by Dessa Lux
He needed his mate, first. He could do the rest later, now that he knew what he needed to do.
*
Welcoming Lir home wound up occupying the rest of the day and a fair part of the night. Devon didn’t even know which one of them was starting it, after the third or fourth time he drew Lir inside him again, slick and open from all the times before. They needed each other, that was all. It was easy, and right, and good.
In between, they talked. Lir told him about his Father’s domain in the north, how that sea was different from his, and even some of his memories of being small there, in the early part of his nebulous, mysterious experience. Devon fed him lemon cake and told him about his parents’ house, and the wooded property where they held pack-gatherings and all the little wolves spent their days running around the forest, chasing squirrels and rabbits and each other.
Lir hugged him close and said, “You’re happy here, though, aren’t you? This is a good house.”
“This is a wonderful house,” Devon agreed, and didn’t tell Lir that he’d decided to contact his parents and their pack. Not yet. Not today, when Lir needed to know that he was the one who made Devon happy.
When they were lying tangled together in their bed, Devon whispered, “I love you.”
Lir looked over at him and smiled. “You don’t regret your choice, then? Giving yourself to me?”
Devon shook his head. How could he? He had found his happiness here, his future to plan.
Lir kissed him softly, and said, “You are my sunlight.”
It wasn’t the normal way to say it, but it wasn’t like anything else about Lir was normal. Devon still knew what he meant.
*
Devon woke up to the sudden acceleration of Lir’s heartbeat. Lir sat up, and Devon followed, blinking around in the early light. The sun was barely up.
“There’s something on the beach,” Lir said, and the tone of his voice told Devon he didn’t mean anything that might be expected to wash up there. Devon was up and out of bed without a thought; Lir got out the door ahead of him, but Devon was on his heels all the way to the north edge of the island.
It wasn’t something. It was a man, wearing only a few unidentifiable tatters of clothing. His skin was so pale it was almost blue, his hair dark with water.
Lir knelt over him, touching his throat and his chest, and Devon knelt across from Lir, tucking fingers under one arm. He couldn’t hear or feel a pulse, but there was a certain aliveness to the flesh under his hand, even though it was cold, and a certain familiarity, too.
“He’s a werewolf,” Devon said. “If we get him warm he’ll be okay, we’re hard to kill.”
Lir’s hands were moving as Devon spoke, though that arrested his attention somehow, his eyes wide as they met Devon’s.
Lir, Devon thought, wasn’t really used to the idea of people dying.
“Come on, he’ll be okay,” Devon insisted. “Let’s get him inside—in the bath, he can warm up in there.”
Lir nodded, scooping up the not-quite-drowned wolf, and Devon turned and ran ahead of him, back inside. He turned on the taps, running tepid water over his hands. Not too warm. You couldn’t heat people up too fast. Lir came in behind him, lowering the man into the bath as gently as if he were a baby, and Devon spared a smile up at him before he turned all his attention to managing the temperature of the water, one hand at the tap, one pressing here and there against the stranger’s skin.
“Hold him up,” Devon said, when the water got deep enough that the stranger’s head could tip into it. “Is he breathing?”
“I can’t tell,” Lir said, resting one hand on the stranger’s chest, his arm propping up the stranger’s head.
“Anything blocking his mouth? Feel with your finger, if there’s seaweed or anything—”
Lir slid a finger in and swept it back and forth, prodding; after a second the stranger gagged, throwing up ice-cold seawater over Lir’s hand. He drew in a breath after that, rattling and shallow but definitely a breath. Devon could hear his heart, then, thumping slow, slow, like a metronome set to the most maddening rhythm, more pauses than beats.
“Okay,” Devon said. “Okay, we’ve got him, now we just warm him up slowly.”
Devon ran a little warm water into the tub, just a second or two before he turned the tap back off, and then he started rubbing his hands over the stranger’s chest and belly, shoulders to hips, and then down each leg, each arm. His hands wouldn’t add much heat, but that was all right. Little bit by little bit. And the touch would help; the wolf would know he wasn’t alone.
He felt the shift coming, a deep shiver, and drew his hands back, grabbing Lir’s wrist to make him let go as well. A second later the still-unconscious, still-half-frozen werewolf coughed up more water and then shifted, becoming a thin, rawboned wolf with soaking wet fur dark as gingerbread.
“Okay,” Devon said. “Okay, let’s get him dry and let him keep warming up, now.”
“We had to wait until he had thirty pounds of waterlogged fur before we tried to dry him?”
Lir was smiling, though, already hoisting the wolf out of the tub while Devon got out a whole stack of towels. They laid him on one, right there on the plush rug, and started drying him off. Lir rubbed a towel over his head and neck while Devon worked at drying his body, feeling the slow but persistent beat of his heart. He breathed in gasps, shallow and still too far apart.
His fur, as it dried under their ministrations, turned out to be tawny, touched with red. Darker over his shoulders and back, lighter on his flanks and legs, almost sandy at his throat and tail. His scent started to rise up between them, between the friction and the gradual warming, and Devon stopped short when he realized what that scent was telling him.
The werewolf was an omega.
Lir stopped too, sitting back on his heels and looking across the wolf at Devon. “What is it?”
Devon frowned, shaking his head. He would probably be able to tell more if he changed shape himself, but shifting wasn’t a good idea after you felt the baby move. He leaned close instead, sniffing at the wolf’s flank, the base of his tail, then at his throat. There wasn’t much to smell but a whiff of seawater and his and Lir’s hands, the smell of their towels, their home.
“He’s an omega,” Devon explained, sitting up again. “Like me. I don’t recognize his scent. I can’t catch any hint of his pack, or where he comes from. Can you tell? From the currents or something, can you tell how he came here?”
Lir frowned, then shook his head. “The current that brought him was one of the ones I made—there are so many of those now, bringing plastic to the island, keeping the weather fair, it’s hard to tell where anything comes from or would have gone normally. I can tell he was in the water a long time, though.”
Devon nodded, remembering those tatters of clothes, the deep cold of him. As if he’d been frozen, as if he’d come from that deep, dark, cold sea Lir had been describing to him. Lir had been in the North only yesterday...
Devon pushed that thought away. It was ridiculous. Maybe he’d gotten pulled here on Lir’s wake somehow, but it couldn’t be anything else. Lir had just said he didn’t know where the stranger came from.
“Come on, he doesn’t need to just lie here on the floor.” Devon bent over the stranger again, to help lift him up, but Lir hurriedly scooped him up.
Devon gave his mate a fond smile and gathered up the wet towels instead. “He can go in the spare room, then. I’ll get a blanket.”
Lir nodded and carried the stranger away, and Devon hung up the towels to dry out before he followed. The second room they’d made would probably be a sitting room at some point—it opened off the main kitchen room with just an archway, unlike their bedroom, which had an actual door.
For now it was mostly full of crates; when Devon came in Lir was laying the stranger down on two of them pushed together like a table, just under a window facing northeast. The sun was properly up now, and it raised copper glints in the wolf’s fur as h
e lay there.
Devon brought a blanket over and tucked it around him to keep in what little heat might escape his fur now that it was dry. He touched the wolf’s chest, feeling the slow beat of his heart, feeling the quick expansion of his breaths, which were quieter and a little more frequent now.
“He’s getting there,” Devon said. When he took his hand from the wolf, it settled automatically on his own belly, and he realized that he was naked—and Lir was naked, in front of a strange omega!—and also starving.
“Go put some clothes on,” Devon said, giving Lir a little push. “I’ll get started on breakfast.”
***
Chapter 15
The newcomer went on sleeping for the entire day. Devon alternated between assuring Lir and himself that he was clearly fine, just needing time to heal, and fretting anxiously over him.
By the end of the day, he seemed to have slipped firmly into fretting territory.
“Maybe we should... call someone,” Devon said hesitantly. “I could... I mean, my pack... there are healers, werewolf healers. Maybe he needs more than this. I don’t know what else to do, I don’t know if—”
Lir gathered Devon into his arms and hugged him close. “Shh, sunlight, you’re doing fine. He’s doing fine. You can hear his heart beating, can’t you? You can feel how he’s getting warm, and...”
Lir kept both arms tight around Devon but extended a tentacle to run lightly over the wolf’s fur, coaxing things into a slightly better balance inside, drawing water from the air to where it was needed. “There, now he’s perfectly hydrated. Other than that—I don’t expect anyone would know what to do for someone who was in the water for so long.”
Devon twisted a little to look into Lir’s eyes. “If he—could you heal him? Could you...?”
Lir grimaced. He was tempted—he’d like nothing better than to push things along as quickly as possible to the part where Devon had a packmate all ready to keep him company—but he knew that tampering with a creature as complex as a werewolf was a delicate thing.
“Other than stuff like that, I don’t think I should push it too hard,” Lir said. “He doesn’t have any obvious injuries to fix, and he’s not sick. Anything that’s wrong now is in his brain, and I don’t want to hurt or change him there, trying to push things along too fast.”
Devon exhaled, sagging against him slightly. “That makes sense. And I don’t guess anyone else could do anything for him without seeing him in person, really. And there probably isn’t much they could do; it’s mostly about letting wolf healing do its own work.”
Lir nodded, rubbing his cheek against Devon’s hair in the process.
Devon looked up at him with a rueful smile. “Sorry. I guess my maternal instincts are getting warmed up early.”
Lir smiled back, letting one hand drift down to rest on Devon’s belly, where the little one was quiet for the moment, but always busy growing. “Never apologize for that, sunlight.”
*
Lir rested lightly beside Devon that night, letting his mind drift outward on the waves while keeping his body firmly in its land-dweller shape. Devon wasn’t sleeping deeply, surfacing to consciousness at every little sound. Lir soothed him back down to sleep a few times, but mostly he didn’t even wake fully, only coming briefly alert before sinking back to sleep on his own.
Near morning there was a different sound. It was soft, barely distinguishable from the ever-present sound of the waves, but Devon was on his feet before Lir could consider whether to hush him back to his rest. He grabbed a robe, wrapping it around himself as he dashed out of the bedroom toward the spare room, so Lir clothed himself similarly as he followed.
There was no longer a wolf lying on the crates, but a man in human shape, pushing himself to sit up with the blanket still puddled over his lower half. His skin was still pale, even paler than Devon’s, but now with a pink undertone of well-circulated blood. The hair on his head and covering half his face was a dark reddish color much like the wolf’s pelt, and his open eyes were icy blue.
He tried to speak and coughed instead, a dry, painful sound; the motion of it shook his thin body, making his sharp-boned shoulders hunch.
“Lir, water?” Devon held out a hand to stop Lir from moving closer to the newcomer. “In a cup, please?”
Lir blinked at that but nodded and retreated to the main room to fetch a cup from the kitchen. He drew water from the air around him to fill it with sweet, clear water instead of bothering with the tap, the same way he usually fed Devon water from his hand.
When he returned, Devon was perched on the corner of the crate where the newcomer’s feet rested, still hidden under the blanket. He held his hand out for the cup Lir held, and he extended his arm to hand it over, so that there was plenty of distance between the newcomer and him, and between him and Lir.
“Here, drink,” Devon said gently. “You’ve been asleep a long time, I’m sure your throat is awfully dry.”
The newcomer took the cup, his eyes darting warily from Devon to Lir and back. His hands were shaking; he wrapped both of them around the cup to bring it to his lips. When he drank it was in noisy gulps, spilling water from the sides of his mouth.
Lir let the cup empty. He had the feeling the newcomer would drink until his stomach burst if Lir replenished it.
He lowered the cup, dragging the back of one hand across his mouth, and all the time looking back and forth from Devon to Lir. “Where am I?”
Devon took a breath to answer and then stopped short; the newcomer’s expression hardened, and Devon raised his hands. “Not planning to lie to you, I just realized that this place doesn’t really have a name, and it wouldn’t help you if it did. You’re—we’re—on an artificial island in the Atlantic, about seven hundred miles southwest of Iceland. My mate and I have been living here for a few months now, and you washed up on our beach yesterday, half frozen. Your heart was barely beating. We brought you in and warmed you up. That’s all.”
The newcomer focused on Devon while he was speaking, but as soon as he stopped those wary eyes were on Lir again. “Your mate, what—what is he?”
Devon laughed a little and glanced back over his shoulder at Lir. He couldn’t help smiling at Devon’s smile, but when Devon turned it back toward the newcomer he seemed unmoved.
“I forget how strange his scent is when you’re not used to it. He’s not a wolf, he’s a sea-shifter. A sea god, really. He built this island—is building it still. He has dominion over this part of the ocean. Not all of it, but more than you can see from here. That’s why he smells like that.”
“A... god,” the newcomer repeated, and his dark, wary gaze settled on Lir. “What sort of worship do you require?”
Lir shook his head, smiling. “None. I usually haven’t got any people in my domain, and whales and sharks don’t go in for that sort of thing. You are our guest here, there are no obligations incurred by accepting our hospitality. You are welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“And if I like not to stay?”
Lir spread his hands. “I’m not a jailer. If you’re unhappy here, you can go anytime you like.”
Devon would not be made happier by the company of someone who felt badly used and only wished to leave. It would mean Lir would have to start over in finding him a pack—unless this one put him off the idea entirely, and he decided that he was happy with only Lir and the little one after all. That might be for the best, really.
“Is there anyone we should call?” Devon asked. “To let them know we’ve found you?”
The newcomer looked at Devon, frowning. Not in suspicion, this time, but confusion.
Devon reached out slowly to set a hand on the shape of the newcomer’s foot under the blankets. “Do you remember how you wound up in the water?”
The newcomer shook his head slightly. “It was cold. And dark. Just... cold.” There was a silence; Lir tucked his hands under his arms to remind himself not to try to coax more from the newcomer.
“I was alo
ne,” he said after a long moment. “And cold. I don’t... I don’t remember anything else.”
“Well, you’re not alone now.” Devon moved his hand in tiny increments, rubbing the newcomer’s foot. “My name is Devon, and my mate is Lir. Do you know what you’d like us to call you?”
The newcomer opened his mouth and then closed it. He shook his head slightly and then gave a larger shiver all over and shifted back to his wolf form. His shape had barely settled in place before he was on his feet, shaking free of the blanket, and leaped directly out the window.
Devon scrambled up after him—not shouting or grabbing for him, just leaning out the window to see where he’d gone. Lir finally dared to approach, curling one arm around Devon’s middle as he looked out the window with him.
The newcomer was already out of sight, but Lir could hear the faint sounds of him running northward to the beach. There was the sound of feet on the sand as the wolf ran back and forth, perhaps picking up his own scent trail.
Then the sound of running stopped, and was replaced by a howl that made Devon shiver in his arms. Lir tightened his grip instinctively, and after a moment the single drawn out note faded. It was replaced after a breath by something else—not merely a howl, but almost a song, a howl with intention in it.
When silence fell again it seemed to ring with the echo of that howl.
“Should you answer him?” Lir asked, his voice barely above a whisper. It seemed wrong for anything less than a true answer to disturb the silence after that.
Devon shook his head, turning to press his face against Lir’s shoulder. “I can’t. That’s a pack song, and not one I recognize. He’s calling for his own.”
***
Chapter 16
“It might be better if you... went out, for a little while,” Devon said tentatively, as he and Lir were getting to the end of their breakfast. He’d made enough for the stranger, but the red wolf was still out on the north beach, sometimes pacing back and forth, sometimes just lying at the water’s edge.
