Mated to the Pack Ch. 32

This chapter contains very little in the way of sex. One act of obeisance to Jessica, Gretchen and Sonya. Thanks once more to the editors who help me write better product, Johnny Galt and Steve150177.

Mated to the Pack, Ch 32

I Say Goodbye to Loved Ones and Attend a Hearing for Quinn

I was still suffering from lack of sleep from my ordeal, and the emotional trauma. I slept on the plane, and in the car on the drive from the airport. When I got to Wolf Central, my parents were there, and I rushed into their arms and broke into tears. They sat me down and held me for the longest time as I sobbed my eyes out. I think they realized how tired I was when I started falling asleep in Dad's arms.

"You need to go to bed, Jessica," Mom said.

"I know, but I have to see the children first, see that they're okay, and Gretchen, to see her. I was told she's here. I should say something to Sasha, too. She lost her son."

"Sasha is with the grandchildren now," Dad said. "I think Gretchen is there, too."

"Show me," I said.

They led me to the room where all four of them were sitting on the floor, the adults playing with the children. Gretchen had her arm in a cast, so I couldn't see the extent of her damage. Was it growing back?

"Mommy!" Matthew said, seeing me. He stood up and toddled towards me and I sank to my knees and hugged him so hard, I almost smothered him.

"My baby, oh, I love you so much."

"Where were you, Mommy?"

"Some bad people took me away, honey. I had to be rescued."

"Where are the bad people?"

"Gone, and they're never coming back."

I was sure word had preceded my arrival. Neither adult was surprised at my announcement. I hugged Elizabeth too. She was almost like my child. She was Sean's and that made her mine. Then I hugged Sasha and started crying again. I felt so fucking bad, and it didn't feel like my heart would ever heal.

Wolves were probably used to their human children dying before them. I'm sure, that on some level, Sasha had prepared for the eventuality that she'd see her son die. Probably not within seven years of finding him, but prepared. Still, she wept with me, for the man we both loved so much.

"Where's Lenore?" I asked when I started to get a hold of myself.

"She's in bed," Gretchen said. "Major depression. She's lost weight because she's not eating that well. Doesn't sleep well either. She walked into it shortly after the police got there. Saw things she can't unsee."

I couldn't unsee them either. I understood. I wanted to sleep for a week myself. Maybe it was worse walking in at the end, and not struggling so hard as we fought to survive, just walking into a slaughter house and seeing the carnage left behind. I got up and hugged Gretchen, holding her close, feeling her breath catch as I held her.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

"Getting by."

"Getting by? You're not telling me much, Gretch."

"I've had a lot of nightmares. Although they've become fewer since finding out you're alive. The kids have them too. They can't see a wolf without screaming."

Great, I was a wolf, and so was Gretchen, and their grandmother. The stuff of my children's nightmares, the big, bad, wolf. Fuck! I wondered how they were handling having the kids here. There was nothing but wolves at Wolf Central.

"I'm exhausted. Can you come to bed with me? I need to eat first. Lots of protein."

"I'll come to bed with you, and I'm starving myself. The arm, you know."

"Right. The arm. Can you talk about it?"

"Not in front of the children."

I suddenly realized why Gretchen had a cast on. The kids couldn't see her arm growing back. For them, it had to be broken, not severed. So many more questions.

"I'll come with you to the kitchen," Sasha said, "if your parents can watch the children. They're almost ready for bed."

"We've got it," Mom said.

We went to the kitchen where Gretchen and I would each scarf down about two pounds of raw venison. Sasha ate about a pound. Raw meat was surprisingly good to my new taste buds. Before we started in on the food, Gretchen removed the cast, which was a prop anyway and showed me her right arm. Her arm had been severed at the elbow. She seemed to have added three or so inches to the stump, though it was still a stump.

"Every time I shift, I add another half inch or so," Gretchen said.

"How often are you shifting?"

"I really can't stand shifting more than two to three times a day," Gretchen said. "It's so fucking painful. What happened to you? Nobody has told me much thus far."

I explained much of what happened, although bits were hazy as I'd been sleeping for some of it.

"Vasilly sliced your belly open?" Gretchen said when I reached that part. "Do you have a scar?"

"No. Apparently what was done to me as a human, didn't carry over to werewolf. Except for having hair all over again and no tattoo, I seem to be right as rain. I shifted three times to wolf and back that first night, but I haven't shifted again since, due to the travel."

"It hurts like bloody hell," Gretchen said. "Takes me forever to shift."

"Me, too. I can't believe wolves like Sasha can shift in less than a second, and they're so accustomed to the pain, they're not screaming every time they shift."

"Over a hundred years of shifts, and you won't either," Sasha said, slapping the venison steaks on plates, and setting them down in front of us. "After the first month of shifting, you're down to under two or three minutes for the shift, depending on how often you do it, and we've built up a tolerance to pain, because puppies get hurt a lot when they're young, playing. Broken bones and torn flesh, are a regular occurrence of their rough housing. It's the reason they can't be raised with humans. The speed of shifting does make a difference, as you're not in pain as long, although it still hurts as much. You'll get used to it."

"Aren't the wolves shifting here at wolf central?"

"In the woods. Gretchen is the only one shifting here, and it's done in a soundproof room, so she doesn't scare the children with her screaming."

"Someone needs to train us to be wolves. I don't understand wolf speech. Will someone give us lessons?"

"You'll get lessons on hunting and tracking, taking down game, and some on speech, although you'll start to recognize much of wolf speech on your own, the more time you spend as a wolf."

"Has Quinn turned himself in yet?"

"About a day ago. He stopped here to check on Gretchen and see his child before turning himself in."

"Where is he now?"

"They have a secret Were prison near Boston. He turned himself in to the Feds investigating your case, and they transported him there."

"I need to go see him," I said.

"We'll try to make some arrangements," Sasha said. "It might take a while and we need to hold the funeral for Sean and Maria."

Of course, mentioning the funeral brought all those painful memories to the surface and I began to cry again, and soon found myself wrapped in Gretchen's left arm, the right stub held awkwardly away, so I cried harder.

Somehow, I managed to finish my meat, then Gretchen led me to her room. I'd originally intended to have sex with her, but fell asleep instead. I did manage to enjoy a brief sixty-nine with her the next morning, but it was odd not finding her shaved bald. Like me, every time she shifted, her pubic hair returned, and since she was shifting a couple times a day, there was no point in shaving it. I noticed the scents associated with sex were so much richer and clearly defined. I was reasonably certain I could pick her out of a room crowded with people while blindfolded, by scent alone.

We showered and dressed, and after eating, I was led to Lenore's room. While still pregnant, she was thin, wan and curled up in a little ball, her eyes closed. This wouldn't do at all. Someone had to end up raising my kid and I hoped it would be Lenore.

"Get up, you lazy slut. It's time for you to lick my pussy."

She opened her eyes, turned, and started crying. I got into bed with her and held her.

"I heard you were rescued," she said after the worst of her tears were over.

"I was. Did you also hear I was turned?"

"Turned?"

"Quinn had to bite me to save my life. I'm a wolf shifter now, which brings me to the main reason I'm here. You need to get the fuck out of bed and start living again. I need you, more than I ever needed a dumb slut like you before. As a Were, I can't raise my son much longer. Maybe three to five years, then I need someone else to adopt him because he can't know about shifters until after he's old enough not to blab. I want you to adopt him because you already know and love him, and because Elizabeth is his half sister. My parents would probably do it, but they've already got Kathleen and they're older. They don't need another kid, but they need to see their grandchild, so I don't want Matthew raised by total strangers.

"Not to mention that at the current moment, our kids are scared to death of wolves. I'm a wolf, Gretchen's a wolf. At the moment, my parents, you, and the kids are the only non-wolves here. We need to move them someplace else, so the wolves can go about their business. You need to get off your pregnant ass and start taking responsibility for shit."

"Where will we go. I can't go back to our home. Not now, maybe not ever."

"It will be a while before our place is habitable again, but we can stay with my parents for now, while we look for something else suitable. I know you hurt. I hurt too, more than I can say. When they killed Sean and took me, and I had to be bitten to save me, they orphaned my son. He has no father, and soon enough, he'll have no mother either. You need to step up, Lenore. You're carrying a new life inside you. If you starve, you're killing the puppy as well, and leaving Sean's children without anyone. You can't do that. I need you.

"Sean's parents are coming here in two hours, and I'm going to tell them about wolves and how their son died, and that I can no longer raise their grandchildren. I want you up, cleaned up, fed, and standing by my side when I tell them that. I want you telling them that you're going to be the mother their grandchildren need. If you get up now, I'll help you shower."

She nodded and I had to half drag her out of bed. I stripped off again and helped her shower, and I even shampooed her hair, which at the moment, was oily and stringy. We got dressed and had something to eat, me eating raw hamburger, and Lenore having an egg and bacon. Baby steps.

Maggie, Gordon and Karina arrived a little after ten, and Lenore was ready to see them. Charlotte was no longer Karina's bodyguard. She had another female, Felicia. Of course, the instant we all saw each other, it turned into another sob fest. I wondered if my eyes would still look red and inflamed after my next shift. They looked like shit now. After getting the tears out of the way, they saw their grandchildren for a little while and then it was time for business. The children were taken out of the room by my parents, leaving just the seven of us (Gretchen was with us), until Sasha and Rene joined us, bringing two NDAs.

"Mom, Dad," I said, "You're about to learn something which needs to kept secret from everyone who hasn't signed one of these forms. You need to read these, and then sign them, promising to keep this information secret from anyone and everyone who doesn't know and hasn't signed a similar form, including Devin. Bad things happen to those who talk."

"Don't Karina and Felicia need to sign one?" Gordon asked.

"Karina signed one a long time ago, and she's kept her promise never to reveal what she knew, because you're clueless. Felicia doesn't have to sign for reasons that will become obvious after you sign. Go ahead, take your time, make sure you understand."

They read over the documents and were a little surprised at the severity of the language, but both of them signed. I handed the forms back to Rene.

"I'd like to start by informing you that you're in the presence of Sean's birth mother. Sasha was Sean's mother. She was raped and when Sean was born, she had to give him up for adoption. She couldn't raise him, so Sean was taken by the adoption agency that you adopted him from. She never knew who he was until I was able to find him."

Maggie looked closely at Sasha "She must have been six years old when she had him."

"I was a hundred years old when I had him," Sasha said. "That's the reason you had to sign those forms. I'm not human. I'm a shapeshifter, a werewolf, according to human legends, as is my mate, Rene, and Karina's bodyguard, Felicia."

"Are you saying Sean was a werewolf, because that's damned nonsense. We would have known," Gordon said.

"No, Sean was fully human, even though the two Weres that made him were wolf shifters. Sasha was in her human form when she was raped by another wolf in his human form. When children are born of that union, they're fully human. If two Weres mate as wolves, they have fully wolf puppies, not other Weres. The only way for a werewolf to be created, is to either be bitten by one, which is currently prohibited by treaty with the US government, or for a male shifter in wolf form, to mate with a human female. That's the reason Karina signed the NDA. The children she's been providing for infertile couples, are werewolf puppies, and Felicia is the werewolf bodyguard assigned to protect her, as was Charlotte before her."

They both looked at Karina and she said, "It's true. I've been having werewolf puppies. I'm about to be bred for my fourth, at which point I'll collect my bonus."

"My mother is also the human result of a wolf/human mating, and given up for adoption. Her father is an Alpha wolf in northern Wisconsin. You met Gerhard at our wedding. I don't want you to have to accept my word on faith. Rene and Sasha are both going to remove their clothes and shift to their wolves. You may pet them if you wish. They aren't dangerous to you, and in fact, Sasha is extremely grateful for the remarkable job you did raising her son."

Both wolves removed their clothes, then shifted. To see it actually happen, even if you're sort of expecting it, is startling the first time, especially when it's so fast, you might miss it if you blinked. Sasha's wolf slowly approached Maggie and laid her head in Maggie's lap. Maggie petted it, then Sasha went to Gordon and did the same thing. After he'd rubbed the wolf, Sasha stepped back, then both she and Rene shifted again. Both got dressed.

I continued. "Werewolf puppies are damned near indestructible, and live around three hundred years. Werewolves heal from just about any wound not caused by silver, or massive blood loss before they're able to heal themselves. Sasha couldn't raise Sean because he would have been in danger, and he would have eventually learned of, and inadvertently, disclosed the presence of werewolves to people who shouldn't know. That's why he was given up for adoption.

"Sean was killed and I was taken, by rogue werewolves, most of them out of Canada. They were looking for another werewolf, Quinn. You also met him at my wedding and various other times. Before meeting Sean, I'd been with him a few months, but I couldn't marry a wolf and gave him up. One of the wolves with them was the werewolf who raped Sasha. He didn't know he had a son from that rape, so he didn't know he was attacking his own child's home. He was not personally responsible for killing Sean. I killed the wolf that killed him. I suspected who he was when I saw him because he was missing his genitals. He'd been gelded after attempting to rape another wolf.

"I informed him he was responsible for killing his own son, and that he was about to kill his own grandchildren. He protected them, making the other wolves leave, sparing Gretchen and the two children. They took me because I was carrying a werewolf puppy. When I was taken, many of the wolves in North America began hunting them down. The man who took me was insane, a psychotic killer. When he knew he was going to be caught, he cut open my pregnant belly. I was going to die in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, except Quinn sacrificed his own freedom and bit me, to turn me into a werewolf so I could heal. I can't continue to raise Matthew for much longer.

"Like Sean, Matthew would be in danger, not from me, or other adult wolves, but from puppies who didn't realize how fragile Matthew is compared to them, and eventually, he would realize I'm no longer human, and tell his teachers or classmates than I'm a werewolf, which needs to be kept secret. I'll eventually need to give him up for adoption, but I believe that Lenore will adopt him and care for him," Lenore was nodding, "and my parents and you, will be able to know and love your grandchildren as you would have, if Sean had survived, but I'll need to pass out of his life at some point, before it becomes obvious to the children that I'm now different."

"What happened to the wolves who killed Sean and took you?" Maggie asked.

"Sasha's rapist, the one who saved your grandchildren and his own, was shot in the head and killed by the psychotic wolf, along with two others that opposed him. Most of the others abandoned him after that and are slowly being hunted down by other wolves who are required to police their own society. The one who attempted to kill me and the other wolf with him, had their arms and legs severed by silver weapons, and they were crucified onto trees in the Ontario wilderness after their genitals were removed for raping me. They are slowly starving to death, their bodies slowly withering, attempting to heal what can't be healed. Since they're so damned hard to kill, they may take weeks to die of eventual starvation."

"Good," Maggie said.

"Gretchen's arm was bitten off by a wolf, and she got turned as well. Each time she shifts to a wolf, her arm is slowly healing. Shifting to our wolf is an extremely painful process, and Gretchen and I aren't very good at it yet. It takes us in the general neighborhood of ten minutes to shift. As you could see, Sasha and Rene can both shift in under a second. It's just as painful, but the pain is of shorter duration. We obviously can't shift in front of the children, who are now terrified of wolves due to what happened at our house. Gretchen is wearing a fake cast because, to the children, her arm is broken, not bitten off. They can't see it regenerate.

"I wanted you to know, because you needed to know how your son died, how he bravely fought for me and the children, and because as much as I'd like to be, I cannot remain as Matthew's mother for more than a few years, and then I'll disappear out of his life. To some extent, it may get harder for me, the longer I remain his mother, and I may not be able to remain as long as I'd wish because it will be more difficult. I will remain in the background and look after them from afar, just as Sasha looked after Sean when she found out he was her son. The house we lived in was largely given to us by the pack because he was her son, although I also gave up my million dollar bonus, which I'm not entitled to any more because the fourth puppy I promised, was killed and I can no longer provide puppies for the pack.

"I, and the other wolves, will see that Lenore has the help she needs with the children. Sasha considers them to be her grandchildren as much as you do, and she'll see that they're protected. I may be able to keep my job for a little longer, but around the same time I leave Matthew's life, I'll need to leave my job. When you're not growing old, you tend to stand out. I can't afford to stand out. I might have to change my name a few times, but the government helps with that because of the treaty. I can continue to contact you, but I won't be able to remain in contact with Devin."