

I shook my head to myself. Sometimes, I forgot how vicious the rest of the Pack could be. “Why did they think I served him?” I took another bite.

“I do not know, Primus. I do not believe they know of your titles or talent.”

Yeah, I didn’t think they knew I was Wufei’s mate or a clairvoyant either. “Is there any evidence you could bring me?”

“No, my Primus. There was nothing of the sort with them.”

I nodded. Hell, it was worth asking. “Howard and Hilde?”

“Not far. At La Quinta Inn.”

“Wufei?”

He smiled. “At the house, supervising the cleanup. He is... unhappy.”

I sighed. Unhappy didn’t begin to cover it, I was sure. “Awesome. Thanks.”

Hearing the dismissal, Rashid gave me a short bow and left. I stared out the window as I ate, letting this new information dance around in my head.

Why did it matter that Quatre served me? Who cared? Why was that information so important? I remember seeing that guy’s face pale when Quatre told him. It was like he got the worse possible news ever. In fact... what gave them that idea in the first place? If I did serve Quatre, why was that worth killing me over?

Shit. Just what I needed.

More questions.

(tbc)

A/N: Helotes is a small city thirty minutes northwest of San Antonio.