Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 12

Gemma swallowed that, and allowed her mate to tug her down the cobbled old street toward the harbour.

Gemma was teasing Mac as they walked back up the same route much later, again hand in hand. Lianna and Jon had been delightful: relaxed, urbane, and obviously keenly interested and delighted in "Mac's girl." Jon had spent some time teasingly admonishing his old college friend for lapsing from his supposed vow of asceticism. When they had studied photography together up at Preston, Mac had apparently barely noticed the hordes of girls who had swooned around him all the time. The most he'd been seen doing was kissing one of them occasionally at parties, although he'd stopped even that when it made them so much more persistently determined. Jon had rolled his eyes at the memories, and told funny stories of having to step over girls waiting hopefully on their Mac's doorstep when he visited.

Gemma had found it fascinating to discover so much about her mate which she didn't know. She hadn't even known he had a arts masters, on top of the forestry degree he'd studied before becoming Alpha, and her brain was puzzling out how he'd managed to fit it in around running the pack and all else; well, she knew he had endless stamina, it shouldn't surprise her any longer.

The reminiscing had been so much fun, but not the best of the evening.

That had been the dogs.

They'd been at a small waterfront restaurant, relaxing together at little outdoor tables, enjoying the soft evening sun and scents, and the succulent, excellent seafood. It was as the light had begun to fade that Gemma had first noticed a pair of supplicating eyes gazing out of a mop of greying hair, the eyes of a small dog tucked quietly in a corner away from trampling feet, just staring.

Staring at Mac.

He or she had been quivering gently, longing etched along every line of the tiny, scruffy frame.

It was then that she'd begun to notice the others. Their table had been ringed by a motley collection of mongrels and pure-breds, all of them crouched quietly, half-hidden a circumspect distance from the Alpha. All worshiping with wary, silent respect, wistfully hoping for his acknowledgement. By the end of the meal, there had also been a little circle of offerings placed slightly closer to his feet: two balls, a bone, a sock, and even a small, very chewed-looking doll, each cautiously presented by an awestricken supplicant who had slunk out and then returned silently to their nooks.

Mac had been careful not to look at any of them, and had exasperatedly conveyed a rebuke to Gemma for doing so. The dogs weren't true pack animals, he'd told her, and weren't circumspect or reliably obedient. They would draw the attention of the humans just by gawping; generations of wolves had had to spend many a long night in Lemark training the local strays not to follow them everywhere so damn obviously there.

But they're cute, Gemma had replied, Go on, the little fluffy half-scotty is dying for you to look at her.

Mac had shot his mate a warning look, and Lianna had asked her about their new home, distracting her as she described the spacious three-bedroom house a little incredulously, and slightly. The large, old wooden structure was set on a corner of two streets very close to the old town, the garden backing onto an expanse of parkland. There were a multitude of rooms: two in the basement facing down the hill toward the sea, five at ground level and a further four bedrooms above. There was even an attic, an artist's studio awash with light.

Gemma couldn't help wondering what had Mac been doing in her cramped student flat if he could afford something like this.

But that wasn't what she wanted to talk to him about right now.

Gemma was dancing along beside her mate as they crossed the four-lane main road separating the old town from their residential area, looking up to tease him about his snooty distain of the sycophantic fan club.

His lips were twitching as he replied, "You just like them because you've finally come across some creatures even you could beat in a wolf fight."

"Hah!" retorted his mate cheerfully. "Really, I feel a certain bond with other creatures who are sneered at by the supercilious pure-bloods," she joked.

Without warning a shockingly sharp, tearing pain ripped through her mind on the echo of a piercing shriek.

Dazed, Gemma found that she was on the roadway, crushed down onto one knee by the pain, trembling in the aftermath. Then in a split second, the blankness that usually swamped her sanity smothered blanketing over the pain, dulling it, while her awareness of her surroundings yanked to full alert, sharply focussing on the headlights bearing down at speed, and her unconscious mate lying beside her in the road.

Mac had received the full force of that blast of pain; what she had caught had been an echo, through him, and that had been bad enough. There had also been a cry for help. Multiple, anguished voices.

Car.

In an instant she was on her feet, white face turned to the lights, waving her arms in panic to alert the driver. The horn blared and the vehicle swerved abruptly around them with a screech, violent swearing audible from the open window as it skidded past almost on two wheels, the air of its passing sucking at her skirt, diesel fumes choking sickness into her throat.

Horror-struck, Gemma focussed on the second set of lights not far behind, cresting the rise of the roadway, coming fast.

She dropped to squat beside her wolf, urgently forcing her arms under his shoulders, trying to clasp her small hands across his chest but unable to reach, instead clenching her fists in his shirt, heaving, hauling ineffectually. She was shouting desperately at the approaching vehicle with the tears rolling down her cheeks, panic fluttering in her veins.

She couldn't budge him. Not an inch.

On her feet again, her wet cheeks shining in the light as she windmilled her arms around her head, the car swerved with a screech around them, another set of gentler, gasped words rolling over her with the sound and the reek, but she was already back on her knees, desperately twisting Mac into a straight line, dimly remembering her first aid courses, hauling up his knee and heaving with all her might to roll him heavily onto his side.

Her skin was prickling with the thunder of an approaching truck, the peripheral awareness alerting her both to its size, and to the sleek car overtaking it - some insane driver, overtaking on the rise. Two sets of parallel lights approaching. Approaching fast as she heaved again, straining every muscle until she thought her veins would burst, and feeling her songmate roll over again onto his back, one measly foot closer to safety.

Then suddenly as the thunder of the engines grew louder, Mac moved. But not of his own volition. The face of the man dragging him was a rictus of furious, tortured strain, the thin, jean-clad legs almost folding under the weight of the wolf. A pulsing vein was etched sharply in the thin neck, a second thick line pulsing at his temple in the orange glow of the streetlights while the human strove with all his might to haul her mate backwards toward the side of the road, staggering slowly, yet inexorably, under the dead weight.

Gemma leapt back to her feet, heart bursting, waving frantically at the approaching blaze of lights as she kept pace protectively in front of the slow procession, gulping back the tears. The overtaking car's brakes shrieked, and the powerful vehicle slammed to a halt, bouncing back onto the rear tyres at the weight of the halted momentum. The powerful vehicle waited with the bumper two feet from her, hazard lights blinking, engine purring silently. The wide eyes of the driver watched the small cavalcade through the windscreen silently.

The human's breath was rasping hoarsely as he attempted to heave the dead weight of the wolf onto the kerb. Gemma dropped down to help, and together they hauled, tugged, and shoved relentlessly, breath panting in unison until the inanimate body was lying safely face-down on the walkway.

Breathing harshly, Gemma lifted her strained face to the rescuer, swiping away the tracks of tears, and her shocked eyes met his blazing blue ones. Samuel. Again.

"You," he choked, heaving for breath and for words to express the anger and incredulity on his face. "What were you thinking, staying out there with him?" he snarled at her furiously, a strange look of longing on his face. If his voice hadn't been so rough, the rebuke could have been Mac's. "What the f-. Insane! What, you think two dead is better than one?"

"Yes," the soft choked answer fell from her lips without thought, and stopped him dead. Samuel surged to his feet and stood glaring at her a sort of hurt, chest heaving.

The idea of leaving her mate had never entered her mind at all.

Samuel's eyes rested for a moment on the small hand cupped protectively over Mac's head, and he closed his eyes, and reopened them on a burning, bitter look.

"Be more careful in future!" he bit out, and swung to stalk off up the street, shoulders hunched angrily.

"Samuel!" Gemma called after him, plaintively. She owed him so much. But her voice broke, and the "Thank-you," was a choked whisper.

He didn't turn.

Mac was crying when he opened his eyes.

Haunted eyes.

He didn't say a word, just swung wearily to his feet and lifted her up into his arms, hugging her to him painfully, as though he needed to hold her, needed the comfort.

Gemma looked into those eyes and the questions died on her lips. She just slid her arms around him and held on, hugging him as hard as she could while he loped back up the hill toward their house, face buried in her hair, breathing raggedly.

She hadn't known that a call from his pack could be that debilitating. Each time, previously, he had taken a second or two to centre himself before answering, control paramount.

Mac hadn't known, either, he explained wearily once they were back at the flat. He sat frozen at the kitchen table, staring at the wood, while Gemma quickly made him a hot cup of coffee.

Nicolas Grey had just tested a new tactic, the Mackeld Alpha explained. Grey had coordinated simultaneous attacks of his remaining wolves on several of the younger Mackelds; those young wolves studying elsewhere, out of range of their families and the rest of the pack, when the link with their Alpha the only clear one sustaining the gensis, the pack-sense.

It was only during the past two generations that larger numbers of younger, less powerful wolves had travelled some distance to study, out of the communal range of the pack. And this of course made them vulnerable, although the vulnerability was not something Mac or anyone else had really thought of before. The Aster had been at peace among themselves for so long.

His voice was hoarse, and Mac struggled to continue, face twisting, eyes closed in grief. The young Mackeld wolves had been attacked and mutilated, severely and suddenly tortured, ripped through unbearable pain to the brink of the edge of life, where the only thing they could cling to was their Alpha. Four of them. Simultaneously. He shuddered.

Gemma was frozen by the sink, eyes wide, tears arrested by the horror as she stared across. How did he bear this? A hand reached her way, and she saw the raging pain in his eyes as she met them, heart creasing for his hurt, stepping closer automatically.

"Did they survive?" her whisper was quiet. Then she wished that she hadn't asked when she read the answer in his face.

"I have recalled all other remote members of the pack," was all Mac said, "And warned the Council." But there was something else in his face, another shadow.

"Gem," his voice was hoarse, and the hand reached again. She rested hers in it, twining her fingers around his, and he drew her back between his knees. She tried to enfold him in her arms but he held her away, and tilted his head up to hers, eyes sombre as a finger lightly caressed her cheek.

He tried to speak, but failed. Blinked, mouth twisted almost into a snarl. Gemma could feel her own heart shrinking within her. It was rarely her mate struggled to put something into words. Abruptly he lifted her right hand and kissed the palm, furious eyes glinting through tears of sadness as he looked into hers and said softly, straightly.

"Those were the wolves guarding Bethan and Kate."

Gemma stared.

Her friends. No.

She could feel the tremble of the rage rising like a tide within her as the meaning slowly sunk in, her fists clenching, lengthening claws digging into her palms.

Her fault.

"Are they -?" she manage to choke, her deadly teeth lifting in a silent snarl, her heart burning painfully in her breast, pounding, the guilt sickening. The stupid drug. Her fault.

"There is no trace of them - no bodies, no blood - I sent the other Mackelds to check on their way home. And there is no scent of any other wolf on the four dead," her mate said bleakly.

Captured? Hostages?

Mac's last words were filtered through the echoing, shattering anger as sickening images played through her mind of what Grey did to people in his power. Kill. Her own, piercing howl was inaudible to the werewolf, the taste of blood on her tongue blanked by the blackness in her head as she leapt to attack.

Gemma came round the following day, but the fire was flaming within her, burning fiercely, making her volatile and snappy, and this time she violently resented the time she'd wasted in the stupid rage. She spent all of the long, seething, guilt-ridden hours of the day working at setting up the lab in the basement. Rigid, furious determination drove her, and if her damn mate hadn't been larger, faster, more powerful and more stubborn and eloquent than she, she would not have left the flat at all until she had found a solution to that damn drug and tracked down and killed the fucking Grey wolf.

And, please God, freed her human friends.

Mac had had to literally drag her out of her lab and the house by one arm, ignoring her rising protests, insisting that he knew wolves, and that the wolf within her needed time outside. She had shut up as instructed on the street, glowering silently, and stumbled furiously along beside him, her arm held tight by his hand. A corner of her mind was wondering why the hell the towering anger she felt didn't consume her this time.

However, eating supper together at a little table down by the wall of the old fishing harbour, watching the waves rolling under the joyous sunset and scenting the breeze soothed something in her blood, mellowing out the fury into a deep, productive determination. Powerful, but no longer wasting energy in anger. Thank god for Mac. He thought of things. And he did know her, and understand the werewolf far better than she did. Now she could think clearly, not simply through rage, and do her best for her friends.

He was the most gorgeous, thoughtful mate in the world.

"Told you I'm always right," Mac murmured.

Alright, maybe he had a few irritating characteristics.

Then her heart melted again when she remembered what else he had done for her today, and she leaned across the table to kiss him.

While she had been out of it, her wolf had had an express package couriered from the Fealden range. A package of hair and blood samples donated by ex-Grey and Fealden wolves, so that she could test to see what was different about the polluted cells while waiting for Gus to arrive with the phial of the remaining drug that her Alpha had captured off Grey. She kissed Mac deeply, delighted that here was something that she could do now.

It would also stop him voicing his smugness.

They would have to wait a while longer for the drug itself to be delivered, Mac had explained earlier today. Fealden Wolflord had chartered a plane for Gus from Kilkenny, but his grandson had been ambushed by a pack of scentless wolves at the airfield. Gus had barely gotten away with the small flask intact; the enemy wolves had been intent on trying to smash or procure it, while trying to overpower or kill him. Gemma thought that it must have galled the massive wolf to run, but he knew what was important.

Gus would be a while, apparently. After a second ambush, pursuit, and a dangerous explosion on a flight he had intended to catch, Gus, Mac and Fealden had decided that it was safer that he run all the way from the Western mountains while evading pursuit. The sparse wolf airfields were too easy to monitor and flights too difficult to police against determined sabotage.

But now Gemma had plenty to do in the meantime, with all her samples. Moreover Mac had today introduced her, online, to an eminent retired physician in France, Valerie, who had offered to teach her wolf biochemistry through the secure web link his brother Karl had installed to the house. Valerie would guide her through how any drugs and minerals she isolated in her tests reacted in the wolf body.

Soon, soon.

A week later, Gemma's eyes gleamed as them met those of the physician on screen.

"So as you can see, there's definitely still traces of a barbiturate in the hair, and while all I really know about those compounds is that some humans use them when driving after drinking because the cops supposedly can't smell the alcohol - how do they work on wolves?" she asked.

"I -," the wolf woman hesitated, and the delicate, lined face was thoughtful as she looked up from reading the results on her own screen, glowing eyes slightly narrowed. "I am afraid I do not know. All I can recall is that we do not use them, because of the side effects. But at a sufficiently low dose, maybe -." She trailed off, and a finger came up to tap the side of her wrinkled cheek rapidly as she thought.

"If I draw together my old team, we will test this, find out -," Valerie added.

Gemma interrupted her, eyebrows twitching together. "I agreed with Fealden Wolflord before I started any of these tests that I would not share the results," she said softly, "You have been approved, so Mac tells me, but -."

Valerie's eyes flashed in return, the powerful glare suddenly scorching Gemma, and she blinked and shuddered in the burn. But then the lightening was gone and all the old physician said, softly, was, "If you can trust me, you can trust the people I trust. Mac will agree to this."

Then the slight Frenchwoman added, "There is silver in the hair also; and many other ingredients, you tell me. If you could find out which silver molecule it is, that would help; we react quite differently to different manifestations. I have just sent you a list of the general wolf autoimmune reactions to silver in its different forms."

The blue eyes were narrowed warningly: "This is also highly sensitive information. Do not share it."

Gemma nodded, her thudding heart still subsiding back to peace after that flash of burning power. Her eyes were slightly wary as she murmured stubbornly, "I will also ask Mac about your team."

Valerie's mouth thinned, and she looked straight into the wereem's eyes, her own flaring with churning, deep power again.

"You have no idea of protocol, have you? To say such a thing to a wolf is tantamount to asking for a fight," the physician stated coldly.

Gemma shuddered, still holding the searing blue eyes, although it was difficult; she was longing to blink and look away, "No, I have no idea of wolf protocol," she agreed. "Among humans, it is considered rude to share a secret without first checking with the one who entrusted you with it," she managed to answer against the feeling of challenge, as calmly as she could.

The aged face suddenly lit into a warm, true smile, the ominous feeling lifted, and Gemma breathed in shakily in the rebounding relaxation as the power in the eyes subsided.