by A. J. Downey
“I’m not certain,” she admitted. “But it makes as much sense as almost any other theory we’ve thrown around in the last few weeks. Nothing about his actions really makes sense in the long run. I’m reasonably certain that only Mathias knows what the actual end-game is with these experiments of his.”
I stared up at the ceiling while Ava continued tapping on my chest for a few minutes, when suddenly her stomach growled loudly and I chuckled, looking down to find a sheepish smile on her face.
“Come on, let’s go see who else is up and around.”
“I thought I was supposed to be resting.”
“Pretty sure you’ve rested enough, Babycakes. We should probably get you moving. Work the kinks out and start teaching you what things are going to be like. The full moon is coming in about a week, so you’ll need to be ready for that.”
She nodded and pulled away, somewhat reluctantly, which made me smile like some kind of retard. To know that she didn’t want to move away from me, gave me a sense of satisfaction like no other, gave me back a sort of missing piece of myself.
I pretty much immediately wanted to slap myself for acting like a sap, but I was really starting to understand what had driven William to fight so hard against Romulus. With his mate’s fate in the balance, he would have moved mountains to save her. That desire to fight for the ones we love is built into us, and it has served our people well over the centuries. I’d never really felt it until her.
“What about the girl?” she asked as we dressed a little more completely. She pulled on her cargo pants and black shirt again but left the Joe Rocket jacket hanging in the closet where I’d put it, soon after we’d arrived at the house. Her clothes and equipment had all been cleaned and checked over, Markus even stripping and cleaning her guns for her. I had told him he didn’t have to do that but it’d been a long time since the old soldier’d had a chance to play with some decent hardware like that so I’d left him to it.
“Which girl?”
“The one we grabbed from the facility. Macy?”
“What about her?”
“Well you told me about Evan. Veteran, wounded, homeless, so on and so forth; but what about her? All you gave me was a first name.”
“Not even sure if that is her first name, could be her last, hell, it could be made up entirely to be honest. We don’t know much about her. She keeps to herself when she’s not around Evan. And he’s been trying to avoid her as much as possible. He sticks pretty close to Markus, I think ‘cause they both have a military background. The old wolf has sort of taken the kid under his wing. I get the feeling he’s trying not to blame her for what happened but you know, it’d be hard, considering the circumstances. You at least got to choose, and from people that only meant you well. This guy was thrown into a nightmare from the beginning and he’s just trying to find his footing.”
“So you don’t know where she’s from or anything?”
I shrugged and pulled my new cut on over my bare chest. I’ll admit, I kind of liked the dark leather vest. My brain was still turning over possibilities, ones I’d have to discuss with Ava in the near future, probably.
“We haven’t really been able to get much out of her, not that I can really blame her. She’s not an Omega, no brand, but she definitely doesn’t have a pack of her own, either. She’s been alone for some time from what I can tell.”
Ava stretched, linking her fingers together and reaching as far over her head as she could until she actually came up on her toes. She wasn’t wearing her boots, something I noted idly and figured had to be part of the wolf-kind mentality; that or she trusted I’d have her back. I liked that last one best of all.
Speaking of which, her back popped a couple of times and she suddenly relaxed and came over to hook her arm through mine.
“Food,” she ordered and started dragging me from the room.
“Right turn,” I said when we got out into the hall and she turned without a word, still dragging me along. We were on the second floor and at the end of the hall, next to the stairs leading down to the ground floor, was the clock she had heard when she woke up. A simple thing with a stainless steel finish and gold numbers on a black background. To a human’s hearing the quiet tick of the second hand on its endless circuit around the face would have been nearly silent, but we could hear it clear as day with the enhanced senses that come with being wolf-kind.
She stared at the clock for a second, her face unreadable before the smell of the food still waiting downstairs urged her onward.
Downstairs, we turned left and headed back in the direction we’d come from to find the hall opened out into a large dining room. Almost like a cafeteria with a half a dozen long wooden tables arranged about the large space. At the far end was an industrial grade kitchen with three walk in coolers filled with food.
Most of the gang were sitting together at one of the tables. Actually, all of them, except for Macy but a quick look around found her sitting by herself at the far corner of the room, as far as she could get from everyone else while still staying in the same room. She looked a lot better, cleaned up and wearing some decent clothes. Her hair was long and dark, a lot like Ava’s but had a bit more wave in it and her skin was a deep olive tan. Definitely some Italian ancestry somewhere in her blood.
I settled Ava at the table with the others, seating her next to Chloe who offered her a warm smile and went to grab us each a plate. Meat, potatoes, simple fare, but well-cooked and filling. It was the perfect kind of meal for a newly turned pup and old wolves alike.
“... to find a new place to settle the pack,” Markus was saying in his deep growl when I returned to the room. I took a seat next to Ava and set one of the plates in front of her where she tucked in, barely even looking down at her food, so absorbed was she in the conversation.
“How exactly does this protocol work?” she asked. “I mean, you just send out messages and get the information to the pack members spread all over the country and they... what? Head to a safe house? Drop points or something?”
They all gave Ava a look, confusion on some of their faces, amusement on others. “We’re not a military operation, Ava,” he pointed out gently. “We don’t have quite that level of organization, but you’re not far off the mark.”
“Arizona,” I grunted. “There’s a lot of empty land out there and it’s always been sort of a neutral state just for this kind of thing. No packs set up territory in Arizona so whenever a pack needs to salt-the-earth, there’s someplace to go.” I glanced at her. “Is that something the Hunters know about?” I asked and she shrugged.
“Not familiar to me.”
“We got that going for us at least.” I moved my gaze over to William. “How’s the protocol progressing, by the way?”
“Doing well enough. We got the entire state population out; they’re all on their way. Most of the out-of-state members have gotten back to us on the protocol as well.”
“Most?” Ava asked.
“Not all of them have responded yet.”
“Are we worried about that?”
“Not especially. Maybe a bit for some of them, but a few are prone to working in areas where they have little access to messages and such, so it might just take them a little longer to get back to us.” Chloe didn’t really sound like she believed it, but nobody commented.
“How the hell have you people hidden for so long?”
Everyone looked at Evan, the new guy. His hands were balled into fists on the table in front of him, veins standing out in his forearms. He looked like a guy on the edge and that worried me. He would be hard pressed to survive his first full moon if he didn’t make some headway on accepting his situation.
“A lot of practice,” I muttered. “Wolf-kind have been hiding from the rest of the world for a very long time, Evan. And we’ve gotten really good at it. It really doesn’t take much, to be honest. Regular people don’t want to believe that there are real monsters in the world. They find ways to ignore, or explain away any of the weird shit t
hey sometimes see. The human race’s capacity to ignore things they don’t want to understand is astounding.”
“So there’s werewolves–”
“Wolf-kind,” Ava cut him off and I shot her a look out of the corner of my eye. She’d finished eating and was leaning back in her seat, arms crossed under her breasts, with her eyes firmly locked on Evan. I felt a warm little glow at that, her defending our preferred title for our people like that. I guess we were her people now too.
“Wolf-kind,” he repeated. “So if wolf-kind are real, what about all the other stories you hear about? Vampires and ghosts and all that?”
I shrugged. He was asking me, not really sure why, but he’d looked directly at me while he spoke. “No idea, honestly. I’ve never met a Vampire, but I guess if we exist, it’s possible they could exist too and be hiding from us just as much as we hide from humans.”
The conversation bounced around a bit after that. It was agreed that we would be staying at the house until after the first full moon. We were about twenty miles from the Shoshone National Forest, so there’d be plenty of good land to run in that night, putting our new pups through their paces. I couldn’t read Ava’s expression during the conversation, couldn’t tell if she was excited or terrified by the thought of her first change, but I didn’t bring it up. If she wanted to talk to me about it, she would. When she was ready.
By the time the conversation wound down it was well into the night, and Ava was wilting in her seat. I wasn’t exactly feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed myself either, so we said our goodnights and went back to the room.
We changed out of our clothes and slipped into bed, Ava molding herself against my side. Without a second thought I held her, smiling like a retard until we both drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 28
Ava
The dream was the first time I’d really felt any different. I knew in the front of my brain that I was dreaming, tucked into the furnace that was Remus but I wasn’t awake. I wasn’t really asleep either. I was in that place in between the two and staring at a black wolf with my eyes set into its face.
So this is what they all were talking about when they said ‘their wolf’ like it was almost a separate entity. I guess it was, but at the same time it wasn’t. At least not really. I sank to the ground and held out my hands and it padded forward carefully, going to its belly in front of me and inching forward.
I held my breath and waited, hands out and finally, she lay her huge shaggy head in my palms and rolled, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. I laughed, and ruffled the thick, wiry fur around her ruff.
“Hi,” I murmured and she yipped, excitedly.
“So how do we do this?” I asked in that same soft murmur, she rolled onto her belly and made a vocalization that wasn’t a whine but wasn’t a growl either. More ambivalent, than anything.
“Well that’s helpful,” another yip.
“I’m not sure how to share,” I said truthfully and felt silly, to a certain extent, like I was talking to myself.
“It’s supposed to be as easy as breathing, the change. At least that’s what he tells me.” I looked up sharply and scrambled to my feet.
“James!” beside him stood Remus, only… not. There was more of a glower to this man’s face.
“Who are you?” I asked, and edged back, hands looking for weapons that weren’t at my thighs.
“Chill, I can’t hurt you here. Not that I’d want to.” I blinked.
“How is any of this even possible?” I asked, frowning.
“The wolf is a spirit, isn’t it? Kind of stands to reason it’d have a connection to the spirit world.”
James smiled and held out his arms, I looked up into my much taller twin’s face, into eyes that mirrored my own so closely in color, and looked at the proffered embrace.
“Can I really hug you?”
“You can do anything you put your mind and heart to here.”
I hugged my twin, and his arms went around me, the dream so real I could smell his familiar cologne and the leather of his jacket. I closed my eyes and breathed him in, this one last time.
“What are you two even doing here?”
“Your wolf can’t speak in this place; you’re limited in communication except for in the real world. In the real world you can share thoughts and emotions but only if you’re open to it.” Romulus imparted.
“You gotta drop those walls, baby sister. The training might fuck with you; if it does, the natural path you’re gonna take is to fight the change. You can’t do that, Babe. Not at the first moon. It’ll fuck you up. Maybe even kill you. I’ve seen it.”
I pushed back from my brother, older by just nine minutes and stared up at him horrified, “The experiments?”
“Yeah, I knew, I saw, and I’m so fucking sorry but Av, you gotta listen to me. You have to, please!” He shook me and the dream started to dissolve, my wolf began to whine and I closed my eyes to shut the image of my brother, my brother who I knew deep down had done terrible things to protect me, and who had died trying.
“I got this,” I told the three of them, “I’ll figure it out, I promise.” I looked at Romulus, “I love your brother too much to leave him now.”
He nodded and the dream dissolved into the ether, my eyes opened to stare at the water stained false ceiling above the bed.
“Holy shit that was intense,” I whispered into the dark.
Remus shifted, and I snuggled in closer to him, laying my head on his chest, my fingertips tapping out the steady thrum of his heart unbidden.
I thought hard, long and hard about the vision. I don’t know that I should call it a dream. Finally, in need of some answers, but not wishing to wake my lover, I slipped from the bed and dressed, heading down to the kitchen to make some tea or something. I wanted to keep my hands busy.
I found Markus and Evan, sitting at one of the tables, steaming mugs parked between them.
“Well, what’s got you up?” Markus asked.
“Sick of sleeping?” I hazarded, but the flippancy I meant to put behind it fell flat and echoed hollow in the large room.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked, leaning back in his seat. Evan eyed me with a mixture of respect and gave me a nod. A total soldierly thing to do. Guess the word had gotten around. I flung a leg over the bench and dropped onto it.
“I just had a very illuminating conversation with my dead brother, Remus’ dead brother, and my wolf.” I cleared my throat and felt seriously fucking crazy. I mean, I’d never believed in anything like this… There wasn’t supposed to be anything after death.
“Did you now?” I looked up sharply, and searched Markus’ face, and found not one ounce of disbelief there. Evan looked about as confused as I felt.
“Am I going crazy? This change flip my switch or something?”
Markus chuckled, “Nope, there are a few of us out there with the gift of sight. Something about being in tune with yourself. We call people like you the Median.”
“Excuse me? Medium, like some kind of psychic?”
“No,” Markus laughed, “Not to be pedantic, but it’s Median, from the definition of literally being right smack dab in the middle. Not sure what makes a Median out of a wolf-kind. Maybe it was because you had one foot in the grave when you was turned. All I know, is that you’re going to have those dreams and visions and you should probably listen to them.”
I sat there and scrubbed my face with my hands, this was almost too weird. I’d never been one to buy into the whole mumbo jumbo of it. I’d never believed in an afterlife, or a spirit world, but at the same time, I couldn’t refute what I’d just experienced.
“Ava? Babycakes, what’s wrong?” Remus sat down behind me and pulled me back into his chest.
“Nothing, pretty much the opposite, Boy. She’s a Median, just let her deal.”
“Baby, why would he say that? What did you see?”
“I…” I didn’t know what or how to tell him. I wasn’t a chicken shit
though, and I knew what I’d seen. I knew what I’d experienced and what I’d felt and smelled… I told him. Every bit of it and sat there biting my lips together, wondering why it was it was so easy to accept. Why it was I wasn’t falling apart or freaking out.
Because you know it’s true, and you’ve never really had the time to freak out over the truth.
True enough.
“So, are you going to listen?” Evan asked softly, meeting my eyes.
I met his stare with one of my own and found the spaces between Remus’ fingers with my own, my palms to the backs of his hands. I gave them a squeeze, “As best I can. I’m not sure how to switch off a lifetime of training, but I’ll do whatever it takes to stay right here.” I leaned my head back and Remus kissed the side of my neck.
“That’s my girl,” he breathed and I hoped like hell it was enough. That just knowing what the problem was, identifying it, would help me avoid it when the time came because I had no idea what was coming. The mechanics of it.
They say that knowing is half the battle though, don’t they? I wouldn’t know until the full moon came, no matter what… so why worry about it until then? I cuddled back into Remus and felt my desire for him spike when he nipped the side of my neck again.
“Well, it’s been swell boys, but the swelling’s gone down. Remus, let’s go back to bed.”
“Anything you say, Babycakes.”
“Call me that again, I’m going to cave your nuts in.”
Markus laughed long and loud over our banter and even Evan cracked a smile, after he recovered from blanching first. We went back to bed, and the sex, as always, was fucking amazing. God I loved his mouth on my tits as he drove up into me. It was enough to drive me fucking wild.
When we finally collapsed into a sweaty heap of blissed out goo, he smoothed my hair back from my face.
“A Median. Who’d have thunk it?” He said with a lazy smile.
“I’m still not sure I’m not going crazy,” I muttered and he snorted.
“Bullshit, Ava. You’re the surest person I’ve ever met, let alone stuck my cock in. You’re fuckin’ sure, you just can’t help but question it to death. It’s who you are.”
