by Jan Stryvant
Alliances
"What's this?" Deanna asked as Roberta handed her a very heavy box.
"Eighty of those 'lycan collars' along with eighty of the tag device that protects lycans from silver. This is what Sean's been making in the workshop all night and all morning."
"Where is he?" Deanna said, looking at Roberta who was only being accompanied by Jolene.
"He's asleep."
"More like passed out," Jolene added. "It's a lot of work to do that much enchanting, even with the special methods he's developed. I don't think he's going to be waking up anytime soon, either."
"Are you sure he'll be okay with you giving me this?" Deanna asked, looking at Jolene.
Jolene smiled, "We're his wives, we get to do whatever we want with his stuff. One of the perks."
"You mean you're his wife," Roberta said. "I'm not."
"Keep thinking that," Jolene laughed and winked at Roberta.
"You're sure about this?" Deanna asked, before Roberta could respond to Jolene's jibe.
Jolene nodded, "It's the whole reason he made them. If the Ascendants come back now, your lycan boyfriends and helpers will be able to give them one hell of a surprise."
Setting the box down on her desk, Deanna stepped forward and gave Jolene a hug.
"Thank you! And make sure to thank Sean for me when he awakens." Turning to Roberta she gave her a hug too, "I expect you to do the same," Deanna smiled.
"What, trying to get rid of me?" Roberta laughed.
"With this many collars and tags," Deanna motioned towards the box, "we'll have more than enough to protect everybody. Do you want any of the left over ones back?"
Jolene shook her head, "You'll probably need them eventually."
"What are your plans now?"
"Now would probably be a good time for us to leave," Jolene sighed, "They know Sean's here, and a large part of our strategy has always been to not stay anywhere once they know of us being there."
"Are you sure? With these tags of yours, we can easily stand against the Ascendants now."
"But it will draw others as well if he remains here, Deanna," Roberta sighed. "As much as I want him to stay, Jolene and the others have a point. They're not even waiting for him to wake up; they've already carried him out to their van."
"Well, I won't ask where you're going, but you're always welcome here, no matter what."
"Thanks, Deanna," Jolene smiled and gave her a hug, then turning she left the room.
"You know, Roberta," Deanna said as Roberta turned to follow Jolene. "Sooner or later that boy is going to make you his."
Roberta sighed and patted her belly, "He already has, Mother, he already has."
"You saw him, where?" Sal said into the phone.
"At the Sorceress Guild compound, out by Hidden Valley," Harkins said.
"When?"
"Last night, when we attacked them."
"You attacked the sorceresses?" Sal was surprised by that. He would have thought that they'd be getting ready for an attack like the one Gradatim had suffered.
"We have some unfinished business with them. Unfortunately Valens was there, and it didn't go as well as we had planned. But now that we know where he is...." Harkins trailed off.
Sal sighed, "He isn't there now. You should have called me sooner."
"What do you mean he isn't there now?"
"This kid keeps moving. Every time he's been found so far, he'd moved off to someplace new. He's not taking any chances."
"He'd abandon the sorceresses just like that?" Harkins said, surprised.
"It's not his fight. You didn't attack because he was there, and if he stays there I'm sure the other councils will go after him as well.
"No, his being there simply draws fire. His best bet is to move on."
"Damn," Harkins swore, "I didn't consider that. I guess I better call off tonight's attack."
"That would be your call," Sal said. "Well, I need to get back to looking for him, at least I know of another place he isn't. Goodbye." and he hung up the phone.
Sal shook his head and sighed. If only Harkins had bothered to call him last night, he could have staked out the place and maybe gotten an eyeball on the kid when he moved and tracked him to wherever he went next.
It had taken him a couple of days, but Sal had managed to figure out who a couple of Sean's high school friends were after finding a copy of his high school yearbook online and doing a few searches. The biggest problem he had with that however was three years after high school, what was the likelihood that they were still friends? Or that he was going to visit his friends while in the middle of what was obviously now a war.
The more Sal learned, the more he realized that the folks over at the Council of Ascendance had reason to fear Sean. He'd put a serious smack down on the Council of Gradatim, and several members of their leadership were now dead or missing, along with all of their lycans.
The only thing Sal couldn't understand is why Sean went after them, before going after the Ascendants, who had given him a lot more to be angry about. From what he'd been starting to pick up from some of the other coven members that Tony had turned him on to, Sean had even helped the gals over at the Sorceress Guild put the smack down on one of Harkins' biggest allies.
Which no doubt had been what inspired last night's attack.
Without much in the way of clues to Sean's present location, Sal had driven by the homes of Sean's friends, one of which was obviously now unoccupied in a rather nice part of town, another one appeared to no longer have the young man he was looking for living at it. The third one's house he couldn't even find.
But two of them he found had business connections and today he was going to stop by the first. Steven Bryson apparently worked at his family's automotive shop. Sal had the address and as he drove by the place, he was impressed by the size of the operation. Combined with the rather nice house he'd seen, apparently the Bryson's did okay.
That made Sal wonder why Sean, who apparently was dirt poor, was friends with a rich kid? That didn't make a lot of sense to Sal, but maybe things were different now from when he had grown up. Back then rich kids most definitely did not hang around with any poor kids.
Parking the car on the street he walked over to the shop. The place had a fairly large front showroom with a large counter and a number of racks with items for sale on them, with the usual display of tires on the back wall. Going inside he walked up to the counter, maybe if he played his cards right, he could get a tour of the place.
"Can I help you, Sir?" the gal behind the counter asked him.
"Yes, do you have a rates schedule I can look at?"
She handed him a flyer, "Is this for an insurance claim? Or will you be paying for it?"
"I'll be paying," he said and she pointed to the bottom of the second page as he opened the flyer to look inside.
"Our rates are there, but for anything beyond a standard tune-up or maintenance, you'll have to bring the vehicle in for an estimate. Our work is all based on standard hourly rates, but estimates are of course, free."
Someone walked behind Sal as she was talking, and he smelled it almost instantly, wolf.
Glancing over his shoulder he noticed a young man heading into the back, and he reeked of wolf. Whether he was a wolf, or had been in the company of one, it didn't matter. If there were wolves around here and he started asking questions about Sean, word would get back to him that a hyena was looking for him. That would destroy any chance of setting up any kind of ambush to take the kid alive.
Then again, maybe that was why this Bryson kid had been interested in Sean? Maybe the kid was a wolf; maybe the whole family was wolves. Sal knew that there were at least two large packs that called the area home. A lot of the free wolves had come out west to run in the high sierras where there weren't many people living and settled here. He didn't doubt that by now, more than a few of them had become quite successful.
So it just might be that the local packs knew what Sean's fath
er had been up to, and had taken an interest in Sean, just in case Sean decided on following in his father's footsteps.
Sal's eyes narrowed a little as he pursued that thought a moment, it would even explain just how the geas was removed and how Sean was able to pursue his magical studies.
"Sir?" the woman behind the counter asked.
"Oh! Sorry," Sal apologized. "Thanks for your time, I need to get going." Turning around he put the flyer in his pocket and headed for the exit. If the local wolf packs were involved, that would mean Sean had a lot more help than Harkins realized. Staying at the Sorceress Guild even made sense, they'd been loosely allied with the lycans for centuries now.
Hell, even he'd be welcome there.
Heading back to his car, Sal decided that he needed to find out just how large and how powerful the local wolf clans were. This would definitely complicate his plans.
Take Me Down
Sean yawned and stretched and looked up at the ceiling. Then blinked, this wasn't Roberta's room. Looking down in the dim light, Roxy was sprawled across his chest sound asleep. So she'd forgiven him apparently.
Sitting up slowly he eased her off of him as she grumbled in her sleep. Jolene and Daelyn were both together on his left side, surprisingly. So moving off to the right he sat up and started to wonder where the bathroom was when he realized just exactly where they were.
They were back in the bunker!
Sniffing the air, he could still smell a few faint burnt smells from the stuff that had been destroyed when they'd evacuated the last time. He could also smell cleaning products, and several wolves that he recognized faintly.
Standing up slowly, he left the bedroom, they were in one next to the one they'd used last time, and he quickly made his way to the bathroom. After relieving himself, Sean shifted back to his human form and decided to deal with the next most pressing thing on his mind: Food.
Sean recognized Stu, from what had been beta team three, sitting at the table and watching a flat panel display as he entered the kitchen.
"I see you're up," Stu said giving him a nod.
"Is there any food in the fridge, and what am I doing here?" Sean said, keeping his priorities straight.
"The fridge is packed, the microwave over there works, and your wives agreed that staying at the guild was too inviting a target, now that people had seen you there."
Sean nodded as he opened the fridge and started pulling out food and stacking it on the table. Grabbing something to drink he sat down and just started stuffing lunchmeats and cheese into his mouth. He'd see about nuking something more substantial, once the initial edge was off.
"What are you doing?" Sean asked Stu between bites.
"We've got a pretty extensive perimeter detection system set up here now. Hidden cameras on all the approaches, pressure sensors, thermal sensors, microphones. You name it. Daelyn had John come down here with us and wire the place last week."
"Dae?" Sean blinked.
Stu nodded, but his attention was on the flat panel display as he typed something on the keypad set up under it. "She had us clean the place out, wanted it prepped for any more lycans that might show up."
"What day is today?" Sean asked looking around. There still wasn't a clock in the room, and someone had taken his watch off, along with the rest of his clothes. Now that he was no longer starving, Sean was starting to realize that he was buck-naked.
"Monday, Five forty-three in the morning."
"Ugh, there you are," Roxy said stumbling into the room still half-asleep. Sean looked at her and smiled, Roxy didn't do mornings much better than he did, and other than a pair of panties, she wasn't wearing any clothes either.
Sean was impressed that Stu only glanced up once, and then went back to looking at his panel.
"I got hungry," Sean said between bites, pulling Roxy over to sit on his lap as he continued to eat.
"Apparently," she sighed and leaned into him. "Cold."
"Yeah, you're naked."
"I got panties on, I'm not naked," She mumbled.
"Eat," Sean chuckled and handed her a cold hotdog.
"Hey, this isn't cooked!"
"Yeah, I didn't want to wait."
Getting back to her feet Roxy went over to the refrigerator. "Well as long as I'm up, I might as well cook you something."
"Does this mean I'm forgiven?" Sean asked.
"It was that or have that demented dwarf shave me," Roxy snorted. "Dae can be downright evil when she wants to be."
"Look who's talking!" Sean laughed.
"Yeah, well. I come by it naturally. I think she's self-taught."
Sean grinned at that, "So, did you give any tags to Deanna's people?"
Roxy nodded as she pulled some food out and went over to the stove.
"Yeah, we gave them eighty. We also sent ninety over to Oak and the shop; to make sure everyone was covered there plus another eight for the people here."
"How many does that leave us here?"
"Two hundred and thirty tags, two hundred and one collars." Roxy turned to him and blushed, "I sent nine tags and nine collars to my dad by courier yesterday, I hope you don't mind."
Sean smiled and shook his head, "Nah, family comes first. So how many of those things did I make?"
"You made all of the tags in the box, that was four hundred and seventeen, and three hundred and ten of the collars," Roxy stopped and pointed the spatula she was using at him, "you were working for over eight hours straight after being up all day and passed out from the stress and the strain and the lack of sleep. I'm not going to get on your case about it,"
"Un-huh," Sean grinned.
"But you need to stop letting your impulsiveness and your anger run away with you," Roxy finished and went back to cooking.
Sean looked at Roxy as she stood there cooking, in only her panties. He loved the way her ass looked, and in those panties it seemed even more alluring. He smiled as he remembered all the times her butt in those track shorts she used to wear around campus had led to some rather impure fantasies back in his bedroom.
And now? Now he had the real thing right there, and that beat any fantasy he'd ever had, hands down, because that gorgeous ass of hers was attached to an equally sexy, smart, and loving woman.
Standing up Sean walked over to Roxy and putting his arms around her, he leaned into her.
"Somebody's excited," Roxy snickered as Sean's erection poked at her butt.
"Well I'm not starving anymore, well at least not for food," Sean whispered and started to kiss down the side of her neck.
"Sean!" Roxy giggled, tilting her head to the side for him, "We have an audience!"
"Stu, is that panel portable?" Sean growled.
"Already leaving, Sir!" Stu said and left the room.
"Now, where were we?" Sean asked and sliding a hand down, relieved Roxy of her panties.
Spreading her legs, Roxy turned off the stove and moved the pan out of the way.
"I think a horny lion was about to spend a little time pleasing his equally horny little cheetah," Roxy purred.
Sliding a hand down to tease at Roxy's sex, Sean was rather surprised to find out that she really was as horny as she claimed.
"Hmm, you weren't kidding, were you," Sean said, nuzzling her from behind and planting little love bites along her shoulder.
"Like I told your lion, I dragged you back to my room for a reason," Roxy giggled and started rubbing her butt up and down along his erection.
"You just want me for my body," Sean chuckled.
"And your money, and your children," Roxy agreed bending over a bit more to reach down between her spread legs and guide him into her body.
"What about this?" Sean growled and drove his hips forward suddenly.
"Oh yes!" Roxy groaned, bracing her hands against the wall over the stove, "Definitely that! Lots of that!"
Grabbing her hips with his hands, Sean started to give her just that. Roxy was definitely a very physical and athletic lover, and she sta
rted bucking back against him almost immediately. Letting go of her hips he slid his hands up higher and bending forward until his chest pressed into her back, he slid his arms around her body, then crossing his arms, to hold her tight, he moved his hands up to capture her bouncing breasts as he continued to pummel her from behind with his body.
Roxy arched her back further bringing her body a little close to the still warm grill, enjoying the heat of it radiating up against her belly, as her mate took her hard from behind. She could hear him growling softly in her ears as his arms wrapped around her, imprisoning her before him, as his body pressed down into hers.
When his hands grabbed her breasts and started to kneed and massage them, she went off like a firecracker under him, her body bucking back against his, as she moaned her need for him.
But he was unrelenting and continued his assault, his fingers finding her nipples and pinching them, hard, taking her breath away as she pressed harder against the wall, her head hanging down between her arms as she tried to catch her breath. Her mate's demanding motions driving the breath from her, as he held on tighter, and his actions began to take on a more demanding and frenzied behavior.
"Babies, huh?" Sean grunted in her ear and then tipping his head down he bit the side of her neck where it joined her body and growling he hit his peak, emptying himself into her body.
Roxy's head came up as he seized her neck in a mating bite, his words echoing through her head, causing her to go off again. Pushing back hard against him, she felt the heat of him pouring into her as she cried out loudly.
Sean held onto Roxy with all of his strength, surprised at just how loud she'd cried out as she'd hit her peak, her body grinding back against his as she moaned and panted rather loudly.
When he finally wound down, he noticed she was purring very softly, only one hand bracing her against the wall, as the other rubbed her belly slowly.
Licking at the teeth marks he'd left on her neck he thought about that a moment, maybe she hadn't been kidding when she'd complained to him about getting Roberta pregnant first?
