Delicate

Chapter 41

Damon's P.O.V

I curl my fist to knock on Hagen's door, pausing for a moment when my ears twitch from the sound of small sniffs coming from the other side.

Guilt digs its vicious claws into my heart and squeezes, making me feel its presence throughout every inch of my body. Clenching my jaws together, I try not to let the pain consume me even though I deserved it. 

I hated seeing my family in pain above anything else, knowing I was the cause this time just made it even worse. 

I shouldn't have snapped at Hagen, should've had enough fucking control to know that Hagen wouldn't hurt Will on purpose and see that he really didn't mean for it to happen. But I didn't, like everything else, I lacked control and took it out of my little brother.

Steeling myself, for now, I tighten my fingers and let my knuckles fall to meet the thick wood.

But it never connects, instead my skin makes contact with an invisible barrier that reveals itself as a poisoned purple from the point I'd met. The entire thing lighting up like a fucking disco ball before shooting back at me with energy that dripped with magic, the force of it sending me crashing into the opposite wall. 

"Fuck!" I spit as something cracks from the impact, mind-crippling agony spreading through my spine as I slide down the wall.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe through the pain as best as I can, but something was most definitely broken. Reaching down, I press my fingers softly against my ribs, withdrawing with a curse the moment the fractured bone protested its pain. Resting my head against the wall with shortened breaths and quickly building anger, I look up at the stupid barrier that was drawing in the final strands of those electric purple veins before falling away entirely.

Hagen wasn't magical so that only left one fucking person.

"Nikola," I growl as I pull myself to my feet, using my spiralling anger to push through the pain. 

The hybrid slipped from the wall as if there was some door there that I couldn't see, his expression just as unreadable as always as he stood a few paces away from me. His grey eyes were cold as always, the presence of magic drowning out everything around us telling me right now the only people who would hear the following exchange would be the two of us.

I really didn't like this little shit.

As always, there were no hints of warmth or love to be found through the link, making it easy to forget that he was half-wolf. But at the end of the day he was wolf, didn't matter how much or to what extent he chose to connect to that side of him, he was still a fucking werewolf.

"What the fuck was that?" I snap, not bothering to reign in my anger.

It wasn't that he'd kept me from Hagen, no the fault came that he'd made an attack on me - his senior in the pack and a higher ranked wolf. Instincts scratched at the surface to put him in place physically, but he was just a kid, so words were the best I could offer... for now.

"You hurt Hagen today," He says simply, tone neutral and detached as always, "now you're hurt as well."

I blink at the kid, honest disbelief making my mind go blank as I stared at him. He stared back, nothing in his stance or expression changing beside the occasional blinking that his body forced upon him as if trying to convince me this thing was a person.

If I scared people as a kid then I really wanted to know how people felt about this one, because he took fucked up to another level.

"And where do you come into this?" I ask with narrowing eyes. "What gives you the right to come and play judge with my family's shit?"