Chapter Text
The sun is high when Soap wakes up. He's usually up with the birds, a natural early riser, but he thinks the conversation with Ghost last night unlocked something within him. Had released the albatross around his neck so that he finally felt free for the first time in weeks. The way Ghost had kissed him last night… the way he had spoken to him, touched him. Well. It was enough to make a man hopeful. Maybe even downright optimistic.
He takes his time getting dressed; lets himself stretch languidly and enjoy basking in the rays of sun beaming through his window for a little while. The sun on his bare skin reminds him of that first day he and Ghost had met. Him fully naked, Ghost dressed to his most menacing and trying as hard as he possibly could to be terrifying. An omega so perfect he was bigger than any alpha, with both the cock and the attitude to match.
Ghost's Wiles last night had felt like nothing else, They moved over him like liquid gold, gentle as the tides washing across his body until he felt like nothing bad could ever happen again. He'd been so eager to serve Ghost, so desperate to do anything he wanted that he thinks he might find a way to stop time if he had to. Anything to keep Ghost near him and using that silky voice. He reckons if he is really lucky he'll be able to convince Ghost to use them again.
He won't be using his voice though not unless Ghost asks him to and he doesn't think that's likely.
Soap is starting to suspect he owes Price some sort of apology at the very least, if not perhaps a small fortune and any other treasures he might be able to bestow upon him. If he had the power to give him Gaz's hand then he would.
When he dresses, he chooses to wear his least ripped jeans and cleanest shirt, which is definitely nothing to do with the fact that it's the one that best highlights his waist. When he's finally picking his hat up off the dresser, he hears a scrabbling outside of his door; Tablet usually knows better than to do that. She's a good girl. He can normally trust her to sit quietly downstairs, although by this time she's usually following Ghost around on his morning chores.
Apparently today she's decided she's going to be naughty for the first time in months.
"Get doon, ye silly bitch." Soap waves her off as she immediately dives between his legs as he swings the door open. She's persistent though and keeps nosing at his pockets and knees in the way she always used to do when she was hungry. It's rare that Soap is up early enough to be the one to feed her these days so he's surprised she's so keen for food. But he figures maybe Ghost has decided to start further out on the ranch and simply hasn't been up to the house yet.
The kitchen is quiet when they get there and Soap immediately finds a scrap of food to hand down to Tablet to quiet her yapping.
From the corner comes a plaintive little bleat.
Soap whips around, somehow still surprised when he sees Mint Sauce sitting in her box just the same as she was when he left her last night. By now Ghost should have fed her bottle and taken her out the box to toddle around the living room until Soap arrived. Soap has never once known Ghost to sleep late in the morning, but he supposes there's a first time for everything and last night had been utterly exhausting for the both of them.
Given what a rarity this is, Soap decides it actually just grants him an opportunity to do something nice for Ghost. He gathers a few items to create a small breakfast and piles it all up on a tray. He makes up a bottle for Minty and feeds her first; Ghost would never forgive him if he found out he'd been happily enjoying a late breakfast while Minty was sitting hungry downstairs. Once done, Soap collects his tray and heads out to the barn.
The note, pinned by a knife on the ladder to the loft, is visible from about ten feet away.
This is again unusual but the conversation with Ghost last night had been fragile ground and Soap had somewhat expected that he may retreat. He won't be surprised at all if Ghost has gone out on a ride to clear his head. The handwriting is neat cursive with it's embarrassingly upper-class letters that Soap recognises from his mum's time in service, receiving notes from her employer.
Soap, the letter starts.
Johnny.
There isn't much I can say that I think you will believe. I know that you will struggle to understand why I have made this decision, but I have thought long and hard about this and I cannot stay. Our time together has been deeply important to me, if I felt that I could say goodbye I would have come and said it to you directly, but I knew that you would try and convince me to stay and I knew that I would not be nearly strong enough to resist if you did.
I am sorry for the things that I will miss out on, first and foremost being your company but also the next lambing season, which is sure to grow your flock and make your ranch even more successful. I'm sorry I won't get to see the lamb we are raising together grow to slaughter weight; she would have made an excellent gift for Price.
I know you are not likely to listen, but please don't look for me. I am doing what is best for me, for us both, and if you love me in the way that you say, then you will leave me be.
My heart remains yours, though I cannot be.
Ghost. Simon.
Soap dumps the tray onto a barrel, bounds up the ladder two rungs at a time. There's almost nothing left, barely a trace of the man who had so easily made himself the centre of Soap's entire life.
Almost, because in the centre of the bed is a tiny package wrapped in lavender cloth. Soap's fingers are trembling as he flips the small bundle open and takes in the contents.
A handkerchief, a watch, a hat charm and a knife.
These are all the things that Soap has left of the man he loves.
Soap picks up the hat charm first, curls his fingers around the smooth edges of the ivory. The skull and crossbones grins up at him mockingly and Soap just barely resists the urge to turn and whip it against the wall as hard as he can. The watch works, the ticking so loud it seems like it echoes through the room. The gold is bright and almost glows in the poor light of the hayloft. Soap is achingly careful when he clicks it shut and slides it into his pocket.
The knife had been left with the note but its usual sheath had been in the package. Supple leather with weaving patterns embossed into it, matching the same patterns that adorn Last's bridle. The thought of Last opens a new pit in Soap's stomach, the idea that when he walks into the stable he will find her gone, Thistle stood there alone, or perhaps worse is the thought that she might still be there. That Ghost might have left her in some weak attempt to make up for the lack of himself.
Soap can't even move to go and check. Instead he picks up the handkerchief and bundling the fabric up, presses it to his face and begins to cry.
The scent of Ghost hangs thick in the silk and Soap loses himself in it for a long while, the sun growing high. He isn't sure how he makes it from the hayloft to his kitchen but he is aware of the cabinets against his back, the small bundle of wool inserting herself into his lap. It hurts, Ghost being gone. There's a physical ache that Soap had been given no chance to brace for. It's a result of the imprint, he knows, the chemical dependency he has developed for Ghost's scent. The intense biological demand that tells him to claim, take, hold.
Protect. Preserve. Cherish.
The note is balled up in his palm, creased and crushed but still painfully legible.
"Soap?" Gaz's voice rings from outside the door.
"Open the door, one of you, your delivery is getting too hot." Their tone is enough to tell Soap that they have probably been out there for a while. Still, he can't seem to gather the energy to stand, or even to shout back to them. Maybe, if he stays quiet and still for long enough they will simply leave him be.
Luck is apparently not on his side, there's the thick clunk of a lock turning before the two of them are strolling into the kitchen. They only stop when they catch sight of Soap, curled up on the floor with his back to the cupboards, Minty nestled in his lap and Tablet curled protectively at his feet.
"Soap?" Gaz asks, tone carefully neutral. Soap watches his boots move across the floor until they stop in front of him, before he lowers into a crouch.
"John?" Price says, voice much tighter. "Where's Simon?" Soap can't speak, can't even bear to look Price in the eye. The idea of trying to stand toe to toe with Price, this Alpha who protected Ghost so well and for so long, and explain to him that he is the one who drove him away-
It's unthinkable.
Instead, Soap lifts a trembling hand and holds out the note. Gaz ignores it in favour of sliding to the ground and along the floor, propping himself against the cabinets, snug against Soap's side. The scent of warm amber wraps around Soap, it should be comforting but in this moment he simply feels stifled. Still, he's grateful for Gaz all the same.
Price snatches the letter, the stink of acrid anxiety radiating from him as he does. He reads it in silence, a small wounded sound punching out of him as he gets to the end.
"It's his handwriting." Is all he says.
"Aye." Soap agrees, though it hadn't been a question.
"He barely even mentioned me." Price says, and he sounds hollowed out, the words ringing far too loud for the room. Price brings the note to his face and breathes in the traces of Ghost's scent that cling to it, Soap should know, he did the same.
When Price drops to his knees Soap reaches out enough to gather him up and drag him close, the need for his pack overwhelming his self preservation but Price lets himself be gathered, presses in to Soap's side and hangs there like a puppet with his strings cut.
Gaz moves, gathering the note up off the ground and bringing it in to his own chest, inhaling deeply.
"What the fuck." Gaz pushes out of Soap's hold until he's standing, his long legs carrying him in sharp paces back and forth across the room. "What the fuck." He says again. "Simon didn't write this."
Price and Soap both growl in unison, long and low and utterly threatening to anyone who isn't Kyle Garrick, apparently.
"Of course he did." Soap snarls.
"His handwriting, his scent." Price adds, voice the kind of dangerous Soap has never heard it before. Gaz doesn't even blink.
"He wrote it." Gaz says, acquiescing. "But he didn't choose to." And then, under his breath, adds "Fucking alphas can't see the woods for the trees when there's an omega involved."
"Careful." Price warns and it actually makes Gaz scoff.
"You both have met Simon, yes?" Gaz asks, tone firm enough for Soap to force himself to listen. "Other than you two what did he love most in the world?"
"You." Price says instinctively at the same time Soap says "What?"
Mint Sauce takes that opportunity to remind them of her presence with a plaintive little bleat. Soap blinks.
"Damn right Minty, you." Gaz tells her, then stares at them like they should know where the hell he's going with this. He grunts in exasperation when neither of them gets it. "Thick as pig shit, you both are. So, does this sound like something Simon would write in a goodbye note: 'I'm sorry I won't get to see the lamb we are raising together grow to slaughter weight; she would have made an excellent gift for Price.'" Gaz looks at them pointedly, "He wouldn't even let Price babysit her alone because he made jokes about eating her. Not a chance he ever references bloody slaughtering her, Jesus."
"He would never have left her without saying goodbye, giving her breakfast." Soap says, slowly. Heartache slowly beginning to morph into cold dread. "But why, and why didn't the letter or the gifts smell like anyone else-"
"What gifts?" Price asks sharply, the fog of despair somewhat faded from his eyes.
"He left me a few things. A handkerchief, his watch. The little skull from his-"
"Hat band." Price finishes, face pale as snow. "Ivory?"
"Yes?" Soap feels the tension pull taught in his belly as Price stands to join Gaz.
"That little fucking charm. It was a gift, early on from Robidoux. Young Simon had a bit of a yen for tales of piracy." Price's face is twisted darkly. "He kept that fucking thing on him the last two decades, a reminder, he called it, of what comes from trusting too easily."
"Everett." Soap rears back. "You're saying Everett found him? Took him? There wasn't any scent-"
"Those plants that Ghost takes?" Gaz says, "I'm guessing they work both ways."
"He didn't choose to leave." Soap says, in that singular truth both a stitch and a knife.
"He didn't choose to leave." Price agrees, and turns to press a fierce kiss to Gaz's mouth.
"He wouldn't." Gaz adds, kissing Price again.
Soap sprints from the room, takes the stairs two at a time as he throws together things he might need. He pulls his gun case out from beneath his bed and pulls out both of his rifles to join his usual revolver, loads ammunition into a bandolier too. He may be a ranch hand now but Soap isn't a stranger to the darker sides of the west, he moved here with little to his name, just the hope that maybe he could make enough money one day to let his mother be comfortable. He rolled with some bad characters, did jobs he wasn't proud of.
When he made enough to finally buy the ranch he'd been doing some protection work for some very questionable types. The type that needed heavily armed men to watch over their wagons. The kind that had asked Soap to kill to protect their cargo, and he had.
Gaz walks through the door and silently takes one of the rifles from Soap's hand, slinging it over his own shoulder. He helps Soap's shaking hands close the buckle on his satchel and gives Soap a once over before he nods soundly, content that Soap isn't actually losing his grip on reality.
'An angry man?' Gaz had said once, reminiscing about he and Soap's time on the wagon protection detail, 'Him I know how to deal with, but a heartbroken one?' Then he'd let out a long, low whistle. Soap had laughed, then, punched Gaz's arm and said something showy like 'A bullet'll treat em both the same.'
He gets it now, he thinks. He isn't sure that there are enough bullets to stop him now. Not in the West, maybe not all the bullets in North America.
"Price is readying the horses." Is all Gaz says now and Soap knows that he means for all of them. Gaz would follow Soap to the end the same way Price would follow Ghost, for all that in this moment Soap wishes he wouldn't. He wishes the two of them would go home and leave Soap to his work, distance themselves from the danger of what's coming.
Soap reaches out then, wraps a hand behind Gaz's neck and hauls him in so he can press their foreheads together, his wrist gland pressed to the one on Gaz's throat. His best friend, since that first day on the boat from Liverpool.
"I can't lose you too." Soap tells him, squeezing tight enough that it must hurt. Gaz doesn't move.
"I'm not going anywhere, Tav." Soap holds him closer anyway and Gaz lets him. The sound of hooves outside finally drags him away and the two of them gather their things and head downstairs to join Price.
Last is there, along with Thistle and Price and Gaz's two horses. "If we bring them all we can rotate them and ride longer." Price shrugs. "And Last will be there for when we have Ghost back." Soap resolutely does not let his breath catch at the certainty of Price's statement but he does allow himself to hope just a little bit more.
They don't have to talk about it to know their destination. All of them are aware that Robidoux owns half the railways this side of the nation. He's not likely to travel by horse when he doesn't have to, not least when the distance he's planing on covering is quite as large as he is. Chances are good he's planning on dragging Ghost back to England, locking him up in that same hunting lodge as before.
Soap mounts Last, he's ridden her a couple of times before, usually because it always made Ghost laugh to see how small Soap looked balanced on her massive frame. Thistle can be the spare horse for now.
Besides, if they're lucky then the first train won't have left for the day. Everett may be rich, he may own the railway, but even he can't make sudden changes to the timetable without risking a crash further down the line.
The other two mount up and nod solemnly at Soap. The train station is in the centre of town, a small ramshackle thing but it handles more freight than one might think, given the number of ranches in this area. It's noteworthy and connected enough that Soap is quite sure that Everett would have bothered to use it, rather than riding further down to one of the larger, fancier stations.
When Soap glances over he sees that Price's hands are trembling on the reins, his scent enough to tell him it's a mix of fear and rage that any man should fear when it's rolling off John Price. Soap quietly reaches out and hands Price the knife Ghost had left. The handle is imbued with his scent, the blade wicked sharp and only slightly less fatal in Price's hand than Simon's.
Price's fingers curl around it until the knuckles turn white.
They don't speak, but Price lets out an affection chuff, tilts his chin down in a way so submissive Soap isn't sure he's ever done it before, it doesn't appear like it comes naturally to him, stiff and experimental.
Instead of acknowledging it, Soap rewards it in the best way he knows how; he digs his heels in to Last's sides and urges her on down the road, beginning their pursuit.
-
Ghost glares out the window, his face flattened into his practised mask of stoicism. He still has the mask, Everett doesn't bother to be cruel, even now, if he did that might imply that Ghost had ever meant any more to him than he does: a title and a fortune. He hadn't even used vile words or violence when he had greeted Ghost in the barn. Instead he had simply used his Voice, no preamble or small talk. He had told Ghost, calmly, that he had armed men with him in case Soap caused a fuss. Ghost wasn't worried about that though, Soap has always slept through the night, and he had been more at peace last night than all the rest of the time Simon had known him.
The Voice had done its job, icy tendrils sliding like knives beneath his skin, probing and pressing into the folds of his brain. When he'd told him to write the letter, Ghost had simply obeyed.
Soap must be up by now, by Ghost's reckoning. The sun is high enough. If he is then he'll have found the note, or will any moment.
Ghost had felt sick doing it. His imprint snapping and whining in his chest as he attempted to sever their connection.
"Honestly, Simon, you always were painfully miserable, but this is something else. You must have known I'd catch you eventually. I was never going to just let you go."
"I wish you had." Ghost grits out.
"And I did, in Paris and Berlin and even your little adventure in Cairo. But now is the time for you to come back into the fold, Simon. Now that it looks like you're almost ready to be of use to me."
"Wha-?" Ghost's brow furrows and he allows his gaze to move from the horizon and finally land on the smug, handsome face of his captor.
"Your father is ill." He says, as blandly as if he was telling Ghost what day of the week it is. "Rumour has it, unsurvivably so."
Ghost clenches his jaw beneath the mask, bites back any reaction that Robidoux might be looking for.
"So cheer up. You're about to be a Duchess, Si." His voice is the same smooth rumble he had used when he was first seducing Simon, thick and sweet. Now he just finds it sickening.
Ghost slides his eyes back across the train carriage and lets his focus once more fall outside the window. Steam is belching out of the stack at the front of the train, whistles and honks and the tell tale engine growl that tells him she's about to pull away.
Then the whistles change tone and the engine dies back down, there's the sound of shouting on the platform. When Simon looks back at Everett, for the first time, there's sweat on his brow.
-
The horses are covered in sweat, hooves pounding the dirt of the road as the three of them race to the station. None of them has said a word since they left the ranch, all focused on the road in front of them, keeping the horses steady. The pounding drumbeat of hoof beats beneath them.
They already know, by the time they throw themselves off their mounts and march into the offices, that it's too late.
The clerk startles, a nervous stammer echoing his words as he tells them that the first train of the day left at eight am that morning, some hours ago, and is likely on the other side of the mountains by now.
Soap doesn't recognise the growl that rumbles out of his chest, but he feels the way it synchronises with the matching one from Price.
"There was an omega on that train." Gaz's eyes flash gold in the hazy light of the timber building. "One for whom you didn't look at the papers." There's real fear on the clerk's face now, and he's right to be afraid. Soap and Price are both near feral, Price already having turned over the heavy wooden table that held the schedules, and Gaz is something almost worse. A cognizant predator. A beta looking out for his pack and a powerful one at that.
Price had told Soap once that Gaz was a powerful beta and Soap hadn't understood what he'd meant until now. It's wrong, what people say about betas not producing a scent, it's just not the same as other designations. The clerk is a low grade alpha, already nervous about the feral pair in front of him but still willing to stand his ground.
As Soap watches though Gaz takes a deep breath and as he breathes out his scent floods the room, cool amber reaching out and filling the space, smothering all else beneath it. It's so stifling Soap almost chokes on it, he's only saved by Gaz being his pack, the scent that of family. For an entirely unfamiliar alpha it must be like having the lights turned off, his keenest sense snuffed out by the cloying cloud of beta neutrality.
"Where was the train headed?" Gaz says, face inches from the clerk's.
"It was the eight o'clock to East Riding." It's not true, anyone could see this man has been told to lie. Gaz's scent increases until Soap's back teeth hurt with it, his vision clouding at the edges. The acrid stink of urine fills the room and Soap realises the clerk has pissed himself.
"Tell me the truth." Gaz says and he hasn't even raised his voice.
"Mr Robidoux had it redirected further east, he's heading for the coast but it will take them a few days to get there with refuelling and necessary stops." The scent disappears in an instant and Soap heaves in the cool air. Price is no less angry than he was before but he also looks dark and aroused, dangerous pride simmering in his eyes. Soap's not surprised, his mate just put on an incredible display of power.
"We chase the train." Soap says, into the quiet.
"Course we do." Price agrees.
"We find Simon." Gaz confirms. "We bring him home."
-
"Sorry sir." A porter has stuck his head into the carriage, he looks harried and apologetic. "One of the cargo crates arrived late and needed to be loaded." Even as he's speaking Everett relaxes. The whistles begin again and only a minute later there's a lurch as the locomotive heaves its way out of the station and begins to roar along the track.
"Time's up." Everett says. He isn't even gloating, just stating the facts.
Time is up for Ghost, and no one is coming to save him.