by Laura Taylor
And so, with no further dramas to occupy her mind for the time being, Dee was lazing on the back lawn with Skip one day, Skip sharing some story or other about something Miller had done which she found highly romantic, Dee listening with half an ear while she gazed at the clouds and imagined the shapes they were forming, when a sharp cry got both their attention.
“Dee!” Caroline yelled from the back door. “Get over here.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, what have I done now?” Dee muttered, getting to her feet. “Sorry, Skip. I’ll catch you later.” She hurried off to meet Caroline at the back door, wondering what minor detail the woman had a bee in her bonnet over now. “What’s up?” she asked when she arrived, with a deliberate air of nonchalance.
“Upstairs. IT office,” Caroline instructed her, hustling her up the stairs without any further explanation. But was that a faint hint of a smile on her face? Did Caroline even know how to smile?
Dee’s curiosity rose sharply as she arrived at the IT office to find Mark already inside, seated at one of the computers with Baron hovering over his shoulder.
“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping into the dimly lit room.
“Take a seat,” Baron instructed her, pulling a chair out. She sat, glancing at Mark worriedly, before turning her attention to the screen. And then she froze, startled to see eleven stern faces staring back at her. The Council. What on earth had she and Mark done to warrant such a sombre audience?
“Good afternoon,” Dee managed to greet them, wanting to be polite, but very confused at the same time. “What can we do for you?”
“We’ve had some news, and unfortunately, time is of the essence,” Feng began, “so we’re not going to be able to give you long to think about this.”
“To think about what?” Mark asked, looking as baffled as Dee was.
“Your application to adopt children,” Feng stated flatly, and that really got Dee’s attention. Though they’d completed their application over the winter, neither of them had expected any sort of reply for a while yet. Mark had barely completed his probation period, and she herself had yet to finish her mandatory two years training as a shifter.
“I realise it’s very early days for you, not only in your life in Il Trosa,” Feng said, addressing Dee, “but also in terms of your relationship together. And while we originally had no intention of rushing any of this, a particular set of circumstances now requires our attention. We’ve received a call from the Den in Ukraine. You remember Nikolai, from last summer’s Densmeet?”
“Of course,” Dee said. The unusual man had become a good friend, and his quirky nature and unique outlook on life had left a lasting impression.
“They’ve been having a few problems with poachers in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Poachers are not uncommon, of course, and depending on their activities, Nikolai’s pack may choose to ignore them, scare them away, or in extreme cases, shoot them. In this particular case, the men were hunting one of the local wolf packs. They killed the alpha pair, and the rest of the pack has scattered. The poachers were killed – Nikolai takes a very grim view of anyone killing wolves – but he suspected the female wolf had been pregnant. Turns out she was, and they’ve rescued two pups from a small den.”
“His first thought was to send them to the sanctuary in Romania,” Elise said, taking over the story. “But since we had your application, and keeping in mind that this sort of opportunity doesn’t come up very often…”
“But I thought there were rules against converting wolves into shifters,” Dee interrupted, feeling very confused. “I’ve been told it never works very well. Or do you mean for us just to adopt the pups and have human children later? We had put on our application that Mark and I want children, and Faeydir wants puppies.” She glanced uncertainly at Mark, who reached out and took her hand to offer comfort, though he had no more answers than she currently did.
“Your situation certainly does present a few challenges. But the short answer is yes, we do mean for the pups to be converted,” Feng confirmed. “The rule about not converting wolves is based more on pragmatic considerations than any moral values. We’ve tried it in the past, and wolves converted as adults tend to have extreme difficulties adjusting to life as a human. They don’t understand our language, our culture, our food, our clothing. But if a wolf was converted as a puppy, they would still have plenty of time to grow up as a human child and be taught about the human way of life the same way any child would be.”
“Nikolai estimates the pups are about three weeks old,” Elise added. “So if we convert them in the next week or so, then the equivalent human age should be about six months old. That’s young enough that they wouldn’t have any disadvantage in terms of education or development as a human. But whether or not we go down that path totally depends on you. Given the circumstances, you’re getting very little warning about any of this, and suddenly taking on not one, but two children is a big responsibility.”
“How do shifter children age?” Dee asked, overwhelmed by all the information. “I mean, a wild wolf is an adult at around two years old. How does that play out if he’s been converted into a shifter?”
“Shifter metabolism is largely governed by the human side of our physiology,” Feng told her. “So a shifter child would age normally as a human, while their wolf side would be greatly delayed. We would expect the wolf to have a fully grown adult body around the time the human child was thirteen or fourteen years old. Mentally, they might develop a little quicker than usual, but then again, children raised in a Den, whether they’re human or shifter, tend to be more mature than their mainstream counterparts anyway. We throw a lot of responsibility at them early in life – through necessity, rather than choice – but they seem to learn to deal with it well enough.”
“God, this is all so unexpected,” Dee said, turning to look at Mark. “What do you think?”
“What I want to know,” Mark said, turning to Baron and Caroline, “is what you two think. I assume the Council gave you the heads up about this before you called us in here.”
“They did,” Caroline confirmed.
“So what about our living arrangements? Dee and I would need to move in together. And my rank is likely to cause problems with which room we get. And then we’d need an adjoining room for the children.”
“And what about everyone else in the Den?” Dee threw in, dreading the answer. “I mean, wouldn’t we have to have a vote on it, or something? This is their house, too.”
Caroline glanced at Baron, who gave her a slight shrug. “Baron and I discussed this when you first put your application in. As far as accommodation goes, there are plenty of rooms on the third floor that could be suitable. They’re not as big as Dee’s room now, but certainly bigger than Mark’s, which might make for a decent compromise, given your varying ranks. As for a vote? No, it’s not necessary.” She smiled suddenly, a real expression rather than her usual wry smirk, and her face looked so different that Dee was shocked by the change. “Wolves love puppies,” Caroline told her warmly. “Even if their human side isn’t too fond of children, I guarantee that their wolf side will fall in love with the pups. And even if you were just adopting regular human children, it’s a given right within any Den, so long as the alphas agree. No one could stop you, but I don’t think many people would want to object, anyway.”
“So how about it?” Baron prompted them, when they had no further questions. “The clock is ticking, and the Council is going to need to send a plane over to pick you up, if you want to go and collect them.”
“Every day that we delay their conversion is roughly a week in human terms that we’re losing,” Feng reminded them. “And if we want them to have the best chance of adapting to human life, then we’re going to have to act sooner, rather than later.”
“Could Mark and I talk about it in private for a moment?” Dee asked, not comfortable making such a large decision in front of an audience. “We’ll only take a couple of minutes.”
; “Of course,” Feng agreed. “We can wait.”
Dee followed Mark out of the room, and she was grateful to see that the hallway outside was empty. “So?” she asked Mark, once they were alone.
“Wow. That’s a lot quicker than I was expecting,” Mark said, echoing the thoughts Dee had been having herself.
“It’s not that I don’t want them. I do,” she said hesitantly. “But it’s just so sudden. I was expecting a prolonged process of bureaucratic fumbling and paperwork. We have nowhere to put them! No cribs, or change tables, or toys…”
“What does Faeydir think?” Mark asked, and Dee was unexpectedly surprised by the question. Faeydir had been utterly silent for the last few minutes, and she tuned in to the wolf now, curious as to why she had so little to say on the subject.
The faint thread of hope, the paltry wag of her tail that Faeydir sent as a reply was baffling, until Dee dug a little deeper and suddenly felt tears pricking her eyes.
“Faeydir wants the puppies,” she reported to Mark, feeling ridiculous over her sudden emotion. “She desperately wants them. But she’s terrified that we won’t, that it’s too soon. She can read every single doubt I have about it, and she thinks we’re going to decide not to have them.”
Mark winced, and Dee could guess what he was going to say next, so she cut him off quickly. “We can’t adopt children just because Faeydir wants them,” she pointed out pragmatically. “There are three of us in this relationship, and we all have to have a say.”
Mark nodded. Sighed. Then reached out and took her hands in his. “I love you,” he said, looking her in the eye. “You’ve stood by me through a very difficult time, you are an amazing woman, and despite the fact that we’ve only known each other for a little over a year, there is nothing I would like more than to raise a family with you. This is sooner than I expected, but realistically, I don’t think another opportunity like this is going to come along in a hurry. If ever. And I don’t want to look back in a year, or two years, and be kicking ourselves because we didn’t have the guts to follow our dreams. We have the whole Den standing beside us. And Caroline’s right; a lot of people here would be thrilled to have some children around. It’s been a long time since there were any. So that’s what I think. What do you think?”
Dee stared at the ground, trying to get her swirling thoughts in order. Faeydir was quiet, knowing this was an important decision and apparently not willing to pressure Dee either way. Aside from the suddenness of it all, Dee wondered, were there any other real problems with the opportunity? She loved Mark and was as sure as she felt she could be that they were right for each other, that they were going to spend the next decade or two building a life together. She knew that Faeydir would take care of the wolf side of raising the pups, since Dee had little idea about how to do that. And she knew that Caroline was right. The Den would pull in behind them both, raising the children very much as a group effort. She checked in with Faeydir again and received a stronger wag of her tail in reply. A bounce. A delighted wriggle that turned into a full-body wag.
She looked up at Mark, waiting patiently for her to make her decision, and grinned. “I think we’re taking a trip to Ukraine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The sun was shining brightly, a brief respite before the predicted rain began again that afternoon. Deep in the forest, the rays of light seldom reached the ground, dappled patterns dancing in the breeze before being swallowed by the gloom again, but after four days of poor weather, the wolves were outside making the most of it anyway. A group of three of them, two males and one female, had taken a liking to this little patch of woodland. All of them seemed to be young and small; there were far larger wolves around, quieter and more watchful than these youngsters, but for the moment, these three had the area to themselves.
They’d spent the past hour chasing rabbits, digging in the soft earth, and practising what seemed to be some sort of agility training. Taking it in turns, one of them would run at a sprint, directly towards a large oak tree. They would leap in the air, using their momentum to drive themselves as high as possible against the tree’s bark, then twist in the air and land on their feet. It seemed to be a competition as to who could get the highest, and so far, the smaller of the two males was winning.
Suddenly a fourth wolf came trotting out of the undergrowth – a large male, pure black, though even he was not the largest wolf on the property. That honour was reserved for the alpha, a huge brute of a wolf, almost as black as this one, with a smattering of battle scars to lend him a distinguished look. The newcomer sniffed the three smaller wolves over, then eyed the tree they had been climbing, his tail wagging eagerly. Clearly, he wanted to have a go.
Perched in a tall pine tree, dressed in a camouflage suit and with her scent disguised with a generous spray of pine oil, Li Khuli watched the newest arrival intently. It was Jack Miller, the traitor who had left the Noturatii and joined the shifters; the target she had been searching for, for the past three months.
And now she had found him, along with the entire pack that had proven so elusive for so long.
But moving against the pack would be no simple task. Li Khuli knew by now that there was also an assassin on the estate, one who had fought, and killed, one of the Khuli in the not so distant past. So far, she had seen him only once, at twilight and from a distance – hence his failure to detect her presence so far. But the very existence of such a man on this estate was going to make this newest, most intriguing of hunts far, far more interesting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Taylor has been writing since she was a teenager, spending long hours lost in imaginary adventures as new worlds and characters spring to life. The House of Sirius is her first published work, a series of seven novels following the wolf shape shifters and their war with the Noturatii.
Laura lives on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia and has a passion for nature, animals, hiking, and of course, reading.
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