Factors of Change Ch. 06

I wrapped my legs feverishly around his waist to pull him even deeper, and each of his strokes sent a fresh spark of pleasure through my core, bringing me closer and closer with each passing moment. I could feel his warm breath against my neck as he sped up his thrusts, and I moaned and tensed in his arms as my insides suddenly contracted yet again in pure ecstasy, blood thrumming in my veins as my heart pounded with yet another orgasm. He gasped and exploded as well, and I held him close to me as his hips jerked firmly against mine, his shoulders trembling with exertion as he leaned against the desk.

We remained still for a long moment, catching our breaths. I opened my eyes and glanced at the closed door. "Did you lock the door?" I whispered.

He laughed breathlessly against my neck. "They would not come in without knocking first."

"Hmm," I let out doubtfully. I moved a bit, hearing the crunch of paper beneath me, and grimaced in discomfort as I reached under me to push it aside. "This looks more comfortable in movies than it is in reality."

He chuckled and grinned down at me, sliding a hand up to give my bare rear yet another squeeze. "That is entirely your fault, temptress. Going around without any underwear."

I smiled back at him. "Oh, so all that was supposed to teach me a lesson?"

"Not at all," he said, laughing. He leaned in and I tilted up my chin to kiss him, tasting his lips for a few moments before he pulled away from me. He reached down for his pants, and I slid down from his desk, smoothing my dress back down. I turned from him and hurried over to the small adjoining bathroom, and came back a few minutes later to find him entirely dressed again. He had draped his jacket over the back of his chair, and was eyeing his messy desk. "Bored, were you?" he asked when I walked over to him, gathering a few pencils up.

I smiled and snuggled close, wrapping my arms around his waist. His arm went around me as well, and I looked up at him. "Your desk was too clean. It needs to look like you're actually working," I teased. "Otherwise people are just going to think you have time for them, and will bring in more work."

"That is a lazy escape," he pointed out with a smile. He reached up with his free hand and tucked back my now undoubtedly messy hair. "Though I supposed I should start doing that, if I want to spend more time with you."

My heart warmed in my chest as I grinned up at him. "You have to work today, don't you?"

He grimaced slightly. "I can worm my way out of a few things, but..."

"It's okay," I whispered, and leaned up to drop a light kiss against the line of his jaw. "I'll just call Laurie and take her out for brunch. I'm starving, and I need to play catch up with her before she hunts me down and fills my voicemail to the brink with angry messages."

"Alright. Ask William to drive you home."

I smiled. "No, I won't. I've always taken the train."

He opened his mouth, but shut it with a slight roll of his eyes. "Alright, fine." He kissed me again and I pulled from him. "I will call you after lunch and let you know when I will be done." I nodded and turned away from him, grabbing my purse from the chair I had dropped it on, and had just reached the door when he called out to me. "Lili?" I turned around and looked at him. He was still standing behind his desk, his clothes in a relatively good order, but his hair was adorably mused by our previous activities, and he looked so damn happy that I gave myself a mental pat on the back. He narrowed his eyes at me and I dropped my hand from the door handle.

"What is it?"

"Please find some underwear," he let out, arching a blonde eyebrow at me, and I laughed.

***

Laurie was, as I expected, ecstatic to see me. We had lunch together and I told her about the run in the woods and as much as she might have expected about the night that followed. I kept to myself my little pilgrimage of the last week, using Gabriel's lie about me working on something for him to my advantage instead. I didn't think she believed me, but she was enough of a friend not to insist.

Gabriel called, as promised, just after lunch, and asked that I join him at his workplace. I had been correct to think his plan was to go to the lake, as he did every weekend, and I accepted his invitation to come with him. I met him at the end of the afternoon in front of the offices on Peel St. and climbed into his car with my small carryon to follow him home.

I was terribly curious, I have to admit. He had mentioned living in an apartment, and I was dying to see in what kind of home he lived in. I had not expected, however, that it would be only a two minute drive from downtown, straight up Mount Royal on one of the steep avenues of Westmount.

I stood and gawked up at the place where Gabriel lived for a long minute: a large, old brick house built in the 1920's, it had been enlarged a bit later in the century, he explained to me, and had then been converted into a two apartment co-ownership. He lived on the second story; the first had been converted into apartments for guests of the pack, and was usually empty.

He led me inside and gave me a quick tour of the beautiful, vast home. It creaked and groaned like an old house should and was wonderful with its original moldings running on the walls below the nine-foot high ceilings and around the large casement windows. The old varnished floors that squeaked under my feet, and the home felt like it was alive around me. I instantly fell in love with it. "When did you get this place?" I asked as I stood unbelievingly in one of the most beautiful kitchens I had ever seen. I never knew fridges could be so large and my fingers itched to check the treasures I knew I would find inside the cupboards. "And in Westmount, too? How much did it cost you, half a million?" I asked as I walked to the window to glance at the wonderful garden out back. "Wow. Change that. One million?"

"It is not mine, it belongs to the pack," he pointed out with a smile, his hands in his pockets as he followed me around. "The previous Alpha had it built and lived here as well, and so will the next, probably."

I smiled back at him. "I can't imagine anyone wanting to sell this place."

"No one would," he said with a small laugh. "Not unless they needed something bigger."

I arched an eyebrow. "Something bigger?"

He raised a shoulder in a noncommittal half-shrug. "It only has two bedrooms."

I stared at him a long moment. My heartbeat had sped up noticeably; suddenly I felt a thumping in my ears. I laughed, a bit too loudly, to forget the sudden cold sweat that had broken on my skin. "Need lessons on subtlety, do you?"

He gave me a half-smile and shook his head in dismissal. "My bedroom is through here," he said, pointing to the hallway. "I will go change and pack, if you want to follow me."

I nodded, too happy to change the subject. A soft 'mirp?' coming from the floor made me look down, though, and I gasped in delight as I noticed my little black and white cat happily trotting towards me. "Benny!" I exclaimed as I stooped to pick her up from the floor. She went limp as a ragdoll and purred in ecstasy as I hoisted her against my shoulder like I would a baby, nuzzling her soft neck. "Was she good?" I asked of Gabriel, who was watching the scene with an amused smile on his face.

"Oh, yes," he said, and reached up to rub the cat's ear. "I had a hard time sleeping the first night, but we quickly got along."

"I'm sorry," I said, smiling. "I didn't get much sleep while sleeping under the bushes either, if that's any consolation."

He chuckled. "I can imagine. Do you mind going back to the lake for the weekend?" he asked as he turned around and stepped through his bedroom door. "I know you just came back, but it will be a very nice weekend."

"I don't mind at all," I said, keeping Berenice in my arms while I followed him. I walked over to the bed and she leaped out of my arms and onto the dark grey comforter, padding over to the pillows on the left side of the bed where she immediately curled up. Gabriel pulled a bag out from a drawer and dropped it on the bed before disappearing into his bathroom. "Why do you have to pack?" I asked. "You have a full, gigantic walk-in closet back at the lake house."

"Those are mostly warm clothes, for the winter," he said. He reappeared with various toiletries and dropped them in the bag before turning to again disappear into his closet. "It is going to be warm, so I might need a few more lighter things." He came back out a minute later, dressed in loose dark jeans and a grey t-shirt, and smiled at me as he dropped a couple of pieces of clothing in the bag. I reached in to fish one t-shirt from the bag and unfolded it.

"You wear this?" I asked in a teasing tone, switching my appraising gaze from the dark t-shirt in my hands to the one he was wearing. While he usually rocked the upper-casual dress code wonderfully, I had to admit that the weekend attire hugged tightly to his shape in all the right places. That, paired with his unruly blonde hair and his usual stubble, made him look quite edible, and also quite dangerous. I bit my lower lip. "I don't think I've ever seen you in anything but dress shirts."

He laughed and reached out to grab the piece of clothing from my hands. He stuffed it back into the bag and zipped it. "All ready?"

I nodded and followed him back out of the bedroom. I took a few minutes to fill up the cat's food and was just walking back to Gabriel when his cellphone rang loudly. He froze before hastily reaching for it, frowning as he looked at the screen. "Important?" I asked, and he nodded.

"It is always important," he pointed out, before bringing the phone to his ear. I put my own bag down on the ground and took a step back to sit in the corner of the leather sectional couch, leaning back against the cushions while letting my gaze wander over to the windows, as Gabriel spoke on the phone. I hadn't been paying close attention to the conversation, so his startled exclamation took me by surprise. He said something quick in French that I vaguely interpreted as 'I'm on my way', and hung up the phone. He stared at it a few silent moments before he glanced up at me. He was a bit pale, but his eyes were bright with excitement. "Something came up," he said as I stared. I was on my feet in a second.

"Are you alright?" I asked with a frown.

He shook his head. "Fine. I just... have to be on my way."

"Should I go to the lake alone, and wait for you there?" I offered as I walked to him. The idea of driving up alone was not one that I liked, so I waved to the couch. "Or... I could just wait here for you to come back?"

He hesitated for a split second, pondering, and then shook his head. "No," he said. "Come along." He reached down for both our bags before turning to the door, waiting for me to step outside. He then turned to lock the door and I scurried to catch up and follow him down the stairs and outside to his small sports car. "What is it?" I asked breathlessly as he started the engine with a vroom that probably got all of the neighbours' attention. "What's going on?"

"They found Joey," he simply said, his eyes on the road as he accelerated out of his parking spot and down the street. I gasped and reached out to grab the door handle.

"Is he alright? Where is he?" He shook his head wordlessly, not answering. "Where are we going?" I asked again, more gently.

"The pack clinic."

I frowned. The pack clinic was located on the second story of a large business building a little ways past the actual downtown. There were a few smaller pack clinics scattered across the island, but I thought he was referring to the official downtown establishment, which was the largest of all and more suitably equipped for emergencies. Obviously, Weres couldn't go to human hospitals to be treated, but I did wonder why Joseph, who was human, hadn't been taken to his own doctors. How badly is he hurt? I wondered. What kind of wounds does he have, that the pack would rather keep him away from a curious human doctor's eyes? From the frown deepening on Gabriel's face, I thought he was probably asking himself the same questions, and worrying about the possible answers.

We busted several speed limits and I kept my foot down on my own imaginary brake pedal for most of the way, but we reached the hospital in one piece. We went up the stairs and I hurried to catch up with Gabriel's long strides as he quickly made his way down the white corridor, ignoring everyone around him. In a small waiting room, standing alone by a row of windows, a woman in her late fifties turned around to look at us. She was human, I identified immediately, and she gasped and hurried over to Gabriel when she saw him. "They won't let me in!" she said quickly. She had been crying; her pretty blue eyes were all red and puffy, and her cheeks were streaked with dried tears. "They've kept me away from him since they came to my house!"

He frowned at her. "Why would they do that?"

"Please, Gabriel," she pleaded. "I need to see him." She sounded determined, though, and even a little angry. I couldn't say I blamed her and pushed down a growing sense of dread as I turned to look up to Gabriel.

He nodded. "Let me go see what is going on, first." He quickly turned towards the door; I followed him in, shutting the door behind me, and turned only to walk smack into Gabriel's back. He had stopped in his tracks the second he stepped in, and I looked around him at the hospital bed on the other side of the room.

A man laid in it, his eyes closed, his chest slowly rising and falling. He had a thick shock of dark brown hair streaked with gray and even in sleep, his expression was pained, the lines in his face taunt with tension. I noticed all of that, but only saw the angry red gouges on the side of his neck. Claw marks, obviously, and already half healed. White gauze had been pressed in a thick pad against a wound on his shoulder, though I could see no blood seeping through it. Along with the spreading bruise and swelling on the right side of his face and the audible hiss in his deep breathing that could indicate any sort of damage done to his chest, I thought it was a small mercy, after all, that he was at least unconscious and wouldn't feel the pain his body was obviously going through.

I could smell only the scent of Weres in the room with us and looked over at them. I recognized Cedric and acknowledged another one of the Six, who had quickly been introduced to me as Elise earlier in the afternoon. I had no idea who the other three were, but one of them wore the distinctive green scrubs of a doctor and had an ominously concerned frown on his face as he noticed his Alpha coming in.

Gabriel strode over to the bed. I watched him from behind, noticing how tense he looked, how stiffly he moved as he leaned against the metal rail of the bed to bend closer to his friend's face. That's not how it should be, I thought sadly. That's not how I should meet his oldest friend for the first time.

I watched Gabriel reach in and gently pull the white gauze away from Joseph's shoulder. He quickly dropped it and took a stumbling step back from the bed, his hands balling into tight fists at his sides. It was only then that what had been nagging at me since I walked in the room finally clicked in my mind.

I could smell only the scent of Weres with us in the room; not a hint of the distinctive, sharp scent of humans. Not even in the bed, where one should have been laying; Joseph's chest was rising and falling reassuringly with each deep breath, but the only smell that came from him was one I would have recognized instantly if I had really paid attention. It was a strangely familiar scent, one that I had tried hard to forget.

The sharp, acrid smell of fear and confusion; the lingering odour of raging hormones and silent anger. The scent of a newly turned Were.

***

Next to me as we sat just outside of Joseph's room, Gabriel was sitting in one of the plastic chairs in the corridor, still as a statue. His elbows were resting on his knees and his chin was propped on his joined hands; he was staring so hard at the floor under his feet that I fully expected it to burst into flames. He was deceptively silent, with his features moulded into the perfectly blank face of a poker champion, but was humming with white hot fury like a high voltage transformer, his anger rolling off from him in spades and obvious to anyone. All of those standing in the hallway with us bore the uneasy expression of someone who had to stand in a closed room with a ticking time bomb.

I somewhat shared their feeling and moved slowly and carefully, yet purposely inching closer on my chair so that my thigh brushed against Gabriel's. I laid a light, reassuring hand on his thigh, and he instantly reached down and grabbed it, his fingers wrapping around mine in a painfully tight grip. I bit my lip, but didn't pull away. He took one long, deep breath before slowly letting it out between his teeth. It would have been exaggerating to say he relaxed, but some of the tension seemed to leave his shoulders, and his grip loosened slightly around my hand. "Who found him?" he asked in a surprisingly calm tone of voice to the small group of Weres surrounding us. The human woman whom I guessed to be Joseph's wife wasn't there, I noticed; I wondered who had taken her away.

Elise nervously cleared her throat and took a step forward. "His mate—I mean his wife, Alpha Sir. She called your office immediately, like you asked her to do. She says she knew she should not call the human police, not the way he was... hurt."

Gabriel looked up at her. "Where did she find him?"

The young Beta pursed her lips. "On their doorstep, Sir. She says someone rang the doorbell and when she opened the door, she found Mackenzie there, lying unconscious on their porch."

"It is a message, obviously," Cedric hissed. I looked up at him; he was standing close to me. He was nowhere as good as Gabriel at hiding his thoughts or emotions, and his anger was written all over his stern features, clear as day. "It is clearly you dey are trying to 'urt."

"Thank you for the obvious, Cedric. But it is not me who got hurt now, is it?" Gabriel snapped back, glaring at him. Cedric didn't flinch, but didn't try to hold his gaze either, turning to look at the closed door beside us instead.

"Dey are going to keep 'urting you, Gabriel," he said in a lower tone. "Mackenzie knew about Weres. And 'e never, ever wanted to become one of us."

Gabriel stared directly at him for a moment before he switched his flat look to the doctor, who straightened up noticeably. "How is he?"

"Well enough, all things considered," the middle-aged Were said quickly. "Multiple... multiple bruises and lacerations, many signs of struggle. But nothing life-threatening."

"Nothing life-threatening," Gabriel repeated slowly. An uncomfortable silence settled over all of us. The bite on Joseph's shoulder, while not a fatal wound in itself, could have disastrous consequences on his life, and we all knew it. "What about the bite?" Gabriel asked. Apparently he was on the same train of thoughts.

The doctor sighed deeply. "It hasn't healed much, so it can't be more than a day or two old. He obviously hasn't shifted for the first time yet, and won't for a few more days, hopefully."

"Has he awakened at all?"

"Not yet, Sir."

Gabriel sighed and leaned back in the chair, rubbing both hands over his face before he ran his fingers through his blonde hair, mussing it up even more. "Does he even know what he is?"

"He fought against de fucking cowards," Cedric said somberly, still staring at the closed door of Joseph's room. "I am sure 'e felt de bite. He knows. His wife probably does, too."