Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin, dammit. *Sobs*. It belongs to BBC.

Notes: I AM SO SO SO SO SORRY ABOUT HOW LONG THIS HAS TAKEN! One more chapter of this story left. Then the sequel :D

Sorry its shorter than the rest.

Twitter: ToniBohr
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Chapter five:

The silence was calm, but tension settled heavy about it like a fog. The calm before the storm – because that was what was coming. A storm. And it would be furious.

Merlin still stared at the door, as if it would offer him salvation, but no such dream was to come. Gwaine had disappeared with a grin and a flourish. How he knew of werewolf and potentials teased at Merlin's brain but now was not the time for such pondering. Not when three wolves stood to his back, one vengeful and furious.

His wolf whimpered within, tail tucked between his legs like some timid dog and a similar rage bubbled and frothed in Merlin's own chest. Emboldened by this rage, familiar tasting and fiery on his tongue, Merlin turned, eyes blazing amber.

"Leave us." The command was terse and low, almost a whisper. Even Merlin quivered at the raw power underlying those words, the thrill of an Alpha's demand.

Arthur had clearly come into his own.

Morgana and Leon nodded obediently, crossing he room silent as ghosts. Neither looked at Merlin, but kept their heads down – and wasn't that strange? – and slipped from the room. The door snapped shut once more, this like a reprimand rather than a bullet but still a break in the silence.

Arthur sat in the armchair, leaning back now. His right ankle rested on his left knee and his hands pressed together as if in prayer and pressed lightly to his lips. He looked powerful and majestic, every bit the leader he was born to be and a brave coil of lust unfurled like a bloom in Merlin's gut before he stamped it down, seizing onto his anger like a lifeline.

Arthur's eyes burned when they opened and gazed upon Merlin. The fury was breathtaking – controlled and restrained, but unholy in its strength. Merlin swallowed a shudder and his wolf cowered within him.

"You bedded another." Arthur voice was dangerously quiet. His eyes glittered like gemstones.

Merlin jutted out his chin in defiance. "I fail to see how that is any of your business." He was dancing with fire, Merlin knew, but he was ablaze himself and could more than hold his own.

"Did he fuck you?" Crude. So crude. Arthur wanted to make it so, make it seem vulgar and disgusting, and the tone of his voice was just dripping with derision and jealousy and possession. And it was cold. Over the past week Merlin had heard several different tones – gentle, angry, frustrated – but never cold.

The hurt was irrational.

Merlin knew that.

He knew that.

But it still hurt.

"I fail to see how that is any of your business," Merlin repeated, teeth gritted. And Arthur was moving then, graceful and quick, so quick that Merlin barely had to react before he was shoved into the wall by an alpha only a shade away from baring fangs.

Merlin's neck jerked, instinct screaming at him to surrender, to submit to the wrath of his broken, betrayed dominant and alpha and take the punishment that was surely due him.

But Merlin refused. He was not claimed, either by the pack or by Arthur.

Arthur watched the battle between instinct and intelligence, between man and wolf with a strange kind of fascination. Merlin felt so alive pressed against him, chest heaving with rage and frustration, skin flushed and eyes glinting like steel. Red with anger, anger caused by Arthur, rather than lust evoked by another man.

Arthur growled, pressing Merlin further into the wall. How dare he –?

"Let me go, Arthur." Merlin's voice was shaky with so many different emotions. His scent was rocked up shades – it was driving him crazy, having Merlin by him but so tense, drenched in the smell of another, a residual of his pleasure spice in the back of his throat – something he should have been able to gorge himself on, to satisfy himself with again and again and again until Merlin was pleasure-weak and broken.

But there had been another –!

"You are mine!" Clawed fingers gouge into the wall by Merlin's head and he flinched despite himself. Arthur's eyes flickered, but he didn't move. Merlin tensed under the words, under the thick, cloying possession that surrounds them, that created them.

"I see no claiming mark!" Merlin snarled back, lips peeling back as his teeth threaten to elongate into razor-fangs.

Arthur retaliated with a fearsome snarl, clawed fingers twisting in Merlin's hair. The violence was terrifying and exhilarating, a misplaced tendril of fear-lust curled and danced in Merlin's gut like a flame caught in a light breeze.

"You knew what we were. You knew and you broke it – I felt that break!" Arthur slammed himself forward, so they were chest to heaving chest, breathing in each other's breath and glaring at amber eyes. "And do you feel it now, Merlin," Arthur purred – violence tempered but still there, a torrent of fury and betrayal and something so incredibly primal that Merlin burned with it. "Tying us together once more. You will never get rid of me. Never."

And the growl behind that was more animal than man and Merlin whimpered, his wolf creeping forward and baring his neck. Arthur's please growl rumbled in his chest as he traced the tip of his nose down the line of exposed throat.

"You are so ungrateful," he murmured, quietly, voice velvet with dark promise. "Such an ungrateful little bitch..." Arthur twisted the hand that was burrowed in Merlin's hair and yanked.

"Arthur!" Merlin's head was now pulled back at an almost uncomfortable angle, eye a curious mixed of outraged man and supplicating wolf. Arthur watched the two personalities shift and argue and fight. Blue and amber flickered and flamed and switched.

"You will know your place," Arthur whispered darkly, just as those eyes settled on amber.

There was a moment of high tension, thick and choking. Two wolves in the mask of men gazed at each other. One bared his teeth, hands clawed and shoulders tense as he stared the younger down, the petulant wolf, the disloyal wolf, the wolf who needed to be taught a lesson.

A heavy moment.

Then those eyes dropped.

The blonde wolf howled its delight – the kiss was brutal, punishing, bruising. Teeth buried in flesh, blood a bitter copper slick on the tongue and the brunet wolf whined in the back of his thought in submission, in apology.

The dominant wolf surged forward, those hips driving forward, rolling like a wave in a storm – constant, rushed, bordering on painful, swallowing those repentant noises that scorched the throat of its wayward mate. Bone ground into bone, grunts and growls swallowed by whimpers and whines, heat curling between them like a flame nursed to brightness.

Claws scratched and scored. Teeth nipped and drew blood. Eyes flashed and electric shot up spines – blood was smeared, pain a blaze, a pleasure and a punishment, both too much and too little.

How dare this little wolf deny him? How dare he? He will learn! Mustbetaughtalesson. Minemineminemarkedupminenooneelse.

It was vicious, it was fury and anger. This was not a mating – this was a claiming, a show of possession and dominance.

This was a punishment.

Pleasure-pain was ricocheting through the very marrow of the brunet wolf, humiliation-lined bliss as he was brutally, harshly shoved towards orgasm – close, so close like a poison in his veins, he whined and pleaded and grappled with muscles begging for more, for less and everything in-between.

Oh god, and it hurt sogood –

"No!"

All sensation was gone. The wolf receded, and Merlin was sprawled against the wall, dazed and unfocused. His jogging bottoms felt uncomfortable, his body felt raw and bloodied –a dull ache was beginning to seep over his muscles and he dropped his head.

His neck twinged.

He blinked blearily, rolling his head with his palm flat against the wall so that he would stumble on jelly knees.

He swallowed – his throat felt dry as the desert.

He just caught sight of Arthur's back to him, shoulders hunched. Merlin gazed down at his body, blinking. It took him a moment to register his now quieting erection, the disappointed sensation of a lost orgasm. It took him even longer to notice the mauling of his body, the claw marks that redden his chest, stomach and hips, the smudges of blood.

A wolf's punishment met human jealousy-fuelled rage to create this violent parody of sex.

As Merlin looked at the wounds now, they burned.

"...Arthur?" Merlin hated how weak his voice sounded, how unsure he was – the wolf brain still casting its influence. During his study of his body, Arthur must have allowed Morgana and Leon back into the room.

Merlin stared at them then back down at his body. Morgana was eyeing the wounds with a little sympathy, and Leon was just plain not looking.

Arthur cleared his throat from his place by the door. "I'm sorry," the blond said, voice tight and heavily controlled. "That should not have happened."

Merlin just nodded blankly.

"I should not have let the wolf take control."

Merlin shook his head.

"But I have an ultimatum for you." At this those light blue eyes collided with Merlin's, like a rock against a wall. "Leon is still Acting Alpha. Defeat him in a fight, and you walk away free to do whatever it is you need to do. Leon wins, and you become pack and we help you with whatever it is you need to do. You refuse either of these options and we report you to the Council. And you know that will not end well for you."

Merlin's attention snapped back. "You can't!"

Arthur's jaw clenched and Merlin had the brief thought of striding over and licking it. "We can, and you know it."

Merlin looked away, running his tongue over his teeth. Arthur was right of course. It was a fair challenge, one he couldn't refuse. Lone wolves weren't looked upon kindly – pack gives stability, gives sanity. Without it, slowly the human and wolf mind erode, like a cliff battered by the sea. The erosion caused a breakdown in rationale and to have one instinct without the other lead to terrible consequences.

The strain of Merlin's separation from her had not yet begun to show, because he remained focused on her, but it was only a matter of time before the fragile tie between them and the memory of her smell stopped working and the sea of separation met the cliff of his sanity.

The council would force a claiming, and hence the integration with a pack, or, should Merlin be too far gone, would organise an execution. And with the added information that Merlin was, for all intents or purposes, hunting hunters – they would probably just skip straight to the execution.

He would be hunted down like a rabbit and torn to shreds.

Merlin closed his eyes and shook his head.

That option was horrible but... he couldn't –

Drag these people into his past, into the darkness that haunted his dreams?

Merlin gritted his teeth.

But he had been alone for so long. Running, hunting, scavenging. Surviving only on a fading memory of dark hair, a glitter of laughter and a sweet scent.

But the shame. But the history that shaped him, built him and twisted him.

The humiliation.

Secret.

His secret. And to reveal that... to show these people just what he really was...

He shuddered.

He couldn't.

He wouldn't.

Merlin opened his eyes when he felt a small weight barrel into his waist and a small cub-whimper, and sniffling nose trailing goodness knows what across his lower belly. Mordred blinked up at him teary-eyed and trembling.

"Why'd you go?"

He would.