by Jan Stryvant
Sean walked over to Peg and Cali and put an arm around each of them. Peg's parents were both dead, her mother having been killed by McConnell's men months ago, and her father having been killed by Sean himself. As for Cali's parents, well, all Sean knew was that they were someplace in Northern Europe, Denmark or Finland or some such, and he wasn't sure they'd have any interest at all. Assuming Cali would even want them there.
"After Canada and Mexico," Sean said. "We'll figure something out."
"Thank you, dear," Louise said with a smile.
"Great," Roxy said, clapping her hands. "Now, go get cleaned up and dressed. Everyone's gonna be there, and we all need to look good."
Sean watched as Daelyn and Jolene headed off to the bedroom.
"Anything else going on that I need to know about?" he asked, taking the time to give each of the girls still there a kiss.
Roxy shrugged and smiled. "A little bit of pushback on your sword training requirement, but that's about it."
Sean nodded and let Roxy push him towards the bedroom. "It is a strange request, so I'm not too upset over them questioning it."
"Really?" Roxy growled.
Sean grinned. "Just as long as they don't question it more than once."
"Better," Roxy said and swatted him on the ass.
"So what time is the wedding?"
"We need to be there at six."
"Six?" Sean stopped and looked at Roxy, who was pushing harder at him, and Cali was starting to help. "But it's only two!"
"We know how you like to get us all wet and slippery in the shower, Husband," Cali said, grinning.
"And you're about to head for Canada, so we want to get you slippery, too!" Roxy said, smirking.
"Oh!" Sean said, and with a smile he let them push him the rest of the way.
Wedding Bells
Sean and the girls, along with Sean's mother and his Uncle Maitland, showed up on time, more due to Daelyn's driving than anything else.
"Look at all these cars!" Louise said, looking around as they got out of the van.
"Chad's pack is pretty large," Roxy told her. "Max's mom's pack is even larger. Then, because of his relationship with Sean, a lot of other people think it might be wise to put in an appearance as well."
Sean led them to the building the ceremony was being held in, it was meant for large pack meetings he guessed, but there was no way it would have held a crowd this large. Claudia had apparently realized this was going to happen, though, as one of the walls had been removed, with only the major supports left to hold it up.
One of Claudia's people quickly intercepted them and led them all to a row of seats in the front row. Sitting down, Sean was surprised to see Chad's parents, John and Karen. Smiling, Sean introduced his mother, then his great uncle to them.
"Now, here's the part where I get in trouble," Sean said with a smile, "Mr. and Mrs. Morkin, this is my wife Roxy."
"You're married, Sean? Why, I had no idea," Karen started off.
"And my wife Jolene."
"Wait, what?" Karen said, then smiled and said hello.
"And my wife Daelyn."
Karen had stopped asking questions, but had a little of that 'deer in the headlights' look in her eyes. Chad's father John just looked impressed.
"My wife Roberta, my wife Peg, and last but not least of all, my wife Cali."
Karen finished greeting them all, and then looked at Sean. "This isn't a joke, is it?"
"Nope," Sean smiled, "they're all mine, and I'm theirs."
"Damn, Boy," John said after having greeted each of them, "you making up for lost time or something?"
"Or something," Roxy said with a smile.
"So, just why are there all these people here, anyway?" John asked as they all sat down.
"Well, about a third of them now answer to your son Chad, maybe half answer to Max's mother Claudia, and the rest are here because they either know Chad, have been under his command, or because they're afraid if they don't show up, Sean might be unhappy with them."
Sean noticed that Karen was looking at Roxy in disbelief.
"Sean," John asked, "how much of that is true?"
"I'm afraid to say that you're in for a lot of surprises tonight. The world isn't what you or I or even Chad thought it was, and a few months ago I had a very rude awakening. Chad, thankfully, was very helpful; several of our friends were."
"In other words, all of it," John said with a nod.
Sean smiled. "There's more, but I'd hate to let him off the hook by explaining it for him."
"Well, he seems to be holding up rather well, and I've noticed his limp is completely gone. Last time I talked to a doctor, they said it would take a miracle for that to happen."
"At least he got rid of that Kathy girl," Karen said with obvious distaste. "I never liked her. Maxine is a wonderful woman, he definitely did something right to catch her."
"He's not going to start marrying more like you did, is he?" John asked.
Roxy laughed, and several of the girls snickered.
"I don't think you have to worry about that," Sean confessed. "Have you met Claudia yet?"
"Max's mom? Yeah, we've met her over dinner twice now. Nice woman, can't figure out why she's single, though," John said, and Karen agreed.
"Not my business," Sean replied.
At that point the minister came out, and everyone quickly quieted down. Chad and Max came out not much longer after that, and as they all watched, the ceremony took place. Five minutes later they were pronounced man and wife, and Sean was surprised when Chad grabbed Max and laid some serious lip-lock on her.
The way Max managed to wrap her body around him, it was fairly obvious she was having no issues with it at all.
When the wolves started to howl, they finally stopped kissing and came up for air.
"Hey! That's enough of that!" Chad yelled, and Sean almost laughed at how quickly it stopped.
"What the hell was that?" John asked.
"Sounded like wolves to me," Peg said with a giggle.
"Well, let's go congratulate the happy couple," Louise said, standing up and, along with Maitland, joining the rather long line of well-wishers.
"Aren't you going, Sean?" Karen asked.
"I'll go last," Sean said with a smile.
"Sean! Sleeping on me already! I hope you're not going to be doing that on the way to Canada tomorrow!" Chad said, coming up to them.
Waking up instantly, Sean realized that quite some time had gone by. Peg and Daelyn were sitting on either side of him; Roxy was using her phone to manage some business dealings of hers. Roberta was sitting behind him, talking to her mother, who had come to the ceremony, and Cali was in a hushed conversation with Samis and his wife Sarah, surprisingly.
Stretching, Sean got up and hugged Chad, and then Max, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "Congrats, you two. Now, I take it you have a plan for taking on all the councils in Canada if they don't roll over quietly for us?"
"Yup, though I dare say you won't care for all the travel arrangements. That does present a minor problem for us, however," Chad said, and then turned to his parents.
"Mom, Dad! So glad you could be here for this. Don't let the crowd throw you, but ever since Sean here sucked me into his new sideline, I've become very popular."
"I thought you had your own store?" John said.
"Sucked you in?" Sean laughed. "You dove in head first. Don't give me all the blame!"
"Eh," Chad said to his father, "it's complicated, and you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you. Come on back to the house with Max and me, and we can talk about it over dinner."
Chad turned back to Sean. "We're leaving Monday at three dark o-thirty. So better be up and ready to roll by then."
"What about your 'minor' problem?" Sean asked.
"Oh, wolves and other American fauna run across the border all the time, and no one cares. But a lion? Not sure how we're going to hide that."
Sean turned and looked at Peg, who sudd
enly blushed.
"Oh, I think I know just how to deal with it," Sean said, smiling at Peg.
"I guess his means only Peg and Roxy will be going with him?" Cali said, looking at Chad.
"'Fraid so, but don't sweat it; three, four days, we'll be done."
Sean nodded. "Okay, I'll see you in the morning. I promised Steve I'd stop by and introduce the girls to his folks when they got in tonight."
"Really?" Chad said, looking surprised.
"I've known his folks since I was ten. Wouldn't be right if I didn't tell them myself."
Chad nodded. "Okay, later then."
Sean heard both of Chad's parents ask just what he and Sean had been talking about there with animals and the border.
"Work stuff, don't worry about it," he heard Chad say as they left.
"So, go back home, drop off Mom and Maitland, get changed, and head over to Steve's, right?"
Everyone nodded.
"Great, let's go!"
Later that night when they got back to the house, Sean got out the faerie swords Maitland and the dwarves had made. The large two-handed one had obviously been made with him in mind. Technically they were all two-handed swords, but in his hybrid form, the smallest of them was more like a bastard sword, size-wise, and being as they were all amazingly light for their size, using it one-handed with his lycan strength was no problem at all.
They all came with sheaths, and Sean was seriously considering taking the largest and the smallest of them. He couldn't wait to see what the armor they were making for him and the girls would look like when it was done. Maitland and Ruthelma's armor was really pretty stunning to look at. But with this trip to Canada, Sean wouldn't be able to get his fitted until after they got back.
Picking up the larger of the two, Sean ran his archive program and was surprised when it terminated immediately with a null output.
"What the hell?" he muttered to himself and tried it again, to no avail.
Setting that sword down and picking the smaller one up, he tried again, and the program once again terminated with no output.
Opening his enchanting framework, Sean started examining the weapons. Where he'd thought he'd find just the standard format that every magically enchanted item he'd seen to date followed, this was completely different.
So different he couldn't make heads nor tails of it.
Ideally, his tarball program should have just black-boxed it and not cared at all. Then again, Sean had written his tarball program when he knew a lot less about magic than he did now.
Sitting down, he puzzled at it for a while. Calling up his stat sheet, he saw he had points to spend; he hadn't looked in on it in a few weeks and things had been fairly hectic in that time, so it wasn't unexpected to see them there.
Obviously he now had something to spend them on as well, namely his tarball spell. Revisiting it for the first time since he'd written it, Sean started to pull it apart, putting the magical equivalent of 'break points' in it, with some data reporting as well. It took a while to figure out just how to make that reporting work in a way he could actually see and understand, but once he did, he quickly tripped on the problem; he couldn't compress the spell.
True to the original tarball program, it first recorded the spell in a format that was simple, but large. Then it was immediately shunted into a second routine that compressed everything and organized it into a fashion that Sean was much more familiar with.
And that was where his magical program was failing. The initial format was fine, and if he had that dump to a tarball, it worked just fine. However, the tarball was gigantic, and the energy requirements to play that back into something were insanely large.
Sean wasn't even exactly sure it would work. Apparently, Faerie magic was completely different than the human variety. Studying this would definitely take time Sean didn't have. He'd have to find Maitland and ask him in the morning, but Sean had already promised the girls he was going to spend all of Sunday with them, and nothing else.
Looking at the program, he took the two huge tarball files and set them aside, then made some changes to his untar program so he could feed those through it, if for some reason he ever wanted to. After that he modified his emulator so he could examine the files, if and when he got the chance. The files definitely looked interesting. He wondered if he could learn anything from his uncle that might let him do even more outrageous things with magic?
It was definitely something to think about.
Popping out of his classroom, Sean looked at the time and grumbled, it was a lot later than he'd realized. Definitely time to call it a night.
On The Road Again
"So, how are you doing?" Sean asked Peg as they padded along the game trail; it was early Monday morning or very late Sunday night, depending on your point of view. Roxy was leading, Sheila was next, then Peg, and Sean was bringing up the rear.
"Her royal highness says she doesn't want to speak to you," Peg's fox said with a laugh.
"Oh? Why?"
"Well, part of it is because she's concentrating on keeping you and Rox disguised as cougars. But she's just a tad miffed that she's out here running around in the dark and the cold when she could be in a nice soft bed with either you or Sheila."
"Oh?"
"Or Jolene, or Roxy, or Daelyn, or Roberta, or even scary but loving Cali."
"Sounds like somebody is a spoiled fox," Roxy said.
"As it should be!" Sheila grumped. "We're creatures of pleasure! Leisure! Fancy homes and soft beds!"
"What? You're not happy either?" Sean chuckled.
"Bad enough you roped Peg into this, I can understand that, she's an expert with illusion. I've no idea why you needed me, however."
"Simple, without scary Cali," Roxy snickered as Sean said that, "we don't have any other truly sneaky people around. I'm sure Peg is good at it, but you're right up there with Cali, right?"
Sheila's tail flicked. "I'm not so sure I'm quite up there with Cali. She can see magic, after all. I can't."
"I can see magic," Peg said with a sigh. "I'm not as good at it as Cali is, she and Jolene are still teaching me. But I can do it. However, both me and my fox want some serious pampering when all this is over with. I'm a spoiled princess, not some outdoor adventurer type!"
"You mean you want to be a spoiled princess," Roxy said.
Sean gave a lusty growl. "Oh don't worry, with only you and Roxy around, you'll be getting some serious spoiling."
"Oh, I like the sound of that!" Peg said, perking up.
Sean heard Sheila's sigh.
"Oh, I haven't forgotten about you, Sheila! I'll be sure to make you happy as well."
Sean laughed and Peg giggled as Sheila's tail bushed out like a bottlebrush.
"When do we cross the border?" Peg asked.
"Ten minutes ago," Sean replied. "I've got a location spell running on us. Twenty more minutes and we'll start meeting up with the Chad and the rest of the pack."
"Does that mean we won't have to walk anymore?"
"Not immediately, we need to find the people from Sapientia who are driving down to pick us up. But it does mean most of the walking is behind us."
"Oh, great! I can't wait. I'm so done with walking through the mountains," Peg said with a dramatic sigh.
"You do know we have to walk back, don't you?" Roxy teased.
Peg growled. "No, I didn't know."
"Oh, I'm sorry; did I forget to mention that?" Sean sighed. "I thought it was obvious."
"First thing I'm doing when we get back is building a dog house, buster, just so I can put you in it."
"You, build something?" Roxy snickered.
"Okay, I'll bribe Daelyn to build it. Better watch out there, Rox, or I'll have her build one for you as well!"
Sean just shook his head, Peg hadn't exactly been enamored with the whole idea of walking twenty plus miles through the forest, but she'd done it, and had saved her complaints for when they were almost done. He figured the real reason she wa
s complaining now was just to make sure he understood she was expecting to be rewarded.
Which Sean was more than willing to happily do. He hadn't had Peg all alone for a while and was looking forward to spending some time with just her and Roxy.
When they caught up with the rest of the group, Sean found Chad, who was checking on the latest intelligence from the Sapientia people while letting his advance team take the first two cars into town.
"So, how's it all looking?" Sean asked, padding up in his hybrid form. It might be summertime, but it was six a.m. in Canada, which made it a hell of a lot colder than he was used to. Having a fur coat under his clothing helped.
"Neither the Ascendance nor the Vestibulum have let their lycans loose," Chad replied, "but the Sapientia and Eruditio people seem to think the Ascendance will turn theirs loose the moment we show up. Apparently they've been asking a lot of questions about hiring people."
Sean blinked and looked at the guy who was obviously from Sapientia.
"You think the lycans they held as slaves will be willing to come back and work for them?"
"Things are a bit more laid back up here, don't ya' know? With the harsher climate, we're all a lot more dependent on our lycans. So it only pays to treat them nice, or you might find yourself stranded out in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm with nuthin' to keep ya' warm. I'm Todd, by the way."
"Plus," Chad added, "if they start improving conditions and treating them better before we free them, some of them are a lot more likely to overlook the sins of the past in return for a paying job they already know."
"Yah, there's that too," Todd said.
"Great," Sean said with a smile. "So, when do we go into town, and how soon do we get started?"
"They should be coming back with a couple of trucks to pick up the rest of us," Chad said. "I was thinking of stopping by the Ascendance on the way in, spend the afternoon at Sapientia catching up on our sleep, then hitting the Vestibulum. Once we're done with them, we'll all move on to our next stop."
"Sounds like a plan," Sean said. "I still need to talk to you in private, when you have some time."
