Chapter 12 - PAWN AMONG WOLVES CH. 09-Pt2

That was why there were so many wolves in this town, Jasmine had once explained. The university sponsored a hydrogen-powered fleet of buses for the local routes, meaning that the wolves could use public transport and blend in more easily with their human counterparts while they furthered their education - both academic knowledge, and the practical understanding of humans which was a necessity for all higher-ranking wolves.

Gemma's eyes softened, a little happy, a little sad, as the beaming daisy whooshed past in the opposite direction. She owed the little flower a lot. Mac would never have moved here, moved in with her, become part of her life, if it weren't for these buses.

What a romantic matchmaker - a bus.

But she flinched away from focussing further on Mac. Since his all-too brief visit, the reports from the Mackeld Range had grown rapidly worse, his defences and counterattacks increasingly dangerous. His close-knit, dwindling force was ferociously fighting their beleaguered corner against the tidal wave of invaders, but until this afternoon, they had been slowly losing their lands, their homes and their hunting grounds. Yes, the Mackelds, the Aster, had regained what they had lost in one magnificent, reckless defiance, but the Tzo still outnumbered them two to one. And the Chinese wolves were now openly using the scent-masking drug. Mac, the Aster couldn't hold much longer, not without a way to counteract the stealth attacks.

And she hadn't found one. She was failing him.

It was then that her burning eyes noticed the new "Mac loves Gemma" scrawled in shaky letters and enclosed in a wonky love heart among the graffiti on the plastic-covered backing of the seat in front of her. She closed her suddenly damp eyes as a lump formed in her throat, heart surging in longing. Was she really such a creature of habit that he knew where she'd sit?

Wolf vandal.

Her lip wobbled. Dammit, it so wasn't his turn.

And dammit, she loved him too. She missed him.

The four of them were in the mall again at lunch time two days later, riding the escalator down to the lower floor, when she spotted the wolf waif for the second time.

The slender girl was seated, uncannily motionless, on one of the benches beside the fountain in the foyer. Her long, jean-clad legs were folded in front of her, heels tucked up on the seat, touching her buttocks, and her arms, lost in a loose, over-large orange jumper, were wrapped around her knees in a defensive pose. Her head rested on her kneecaps, tilted slightly to one side in weariness.

The young face was blank, eyes seeming slightly unfocussed, disengaged, as they drifted over the throng of laughing, passing faces.

Then blue, blue eyes met Gemma's where she stood in her own bubble of self-absorbed isolation, packed in the mass of stationary shoppers on the moving staircase. A spark of incredulous life shot into the lifeless blue, and the girl tilted her head to vertical, chin resting on her knees as her wondering eyes drank in Gemma's features. Those eyes - so like Anne's. The colour, the shape, but mostly the underlying drained, slightly dead look.

Abruptly, the now intent gaze moved on and flickered into panic when it lighted on the three wolves horsing around juggling purchases just in front of Gemma. In seconds, the waif was on her feet and had disappeared into the teeming crowd.

Gemma hesitated, then deliberately steered her friends past the bench where the girl had been sitting moments earlier, but the waif had vanished. And her wolf companions didn't so much as twitch. Definitely scent-masked.

Gemma's eyes lifted, pulled by that feeling of being watched, and she absorbed the intent, hungry look in the young face staring down at her as the Grey wolf girl rode the glass elevator up at the far side of the foyer.

"What're you gawping at?" joked Jeremy, turning to see, "Is he that handsome?"

Gemma's skin prickled in warning, and she turned away with a forced laugh, drawling sarcastically, "Right. Makes Mac look like a wet weekend."

The boys howled with laughter, but Jasmine looked at her friend intently, suspicion sparking in the black eyes.

On the following Monday, on campus, Gemma's eyes were drawn by the glimpse of an orange jumper slipping cautiously into a seat on the back row of the vast theatre where she gave her twice weekly undergrad lectures. Her breath caught slightly. Yes, her full-time wolf guard for today, Jeremy, was way down at the front, carefully stringing together one of those lethal-looking noose-net traps that they kept sending up to the Range, and patently not listening to a word of the lecture, but the waif was too close to him to be safe. Gemma had witnessed often enough by now just how alert her guards were.

But the Grey wolf just hunched low in her seat and kept her glowing eyes fixed wonderingly on Gemma throughout the fifty minutes, never even seeming to blink. It was unnerving.

Over the course of the next two days, it slowly dawned on Gemma that despite the three deadly wolf guards surrounding her, she was being cautiously stalked.

Worshipfully.

By Wednesday lunchtime the prickling in her spine and the taut feeling on her skin were constant. The tension had slowly built from the myriad of sightings of that orange flash of colour, appearing and disappearing in the periphery of her vision as she moved through her life. The wistful longing in the deep blue eyes. Aching with tension and brain fully alert, Gemma cautiously exited the side door of the staff refectory bathroom, leaned back against the brick wall beside the door with her arms folded, and stared across at the nearest clump of trees twenty yards away.

She needed to know what this was about.

Sure enough, a hint of an orange elbow was just visible behind one of the white trunks. Gemma settled carefully back against the warm brick, staring, staring a silent challenge at the stalker hidden not very well among the stand of young silver birches. She had weighed the risk. Gus was waiting outside the bathroom door, and would no doubt hear if she yowled, easily. Her heart was beating fast, but her mind was cool, decided.

Among other things, she had decided not to mention this to Mr Overprotective.

Gemma straightened to stand upright, warily, as an orange and blue blur streaked towards her and then abruptly halted five feet away. The waif hovered from one foot to another, hands clamped around her upper arms, hugging her thin form while her eyes again drank in Gemma's face. Damn hero worship. The tinge of shame in the blue eyes was more understandable, and Gemma felt the familiar light hint of anger begin to tighten in her belly.

"What do you want?" she asked the girl softly.

The big, blue eyes continued to stare at her, awestruck, and then the question registered and a flush spread across the pale skin. The stick-thin wolf girl nervously ducked her head, pulling at her blond hair, her eyes embarrassed as she looked away.

"I -," she whispered.

There was a choked pause, and the slight figure started shivering uncontrollably. Gemma simply waited. Close up, the girl looked unhealthily, dangerously thin and pale, with large, dark hollows around her eyes, every delicate bone on the little gamine face showing starkly under the pasty skin.

"I -," the waif choked again.

As Gemma waited, she slowly absorbed the general air of neglect, of a beaten-down, broken fellow being, and the anger began heighten, boiling through her blood.

The pale lips were moving but the wolf seemed unable to force words out. Then her gaze lifted and she flinched away from the cool sympathy in Gemma's eyes. Something strong, furious, pained, shot across the youngster's face, and the girl burst out, low, "Well, primarily to thank you for Anne, for breaking her bond, getting her free. I could have torn us out too then, followed my natalí, if he hadn't had her killed. But now I -. I wish -"

The waif gulped, and choked into silence again, a spasm crossing the finely-etched features, silent pain drawing tight the pale skin. Her eyes glowed eerily as she stared at Gemma.

But the opening seemed to help, and the Grey wolf soon started whispering again, eyes clear, pained, pleading as she pulled an iPhone from her pocket. "I couldn't hurt you, not after what you did for us, but he has ordered me."

Another pause.

"I am to get a photograph of your naulu, that is why he sent me this time. He thought because of what you did in the shop, and did for Anne, you might let me get close enough, talk."

The wolf-girl shivered and she glanced at the open window beside them, whisper dropping, "Not that he cares if they do spot me." The young face stilled, eyes growing more dull, defeated, "I'm not sure I care either. I'm scared, but at least it would be over - and over quickly, from the sound of it." Her face spasmed again, "But I can't, I can't leave -"

A gulped sob, and there was another long pause. Gemma's mind echoed with emptiness, wondering frantically what to say to a suicidal young wolf. This Grey girl must be about nineteen. Nineteen. How long had she been a victim?

"I would care," was all that came to Gemma's lips, her anger fired by the waste, the hopelessness apparent in the young face. Not a sentiment of any use, but the dull blue eyes lifted swiftly back to hers, a faint hint of the eerie worship lighting the lifeless depths.

"And I'm sorry about Anne," added Gemma gruffly.

A spark of the fire and the pain burned across the pale face again, awakening the wolf waif, and the blue eyes fastened eagerly on the human's face. Pleading, tortured eyes, burning with a spark belief, passion, longing. A spark of hope.

Gemma unwrapped her light jacket, and eased her blouse down over her left shoulder, after uneasily checking around. Just her luck one of her students would saunter into the middle of this. "Take your photo. What does Grey want it for?"

Relief, hope, passionate thankfulness, and adoration flitted across the little, gaunt face and the waif's voice was distracted, surprised that the human had to ask, while she lifted the phone in her shaking hand and pressed the screen to wake it up, not even looking at Gemma while she replied, "To torment Natasha Vanilchov. That her mate has claimed a human."

What? Abruptly, Gemma shrugged her blouse back up, shivering, indignant. Natasha Vanilchov - Vanil's sister, to whom Mac was promised. This Grey didn't have to lie. "They are only betrothed," she corrected her flatly.

What did Nick have to do with Vanil's sister? And Gemma had thought that her name was Natalie, not Natasha? Was Nick planning on posting anonymous photos to her?

She snorted in disgust. It was about the smelly wolf's level.

The blue eyes of the wolf waif lifted back to hers, surprised. "Officially, yes, but that's only because she hadn't been on heat. She reeked of the Mackeld when first she was brought in, mating scent and seed. I was often assigned to groom her in the beginning, and she used to howl his name under torture too, calling to him for help."

Her eyes dropped back to the phone as light flashed onto the screen, and the Grey wolf muttered distractedly, "Now I only do clean-up occasionally, since she was moved, and I'm taken there under total sense deprivation."

The waif shuddered at the memory of that helplessness, sidetracked. "No-one but he knows where she is, he has her incarcerated somewhere no-one will find her, the Mackeld got too close. It's his usual cunning - if he dies now, then she will also starve to death before anyone finds her. So the Mackeld can't kill him."

The words shocked a chill through Gemma. But the shockwave soon met and was smothered under a steady warm glow of anger inside her chest, and the main thought firing through her mind was a sarcastic, Nice try, Nick. Did the Grey leader really think that she was that dim? And insecure? That she knew her own mate so little?

About the last thing in the world Mac would ever do was abandon someone he knew - never mind cared about - in Nick tender care while he accepted exile and sauntered around lazily pulling pints and taking photos, filling in time until he could return to his pack. Yeah, right.

But. This teenager seemed to believe it. Either that, or she was a damn good actress, better even than Bethan. Gemma decided to play along and see if she could learn anything useful.

Mac had been exiled because of his raids onto Grey lands, looking for a hidden lair, the thought peeked into her mind. She swatted it for disloyalty. So Nick had built his lie around some truths. The best liars did.

"Torture?" Gemma asked quietly, wondering why the Grey - oops, why Grey was doing this.

The waif was still pressing the screen of her phone, and answered matter-of-factly, absently, as she turned the camera on. Watching closely, Gemma thought she was a little too careless in her delivery. No-one could be that casual, inured to torture. The images painted by the fresh words the Grey wolf girl was murmuring were causing bile to rise in Gemma's throat, even though she knew it was all made up.

"He uses some conditioning and concoction to try to force her into rut, then to accept his seed so that he can get an Alpha litter on her, and his cubs can inherit. He has succeeded in drugging and paining her into false rut several times but she is unbelievable, still manages to shift human so his seed doesn't impregnate her. Despite all that he does to try to stop her, she still seems to be holding, after all these years. I don't know where she gets the strength, the tchi."

Years of torture. This was unbelievable.

"And Nick thinks that this photo might break her." Gemma's lips were cold as she whispered the cold statement.

Unbelievable.

"Well, by all accounts Tasha doesn't believe what he tells her about the Mackeld having claimed you. She just laughs at him, especially now, since the Mackeld caught him and wounded him so badly that he's been unable to mate for months. His penis will regenerate eventually, but she laughs." The girl shivered, an echo of awe shining in her eyes as she shook her head, thinking of the Vanilchov sjeste.

Nick's cock? When? When had Mac torn him there? In the forest? She didn't think Grey had been seen since.

It's a lie, thicko, remember?

Gemma's stomach was churning - she had nearly been raped by Nick herself, and she couldn't help thinking, what if Mac hadn't been there to stop him? For years? Under torture, pain, and drugs as Grey repeatedly forced himself on her, trying to impregnate her with his seed? This story was making her feel sick. Then a small quirk lifted the corner of her mouth. Well - she loved the idea of Mac ripping Nick's cock off, but sadly she had to throw that idea out with the rest.

Besides, her wolf would've ensured that she was told. What better way to cheer his mate up?

Gemma pulled her jacket together carefully, her hand lifting to her throat to close tightly about the fabric, hiding every hint of the skin of her neck. The blue eyes of the waif lifted to hers, puzzled, "I didn't take one yet."

Gemma's brown eyes were fierce, scorching as they met the blue. "Tell Nicolas Grey I'm not that much of an idiot - he'll have to send a better lie than this." The waif's face fell, shock and panic washing across the pale skin, and she choked as Gemma turned and slipped back into the bathroom.

Her burning eyes lighted on the narrow red porcelain vase which had appeared on the shelf between the mirrors and the basins while she was outside. A delicate, elegant piece of pottery holding a single red-and-yellow tulip. Her favourite flower, as her wolf knew.

Tears flooded her eyes this time.

So un-Mac, that lie.

Gemma lifted her new gift down and kissed and kissed the petals, hearing Gus's gruff voice calling, "Have you drowned in there?" through the door as the soft fragrance of the flower curled around her.

That evening, Gus had just opened the street door to their block of flats when both wolves with her stiffened. Jeremy dropped his backpack and flashed away in a streak upstairs just as a muffled, anguished howl sounded at the top. Gus yanked the keys back out of the lock, scooped Gemma and the bag up, and jumped inside, kicking the door shut behind them while he raced after his twin with the small human tucked on one arm.

Wailing wolf shrieks were now emanating full-volume from the top landing, and as they rounded the bend below the last run of steps Gus dropped Gemma onto her arse on the carpet and leaped into the air, just managing to grab the slender foot of the black-haired lycan who was leaping over their heads, using the stair windowsill as a foothold to propel herself around the corner above them and make her escape.

Gus and his handful landed back together almost on top of Gemma, and Jeremy sprang back down from the top landing, also grabbing at the fighting, yowling lycan. Jasmine. It sounded as though she was in horrible pain. Gus backed off with a sharp grunt as her razor teeth tore his hand from her toes, and a second later Jeremy thudded back against the wall of the stairwell when those powerful hind legs surged against him, claws shredding his coat.

The twins spun to leap back onto the fighting sjeste, but they couldn't hold her, she threw them off repeatedly, and gained more ground down the stairs, despite their best efforts and repeated pleas for her to calm down, control herself. Gemma got a light scratch from one claw when she tried laying a hand on one furred shoulder herself to calm her friend, and realised that as far as she could tell Jasmine was in control. Or Gemma would have had her human hand torn open like Gus's healing wolf one.

What was this? Something was so wrong, achingly, howlingly wrong. So wrong that Jasmine didn't care if she ran through the streets as a werewolf. Gemma blenched. She could see why the twins' were trying to stop her.

But the boys were losing, surprisingly. Jasmine was so small and slender beside their hulking forms, even as a werewolf. But the two of them couldn't subdue the slender girl - possibly because they were trying not to hurt her, only to stop her. However, Jasmine was also damn good at this, she never let them pin her to anything, never let them get a firm hold on her twisting form. A small smile of pride in her friend lit Gemma's eyes.

She missed the sound of the bottom door reopening, the first inkling she had of the new arrival was when Jasmine's head shot up. The sjeste yowled even more fiercely in sudden protest and spun to leap back up the stairs to the flat.

But the fleeing black lycan was pounced on on the top landing by a large, tawny Alpha. Gemma gaped, frozen in disbelief. All she had caught was a blur of white fur turning gold-and-brown as he dove past them on the stairs. Mac.

Dammit, she knew why he was flattening the wolf girl under him, but the rational knowledge didn't stop the rage of jealousy which washed through her as she watched. Stupid, stupid, stupid emotion.

Stupid wolf.

Her mate swiftly and expertly subdued the struggles of the slight, lithe sjeste fighting no-holds-barred under him. His chest was heaving with the burning breaths of an all-out sprint, and he looked slightly wilder, more gaunt, raw, and bitter-edged than when she had last seen him only two weeks ago. However, his careful immobilization of the young wolf girl was gentle. And effortless. After only moments, while the twins scrambled back to their feet and Gus disappeared downstairs to reassure a worried Mrs. Barraclough on the ground floor, Jasmine stopped fighting and just lay under Mac, sobbing silently into the rough stair carpet.

How had he got here? Where from? So fast, so opportunely?

He kissed the top of the small lycan's black furry head and hugged the small, shuddering form to himself, swinging her up in his arms as he rose to his feet. Then Gemma's mate followed Jeremy through the open door of his old home with his burden, without even glancing her way.

It hurt.

What was going on? What was he doing here?

Dazedly, she followed.

Mac, human, was on the living room couch, where she'd seen him hundreds of times before, cradling the small half-Indian girl to his chest, rocking her soothingly, all his attention fixed on her. Jasmine was also back in human form, crying silently, breathlessly, occasional wracks of agony contorting her limbs while she writhed, crying out in pain.

Gemma was guiltily ashamed of the anger that washed through her again as she watched Mac holding Jasmine, and clenched a furious hold upon her emotions, yanking them back into line. Whatever this was, it wasn't a sensual embrace; more one of solace - was she really such an insecure little wimp that she begrudged her wolf friend some comfort, when it was obviously, desperately needed?

The bitter tableau went on for eons: Jasmine thrashing, arching in agony, choking on anguish, and Mac echoing the pain on his own face, his strong hands gentle, soothing as he wiped away the ceaseless tracks of salt streaming down the brown cheeks.

Then abruptly, the slight figure of the sjeste relaxed. The silence echoed with chill, a chill spreading from the motionless, slight figure lying across Mac's knees on the sofa. Then Jasmine heaved a deep breath, choked, and began to sob in earnest; heart-wrenching, broken gulps of despair, of loss, as she turned her face to press it into Mac's shoulder.

Gemma stood with the twins in the doorway, feeling like an intruder. Whatever this was, it was beyond her knowledge, her experience, her ability to help.

But not beyond Mac.

She could see the pain twisting his face as he soothed his hands gently over Jasmine's scalp, stroking, just sharing simple touch. The sobs were wracking the girl, shaking her frame, although the full contortions of deep physical agony had stopped. Jasmine jammed her face harder into Mac's shoulder, trying to blot out the world.

It was like being at the funeral of someone who had died suddenly, shockingly, Gemma realised, chilled; watching the immediate family trying to deal with the shock of the loss, when you were just a nodding acquaintance, someone who had barely known the deceased.

"How can you bear it?" Jasmine's voice was shrill, cracked with pain as she wailed into Mac's shirt.

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and the answering pain in his voice was echoing with steady, deep, controlled, unbearable feeling, "You have to. For him. If you break, so will he."

The Alpha repeated, firmly, implacably, "You have to."

Gemma heard a little intake of breath, and realised it was hers. They were not talking about someone who had died. What? Who?

Someone alive.

She felt a stirring in the air behind her and Gus and Jeremy quickly dragged her out of the way when the Marsh Alpha stalked into the living room, face etched with pain, chest heaving for air, and dropped onto the sofa beside Mac to drag his daughter into his own arms for a fierce, convulsive hug.

"We were following the vehicle, but he's out of my range. Out of even yours now, I guess. I'm so sorry, elske, I had no warning." The words tumbled from his mouth as he murmured into her sleek black hair, cheek resting sideways on her head, hands soothing over her. "They used a silver bullet, and he was beyond my con - when he fell, Tapio believed that he was dead. But they deployed enough troops to force a way through and grab him. Tapio realised then, contacted me, and we pursued, but couldn't catch them before they reached the vehicle. They dug the bullet out once they had him secured, broke him out of it, and now -." The Aster warlord stopped, pain and rage tightening his throat, while Jasmine yowled despairingly again, tightening her slim arms around her father's neck.

Her voice was high, desperate as she finished his sentence.

"Now they've got him. He was in a human vehicle. With humans. Smelly. Sick. Blindfolded. Chained. And they were painting him with something that burned into his skin. Then cutting and peeling back his pelt, and applying it underneath. They were laughing. Felt sick. Weak. Gasoline. Burning, sickening, scorching pain."

This was about Jasmine's natál, Gemma realised dazedly. Her twin Karim, the litter-brother, whom Gemma had never met.

"Elske, elske," Marsh tried to cut in, to stop the torrent, but Jasmine's anguished words continued.

"It burned so badly - and they enjoyed it, were laughing, telling him to wait and see what they had back at the den. That's when I lost him." Jasmine choked off again, gasping while she pressed herself back into her father's arms. They tightened fiercely around her.

Mac laid a hand on the Jasmine's shoulder again in sympathy, but this time she shrugged it off, furious, and turned snarling on the tawny Alpha.

"You wouldn't let me go help. I could have tailed them. Found him."

"Elske," Marsh barked the word warningly. "From what Mac has been telling us, Nick wants Alfamme sjeste most of all. There would have been a trap. This whole setup probably is a trap, using Karim as bait to capture his natalí. Grey would have been delighted had you pursued him."

From what Mac tells us, Nick wants Alfamme sjeste most of all. Gemma felt the bile and horror rising in her throat. Natasha Vanilchov? Was it true? No.

"They wouldn't have caught me," the half-Indian girl retorted stubbornly, fiercely. "I'm the best at evasion. And I could have found the Grey lair."

"No, you couldn't," Mac replied tersely. "Believe me, I've tried every feasible way to find that damn lair, with my best damn trackers."

Maybe it was true, reeled Gemma faintly. Maybe he had been hunting the damn lair to find his betrothed. True?

Maybe. But Mac loved her. She knew this.

However, he hadn't so much as glanced at her now. 'His people had enough to worry them without fear that their Alpha was about to run off with a human again'. She felt the sadness rising through her. His people were losing, she reminded herself; their friends, their homes, family. He was right to protect his pack. He himself must be losing wolves he loved daily. It would be torture to him, watching his people fighting, losing, dying around him, unable to stop it. Unable to protect them. He had lost almost a quarter of his pack in two months, most of them in the last three weeks as the attacks had intensified. The pain must be stupendous, unimaginable to her. He couldn't add to their worry.

She felt her heart melting in aching sadness. She was just wrong for him.

And on top of trying not to worry his pack, if the Russian wolves suspected him of being attached to someone other than Natasha Vanilchov, they might withdraw their troops, leaving the Aster in general, and Mackelds in particular, in a worse mess than they were in already.

Sadness. steeping through her. He looked so tired, drained, despite the flecks of fire in his eyes as he argued. Red-rimmed eyes; the shimmer of power was still radiating from him, but it was banked, as was that of Marsh. The Alpha's were having to conserve their energy.

In contrast to the strain of Mac's life, Gemma slightly guiltily considered her own. She was in a safe little suburb in her cozy flat with a good job, beloved family, and her biggest worry was that her boyfriend, lover - love, hadn't acknowledged her when he had sprinted over this evening to sort out one mess in this huge big mess.

Actually, she thought her biggest worry was that his betrothed really was being tortured by Nicolas Grey. Mac must know this, if it were true. The bile roiled in her stomach.

There had to be some reason for all this, some explanation. Her Mac would not leave his betrothed in Nick's clutches, indifferent. He couldn't. So if he really believed that Natsha Vanilchov was held by Nicolas he would have been fighting to free her all these years, not calmly accepting exile. It didn't make sense.

Trying to argue herself into reason didn't counteract the sadness. In fact, it grew worse. Gemma was willing him to simply glance at her, her skin keening for one look. One little look wouldn't hurt the alliance. She needed something, a little warmth, while this doubt reverberated through her. She felt guilty for doubting him. Fear for the trouble she caused him. And angry that he wouldn't look at her, when clearly something major was going on which he hadn't told her about. Natasha?

But - Vanil believed that his natalí was on walkabout, runaround - whatever it was called. Jasmine had said that he'd got a postcard.

Natál. Natalí. She should have got it earlier. A natál was a litter-brother, a natalí a litter-sister. Gus and Jeremy. Jasmine and Karim, and Vanil and Natasha. Were they all as close as the twins? Evidently Jasmine and Karim were so connected through the shared bond that they could convey over long distances.

But Mac - hadn't he implied that he could also convey with someone held, tortured by Nicolas Grey? Someone who would break in captivity, if he didn't stand firm. Another bond? A strong bond?

If you break, so will he.

Or she.

No, she thought sadly. He had just been telling Jasmine to stand firm. She thought.

He loved his picchu. He had had no reason to say so, unless it was true. It was true. She knew it, in her bones. But what was this?

Look at me, Mac.

Nothing. No sign. He was too intent on fiercely arguing Jasmine out of hunting for the Grey lair.

"Jasmine," growled her father, warning in his tone. "Listen to Mac. He knows."

He knows.

Abruptly, Mac surged to his feet, face creased in pain, and said brusquely, "I have to get back."

The older Alpha nodded to him, formally, the deep, intent gaze of the Aster Warlord catching and holding Mac's, sharing something. The Mackeld's eyes flickered. After an infinitesimal pause, he nodded back in acknowledgement, and turned to stride impatiently to the door. The twins moved back hastily, but Gemma ignored their hands plucking at her elbows, standing unmoving in the doorway and staring stubbornly, questioningly up at her mate as he paced across the room.

Mac halted, and looked down at her, his eyes softening, but distant. Distracting, pained thoughts were shading the back of the green depths.

"Gemma. You are well?"

Am I well? Am I well? Dumbfounded, she glared up at him. What am I, a distant acquaintance you have to be polite to at chance meetings?

The bitterness of his impassive front welled up inside her and she bit tersely, "Is Natasha?" For a split second saw a pulse of raw, bitter agony rasp across his face, followed by a flash of rage, before it blanked and he was gone, the air of his passing brushing his absence against her tingling skin. She drew in a sharp breath, as though someone had stabbed her in the back, and felt herself steadied with Gus's gentle hand at her elbow.

It felt like she'd stabbed herself, seeing that pain, hurting her wolf that badly. And - he had just gone. Left.

You deserved it.

What was going on?

Gemma shook free of Gus and turned and stumbled dazedly off down the corridor to the kitchen, pushing the kettle under the tap under autopilot. The tears were frozen in her eyes with shock, and anger. But part of the anger was the flicker of memory of the huddled heap of misery of Jasmine across her father's knees. Yes, she needed to talk to Mac. But not now. There are other important things in life.

Do something. Jasmine would need a cup of tea. Comfort. Indian tea. Inadequate. Inadequate. Useless.

No. She couldn't clear the questions from her mind.

What was wrong? It was so unlike him. But if his betrothed really was being tortured regularly by Nick - and Mac knew this, but could do nothing about it, couldn't find her, couldn't kill Grey without killing Natasha also - she couldn't imagine a worse torture for her wolf.

But if so, why the hell wasn't he still hunting for her? Why hadn't he been hunting her all these years?

No wonder he had been struggling to steer clear of his picchu, despite the attraction. Gemma was suddenly bitterly angry with herself - look at the mess she'd dragged him into with that one damn kiss. Fiercely, she hoped that Natasha Vanilchov didn't know about her, didn't believe a word of the rumours of Mac being too attached to a human. She shivered at the idea of being in the power of the vile, sadistic predatory Grey. Natasha needed all the help she could get.

If it were true. She still couldn't quite believe it.

But.

Mac had looked - haunted, drained, a tortured shadow of his usual buoyant self. And then that look when she'd asked him about Tasha. Raw pain. And the shadow of quiet, constant suffering.

Mac hid within himself a deeply etched copy of the numb, pained look which was draining Jasmine's animation, where she lay limply on the sofa. The sadness that Gemma had always known was within Mac.

The Marsh sjeste had just experienced her twin brother being tortured.

Gemma shivered, shame dragging her out of her self-absorbed thoughts, and forced her mind back into focus, replacing the kettle on its stand and turning it on.

Marsh had to leave shortly after she returned to the living room with the steaming mugs, head shooting up as he heard a call, teeth baring in a snarl. Jasmine had caught the conveyance also, a spark hit her dulled eyes, and she rolled to her feet to allow her father to his, spinning to face him.

"I will come with you," she announced fiercely.

"You will not," returned the Marsh Alpha clearly. "You will stay here and continue to guard the Fealden Wolf-friend as she works to aid us."

Fierce black eyes glittered into power-flecked brown. Father and daughter faced each other in silence, a feeling of silent clashing growing in the air, shimmering in the room, seeming to heat the air. The smouldering increased until Gemma thought that the carpet would scorch alight in the heat roaring off the pair, then Jasmine abruptly shuddered and dropped her gaze, glaring at her feet, and nodded her head, bitterness in her face.

Her father tilted her defiant chin up with a finger, and his tone was gentle as he looked into her clouded black eyes, "There will be Greys enough to kill before this is over, elske."

Jasmine eyed him silently, bitterly for a moment, her own eyes bleak but calm, then her expression softened on a thought and she stepped in to reach up to pull down that proud head and kiss him gently on the cheek. "May your hunt be successful, Ap," she murmured as she stepped back, speaking silently to him as she looked straight up into those powerful, shimmering brown eyes.

Marsh cupped his daughter's head and drew her forward to kiss her forehead in reply, responding softly with a gruff, "May your home be at peace," before he disappeared soundlessly through the open doorway on a brush of air.

Gemma choked down the lump in her throat, a pang shooting through her as she recognised the feelings, the knowledge which had forced the Marsh sjeste to set aside her bitterness. What if even Mac didn't survive the next battle? What if that accusatory phrase turned out to be the last thing she ever had a chance to say to him?

Her stomach churned with the sick knots tightening, tightening.

As soon as Marsh left, the fire in Jasmine dissolved and she slumped back onto the sofa, staring bleakly at the wall, knocking her untouched tea into the carpet with unwonted clumsiness. As Gus galloped off to get a cloth and Jeremy began to pace angrily, Gemma stood frozen in the centre of the room, the bitter frustration welling. She couldn't do anything. Couldn't help. She sank down beside her friend, slipping a hand into the cold one curled lifeless on Jasmine's knee. What could she do? She had tried everything.

Gemma was in a bleak mood the next day, her thoughts still seething helplessly, uselessly, after a night of no sleep. Anger, sadness, pain, confusion, worry.

None of them had gotten any sleep. But she had hatched a plan. Even if she doubted that it would meet with Mac's approval. So? She wasn't planning on seeking it.

It wasn't as though he told her everything either.

And she was sick of being a useless pawn in this.

One of the litanies that her Marsh friend had used while giving Gemma her brief, long-ago crash course in how to avoid lustful males on the rut had been that wolves tracked by scent, sound and sight. But principally by scent. Jasmine, the Mackelds, none of the Aster could track the Grey wolves because their enemies could scent the trackers long before they were close enough to be identified by sight, and disappear.

But humans could smell the Grey wolves. Humans were not a threat for a wolf to hide from. Gemma could find a Grey.

It took hours to bully Jasmine into agreeing to try, but after repeated, exasperated promises not to do anything rash, or without a guard, the Marsh had eventually agreed a Gemma-safe plan so that her human friend could try to identify a Grey wolf for her to sight-track.

The girls had suddenly become interested in keeping fit - Gemma growled at the boys' amusement and hissed at them that she was dragging Jasmine out for a run to keep her from constantly brooding, which sobered them rapidly. It was a slightly slanted version of the truth.

She could do with a little respite from brooding herself.

That lunchtime, Gemma and Jasmine circled on a slow, thorough lope around the campus, and came across a total of three different hiding places from which the rank scent emanated; each, unsettlingly, a vantage point overlooking her soil science building. The first two spots emptied rapidly at the approaching scent of Gemma's companion, but the third was too far upwind to scent them.

After pausing at a safe distance to make a phone call behind the concealing trunk of a nearby tree, Gemma and Jasmine returned the way they had come. But as they disappeared back towards the centre of the campus, Kate and Bethan sauntered over from the opposite direction with their friend Emma, to settle down and study and picnic in the shade of the tree for the afternoon.

Gemma had felt a tinge of unease that her human girlfriends were now involved in this, but after Gemma had requested a sleepover that night and explained that Jasmine needed to stalk an elusive stalker who they suspected of hanging around the campus, her human friends had indignantly insisted on doing more, and keeping their eye on him for the afternoon once Gemma and Jasmine had sussed out his hiding place. They'd be safe as a threesome.

Jasmine assured her that they would be safe as humans, in public - only an insane, suicidal wolf would incite the wrath of the global senshal by attacking three humans, in plain view of hundreds of other sunbathing students, in broad daylight.

Gus and Jeremy accepted the absence of Jasmine for the return journey to Gemma's flat that evening, with the plausible explanation that Kate and Bethan had dragged the sjeste off shopping in an attempt to cheer her up, and that all three girls were going to go straight back Kate and Bethan's flat to start up the party, and meet Gemma there later that evening. They were having a girls-only pampering night to solace Jasmine. The twins even reluctantly agreed to leave Gemma in the Marsh sjeste's sole care for the night, although from the stubborn looks on their faces, they'd be standing guard outside Kate and Bethan's flat anyway.

So Jasmine would have to be extra cautious when she returned from her hunt.

Gemma had to smother the urge to giggle when the boys, having escorted her around to Kate and Bethan's, didn't realise that the 'Jasmine' they were just able to glimpse having her nails painted by Bethan in the living room was actually Emma in one of Bethan's wigs. Kate was impatiently shooing the twins back out with a coy "We'll be happy to give you two massages another day." Jasmine had assured Gemma that so long as the person who answered the door's nails had just been painted, the boys wouldn't be able to scent anything else, and it looked like she'd been right.

It had worked. Shockingly, bizarrely, the whole plan had so far gone without a hitch.

So with any luck, that Grey wolf had had a chocolate-and-honey coloured shadow tailing him when he had finally abandoned his post that evening.

With any luck, Jasmine would be able to follow him back to the Grey lair.

Gemma turned over in her sleep, snuggling face-down on the sofa bed in Kate and Bethan's living room.

Uh? Dimly, she became aware that her cheek was squashed against something smooth that shouldn't be in her bed. Slowly her mind started to surface. Then it sighed contentedly and started to fade again, not really bothered. Too comfortable, warm, cocooned.

It wasn't a threat, there wouldn't be a threat, not with this scent snuggled around her, the muscular arms cuddling her close against the warm chest, the long powerful legs twined around hers.

Mmmmm. A dream? She had plenty of dreams of Mac. Although usually his erection was slightly more eager than - oop, there it went.

She smiled into the cover, and felt her cheek wrinkle against the smooth, yielding, faintly hollow-feeling surface under it. What on earth?

Questions dragging her more fully out of sleep, Gemma felt the amused, mock-indignant rumble growl through the warm chest against her back and tickle in her ear at the same time as she realised that the thing her face was plastered against was a thin cardboard box.

"Filling a hole?" Mac kept his voice low, the tone ironic.

Her stomach jumped. He was here.

"What bona fide catering company would really trade under the name 'Filling a Hole'?!?" he queried sarcastically.

Gemma couldn't help it. Despite the anger, worry, upset and thousand questions shrieking into her mind, she swiftly turned her face to press it into her mate's bicep and smother her giggles.

He'd liked the wrapping then. She and Kate had spent a lot of thought and effort designing this box for the Duck a l'Orange delivery. It was nice to know that it hadn't been wasted.

He hugged her to him, his chest also reverberating. "You are atrocious, my little mate." Then she felt him fall still, and his voice changed.

"So, Picchu." There was anger in the velvet voice. "What the hell are you doing here, with no guards?"

He was angry with her?

Gemma sat up with a jerk, heart bounding painfully in her chest, and a rage took her, much stronger than the one she could hear as she glared back down at the wolf lying in her bed.

"I think you owe me a few more explanations that I owe you," she bit out.

He rolled her over rapidly, pinning her spread-eagled underneath him. She ignored the wanton writhing in her stomach and stared angrily back up into those black-flecked green eyes, barely visible in the dark room, but the warmth in the depths of them cut through the anger and she could feel the longing on her skin, in her heart. He was here.

Then suddenly he simply bent and nudged her head sideways with his, and despite her indignant squirming began to lightly smother kiss after kiss after kiss along the join of her neck, the line of her collarbone, the round of her shoulder.

Indignant. Indignant. Come on, remember, indignant.

"I owe you," he murmured between kisses. "Let's see. Duck a l'orange."

She continued to struggle against the confining arms. Struggling was making the heavy, throbbing bulge pressed against her thigh grow longer, harder.

Harder to ignore.

Down, girl.

No, keep squirming. But not like that, like this, see?

I said DOWN.

"Mac! Get off."

He ignored the breathless squeak of protest, rumbling through the tick-list of her gifts for him, "Big White in my old pirate eye-patch. That atrocious poem. The picture."

God, even as furious with him as she was now, it was nearly impossible to hold onto it as he kissed his way up her neck to under her ear. She was now trying to stop herself from squirming up against his hard, aroused form. Control. Control. That little brush of her hips didn't count as a squirm. Or that one. Not really.

Cross, here, her mind cut in. Really fuming. Need answers. Remember?

"Fake plane tickets to Paris."

He breathed the last heavily into her ear, and swirled his tongue inside, so that a shiver unhinge her spine and she melted underneath him.

Oh what the hell. Seize the moment. You can talk later.

Her mate sank down, so he was lying fully, heavily on top of her, that delicious, impatient bulge throbbing against the crease of one hip, and he held her head still with his hands cupped behind her ears, staring deeply down into her eyes, his nose millimetres from hers.

"And an apology."

Her heart was hammering so hard in her chest as she stared into those deep, deep, oh-so-warm green eyes. Sad, happy. Loving.

Her face puckered.

"You looked so sad, hurt," she wailed. And was instantly annoyed with herself - she couldn't believe she'd said that. He'd been the one who walked out on her, after practically ignoring her, for crying out loud.

Mac's voice was very carefully level, low. "Picchu, do you expect me to be happy about what is happening to Natasha?"

"Your betrothed," she snarled quietly, jealous rage flaring unstoppably through her. "Why the hell didn't you mention that she was being held, tortured by Nicolas Grey? Slipped your mind?"

A spasm of searing pain flashed across Mac's features, and then black obliterated the green warmth in his eyes as they lit instantly into fury stronger than her own; she could see the enraged wolf glaring out through the eerie back-light.

"You think I didn't remember? You think I ever forgot?" The rage was towering through him, fuelled by intense, deep-seated anguish and fury at her unjust accusation. The words were slightly distorted, and Mac forced his lengthening jaw back to human shape while he hissed down at her, "I was officially exiled by the council for unlawful raids into Grey territory."

A tortured breath rasped in. A second, as he struggled with his control, while Gemma stared quietly into the pain-fired fury in his glowing wolf eyes.

"But I accepted the damn exile because Grey promised me, and demonstrated, that the torture he inflicted on Tasha would increase twenty-fold if I remained within my pack, within raiding distance of his Range. It was the best we could do for her. We couldn't find her."

Gemma's heart burned, relief and anguish ripping through her. He did care. Thank god. She knew - he cared about his people.

But - no, oh no - he did care. About Tasha.

Then she was lying alone on the bed as tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes. Her heart was burning in anger and distress.

She'd hurt him. Again. Really, really hurt.

Sitting back up, she called urgently, softly, "Mac."

The shadow at the window rumbled back over his shoulder, "I'm not going anywhere, Gemma. I just - do you really think I could just forget what he's doing to her?" There was deep pain in the soft whisper.

Ouch. But her sore heart eased slightly. What seemed to hurt him most was her lack of trust in him.

"No," she murmured simply. "I never did. I'm sorry, Mac, I - have been - confused, and angry, hurt that you first ignored me then just walked out on me on Wednesday, so I - hit out at you."

She sighed, softly voice hitching on the held-back tears, "About the thing I'm most certain of is that you would never just leave her, anyone in that mess, not care."

There was a long pause, a sigh, and she could see the green eyes glowing steadily when he turned.

"What you should be most certain of, Gemma, is that I am your mate. Yours."

He twitched abruptly, shaking something out of his head, and strode back toward her, his voice deepening, settling, "I hate all this - I know you were hurt by my apparent indifference on Wednesday, I'm sorry Gemma, that's why I came down tonight - yesterday we were attacked again, I couldn't."

"And I hate the subterfuge, not being able to spend time with you, touch you, guard you myself - although I love your gifts. Becoming a lone wolf is growing daily more attractive."

He sank down tentatively on the sofabed beside her feet, and Gemma rolled over and pulled herself to sit upright facing him, not quite touching as they stared into each other's eyes.

"How do you know Grey has her? Vanil believes she's in Europe or something," said Gemma.

There was something deep in the warm green eyes, a sad little shadow. "Gemma, I've known Vanil and Tasha since they were little cubs, they fostered at McIntyre when their parents were killed, and they're the same age as Karl and Rebecca. They're like extra little siblings. I - Vanil was over in Russia when Tasha was taken, and she called to me for help."

"Besides, you're promised to her." Would she stop harping on about that? He couldn't help it.

Mac sighed slowly, and lifted her chin with a gentle finger. "Gemma, she is betrothed to the Mackeld Alpha. That is all the Koschuk, or the Vanilchov care about, the rank, not the person. I care about you."

His eyes lightened in a slight smile, "Will you take a chance on becoming the lifemate of an unemployed, homeless drifter once I abdicate after the war? I promise I'll find some way to provide for us anyway."

This again. Gemma felt her heart easing at his teasing attitude, the light-hearted words covering the aches as he struggled to find a way to close the distance between them, close over the hurts. Abruptly, the pain in her melted. She loved this wolf. He was a stubborn, proud, incorrigibly over-confident, over-protective idiot, and one thing she could bet on was that this would not be the last argument they ever had. So he had been wrong to walk out on her the day before yesterday. But he'd come a long way, at a very difficult time, to apologise in person.

"That's a bit of an archaic attitude. We could live off my income," she replied.

A faint hint of a growl. "No we couldn't. What kind of a man do you take me for?"

No surprise there. There was now a smile in her voice, "You're not a man."

She could hear that he was smiling back, "Even once I become a man, I'll still be a back-woodsy, stronger than a hurricane, harder than the mountains,..."

"And more modest," she interjected swiftly, earning a grin.

"...don't-mess-with-me kind of guy. Don't expect me to start eating tofu and hanging out in spas with you discussing the latest hair styles."

Gemma smothered a laugh at the mental image. "Awww - as a special treat for my birthday next year, can I at least plait your gorgeous hair into lots of little braids and tie them off with cool, coloured ribbons? It would look spectacular."

"No."

"Please?"

"Not a chance."

"I'd be the only one who saw it."

"This message was deleted for being too idiotic to be allowed."

She hunched over to him and slid her bottom into his lap, feeling the warm, muscular arms close about her. Home.

This was the Mac she had lived with for six months, fallen in love with.

"Go on then," she titled her head back to beam up at him expectantly, a gleam in her eyes.

Mac looked relieved, puzzled, and a little wary. He knew that look.

"Go on, what?"

"You said you'd come here to apologise. I've seen how wolves apologise. Go on."

The spark that flashed into his eyes was incredulous, and then amused, and then – steely. They stared at each other, the challenge growing, both of their lips twitching.

"Or don't you mean it?" she taunted challengingly.

He glared back.

"You know I mean it, picchu. You're a human, so I apologised to you in the human fashion, with heartfelt words. I am sorry, I don't want you hurt, I just want you - safe."

His angry gaze glared suddenly around the room. "So where the hell is Jasmine?"

Quick, distract him.

"So do I get to punish you now so that you can learn from your mistake?"

He gave her a look.

Gemma straightened up on his crossed legs, her chest heaving, and pouted up at him naughtily. She saw him swallow, feeling his semi-erect cock twitch into life underneath her buttocks as he wrenched his eyes back up from her jutting breasts, whereupon they got stuck on the glistening curve of her protruding bottom lip. Her blood bubbled frothily in response - such a simple thing, to cause his eyes to glaze like that.

Her wolf was hers.

"I think as a penance, to teach you, you'll have to ignore me again, but under duress - lie down flat on the bed and completely ignore whatever I do to you."

That did it. His cock was now practically lifting her off his lap, it was so hard. Mac groaned.

"Picchu, we can't."

And his voice was hoarse. Wow, was she smug.

"I'll avoid moist tissue, don't worry." She blinked up at him innocently, the challenge in her gaze full of deep amusement. "If I lose control you have permission to stop me. But I won't."

He swallowed again, raggedly, his chest rising and falling on quickening breaths, his eyes sinking into hers, then he wrenched his gaze away. She could feel his heart hammering inside his chest as she leaned back against him, enjoying the shudder of his skin against hers. For some reason, despite the fire in her blood and the moist ache between her thighs, her mind seemed clear.

"How do you know Tasha is still alive?" The words spilled from her mouth. This was why. Beneath the heat, her brain was still quietly reasoning.

Mac's heart jolted, then slowed, along with his breaths, and she could feel her wolf pondering his answer.

"Gem, do you know what makes a wolf an Alpha? Or Alfamme?"

Hmmm. Where was he going with this?

"Control?" she hazarded softly.

"If that were all, then Nick would be a full Alpha, he certainly is strong-minded enough, and I've seen him crash and swamp unmeshed betas even through very sturdy shields."

At the reminder, Gemma's heart lurched in worry, and clenched in anger. This wolf had crashed a whole army of the Tzo earlier this week, in what her wolf guards described as in insanely glorious, reckless defiance.

"Mac, did you have to try to kill yourself by crashing Tzo's son?" the rushed rebuke was a little high-pitched and whiney, because her throat had tightened again at the fear. She heard the answer inside her own heart. Yes, did have to. And he would keep doing things like that. He was an Alpha.

She began to get an inkling of where he was going with this train of thought.

Her mate nuzzled the side of her neck softly, his tongue soothing lightly over her skin in wordless apology for scaring her. Her heart melted again, and she sank back against him, curling to press her cheek against his chest as he hugged her closer. She knew that that was all the apology she would get, all she could expect. He was an Alpha at war.

He did what must be done for his pack, regardless of the consequences.

"It was worth it. I also read Jian-Xi's knowledge of his father's battle plans, when I crashed him. He could not hide them."

Ah.

"What makes an Alpha an Alpha - the closest English word is care. My care for my wolves, their trust in that care, which allows them to melt into my Aegis, form a battle meld, and a myriad of other things. Nick rules by fear, which is not nearly as effective, but he has the scent-drug, which evens things out somewhat. If it were only the Greys, we could defeat them because of their lack of cohesiveness, but Tzo - Tzo is a true Alpha. However ruthless, his ultimate goal is for the good of his pack."

"You protect your wolves, whatever," said Gemma softly.

"Yes," agreed Mac.

"So you can't risk passing potentially dangerous information to a human," reasoned Gemma quietly. "If you can break into and read Jian-Xi's mind, then a human's must be easy to crash."

She finished his explanation for him.

Her mate drew a long breath, "Gemma, human is good. No-one can read humans. If you would promise me, truly, that you have no intention whatsoever of trying to turn into a were..."

Her heart bumped against her ribs. Damn. He knew her too well. And she knew he'd felt that tell-tale thump.

".. and you'd allow the Fealdens to take you back and guard you in Fort Amicable, in complete safety, for the rest of this war..."

Stifling. Useless.

".. so that there was no chance whatsoever of you becoming a vulnerable wereem, with a mind open to any reasonably strong wolf..."

HAH.

" .. then I will tell you. Will you promise me?"

They sat curled together in silence, stubbornness reverberating in the air. Gemma knew that her answer was no. And she could understand how telling her how he knew Natasha was alive, in Nick's clutches, might endanger the Vanilchov sjeste, when Gemma herself was this vulnerable to being turned. But her heart was burning with the question. Why did Mac know about Tasha but not Vanil, the girl's natál?

The silence stretched for so long that eventually Mac sighed under her in resigned acceptance. He wanted her packed away completely for safety.

Alright, let him keep his secrets, she told herself grumpily. There were some things she wasn't planning on telling him, either.

"Where is Jasmine?" Mac asked, for a third time.

Her heart lurched again, skin turning clammy. Had he read her mind?

She knew that Mac, or Fealden himself, would whisk her away if they knew what she and Jasmine had been up to today. Such a little, little risk, and so worth it. Like his stupid crashing. But he was Mr Over-protective, and seemed to think of her as a fluffy toothless bunny-rabbit among the pack of wolves. Had he read her mind?

No, he'd just said it himself, no-one could read humans.

"Looking for Karim," Gemma growled the half-truth. Then, "I think if you're not going to tell me anything, you'd better stop asking questions yourself, and just lie back and shut up and take your punishment," she added, slightly bitterly.

At her renewed challenge, this time it was Mac's heart which lurched wildly, then it began to beat very fast, and she could feel the blood in his veins accelerating, heat shimmering off his skin as the hard cock beneath her reared suddenly back to full attention.

There was a short silence as he tasted the faint hostility in the air, evaluating her feelings.

"Very well."

His quiet agreement shocked her into stillness on his lap. The epitome of stubbornness was backing down? A warmth in her chest. Her wolf did love her.

But he wasn't letting her have her own way entirely.

"But, I was also wounded. I am - unguarded to you, picchu. My emotions. You said that you were sorry for doubting me," he responded, voice low, "So to atone for that hurt, after you have corrected my neglectful behaviour, I think that you will have to lie quietly in my arms for the rest of the night, until your guardienne reappears, and accept my caresses also, whilst I prove to you that I love you."

Oh wow.

Gemma melted against her wolf as Mac sank back onto the bed.

Jasmine had better not get back until daybreak at least.

Mid morning.

Mid afternoon.

Next week sometime.

Five days later, Gemma was weaving distractedly through the crowds of pedestrians lining the edges of the main street in the centre of the city of Medway, intent on the street map in her hand. The four-lane road was a bustling, noisy, smelly stream of constant stop-start traffic to her left, and the people jostling on the six-foot wide walkway were all busy on their own journeys; slow, fast, intent, meandering, the melee of humans as jumbled a river as the vehicles.

Jasmine had made Gemma swear to stay in the crowd of humans.

Stay with them, yes, but not suffocate under them.

Gemma began angling her way toward the doorway of the building to her right, trying to find some space in the thicket of elbows and chests around her. It was such a pain being short. The bank was closed now, this late on a Saturday, and she picked her way thankfully through a pack of giggling teenagers and up the three stone steps into the small free space. Jasmine was somewhere in the area, cautiously sight-tracking the last Grey wolf Gemma had identified by his scent. Gemma flattened their map against the wall, and marked a cross on the paper where the last one had disappeared into a building.

Four Greys had entered buildings in that block. She began to gently shade in the new area of the complex. The Grey lair was big, they had identified entrances in a series of several different types of building: residential, commercial, industrial, stretching along almost the entire west side of the large, central park.

Jasmine had been despondent upon her return that night, and quiet under the lash of Mac's lengthy rebuke. After he had eventually left, she had slumped down on the bed next to Gemma and resignedly reported failure. She had tailed the Grey wolf for two hours, cross-country, to the vast, industrial sprawl of the city of Medway. He had shifted human when he had reached the outskirts, and she had lost him shortly afterwards among the crowds of humans teeming around the streets in the warm summer evening.

But wolves did not lair in cities. It was too restrictive, too difficult to hide, impossible to be yourself. The Marsh sjeste gloomily believed that the Grey wolf must have spotted her sometime during the chase and taken her on a decoy trail. Jasmine had curled into a miserable huddle and tucked her face out of sight in her arms.

But Gemma wouldn't let her give up, and her hope had rekindled when all subsequent trails had also led to the city.

Over the next four days, Jasmine had continued to sight-tail the Grey wolves who her human friend identified during their noontime circuit, following one each day. The Fealden twins had made half-hearted noises about the Marsh's dereliction of duty, but they were bitterly worried about her, and largely left the very touchy sjeste alone, asking Gemma if she was alright, believing Jasmine disappeared into Gemma's room late every night for comfort.

True, in a way.

Jasmine hadn't recognised any of the wolves who she had followed, but then Grey wolves did not visit, didn't train at Marshmont or Boswell, and none had switched pack in her lifetime. But that also meant that, hopefully, they wouldn't know to identify the 'human' who loitered on street corners in the city, tailing them. They wouldn't be familiar with her by sight, and Jasmine had cautiously dropped the trail of the most cunning of the Greys, when there had been a risk of him catching and recognising her scent.

The three successful trackings had led to the wealthy suburb of Axefield, within Medway. But it was hard to pinpoint exactly where the wolves ended up, the Greys seemed to have an elaborate system of route muffling as they neared their destination. They disappeared into different streets. Jasmine had even seen two of them entering doorways, but each a different doorway in a different building, a different road.

And Jasmine had also reported each entrance to be a very well guarded, with at least two hulking warriors opening both doors from the inside for their arriving packmate. She had been growing more agitated, sure that she would be identified while trying to pinpoint all of the entrances by this very slow method, emphatic that they needed to be sure of all lair exits to prevent Nicolas Grey from eluding them, or more especially, taking captives out. Jasmine came back from the hunt seething with additional, frantic worry - the last three times she had come within range of her natál, but he had been hazy, unconscious, drugged with chemicals and pain, and the bond was not directional, she didn't know where to look more closely.

Bitterly worried.

So Gemma had overruled Jasmine's protests over her human friend's safety, and in front of the twins had increasingly volubly bullied the Marsh wolf into a repeat lingerie shopping trip to distract her from her worries. Jasmine had pretended to protest until finally giving in, but had ferociously rejected the twins as a further escort, declaring that she had enough to bear with whining humans, and wasn't having them as well.

The girls had sneaked down to Medway together to narrow down the field, Gemma travelling on the train for half an hour, her wolf friend setting off earlier and running through the nearby countryside. Jasmine's route had swooped close to the railway track once, and Gemma had heard the young boy in the seat ahead excitedly pointing out the honey-and-grey wolf to his mother.

"Oh yeah, isn't he graceful? But that's not a wolf, honey, there aren't any around here. He must be a stray dog. I wonder what breed? Isn't he gorgeous?"

Gemma had smiled to herself.

Today's plan had worked. Among the crowds in the lively suburb of Axefield, Gemma had identified several dozen Grey wolves for Jasmine to follow, and she was now carefully marking in the outline of the stretch of buildings which the Greys had kept disappearing into this morning. Jasmine was almost ready to alert her father, and take the hit for the several, strict orders they were disregarding. But they needed to be sure to first identify all exits and entrances, because as soon as Fealden, Marsh or Mac knew that Gemma was here, she would be whisked to safety, and they'd lose their chance.

She was a wolf friend to Fealden Wolflord. And carried the Mackeld's naulu. Jasmine was going to be in for it. She didn't care. But she was very strict about Gemma staying in sight and contact with as many other humans as possible.

"Damn," Gemma heard her friend's voice, and the Marsh sjeste appeared at her side on the bank porch.

"Did you lose him?" Gemma murmured, not looking up from her careful sketching.

"I think one of them scented me," growled the wolf girl, and Gemma's head shot up, alarmed.

"I'm not sure, she didn't immediately call an alarm, but -," Jasmine halted mid sentence, spinning on her feet into an aggressive crouch, but Gemma grabbed her friend's arm as she recognised the orange sweater hovering among the crowd of humans, and tugged Jasmine back against the wall. The Marsh wolf centred herself, remembering anyway that they were in a crowd of humans.

When her natál wasn't being tortured, she could keep her cool.

The wolf waif was on the edge of the crowd, staring, mouth open, at the map hanging from Gemma's other hand. The outline of the building complex was etched in thick black pencil, with crosses marking the doorways where Grey wolves had been disappearing. The Grey sjeste stepped closer unconsciously, dumbfounded, her white face seething with emotion.

Jasmine growled in disgust, quivering lightly under Gemma's hand, and snarled quietly, "Well, go on cur, yowl the alarm. I'll take you out somehow."

The blue eyes fastened on Gemma's, pleadingly, and the waif answered to the human, flinching slightly away from the aggression shimmering off the Marsh sjeste.

"I scented you. I can't keep him out of my head, and he'll demand my report in a few hours, but - I'll keep quiet for as long as I can, if you can get the cubs out. Please? My cubs?"

Jasmine bolted upright, a shimmer of fury running through her, "Grey holds your cubs?"

The wolf waif was still pleading at Gemma, words tumbling in a torrent of whispered terror and hope from her mouth. "If I don't tell him you're here, with that map, he'll kill them - eventually." She gulped, shivered, a spasm passing through her scrawny frame when her eyes clenched closed, but they reopened on blue fire."

"He holds your cubs?" repeated Jasmine.

The Grey wolf girl ignored the caustic hiss from the Marsh, her plea growing strength.

"But they don't have much of a life right now anyway. Not for wolves. Not for my chouchou. If you can get them free, I'll -," she choked off on a rush of overpowering feeling, eyes spilling with tears.

"Grey holds your cubs?" Jasmine's incendiary tone insisted on an answer.

The Grey wolf nodded hesitantly at the Marsh, "They are kept apart from us. All cubs are moved to the cub ward at 6 months, but he took mine earlier, straight after my natalí circled, and now I only get to see them when on guard duty, in the wing. Until they are old enough to work," she added bitterly. "Cubs are kept as surety for good behaviour of the less amenable adults."

Jasmine was growling under her breath, the anger visibly growing in her trembling limbs, "We can't get in," She fumed bitterly. "All the doorways are too well guarded."

The Grey waif now answered the Indian wolf girl directly, pleading hope shining in her eyes, "There is one unguarded window in the cub ward, high up the wall - they are too small to reach it, and it's too far to boost, but I go on duty in half an hour - I could deal with the other guard, let you in, if you could get them out, somehow, between you. Please, please. But - you'd have to take all of them. Any you leave behind would be in danger - he is a vengeful, vicious creature."

Then the hope in the blue eyes faded and she whispered bitterly, "But many of them are too small to run far. We'd never get them away, to safety in time."

Tortured eyes winced at Gemma. "And if I don't tell him that I scented you, he'll - I've seen him coat the silver slime on cubs, when a parent is simply disobedient. And I can't keep him out of my head. What he'll do to my pair in revenge for my even thinking this, before he finally lets them die -."

She broke off to shudder on an anguished sob, eyes panicking, but Jasmine had already grabbed her arm and was growling assurance, "Cubs threatened? Asage held by their cubs? We'll get a rope. And call for help, protection from my pack, they will come. You just convey to me what we're facing, what this window is like, then get in there and let us in."

The waif's face twisted in indecision, tears rolling down her tormented face as she looked away, and the three of them stood in silent tension beside the wall while the passers-by teemed past in the glowing sunset.

Then slowly the waif's eyes returned to Jasmine's, a determined light burning, overlaying the worry in the blue depths. "They deserve a chance," she said gruffly, her words clipped with too much feeling. Jasmine gripped the hand of the tall slender waif, promising, "We'll get them out." The Marsh sjeste's gleaming black eyes seemed to brighten, power rising as she stared for a long minute into the blue eyes of the Grey, and then suddenly the waif shuddered, and seemed to relax, eyes tearing over.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"We'll get them out," repeated Jasmine, softly, "Go."

As soon as the Grey wolf had disappeared into the crowd, Jasmine glanced around frantically for some privacy, backing toward the deep porch.

"Need to call Dad," she said succinctly, biting her lip, her cheeks slightly pale. Gemma grabbed her hand and towed her shivering friend up the worn steps. They sank down together on the stone flags, sitting wedged in a corner against the studded wooden door, and Gemma pulled open the sleek boutique bag holding their purchase – a now irrelevant decoy for the twins - so that they could pretend to admire the bits of skimpy lace inside it, Jasmine hiding her face while she conveyed to her father and Alpha.

The Marsh sjeste winced and cowered to the ground shortly after making contact, but seconds later she uncoiled back upright, insisting quietly, aloud, "Well it has happened, Dad. And this is their only chance. Despite my help, that sjeste Ada cannot hold Grey out of her head when he demands her report, and once he knows we've found this place, he'll kill her cubs, and move the pack."

She listened for a still moment then answered, slightly tetchily, "But I am an Alfamme. Like you said, I just had to find a reason to put my mind to it. This is it. I have. So you can't stop me. We can't wait for you, leaving all those cubs there, at his mercy." Her eyes widened, then narrowed, then widened again as she shuddered, something seething through her with her Alpha's reply. She straightened her back slowly, the light in her eyes burning deeper, stronger. There was a long, stretched moment of silence, the air in the quiet corner all seeming to gather, to coalesce in her glowing eyes.

Then Jasmine's shoulders relaxed, her eyes flickered and she glanced across at Gemma, nodding at something in her head. She flinched again, lightly, but a wry smile twisted her lips immediately afterward and she said with finality, "I know. But Alpha protect the pack, Alfamme protect the people. Just -run fast, Dad."

Jasmine's face creased with emotion, a melting look of love, and she unfolded to her full height, ready, face twisting into a smile and eyes shining as she returned the farewell in her head.

I wish I could convey to Mac, the wistful thought wisped in Gemma's mind.

The cub ward was utilitarian, a barracks, the corridors and Spartan rooms all concrete, faded off-yellow walls and cold grey floors. Jasmine had led Gemma circuitously to a flat garage roof overlooking a small, grimy window at street level, and then had proceeded to survey the street intently for the remaining wait.

Later, Gemma had winced at the faint, grating noise of wolf claw cutting out a circle in the one-and-a-half by two foot pane of glass, then had held the pane carefully so it wouldn't fall and smash while Jasmine cut out the whole sheet. Gemma had hidden it in a wheelybin across the street while Jasmine scraped the windowframe smooth.

A ten foot drop, down into the narrow corridor that led between two cold dormitories to the main room, where the cubs were assembled. Jasmine dropped down easily, while Gemma stayed on watch in the road.

But she was soon called inside.

Gemma had fashioned a sling for the wolf cubs out of rope and cloth from a nearby hardware store, but it was too slow, there were too many, they would never get them all out before the next watch change. Jasmine had decided that the girls would have to stand on each others' shoulders to create a living bridge which the cubs could scramble up, a climbing frame.

Before they even began to hint at the move, the Marsh sjeste was very careful to convey to each and every one of the young yips, playing a short, swift rough-and-tumble in their midst before staring intently into each set of eyes. The link would not hold, she had warned Gemma, not for more than an hour or so, but she would keep them from innocently sharing with their parents the details of this exciting outing. And it would mean that she could guide them once they were out.

Then they lined the excited cubs up for their trip to see trees, and began their exodus. The oldest, the eight year olds at the front, were quivering with tension as they scrambled up over Ada in lycan form, claws used to keep purchase in her clothing, then over Gemma standing on the wolf-waif's shoulders, then lastly over Jasmine standing on Gemma, her forearms and elbows wedged on the sill of the small, square window at street level. As they exited the window, the cubs shifted to human, their loose, baggy clothing hanging off them, and glanced warily around. These older ones had more idea what was going on, the importance and danger of this excursion.

Under mind instruction, the eight-year-olds first took up positions at the corners of the roads, and marshalled the younger cubs, two-by-two, older paired with younger, on the short journey to the park where the group slowly congregated under the concealing shelter of some low bushes. The tiniest made the whole journey four-legged, unable yet to walk in human form, and Ada sobbed in an unsteady breath as her own pair excitedly scrambled out into the fading daylight, one after the other, and left, each tripping along beside a keyed up six-year-old.

It was lucky the cubs were all well trained in unquestioning, instant obedience.

It was also a little sad.

Jasmine was scowling, face twisted in intense concentration and worry as she guided the pack of yips with conveyed thoughts while they crawled over her and so out into the human streets for the first time in their overexcited lives.

Gemma kept hearing urgent whispers of guidance that the Marsh sjeste couldn't hold back when conveying, "Stop that, no tussling." "Stealth silent." "No, don't stop to scent that." "Believe me, it tastes disgusting." "Keep moving." "Stop." "That, cub, is what a cat smells like." "Quiet." "STOP, wait for that big metal smelly thing to move past first." "No tussling." "I know, hold your breath." "No tussling!" "Don't eat that." "Hush!"

It went on for over half an hour, the tension within the adults increasing as they guided the wobbly pups clawing their way to freedom, but after long, crawling minutes the larger four and five year olds were all that were left.

Two were scrambling up over Gemma, one on her back, the other just clawing its painful way up her raw-scratched, jean-clad legs, when she heard the hoarse, heavy breathing of a large beast and looked up to see glowing dark eyes glaring down through the window, reflected in the dying daylight of the street. She almost screamed, but the sound was caught in her throat instead by the ferocious snarl which resounded below her, inside the room, and she tilted her head down in time to see a huge, furious human slamming a large, clenched fist into Ada's temple below her.

She'd seen him before. Long, long ago, back at the flat, and from the look of it his right leg had not healed completely straight, after Mac had broken it.

Quickly, as her support crumpled, Gemma jumped and jammed her legs straight against the walls of the narrow corridor to either side of her, forcing them to hold steady under the load of herself, Jasmine, and the four cubs still climbing. Urgently, legs trembling, she reached behind her back to steady the two cubs. In panic, they scrambled over her as fast as they could, but their clumsy little legs were wobbling. Gemma felt long claws rake deeply down her buttocks as the Grey wolf guard used them for purchase while he leapt high up the window embrasure to grab the lower of the escaping cubs by one hind leg. The small wolf yipped in panic when he was pulled from his escape.

Gemma sternly forced her unsteady legs to hold firm under the jerking feel of Jasmine twisting on her shoulders. The topmost of the two cubs climbing Jasmine had scrambled out, and the second had been scooped to relative safety by the male standing above the window. The Marsh sjeste stooped to lift the remaining cub clinging her legs up to the adult wolf, then almost simultaneously the Alfamme turned, raging, and dove back down onto the huge male challengingly shaking the little cub dangling in a terrified ball from one of his oversized hands.

The surge of Jasmine's legs against her shoulders as she launched herself at the Grey wolf guard pushed Gemma from her precarious purchase, and she banged her head hard against the brickwork as she tumbled to land on top of the unconscious Grey waif at the foot.

Stars revolving behind her eyes, she saw a large, chocolate-and-cream blur diving past into the room, snarling ferociously. As she sat up, shaking her dazed head, a second, third, fourth, fifth wolf leaped past her to join in the fray.

Marsh was impossible to see, a whirling fury against the tide of Greys fighting to get in through the doorway. Jasmine was at the other side of the room, tearing into the newly arrived Grey wolves trying to force an entry down the passageway to the left. Two of the other Marsh wolves had leapt into position as a shield-wall between the fight and the window embrasure. Cubs kept scooting, yelping and whimpering, between the Marsh guards' legs, guided or swung to safety behind the two fighters by the other Marsh warriors out fighting in the room, fighting to bring them in to safety. Ada stirred, pushing herself upright off the cold stone floor, shaking her head painfully but answering the desperation in the scared young voices.

Ignoring her own shaky limbs, Gemma swiftly climbed up the embrasure, jamming her limbs against opposing walls to steady herself in the classic, familiar climbing technique. One foot slipped, but she caught herself, then she was at the top, and rolled, panting, to lower her rope-sling. Between them, she and Ada began to haul the remaining cubs up to safety. One eight-year-old appeared at her shoulder, one of the first ones out, and he soon hurried off with a group of his younger pack-mates to the park, promising breathlessly to return later for more. His eyes were shining in glee, pride, as he glanced down through the window at the fight.

It was now pitch dark, and Gemma was a bit worried about letting little kids - ok, wolfcubs, but they looked like children, wander alone about the streets. Then she glanced back through at the bloodbath in the room below, hauling up the next cub with her aching arms, and realised that out was safer. Most of the cubs still in the room were now in relative safety behind the shielding wall of two hulking Marsh fighters, but tears burned her eyes when she saw a small, inanimate body rolled in a corner, blood on the lycan fur and a trickle painted from his mouth.

There was another terrified cub trapped across the room, curled as a wolf as far back in a corner as she could away from the menacing advance of a Grey, but the aggressor disappeared beneath chocolate brown fur in a violent spurt of blood before he could reach her. The cub's scared yi-yi-yi squealed over the other sounds in the room as she was tossed, limbs splayed, across the heads of the fighters, caught gently by the waiting member of the shield wall, and placed carefully with her young packmates waiting to be hauled to safety. Gemma didn't even see Marsh move, she just had an impression of a chocolate-and-white coloured rage scouring around the room.

Feverishly, she lifted the latest cub out of the sling, steadied it on the roadway with the four already clustered against her, and dropped the sling back down through the window. The Greys kept pouring into the room below, more and more of them, and Marsh, Jasmine, and the lone fighter still standing with them were being forced back toward the window embrasure.

Another cub. Another. She ignored her straining arm muscles' shrieks that they could do no more. No more. None of the four-or-five year olds weighed too much, individually. However, pulling ten, fifteen, twenty of them up a fifteen foot drop seemed to be pulling her burning arms from their sockets. But she could do one more. And one more after that. And still one more. Another.

Then abruptly Jasmine arched in a scream in the melee below, body convulsing in agony although no injury appeared, and slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Instantly, Marsh was standing over his inanimate daughter protectively, ripping the arm from one Grey as the enemy reached for her, sending a second flying in a spray of blood to smash into one of many the wolves pouring through the entrance. The Grey troops doubled their efforts to break through and seize the unconscious Alfamme. Then suddenly one huge Grey wolf's nose lifted, listening, he twitched to a voice inside his head, then with a ferocious snarl he turned and leapt onto one of his own packmates, protecting the Alfamme who had guided his cub to safety. The melee broke up into a heaving seethe, Grey fighting Grey fighting Marsh, chaos tearing around the room choked with stampeding, furious fighters.

The shield wall around the remaining three cubs was overwhelmed and broke, the Marsh warriors swooping around to lift the cubs and toss them up the long wall to Gemma; she fumbled the third rapid catch, horrified, and heard the desperate squeak as the small lycan tumbled back down the long drop. But Ada leapt and caught him, swinging him behind her slight form where his claws clutched, digging into her orange sweater and the skin of her back. The Grey lycan spun grimly back to face the attack of her packmates with the small cub clinging between her shoulder blades, crouching instinctively as flat as he could to her back.

A slight sound behind Gemma, the squealed snarl of one of the cubs pressing against her legs, and she suddenly felt a wash of tingling burn through her like pins and needles, disorientating her. A simultaneous sudden surge of rage and alarm made her spin on the spot, tripping over her too-large trainers while her thighs suddenly pulsed in pain, unmovable in the tight constriction of her jeans, and she fell onto her back just as a handful of razorsharp claws raked through the air where her throat had been a second before.

Assailed by a wave of scents and sounds, disbelievingly, Gemma stared up at the clawed, hairy fist protruding from the long black greatcoat of the man standing glaring down at her for the split second before he exploded backwards under the impact of the massive, frosty-haired four-legged animal who pounced on him over her.

Human or loup in the city, the harsh rebuke burned into Gemma's brain, and the wash of pins and needles obediently fired through her again before she even realised. The ferocious fight between what were now twenty or so huge dogs was being driven down the street to her left and back within the buildings, while she sat up, staring in bewildered disbelief at the splits along the side-seams of her jeans, where the cold night air was stroking along her thighs.

She could hear, sense the huge numbers of wolves pouring into this area, surrounding the buildings, fighting their way into the Grey lair on every side of the huge complex. Her mind was linked with the mesh of seething thoughts pulsing through the streets, and she flinched, trying desperately to pull away from the chaos, the close, claustrophobic constantly-shifting weave of the pack focus.

No. No. This wasn't possible. No way.

Mind battered as it was swept along in the whirling, chaotic current, she managed to drag a corner free and just stared at her hand. It looked the same as ever. But - she could smell it vividly, her own hand, lying limp at the end of her wrist.

No.

Her stomach was churning with the whirling, unbearable pull in her head.

She had turned into a werewolf.

When?

How?

How the hell did that happen? The thought blasted her from the side, from the outside, yet confusingly the deep, pulling voice was inside her own head, and she found she was cringing instinctively under the overpowering, echoing rage, even as her own anger rose to meet it. Like she knew?

The battering fury lightened at the obvious bewilderment in her own thoughts, and Gemma found herself anchored, steadied in the wild maelstrom of the pack meld, held clear in a little protective bubble.

Her mate was just as polite in his thoughts.

She was nudged with his amusement at her waspish opinion, then felt an overwhelming surge of longing, lust, fear and love swamp her. She had no idea if it was from within or without her own mind - or even if there was a separation between them. Suddenly a frantic, claustrophobia engulfed her, and she found she was clawing mentally at the cushion surrounding and steadying her mind. As the strangling fear rose in her throat, Gemma abruptly felt herself free, cut loose, separate and whole again.

Take those cubs to the park, Mac's parting order echoed in her soothingly quiet head.

In her freedom, Gemma felt a wistful surge of stubborn wantonness rear up within her, urging her to ignore the order and just find him, pounce on him. It had been months. The lust was rising powerfully within her, pulling at her - although she had no idea which way to go. The sense of him somewhere near was not directional.

But oh so tempting.

The heat in her blood was dragging at her, shuddering through her veins as her mind clouded with lust.

Then one of the cubs leaning against her knee whined, and she awoke suddenly to awareness of the sense of them. The youngsters clustered around her exuded a wild, scared, vulnerable melee of scents and thoughts which raised the hairs on the back of her neck and made her skin ache with protective fire. A scent which got her moving to guide them to safety, order or no order.

As she staggered along with the fire cooling in her, a rueful, slightly shivery remembrance also hit. Mac was in the middle of a battle. DUH.

It was only her own thoughts battering her now, internally.

More than how, or when.

Who had turned her?