by Limelan Z
We sprinted after him.
And then we were outside.
And then we ran.
Wolfe’s house was in central London. Not the best place to go unspotted as a werewolf. But, god, could we run! We were faster than cars, took the footpaths along the river, across the parks, further wild westward.
The wind tickled my fur. I felt like I’d never used my lungs before these wide breaths. My limbs worked hard, sweating, pushing us to run further in bounds. But the air was cool.
We must have run for hours and hours through fields and forests. The moon came and we called to it from the moorland. I felt free.
By the time the sun appeared on the horizon, we were at the coast. Wolfe nuzzled Ariane and then lay down to watch. We did the same. I felt him changing back at my side, then felt his fingers in my fur.
‘It is good to run like that. Did you feel the moon?’
Yes, I tried to say. I don’t know if anything came out. I had always liked the moon, the crispness of it in a black sky. This had been different. It had called to me. It soothed me.
‘It will be difficult when you change back,’ he continued, ‘but it will hurt less and less each time.’ Did he mean now? ‘Are you ready?’
No! Ariane snorted. She was in agreement. Why would I want to give this feeling up?
‘It is better now while you are satiated from the run. Do not overthink it. You do not want to wait too long.’
Why? What happened if I waited? Would I be unable to change back like before? I wasn’t sure I wanted that. But then, I wasn’t sure I even knew how to change back.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘let Ariane rest.’
And then I felt it. Ariane was tired. I wanted to soothe her.
It’s okay, I tried to say. You can rest. I won’t keep you away so long again.
Ariane snorted a few times. They lay her head down and closed her eyes.
We will run again. I wanted to. Soon.
And then I felt it at my fingers. The pain was different to before but no less excruciating. Like stepping into a body that had not been my own. It was like the ultimate mindfulness technique. My body was coming back to me. Aside from the pain, I was suddenly aware again of my feet, my hands, my legs, my chest, everything.
When it was done, Wolfe pulled me onto his lap and held me. My skin hummed but it wasn’t unpleasant.
‘It will get easier,’ he murmured against my sweat drenched temple.
‘I’m cold,’ I said after a while. I was naked on an English beach at sunrise after all.
Wolfe went off to find clothes.
Chapter 19
I hadn’t spoken to Vince since Wolfe had literally thrown him off my doorstep. I also hadn’t been to the lab in a while. After an early morning breakfast with my supervisor on Monday – where I explained a family emergency had kept me busy – I made my way to the labs. My bookshop owner/bodyguard Frankie had been reinstated in case I started feeling unlike myself. But so far everything had been the same.
‘Morning,’ I said as I entered.
Vince glanced up. ‘Morning.’ He didn’t try to hide his mixed feelings about me. But then, as a werewolf, what would be the point? He was irritated, even if he was still attracted to me. Then he broke into a grin and stood up at the burley guy behind me. ‘Ah, little Frankie!’
I watched intrigued as Vince stretched up to wrap Frankie in a kind of man hug. There was genuine delight at the act on both sides. Vince even kissed his temple.
‘Are you well? How’s the shop?’
I hung up my jacket and sat back to watch the interchange. Vince engaged and asking questions, Frankie excitedly answering. After a while, it struck me what I was seeing. They were family. I squinted to look for a resemblance. Frankie was much taller and broader than Vince, and his hair was cut shorter, but there was something about the eyes and the jaw.
Vince turned to me then. ‘Frankie is my great-grandson,’ he said proudly. It was an odd expression to see him wear. He always seemed so youthful but now he looked like an old man in a coffee shop playing chess or something with a young boy.
It took me a while to compute. ‘Werewolf grandson?’
He sent me a look. ‘I’m not mated. Before all that.’
He’d had family. Of course, he had! He’d been turned later in life, so he’d had a decent time as a human first. Someone as affable and attractive as him would hardly have struggled to find companionship. I wondered why Frankie had been turned, and if Vince had any other relatives – werewolf or otherwise, but now didn’t seem the time to ask.
The only other way to have family was to find your mate. Did mated werewolves have human children or were there baby werewolves running around?
‘Is Tilly looking after the shop today?’ Vince asked.
‘No, she’s down in Devon with her mum. Alexa’s covering.’ I winced, again reminded that people’s day-to-day had been disrupted while everyone figured out if Ariane was still loco.
‘That’s good. She’s a good girl,’ Vince said with a nod.
Frankie motioned towards the lab equipment setup in front of Vince, so Vince launched into an excited rundown of everything he was working on. I’d never seen him so animated by the subject matter before so I could only assume it was the pride in showing his great-grandson what he did.
When our other lab partner Eric arrived, Frankie went to wait on the other side of the door and it was back to business-as-usual. Well, with the exception of Vince ignoring me. I didn’t like it. Falling out with Vince didn’t sit well with me. A few hours later, Eric went on the coffee run. I turned around on my stool immediately.
‘I get why you’re pissed at me,’ I said to Vince’s back. I wanted to get everything out in the open.
He turned. ‘I’m not pissed at you, Ceri.’
‘Yes, you are. Because of the other night. We were having a good time and then Wolfe showed up.’ I decided not to go into detail.
He paused, blinked and frowned. ‘You think I’m upset because you slept with your mate?’
‘I mean, yeah. He’s not my mate but yeah.’
Suddenly, he laughed. Then stood up, walked over and wrapped me up in a bear hug. ‘Who you sleep with is your own business. And as far as your body is concerned, Wolfe would have been the number one pleasure-giver. Sex with your mate is supposed to be incredible.’ It had been. ‘Even if he wasn’t your mate a week later.’
I wasn’t quite sure what was happening so I let him hug me. It felt nice. I hugged back. ‘Well, if you didn’t care about that, then why have you been pissed?’
He let go – suddenly serious – and took a step back so he could see my face. ‘Because I kissed you. Because we’re friends and you were drunk and I took advantage of you and kissed you. I shouldn’t have done that. Friends don’t do that. And I’m sorry.’
I was still a moment and then: ‘Are you kidding me?’ It was my turn to laugh.
‘What?’
‘You didn’t take advantage of me!’
‘We’d been drinking and you could barely walk. I had to carry you home,’ he protested.
I laughed again. ‘That’s because I’m lazy. Jeeze, Vince – I wanted you to kiss me. In fact, I have done for a very long time, sober or not. So you took advantage of nothing.’
He seemed confused. Then rubbed his face. ‘You are a very confusing woman.’
I stood up and gave him another hug. Hugging him felt good. He was all rigid planes and strong muscles, but other than Fi he was probably my best friend. ‘That’s because I’m actually the most legendary werewolf that ever lived.’
Back to being friends again, we got on with our work. Since Vince and I would be working together all day, I suggested to him that he “watch” me so that Frankie could do his own thing. Rather than go back to his bookshop, he was going to spend the day with his husband – a sculptor who was renting his studio from his ex-wife and was apparently not a werewolf. It seemed like an interesting situation but none of my busine
ss.
‘It’s silly, don’t you think? That Wolfe thinks there needs to be someone to keep an eye on me all the time?’ I said over a drink after work in the beer garden behind the labs.
‘No.’
‘Do you want to at least pretend to think about it?’
‘No.’ He leaned forwards. ‘Not long ago, you were vaguely normal. Then suddenly, you were blacking out and beating people up,’ he pointed at himself. I remembered guiltily. ‘And then you virtually ripped an alpha to shreds during a challenge as if it meant nothing – again, with no memory of doing it. Some ancient magick that kept you you for hundreds of years then gets removed. A few days later you feel fine, so it’s all good?’
‘Well, when you put it like that.’ Somewhere along the line I had got distracted and shelved my fears of what Ariane might do, but I didn’t really know her. I swigged on my bottle. ‘How long do you think this will go on for?’
‘I don’t know. A year, maybe?’
‘A year!’
‘Longer? Who knows? You need to establish a baseline first.’
A couple of female students did a slow walk by, whispering to each other and looking at Vince. Irritatingly, my hearing was improving daily and I could tell they were talking about whether or not he was single and what they would like to do to him. I glanced at him. How irritating it must be. Someone like him would get that sort of thing all the time. He sent them both a smile and gave a sort of salute with his bottle. Perhaps, not so irritating then.
Then he turned back to me. Whatever he read in my expression made him lean closer. ‘I know you hate the idea of being watched. I’ve seen you delete your cookies daily. But this is uncharted territory, Ceri. What if disabling the magick doesn’t put you into a new normal but actually starts a process whereby Ariane grows more powerful than before. She’s had 400 years to evolve while letting you drive.’
I shivered. Either Ariane was more comfortable now than she had been, or after years of being locked up she was going to start testing where the new boundaries were. The thought turned my stomach.
‘Do wolves get stronger as they age?’ From what Frankie had told me, alphas tended to be older than the rest of their pack.
‘It’s more of a selection process. Those that are stronger or cleverer tend to survive longer. Plus, like anything, you learn as you go. I’m a lot better at dealing with life now than I was a hundred years ago.’
I watched him carefully. I didn’t want to wait a year to find out if Ariane had figured out how to not kill someone who looked at her funny. I leapt on a sudden thought. ‘What if I go to Scotland?’
‘You want to run away?’
‘No, I mean go to the Northlands? If they amplify power, then maybe it will speed up any weird reaction.’ He scratched his jaw. ‘I’ll be able to find out if Ariane and I really have found a new arrangement.’
‘Maybe not the best idea,’ Vince said carefully as I pulled my phone out and started texting Wolfe.
‘Because it’s better to let these things change organically?’
‘No,’ he said, frowning at me. ‘Because for the majority of intents and purposes, you are part of Wolfe’s pack, and there is an ongoing war over the Northlands.’
I’d already hit send. Perhaps I’d been overzealous. I’d forgotten about that side of things. ‘What kind of war?’ I asked.
He’d been around long enough to know what I meant. It ranged from heated political discussions to blood. Would my presence lead to bloodshed or a stern ticking-off?
‘The kind where an increase in the balance of one species – perhaps by the noticeable arrival of a dangerous legend – would rock the boat. It would be seen as an act of aggression by Wolfe.’
I untied and retied my hair back from my face to give me something to do while I thought. ‘But I’m not pack anymore,’ I countered. ‘I am the literal definition of a lone wolf.’
‘Who sleeps with the alpha and has a 24hr guard by the rest of the pack?’
Fair point.
‘If you’re looking for excitement, there’s enough to think about staying in London. The other werewolf packs may now recognise and revere you, but we don’t know where else news of you has spread. There was that whole thing with the London vamps and they are a really gossipy lot.’
I thought back to the pasty creatures who’d grabbed me and slammed Vince’s face against the ground. No matter what I did, I was being selfish. To go to Scotland in some attempt to find myself would potentially spark the next Reckoning. To stay meant the pack would have to put their lives on hold for a long time to protect me from whatever other things existed, or from myself.
‘It’s a lot to think about,’ I said, soberly.
He gave a nod. ‘Maybe just take it easy for a bit, yeah? Forget about sticking it to the man and railing against the rules. Enjoy the fact that you’re getting laid for the first time since I’ve met you.’
My jaw dropped as he wiggled his eyebrows. What was the point in denying it? Gross as it was, he could scent my sex life. And, yes, I hadn’t been particularly active over the last three years.
He grinned.
‘I have no idea what to say to that,’ I began. ‘Other than it’s not a race. And we aren’t all considered “catnip people want to roll around in”.’ I’d quoted what the students had muttered earlier.
He gave me a look. ‘Please,’ he said dryly. ‘You get plenty of attention.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘We’re not talking about me. And let’s stop talking about me. Let’s talk about you.’ He stared blankly. ‘I actually have loads of questions.’
‘Am I going to need another drink?’
‘You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.’
‘In that case, let me tell you about this band playing in Shoreditch this week.’
‘Vince…’
He smiled. ‘Ask me what you like.’
Where to start? I wanted to know about his immigrant upbringing and how he’d gone from the slums by the docks to a researcher. I wanted to know about his life as a human, and his family, and Frankie. I wanted to know who had turned him and why, and if they had done it with his agreement.
Instead, I opted for: ‘Why do you commute from zone 6? There are loads of cheap places to rent nearer by.’
He grinned. And then my phone buzzed. It was from Wolfe – a one word response to my impulsive suggestion about going to Scotland: “Yes.”
Chapter 20
So, it turned out that when the Zosimos Wolfe decided to randomly invest a few hundred million in a small arm of a biochemical research lab at Imperial College, it was totally fine for two of the lead researchers to book off a random three-month sabbatical and sojourn to Edinburgh. All other work went on hold.
‘It’s great to be rich, huh,’ Vince said with a grin as we boarded the sleeper train and made our way to the bar carriage. Everything was lined with a plush red velvet and gold trim in an art deco, Great Gatsby vibe. There were chandeliers and even a quartet playing soft jazz to one side. It was way too over the top for what had to be maybe a six hour journey from London?
‘Why not fly?’
‘Wolfe hates to fly. He usually goes by train or boat. Or runs.’
The mighty werewolf alpha was afraid of planes? I took a minute to wrap my head around it. I supposed he didn’t really need that particular ability to lead the pack.
I still didn’t get why he was coming with me. Or Vince. If we were already teetering on the edge of war, turning up with an entourage of werewolves didn’t exactly exude peaceful intent. What would the consequences of our going there together be?
My fears were making me edgy. So far, Ariane hadn’t reared her head and I felt pretty much in control of myself. But time would tell. I just wanted to keep my head down.
‘Are you sure we’re allowed in here?’ I asked as Vince picked a table, slung his duffle bag under it and sank into a ridiculously ornate chair. I shuffled a little more subtly into the one opposite t
o him.
‘Yes.’ He passed me one of the menus and took the other for himself. ‘We have tickets.’
‘I mean more is there a dress code. We both look like postgrads. I’m wearing hoodie and you’ve got hole in your jeans.’
He glanced down at the shredded material across his knee. ‘Fashion.’
‘You forget, I was with you when they tore.’ He’d been trying to climb a statue with some others at one of the Christmas parties. In retrospect, he could have done it easily but must have been holding himself back to appear human.
He sent me a look. ‘Ceri, the really rich don’t care about what they’re wearing. If they have a mustard stain on their jacket then it was probably meant to be there. If the Queen walked in here now in a hoodie, no one would throw her out.’
I still felt uneasy. I glanced around the carriage. ‘Where is Wolfe?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably still working.’ His eyes lit up as he explored the menu. ‘We’re not scheduled to leave until just before midnight.’
‘Then why are we here now?’
He looked at me like I was speaking another language. Then showed me the menu. ‘It’s free.’
‘Then why are there prices next to everything?’
Vince rolled his eyes. ‘Fine, maybe not free but Wolfe’s paying.’ He caught a waiter’s eye. ‘Can I charge this to my room?’ He flashed our sleeper tickets.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Great, then I will have a champagne cocktail please and…’ He was waiting for me to order but I folded my arms. ‘And another champagne cocktail. And some of those nuts in the big jars.’ He was like this at conferences too.
‘Certainly, sir. Which variety. We have—’
‘One of each sounds great. Do you serve hot food?’
I let out a breath and tipped my head back while he did his thing. When he was done, he grinned at me.
‘We might as well go out on a bang.’
My irritation was immediately dwarfed by my resurfacing anxiety. ‘Are you saying you think this is our last meal?’
