Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 12

"Among wolves also. Ask by all means. I will not share this knowledge until you have confirmed with your Alpha," the old woman promised. Then she added, seemingly inconsequently, "You will make him an excellent mate."

Gemma's heart clenched in pain and longing. "I am a werewolf," she retorted gruffly, glancing down to open the new email which had appeared to hide her eyes. "Heaven only knows what I will end up." Then a thought occurred to her: "I wish - do you know if I can get hold of some of Dr Coulter's research papers so I can at least find out what might happen to me, what is likely?"

She wanted to shield Mac as best she could.

The disgusted snort which answered her was easily audible over the video link, and Gemma looked up from the notes on the wolf autoimmune response to silver, startled.

"You're the third werewolf she's ever met," Valerie answered the question in Gemma's eyes caustically. "So what makes her a 'Werewolf expert', hmm?"

The old lady shook her head, shrugging in a French fashion. "Today, perhaps, we know so little. But what you really need are copies of the old tracts from the physicians who used to actually deal with the werewolf armies, day in, day out, during the Steppe Wars and before. The ones Martha ignores because they do not agree with her. I believe that some remain in the Caucasian archives, and will see whether we can perhaps obtain copies."

Gemma smiled tentatively. She daren't hope.

Yet Valerie was proving to be such a gift. A sharply intelligent mentor, who seemed also genuinely interested in Gemma's responses to and frustrations with her changing self. She had charmingly asked only yesterday whether she could take notes on her young friend's progress; after all, though retired, she was a physician, and while she had known many werewolves when she was young, she had not paid much attention to them. It seemed to be the time now to redress that omission.

Gemma herself was a researcher, and here she found someone who wanted to help. Someone Gemma didn't have to hide the insane, feral side from. Someone it didn't hurt to see the steady erosion of her sanity or hear how it felt. Poor Mac.

Two days later, the young werewolf was again sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room in front of her computer screen, her brain firing with fierce volleys of careening thoughts as she read and sifted through the meanings in her latest email from the physician. Valerie's emails were never light, easy material. But they helped so much. She didn't register the soft sound of the heavy door opening behind her.

'I agree, the meticulous case notes in the last chapters of Meditations on Symptoms could be interpreted as meaning that some of the insane werewolves kept for observation periodically regained control of themselves, even once they appeared to have grown free of their Mordeur. However, the ancient language of the text makes the translation ambiguous, and there is no other surviving document such as this. Many believe that Amesteres was ridiculously biased towards werewolves. And nowadays, nobody cares.

The world has changed since the Steppe Wars, and the gap between humans and wolves has been growing for a long time. It is now extremely rare for a wolf to live among humans for a significant period, and it has been almost three millennia since last men were truly aware of our existence. As creating werewolves gradually became less needful, then less fashionable, then frowned upon, and of late downright illegal, we have also grown increasingly detached from humans.

I'm a little disturbed by the growing distrust and dislike of humans which is rising throughout our world, enhanced by the escalating industrialisation and urbanisation of human society. Tzo is not alone in advocating that we combat the pollution which so damages our ranges and restricts our freedom by direct attack on the source: the humans.'

"Picchuuuu?" Her mate's voice was soft, with an atrocious French accent. He had paused just inside the basement room, leaning back against the door which closed with a solid clunk. ""Not tonight, Picchu."," he misquoted.

"Mac!" Gemma cried joyously, bounding up from her position cross-legged on the empty floor, where she'd been sitting facing the large screen embedded into the cream concrete wall. She spun and ran happily across the echoing vault-like room to greet him, apologising, "You're back! I didn't hear you."

The relaxation of his taut frame was so slight that it was almost impossible to see, and besides she was mesmerised, as ever, by the beautiful grin that split his face while she sprang into his arms and hugged him as hard as she could.

"What, only a hug?" he complained, and she lifted her head, tilting it back while he bent his lips fiercely to hers. A long, slow tingle shimmered down her spine, and she felt the warm relaxation gradually melting through every pore while his arms tightened ardently.

She was panting hard when they finally broke apart, a happy little smile curving her lips, and she ran a gentle finger down his nose before she dove back in to hug him again.

"I didn't hear a peep from you, picchu, you are getting very good at shielding your thoughts automatically. What had you so absorbed?" her mate questioned, lifting her up indulgently so she could kiss his nose.

"Valerie's volunteers experienced a similar loss of scent when they tested a minuscule sample made of our latest findings," she explained happily. Mac rolled his eyes at the "our", but in truth he helped immensely - she had a fantastically energetic lab technician at the moment. He didn't know much about chemistry, but every single implement in the lab was meticulously washed, dried and returned to its place almost as soon as she placed it in the soaking solution, and any new chemical, implement or piece of equipment she asked for appeared overnight, if not within hours."

"The scentlessness only lasted for seconds, but -," Gemma grinned up at him, not finishing the sentence, and her mate lifted her up and swung her around in a circle, kissing her breathless.

"You genius," he said proudly as he put her back down again.

Gemma fluttered her lashes, wrinkling her nose cheekily up at him, muttering the words Alfamme matches Alpha under her breath while she regained her breath. Then she continued cheerfully, "There are other ingredients I haven't really worked out yet. The bit there must be to make it adhere to a wolf, because it lasts far longer in the ex-Greys, I'm still finding it hard to pin that down. And there is more to it, but we're getting there."

Mac dropped a brief further kiss on the tip of her nose, before releasing her, slanting smiling eyes back her way as he turned to wrap both hands around the smooth vertical bar of the handle embedded in the door.

We are a perfect match, he agreed, bracing his right foot on the wall beside the door, and gradually leaning back, hauling with all his weight and strength, pushing with his straightening leg.

Yup, we complement each other beautifully. I am the intelligent one. You are the delicious, brawny ornament, Gemma teased.

"It's a beautiful evening," she continued quickly before he could reply, resting her hand lightly on his straining back while she glanced up at the wide, short windows situated high up at the top of the blank concrete wall. She smiled at the shimmer of multi-coloured warm evening light bouncing through the panes down into the bare room. To think that she used to argue about him dragging her out to eat every night.

Slowly, as Mac hauled, breathing hard, the door cracked open.

"Shall we stroll down to the harbour?" she suggested.

They never spoke of the reason she was in this room; the deeply scored rips and bites on the door and doorframe, the scrabbling scratches up toward the high, soundproofed windows. She knew he detested leaving her in here, but as her rages frequently now lasted several hours, he had to leave her somewhere secure occasionally while he went out for food, or to replenish their chemical stock. Today he had been out to collect more samples for her from the parcel office. She had asked him to leave her behind, so that she could get on with deciphering the latest results. And the only safe place to leave her was in her basement strongroom, in case the rage hit.

She had been so touched, the first time she'd come around alone in here. Her computer was in the lab, but along with the other refinements he'd had added to the house before they moved in, his brother Karl had routed her office computer to an additional, huge touch-screen monitor embedded in the concrete wall of her 'panic room'. That was how she referred to this place. And the screen was not something with which she could hurt herself, or her mate, but a reminder as soon as she came to herself that her wolf loved her. Was thinking of her, and did his utmost to help. By giving her her work. And her contact with the outside world.

The door clicked into the locked-open position, and Mac sighed and let go of the handle, breathing deeply as he straightening up. He slid a hand down her arm to engulf hers and suggested, "The Waterfront Café?"

A normal couple, deciding where to go out for the evening. Gemma smiled to herself as she walked upstairs with her wolf.

"Only if you'll talk to the poor wee worshipping mongrels. I'm not being seen with a superior-than-thou almighty Alpha, it's embarrassing."

"Hah," responded Mac, "You wait until we're followed around like your Pied Piper, then you'll find out what embarrassing really is."

"They've promised not to," cajoled Gemma.

"They're dogs: most of them haven't any discipline," her mate objected.

"Nor have werewolves," she retorted.

Mac growled under his breath, snorting something that sounded like, "That old sympathy argument."

Gemma grinned and kissed his knuckles, "We wolf rejects must stick together."

Mac swooped around faster than she could blink, plastered her to the wall, and kissed her deeply, searingly. Reject?

Gemma struggled to think coherently as he lifted away, her mind shuddering from his passion, body aching in want and blood surging in her veins. The air brushing her skin was torture. Her body was so attuned to his.

Do you feel like a reject? he asked.

Gemma had to heave in a few more breaths, brain whirling in heat, before she managed to reply.

"Um -not sure," she whispered hoarsely. "Could we try that again?"

They were late for dinner.

Another week almost gone. This one frustrating in its lack of further progress. Gemma was sitting in her lab, labelling up a new set of plastic bags for the next series of experiments, and griping at Valerie over the web-link. Mac was upstairs in the kitchen, roasting something that smelled delicious.

"Yeah, I'll say the rage is getting stronger," complained Gemma. "I can't believe how contentious the wolf bit of me is," she growled to the old woman. Her mentor was sitting stiffly upright in her armchair, her strong, lined face clearly visible across the web-link in the pale evening light which was filtering in through the windows of her small home on the other side of the world.

"What happened?" responded Valerie. "What triggered the rage this time?"

Shifting her buttocks on her chair, slightly flushed, Gemma opened her mouth. "I -," her cheeks reddened, and her throat tightened around the next words.

She's a doctor, she reminded herself.

"I felt a sudden surge of - affection," she explained inadequately.

The old eyes crinkled in amusement.

"It was totally inappropriate," Gemma complained, suddenly eloquent. "We were in the middle of the grocery store, yet I was suddenly furious that he wouldn't let me -." She broke off, the red in her cheeks darkening.

However, Valerie was now serious, alert. "Are you sure? Were you aware yourself how inappropriate the time and place were?" she queried, eyes pondering something internal.

"Of course I was! We were in the middle of a crowd of happy shoppers, for Pete's sake!" squeaked Gemma.

"Then think," admonished the old physician. "The anger. And the lust - I refuse to call it affection - catalogue the sequence properly. I assume you were not at all angry about anything else initially?" she asked.

"No," returned Gemma, slightly puzzled. "I was happy - teasing him." She flushed darker again. She wasn't going to go into details about that.

"So hence your lust increased," concluded Valerie. "Because of where you were, did you supress it?"

"Of course I did! I'm not into exhibitionism."

Valerie smiled, "So, did you actually get angry with yourself for repressing your natural urges, or with your mate for rebuffing you?"

"With Mac!" retorted Gemma. "He -" She stopped abruptly, thinking back. She had been tense, feeling that shimmer of overpowering feeling - lust or rage, she wasn't sure which, growing within herself. So she had pulled down his head so that she could kiss him in blatant invitation.

She felt as though a heavy stone of guilt was sinking in her stomach.

She had already been seething when she kissed him, because she had been restraining herself.

And then she had raged at her mate, taken the fight to him when he had endorsed her own internal denial of the lust.

Dammit.

She felt a little sick. How was she supposed to deal with this? When she couldn't control the wolf inside her, she turned to Mac, expecting him to do so. Then attacking him when he did.

Head down, jaw jutting she glared at the foot of the wall, tears glistening in her eyes as she whispered as much to her mentor.

"Stupid wolf," she growled in conclusion. For once she didn't mean Mac.

Gemma heard a sigh from the speaker and looked up to see the old physician wrinkling her nose reflectively.

"Therein lies your problem, I think."

"You don't say - stupid, stupid, werewolf," Gemma cursed.

The liquid blue eyes lifted, and the alert gleam in them sent a jolt through the young werewolf sitting at her desk. "No, you misunderstood me," replied Valerie. "You treat the wolf part of you as though it were not part of you," added the Frenchwoman. "As an irritating disease, an enemy, and you never allow yourself to live in your wolf side."

"It keeps attacking people! Attacking Mac! All it ever .."

"I," interrupted Valerie firmly.

".. does is -. What?" exclaimed the werewolf.

"I keep attacking people," the little old lady corrected her phrasing. Gemma felt a surge of revulsion followed by a flash of rage, and glared at the screen. That is not me.

"And you are finding it harder to control because you never listen to what it is trying to tell you, convinced that the wolf side is merely insane and wrong. So you - the wolf, you - are getting angrier. The wolf within is not an enemy, Gemma. You have to learn to read that part of yourself, to pay attention to your instincts, because unless I miss my guess they are growing in strength as the change progresses. In a wolf-born the balance is pretty much half and half. And you will not be able to smother half of yourself, or even hold yourself in check much longer."

Gemma growled, furious. "IT is NOT ME!" she hissed. The wolf side was an irrational, feral bundle of nerves and powerful emotions that just messed everything up and wasted time, precious time, when she had a desperate feeling that she had so little left. That was what she resented most of all: the time lost in the mad rages, time which she could have, should have spent helping or loving her mate.

She was halted by a responding deeper, admonitory growl from the old woman rising to her feet on the screen. Valerie's eyes were growing dark, glowing as she walked forward toward the camera, glaring power. Even though the link, it echoed.

Something inside Gemma shrank. The internal, whirling bitterness subsided, to her astonishment, and she gaped, held by the glowing, fiery black-flecked blue eyes of her mentor. Wolf eyes.

"Don't growl at me, child," rebuked Valerie. Gemma's mouth was still open, or she'd have felt her jaw drop at the form of address.

"Shit happens. You are a wolf. Stop whining, accept it, and learn to live with it," said Valerie.

"I am a werewolf," spluttered Gemma.

"Shut up," responded the woman on the screen. "Which of us is the physician, here? Have you yet to find anything in our research to suggest that there is any tangible, physical difference between a wolf and a werewolf? I have not. And I know far better than you what to look for."

Gemma gaped for a moment longer, then felt a second rush of boiling anger at the hope briefly engendered by Frenchwoman's obtuseness and snarled, "The rut cycle. And no cubs."

"New wereem came into heat on average four times in the first year, which is principally why they were created," agreed Valerie. "Whereas a sjeste is fertile about once every three years. But a human female, once a month, is this not so?"

She continued, "The texts indicate that by the time a wereem had reached insanity, grown free, the rut frequency had also died down. They were then tiresome as pets, and dangerous to keep for sentimental reasons as they could be cunning in their rage, seeming sweet, yet treacherous, so were nearly always destroyed."

Gemma felt her lip lifting in a silent snarl, anger tightening along her skin. Yes, what she had read had communicated this knowledge also, but to hear it stated so matter-of-factly made her burn with resentment. It explained the attitude of the majority of wolves she'd met since she'd been turned. Wolves saw her as a mindless, dangerous plaything or accessory. She wouldn't explain things to a pet either. Or keep a dangerous one.

"There is no reason to believe that in time a wereem's reproductive system would not have reached the same two-year cycle as that of a sjeste," continued Valerie, breaking into Gemma's seething thoughts, the glowing blue eyes still holding her.

"Some were kept," growled Gemma. Kept as pets, curios, or ornaments.

"Only two records mention wereem who had not managed to kill and be killed by the end of their second year, and their cycles were never recorded. There was never the need. And yes, no wereem was ever noted to grow with a litter but during the change that is understandable, after all we cannot breed with humans, and after the change, a sample of two is too little to draw conclusions from."

Gemma half-whined, half-growled in response, her throat muffled with tears and the rage seething afresh through her. She felt as though part of her was melting in sadness. If only they could-.

"But that is for the future. First you have to remain sane," Valerie baldly stated, half answering the werewolf's unspoken wish. "And I believe that the reason you will go insane is not because it is predestined, or inevitable, but simply because you are too scared of the wolf now within you to try to learn to control it, and too bitter to recognise that what the wolf side suggests is not always irrational and idiotic. You have to learn to accept your wolf."

Gemma snarled full voice, fighting to bite the speaker from which the idiotic suggestion had emanated, but was held trapped by the deep, powerful eyes of the wolf on the screen. The Alfamme, she realised, startled, as she glared into those old, echoing, beckoning eyes. And a damn powerful one.

"Stop it!" the physician admonished on a sharp note. "I know you are angry - I would not wish to go through puberty again either, wracked by unfamiliar instincts, and especially not were half of me a fully rational adult, and the other a barely understood child-mind in an adult body. But that is how it is."