by Noah Harris
“A mother is entitled to be overjoyed at having a new addition to her family, and at finally seeing her eldest settle down.”
“Mom,” Mikael all but whined, “You act like I’m nearing middle age and still trying to be a playboy or something.”
Matalina eyed Mikael, “Maybe not middle age, but if you think I don’t know what you got up to when you weren’t under the eye of the pack, then you are very much mistaken Mikael. And before you snicker Katarina, I happen to know you’re up to about the same. The only one of my children who doesn’t act like a pup coming into their first rut is Lucille.”
“Mom!” Dean laughed at the simultaneous and synchronized sound of dismay from both Mikael and Katarina. He was sure that for Katarina it had to do with the audience they currently had in the form of some very amused looking pack members. Mikael had and would always be slightly mortified whenever his mother brought up his sex life.
“See? Horndog.” Dean supplied helpfully in Mikael’s direction, earning him a warning scowl that he promptly ignored.
Matalina smiled and stepped back, which was apparently the signal for the rest of the pack that had been impatiently waiting for them to finish talking. Suddenly Mikael and Dean were swarmed by a veritable horde of pack members, all eager to wish them congratulations and express their happiness. Their mode of expression ranged from either a slap on the back, one of which almost sent Dean sprawling, to very exuberant hugs and loud voices in his ear.
Mikael was just as swamped as him, separated from Dean by the crowd that was swimming about them. Some of the younger children had joined the ruckus, and a few were demanding Dean pay them particular attention. That was how he ended up with a kid on each hip, grinning at Mikael across the small distance between them, happy to bathe in the happy energy surrounding them.
Dean would give the pack this much, they knew how to throw up an attractive building quickly when they put their minds to it. Many of The Grove’s buildings had been damaged from the fires that Damian’s pack had lit during their attack. It had been the main house, the place Samuel and Matalina had called home, like many of the alphas before them, that had burned almost completely down, though. The space where the main house would have been was still bare after being cleared of the remains of the charred wreckage.
Instead, the clan had erected a makeshift main house for the two of them to live in just in front of the area where the first house had once stood. It wasn’t nearly as ornate and large as the original, and before Mikael even said anything, Dean had the impression that it wasn’t meant to be a permanent structure. This was bolstered by the fact that Mikael took one look at it and muttered to Dean that while it was put together to last, it could easily be taken apart as well.
It was still a nice building, and because it wasn’t quite as grand and large as the original, it seemed more comfortable as well. The central room still bore the same feelings of both comfort and grandeur, definitely meant for formal meetings. The doorways leading to what Dean suspected were their bedroom and the cooking area, were closed off. The central part of the room was recessed, allowing for a pit where a fire crackled merrily as they entered. Torches were set into four pillars that stood equidistant from one another, encasing the pit and the seating area positioned around it.
The heat would have been stifling, even with the cold weather, but he detected a faint bite of cold air creeping in from the windows nearby. The smaller space with the lighting made it look far more comfortable than the last meeting room had been. Before, it had seemed like a lot of dancing shadows, and generally it made both Matalina and Samuel seem far more foreboding than Dean would have liked. Now, everything seemed more cozy and welcoming, and Dean wondered how much of that was simply a matter of creating a space for them quickly and how much of it may have been Matalina’s influence.
Both Samuel and Matalina sat in their customary position on large, comfy looking pillows. Without a raised dais, they were at eye level with Mikael and Dean. Matalina had shed her warm winter clothing, wearing what Dean could only call a light poncho and skirt. Both were beautifully embroidered with designs that Dean couldn’t make out and they seemed to be nothing more than swirling patterns. Samuel had inexplicably eschewed a shirt of some kind, wearing only heavy looking necklaces that were draped over his shoulders and reached down almost to his abdomen, a pair of brown leather pants covering his legs as he kneeled.
“You made it then,” Samuel said in way of greeting.
“More or less, though you know, a phone call would have worked too,” Dean told the older man as he and Mikael positioned themselves on their own pillows before the alphas.
“Phones don’t work out here.”
“Carrier pigeon?”
“Dean,” Mikael replied for his father, “those are extinct.”
“Raven?”
“Babe.”
Dean shrugged, glad that they had removed their coats in the small entryway before the larger open room. While it was comfortable to kneel in here wearing only the loose shirt and jeans, it would have been downright smothering in anything heavier. He would have led the conversation by asking why Samuel was going shirtless in the middle of winter, but decided he’d pushed it enough. Samuel actually looked less grumpy than usual and even Dean didn’t want to goad the man too far if they could manage a somewhat decent conversation.
Once it was apparent that they were done, Samuel cleared his throat. “In any case, I called you here for a few specific reasons, though before we get to them, it seems congratulations are in order.”
Dean watched Samuel’s eyes trail to his bandaged shoulder. “It’s a bit new, but yeah, we finally got around to it.”
Samuel’s gaze moved to Mikael, raising his brow slightly, “For someone who was so intent on making him your mate, you certainly took longer than I had thought you would. Bit of nerves?”
“Or maybe we just wanted to wait for a specific moment,” Dean answered for Mikael without a glance toward his mate. “That, or waiting until we didn’t have a roommate roaming about at random times. Seriously though, did you guys train Apollo to be a ninja, or did he just learn that on his own?”
Samuel gave a soft snort. “Both. The two of them had a talent for being quiet when need be, to the extent that Apollo does it naturally now. Hard to have privacy, hmm?”
“A bit, yeah.”
Matalina raised her chin to look at Dean and Mikael. “In any case, that little welcome party was not meant to be the celebration we intended, only a show of welcome and happiness. So, we will still be having a celebration to commemorate the bond the two of you have decided to forge with one another.”
“Which leaves us with two celebrations to arrange.” Samuel explained, a tightness around his mouth the only show of his unhappiness. “Customarily, a celebration for a successful mating is done shortly after the deed is done, as such a bond can occur at any time. The rite for initiating a new member however, is usually done in the spring, so as to mark a new beginning for the new pack member. Of course, the rite is usually done before a mating happens, but you two decided to go about it a little differently.”
Dean managed to repress a smirk as he nodded. “Then just do it the way you would normally do it. I know reserves are tight, especially with everything that’s happened, so you don’t have to make a big deal over the mating thing. Do what you would normally do, but the mating was more for us and we don’t need to have a big fuss made over it. I wouldn’t object to a fuss over the initiation though, I’d love to publicly celebrate joining the pack.”
Mikael nodded his approval of the idea, jerking his head in Dean’s direction as a show of support for what Dean was saying. While he was speaking, Matalina stood from her pillow and moved to where Dean was kneeling and placed her hands gently on his shoulder, halting anything else he would have added. He winced as her fingers pulled at the fresh tape, peeling it from his skin as a rush of cooler air hit the wound. It was still raw and angry looking, but the wound looked
cleaner and more healed than it had even the day before.
“Interesting.” Matalina murmured, her fingers hovering over the bite but not quite touching it. “It seems you bear some of the accelerated healing that we enjoy, with a diminished susceptibility to a werewolf’s bite. In both humans and other werewolves that I’ve seen bitten in the past, it took a much longer time to heal than this.”
“Geez, did Apollo give you guys the exact date?”
“Dean, he left for only a day and came back and you were marked, it doesn’t take much to know when you were marked.”
“He never even got to see my shoulder!”
“You… smell, a great deal like my son, more so than usual,” Samuel explained as Matalina slipped away from Dean, and back to her cushion. “You could be away from him and anything of his for an extended period of time and you would still smell of him, now at least. That, and a marked person’s scent changes subtly; anyone who smells you would know instinctively that you are claimed.”
Dean turned to smirk at Mikael, “Great, I’m like your personal fire hydrant now.”
Both Samuel and Mikael groaned, though the latter more audibly than his father. Matalina only shook her head, still seeming to beam without smiling in the slightest. The woman always seemed a little disconnected, above everything that happened around her, with an air of unflappable calm. Now, seeing her acting bright and warm toward them, she simply looked like a happy mother. He supposed it made sense, but there was something utterly charming in seeing the usually placid woman so overjoyed about her son’s mating that even she couldn’t contain it.
“In any case,” Samuel began, shooting Dean a dirty look that spoke volumes about his lessening tolerance for Dean’s poking, “We shall do it your way, Dean. Seeing as how my son seems aligned with your plan, we will arrange for the celebration of the mating soon.”
Dean didn’t miss the possible insinuation in Samuel’s comment about Mikael simply going along with what he said. Annoyance flashed through him, not liking the idea that Samuel assumed Dean was just pulling Mikael along on a leash. While it was true that Dean typically took the lead in most things, it didn’t mean he ignored anything that Mikael had to say on a subject. If Mikael disagreed with him, Dean trusted Mikael would have no problem speaking up, at least he hoped.
“Before addressing the… political concerns; Dean, how goes your training?”
Dean winced, giving a light shrug, “It’s hard to say. I don’t really have anything to measure it against to truly know how my progress is going. Without a teacher, I’m kind of just winging it and hoping for the best. I think having the greenhouse has helped a lot, because being around growing things has really helped. I can… influence the way things grow. Mostly how fast or well they grow, which I’m guessing I’ve always been able to do to some degree, based on all the questions about what my secret with the crops was before my abilities surfaced. I think I’ve moved a bit into influencing the direction of things a bit— like the vine plants I own that I somehow managed to convince to grow as I want them to— but…”
“Not totally as you want?”
Dean gave a small shrug, fiddling a little nervously with the hem of his shirt. “It’s hard to say how much I should. Things grow the way they want to, and it sorta feels like just because I can influence things, it doesn’t mean I should command them, even if it's something I can do. Or at least, not something I should do that often.”
“Because?”
“Because that’s probably the same road that Nox traveled down that lead him to being a twisted freak of nature hellbent on dragging the world into darkness for his own personal power.”
“So, you have influence over how well things grow, and how they grow to a certain extent. Can you communicate with them in any way?”
“Sometimes? Kind of depends on the plant, I’d swear I can hear that flower that Mikael bought me most of the time, though. So maybe an emotional connection helps? Can’t understand it, but you bet your ass that sometimes I swear I hear that thing whispering from the corner of the kitchen I placed it in. I wonder if it’ll be worse when it flowers. Oh! And I could hear the old woods when I showed up, but like, from further away than the first time.”
“First time?”
Dean cleared his throat, sensing more than seeing Mikael grow uncomfortable. “Yeah, the first time was the first time I walked through the Old Woods; which would have been back when you and I had our little… showdown.”
Samuel nodded, “So progress has been made. As you said, it is hard to measure just how much has been made without someone or something to compare it to, but it is progress all the same. We have not heard much in that regard, save for a few half-hearted messages.”
Mikael frowned at his father, “I take it that things haven’t gone very well with the other tribes?”
A growl from Samuel preceded his words, fingers clenching a little in his lap, “To say the very least. The entire region is all but split down the middle on how to handle things. Most of the closest packs are with us, as well as a few others scattered about.”
“Let me guess, Damian.”
Samuel nodded, and Mikael puffed up in anger as his father continued, “From the moment he fled here, he was already beginning to spin his little tale. We nearly missed it, being so caught up in fortifying our defenses and repairing what damage he and his pack of idiots had done. Thankfully Lucille caught a whisper of it in her travels and sent word back so that we could send out our own heralds to attempt to fix what damage he was trying to inflict on our reputation and honor.”
Dean perked at the mention of the youngest child. “Lucille is about, then?”
Samuel shook his head. “Not currently. She’ll be here within the next few days I expect, apparently even she isn’t immune to the news about your mating.”
Mikael grunted, interrupting their side discussion, “What the hell did he start telling the other packs?”
“That we lured him here under false pretenses and that thankfully he had the sense to keep his own pack nearby, since we ‘ambushed’ him here, taking him prisoner and killing his escorts. Though I’m sure the little shit wouldn’t thank us one bit for killing that viper, Nox.” Samuel frowned when Dean cleared his throat. “Fine… when you two killed Nox.”
Dean smirked, but continued the discussion without a further comment on the slip. “So he’s gone around painting a picture that makes us look like backstabbing assholes, and him the wounded party who narrowly managed to escape? People are buying that?”
Samuel’s face twisted, wavering between a strange mix of frustration and defeat, “Sadly, some are, yes. Those who have had the best ties with us over the years are siding with us on this. Without Damian’s strength of numbers and sheer brute force, he lost most of his influence on our neighbors. As much as I would like to call it cowardice on their part, I cannot fault them for trying to preserve their own smaller packs in the face of what Damian was attempting to achieve. Now that he’s lost that, those that hated him to begin with, are speaking up.”
Matalina smoothed over the wrinkles of her skirt as she spoke up. “The problem being, there are also plenty willing to side with Damian. Some because they are genuine allies of his, others because they simply hate us, or those who have aligned with us. I would also bet that there are more than a few in his new alliance that simply want to grab themselves some new land.”
Drumming his fingers for a moment in thought, Mikael looked to Samuel, “Are we talking a full-fledged war?”
“It may come to that. We’re attempting to keep the situation under control, but there’s only so much that we can do. The matter will be decided one way or another, and very soon I’m sure. I do not trust Damian to let things rest and move to a natural end, he will attempt to find a way to fan the flames from simply a bunch of alphas yelling at one another, to a bunch of alphas going for each other’s throats. He proved his willingness to bring unnecessary bloodshed when he was here last.”
/> “If it comes to war, how are we looking for ending up on the winning side?”
Samuel’s face darkened at that, “If it does indeed come down to the two main camps, those who support us, and those who support Damian, then our side stands an equal chance of winning as the other side. The problem is that most of our support is from the packs to the east and to the south. We have minimal support to the north, and it only extends to a few packs. Nothing to the west.”
Dean squinted, tracing over the knowledge of the area as best he could from the maps he’d looked over in his research. He hadn’t gone over the territories of the various packs all around them, but he could guess. Their southern border was bolstered by plenty of support, and their eastern borders were equally protected. Very little to the North probably meant a small collection of packs and little more than that. The West was left wide open from the sounds of it, with not one pack on their western border as a means of support or protection.
“Which means,” Dean spoke up, tone grim, “that if it comes to war, they’re going to aim for the pack that supposedly started the problem in the first place, and our western flank is completely exposed.”
Samuel leveled a stony gaze at Dean, nodding, “And our northern one is fragile. If we aren’t properly prepared, they could very easily smash through the northern defenses and hit us from both west and north. Considering Damian’s propensity for trickery and ambush, I expect that’s exactly what they’ll do, I just don’t know when.”
“So have the other packs bolster our perimeter,” Mikael implored his father, sounding exasperated. “Or are they still dragging their feet?”
“We need more than what we have. We need to show that we deserve to be given physical support, Mikael. We may have their respect, but for many of them, they feel they could be the first target. Beyond having been at the center of it, they see no reason we should be the first attacked. Not when they could attack the more fragile and weaker packs first and end up surrounding us. As far as they know, we have nothing beyond greater strength, and better stores than they do, that could make us a target.”
