Chapter 6: Weeping Heroes

Being in the business taught you many things, but one of the most essential rule was that if something felt off then the job wasn't worth it.

Of course, when Victor failed to hear the critters scattering on the ground floor, or the birds singing their lungs away or even the faint rustle of the leaves in the breeze, he knew something was off. His nose twitched when he took a long sniff and immediately he felt his shoulders tense for the oncoming impact.

True to his senses, the bullet lodged itself in the base of his neck. Creed snarled, recovered quickly, and zeroed in on the source of the shot. High up in the branches he heard the agent curse to themselves; no doubt they were shitting themselves. They had missed by an inch. Higher and they would have incapacitated him for a while.

Then space aliens could have abducted him for all he knew.

Unfortunately for the agent, he was no push over and clawed his way towards the agent before they could reload. They gasped sharply and ducked just as his claws swiped for them. A woman. They had sent a woman after him despite his reputation with the frails. He sneered mirthlessly and this time grappled this entire torso when they aimed for him again.

"Got chya, frail!" his spittle covered the black faceless mask they wore but he could still imagine the way her eyes widened in terror.

The woman struggled, throwing a punch at his elbow, but he threw her off balance before the hit could land. She fell on the descending branches, screaming when her ribs shattered, and plonked on the forest floor with a splitting howl.

He landed on his feet next to her, heavily. "I have to say, I'm a little disappointed."

His beefy hands clamped down on the helmet and tore it off. Strands of blonde hair shimmered as they came loose and her wide blue eyes linked with his the moment she adjusted to the filtering flits of light that shone through the thick canopy.

"Wh- what?" she chuckled hysterically, "Were you expecting anything less?"

Creed cocked his head, "I was expecting more."

He tutted at her when her forlorn visage grimaced. Oh, he knew who she was. Abigale shaws. She was one of the best 'negotiators' there were in the field. However, he didn't negotiate with women like her: high strung and pompous. Not that he had anything against women, it was just a dominance thing, when he saw them he wanted nothing less then to come up on top but if they had sent a man, no doubt perhaps he would have taken their proposition a little more seriously. Nonetheless, he would have tried to dominate any man they would have sent as well.

"They coulda at least someone worthwhile" Creed lazily sat on fallen trunk nearby and then kicked some dirt her way, "I mean what'd they expect when they sent a frail like you?"

"I'm not a frail!" Shaws screeched, despite the strain it put on her body. Her face had turned as red as a tomato and Creed couldn't suppress his cackles fast enough. With her broken body she couldn't do anything… maybe loose some profanities at him but nothing more. Not unless she wanted to lose some limbs.

"Really, then what'd you think your doin' now, frail?" he extended a clawed finger in her direction, mockingly.

She was an amusing thing, Shaws. This wasn't her first encounter with her even though Abigale didn't know any better. She had been part of the team that they had sent to track him after Inu's birth and he had evaded them, not before she pissed him off though. What could a man do when scum like her almost found his little secret? They hadn't known it was him in the woods that month. It was a fluke at best but it was a close call. He had almost taken them on a trail straight back to his sanctuary.

That had been a few years back and now he was able to put a face to a name. Seeing a picture was different than seeing the real thing.

He was not expecting her, however, to laugh right back at him. "You think you're untouchable, don't you?"

Creed leaned forward, his claws lengthening but gave nothing else away, "Nah. No one is, but paper pushers like you couldn't kiss my ass even if you tried. 'Sides I got better things to do than pickin' a bone with your lot." He stood leisurely and stalked towards her.

He could see the panic rising in her but she put up a good bravado, "You're right. No one's spared."

His eyes widened and his reflexes were a split second too late: the last thing he saw was her condescending smirk.

;-;-;-;-;

Victor barely had the strength to lift his head when the light flooded in his cell and just managed to bare his teeth. Though even that was a chore. A terrible shock ravaged his body and felt the grubby hands skim over his body. Damn them!

He snarled but in his weakened state it sounded like a kitten hissing. He blindly swiped his arms and felt a burst of satisfaction when his claws dug into a warm body to the right of him. He jerked it back however, when another shock fried his brain.

They left just as quickly as they came… whoever they were this time. He didn't know how long they kept him in that cage seeing as how it was designed to numb any and all senses. It could have been days or months, but he knew the indignities they made him suffer through made it feel like years. They starved him, beat him, shocked him, stripped him bare and made him lay naked in a puddle of his own excrement. All in the name of science.

Fuck them! When he got out of here he would raze the entire landscape the lab sat upon. The people wouldn't even be able to catch their breath before he was done with them. When he got out of here he was going to make them wish they had never been born! When he got out of here he would… he would… go back home and kiss his mate. Tell her how much he missed her.

It wasn't the first time Victor's mind blocked out all rationale and returned to his Mate. His teeth ached at the thought of her and the cubs being in danger. It made the beatings worse, but he wasn't going to let anything slip. His brood would not be threatened because he suddenly became a pussy who couldn't handle a little pain.

He just had to sleep it off and let his healing factor kick in. He was fooling himself in all honesty, but he lied to himself, knowing that he would lose hope otherwise, and the he couldn't bear the thought that his hallucinations would suddenly become real.

He didn't want his Mate anywhere near this facility; he once caught a glimpse at the female prisoners just outside his cell and all he saw was his Mate in the same condition as him. He almost couldn't stomach it. Often, he would find Noor sitting beside his tattered body and whispered sweet nothings to him as he tried to find peace in the hole he had dug himself into.

When he awoke to the smell of his own burning flesh, he knew the cycle had started again. The tests became more stringent, they took more blood, they took more tissues samples and after one particular nasty episode, he felt his mind go completely blank, his eyes rolling into the back of his head, body limp.

The first thing he heard was a torn voice, calling his name, which alerted him beyond everything else. He couldn't remember revealing his name so to hear it felt wrong. But, there was something else. They did not call him Creed. They called him Victor, no one did that. His heavy eyelids fluttered but no matter how much he begged them to open they would not obey him. He could not even distinguish if the voice was male or female.

He mustered a deep growl from his chest when he felt hands on him yet his growl died seeing as how the hands were different as well. They did not probe him or hurt him, no, they were searching. For what he did not know, however he soon felt something heavy fall on his body save for his feet.

Stubborn as he was he never did stop trying to rouse himself and when his eyelids finally obeyed, he was left breathless.

A sallow face splattered in dirt and blood. Big, big, golden cat eyes spied him with incomparable fright. Burgundy swollen lips were moving but he couldn't hear much less make sense of the words. Quivering, Victor raised his hand to her face and said nothing as his eyes drank her in. Suddenly, his eyes widened beyond belief as he registered that she was before him. His Mate was in this God forsaken facility.

Shocked as he was, he didn't realise his Mate had taken the brunt of his weight, or the bodies that littered the ground, or even the gaping hole they passed through. In fact, Victor didn't react even as Noor brought him home, cleaned his filthy flesh, fed him and laid him to bed.

;-;-;-;-;

Days later when the sun beams were flitting across the room, consciousness flew back to him and hit him like roadkill, and the first thing he saw were the worried lines around his mate's mouth. Again, her mouth was moving and no matter how fast she spoke or how hard she shoved him, Victor's eyes lined with her face and focused on the way her eyes fluttered frequently as they zeroed in on his knees.

One of her hands held his neck and the other was wiping him down with a damp cloth.

"-tor…"

The sun caught her just right and a halo sprouted above her head.

"-ctor- wer-"

Her pupils contracted with fear as he continued to be unresponsive.

"-ictor!"

Her eyebrows shot down as a glare set in.

"Victor!"

Victor blinked hard and the haze began to lift.

"Victor, answer me! Please!"

Victor blinked hard this time and grumbled, "You're voice is like shattering glass, woman."

"Oh!" his Mate leaned down heavily on his chest not realising the added pressure was not what he need, but he did need her in close proximity so he didn't complain.

"'S alright, Noor. I's gonna stay here a little while longer 'till I'm back I'm on my feet, then you watch…"

"I thought you were dead! I didn't know what to think! You didn't call or-" her rambling was cut short when Victor pulled her face back down on her chest.

"I know, I know, Mate. But you got me out…" he pulled her hair which angled her face towards his, "So proud of you."

He nuzzled her face, their noses gliding over one another, and he purred, "How'd you find me anyway?"

Noor pulled back and stared at him intently, "Does it matter?"

"Nah" Victor grinned and chuckled deeply, "Doesn't matter at all."

It became a ritual of theirs. Noor would take care of his needs in his bedridden state and he would take his time to memorise her, burn her into his memory, until he could no longer keep his eyes open. He was uncharacteristically quiet which made Noor anxious beyond measure.

The spell was broken one day quite abruptly. Noor was washing his chest with careful and soft hands and when her right hand slide near his clavicle, he caught her wrist and pulled her down towards him, a desperate look in his eyes. "Did- did you kill anyone?"

Noor's brow furrowed and used her other hand to steady herself, "Victor, I don't-"

Victor ground his teeth and pulled her ever closer until their foreheads connected, "At the facility. Did you kill anyone?"

The confusion evaporated leaving Noor blank, "I killed them all, Victor."

His other hand cradled the back of her head, "Everyone? You're sure?"

Noor nodded affirmatively, "Yes, everyone. No one but the- the prisoners escaped."

Scenarios ran in Victor's head where he lost everything, his mate, his cubs and this fear made him question her again. "Mate, you-"

"Victor."

The certainty and authority she spoke with silenced Victor immediately. Their foreheads were still linked so he got front row seats to the emotions that spewed in his mate's mind: resolution.

"No one is going to hurt our family. No one."

It was in that moment Victor Creed discovered that his mate was just as protective over him and their broods as he was if not more. This hidden coolness of hers, especially how calculative she was, was something he was not going to forget anytime soon. Too long he had seen her as something to protect but he knew that was going to change. Noor Creed was not a woman to be trifled with.

She may have rolled over for him but that didn't still mean she was no longer a feral. She had lived a brutal childhood, without him, and that armed her with all the skills she needed to live a life without a protector like Creed. He had forgotten that but not anymore. She still was lethal even if she had buried that for a while.

He yanked her down for a promising brutal kiss.