Every Story Is A Love Story
by Sandrine Shaw
You meet him when you're barely nineteen and in your freshman year at college. It's in the early hours of the morning and you're on your way home to the campus after a night out with a couple of friends, not quite drunk but pleasantly buzzed in the way that makes you feel giggly and unselfconscious, when you find yourself surrounded by a group of guys.
Maybe it's the alcohol, or maybe you're really that naive, a small town girl left to her own devices in the big city; either way, it takes you a little too long to realize that their friendly demeanor isn't quite that friendly after all and perhaps you should have taken the long way around the park.
He comes sweeping in out of the darkness like the blind superhero in the Daredevil comics your brother Thomas used to read when you were teenagers, before the accident.
And if the way he stabs his cane into one of your attackers' side is a little too practiced, if he chokes another one of them a little longer than necessary, if he's a little too unperturbed by the blood and carnage he leaves in his wake, if something about him makes your skin crawl in a bad way – well, why would you pay attention to that? He's the one who saved you, after all.
(Later, you will think that you should have trusted your instincts. Later, when it's already too late. Unlike in comic books and literature, it's so easy to confuse the hero and the villain in the real world.)
He holds out his hand and pulls you up from where you got pushed to the ground, the harsh, dirty asphalt leaving you with bruises and abrasions. His grip is firm and warm, and he doesn't let go once you're on your feet, his thumb brushing softly over the back of your hand.
"Hi," you say, stupidly, because being nervous makes you babble nonsense. "You just saved my life, I think. Or at least my virtue. Not that I'm— I mean, this would have ended really badly if you hadn't been here, so, thank you. I'm Jennifer, by the way."
He smiles. It's a sharp smile, but not unpleasant. "Deucalion."
"Like the son of Prometheus?" you blurt out, instantly blushing because mocking someone for their name is rude. All it does it make him laugh, though.
"You can call me Duke if you want."
Blind superheroes are, apparently, not a real thing. Werewolves, on the other hand, are.
It takes a while to get used to it, but Duke eases you into it gently, and it helps that you like his pack. Ennis is calm and silent, Mel is so beautiful it's almost unreal, but unlike the girls at college she doesn't use her looks to intimidate you, and Jake has a wicked sense of humor that reminds you a little of your brother.
When you hang out with them, you feel a greater sense of belonging than you ever felt among your fellow students, the crude frat boys and vain sorority girls who look down on you for liking books and evading their questions about your family. Curled up on the couch in the house the pack shares, laughing with Jake, watching Mel and Ennis spar, spending hours talking with Duke through the night, you feel more at home than you've felt in a long time.
You like them all, but you stay for Duke.
There's a quiet, understated intensity about him that intrigues you and draws you in. You know his blindness is a false veneer of vulnerability. You watched him fight; you know how dangerous he is.
His hands travel over your face, mapping your features. "You're gorgeous," he tells you in a matter-of-fact tone, and you blush.
The first time he makes love to you, it's almost overwhelming to have all his attention focused on you. Long, slim fingers explore your body inch by inch, dipping into the hollow of your throat, tracing your nipples, trailing a path downward. He makes you whimper and cry as he pushes two fingers inside you while his thumb mercilessly flicks your clit until your body shakes apart.
You can see how painfully hard he is, but when you reach for his cock, he pushes you away and presses you back into the mattress, following the path his fingers travelled with his mouth. He tears orgasm after orgasm from your body until the pleasure borders on pain, until you can barely catch your breath and don't have the power to even plead with him to stop anymore. Only then does he fuck you, and even though it's too rough and you're sore, you're too blissed out and exhausted to really mind.
He's an attentive, experienced lover, nothing like the boys you've been with before him. He knows exactly what to do to evoke what kind of reaction, and is patient and relentless enough to draw it out of you.
For days and weeks on end, he's intense but gentle, all soft touches and lingering kisses. Sometimes, though, he displays a cruel, almost sadistic streak that would scare you away if it didn't leave you quite so satisfied. You don't know what sets him off, and maybe you should ask. Maybe you should worry. But you've never come as hard as the night when he bends you over the footboard of the bed, spanking you with his folded cane until your ass is on fire before he takes you from behind, his hands leaving shallow claw-marks down your sides. Afterwards, his fingers brush over your aching skin, black veins pulsating in his arms as he absorbs your pain and leaves a pleasant buzz in its place.
He never apologizes, and you never complain.
You don't understand what you've signed up for until a fight with a bunch of hunters leaves Jake injured, long bleeding gashes down his torso and his legs, and they won't stop oozing black blood. You're doing your best to clean the wounds, hours and hours at his bedside, and it's only when the night gives way to dawn that he's beginning to heal.
The flood of relief you feel makes you light-headed, and you press a comforting kiss to his feverish forehead. "You'll be okay," you tell him.
Sometime during the morning, you must have fallen asleep against Jake's side, because the next thing you know, Duke is standing next to you, dead eyes turned to Jake.
You smile up at him. "I think he'll make it," you tell him.
Duke inclines his head towards you. "No, he won't."
What follows is the single most horrible thing you've ever witnessed, worse than watching your brother's bike getting thrown halfway across the street after he was caught by the van, worse than your mother's gradual decent into depression and madness. Duke's hand is stretched around Jake's face, claws digging into his skin, fingers crushing his bones until they crack.
You clutch at Duke and try to pull him away, but he effortlessly throws you across the room as if you weigh nothing. The pain from where your back collides with the wall barely registers. You scream and you scream and you can't stop until your voice is gone.
At some point, Duke crouches down in front of you, blood-stained hands wiping at the tears on your face. "Let's not be squeamish, Jennifer," he admonishes you. He almost sounds like he's disappointed by your reaction.
You spit in his face.
He backhands you, probably not even using a fraction of his strength, but it's still hard enough to make your head slam against the wall.
"You're a monster! How could you—" There are no words to describe what he did, so you don't bother to finish the question.
"How did you think I got my powers, my dear?" He asks, gentle and measured, as if he was talking to a child. "Jake was too weak. He had to die so that the rest of us can be stronger. Don't worry, we'll soon find someone to replace him. Now, let's be smart and not tell the others what happened here today. It would be a shame if I had to discard them as well."
He offers you his hand. You don't want to take it; you want to run away screaming and never see him again. But barely a moment ago, you watched him crush the skull of an Alpha werewolf with his bare hand. You have no interest in finding out what he could do to a defenseless human. So you make yourself wrap your fingers around his and let him pull you to your feet.
"Why did you save me?" you ask him. "That night we first met, in the park. I was nothing to you. Why not let me die?"
Duke brushes the hair from your forehead. The touch of his fingers against your skin is soft and tender. It's hard to reconcile it with the same hands that you've watched rip bodies apart and squeeze the life force out of people. "I've seen your potential. It would have been a shame to let it go to waste like that."
You're not quite sure what he means by potential, but you don't like the sound of it, and your heart is beating so fast that you think it might rip your chest apart when you think of the meaning of his words. "Do you want to turn me? Make me one of yours?"
You don't want that. Maybe at the beginning, for a while, it appeared to be a tempting option because werewolves seemed strong and powerful and almost invulnerable. You've been robbed of that fantasy in the most brutal way. The truth is: werewolves die, just like everyone else.
"No, I don't think so," Duke says, stealing a kiss from your unresponsive lips. "You're more useful to me as a human."
Jake doesn't remain the only casualty.
Mel follows him a few months later, and Jake's replacement doesn't last for long. As the years pass, the bodies keep piling up. Duke brings in new Alphas, makes them kill their own packs to join him, and when they cease to be useful, he quietly disposes of them and harvests their powers, letting the others believe that they fell victim to whatever pack they're currently usurping.
In the spring, a little over six years since that fateful night that changed your life, Duke takes the pack to Beacon Hills.
Duke's plans are always precise and minutely prepared. He leaves very little to chance, and he's long since started to involve you. Your presence in the school's boiler room is no coincidence, and even though Duke didn't bother to explain, exactly, you know you're a honey trap for Derek the moment he holds out his hand for you, a handsome knight in bloodied armor who has no idea how hopeless his situation is.
If you're shaken, that night, it's as much about the two rabid werewolves that almost tore the room apart as it is about the realization of what Duke wants you to do.
Part of you hopes you'll never see Derek again. Part of you knows that you won't be so lucky. He won't be so lucky.
"When he comes to you—" Duke starts, and you interrupt him.
"He's not going to come to me. Why would he? He doesn't even know me."
The smile on his lips make your insides freeze. "Oh, he will. When he comes to you, make sure he stays away from his pack. We've already driven a bit of a wedge between them. Now it's your turn to ensure that it stays that way."
"How am I supposed to do that?" you ask, afraid you know the answer already.
"I'm sure you'll think of something." Duke pulls you closer, chuckling. "If anything fails, you can always distract him."
Derek is broken in a way that goes beyond the gashes on his skin, and even if you were the person he thinks you are, you're not sure if you could fix him. In another life, you would like to try, though, because just looking at the way he regards you with a mixture of hopelessness and wonder in his gaze makes you ache for him.
But you can't save him. You can't even save yourself.
For a brief, desperate moment, you think you should at least make an attempt. Recklessly, when you suggest he let his pack believe he's dead, when you rattle down examples of literary characters using a false death to their advantage, you throw in Romeo and Juliet, hoping that he'll get the hint. Derek proved the other day that he knows plenty about literary theory; he should know that the only thing Juliet gained from her pretend death is an actual, real death. It's as much of a warning as you dare to give, but Derek is either too worn out or too trusting to understand.
"Everyone around me gets hurt," Derek says, and it's precisely what Duke wants him to think, how he wants Derek to isolate himself.
I'm sorry, you think when you kiss him. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
When you return next day, Duke spreads you out on the bed, his hands relentlessly skipping over your body, covering every inch of your skin.
"You reek of Derek," he sneers as he buries his nose in the crook of your neck. Warm breath against your skin makes you buck up against him, an instinctive reaction more than anything else.
Your protest is meek and breathless, but it's all you can manage. "You were the one who sent me to him."
He raises his head and turns towards you with his eyes burning red, but his tone is conversational, halfway between intrigued and amused. "Did you like it? Fucking him?" His accent curls around the words in a way that makes your belly flame with heat, and you hate it, hate him, hate how you've been conditioned to react this way, hate how much you want him. "Is he better than me? Did he make you come harder?"
Yes, you want to say, but he'd hear the lie.
You blush and turn your head away, as if that would change anything, but he won't even allow you that small, useless show of defiance, reaching for your chin and tugging you back towards him. When he kisses you, it's nothing like it was with Derek last night; nothing hesitant and tentative and gentle about it.
He spreads your thighs and pushes into you, making you gasp and dig your nails into his shoulders as hard as you can while he eradicates the last of Derek's scent and touch from your body.
He tells you about Ennis later.
You will yourself not to react, telling yourself that it was bound to happen. But it hurts in a way you didn't expect. Even though he wasn't a man of many words and you didn't exactly consider him a friend, you knew Ennis for almost as long as you knew Duke.
You thought maybe it was different with him; maybe Duke would keep him around. And if there was one exception, then there might be others.
Ennis' death crushes that hope, firmly and finally.
It only ever ends in one of two ways: they die or they join. And even if they join, they eventually die, so really, there's only one way things go for the Alphas that are unlucky enough to cross Duke's path.
You've known that Derek wasn't going to join Duke's pack since that first time you met him, down in the school's basement. He put himself in harm's way to save a perfect stranger; he was never going to kill his own.
Duke has an arm around your waist and the clawed fingers of his other hand trail suggestively down the exposed skin of your neck and shoulder.
"If you hurt her, I—" Derek grinds out between his fangs, struggling against Kali's and Aiden's hold, and you wish Duke hadn't insisted that you were here for the endgame. It's needlessly cruel to rub your betrayal in when Derek has already lost. You're not entirely sure if Duke is punishing Derek or you, for that brief moment when your loyalty was swayed, even though he shouldn't even have been able to find out about that.
He chuckles, doubtlessly amused at Derek's unwavering belief that you're the damsel in distress. "Now, why would I want to hurt her? Lovely Jennifer has been most helpful. If anything, she deserves a reward."
Derek doesn't get it until Duke cups your cheek, pressing a brief kiss against your temple, and you unconsciously lean into the touch despite yourself. You close your eyes when you see understanding flare in Derek's eyes, bitter recognition of your betrayal; you can't bear to look at him and you don't want to watch what's coming.
"Did you really think she was yours, Derek?" Duke taunts. "She's been mine all along. She'll always be mine."
As soon as he lets go of you, you all but run out of the loft. The urge to turn and take one last look at Derek is strong, and it takes all your willpower to resist.
His screams follow you outside.
"You did well," Duke says when the Beacon Hills city limits sign disappears in the rear view mirror.
There's nothing you can say that wouldn't either be a lie or anger him, so you don't say anything at all. But perhaps the sound of your silence is loud enough, because he turns his head towards you, unseeing, sunglasses-covered eyes fixed on your face in an odd approximation of watching you. It used to creep you out when he did this, but at some point you got used to it.
It's strange how easy it is to get used to all sorts of things.
"Jennifer." His tone is quiet and dangerous. You've heard him do that thing with his voice where it drowns out everything else and becomes an inhuman roar powerful enough to make glass break and shake the earth, and you've watched people cower from it. But privately, you always thought he was at his most frightening when he was calm and soft-spoken and perfectly pleasant, like now. "You know you're mine, don't you?"
You smile like you mean it, because he might not be able to see it, but he'll be able to hear it in your voice.
"Of course. Always."
It's acknowledgement rather than promise, because it's a fact. Inevitable. Irrevocable.
You've given up hoping for a happy ending to this story. At this point, all you want is an ending, any ending at all, but instead it goes on and on - new places, new people, new dead bodies - as Duke's powers grow and grow, and you'll be at his side because there's no other option for you. You ran out of options a long time ago, at nineteen, the night in the park; it just took you a while to realize it.
End.
As always, feedback is very much appreciated!