Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 13

"Well, if that is what they were trying to do, I can't say I noticed. I remember being a bit surprised at the time at all the things they thought they could somehow get me to do."

The Whites brought the post with them as usual when they arrived at the house the following morning; there was an official-looking letter from Gemma's faculty, which someone had somehow brought from her flat, and Penny took it down to where the werewolf was intently journal-surfing on the computer in the lab, reading up on the use of barbiturates for mental disorders. After a brief halt to read her letter, Gemma tried to go back to work, discussing possible new tests to try with Ada and Valerie, but after a short, restless half-hour, she gave up and went to find Mac up in his studio on the top floor.

The wide expanse of the A-frame ceiling was lined with tongue-and grooved boards, the warm pine striping up to the high peak of the roof. The wooden floorboards were dappled with the moody, cloudy sunlight which was flirting through the eastern of the huge windows embedded in each slanting roof, with more rays just peeking through the southern of the additional large picture windows under the eaves. The scent of old sap rising from the floorboards tingled soothingly into her spine; she knew why her mate liked to spend time up here. He and his hunter Whites had turned it into their planning room, and a group of them were crouched with the Alpha on the far side around a huge trestle table, murmuring tactics over some Monopoly pieces they were moving around over a map when she stepped in. There was a huge blue expanse on the paper, with a black blotch staining one corner, but it was miles from where they were moving the pieces over the dark green forest.

Gemma jerked her eyes away.

They all rose to their feet: Mac, because he came striding across to her, face creased in concern; the others, she thought, out of courtesy. She found being an Alfamme a bit unnerving. I mean, she didn't feel like she should be in charge of anybody. Or worthy of respect. From wolves, any of whom could stand her on her head effortlessly.

Mac reached out a hand to her as she stepped up to him, "What is it, picchu?"

She glanced at the others, and her lips turned up in a slight smile. The warriors were already loping past her out of the room, nodding acknowledgement as they passed, no doubt having sensed something in her scent. She waited until the last had left, then held out the letter, her brown eyes troubled.

"I'm about to be sacked," she said succinctly. "Unless I can provide evidence of my medical condition."

Mac glanced at her, eyes unreadable, and then began to carefully read the letter.

"I could ask Will or Amy to provide you with a medical report," he murmured slowly as he read. "Probably Amy, because she's registered here, with a human medical degree and training, but -." The deep green eyes lifted back to hers. "Do you want to go back to work at the university?" he asked.

"I don't know," Gemma murmured, head tilted slightly defiantly. She didn't know why there were tears lurking in her eyes, why she felt so wobbly on getting this letter. An arm slid around her shoulders. "I don't know what's going on," she whispered. "I don't know - what future to plan for."

Her voice began to rise, reflecting the feeling of helpless panic bubbling up inside her as staccato phrases began to jump out of her: "I don't know. Don't know where I belong. What to do. Should I let go of a job I worked so hard to get? Will it be a black mark on my record?" She paused to heave a breath, dropping her head as a tremor of unease shook her. "How will I earn my living? Where does all this come from?" she added, flinging an arm out in a staccato gesture at the room, while Mac lifted her off her feet, strode over to the leather-cushioned flat bench underneath the western skylight, and sat down with her sitting half-sideways on one of his knees, both arms around her.

"Why am I even worried about this?" Gemma added, her voice breaking on the last sentence. Mac hugged her to him.

"Because your whole life has been turned upside down," he answered softly.

Gemma cracked a broken little laugh, and turned her head into his shoulder. Breathed deeply. Mac smelt nice: clean, musky, male, with a slight tang, a wild undertone. A little smile wobbled on her lips as she breathed in his scent, soothing herself.

This aromatherapy seemed to work both ways.

After a few moments, she muttered, "I do know where I belong," into his skin quietly, her voice still wavering through tears. "With you. But I don't know, physically, where that is. Will be. How to live. What will I do?"

She lifted back and looked at him, blinking the moisture from her eyes.

"Make me peanut butter chicken?" replied Mac hopefully, but instantly sighed and continued seriously, "I'm sorry, picchu. I - if you want to keep your job at the university waiting for you, I'll arrange an official sick note."

Gemma smiled shakily at him, but shook her head, "I - would feel bad, doing that. I would like a sick note so that they will sign me off honourably, so that I can prove I'm leaving them in the lurch for a good reason - chronic medical incapacity," she bit back a half-gulp and grimaced expressively, continuing, " but I couldn't keep the job hanging open for me, they can't afford - will need to replace -." Her voice cracked, and she rested her forehead down against his shoulder again, then laughed and added tearfully, "At least I won't have to work with Craig any more."

Mac sighed, and kissed her above her ear, tightening his arms. "My brave picchu," he murmured.

Brave picchu began to cry in earnest into his shirt.

After long, comforting minutes huddled in his arms with her face pressed into his chest, leaking emotion, allowing herself to just cry, the sobs began to subside. Gemma hiccupped a few times, sniffing, feeling just - mellow. His. And then she began to feel a little melodramatic, stupid, emotionally naked. Of all the things to cry about! Embarrassing. Cheeks flushed with self-consciousness, Gemma took a deep, shaky breath, sat up and began to wipe her eyes, smiling shyly up into soft green eyes through her tears. Her heart melted and lip wobbled again.

Her mate murmured such nice things into her ear while she was crying on him.

"Sorry," Gemma gulped. Mac rolled his eyes at the unnecessary apology, and lifted her wet face with a gentle hand under her chin.

"If you write back to the faculty," he suggested, carefully wiping her cheeks himself with a corner of his brushed cotton shirt. "Tell them that Dr Amy Waring is the specialist dealing with your condition, and will be sending them a supporting letter, separately." He paused.

"You're sure she'll be OK writing it? For an outlaw?" Gemma asked doubtfully, her voice still a little wobbly.

Mac snorted. "You saved her life, picchu," he replied dryly, smiling as his mate lifted startled eyes to his. "I'm sure."

Who -?

Mac interrupted her thoughts, sounding thoughtful, "A better idea would be to get one of the troops to write your reply for you, and just sign it. It will sound more official, and you've got plenty of more important things to do. All they do is sit around all day drinking our coffee and messing up the kitchen with toys."

"Besides cooking," Gemma reminded him, then paused to release a watery little hiccup. "Shopping, cleaning, gardening, guard duty, and helping you up here and me in the lab," she rattled off, more calmly.

"You're an Alfamme now, picchu, get used to it," Mac shrugged. He grinned at her, green eyes sparkling softly. "Nowadays the only letters you should bother to write yourself are love letters to me."

Gemma shot him a smiling look from the corner of her tear-sparkling eyes, filing that advice away for future notice, then took in a faintly wobbly breath, turned slightly so she was fully sideways on to him, and sank to rest against his shoulder, sliding her left hand around the back of his waist and the fingers of her right into his open shirt collar to tease light fingers over his collar bone.

"I still feel a bit - unsettled. Where does all this come from? Are you really rich?" she asked, gesturing around the room again. "I don't like just living off you. Indefinitely."

Mac sighed deeply. She could hear him thinking, just couldn't catch the words. He took another deep breath.

"Damn," he muttered.

Gemma's fingers stilled. His scent was - she didn't know, hadn't caught that fragrance before, it wasn't threatening, just - unusual.

"What?" she asked.

"You would ask that, wouldn't you picchu?" he asked in return, his tone slightly sheepish.

Gemma lifted herself upright again on his thigh, and just looked at him, eyebrows raised.

Mac rolled his eyes again, and ended up looking at the ceiling, avoiding hers. "No, I'm not rich. Comfortable, with the proceeds from my photography, but not rich," he told the mellow pine boards.

"Mac?" she asked softly, tone slightly dangerous. She knew when her mate was teasing her.

His eyes dropped back to hers and there was an amused yet challenging look in his face as he told her, "The Wolflord is paying for this - the house, the conversions, the rent for the troops' dens, and - well, he provided a salary, so our alchemist could live comfortably while working for him, for us."

Gemma stared at her Alpha while it sank in, amusement beginning to creep into her eyes. He looked away quickly.

"I provided the touch screen in your panic room!" Mac insisted, slanting another look at her.

"Thanks," murmured Gemma, her face perfectly straight. Then it split into a grin when her mate twitched his eyes away again to stare intently into the distance, his jaw set.

"You mean, you're living off me?" she concluded quietly. She was trying to remember the exact words of a discussion they'd once had back on Kate and Bethan's sofa bed.

"It was for both of us!" Mac returned, the amusement creeping back into his eyes as he looked at her, "Provision was made for both of us - you needed a guard and an assistant. It's you who always refers to our research."

"That was before!" she protested. "Now you just spend all your days running around in the woods pretending to hunt for ex-Greys. I'm the one providing for us, here."

"You're the one who insisted I hunt ex-Greys," Mac retorted. "And so the bulk of the earnings must be mine - I risk my limbs to provide you with valuable assistants, so I should get danger money in my share!"

Gemma's heart lurched in faint worry, and she sank back against him, sliding her arms back around his waist and hugging him tightly, kissing his jawline, chuckling. His head turned and he caught her lips with his.

When his head lifted again, her eyes were clear.

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" Gemma asked quietly, reaching up a hand to stroke along the strong line of his jaw.

He shrugged, and his voice was quiet as he replied, "It didn't come up - and then I didn't want to influence your decision about your human job. But now you've decided to give it up - Gemma, the Whites will start to come to you with their problems too. Things they find it difficult to approach me with, or sometimes matters too personal, especially in the case of the females. Also to argue about orders I have given which they disagree on - you are the second voice. And we need to work together to rebuild this pack - they are such a mess, they will require a lot of training, and help - counselling - there is no wolf counselling, I have no real idea how to go about this, I need your help. And - what you are doing right now, downstairs, too few wolves understand. Once your sentence is lifted - there is no wolf chemistry training, it has been illegal for centuries, which is ridiculous when you consider how vulnerable we are. If you wanted to start your own school, in the future -."

He left the sentence trailing, and Gemma smiled at him. Her heart was beating slightly faster at the phrase, "Once your sentence is lifted." Her songmate was always so sure that they could sort things out, that he could sort things out. She loved that incorrigible facet of him.

"Not short of possibilities, then?" she said cheerfully. "Sorry I got so upset."

He smiled back, his green eyes shining with deep feeling, and leaned in to kiss her nose gently.

"Picchu, I'm always in slight awe of how well you're dealing with this."

"That's because I've got you," she replied, hopping blithely down from his knee.

He caught her hand as she turned away and drew her back for a last, lingering kiss. Then he sighed as he lifted his head, "Send the troops back in on your way out, would you, love?"

Gemma blew him a kiss as she left.

*

Late one evening five days later, Gemma was in her and Mac's bedroom sitting between two of the other girls, concentrating hard as she stared at herself in the mirror of the huge mahogany dressing table.

The soft electric lights surrounding the glass lit the reflection of the muddle of clothing strewn around the large, square room on the moss green carpet; various dresses, socks, and pieces of underwear tumbled haphazardly across the floor. Some had even landed on the pristine white coverlet stretched over the huge bed while she'd danced, trying to distract herself as instructed. But none of the damn garments were on Gemma. She checked again in the mirror that the long, heavy grey-green curtains on the opposite wall, across the other side of the bed, were tightly closed: this was not something she wanted to explain to the neighbours.

A crease appeared between her brown eyes, and Gemma's delicate, furry features began to scrunch together in a frown, the pelt across her shoulders lifting as she tensed.

"Steady," murmured Soledad. "Calmly."

She never could do this calmly.

A jolt shot through the wereem as she shifted abruptly, and she growled at her human features, exasperated. She could shift easily, instinctively, bare naked, but the only way to build in clothes was to think about it, to think of them as fur, so she was told. But if she thought of how she looked, it was like someone was watching her driving, and she crashed from one form to the other.

She couldn't do it.

"Heey!" cheered Penny, and lifted her Alfamme's left wrist. A small gold bangle gleamed in the light of the lamp, winking up at Gemma.

"That - was it there when I was wolf?" she questioned softly, heart jumping in hope.

"Nope," the older woman assured her. "You were totally bare naked. You furred it."

Great. Not completely naked then. If she could just hide behind a thin gold bracelet.

"It's a start," Penny informed her, tossing the slinky cream dress across from the bed. "So that'll do for tonight. Time to dress for dinner. Again."

Gemma smiled as she scrabbled under her chair for her underwear. Her pack were really insistent that she dress for the A's return, and the girls had spent quite a bit of money - her money! - replacing the old clothes she'd ripped through in her weeks of raging.

Only one rage this week! her heart sang.

Gemma was fastening the last of the large circular brown buttons which ran between her breasts up the front of the dress when they all sensed the alert frisson which ran through the guard at the front door, the tension which meant he'd caught the scent of the Alpha approaching up the street.

The Alfamme dashed into their en-suite bathroom, a lurch of excitement and faint trepidation in her stomach, ears twitching to the quiet rustle of hasty activity breaking out all over the house. When she sped back into the bedroom a moment later, a small smile on her lips, the other two sjeste had already disappeared. She swung through the doorway and bounded three at a time down the thickly carpeted steps before skipping joyously down the corridor to join the hive of activity in the kitchen. The blinds had been closed over the wide window above the sink, to her left, and the sink, draining board and solid wooden work surfaces surrounding the large, square room were scrubbed spotless, as was the mellow wooden floor. The pine table in the centre of the room had been waxed again by someone recently, and was gleaming in the soft lighting from the wall-lights, the warm tones blending with the wooden doors of the cupboards and contrasting with the brightly gleaming cooker against the opposite wall. Gemma sighed as she glanced around. Nothing for her to do, as usual.

Gustav was already sliding the steaming shepherd's pie onto a mat in the middle of the large wooden table while Ada straightened the two place settings, pushing into line one of the colourful leaf-woven place mats that was lying slightly askew on the scrubbed pine surface and realigning the already opened bottle of wine. Fabian was pouring water into tall glasses, holding the jug as high as possible to see how many bubbles he could create while his older sister, her sad face shadowed, silently arranged the tall pepper and salt grinders to flank the oven dish, opposite a fragrant bowl of sliced tomatoes and avocado and mozzarella. Erik hummed from the corner softly as he mixed his leader's favourite aperitif in a squat tumbler.

The wereem almost tripped over Lucy as the puppy lolloped across the floorboards to her mother, whining with tiredness. The little yip knew it was time to go home. Gemma halted to wait for the tired shadow of Alexandra also wobbling across to Ada, in the wake of her natali. Mac was very late tonight; the cubs were exhausted.

"Wait," whispered Erik suddenly, lifting his head, his eyes alert. They heard the click of the front door closing, and then a harsh, scraping sound approaching slowly down the hallway. Startled, puzzled by the noise, Gemma's wide eyes met Ada's across the room, both silently wondering.

Then the scent hit them all.

For a moment, everyone froze instinctively, a startled, shocked tableau shuddering in the stillness, skin prickling. Oh my god, not again, cried Gemma's heart. Parents stooped swiftly to scoop up abruptly silent cubs, the wolves stepping back out of line of sight, lining the walls while Gemma slid into her seat and turned worried brown eyes toward the door.

Mac was seething over something; bitter, angry and emanating a feeling of intense aggression.

The door opened, and Gemma bit her lip at the sight of his exhausted, lined face.

Still. He needed a break!

The Alpha barely seemed to see past the blind, distant raging in his eyes, one hand pressed against his forehead to push back the spiking pain inside his head, while he dragged himself across the floor, weaving slightly, and dropped into the chair that Hakan had silently pulled back.

He was melded with the Mackelds. Something was badly wrong. Again.

Eyes frowning with worry, Gemma swiftly served him a huge portion of the hot, fragrant dish, not even trying to distract him with a question, and pushed it across under his nose.

Mac barely seemed to see it, but the scent caught him, and a slightly shaking, blood-and-mud grimed hand peeled back the crisp potato layer with two claws so that he could absently scoop the hot meat up into his mouth with his fingers. His head was propped on his other palm, elbow on the table, the fingers clenched around his skull as though to hold the bone together while the barrage of thoughts ricocheted back and forth inside his skull.

Gemma's soft brown eyes puzzled worriedly over the white caking under the fingernails pressing into his skull, and then as the door was swinging to behind the last of the silently departing Whites, she caught a glimpse of coarse, deep scratches scored along the wall of the hallway, and absorbed a flicker of scent under the rich swirl of meat, gravy, carrot and potato he was swiftly scooping into his mouth. Plaster dust.