Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 10

Eugh.

Mac was uneasy, but holding firmly onto his calm, projecting it for Gemma. She slanted her eyes toward him, and relaxed.

Dr Coulter cleared her throat.

"However; however new and vulnerable the werewolf is, stronger even than the instinct to obey, is the instinct to survive," she continued calmly.

Abruptly, Gemma felt the blast into her mind of a powerful, pounding command; a deep, disgusting image of herself raking open her stomach with the claws of her right hand.

Mac was on his feet, mind reverberating in barely controlled anger, with Marsh holding onto his biceps and speaking soft, swift words into his ear. Gemma realised that her right hand had obediently transformed into a clawed fist, but had halted, an inch from the soft cotton shirt covering her belly.

She bowed almost to the floor under the repeated command, the image plastered, burned into her head, but her claws raked the open air. However often the command thundered through her, she couldn't make them connect, she couldn't make them, she was trying, trying, weeping.

"Enough!" clipped the soft Indian lilt, and the bludgeoning command abruptly lifted from Gemma's mind, leaving her panting on the floor, curling into a ball.

"I think that you had better leave, Mackeld," stated Martha Coulter coldly. Gemma hurtled into her mate's mind, and realised that her wolf was being held in check, physically by Marsh and two other wolves on his other side, and mentally by a group of the senshal. They were all looking shocked at the Alpha's behaviour.

She was shuddering to the horrible feeling of having her mind flattened like that, walked over, pounded, ground into the floor, and he folded her in a gentle mental embrace, soothing.

Let me shield you, picchu. I can protect you from this.

Mac flung himself back into his seat, glaring bleakly across at Dr Coulter.

"I fail to see the purpose in this," he growled curtly, while the wolves around him sighed, and relaxed back into their own seats.

"Then control yourself, and wait. We will establish who is her mordeur."

Let me shield you, Mac repeated softly in her mind. Mac feared what was going to happen next. So did Gemma, but she realised - Mac was still under suspicion of being her mordeur. They needed to establish who really was, in order to lift the accusation from him.

Also, if he did shield her - what about his alliance with the Koshuk, the Vanilchov? Vanil was not here, he was still searching desperately for his natalí, but news travelled fast in the wolf world.

I'll be fine, she responded wistfully, and felt him clutch at her.

I'll be fine. We have to do this, Mac. I can't have them suspecting you. It won't last long and I heal really fast.

A group of five nervous, excited cubs were filing in at the side of the chamber, shepherded by anxious parents to stand in a line facing Gemma across the open space before the senshal. The oldest of them could only have been about three, and the youngest was still a wobbly four-legged wolf, the littlest one, with the ragtag ear. Three of them yipped excitedly across at Gemma, the wolf voices strange echoing from the human throats. The littlest waggled her whippy tail, and began to bound excitedly across the expanse of exquisite parquet flooring toward the wereem, but her harassed mother rushed after her and scooped her up by the scruff of her neck before she got far.

The apologetically wriggling cub was placed gently back at the end of the line and licked her mother's nose as she wobbled back around to face Gemma.

They looked at each other.

Then the little girl on the far left frowned, and her father placed a gentle, encouraging hand on her shoulder. The young cub's brow was deeply furrowed, and then Gemma received a fuzzy image of herself bounding around the room. The wereem grinned across at the cub, and the girl smiled back doubtfully, looking questioningly up at her father, who stroked a soothing hand over her hair.

A second image, of herself jumping up in the air and clapping her hands over her head, appeared in Gemma's head. She smiled again at the second wolfcub, shaking her head.

The next second she was on the floor, in wolf form, chasing and snapping at her own tail, stumbling over the loose clothing hanging off her four-legged form. Incredulous anger fired in her mind just as she heard a giggle of laughter from the toddler across the room, and felt a gentle touch of calm from her mate.

Abruptly she had shifted back to human, naked from the waist down - as she hadn't yet learned to transform clothes into pelt, and she was rolling to kiss the feet of her wolf guard. He growled, stepping backward.

Vaguely through the dinning of rising rage in her ears, and the desperate calling of her mate in her head, Gemma heard a chorus of adult wolves shouting to the cub to stop. The loud voices were punctuated by squeals of gleeful laughter and giggles from the line of cubs across the room. She was on her back, forced to spread and close her arms and naked legs as though making snow angles, the black spots clustering in front of her eyes obliterating the tense faces of the senshal. Mac was calling, calling, but the black shroud was thickening, blocking out his voice.

Suddenly the rage solidified, and she knew no more.

Coming around, her right arm felt as though it had been wrenched from the socket, and her left shoulder was torn in a painful, deep bite. Gemma swam back to full consciousness to find that she was pinned to the cool wooden floor on her front, underneath her mate, her furry lycan arms twisted up behind her in an unbreakable hold. Angry voices behind her were scolding the cub for provoking his wereem, and a shocked, scared murmur rustled through the audience benches.

Gemma blinked her eyes open to the sight, not a yard in front of her face, of the five cubs huddled together. The shocked parents were crouched ready to fight in front of them, and all, adults and children alike, were all eyeing her in fear. Except that the fear in the eyes of the little male cub in the centre was tempered by a gleam deep in his eye. He would like to do that again.

Gemma shuddered, shutting her eyes as her muscles shrieked in a protesting, torn feeling while Mac released her and lifted himself off. Already the pain was fading.

What happened? She asked him faintly.

You went berserk and sprang for the cub. Misha was finding it impossible to stop you, and I was the fastest Alpha. I had felt you losing it. Mac's voice was grave, sombre. And bitterly angry. Gemma uncurled, shifting back to human, and felt a wave of uncertainty and worry, pass through the assembled wolves as she regained her feet. Faint nausea rose in her as she saw the deep, scored rips and tears that had shredded the hefty guard hovering beside them.

The Spanish lady senshal was calling for order, for the cubs to be taken from the room, when Martha Coulter interrupted her with, "One moment, Paula."

The room suddenly fell silent again.

"We haven't tried the other two yet," Dr Coulter finished. Gemma felt rage surge through her, but this time it wasn't hers, she was still in shock at the damage she had done to that powerful wolf. The fury was in her mate, he was prowling forward, protesting. A were could not have two mordeurs. The idea was preposterous. Unprecedented.

Gemma sent him a flicker of calm, and then was distracted, trying to smother the surge of giggles which rose at the sudden change in their roles. She felt her mate calming down as he sensed her amusement, clamping that iron control around himself, coming to a halt in front of the senshal.

"This whole situation is unprecedented, Mackeld," responded Dr Coulter, who had retreated back to her seat behind the vast wooden table. "I have never heard the faintest hint of a legend of a were turned by a cub. Yet here we have one. We must explore all possibilities. The shiele of all of them was inside her when she was turned, you said as much yourself."

Mac was bristling angrily inside his head, and Gemma continued to soothe him. If they could just stop the cubs from playing with her like a piece of meat, she could handle it.

I will shield you.

Didn't you try to before?

Echoing silence from her wolf. She had thought so, thought that she had felt the sense of his mind enclosing hers, but he evidently couldn't shield her from her mordeur.

The only way she could break free of the cub's commands was by losing her mind.

Gemma took a deep breath, walked back across the room, and picked up and pulled on her loose cotton trousers, tying the belt string. Her knickers were shredded.

Again, not by her mate. Life was definitely going downhill.

Mac was smiling faintly as he re-seated himself.

Gemma waited, looking across at the petrified cubs.

The fourth eventually calmed enough to send her a trembly image of herself simply clapping her hands.

Nothing.

The last, the friendly little wolfcub, conveyed a terrified, scorching image of Gemma scurrying back on all fours away from her, away as far as she could get. The cub just didn't want her near. The wereem was already obediently curled, lycan, far away in the corner beyond the last of the senshal, pressing herself hard against the cold stone, when the mother wolf lifted up her frightened cub, soothing her, and the connection cut off.

The silence was still, all the wolves holding their breath. But Gemma felt no rage, only sadness. She had seen the little cub's petrified memory of the flaming black, insane eyes of the enraged were leaping across the room towards them. Gemma herself.

Shaking her head, she uncurled glumly to her feet, human, and paced slowly across the floor to retrieve her trousers again, uncaring of her nakedness in the packed room. Her mate was soothing her once more, but she felt shrunken inside her own mind, trying to escape from the recognition of herself as a fearsome monster. His words echoed unheard outside the gloom as she pulled on her slightly torn garment.

"Please take your cubs away now, thank-you," murmured Fealden Wolflord. The white-faced parents began to file from the room, shepherding their cubs. The last, the pale-skinned woman cuddling her little girl, Gemma's second mordeur, paused, and hesitantly addressed the senshal.

"Simon - the male cub who is also the wereem's mordeur, was sired by the Deadwolf Grey. Grey always maintained a strong link with his cubs, he used them as spies among us and rewarded them for loyalty. It may be that he still maintains that link, can direct the yip."

The mother wolf broke off her terse recital and looked across at Gemma, who had halted her fumbling dressing, and was staring across at the pair of them, white faced. Mind blank.

Bizarrely, the tall female bowed to her, a deep, graceful bow with a flick of her fingers to her heart and lips. A mingled sigh and gasp ran through the chamber.

"Thank-you," murmured the Spanish senshal, smiling at the ex-Grey wolf, and mother departed with her squirming cub.

Gemma seemed to have sunk into shock. She sat quietly on her bench while the arguments ranged around her, scorching through the air, the voices heated. They didn't make sense. Nothing seemed to make sense, to reach her. Did this mean she was vulnerable to Grey? Would obey his orders, given through his cub? Her stomach was hollow, aching.

Mac had been so right not to trust her with his secrets.

Eventually, she realised that the echoing voices had stopped, and the room was silent, the senshal frowning, thoughts bounding between them. After many long, silent minutes of rising tension, the long line of senshal relaxed. All except Fealden turned to look at Gemma, soberly. Then with a sigh the African wolf on the end rose majestically to his feet, flicking a glance at the Wolflord before he turned to address the room, and more specifically, Mac.

"Ulf Mackeld. Your naulu protected her as a human. The same for Fealden Wolflord's friendship. However, as a werewolf, she is subject to senshal law, as are wolves. We have agreed that none of her mordeurs, including yourself, are to blame for her existence, as none alone turned or intended to turn her."

A sigh ran through the packed audience chamber.

"However," the powerful, dark-skinned wolf voice echoed with steely resolve, "the creation of this wereem, the first in two centuries, is a threat to our society, our secrecy."

Mac was quivering on his seat behind her, she could sense the effort he was putting out to control himself.

"Your argument that as his allies created this one, Tzo has no right to demand retribution, does not hold. Although the Deadwolf Grey and his pack contributed to her turning, the initiation was yours, and she evidently looks to you. You are her Alpha, so she is an Aster. Tzo is demanding that as the Aster have increased their troops in this way, he must in fairness be allowed to do so also."

Mac bristled across the room at his enemy.

The senshal spokesman continued.

"This we cannot permit. The situation is already dangerously unstable, and we cannot allow it to escalate. I'm sorry, Mackeld, but the senshal have declared the wereem Dead."

The last words were lost under an anguished, enraged howl as a blur of tawny fur slammed into her guard, catapulting him across the room into one of the astounded door wardens.

Come on!

The sharp command brought Gemma to her feet, but she froze, sickened, as suddenly her mate was plastered to the floor, as though a gigantic, invisible palm had slammed down upon him.

"Mackeld!" barked the speaker. The senshal were all on their feet, shocked, staring at the Alpha pressed against the floor, their faces creasing with effort as he continued to struggle. All except Fealden, who had remained seated, detached, stiffly staring over their heads out of the Eastern windows with a bleak expression on his face.

Gemma's heart shrank as she saw her grim-faced guard bounding back towards her, and realised that the senshal meant their sentence to be carried out immediately. Then her eyes were yanked back to her mate when a gasp rang through the room.

Mac's face was twisted in intense pain, but he was slowly forcing himself back to his feet, shaking his head in a raging, vicious negative. Suddenly something holding him seemed to snap, and the Celtic senshal reeled, clutching at his head. Mac pounced on the passing guard, ripping a deep gash in his leg as he spun to toss him back across the room. The hapless, grizzled wolf flew, arms flailing, one leg trailing, to crash into the tier of benches and Alphas rising to their feet on the opposite side.

All eyes were on Mac, spellbound, astounded.

He was twisting, snarling, leaping and feinting in the air in the centre of the star. Gemma could sense the senshal trying to join together again, to mentally force her wolf back to the ground, hold him down and make him yield to reason. They were wincing and reeling around him, eyes burning, shuddering. Failing.

Each in turn took a battering from the Mackeld Alpha's mind as he whirled, attacking wherever the meld was weakest, before they could properly coalesce, his body mimicking the attacks in his mind, just as the senshal were reeling in response. Then out of the corner of her eye, Gemma saw two hulking Alphas converging on her mate, and remembered what he had said about physical submission reinforcing mental.

Gemma's heart leapt in fury; however, this time a necessary glimmer of thought held her together. She catapulted as a loup into the threat bearing down on her mate, the surprise of her attack taking the nearest unawares, managing to send him tumbling across the floor as she collided with him from the side, just as Gus had taught her. Then she felt a sharp tug on her mind while Mac leapt over her to bowl over the second Alpha.

JUMP! the command reverberated in her head while she scrambled back to her feet. The image was clear, and they sprang together, two wolves side by side, in a long powerful leap over the heads of the shouting senshal to smash through the huge, stained-glass window above them, shattering glass and bending soft lead. Gemma felt a different order grasping at her mind, but the tentative hold slid away when Mac mentally punched the wolf in the face. Abruptly a smooth, opaque blanket smothered cloyingly around her thoughts while they rolled together down the steeply pitched slate roof outside the audience chamber.

They dropped down from the roof to land on all fours, already running, among the sparse scatter of startled wolves in the courtyard. The gateman rose to his feet, then flinched and dodged out of the way when Mac snarled at him. He watched, mouth open, as the pair careered past, out of the open gate, onto the tree-lined, indistinct dirt track.

Mac's mind was also sheltered inside the oppressive blanket, it was his shield for them both. The sense of him there with her soothed the quivering panic Gemma could feel hovering at the edges of her mind. Her mate's thoughts were still echoing with rage, mixed with a bitter seethe at the idiotic, short-sighted, unjust judgement of the senshal. But his need to plan was cresting over the rage, and his driving purpose was easy to read: to evade the senshal's trackers and get his mate to safety. Gemma felt her throat constricting with tears - she couldn't even cry in this form! - when she realised his full, bitter purpose. To hide them both. Because, for protecting her from the senshal's judgement, he was now also an exile: outlawed, condemned. A Deadwolf.

Run, my picchu, he soothed her.

Shocked, Gemma recognised the happiness welling up in her mate.

*

Many, many thanks for all the comments and votes for Chapter Nine. I write for my readers, and would have given up long ago if you weren't such an inspiring audience. I'm enjoying it, thanks!

Yes, Gemma and Mac's story is pulling to a close, now. There are two or three more chapters after this one, possibly four, depending on how side-tracked they get.

And I have tried to go over this chapter enough to make place, time and timing clear, while keeping the pace, but it's sometimes hard to judge. Hope it works.

Thanks so much voting and letting me know what you think!

Smiler

Alfamme female Alpha

Argen silver alloy which debilitates wolves

Asage mother wolf with young cubs

Chituk territory challenge

Convey send information mind-to-mind, either by words or images/ feelings

Defasio personal, formal challenge

Doft mating scent

Fria formal welcome, denoting peace

Loup what a human calls a wolf (canis lupus);

name used for four-legged form by a wolf

Manu a human

Mordeur the wolf who a werewolf answers to, the one who bit and turned him

Mortefio death challenge

Natál litter-brother

Natalí litter-sister

Naulu mark of protection

Phys physician, wolf doctor

Piquant battle headache

Picchu little jug of sweetness (personal nickname)

Ruggare young male wolf

Ruhkreis circle of peace for mates during the rut

Shiatz healing coma

Shiele essence, personal strength

Sjeste young female wolf or wolves

Sjestval female's right to leave a mate

Wereem female werewolf

Werewolf human who has been bitten and turned, not born a shapeshifter

Wolf natural born shapeshifter with three forms, human, lycan or wolf;

name used for lycan form by a wolf