Warning: Mild bloodplay (more than in chapter 3, at any rate).

Headcanon actor for Graydon Creed: Ian De Caestecker. Yes, I know he's Leopold Fitz on SHIELD but he just looks too much like Liev Schreiber, and Ian played a very convincing villain in the Framework.

Even after an hour of driving, there was still a part of me that was pissed off and shaky, which pissed me off even more. I wanted to hunt and kill to get rid of the feeling of being helpless, of feeling like I had absolutely no control over what happened; I could still feel Rook's cold hand in mine, getting colder in the instant we moved, painful as frostbite.

At the motel I threw cash at the desk clerk, not caring if I overpaid because my anger was going to go one of two ways: either I was gonna kill her or I was gonna fuck her. Considering she couldn't die, I'd have to take what I could get.

As soon as the door was closed I grabbed Rook by the neck, my hand circling and squeezing. She didn't struggle, it was like she expected it, and that made me angrier.

"Don't fuckin' pull that without warning again."

"You would rather we had been caught?" she replied, showing no fear at all. It occurred to me it was the same reaction she'd had before she got her power back; she could probably put me on my ass now but she didn't stop me. "You like taking unnecessary risks?"

I grinned at her. "Woulda thought that was obvious, considering what I do." I wished I could figure out why her smart mouth amused me, why it didn't make me see red. I've killed for less but for some inexplicable reason it just made me want to fuck her even more.

"Sorry, I forgot that little detail." Rook shuddered when my hand tightened on her throat, her eyes growing paler without going completely white.

"Shut up." I bent my head and kissed her, bruising her lips and growling when my fangs nicked her tongue. The strange flavor of her blood, now explained, still made me want her more, to leave marks on her again, watch pink rivulets run down all that pale skin. I let her go long enough to pull her shirts off and I growled again at what was revealed.

"You ain't wounded," I said, touching her unmarked neck where I'd bitten her that morning. I dragged a claw across her skin and watched the cut heal, quicker than even I could manage. It didn't seem to work the same as my own healing ability, either, it was almost like it was there one second and gone the next.

"Part of my abilities," she said, shrugging one pale shoulder. "I could not heal until the inhibitor was off." She shuddered when I cut her again. "Doesn't mean you cannot keep trying."

"You talk too much." I took her mouth again, felt her fingers dig in on my back as she rose on her toes to change the angle, make her almost my height.

I pushed her away, sending her stumbling towards the bed so that she was bent over it. She wiggled her ass against me, earning her a set of cuts down along her spine that made her gasp and writhe, the bandaging falling away in pieces, her skin parting in tantalizing red furrows for a split second.

Under the haze of need and want and now I recognized that she wasn't just capitulating, wasn't just going along with it so I wouldn't hurt her too badly. She could escape at any time, certainly didn't have to fuck me. She did it because she wanted to.

Women throw themselves at me with about the same frequency they did Jimmy, there's some weird animal attraction or whatever that draws in the ones that want a wild ride.

But every single one of them, even if they think they want it rough, they don't understand what they're asking for and, inevitably, they freak out. They cry and they beg and it doesn't stop me, but this was the first time I'd found one who knew what they were in for and still wanted it. From me.

Jesus Christ, I'm turning into the runt. The realization was like cold water in the face. The last thing I wanted to be doing was brooding, especially when Rook had turned and was trying to get into my pants.

"In a hurry?" I asked, turning her away again.

"Should I not be?" she replied. "As if you would go slow anyway. You are the one who started pawing me as soon as we got here, after all."

"Still talking too much." I'd gotten her pants undone and slipped my hand inside, finding her just as wet as expected.

She whimpered and pressed back against me, one hand coming up over her shoulder to grip my shirt, the other holding my hand in place between her legs.

I pulled her hands away, holding both in one of mine and grinning when she struggled.

"I could get away, you know," she said, tugging a little at my grip.

"Put up or shut up." The whole back-and-forth thing, actually talking to a woman, was seriously not something I was used to. Even if they're begging, I don't say much.

One second she was in my hands, the next she was a few feet away, smirking at me. I growled and took a step towards her, watched her blur as she moved again another handful of feet. It fed the need to play, to stalk, getting within inches of my prey until finally she stayed solid and I caught her, fisting my hand in her hair and dragging her head back so I could bite at her neck.

I wasted no time in pushing her onto the bed, and as I unzipped my jeans she wriggled until her pants were down to her knees. She was slippery wet when I touched her, my claws barely skimming over her pussy and making her gasp and push back so that I opened up several superficial cuts along the insides of her thighs.

I knelt on the floor and leaned in to lick away the blood, my tongue darting in to taste her, earning a groan that I echoed. It's not something I do often but I wanted to bring her off with my mouth and hands, knowing I wouldn't have to be careful.

Rook yelped when I flipped her onto her back, eyes wide and surprised when I pulled her pants off the rest of the way and dragged her to the edge of the bed.

"Victor," she sighed out when I lowered my mouth to her, nipped one of her lips and sucked at the resulting wound, the taste of her combined with blood making me growl deep in my chest.

I pulled the claws on my right hand in all the way before pushing two fingers inside, felt her pussy squeeze down when I sucked her clit, stroked it with my rough tongue and made her cry out, her head thrashing.

Her hand touched my head, her fingers unable to dig into my short hair so that her nails scratched along my scalp, making me snarl. The vibration against her made her hips jerk.

"You gonna come?" I asked, lifting my head to look at her. Her eyes were blind white but I knew she was looking back at me. "Could you even hang on if I kept up?"

She whimpered, her thighs just starting to tremble. "Please," she begged.

"Come for me," I demanded, lips against her clit. After a moment she went tight around my fingers, her body bowing as she cried out, her hands clenching in the sheets. She tried to push me away when I licked at her again, curled my fingers up inside her.

"Please, I can't, it's too much," she said, breathless, voice hoarse.

I turned my head and bit the inside her thigh, the claws of my other hand digging into her hip. I let her come down, felt the twitches of her pussy slow down before I twisted my fingers inside of her and sucked her clit again, grinned as she came again, harder this time.

Words fell from her lips, some language I'd never heard before though I could catch the gist of it, nownownow.

Her back arched when I pushed my cock inside of her, so tight I had to work to get in, and she wasn't making it any easier to move when her legs hooked around my waist.

I pushed harder, grabbing her wrists to pin them at her sides and found her fighting back. One of her hands slipped free to grip my shirt and pull me down into a kiss, my fangs cutting her lower lip.

I let her other arm go, my hand moving down to grip her hip and pull her closer, claws embedded in her skin again and dragging a shuddering groan from her mouth into mine.

Her head dropped back when I bit her neck, and I wished I could leave lasting marks on her, no matter how fucking fascinating it was to watch the wounds close up.

Between one thrust and the next she snaked a hand down between us, fingers finding her clit and working it and I could barely move when she came again. I bit at her shoulder hard enough to temporarily bruise her, my hand fisted in her hair when I finally came, vision whiting out for a moment.

She was laughing when I collapsed against her, still inside her.

"The fuck is so funny?"

"No idea, honestly." She pushed me away and I let her, too fucking exhausted to fight about it. "Maybe I am just happy to have the inhibitor off."

She disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes, but I must have passed out because I woke up curled up on one side of the bed, my back pressed up against her legs. I could have sworn she'd had a hand on my hip while I'd been asleep but I could have been imagining things.

Rook poked at the keys of my laptop balanced on her knees, occasionally using the trackpad to scroll. "Good gods," she muttered, pushing hair out of her face. "Just when I think that I have seen the worst, something else pops up and blows that all to hell."

I rolled onto my side facing her, propping my head up on my fist so I could see the screen.

She continued scrolling and reading, stopping when something caught her eye before moving on.

"Wait." I reached out and touched the back of her hand. "Go back a page. One more." I sat up fully and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

I'd always wondered if I'd left any bastards running around. Always knew it was a possibility but it wasn't like I cared, like it would mean anything to me. But that still didn't stop me from feeling like I got punched in the gut having evidence of it.

"Graydon Creed," Rook read off, glancing at me for a second. "Leader of the Friends of Humanity. That explains many things, but if you are his father, who is his mother?"

"Does it say anything?"

Rook's fingers tapped for a few moments, flicking between files. "Leni Zauber?"

I frowned. "I don't - wait a fucking second." I got to my feet, suddenly restless and uneasy. "Raven, you lying blue bitch."

"Raven…" Rook looked up at me. "Raven Darkholme? How on earth did two mutants produce a human?"

I shrugged, not even questioning how she knew Mystique. "Fuck if I know. What else does it say about him? How'd he end up with my name?"

"The files we recovered do not say, but perhaps the internet will."

I knew I was pacing the room like some animal at the zoo but I couldn't stop myself. Was this some kind of fucked up revenge thing? If he knew my name he probably knew who I was, what I was, but that still didn't explain being part of a hate group and sending people after me.

Rook made a considering sort of sound. "Well, perhaps he can tell us himself." She turned the laptop so I could the screen, then hit play on a YouTube video.

I didn't recognize the first guy at all, some talking head for CNN.

"Now that we've discussed your organization's manifesto, would you mind giving us some background on why it is you dislike mutants so much?"

The feed split in two and for a second I thought I was looking at myself, or at least a younger version, one I hadn't seen in the better part of a century.

Graydon had my facial structure, down to the nose and jaw, but those eyes were all Raven despite being blue.

"As it happens, Mr. Collins, both of my parents carry fully expressed X genes, and neither of them are what you could call a law-abiding citizen."

There was clear hatred on that face, in those eyes, directed outwards for all to see. "My mother gave me up for adoption but wasn't brave enough to simply let me go; no, she had to check in on me, and because she's a shapeshifter, she did it with someone else's face. I always knew it was her, there was just something about the way she moved and spoke that gave her away."

That did sound like Raven, not wanting the hassle of actually raising a kid, but unable to keep her hands out of the cookie jar.

"And your father?" the interviewer prompted.

Graydon full-on sneered in response. "He's a rapist and a killer and has no qualms about either. Quite possibly the lowest man I've ever had the misfortune of being aware of, and I use the term 'man' loosely since his mutation gives him the claws and fangs of an animal, which I'm sure he puts to good use in his depravity."

I rolled my eyes at that. The kid (yeah, maybe he was in his early 30s, but he was still a kid to me) had the conviction and zealotry of a televangelist who could talk little old ladies into giving him their pensions for a promise of eternity in Heaven.

"And those are just two of the many degenerates who call themselves homo sapiens superior. There isn't a single creature among them who hasn't hurt a human, who hasn't caused grief and strife to be brought upon those unlucky enough to birth such an aberration."

The interviewer was clearly uncomfortable with that line of bullshit but he ran with it. "What is it that you hope to accomplish? And how do you expect to garner any sympathy when your group has been accused of acts of terrorism against mutants and their human sympathizers?"

Graydon looks directly at the camera then. "Any human who aligns themselves with mutants deserves the consequences-"

"Turn it off," I said. "Fuck me, that's my kid?"

Rook shrugged, shutting the lid of the laptop. "That certainly explains why they are after you, then. It's not just a general hatred, it's a personal vendetta."

"Yeah, except I've never even seen the little shit. This is literally the first time I even knew he existed." He may have looked like me, but I didn't think I'd ever had that kind of hatred in me; took too much goddamned effort to hate that strongly. Effort that needed to be focused on survival.

"So what, then?" Rook set the laptop aside and scooted to the edge of the bed closest to me. "Is this really just revenge? Getting back at you for, what, being a mutant? Is it jealousy?"

"Fuck if I know." I didn't know why but I touched her when my pacing brought me close, tucking hair back behind her ear. All my anger at her from earlier was gone, exorcised either through sex or just the passage of time. The last time anyone even seemed like they gave a shit about me, it was Jimmy, and it was like some kind of body memory that made me ache for contact that wasn't painful.

Rook's eyes widened a little but she accepted my touch, took my hand before I could pull back. "You should sleep tonight, you're nearly healed. Tomorrow we can-"

"Quiet." I pulled away, held my hand up. All the sounds I'd been able to hear outside, just normal people-going-about-their-business background noise, had ceased.

The motel room door exploded inwards, splinters pelting us a half-second before bullets followed.

I roared in pain, lashing out at the first warm body that came my way, another one of the paramilitary shitheads the FOH had sent after me. My claws sank through his body armor like the Kevlar didn't exist, through skin and muscle until I could wrap my fingers around ribs and pull.

I dropped the corpse and turned in time to see Rook's Reaper form wrap itself around another goon, and I swear to God I'd never before heard a scream of agony like what came out of him, and trust me, I've heard some pretty impressive death screams.

He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut and didn't so much as twitch.

But I had almost no time to admire her efficiency. The FOH had come loaded with carbonadium ammo again and it was already fucking up my healing factor. I was still barely recovered from the first round.

"Can you get us out?" I asked.

Rook coalesced again, shaking her head. "It would kill you if I did it right now."

"Fuck." I coughed and tasted blood in my mouth. "Then you need to get out of here."

"Victor-"

I grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her towards me. "They're not gonna kill me, not right away. You ain't gotta get snatched, too."

"You're in this position because of me, and I made a deal with you," she protested. "I can keep them away from here, keep you from dying-"

"Rook." Breathing was suddenly something that hurt to do, and I could feel blood bubbling in my lungs. "Doesn't fucking matter. They'll take me, you can get out and then come save my ass or let me twist in the wind."

She stared at me for a moment, her teeth worrying her lower lip. "I will come for you, as soon as I can." She rose on her toes, pressed a kiss to my mouth heedless of the blood.

I smelled ozone and then her Reaper form floated there, horrifying and fascinating all at once. She looked at me for a moment, then she blinked out completely.

I could hear the next wave already moving in.

"Alright, let's do this."