Levi groaned softly against the leather of Hanji's office chair, "My head is fucking pounding. Worse than my first hangover . "
Hanji was trying to withhold her excitement, the captain could tell from the way she fiddled with her pen, her eyes straying continuously to her spiral, "Do you feel like yourself yet?"
He settled her with a glare, "What do you think, shitface?"
Hanji cocked her head at him, "Well that's a new one. But, you aren't curled up, whining in my chair anymore, so I'm going to say yes."
Levi brandished his knife at her, "Last warning, Four-eyes."
Hanji didn't seem in the least bit worried, but she didn't press the matter, "Why did you come to training if you weren't done with your heat?"
Levi groaned, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, "How am I supposed to know when this damn thing is over?"
Hanji looked away. Her mouth twisted as she hummed, dissatisfied.
Levi simmered.
Hanji thumbed the clip on her pen before continuing with abandon, "What happened? Did Eren do something to you? Was it pheromones? I heard a theory on them when labs were still freely operating. It was fascinating. What did it feel like?"
The knife embedded itself into the wall beside Hanji's ear. Levi was rather perturbed to notice that the woman didn't even flinch. She did, however, have the decency to look at least slightly admonished.
"I am not one of your lab things," Levi snarled at her.
"You're the closest thing I've got, though," Hanji returned, a sad smile on her lips.
The captains regarded one another. Levi waited for her to fold under his dark glower. Hanji did not fold. He knew she wouldn't; she never did. Instead, the woman retrieved his knife from beside her head, and wordlessly returned it to him.
Levi sheathed it at his back with a sigh, "I don't know. We were training and then something just switched. I couldn't think, I just moved."
Hanji hummed, "Can you remember anything distinctive before the change? Anything that was different or out of place?"
"It smelt like the outside." Levi shifted uncomfortably, the mere memory of the scent enough throw a spike in his breathing and bring to mind the memory of a forgotten song.
Hazel eyes narrowed with focus, "The outside? Outside of the walls?"
"Like a forest but. . ." Levi tried to think of how to put the thought of the impressions in his mind— Mark. Claim. Bond. Mate. Den. —into words. He floundered as Hanji scrutinized him before looking away, feeling heat crawl up his neck.
Hanji's face lightened and she raised an eyebrow.
Levi stood, stiffly fastening the buttons of his collar, "Those idiots should be done fighting by now."
The woman was on her feet in a moment placating hands outstretched, "We should give them more time. From what I've been able to understand of wolf hierarchy, as a beta, Eren violated some huge unspoken rules by targeting an alpha's mate. I'll honestly be surprised if Aadya doesn't tear out his throat."
Levi spun on her, "What? You knew that was a possibility and you left them?"
Hanji hefted her hands higher, "You can't get between two wolves in the middle of a fight, it's suicide."
" You can't."
Levi tore through the door, enraged at the way his heart had sank at her words. Why did the thought of losing one of the siblings have such an effect on him? What were these wolves doing to him? Despite the turmoil within his chest, Levi pushed on, unable to keep his feet from pulling him closer and closer to the stronghold.
The fighting had diminished to just a single enraged voice threaded with quiet whimpers. Levi felt the boy's desperation within his bones with each quiet plea. The captain threw open the door, pausing for just a moment on the stairs to take in the situation.
Aadya held her brother by the throat, her claws leaving deep, weeping trails in his coat. Her lips were pulled back into a snarl as she pushed him further into the cement wall, inching closer to his maw with each renewed snap and growl. Every visible patch of fur stood on end and her ears were flat against her scalp. There was blood on her canines. The beta hung limply, releasing quiet whines as he reached out to lick her jaw. There were deep grooves dripping blood from his coat. His sister had torn the will to fight from him with each tear into his hide. She would have his life if Levi didn't act quickly.
The captain jumped from the stairs, landing in a crouch, shouting out the alpha's name.
An ear twitched toward him, but there was no other sign that the alpha had heard him.
Teal eyes alighted on him for just a moment before a deeper rumble reverberated against the cement and he was slammed into the wall with renewed ferocity.
"Aadya, let him go," Levi said, his voice laced with his own, quieter—human—snarl.
"Will you come to his aid, my omega?" Aadya thundered, "Will even my own mate betray me?"
"I'm not yours," Levi snapped, "Even if I was, I couldn't let you kill him. The cost to get our hands on you two was too high."
"Then I am doing my brother a service by freeing him of this prison."
Eren's eyes rolled back and his body went limp. The alpha released her brother, letting him fall to the ground with a hollow thump. Levi's blood ran cold as he watched Aadya kneel beside Eren and open her jaws wide.
Levi cursed, rushing forward to pin an arm behind the alpha's back and lock an elbow under her jaw, "I'm getting too old to babysit brats!"
Aadya reached a hand up, black claws glistening with blood-soaked intent, before she went limp. The captain held her for a moment longer, eyes warily lingering on her stained hands. When she made no move to retaliate, Levi pulled her to her feet. It wasn't wasted on him when the she-wolf allowed him to move her from her brother's side to her cell—he knew just how easy it would have been for Aadya to sink her fangs into his throat instead.
Her face turned toward the heavy clink of the lock, but she kept her eyes fixed in the distance as she murmured, "Why do you deny the wolf within you?"
Levi's lip curled as he yanked the key loose, "I'm no damn wolf."
"In denying the wolf, you deny a part of yourself," Aadya sighed as she released her hybrid form, wincing at a particularly loud bone crack.
"You should be damn thrilled," the captain retorted, the uncertainty in his eyes contradicting the venom in his words. "If I didn't, I'd be bonded to that wolf over there right now."
The fire returned to the alpha's eyes in a flash of rage as a growl split the tenuous quiet that had rushed in to fill the place of the wolves' battle.
Levi spun on his heel to hide the resulting flinch, but he knew the alpha could hear how his pulse spiked.
Damn heat.
Damn mark.
Damn wolves.
Damn omega blood.
The captain spared a glance down at his shaking hands and decided that denying the wolf within him suited him just fine.
A weak trickle of a whimper pulled his attention away from the alpha. Levi's gaze snapped to the beta who's slitted eyes wandered without focus. The man shot forward, his knees hitting the ground beside Eren's head.
"Oi, brat," Levi muttered as he heaved the giant wolf's head off the ground, "Don't you dare fucking die on me. Do you have any idea how much paperwork I'd have to fill out for that shit?"
His eyes focused on Levi for just a moment, and then he was jerking away in fear, yelps filling the air as Eren searched for the alpha. Levi's chest twisted painfully as he watched the boy recoil. His nails scraped against the ground softly as he tried to shove himself against the wall—as far from Levi's reach as he could.
"Dammit," Levi whispered with vehemence, wanting to simultaneously repair this rift between the siblings he had caused and beat the living shit out of both of them.
The sharp staccato of boots on the stairs pulled Levi's attention from the blood that dibbled from the wolf's nose long enough for him to look over his shoulder and roar, "HANJI, GET OVER HERE."
The brunette rocked, as her pace froze. She'd never heard such desperation from him before. Hanji's eyes sharpened as she vaulted off the steps and hit the ground running.
"I'm here, what happened, Levi?"
"She was going to fucking kill him," Levi muttered, eyes flitting between each weeping gash. His hands were covered in blood, his pants were soaked with it. Despite the many years on the battlefield, the knowledge that this blood was his—was hers—was theirs —made his stomach roil.
Hanji pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose as she circled the wolf's limp form. Despite the addition of another human, the boy's nose was still pointed at Levi. His eyes had slid shut, but his paws dragged on the floor, the soft scuffs marking the sound of his attempted retreat. Levi could practically hear the soft timbre of the boy's voice with each scrape.
Please, just don't hurt me anymore.
Levi spun on the alpha, eyes black as he gripped the bars of her cell, "How could you do that to your own brother?"
The alpha was tightly curled amongst the nest, face shoved into a pillow. After a moment, she stirred, slowly lifting her head to look not at Levi, but at where Eren laid. His form had finally stilled, twitching occasionally as Hanji prodded gingerly against his hide. Aadya's eyes were filled with sadness as she looked on her brother, her hands fisted tightly. Levi found himself aggravated that she had resumed her human body—wishing for ears and a tail that could more accurately clue him in to what the woman was thinking.
"Do no think I find pleasure in seeing him this way," she murmured. Despite the mournful howl in her voice, there was no remorse in the deep amber of her eyes as the alpha met Levi's gaze. "It is the way of the wolf, small one."
"Way of the wolf, my ass ," Levi seethed.
Aadya turned from him to carefully lick at a deep groove that trailed from her collarbone to her shoulder blade.
Levi gripped the bars tightly enough that the metal groaned.
"Levi!"Hanji called, the relief in her voice enough to pull the omega away from Aadya's cell, "He's going to be okay! Come look at this regeneration. It's incredible!"
"We would not have survived the labs if we could not recover from such trivial wounds," Aadya muttered with no small amount of nettle in her tone.
Levi's gaze slid back to rest on hers, his muscles trembling with rage. The alpha met his glower, her eyes heavy with betrayal before she turned her back on him and resumed cleaning her own wounds.
"Levi-"
"Shut up, Four Eyes," Levi growled as he tore away from the cell and made his way back to stand beside the brunette.
Sure enough, the blood trickling from Eren's muzzle had dried and the boy's breathing had already stabilized. Levi was relieved when the wolf didn't immediately take up it's frenzied retreat as he drew closer, taking note of the unconscious pull on his limbs. The captain followed the woman's gestures to kneel beside her, leaning forward to watch her work.
Hanji had the thumb and index fingers of her hands at the beginning and end of a jagged slice that trailed from the bottom of the wolf's rib cage, over his haunch, and down his hind leg. After a few seconds, she would move her hands closer together, fingers acting as rudimentary sutures to hold the lips of the wound together. As Levi watched, the skin fused, leaving only faint pink skin and small drops of blood in its wake.
"This is the main incision I was worried about," Hanji explained as she shifted her weight between the balls of her feet so she could hobble closer to Eren's hind leg, "But as soon as I closed it, the tissue began to repair itself. This could be why the wolves are so hard to snuff out. If they all have these kinds of abilities, it would explain why there always seems to be an endless army."
"They aren't breeding like rabbits," Levi muttered, his own gaze wide as he watched strands of tissue reach out across shredded muscle and bone to connect and pull the skin closed, "they're just impossible to kill."
"Precisely," Hanji breathed, experimentally tugging at a recently sealed potion of flesh before going back to her previous task.
After a moment of silence, Levi asked, "How long before the kid is back on his feet?"
Hanji whipped her gaze back to him, her face contorted with incredulity, "Ha? How should I know?"
"Well, what do you think?" Levi snarled back.
Hanji huffed, "Are you seeing how fast he's healing? It could be next week or it could be in an hour. So far as I can tell, his body is expending all of its energy towards closing his wounds. I don't think it's taken care of any under the surface trauma yet. I think we'll just have to wait."
The wolf stirred under Hanji's touch as the last of the gash fused together and both captain's gazes snapped up to watch as the boy's eyes opened sluggishly. Eren's breathing was beginning to regain the labored push and pull as the pain registered through his consciousness. The wolf's form once again flinched away as his gaze fell on Levi and the captain's chest tightened.
"Don't worry, brat, your sister is in her cell."
The boy's retreat halted, but his muscles were still tensed. Levi clicked his tongue in annoyance.
The alpha had hurt Eren so badly that he was scared to even be within arm's reach of him. The captain wanted to reach out and press his hand into the beta's fur, just to piss her off and prove that he would not allow things to be done this way. Show the alpha that she couldn't just fight off anyone who so much as looked at him. He was not a wolf, and regardless of if he held affection for her or her brother, he would not be following 'the way of the wolf'.
After a moment of conflict, Levi moved from the boy and paced away to lean against the cool cement wall.
"How are you doing, Eren?" Hanji asked the boy gently, "Do you think you have enough strength to transform? I would be able to help you more if I could see your injuries better."
There was a light shuffle before a low whine threaded through the air. Levi's own muscles tensed as the pops and cracks of his transformation rose to accompany the threadbare sound of his whimper. A sick feeling took root in the omega's stomach as he listened to a particularly long whine followed by a wet shhhk.
His skin had been ripped open from the inside.
"Eren!" Hanji exclaimed, her voice high and thin with distress.
Levi couldn't remember when he'd closed his eyes, but he refused to open them now. He knew the image of Eren fighting through the transformation would be enough to pull him to the boy's side. The last thing Eren needed right now was to try and run from the omega as his own body tore at him.
The captain dug his nails into his biceps.
The change was taking longer than usual.
When the wolf's panting breath carried a note of his usual boyish tenor, Levi finally allowed himself to open his eyes. There was a rib pushing out against his skin. The bloody shard of a bone protruded from the left side of his torso. It was a clean break, one that would heal to be stronger than ever, but such things were hard to think of when the bone was pushing his skin back far enough to glimpse sinew.
"Shit," Hanji hissed, her hand fluttering beside Eren's own trembling hand as they took in the damage, "Shit, Eren, I need you to hold still. We have to push the rib back in."
"No!" The beta's yelp was hard to discern, the pain painting his words thick with wolfish tones.
"Eren, if we don't do something now you could pass out again. You've lost too much blood. We don't know that you'd wake up this time."
Levi reached to untie his cravat, tugging the fabric lose with enough force to leave the back of his neck burning. The omega strode forward, swallowing down the fury that rose up when he saw Eren flinch at his approach. How long would what had transpired that day affect them? How long would he have to see the boy's gaze land on him with nothing but fear to move the ocean of his eyes?
He shoved the cloth at Hanji, "Gag him."
The beta's face slackened in horror.
"No, he's right." Hanji reached out a hand to calm the boy even as she stretched out the other to grasp the offered cravat. "If we don't gag you, you could bite off your tongue."
After a moment, resigned terror tightened Eren's jaw. He nodded slowly, one hand cradling the skin just under the protrusion whilst the other trembled in the air above the shard, "Okay, I'll let you gag me. But, let me try to pull the bone into place. Please."
Eren wouldn't look at Levi.
Hanji's eyes bulged. "You can do that?"
A drop of sweat trailed from his hairline into the corner of his eye. The boy blinked against it while offering the woman a strained smile, "The change isn't completely involuntary, we control most of it."
How could you control a force that tears through your blood and muscle and bone until you are completely undone only to throw you back together? How could a boy that hadn't yet lived past his adolescence subject himself to so much pain and undoing? He said it like it was to be expected, like he was just another tool in an endless war to be manipulated without thought and empathy.
Because wasn't that just what he was?
Wasn't that what any of them were?
Eren stretched open his mouth as Hanji leaned forward, white cloth stretched between her hands. There was tacky blood trailing from the corner of the boy's mouth that smudged on the cravat as it was pushed into his mouth. Levi's eyes were transfixed by the ident of sharply pointed canines in the wad of cloth in the beta's jaw. His lip stung at the memory of them.
Levi absently stroked his tongue along the inside of his own canine as he watched Hanji finish tying the knot behind Eren's head. It was dull and useless in comparison to the fangs Aadya and Eren sported.
He wasn't human. He wasn't wolf. He was just another monster born to the blood-soaked fields of battle. Without a war, he lost all rights to the very breath within his chest. There would never be a place for him that wasn't dyed crimson.
Levi found himself wondering if the siblings had come to the same conclusion.
Bones cracked.
Eren screamed.