#mahim

Clicking her tongue, Olli crossed the small room in a stride, sidestepping the mess of discarded outfits she knew he’d agonize over, later, and yanked a side of his earphones off.

“Ow!”

“Hi.” Olli reiterated, over the radio hum of what seemed to be 80s bollywood.

Mahim’s scowl fell away in an instant. “Alpha, I didn’t see you there.”

“I asked, thrice, by the way, if you’re sure about this.”

“Oh,” He shuffled, threading a strand of his black hair around a finger, then letting it go. “I am. I’d tell you if I weren’t.”

Olli eyed him, then shrugged, and settled down at the edge of his bed. Smiling at her, Mahim went back to fluffing up his hair so that the curly dark ringlets shone almost obsidian beneath the light. Cut low at the neck, his shirt was a pale, sparkling yellow that contrasted with his beaded shawl splashed with many colours. He swept a line of gloss over his lips, before gathering up his hair again. “Leave it down, or up?”

Olli blinked. “You’re...going to meet the hunter. Dressed like that.”

“Down, I think.” Mahim let his hair fall in a curtain of curls down to his lower back. “And of course I am!” He began to curl his long lashes around a stick of mascara. “I’m your envoy, Alpha. Your ambassador, your peacekeeper. I need to look presentable.”

She snorted, preparing to respond with a jest before the words rang oddly in her chest, picking at an instinct older than Alpha, older than this hell of a week, something born of the months between then and now, this knowing when Mahim’s cheer veered to a touch too deliberate, put-upon as the lotion he scrubbed beneath his eyes to will away weeks’ worth of dark circles and tired tears. There was a scar he hid beneath his hair, a clean, clinical cut from the nape of his neck, down his back, silver and faded.

Where’s that from? She’d asked, what felt like a million years ago, in a world where she hadn’t known Mahim better than she knew her own heart.

Hunters. He’d replied, and refused to elaborate. He didn’t need to, but there was more, Olli knew, more a secret he kept from even her, a hurt he cradled so privately that she wanted, sometimes, nothing more than to protectprotectprotect him what she couldn’t even see.

And so she said, “You don’t have to be. You don’t have to force yourself into anything-”

“What, and Ed does? And you do?”

“Mahim.”

He turned to her, finally, the walls falling from behind his kohl-rimmed eyes. Overbright. Shit. “Let me do what I can, Alpha.”

She thought of napkins folded neatly over newly-polished tables, of clumps of daisies picked from the wayside, hewn into Izzie’s hair, of the relentless peacepeacepeace in his faint, coal-and-earth-and-wolf scent. She thought of waking up on Tuesday to find him scrubbing the kitchen counter till he could see his own face in it, of him gathering JiAn into his arms, after a long, shuddering spell of silence, to turn the speakers on again.

Please wove wordlessly around her again, lingering at the edges of his hurt silence.

“You’re already doing a lot.” She told him. “You don’t need to put yourself through playing nice with a fucking Hunter for it.”

He looked away, abruptly. “’m not playing nice.” He mumbled. “And it’s not just for Blackwell, either. We need people on our side, debt or friendship, if we’re gonna live here. If we don’t- we-” He swallowed. “It’s not more than I can handle, Olli, I promise.”

There was that, too. The we need people on our side. The twenty-one times she’d counted him practicing hello, hello, hello before he’d said it.

Mess. The mess of it all that Olli kept sharpened beneath her claws into flintstones that sparked both her humor and her rage, Mahim folded into sixteenths he tucked inwards like a handkerchief, its surface polished smooth into home, and love, and pride, into rebuilding the bare bones of everything he hated so he could watch it shine in the mirror, a halo around himself, into we need people on our side.

The thing was, the thing really was, he wasn’t even wrong. He wasn’t, not most of the time.

“I just-” Olli let her voice taper away into uncertainity for the first time since she’d assumed her title. “You’ve got a choice, okay? With all of us.”

lovelovelovelove.

“Thank you, Alpha.” He said softly, light sealing the fault lines of doubt between them. “If there’s a chance for peace to be found in all this, you know.”

Olli ran her hand up a sunflower-patterned pillow, frowning. “Yeah.”

“He’s not those hunters.” Mahim went on. “I can tell. I know the eyes the others have.”

Olli neither agreed nor disagreed, nor did she think that Lee’s intentions mattered as much as Mahim’s comfort did, nor did she like that he knew how to tell the difference, how he had to learn to tell the difference.

“And if he isn’t-”

“I rip his fucking heart out.”

There was the wolf, the hint of a growl, the golden flash in his eyes. It was gone before Olli could blink, beaten back into sweet-soft and gentle like he always did. If shit went south, Olli remembered, that hunter was coming out in pieces.

She let out a breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Mahim was smiling again, admiring his own handiwork in the mirror. Absently, he drummed his fingers over his collar, over the tattoo peeking from behind fabric.

Olli was a stranger to the language, but not to the name. Janaki. A simple line of numbers Mahim still knew by heart, saved still in his phone, as Ma. It took that frantic, little gesture of his, that absent minded search for his mother, for Olli to remember why she’d come here in the first place.

“Mahim,” She got to her feet and opened her arms. “Come here.”

He did.

Mahim, worker of miracles, talker of birds out of trees, fairytale prince among wolves. He could wring a hunter’s heart for it’s last dew-drop of sympathy. He could wash cuffs and collars, sheets and pillowcases clean of the last bloodstains of grief. He could hold her hand when it was the last thing she cared for, stitch the guilt out of her one little nudge at a time. He could waltz into lives and live there. He could hunt, more vicious than any wolf save Olli herself, and cast it away as easy as it were a coat. He could drown the moon out with music. Or at least pretend to. He could weep all night and shine golden in the morning. He could face the worst of his fears with a smile that reached his eyes. He could tell her, quietly, firmly, that he trusted noone better with the pack, and he could make anyone, even herself, believe it.

But he couldn’t, he couldn’t hide from her.

One half of my heart. He’d called her. The storm to his calm, the twin to his soul, his anchor within this family where everyone belonged to each other and to noone at all.

She felt his shoulders relax the instant her arms were around him, and her own with it, so used to dismissing the weight of all she carried upon them.

Safesafesafesafe.

homehomehome.

Mahim pulled away from the hug, leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Thank you, Alpha. I’ll bring flowers home.”