Chapter 7 - Power Play

“Ezekiel like all of your other brilliant ideas, this too will end badly.” Walter hissed, pointing down at the mortal. “Father has been lenient in the past, but this!?” Walter hissed, shifting his piercing yellow eyes down to the unconscious mortal before him.

 “By bringing this stranger here, in this act of willfully disobeying him you are saying that you don’t care about the rules he has set forth! Rules that not only protect him but the rest of our Clan!” Walter huffed, still with no real inflection to his words other than stating simple facts and consequences.

Then Walter waved his hand across the front of his chest, palm out facing Ezekiel. “Now explain yourself. Speak.”

A new wave of power slammed into Ezekiel’s entire being, but unlike feeling his brothers will locking down on him, Ezekiel gasped as the cage was popped off. His mouth and mind were suddenly free.

“Damn.” Ezekiel hissed suddenly as the funny feeling of being freed of his brothers' power faded away. He put a hand to his throat and cleared it.

“Did you really have to do that Walter? You just had to put the mojo on me?” Ezekiel quipped at him, but Walter didn’t respond. He calmly waited for Ezekiel to give him an explanation.

Put on the spot Ezekiel tried to explain. But what did he have to say in his defense?

All of his actions so far had been based on simple instinct and absolutely zero forethought. He was reactionary. His own personal curse. So naturally he had nothing to say.

Sighing Ezekiel dropped his hand from his throat and shrugged. “Ok Ok... So...so I don’t exactly do what I’m supposed to do ALL THE TIME, but do you really think I’m doing this...!” Ezekiel said pointing down at the unconscious stranger like Walter had before him. “To get back at Dad!?”

Ezekiel rolled his eyes at his older siblings.

“Sure we have our disagreements sometimes. But I would never do anything to jeopardize our people! This time it’s not some fire I started or me destroying some vase in the house cause I went a little crazy. I’m trying to do a good deed here.” Ezekiel told them all. Then he sighed realizing something.

“Just forget it!” Ezekiel said with a shake of his head.

“I can't waste time on this. You three can go back to patrolling the perimeter like good little cubs and forget that you saw any of this. I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll get him up to the house and ask Mom to look at him. Case closed.” He finished with a confident air. “Now move out of the way!”

Ezekiel wasn’t sure what to expect after his harsh words....but he should have known that there would be serious backlash.

“I think someone’s forgotten who the hell he’s talking to! Do you really think you've got what it takes to go up against any of us!” sneered Ezekiel’s green-eyed brother, Lander.

With a brisk step, he brushed past Walter and approached Ezekiel with eyes full of open aggression.

Lander was Ezekiel’s second eldest brother.

He much like Walter had wide shoulders, but his hips were more narrow and defined by muscle and sinew. Defined but slimmer he was built for the Shift, the streamlined body made for hunt and kill, like the leopard that slept inside of him. His hair was a stark mix of golden and light golden that was long enough to brush the tips of his ear in the front, but long enough to dust his neck at the middle and back of his head.

And unlike Walter Landers face was free of all facial hair, though his upper chest was also dusted with short golden hair. While his left eyebrow was triple pierced, with three simple green amethysts that shimmered in the sun, but barely sparked in the moonlight. And with his hair swiped back with the morning dew that had soaked him through to his jeans.

“You’ll take care of it? And let’s all just forget that you’re playing with fire!? You are so freaking ignorant sometimes Ezekiel. ” Lander pointed out marching across the clearing. Pine needles crunched as he walked.

“You touched it remember!? There are drops of blood all over you! Now your scent is on the mortals skin, not to mention his blood smeared all over your shirt. So...Even if we did leave it with you and you took IT into the village....Dads gonna smell the blood tonight when he comes home. Then Dads gonna find the mortal and that will be it! And you can’t NOT come home ’cause then he’ll be looking for you. Either way, you’re freaking caught. So we can’t just “Let you take care of it.” Because you’re already in deep shit!!” Lander shook his head. “But I don’t really care about what happens to you or this intruder, but now you’ve drug us into this mess with you!”

“I said I didn’t want your help!! Now back off!?” Ezekiel snarled. Lander took one bold step after another towards him and the mortal.

“But you want Mom to get involved!? For some stranger?” Lander hissed in outrage, still coming at him.

“I know what I’m doing!!” Ezekiel hissed, taking a steep over the mortal to stand in his more emotional brother’s way.

“No you don’t you lil shit!!” Lander said. “Every Shifter in this Clan knows not to go anywhere near a mortal, but you just had to try didn’t you!”

His brother hissed as Ezekiel came abreast of him, but Lander dominated him, with his slightly taller body.

Ezekiel tried to respond in an even tone instead of a growl but he failed. “I know the damn rules. He’s my DAD too you know!“” Ezekiel replied to Landers harsh words. “And of course I don’t want to get MOM mixed up in this!”

Lander smirked, but Ezekiel ignored him and kept talking. “But, I definitely can’t risk taking the stranger half way across the Clan Lands to the other Healers house either.”

“Why not?” Lander hissed in irritation. “Anyone but mom would be better!”

“Well for one, you asshole.” Ezekiel snarled at his infuriating sibling. “I wouldn’t be able to get the mortal all the way over to the Eastern village before sun up. And by then there will be far too many Shifters outside preparing for the upcoming harvest. If I get spotted with the mortal, not to mention if one of them smells the intruder, count on word of this getting back to father faster than a fly settling on shit.” Ezekiel said and smoothly ignored how Lander glared at him for his vulgar use of language. “So that just leaves mom.”

Ezekiel continued gesturing to the woods ahead of him. “Mom will not only be able to help with the mortals injuries, but she’s closer, and unlike anyone else, I know I can count on her to stay quiet about all of this. At least until I can get the mortal stabilized and then back out of here.” he finished.

Lander growled somewhere deep in his chest like a cat in distress, but ten times bigger and angrier, and didn’t say a word.

Probably because he knows that Im right!

Ezekiel said to himself. Then cleared his throat.

“Lander... I know that’s its not ideal getting Mom mixed up in this, but she would want us to help him!” Ezekiel tried to implore. “She would also be heartbroken if she found out that there was someone here who needed her help but they died because we were too SCARED to come to her! Even if that someone is a mortal.” Ezekiel stopped, putting his hands on his brother’s shoulder, and trying to ease him away.

With a sudden growl, Lander shoved Ezekiel backward with a hiss. Long white canines grew before Ezekiels' eyes, overlapping Landers bottom lip as his anger let the Shifter, the leopard, inside come closer to the surface.

“Mom won’t hear anything about this Ezekiel.” He spat, as Ezekiel glared him in the eyes. “The solution here is easy to see. Just take this filthy mortal back wherever you fucking got him from and leave it alone!” Lander pointed out stepping right up to Ezekiel again. Getting in his face now.

Ezekiel snarled, his own eyes slit, and glowing blue, overtaking his irises, as leopard eyes replaced his mortal ones.

“I wont! What’s wrong with you? Why are you trying to condemn a total stranger to death? We don’t murder outsiders!” he shouted.

Lander smiled at him nastily and completely unmoved.

“Oh grow up! It isn’t murder if we didn’t slice ’em up in the first place.” He supplied coldly. “There are NO MORTALS PERMITTED without Dad's express authority onto the Clan Lands! You know this is wrong! What gives you the right to usurp Dad’s authority anytime you want to!? Youre not special and just because your blood is a little fucked up compared to the rest of us it doesn't give you the right to just go off the rails like this!”

Ezekiel shoved his brother with his left arm, still unable to move his right shoulder very much since he had gotten stabbed.

“Oh like your so god damn goody goody Lander. You don’t give a damn about the rule and I know I don’t give a damn about Father's rules IF they say that I have to stand back and let people die in front of me. Even IF that person is an outsider! He’s harmless. What will it hurt for Mom to take a look at his wounds? Huh! Tell me what the fucking issue really is!?”

Lander took a step back from his brother with an aggressive hiss and spit at the ground, beside the mortal’s body. “On fucking cry me a river you liar!” He said. “If that mortal is so sickly and helpless, then how did you get that giant hole in your chest Ezekiel?”

“Shit.” Ezekiel mummed under his breath, feeling the giant stinging hole in his collar all the more now that his brother had mentioned it.

He had hoped that his dark clothing and the smell of rotten flesh on the mortal would hide the smell of his own blood. Ezekiel had also hoped that the sparse moonlight would hide the decidedly deep flesh wound inches to the left of his heart, but no such luck.

Lander being so close to him must have smelled the blood he had spilt while apprehending the intruder.

“Oh, Shit is right.” Lander chuckled with a hard edge. “Now tell us the whole story. Not some patched-up sob story. You didn’t just find him passed out in the woods did you, little brother?”