Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 14

His eyes swept over the intent, quivering circle of wolves. Listening together. The beginnings of a true pack, they had melded for the first time tonight, instinctively, to protect their Alpha and Alfamme. Mac felt a pulse of pride in the Whites while he continued evenly.

"Now, Silback reports that two of his scouts have been killed recently on their western borders, without challenge, and without time to convey," he said. His fingertip slid down the little finger of his right hand, tracing a path to the centre-right of the palm. The surrounding wolves' eyes were beginning to burn. "And Vanilchov tells us that the game from his northwestern region has been migrating unusually early, and unusually briskly south."

The third movement of that fingertip followed the curving line mapped out on his hand, ending at the base, just above his wrist.

You could have heard a pin drop in the house.

Mac sat perfectly straight, looking around at the crowd of the waiting wolves. "Tonight we pulled the pieces together, and realised: Tzo is moving the bulk of his forces toward Medway." He gently tapped the vein close to the surface on his wrist. "For attack or rendezvous with Grey, his intent is not clear, but we know his overriding wish for he has stated it many times: that wolves would stop arguing with him and band together to attack the humans."

Gemma's head shot upright to his last words, startled, while the powerful voice dropped, silky and growling, continuing, "What if we could not argue? Fealden says that Senshal Lu seemed to be fighting within himself, even while attacking him."

The Whites half-growled, half-gasped, while Mac continued, hands dropping to flex and clench next to his thighs, leaning forwards in urgency as he bit out precise words: "We are all aware that somewhere near Medway - in Marsh or Grey range, Tzo's former ally Grey lurks."

He paused, then added, "And you, my Whites, are sadly well aware that Grey possesses a drug which can bind a wolf to his will."

A shudder rang through the collective circle.

"It would appear that Tzo knows of this also."

A harsh sigh.

"The Wolflord believes that Tzo is going for the drug," Mac stated darkly, the power pounding off him.

Snarls erupted around the room, fury raging from many wolf throats.

Under the echoing noise, the rising feeling of ferocity in the air, Mac conveyed privately to Gemma as he gently lifted her off his knee while hauling the duvet up from the floor, folding it on the mattress beside him so that he had a blood-free patch to put her on, Do you have enough travel drug to get the whole adult pack on the train to Medway?

No, she responded silently, startled. In a few days I could -.

No, you need to work on the other one as fast as you can, he interrupted. Very well: a war run. No-one can fly right now; there have been several explosions in the planes they tried to take to pursue Tzo, the fuel has been sabotaged. All fuel, at many different airfields; Tzo knew we would mobilise after him from everywhere, no matter what the outcome. This was a very well planned, co-ordinated assault.

Mac drew another breath, sliding off the bed and drawing himself up to stand at full height. The air seemed to thicken, tingling against the skin, and the Whites fell silent again abruptly. His voice when he spoke to his new pack was deep and slowly growing more emphatic. Gemma watched the wolves stirring ardently to the fire of his words, his eyes, the beating of power in the air: "Does Tzo know where Grey is hiding? Maybe not, but it is not a risk we are willing to chance. We must stop him. Yet the Marsh are divided: half at their Range, half at the front. And they are in disarray: their Alpha killed, his son too weak yet to hold a meld, and his daughter has never done so. The Wolflord is guiding them from afar, but the Marsh are at the moment alone, divided, distressed, and leaderless: they cannot do this by themselves. They cannot stop Tzo, cannot prevent him from uniting with Grey. From getting the drug."

He drew a long breath, looking around at the quivering readiness of the eyes burning around him, responding to his words, "We are the nearest pack. We have to get there first."

A collective, assenting snarl rang out from the quivering wolves, and Mac strode forward into the centre of the pack and was engulfed as they closed in around him. Gemma could hear him giving soft orders to groups of two or three wolves at a time, examining healing bites, sharing a soft touch, a gesture, a commendation, turning from one set to another, each group of them eagerly awaiting their instructions before exiting swiftly. Each departing pair also hoisted a body up between them as they left. The wereem realised as she watched her Alpha in pride - the wolves had to run in smaller groups. The humans would notice a pack this size if they streamed cross-country together.

So many basic facts about being a wolf which she'd never have thought of.

When all had dispersed, Mac turned back towards his mate, a strange, churning fire in his eyes. They were almost too fierce to read as he stopped in front of her, and he looked down silently into her face for a long moment. His voice was unsettled, dry when he eventually commented, "This is a strange situation."

Gemma waited, eyeing him doubtfully.

"You scented them; you defended me." He lifted her small, bewildered frame off the bed, crushing her in an intense hug as he growled, "You saved my life."

Of course I defended you. She was burning with indignation.

Mac bent and kissed her fiercely, bending her back over his arm in a painful arch, lips burning into hers, mouth greedy.

Then suddenly when she thought she would burst from the rising feeling of exultation, he lifted upright again, heaving a deep breath, and continued softly, "Yet you still have until midnight for your penance to run."

His eyes were troubled, frowning down into hers in doubt at the justice of maintaining her 'punishment'. Gemma smiled and relaxed, hugging him hard in return. She had accepted her penalty for her stupidity in tying herself up. She didn't want him to go easy on her. She wanted him to trust her to keep her word.

Besides, she liked it. Proving that she trusted him.

"I think the saving life thing was mutual. I might not have won if I'd been on my own," she replied tongue-in-cheek, eyes drifting over the remaining scattering of dead wolves strewn around the bed.

"I will continue to obey you today," she whispered, smiling up at her mate, touching his cheek gently. "I promised. Trust me."

A strange look crossed his face, then it settled back to amusement, and a little gleam of anticipation.

"All the better for me," he replied. "Then, picchu, what do you need to do with the drug Bethan and Kate salvaged for us yesterday?"

"I just need to run my samples through the spectrometer this morning," she replied, distractedly deciphering the numbers on the face of the bedside clock lying upside-down on the floor, half covered by the fur of one of the remaining dead. Too early to call her friends yet. She also couldn't spot her bracelet, and was unsettled by the empty space on her wrist, eyes darting around the floor.

"I bisected it as far as I knew last night and the tests I prepared of the remaining links should be ready by now," she added absently. Then her eyes began sparkling in anticipation. An answer.

"Good," he replied, releasing her and turning away to scratch at a patch of drying blood on his thigh while he walked around the foot of the bed, glancing out of the window at the four 'men' in the back garden , just visible behind the juniper hedge, vigorously spading up a large area of the vegetable patch. Several other White koiru paced back into the room to begin lifting out more furry bodies. "But can't Ada do that?"

"Yes, but -," she began. She wanted to do it. Gemma didn't lift her eyes from the carpet, scanning it for a gleam of gold.

"Then please ask her to. I'd like you to come and wash my hair in the shower," her mate said over his shoulder as he walked into the en suite. I'm phrasing it as a request because the Whites need to trust you to stand up to me if necessary; it's not one really, picchu: not today.

Her head jerked up at the sudden pulse to his scent. The wolves hefting bodies toward the door tried to hide smirks as Gemma rolled her eyes and walked past them, blushing faintly while she followed her mate. That was the trouble with mating scent. His burning musk made it blatantly obvious to all the wolves in the room what Mac really intended to do in the shower.

Oh you can wash my hair too. After.

*

Less than ten minutes later Gemma was panting harshly, leaning her forehead against the side of the shower cubicle, hands plastered flat against the glass beside her shoulders. She was trembling, trying to recover her breath and force some stability back into her wobbling legs. Strong fingers were massaging shampoo into her human hair while the warm water showered over the tingling alert skin of her back and buttocks, and a separate, slow glide of her mate's cum began to trace its way down the sensitive surface of her inner thigh. She felt his fingers drop to run gently along the pattern of squares on her buttocks, fingertips following the raised lines standing out on her taut skin. A smile hovered on her lips. Well, if he would pound her into the tiled wall that hard, what did he expect?

Don't think I should relax you that often, she thought vaguely, legs almost folding, still waiting for her head to stop spinning in time with her pounding blood. Kind of obliterates my ability to stand.

The half-awake cock brushing against her thigh rose to stiff attention.

Mm mm mmm.

Mac sighed.

"I love you," he murmured in answer, and nipped her ear lightly. "And I am well rested, thank-you, and my blood is up but -"

"I'll say," she interjected, grinning into the glass.

He swatted her arse gently, amusement in his voice despite the mock-reproving tone, "-but you'll just have to wait for tonight for me to play with my slave properly - we have a busy day ahead."

Gemma pussy clenched in delight and she half-twisted and looked down at the engorged cock waving in the air just above her buttocks. She pulled a disappointed face.

Mac pulled her left hand off the wall and slapped the bottle of shower gel into it.

"Stop drooling at my cock and wash my hair, woman," he growled. Suddenly the small cubicle seemed even more cramped when he shifted, and the looming lycan towered beside her. Gemma's eyes widened as she stared. He really was larger everywhere, in wolf form.

"That was an order, Gemma," her mate reminded her silkily. Her head jerked up, and she looked into the gleam in his eyes, startled.

I told you you wouldn't like them all, he added silently.

No drooling at his cock? But couldn't she just look? she protested.

You are incapable of looking without drooling, he grinned as he replied.

Gemma pouted and squeezed some soap onto her palm. Damn it was hard not to look down. The scent was driving her crazy.

"Johnson says Kate and Bethan are still asleep at the hospital," her mate announced, clearing the lust clouds abruptly from Gemma's mind. "The doctor will see them between ten and eleven, and we're assuming he'll pronounce them good to go - there was nothing really wrong with them last night but they wanted to keep them under observation."

"Go where?" Gemma asked.

"I have a couple of safe places in mind, but we'll need to ask them what they -."

Safe?

Mac stopped abruptly, looking down, a sombre light in his eyes, nose twitching. The gel bottle landed with a soft thud on the floor, sliding from Gemma's suddenly numb fingers. Mac took in the glazed, distant, pained look in his mate's soft eyes, the shudder starting to shake her frozen frame. Her fingers were digging into his skin. Gently Mac eased her desperate clutch from his fur, and Gemma felt herself lifted, cuddled against his frame while her mate sank smoothly onto his haunches, leaning back against the shower wall.

The water beat down upon her drooping head.

Gus was dead. It had just seemed to hit her, crushingly. Bright, teasing eyes empty. Gone.

The shudder was deep, cold in her core.

Images of all those other dead, tossed in undignified heaps around their bedroom, danced behind her glazed eyes. Vicious teeth descending. The thick blood soaked deep into the mattress. The reek of it. That tiny scrap of the brown fur sprawled over the cabinet, neck at an impossible angle. Gemma's eyes were glazed as the sickening images flashed repeatedly through her head, her blurred gaze caught by the rivulets of dark red water running across the floor and down the drain, running from her mate's fur.

Grey eyes glaring hatred at her through the windscreen as he drew back those long, vicious claws. The tearing sound of those claws raking deep through the flesh of Hakan, jerking the heavy body lying over her. Blood oozing around her fingers, pooling on his stomach while she cut into her bodyguard herself, deeper, deeper, tears falling as she couldn't close the tweezers around the damn slick bullet.

The shaking was growing stronger. So cold.

In lycan form, Mac stank of blood.

Death.

A nudge of his mind, and she was also lycan, the water plastering her dark brown fur to her shuddering skin. Caressing hands began to massage the gel along her limbs, and she just watched, trembling as the foaming bubbles rinsed down through her fur and snaked across the floor under the sluicing water. Her limbs lifted as directed by his touch, turned, or held themselves steady in the warm, cleansing shower. His touch slid soothingly along every inch of her body, massaging heat back into her. Love.

Her eyes focussed on the smooth gold band dangling around her furry left wrist. A wisp of warmth curled around her heart. Where had that come from?

Eventually, the shaking subsided.

Settled on the floor with a soft kiss on her lips, Gemma pressed her back against the side and curved her arms around her naked legs, watching as Mac rose back to his feet and began to briskly soap his torso and powerful arms. His hands were scrubbing hard over the muscles in his thighs when she rose on her own shaky legs and took the bottle off him, sliding around behind him and squeezing gel onto her palm to massage it into his back.

"I love you too," she murmured, and felt the taut muscles under her fingers relax a little.

Mac sighed deeply, leaning against the wall as she worked on his shoulders.

"I'm sorry, picchu. I would have kept you clear of this if I could."

"I know. You'd have left me a lonely, ignorant human." Heart lifting, she swatted a pleasingly loud slap on his furry buttock. "Bad wolf."

Her eyes blurred at the speed with which he spun, then a second later she was plastered against the wall in front of him, lifted by a firm grip around her upper arms so that her playful eyes were level with the green fire of his.

"Some things I don't accept, even from you, Gemma," Mac growled, only half-amused. Then his mouth twisted in a grimace as they both sensed Hakan sprinting up the stairs in a panic, conveying something about police and a news crew. Her Alpha dropped her on her feet, promising, "You'll pay for that tonight."

Yippee!

She leaned in and kissed him on the chest. Not very contritely.

*

Fierce blue eyes met brown through the weblink. It was late morning, and Gemma was sitting at her desk in the lab in the basement, discussing the morning's findings with Valerie. Mac was at the top of the house making final plans for the clean-up and the war-run with his senior wolves. She had thought that the Whites had already left, but not all. There had been a great deal of organisation to plan, besides having to deal with the police and the press - apparently this morning's local newspaper headline was "Dogfight at Old Kentucky St Corner".

She was astonished again at how much Mac got arranged, and how swiftly his wolves carried out his orders. She had gotten out of the shower to find the bedroom teeming with wolves. Half had been carefully staying out of sight from the street window while holding furniture off the floor, and jumping lightly over sections of the blood-stained carpet which the other wolves had been swiftly crawling over, shredding and bagging. The mattress on the bed-frame which two of them had been holding aloft had by then already smelt of Hakan and Penny - they had obviously disposed of the old one and grabbed a replacement.

While Mac had been out in the road taking to the police, and Gemma had watched astonished while she swiftly dressed, all scraps of fur and stains of blood had been wiped up with the same woody-scented concoction they used on wounds, the large rug from the attic rolled across the centre of the floor, the furniture replaced, and the saved window glass shards artfully scattered across the clean floor by the broken window, together with a couple of bricks.

The same metamorphosis had already occurred throughout the rest of the house, by the time she'd been called downstairs by her fiancé to speak to the cops. And there hadn't been a single sign of a wolf body, just a crowd of panting, sweating Whites silently gulping down water in the kitchen before slinking back out through the smashed-in back door and disappearing to the human eye in a blur of speed.

Gemma was still red-eyed now. She felt so guilty, the fresh mound of the grave in the back garden praying on her mind. Her tears had fallen ceaselessly while she had watched the police examine and photograph the mongrel pile of the dog corpses, some tiny, scruffy scraps smaller than Rowan, which had been strewn along the roadway in front of the house.

Mac had somewhat forcefully dissuaded one nervous policeman from shooting the three limping survivors who had clustered slightly hesitantly around his legs as soon as he'd emerged from the house. The dogs showed no signs of disease, and the local vet he had already called to come and attend them before the cops had arrived had confirmed that none of the corpses or the living dogs showed signs of rabies or anything else dangerous. Mac had lied convincingly that they had just been guarding the house of the couple who'd taken to giving them some food and a bit of affection, especially since the gang who'd attacked had brought some dogs with them too.

The officers could see that he and his fiancée had suffered from a break-in; more than that, a smash-your-way in. He had had a turn-up when they'd first arrived with a guy called Samuel, who ever since then had hung about at the end of their road, watching. Perhaps they could ask him if he'd seen anything - although he seemed to be notably absent this morning.

The police hadn't commented, but their silence had been quite eloquent: apparently Samuel was well known to them as a suspected member of a gang, and this was a standard intimidation/payback form, although not usually in this area of town or with any dogs involved. Gemma had been horrified at the suggestion that Samuel might have had anything to do with this, but Mac had shot her a sad look as he had turned away to speak to the vet again.

Someone betrayed our whereabouts, picchu.

Gemma had retreated back to her lab. She had been sorting out her samples with Ada when the humans had eventually left. The Alpha had then called them both out to witness the dogs being lain gently together in the earth by the senior Whites, to show respect to the strays who had been ripped to pieces trying desperately, hopelessly to defend their Alpha's home until his wolves could arrive.