by Dean Murray
**
I must have checked the clock sixteen times during the last five minutes of the obligatory half-hour. The sensible, grownup part of me was arguing for another five minutes just to make sure, but I told that part to take a flying leap and all but ran through the house looking for Donovan.
"Yes, mistress? Do you need something?"
"Donovan, Alec said I could go watch them work out. Will you take me to wherever they are?"
He dried his hands on a blisteringly white towel, and nodded. "Of course. I believe they are in the north end of the valley. Right this way."
We made good time, even with Donovan's jerky, oftentimes painful gait, but the estate was even bigger than I'd realized. We walked for several minutes before rounding a corner and finding the entrance to a hedge maze.
"We're very nearly there. The maze serves as a final barrier against unwelcome eyes."
I was lost within seconds, before we'd made more than four or five turns. "No wonder Alec laughed when I threatened to try and follow him. I'd starve to death before anyone found me."
Donovan's laugh was surprisingly relaxed. I'd only ever seen him with a serious, if respectful expression. Even Rachel's frequent teasing hadn't ever managed to crack his 'working face'.
"I hardly think that would be the case. While you may very well have lost your way, it would have been a small matter for one of the others to track you down. You have, if I may say so, a very distinctive smell. It reminds me of a type of sage brush that hasn't grown here in quite some time."
His sigh was more felt than heard, and it put me in mind of mountains, redwoods, and other ancient things.
"Donovan, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course, mistress. I'm afraid there are many which I won't be able to answer, but it would be a delight to share those things which haven't been forbidden me."
"You're really old, aren't you?"
His hesitation was brief, so much so I almost thought I'd imagined it. "Yes, Mistress Paige, I'm quite old."
"Older than Sanctuary?"
This time there wasn't any doubt. He'd definitely hesitated. It stretched out long enough that for a moment I didn't think he was going to answer, but then he nodded, a long deliberate motion that left no question but that it was a confirmation.
I wanted to ask more, but didn't want to venture into the kinds of things that would get him in trouble with Alec. We walked for another minute or so before I was struck with the silliness of someone who was old enough to be my great grandfather calling me 'Mistress Paige.'
"Donovan, you could just call me Adri if you want."
"That would hardly be appropriate, mistress."
"It just seems silly. I mean, I'm not really part of the family or anything, so there isn't really a need, is there?"
Donovan's smile was incredibly gentle as he shook his head in disagreement. "You're very much a part of the family, and if I may be so bold, I'm quite delighted by your inclusion. I've not seen Mistress Rachel or Master Alec this content in more years than I like to think about. For my part, I hope to have the continued pleasure of your company for a very long time."
I felt myself blushing. I hated how easily my face heated up, but a little thing like my imminent death was hardly going to change that.
"Thanks, Donovan. Not just for that either. I haven't properly thanked you for how nice you've been to me."
Donovan waved away my thanks. "That is no more or less than my duty to a member of the family, and with that, we've arrived."
The Graves estate was cradled between two spurs, and we'd finally traversed the length of the estate to arrive where the spurs joined the mountain. The north end of the valley was a terraced masterpiece that was remarkably green despite the complete lack of visible water. Large trees of a type I didn't recognize towered on each side, shooting up dozens of feet before branching out into an interlocking canopy that cut the harsh sunlight down to a greenish haze that swayed with the gentle motion of a breeze too slight for me to feel.
A gravel pathway cut its winding way between real, live grass before terminating in a sandy courtyard that my eyes had been avoiding, almost as though my mind wasn't ready to deal with what it knew it would see there.
The pack had turned at our appearance and six sets of unblinking, inhuman eyes stared up at me.
A low growl sounded from one of the throats, and Donovan edged in front of me as the largest of the figures turned and struck out at another of the shape shifters with blurring speed.
A startled yelp bounced off of the valley walls, and then Donovan relaxed slightly and started forward. "We should be safe now. Master Alec seems to have things well in hand."
His word choice didn't inspire an overabundance of confidence, but I could hardly turn and run away after begging to be allowed to come watch.
The path seemed to shrink as we were walking, and almost too quickly sand replaced the crunch of gravel under our feet.
I recognized Alec's humanoid form from before, a massive, black, heavily furred tower of muscle, claws and fangs. I might have pulled back at his approach, but the eyes, even with their vertical pupils were still undeniably his. A paler, more icy blue than I was used to, but it was still him looking out at me from the other side.
Everyone else was harder to pick out, but I gave it my best shot. Isaac was probably the bluish-black hybrid who was nearly as big as Alec. His utter stillness in comparison to the constant motion of the rest of the pack was too much like his normal self-mastery for it to be anyone else.
The other hybrid, the gray one with his teeth showing and just the barest hint of a growl had to be James. Jessica was obviously the smallest of the wolves. She paced back and forth, her eyes never leaving me as she made it entirely evident she'd like nothing more than to give into countless millennia of instincts, and just rip my throat out in a single lightning-fast bound.
It wasn't until I tried to decide which of the two remaining wolves was Dominic, that I realized the next smallest figure wasn't a wolf at all. The pitch-black shadow that padded towards me was some kind of cross between a leopard and a jaguar.
A low growl rippled up out of Alec's throat as the large cat got closer, but she dropped to the ground and rolled onto her back. I started forward, but Donovan's hand closed around my arm, pulling me up short.
Alec's gaze never left the prostrate shape shifter. He let her remain on the ground for several seconds, and then his chin dropped in an unmistakable nod.
Moving with what had to be exaggerated care for someone capable of such speed, she rolled back onto her paws and crossed the remaining distance between us. Donovan released my arm as she reared up and placed her front paws on my shoulders. The colorless eyes didn't match any of the pack's human form, but they had Dominic's gentleness.
She dropped back down and butted her head against my hand. I started petting her out of reflex, but when I slowed down out of embarrassment, she butted my hand again. After a few seconds she turned and slipped away, disappearing into the trees in a matter of seconds.
The rest of the pack waited expectantly, milling about partially hidden by Alec's towering figure. I turned to ask Donovan what to do next, only to have the words torn away from me as a surge of power washed over me from where Dominic had disappeared. A momentary ripple of stillness swept through the pack, and then Dominic reappeared, this time walking on two legs.
I'd been too overwhelmed by everything else to really register the fact that everyone was wearing some form of stretchy clothing. I'd never thought about how changing shapes must make for difficulty when it came to clothing choices, but it appeared someone had solved the problem.
Dom's black outfit had perfectly matched her fur, and whatever it was, it had shrunk down to fit her four-legged form, while still having enough elasticity to expand out to cover her person shape. The girl's clothes had an elastic band of some kind at their necks, legs and arms, while the boys were wearing a pants-like number which cinched down over their
waist, as well as just above the knees.
My preoccupation over what everyone was wearing gave Dom a chance to cover the distance between us. Donovan smiled as Dom reached us. "I'll leave her in your care then, Mistress Sanchez?"
Alec watched Donovan leave, and then turned back to the pack and chivvied them back into motion. I grabbed onto Dom's hand with enough force to bruise a normal person as Isaac and James turned on each other with a sudden ferocity that left me breathless.
"It's okay. They're training, sparring if you will."
It was hard to believe what I was watching was anything less than an all-out bid to kill each other. Isaac ducked a vicious swipe from James, and then knocked the smaller hybrid over with a backhand blow I was pretty sure would've crushed rock.
Dominic winced a little as the blow landed and her boyfriend hit with earth-shattering force.
"Are you sure? I mean, it looks pretty real to me."
"They're definitely being careful not to kill each other. Isaac could've connected with his claws instead of his fist."
Jasmin and Jessica were circling each other now. It reminded me of a fight I'd seen between two feral dogs while I was still in grade school. The dogs had circled for five or ten seconds, and then one had thrown himself at the other. A neighbor had broken the fight up with a few thrown stones before it'd come to a grisly end, but it'd been obvious once the first dog had latched onto his opponent's throat that it was only a matter of time before the smaller dog would've died.
This was exactly the same, only it happened faster as Jasmin blurred into motion. One moment she was growling at Jess from a distance of more than five feet, the next instant she was on top of Jess, and her teeth were latched around the smaller wolf's throat.
Dominic's hand tightened on mine as Jess began to whine, but Alec took a menacing step forward and Jasmin released Jessica with another growl.
"She didn't want to let go, did she?"
Dom looked for a second like she wasn't going to answer, but she finally shook her head. "It's harder to control the instincts, the beast inside us, if you will, while we're in an alternate form. Hybrid, wolf, cat, to one extent or another, we become the beast, and if there's one thing animals have figured out, it's that you don't survive by letting a beaten opponent live to learn from their mistakes."
I felt a shudder go through me at what she was saying. "So Alec wasn't kidding when he said it wasn't safe for me to be here?"
"You're probably not in any more danger today than you were that first night. Jessica isn't any fonder of you now than she was then. I've been working with James every day since then, but he hasn't really come around yet, so he is still a bit of a problem. Luckily, with Alec and Isaac both firmly on your side, and Jasmin starting to develop a liking for you, there isn't a thing those two can really do about it. As long as Alec is very careful to stay between the two of them and you, you really don't have a reason to worry."
"He let you get close to me."
Dom's smile was incredibly winning. "Ah, but Donovan was still with you, and not only do I like you more than any of the others, I'm also a cat, so in this case my instincts aren't quite as worrisome."
"You're different from the others then? I mean, they can't change into cats, can they?"
She shook her head, attention still mostly on the fighting taking place on the far end of the sand court.
"We're from different bloodlines. If you believe the legends, Adjam became the first wolf, and Inock the first of the big cats. Alec and the others descended from Adjam, and I'm a descendant of Inock."
It all seemed so impossible, legends brought to life and paraded before my incredulous eyes, and yet there was no arguing with the truth. It was starting to sink in that I needed to come to terms with all of the natural implications. Things like the fact that some or all of my attraction to Alec was based on his ability to addict humans to him, intentionally or not.
James and Jessica were squared off against Alec now while Isaac and Jasmin watched. I'd thought everyone else moved fast, but Alec was even faster. He actually dodged Jess' jump, causing her to latch onto nothing more than thin air, while he spun around and hit James with a blow to the chest that had to have broken ribs.
"Alec's a good leader. Maybe the best. This kind of exercise would be impossible in nearly any other pack, but it's the only thing that's kept us alive in the face of Brandon's larger pack."
I didn't want her to say anything she wasn't supposed to, especially not if Alec was having as hard of a time controlling the anger that seemed to be part and parcel of the new shapes everyone was wearing, but I was desperate to start understanding some of what was going on.
Dominic must've looked away from the fight long enough to see the questions on my face. "It's hard to understand just how important the pack structure is. The question of who is dominant and who is subordinate drives so much of what we do. Even so, it's not nearly as bad as other packs, other places. Alec's established clear dominance to everyone else here, but he still probably couldn't make his gentler rules stick if it weren't for the fact that Isaac backs him almost without question."
The object of our discussion was currently backing away from James while trying to keep Jessica from circling around behind him. I finally realized what I'd always thought of as grace was really an economy of motion. It was like he was saving every possible bit of energy because he never knew when he'd find it necessary to burn up his reserves in a blaze of violence.
Even as I watched, he spun around, plucking Jessica out of the air, grabbing her by the head mid-leap as she sought to find purchase on this throat. He tried to spin back around to meet James' rush, but the smaller hybrid knocked him down with a crash. Isaac and Jasmin were there in a blink, tearing the other two wolves off of Alec before the conflict could turn deadly.
I couldn't breathe until the dust settled, and Alec rolled back up to his feet, dripping blood from a large gash in his side. Dominic heard my sudden gasp and reached over to reassure me.
"He's okay. We heal fast, and he heals faster than most."
"So this isn't normal?"
Dom shook her head again. "No, in most packs, any confrontation ends in violence. Generally there are a whole host of dominants who want to become the alpha. This would usually turn into a real dominance fight, with the other two doing their very best to kill him before turning on each other to fight over the spoils."
"That's terrible."
Her nod was sad. "I told you he was special. All of that hard-won civilization tends to flake and chip away when we're that close to our beast. Alec always does what's right though. No matter what it costs him personally."
Dom's words were timely. Before hearing them I would've watched Alec's near-stillness with unconcern, but now, seeing the way Jasmin and Isaac split their attention between Alec and the wolves they'd just pulled off of him, I could nearly see the effort he was exerting to shove aside the instincts demanding the death of the wolves who'd marked him, who'd questioned his supremacy.
With a shudder, he relaxed again, and Jessica approached, dropping to her stomach to crawl the last little ways, and then rolling onto her back. James dropped down on all fours, grounding the wicked-looking claws tipping his hands, and then it seemed all was forgiven.
My suspicions were confirmed when Dom sighed with relief. It hadn't just been my imagination. Alec's will had been sufficient to the task, but its victory hadn't been assured. It was a terrible risk to run, one that apparently put a big fat target on his chest for anyone in the pack who wasn't happy with how things were currently running, but Alec ran it regardless. He ran it again and again because doing so gave his pack a slight chance of survival, and he couldn't deny them that chance, not when there was something he could do to put it within their reach.
That wasn't the kind of person who'd take advantage of my human weakness to seduce me. In fact, it was all too likely he was going to fight my every effort to bring us closer together precisely because he didn't
want to take advantage of me. I was suddenly very certain though that I was going to wage that war. I couldn't not want him, not love him, any more than he could do less than his best to keep his family from harm.
