Tori
She had taken care of me. Nobody had ever done that before, and it made me ache in a way I couldn’t explain. Was it possible to be happy and sad at the same time? That was the closest thing I could think of to describe how I felt.
Gwen had sat with me in the cage. She had comforted me. I couldn’t remember all of it, but I remembered waking up several times to her stroking my face, feeding me water, or worrying over me. Nobody had ever done that for me…
That wasn’t true. Fang had. The night they rescued me, I cried. I cried until my soul hurt, but he held me. He just… held me. When we went to sleep that night, far away from the campground, he laid near me and held out his hand so I could squeeze it when I needed.
I remembered how Alpha swore at him for that, I couldn’t remember what she said exactly, but it was something about encouraging me to be weak. In all my time with the pack, I could only think of a handful of times where Fang stood up to Alpha, but he did that night. And for a week after. Never touching me unasked, just… being there when I needed a hand to hold.
At first, I wasn’t sure why that memory was coming up, but it clicked for me. That was the last time I felt this helpless and weak. That was the last time someone had really shown me kindness despite my weakness.
Until Gwen.
But she had poisoned me, coated these horrid bracelets in some mixture, bracelets that she wouldn’t remove. Bracelets that I couldn’t remove. She had caused the problem that she had solved.
The world bubbled around me, the ground was moving back and forth, side to side. Closing my eyes didn’t make it stop. My thoughts were no different. Wobbling, scrambled, and confused. The way she held me had felt good, in a way I wasn’t sure I had ever felt before. She had been gentle and patient. I wasn’t sure how long I had been unconscious, but I had drifted in and out, never staying awake for long as my body fought off the toxins and the chill. Every time I drifted in, there she was.
Sometimes she was helping me take a drink, sometimes she was wiping sweat from me, but more than anything, she was just… touching me. With kindness, with gentleness, and with concern. It reminded me of something long, long ago, but I couldn’t say what. It didn’t fit with the way she acted. She was so forceful, so challenging, like she wanted nothing more in the world than for me to show my throat.
I was tired of showing my throat. Spike had been with us over a year now, and I had been forced to submit much, much more since he did. The room itself felt darker while my thoughts turned this way, to Spike’s crooked, grinning face. But according to Alpha, he made the pack stronger, and we didn’t turn our back on a wolf in need.
I had tried so hard to make him the bottom of the pack. I had tried so hard to establish my dominance. I had been a wolf for years while he had been one for months. But I couldn’t overcome our size difference.
Groaning, I rolled onto my side, staring out of the bars at the comfy-looking chair.
Her hands had felt good on my skin.
How would they feel in my fur?
My hand went to my face, as though I could block out the thought the way I blocked out the light, covering my eyes and clenching my eyes shut. Seeking solace in the darkness, like a moonlit night. I buried my head under the blanket, though I couldn’t stay there long. The air turned stale.
And the thought wouldn’t go away.
What would it feel like for those hands to scratch the fur behind my ears? On the particularly fluffy bit at my chest? I’d never been touched that way, I wasn’t even going to ask Alpha. She would see it as weakness, as a betrayal of my “proud heritage.”
Spike already called me a dog enough. I shouldn’t want to know what that kind of touch felt like.
I want her to pet me.
Horrified at my own thoughts, I struggled to a sitting position, wishing she had turned on the TV, that I had anything to distract me from my traitorous wonderings.
“Fuck her for being nice to me.” I took a sip of the soda, sneering at the taste of chemicals in it. Humans couldn’t have anything without some sort of toxin in it. “Fuck you, Gwen.”
It had been easier when she had purely been an enemy.
* * *
Gwen
The snow bore the brunt of my frustration. It had been difficult to get to the shop the previous night, now it was a white nightmare. The shovel felt good in my hands as I attacked my enemy. A problem I could solve simply with effort.
Those were the best kinds of problems.
One that didn’t fight back. One that I couldn’t accidentally hurt.
She had slipped in and out of wakefulness for hours, the whole while I fretted, terrified that I had done permanent damage to her. Terrified that I might have killed her. She was so young, so fragile, she should have been out drinking and partying with friends, enjoying the very beginning of her adulthood.
But Vicky had never had a childhood. How could she start her adulthood? She needed love, she needed caring, and she had felt so good in my arms. It had been so long since I held someone and my heart ached from it.
“No no no, Gwen.” I dug the shovel in again and again, throwing small masses of snow over my shoulder. “You can’t fall for her. Not again. Not another girl, you swore off girls, remember? Men only. Fuck them and send them on their way.”
But it had been so long since I had done that, too. I couldn’t even remember the last one’s name, Marcus or Michael or… something like that, something that started with an M. He had been slim and soft, and I had bent him over and…
I could only picture Vicky that way right now.
“Fuck!”
The shovel took flight from my hands as I screamed.
I had hurt her. I had poisoned her. She depended on me for food, for safety, for caring, and all I was doing was hurting her. All I wanted to do was help her. Nothing, nothing had gone right since that conversation at the market.
She was unlike any wolf I had ever dealt with. Not that my sample size was large, mind you, but it was far more than most humans could say. Lily was positively well-adjusted in comparison, and that girl had suffered. The Trueborn humans had the deck stacked against them. They went through a normal human childhood, but one of isolation. Lily’s human parent cared for her, at least. She tried to protect her from the world, tried to give her the best life she could even though the deck was stacked against her.
Vicky never had that. From what I could tell, she had never had that.
And here I was, poisoning her when all I wanted to do was hold her.
“I should let her go.” I looked to the sky, half-hoping for some kind of sign, for some word from Granddad, something. “I should set her free, let her just… go.”
Let her go kill someone. Let her go suffer out there, alone in a world she didn’t even understand the rules of. She hadn’t known that silver could hurt her. She didn’t know about witches, or hunters. Did she even know that one of her parents was a wolf? That one of them had to be, but that it couldn’t be both parents?
Did she know anything about her own kind?
If I let her go, I might as well just put a silver bullet in her brain myself.
I sank to the ground, sitting in the snow and fighting back tears. If I kept her here, I was hurting her, but if I let her go, I’d be hurting her much worse. Possibly costing people their lives. She’d killed once, she’d kill again.
There was no right answer. There was no good answer. There was no answer at all that didn’t involve hurting her.
“Fuck!” I struggled through the snow after my shovel. I needed that mixture to work. It had started off perfectly. I was going to be able to overpower her, make her submit, and then care for her. She was so beautiful. She was so fragile. It wasn’t just her outside that was beautiful.
She just needed love. Everyone deserved love.
Especially someone who had never felt the love she needed to grow and flourish. It hurt to think how different Vicky’s life could have been if people had cared for her.
I wasn’t going to give up.
My shovel dug in again, throwing more snow. I put my entire being into every motion, I lost myself in the work, glad for it.
I didn’t find myself until I found the door to my forge. When I did, I was hungry again. Which meant Vicky would be as well.
I needed to get something in her stomach, some soup, some starch. I couldn’t remember any of River’s pack ever getting sick, so I could only assume that the best course of action was to feed her like I would a sick human. I wasn’t ready to face her though.
I wasn’t ready to put on that stern face and pretend that I hadn’t fucked up royally.
If I showed softness now, if I was gentle the way I longed to be, it would undo what little progress I had made. The only way forward was for her to recognize me as her Packleader, to admit that she needed help, and see that there was nothing wrong with needing help and love. With a sigh, I put on a pot of water, dropping in a cube of dried chicken stock - something with real marrow in it would be better for her, but I didn’t have time to make a bone broth.
While the water heated, I turned to Granddad’s book.
Dire Affliction.
It was the same, the damage she had now and that cursed illness. She was feral in a different way, a way she couldn’t see and wouldn’t admit. I flipped to the section with the witchcraft rituals and recipes. The texture of the page under my fingers, that faint smell of cigar smoke bound to the old paper, I couldn’t bear to tear the page out.
I was afraid to try another one.
This book, these rituals, were my best bet. I wasn’t going to be able to get her to submit to me without some help. I didn’t need to make a decision right then, though - spring was a long way off.
The wolf must be made to submit. The wolf must recognize the tamer as superior, as being higher in the pack, as the authority and the keeper of safety. Anger is the enemy, as long as the wolf is angry - and the dire affliction only enhances this anger - the wolf cannot submit. Pride will maintain its grip on the wolf’s heart, and until that grip is broken, there can be no healing.
It is folly to think that one can physically overpower the wolf without help, but there are mixtures that can weaken the wolf, that can disrupt their supernatural connection.
“Didn’t work.” I grumbled, glancing at the pot before I went back to the book.
The wolf must be made to respect, to fear the tamer. Or in the case of a female wolf…
“No. No way.” I shook my head, closing the book, turning my full attention back to lunch. To restoring Vicky’s strength… even though that was only going to make my job harder.
It was the right thing to do.