Chapter Eleven: Narrowing Night

Thanks to my wonderful beta, Blythechild! She's a constant source of loveliness

Heed the initial tags for this chapter

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Are you sleeping in the snow? she demanded when he didn't return, shifting into a wolf and probing for his familiar mind. Except it didn't feel familiar right now. It felt wired, masculine, appealing, and she withdrew quickly from that taunting focus being turned towards her. With her mind carefully guarded from his, she sent a coarse, please come back inside, that he ignored.

She waited for the sun and poked her nose out, fog huffing from her muzzle. There was no sign of him, but in the silent, muffled morning she could almost detect the thump of his heartbeat nearby. If it wasn't for all her senses being attuned to him, she would have missed it.

Padding out, she poked around a snowy bank until her nose broke through and she found two wide hazel eyes staring at her from the hollow he'd made.

You're a ridiculous animal, she told him, and he twisted around until his back was to her. You're going to freeze your tail off. Despite her harsh words, it was somewhat warm in his snow-den. Not comfortably warm, but not 'frostbite cold' either. She shuffled further in, ignoring his low warning growl, and studied the only part of his face visible to her with his bristly tail snug over his nose.

Sled dogs have double coated fur for insulation, he said finally, realising she wasn't going to quit. They often sleep like this.

She looked at his fur and the thin coating of ice along his flanks and spine. Interesting, she said. She licked the worst of the ice off, ignoring the way he twitched and rumbled with irritation at her tongue on his coat. Finally letting her groom him, and only because the skin underneath was ice-raw and pink. You're not a husky. And your fur isn't double coated. If anything, I should be the one asleep under the snow. At least I'm built for it, Vegas boy.

No, he said stubbornly, shivering. Go away. I'm happy here. Joyful. It smells like wet dog inside anyway, no one here cleans.

I'm not going, she warned him, and squeezed into the snow den, pushing it out with her shoulders. It was a horrible, squashy confinement, with snow trickling down her back and shoulders as it heated from her body pressed against it, and he was a shivering, miserable lump of a wolf underneath her, squawking with indignation. I'm staying right here until you agree to come inside.

No, he snarled, trying to wriggle out from under her, but she was determined. Fuck this place. Fuck these people. Fuck everything.

Reid peeped as she accidentally leaned too hard on his ribs, crushing him a little, and she amended that last thought. Fuck everything except her best friend. She stubbornly persisted and he went quiet and stopped wiggling. They lay in silence until he sleepily whined, I'm not shivering anymore.

Good, she said absently, licking snow from his ears.

I don't think it's good, he said, and there was a distinct slur to his voice. Tired. Confused. I forgot where we were for a second…

She surged upright, throwing snow around them, and grabbed the idiot by his stupid, selfish ruff. He made a miserable mewling noise as she dragged him up as though he weighed nothing, tugging him through the snow like a sack of doggy potatoes and through the door into the room, cussing the whole time.

Fucking piece-of-shit idiotic males, she was snarling, claws skittering uselessly as she hauled him to the bed and rolled him in. Wet and muddy and completely listless, he sprawled there and blinked sadly up at her as she shifted and stormed to the inner door, booting it with her bare heel.

That didn't work.

"Stupid fucking selfish fucker!" she cried, taking a leaf out of Rossi's book. She needed to make more noise. Books. Books would do. She jumped the bed, grabbed an armful, and proceeded to hurl them at the door with loud thumps, punctuating each one with a shouted word. "Idiot! Doesn't! Give! A! Shit! About! Me!"

Reid didn't reply, curling up tighter, his nose rough and eyes rheumy.

"Oh, that's fine," she screamed at him. "You can go and just fucking freeze yourself to death, you little shit! Leave me here alone! What the fuck am I supposed to do without you, Spencer? How do you expect me to do this alone? Oi! Answer the shitting door you cunt fucking shi—"

The door opened. She blinked, mid-hurl, and was justly rewarded by the book thunking into the man's shoulder.

"Ow," he said, frowning at her. "Please, don't."

She stared at him and considered throwing the last book, a heavy medical dictionary. Instead, she swallowed her hate and anger and fear and said, "He's given himself hypothermia because of you assholes. Are you happy now?"

"No," the man said shortly, shifting the blankets in his arms and striding past. The door clicked shut behind him, someone standing on the other side. Emily caught a glimpse of a rifle butt against a man's chest. Yay. "Hey, Spence. Can you look up for me?"

Spencer looked up. Blinked. His ears flicked, his eyes narrowed, and she watched as black lips curled back to reveal white teeth and whiter gums as he snarled.

"Yeah, I know," the man said, crouching to lay a heat pack against the frozen wolf's side. "I hate me too. The feeling is mutual, brother."

It took a long beat for the word to drop; a long beat in which Emily took a step back from this whole situation and studied the man's stocky build, the sharp jaw hidden by a neatly-trimmed beard, his green-dark eyes. The scowling shape of the mouth that she'd seen twice before: once on his father's living room wall, and once on his father's face.

Brother.

It was Ethan.

"You fuck," she breathed, feeling something fierce and furious burst into life in her chest. She wanted to shift. She wanted to hurl herself at him in a flurry of teeth and claws, wanted to throw him to the ground and enact revenge for every day they'd lost in this lonely limbo. "You did this."

"I didn't," Ethan replied quietly, smoothing his hand over Reid's shoulder and almost getting bitten for his care. Reid snapped his jaws seconds away from his brother's thumb, his growl ragged and pitched oddly as his body readjusted to not being frozen. "But… not here. Spence… this is fine, okay?"

Reid stopped. Stopped everything. Emily stared, because she'd never seen Reid—the twitchy, fiddly, wriggly Reid this still, not even when asleep—and the sight was disconcerting. Just his hazel eyes locked in place and not a muscle shifting.

Ethan tugged the blanket over his brother, tucking it close and standing to back away. The door opened again, Emily jerking with shock at the sound, and a woman sidled in. Tiny and mousey with a thin, worried face, she held out an armful of clothes and cast a nervous look over her shoulder. There was a ropey scar on her throat, barely hidden by her collar.

"Get dressed," Ethan said, turning to Emily. "You need to come with me. We don't have time." Another glance cut down to Reid, who was beginning to tremble with either fear at his words or the pain of his limbs waking up again at the returning warmth. He whined, shaking his head. "Please, Spence. This is fine."

Reid looked at her then, his brow furrowed and eyes wild.

"Please, hurry," the woman breathed. Emily took the clothes with steady hands, scenting quickly. The woman's scent was cold, clean. Chemical. Overlaid with the rough sun-fur scent of Reid.

Not Reid, she realized. Ethan. The woman smelled like Ethan. They were mated.

She hesitated, still on the cusp of her wild anger. Stay here with her sick partner or go and possibly find answers? The tension in the air was palpable. Whatever was causing them to goad her into hurrying, she didn't think it was a ruse. They were genuinely concerned.

And they needed answers.

"Okay," she said, and slid on the thick, lined pants, tugging the undershirt overhead. Another shirt followed, a sweater over that, and another coat. The woman watched silently, Ethan's breathing rough behind them, and there was a medical kit hanging on her arm.

"Stay with Spence," Ethan ordered the woman. "If they check where you were, Jacobs will say it's emergency medical treatment. He's not completely lying."

"Okay," the woman agreed, inching past as Ethan strode out the room and held the door open. Emily followed, tugging socks and boots on with one hand and almost stumbling into the wall.

Reid whined again as she stepped out of their prison. Emily shuddered at that whine, the layered horror and loneliness and fear within it, but it was too late. The door slammed shut between them with an ominous click of the lock engaging tight, and she was alone in a narrow hallway with Ethan Reid and an unknown werewolf holding a rifle.

"Come on," Ethan said, striding away. She followed, trying to look at everything at once and under no illusions that this meant freedom. There was a reason they'd waited to do this until one of them was incapacitated. Brother or not, there was every possibility that they would use Reid's confusion to control her.

Cameras hummed overhead as they walked down an endless labyrinth of corridors. Emily looked up at them, studying them as they passed. Red LEDs stared back, not a blinking light among them.

"Your camera system is offline," she pointed out, all her senses alive. There was nothing to scent in these empty halls but bleach and ice, nothing to look at but bare doors and walls, no one besides the two of them. Her skin felt odd. Over-heavy and weirdly enclosed in the clothes she hadn't worn for who knows how long, her feet clomping hard on the concrete floor.

"Not for long," Ethan grunted, and pulled out a key-card to swipe it in a panel next to a thickset door. She tried to peer around unobtrusively to see what pin he pressed in, but he blocked her with his hip and side. The door ground open and she stepped in after him, everything within her screaming trap. It's a trap, and you've left Reid alone, what kind of a mate are you?

It was a laboratory. She scented now, the bleach still sharp but not sharp enough to hide his scent and that of an unfamiliar wolf, female and young without the musky tang of the season. She narrowed her eyes, scented Ethan again.

He didn't have it either. He wasn't in season. Instead, there was everything she picked up on the men of her pack—strong, healthy, male, a whiskey-scent that bit at her nostrils that was new but not unfamiliar. There was nothing about him that whispered virile.

"We're alone," he said, whirling on her and forestalling anything she might have been about to accuse him of. "Listen to me, and please, believe me. This is my fault. This is absolutely my fault, but I can't regret that." Shaking his head, his eyes were grieved and watery-red. She remembered where she'd smelled that whiskey-scent now; on the drunks her father had used to drink his strains away with. "There's more happening here than you know. And, I swear, as soon as I realized they had my brother—as soon as I realized you guys aren't together—I have been doing everything in my power to get you out. I'm trying. I really am, but they're—" He stopped with a snarl, twining his fingers through his hair and pacing almost on the spot, his face twisted. "You can't let them breed you."

There it was; the ugly term. She shuddered, repulsed, her insides crawling as though her reproductive system had just up and decided to nope out of this whole situation.

"Okay, we're gonna have to back up a fucking step," she said slowly, glancing at the closed door. She was alone with this man who might be Reid's brother but that didn't make him safe, and that wasn't as comfortable as she might have wished it would be. "Because I have no intention of—"

"They're monitoring your water supply and waste to check your hormonal levels," Ethan said blankly with a glance at the clock. "As soon as your hormones spike indicating a season, they'll dope you up and let it happen. And it will happen. And as soon as that happens, you're…" He closed his eyes, his face suddenly harrowed, and murmured, "trapped."

There was a level of grief to that that told her with more certainty just why Ethan Reid had never come home.

"What did they do to you?" she asked, watching him carefully now. Not just what he was showing her. The smaller details: the chemical burns on his narrow hands, the way he kept glancing to the clock as though their time was fast running out, the narrow line of scarring around his throat. She remembered, suddenly, the collar on the wolf they'd seen through the fence.

"Their intention is pups," he replied, snapping that dark-green gaze back to her. "That's all they care about. They profess to be doing this for the betterment of the species and their indoctrination would certainly suggest that, but…" He trailed, coughed, and the scar pinched as his throat bobbed. Not collared anymore, but still here. "I took steps to… suppress their influence. On those who don't agree with what they're doing, and you're here because of that. I'm a valuable stud to them… isolated as we are, there's a screaming need for people like me."

Something nearby beeped, a machine whirring. There was a desk littered with data reports, chemical equations, half-open journals.

"Chemists," she murmured, and then thought of Reid. "Geniuses."

"Captive born and bred," he replied. There was an uneasiness to his actions suggesting he was putting himself in danger to tell her this, but there was also a dull kind of despair to the slope of his shoulders that suggested he wasn't as immune to the 'indoctrination' as he stated. "They want my brother, Agent Prentiss. I stopped them from continuing to use myself and Quinn for their purposes, so they took Spencer… you were the collateral they must have assumed they could use to twist him to their cause, just like they used Quinn against me. For everything we bullshit about being above animals, there are aspects of our brain that are primitive." He turned away, fumbling for something on a workbench with a clatter of glass on glass. "You should know how easy we are to control, if one has the right leverage. A male wolf, once mated and bred, is a slave to his need to protect." The bitterness was raw and realised. She breathed evenly, settling her heels and focusing on not panicking.

They needed to know more.

They needed Ethan firmly on their side. She needed to find his pressure points.

Maybe he'd already told her what they were.

"What are your children's names?" she asked, tense. This could be a misstep. The clinking paused and she waited to find out if she'd just shoved her booted foot in it. But if it worked, it was a reminder of the damage done to him, the damage that would be done to the brother that Emily suspected he still loved dearly.

"Arlo, Rowan, Imogen," he recited, turning to her with empty eyes. "Finley. Calliope. Emily. Oscar."

She blinked. Seven pups? That was…

How? That many pups should have killed his mate.

But he was still murmuring names, eyes closed and fingers tight around something hidden by his palm. "Nora. Kate. Daniel."

And it clicked. "That's a year's worth of pack pups," she said, easing back now because she felt sick, flushed, scared, desperate for—strangely—her confined little room and Spencer and comfort. Even tighter to her heart, a frantic hunger for Aaron and his neat bedroom and gentle hands, for Rossi and his loyal calm, for JJ and her soothing voice. "You're listing the year's pups."

"They'll take them," he said, and held his hand out palm up. A hypodermic glittered within, the lid capped. "As soon as they're born. They'll blindfold you and nose-blind you at your first contraction, and they'll take them before you have a chance to catch their scent. And that's how they'll keep you here. With structured glimpses of a dozen pups through a one-way window and no way to tell which ones are yours until they're too old for it to matter anymore."

All pups were born over the same three-month period; it was the nature of seasonal mating. They'd be within weeks of age of each other. Indistinguishable until they were old enough to shift to human form, unless they were willing to risk going by the markings of their fur.

She felt sick.

"What is that?" she asked, and looked at the syringe. The clock ticked once and beeped to mark the hour, and she saw him tremble.

"An out," he said plainly. "Chemical castration. It's catered to the males—there's a female version, but it's… there are side-effects. And it takes time to set, time you don't have judging from your luteinizing levels. It's permanent. It will appear to those who don't know about the solution that it's natural. And it's immediate."

Emily stared at it.

An out.

A permanent out. Reid would take it; she absolutely knew he would. Carrying litters was dangerous. Exhausting. Damaging to the mother's body. Reid would castrate himself with his own teeth before risking her like that, and he'd already attempted to turn himself into an astoundingly stupid wolfsicle.

"Side-effects?" she asked slowly, and Ethan shuddered.

Damn.

"Minimal," he lied, looking away.

Damn, damn.

"Don't lie to me," she hissed, stepping closer. "He's your brother."

"The side-effects only last two weeks," Ethan replied, his skin ashen. "Only two weeks. And he'd be isolated while they… he'd be isolated."

"Tell me." A headache throbbed behind her eyes, a warm-hot rush between her hips, a humming electricity down her spine. These feelings she knew. They were out of time. Now or never. Ethan's nostrils flared, his expression falling.

"Delirium," he said finally, refusing to meet her eyes. "Paranoia. Ah, it also… there appears to be a trigger for aggressive psychosis in the male solution. Temporary. We think."

But his eyes said it all. Temporary, maybe, but he was still carrying the wounds.

She remembered the scar on his mate's throat. Torn by teeth, biting down and shaking. Wolfish.

She'd seen Reid's fear when faced with psychosis and paranoia through their work. Not of the people afflicted with it, she could tell in the twist of his mind that they didn't frighten him. He feared it for himself and that had never made sense to her until she'd met Diana Reid.

Damn.

"No," she said quietly, and closed her eyes. They'd have to… they'd have to escape. Between now and the possible… well, they had nine months to work out it. Worst case.

It might not even take. She might miscarry. So many mights; she refused to trade a might for a certainty that would hurt him on her behalf.

"You realize what you're consenting to?" Ethan asked, lowering his hand. He didn't ask her why. He knew his brother, probably better than she did, and he knew the risks this medication carried. The fact that he wasn't pushing her further only cemented her resolve. "Your season is starting. That gives you less than twenty-four hours before they realize and medicate the both of you. You'll be collared and drugged and that's it. By the time you both come down, pair bonding will do the rest."

She just looked at him. Not feeling anything. How could she? What could she possibly say to that?

"Take me back to my friend," she said instead of anything at all, and turned her back on him. Numb resignation settled over her, offsetting the warm hum of anticipation at the knowledge she was returning to a male whose scent she'd been forcibly assaulted with for weeks now. They walked back in silence, and Ethan's feet dragged. The cameras were still off. She wondered how much time he'd bought them, and what price he'd paid to offer her a solution she couldn't take. A solution she couldn't even admit the existence of to Reid. He'd demand it. He'd be infuriated that she hadn't given him the option to take it.

He'd gladly light the match if burning himself would save her.

The man looked up as she walked by, the door clicking open at the swipe of Ethan's card. She walked into his prison willingly with her head down.

Reid bolted upright from the bed, human with his face flushed and hazy. "Emily!" he yelped, trying to stand and forestalled by the woman pressing her hand on his shoulder. He was wobbly. Idiot. "You left, why'd you leave? Are you okay?"

She looked back, but Ethan hadn't followed her in.

"He's okay," the woman said, clipping her pack shut and standing. "Some grogginess, some confusion still, but only mild. Just keep him still and quiet for a few hours, the longer the better." Emily saw her nostrils flare, saw the sympathy that crossed her face, the hand that flickered up towards her throat. "Good luck."

And she was gone and they were alone again.

Emily closed her eyes, shivered. Everything was pressing down on her; the stress of the day, Reid's illness, the quiet push of go to him deep inside her. She stripped slowly, throwing the clothes down uncaringly on the muddy floor, and stepped down into the padded depression, scooting his blankets aside. He didn't twitch away, still too listless to realize what she was doing before she did it; sliding into the cradle of his arms and pressing flush against his body, her fingers for a moment taking the rare opportunity to trace the blurred outline of the burn on his shoulder.

He'd gotten that protecting her. It would have been worse without her protecting him.

It was visual proof that they could do this without destroying what they had. If the fire hadn't broken them, neither would sex, or what came after. She leaned into him, brushing her mouth against the roughly healed skin. Turned her head as she went so her lips only skimmed him, almost accidental.

She felt his heart skip with surprise, his breathe catch. Felt him harden against her hip despite him being too muddled to realize he was even responding to her touch. They'd never held each other like this, even as his hands cautiously laced over her stomach, fingers trailing on her skin.

"You're very warm," he mumbled, relaxing into her body. And that, more than anything, stressed how sluggish his brain still was. If he'd been alert, her proximity would have worried him, had him scenting her, had him questioning her. It would have had him jerking his hips away to stop from brushing against her. Not curling against her back from his chest right down to their ankles twined together with his head drooping against her hair. "Was worried about you."

"I'm here," she replied, closing her eyes and lowering herself flat. They'd sleep. They'd just… sleep. She couldn't think of what else to do. She was done. They were done.

She missed Aaron.

She missed Jack.

She missed herself; the Emily who could have faced this fearlessly with her head held high.

Reid was quiet, his breathing evening out. "I'll never hold this against you," she told him. "This isn't our fault."

He didn't respond, already asleep. She closed her eyes and joined him, dreaming of a reprise of familiar howls summoning her home and a great black wolf standing alone on the edge of a desert that burned with the sun.

And she woke to a gun pressed against her neck. Reid was next to her, frozen and rumbling with a furious snarl working its way violently between from his bared fangs. She was a wolf, her body stiff and unwieldy as she tried to regain her equilibrium. It wasn't a surprise. Unintentional shifting was a side-effect of the season. Her body burned, Reid's scent thick in her fur, and they were still twined tight to each other.

A man crouched next to her, seemingly uncaring that his shoulder was brushing the rifle. "Don't bite," he warned her, holding up a dark-iron collar and jerking his head to where Reid was pressed down by another warning barrel.

She let him collar her, wheezing when it snapped tight and painful around her throat, feeling it bite hard into her skin and scenting blood on the air. Hers and Reid's, as he groaned similarly. A hand twisted through the collar, lifting her by it. She choked, twisting in that crushing grip as it pulled tight against her windpipe, but the grip was unrelenting.

"Stop fighting me," said the man, and a needle dipped into view.

She didn't. She fought. Behind her, she heard Reid roaring, issuing great, echoing barks of fury as he battled for his own freedom.

They lost. Reid copped a gut butt to the side of his head after he tore open the arm choking her, splattered with her captor's blood. She fought until red danced across her eyes; still the needles nipped home. They were dropped, unceremoniously, back into the bed. And while they gasped and struggled back to their paws, collared like fucking animals, the men retreated.

They were alone.

God, no, Reid choked, trying to wedge his paws under the collar and work it off. She winced, seeing blood pool down his chest from where he was tearing the skin. The spikes were set to push against their throats, to stop them from shifting without the iron reacting agonisingly with their skin. No, no no nonononono!

Calm down, she managed, shaking her own fur clean of the man's slimy touch and trying to crawl closer to him. At some point during their sleep, it had hit her well and truly. All she could scent was his fur, his sweat, his musk, and it was scattering her brain. All she could think about, horrifyingly, was Aaron and his scent, and Reid could hear that. Her boundaries shattered, she was projecting so loud that she knew he could hear her. Just, oh god, breathe. Breathing. We're breathing.

She tried to lick at the blood, offer him some comfort, but he whirled on her and snarled.

She didn't flinch. Her heart was hammering. He smelled delicious.

I'll never hold this against you, she repeated calmly and pressed close. Both their hearts were racing. He was standing spread-legged, tail high and bristling. Not meeting her gaze. His mind was a turmoil; internally, he was screaming. This isn't our fault.

I'm the aggressor, he moaned, quivering away. I'm going to—

Not our fault, she repeated, tugging him down by his ear to huddle against her chest. They stayed like that, pressed together. Never our fault. He let her groom him; shoulders first, chest. Nipping at the clumpy parts where his fur matted with blood. Where he'd attacked a man to protect her. I love you. She didn't have to clarify what she meant. Her emotions did it for her.

He didn't ask for clarification. He could feel it. They were friends; they'd been friends for years. He'd almost died for her, she'd die for him. She loved him. Absolutely.

They were pack in everything but formalities, and she suspected they always had been.

I love you too, he replied, his voice distant. I'm sorry.

Not your fault, she said one final time, and licked his muzzle. They waited. The sun dipped outside. Maybe it was an hour, maybe less, maybe forever. Time spread a little.

He shivered once and pulled away, but she was already up. Dizzy and joyful and more than a little fucked up, the drugs hit hard and they dragged her with them. In that moment she was many things: twisted, lost, in love, aroused, still lost. She felt him spiralling after, felt him hum something in her brain that could have been her name or it could have been find me or it could have been I want. His mind hauled her close, nothing like the gentle meet of hers and Aaron's and everything like the unstoppable drag of a ship being thrown against uncaring rocks.

It dragged her again and she crashed against him, broke apart. He leapt up, whirled, and she could scent everything; alive, male, strong, here, so fucking horny, alivealivealivealive.

Her blood danced, her paws dancing too. On two legs and four, moving to stop her skin from flinging itself off, following some uncertain beat. They slammed against each other again, their minds relentless in their quests to bind them. Distantly she heard herself whine, heard herself question would it be so bad? It kicked in slow and then fast; a giddy, euphoric feeling that thrummed with her heart and her pulse and pulled her towards the snow, towards a remembered verge of trees and a black wolf waiting. You're your own wolf, Emily Prentiss, but she didn't feel like her own wolf right now. She felt lost.

Another impact. This time she went with it, lying flat on her belly with her tail curled to the side and her throat bared. Take this. All of it.

Yours.

Reid watched her silently, his own blood skipping. He stepped forward and she stared into his eyes, bottomless. Black. Pupils so huge she couldn't see the hazel. He scented her, scented what she wanted. And she did the same, his scent musky, salty, strong enough to taste. She knew what he wanted, could see it.

Me.

One of them made a noise, an unfathomable hum of a sound that throbbed through both their chests and reminded them that they were less. That they could be more if they'd just give in. He stood, crouched, stood again. Uncertain. His eyes tracked her haunches with a dazed kind of longing.

But that wasn't the game. His muzzle brushed hers, he crooned deep in his throat.

She ran. Out the door and into the snow. He followed. In that moment, she loved him unequivocally. Their minds tangled again, but this time they stuck. Wrapped around each other until she couldn't tell which throb of desire was hers and which was his.

She ran from that wanting, because the chase was part of it. And she howled, knowing he'd answer. Knowing he'd hunt her. Knowing that, when she allowed it, he'd catch her.

He did.