Fang
Something was wrong. I could feel it in the air. Like the smell of a storm before it came or the feeling just before a big ass branch fell out of a tree. Tension. Things I hadn’t known or felt before the change.
But I felt it now.
It was dark. It was late. The sky had opened up and dumped snow on us like the ash of a burning cigarette that hadn’t been touched in too long. A rush, a pile, all at fucking once.
I had been watching out the window for a while.
Darkwater had stopped me hours ago, at dusk, fury in those yellow eyes that I had tried to slip out. She said I was too easy on the kid. The big bitch always laughed at that, at me referring to the runt as “kid”. She wouldn’t ever say how old she was, I gave up asking years ago. I’d been with her for seven, but for all I knew she was twelve years to the kid’s twenty-one. But Darkwater - I had to remember to call her Alpha around Tori, she’d always be Darkwater to me but the runt hadn’t figured out how to say her name in English yet - Darkwater was an adult even if she had fewer years, and who the fuck knew.
Aging was weird with wolves. The Trueborn kind, anyway. No extra long life for my Turned ass. I was still getting older one year at a time while the runt still looked exactly the same as she had the day we found her.
What a shitshow that had been. Doesn’t matter how much a person hated their parents, seeing them eaten in front of you was gonna fuck you up. I tried to shield her from it as best I could. Darkwater didn’t get shit like that.
And I was worried. That feeling was gnawing at me, and it wasn’t a coming storm. Not weather, anyhow - the skies had already shit all over us. Darkwater was pleased as punch, for all I knew she’d go out and sleep in it.
It was the snow that made me suspect she was younger than she let on.
“Pining for the puppy?” Spike didn’t know when to shut his fucking mouth.
I shot him a look, one side-eye before turning back to look at Tori’s most likely path.
My voice was much deeper than his and it drove him nuts, so I laid it on. “She shoulda been back.”
“Maybe she did us all a favor and ran away.” He leered at me, too close. He never saw my fist coming, just felt it collide with his jaw as he fell to the floor. He still didn’t get it. What it meant to be a pack. And I wasn’t quite sure how to beat it into him.
“Fuck you, Fang!” He spat blood on the floor as he pushed, jumping to his feet with his fists balled.
I didn’t even turn my head. “You swing on me and Alpha beats the stupid out of you, Geoff.”
“Don’t fucking call me that. That name is dead to me.”
His whining gave away that he wasn’t going to do anything. I was the Second, Darkwater would thrash him before I got in trouble and he knew it.
“I’ll stop when you grow up, Spike.” I tossed his new name into the mix to shut him up. Maybe it would keep him from saying anything else stupid.
He flopped angrily on the couch, kicking his bare feet up onto the table, intentionally knocking over some decorative bowl of pinecones and shit that humans thought meant “nature”.
I was wrong, it didn’t. “How long have you been fucking her? I’m not into puppies.”
That was enough to get me moving, and before he could even claim he was ‘just joking’, I was the brute and he was pinned against the wall by his throat, the sound of glass cracking as I slammed him into some stupid framed painting of a boat.
No.
The white wolf with the yellow eyes had appeared from nowhere, saving Spike from a day spent healing after I turned his face into hamburger. I dropped him, turning to Darkwater.
“She’s been gone too long, boss. Something’s wrong.” I shook my head. “She shoulda been back. We haven’t gotten a call. She shoulda called by now. Runt’s in trouble.”
And I should have gone after her hours ago when there was still some fucking light, you stubborn bitch.
“Fang just misses her pus- “
All will be silent.
Even the runt would have understood that one clearly. I kept her eyes, never looking to Spike as he picked himself up off the ground for the second time in five minutes. I didn’t submit, I didn’t look away. I needed her to know I was serious.
This wasn’t a new thing between us, but it had been a couple of years since I’d really pushed back on anything involving the kid. Not since Darkwater had beaten me half to death for jumping into a fight that wasn’t mine to fight - it had been the runt’s.
My heartbeat sped up as she walked closer, her brute standing in front of me where a wolf had been mere moments ago, looking up at me but only barely. Neither one of us had any doubt who would win if we really tangled.
She’d kick the shit out of me.
And not just because I wouldn’t fight back against her.
“You are too soft on her. The runt will be a pup as long as we allow it and no longer.”
I broke eye contact. Challenging her now wouldn’t end well for me. I didn’t turn my body, I didn’t shy away as she stood close enough that I could feel the exhale of her breath. But I did look away.
“Something’s wrong, boss. You taught me to trust the wolf, to trust the instincts. Mine are telling me that she’s in danger.”
She grabbed me by the beard, the long shaggy thing that I actually enjoyed keeping, and forced my eyes back to hers. My mouth went dry in response.
“The runt does this so we will fear for her.” I relaxed slightly, there was no anger in her voice. “She is hiding somewhere from the snow because she took too long.”
I spoke slowly, carefully. “I want to go look for her.” You didn’t say please in a situation like this. You didn’t beg or grovel, it only invited scorn and pain. The only way forward was to stand my ground and submit at the same time. To challenge and appease at once. Old Willow had taught me that. I missed her something dreadful in moments like this.
Darkwater had respected her. Old Willow had actually been able to calm her down when she was still Second. When I was still struggling with being normal one day and a complete outcast from society the next because of a nighttime hike gone wrong.
I stood there, my beard in her fist, unmoving while she considered. Spike, thankfully, kept his trap shut.
“No.” The boss let me go and turned away. “You will not give her what she wants this time. We wait. She will either show or call.”
The white tail disappeared up the stairs before I could even answer.
Spike was leaning against the far wall, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Too bad, I guess.”
Now I had some steam to work off. I’d just have to thrash him quietly.