Fic: Homo Homini Lupus Est -- Part Three

[neotoma]

The first time Sam saw him, he wondered who the other wolf was, off in the distance, participating in a hunt. It was idle curiosity, since the locals were short-haired, either ashy gray and burnt yellow, not a brindled timber-wolf, shaggy and dark. That he was hunting over the rolling hills with a pack of pale furred locals was strange, but Sam figured that at least some member of his company was making friends.

It wasn't until days later – weeks really – that Sam had been on business around the far hills outside of the railroad town and seen the brindled wolf again that he was hit by the strange feeling of recognition, like he knew the other.

That time, the wolf was at on a creek bank with two cubs, one a wheaten dog-cub, leggy and silly with youth, and the other an infant, soft grey and pudgy with baby-fat. The child wolf was hunting, inexpertly under his parent's eye, possibly for newts or the sharp-pinchered crustaceans that the locals called crawdads and Sam called inedible.

"Eh, that's the tiger's husband. You want to talk to him, you'll have to go through her," Lupe, his guide that day, a good foreman even though she was a delta, said. "He's shy."

"The tiger's married?" Sam asked. He'd heard of the 'tiger', the local name for a wise-woman – a witch, or maybe just a skilled midwife, he couldn't tell through their thick accents and not entirely compatible dialects.

"Years now. She found him on the road and took him home, even accepted that cub of his," Lupe said, with a headshake at what sounded like baffling generosity to Sam. "He's a northerner like you..." she gave Sam a speculative look, "maybe you can make nice."

Sam shook his head, and didn't try to explain that Sam and his men weren't northerners – any man who had a timber-wolf was a northerner to the locals, even they'd come from a river city. It took getting to the Great Pine Forest to be a northerner, as far as Sam was concerned. Of course, the locals only saw pines up in hills – most of the lowlands was parklands with pecans and oak trees.



Kali had noticed the tall Northerner at the festival in a half-interested way. There was an outpost of them at the junction where the tail-end of their trackwork met the rail lines controlled by her own people, but it was a good hour or more by zipcar and thus too far for causal travel by foot or bicycle and those Northerners rarely bothered to come for market days, what with a neighboring village's market being much closer to their outpost.

But the Northerner was ridiculously tall, even for a Northerner, who tended to be taller anyway. They must not have anything else to do in the winter but gorge and grow enormously, at least from her Gabriel's tales of being trapped by cold weather inside their houses. She thought he was exaggerating, at least a bit.

"Gabriel," the Northerner gasped as he came right up to their table, like he was a friend, like they knew him, "It is you..!"

Kali's rebuke for the tall man's presumption died on her lips as she saw color drain from her husband's face. She reacted, jumping off her bench seat and stepping between Gabriel and the stranger.

"Who are you?" she hissed. She suspected, and if she was right, if this was one of Gabriel's brothers, possible the brother, the rapist, she'd strike him down in an instant, even though they were in public. Even though there would be a magistrate's inquiry if she did that. No one would blame her for defending her sad wolf, not here in her own village.

"Who are you?" the stranger said, and bristled at her, hackles raising even though he didn't transform.

"Sam," Gabriel said behind her. "He's Sam..."

"Not Castiel?" Kali said suspiciously, not taking her eyes from the stranger.

"No. He's Sam."

"Samuel Alpha John Winchester, ma'am," the stranger said and stepped back a stride. Not that the short distance put him out of striking range, if he decided to be so foolish, but she wasn't completely crowded anymore.

"He's my brother-in-law," Gabriel elaborated. "Or was."

"Still am," the tall Northerner agreed.

Kali snorted at that, but stepped back herself. She sat down cautiously, but kept her eyes on her new and unwelcome relation.

"We thought you were dead, Gabriel!" the man said as he stepped forward, leaning over the table, into her and Gabriel's dinner. "You disappeared and when you didn't turn up with the Cherubim, Lucifer said you must have thrown yourself into the river in a fit of postpartum madness!"

Gabriel blanched at that, Kali noted, and ducked his head. His entire body curled in and away, like he was bracing for a blow. Kali hadn't seen such behavior from him for a long time, back before they were married, right before and after Jocheved was born.

"Step back," Kali stood up again, blocking the looming Northerner and contemplating whether she'd have to transform in the middle of the festival and force him to leave.



Gabriel's woman was tiny and had no qualms about putting herself between Sam and his brother-in-law. It was weird. Sam wasn't even sure if she was a delta – he hadn't seen even a hint of a wolf's teeth in her, no flash of fang to remind him she could bite him, but she bristled with ferocity all the same.

"Mommy? Daddy?"

Sam turned to stare at the youngster who had come up behind him. A girl, blond and rosy beige from summer sunlight, was staring at him, and a toddler peeked over her shoulder from being carried pick-a-back.

"Jocheved, come here," Gabriel said.

"Daddy, who is he?" the girl asked as she sat away from Sam on Gabriel's other side and handed the toddler off to Gabriel's care.

Sam just stared. She was about seven, maybe eight, wheaten blond and brown-eyed – a northern child down here in the south? If she wasn't Gabriel's by birth, Sam would eat a shoe. And since Gabriel had been that timber-wolf bitch Sam had spotted, that meant this girl had been the male pup...

"A zeta?" Sam gasped. It was appalling and Sam needed to know who to blame, who to sue for the dishonor. "You have a zeta child? Who fathered her?"

Gabriel flinched and blurted, "She's spurious."

"I'm what, Daddy?" the child asked.

"Spurious," Gabriel said to the child, but didn't take his eyes off Sam. "It means you're just mine," he lied.

"And Mommy's," the child corrected.

"Yes, and mine," Gabriel's woman said, and smiled at the child. Then she shifted to look at Sam, and her look was a challenge.

"I'm not arguing," Sam said, and held up his hands. He didn't know why, Gabriel's woman was tiny, and her wolf – if she was in fact a delta – was probably no bigger than a fox, but Sam didn't want to cross her. Especially if she was claiming to be the parent of an admittedly spurious child – to accept some bastard whose father couldn't be named meant she had to be deeply invested in her alliance with Gabriel.

"Kali..." Gabriel said.

The woman turned to look at Gabriel, and there was such fondness in her gaze that Sam immediately felt awkward. Such open affection, it should have been private, not something for a public festival.

"You, Sam Winchester," the woman – Kali, Sam repeated to himself – faced him again, her eyes dark and flashing, "are not a friend—"

"Kali!"

"Gabriel—"

"Sam's all right. He left a satchel for me, when I left home."

Kali's eyebrows rose and she turned to stare intensely at Sam.

"Yeah," Sam admitted, "I did..." Sam turned to Gabriel, "I thought, I don't know, that you'd run to the Cherubim."

"Who are they? Why were you running, Daddy?" the girl asked.

Gabriel turned to her, and pulled her close to him, and then ducked his nose against the toddler in his lap. Sam looked at her, and then at Kali across the table; if the older girl was fathered on Gabriel by some unnamable northerner, Sam would bet money, bet Jess's coming dowry even, that the toddler was Kali's and Gabriel had fathered her. The toddler plus Gabriel Minor of the Lilim made two acknowledged and legal children for Gabriel – not enough for him to be rid of his obligations to his family under the law, not with the twins being officially Dean's and his girl Jocheved being spurious, but Sam knew that many families would let Gabriel go into retirement anyway, given that he had slid into middle age now.

"The Cherubim are my mother's family, and I was running away because my family had been... very mean to me."

"...Did they not let you have dessert?"

Gabriel laughed weakly. "No, Jocheved."

Sam winced. They had all been much worse than that, and none of it was fit for a child's ears.

"Sam Winchester," Kali said abruptly, and took Sam's elbow. "We must... talk."

Gabriel looked up, startled. "Don't kill him, Kali."

She smiled at Gabriel, and then up at Sam more toothily. "I won't, my love. I'm just going to explain to him, about my regard for you and Jocheved and Sakuntala. I'll be polite."

She was, in the end, polite. Also terrifying. At the end of the night, Sam still didn't know if she was a delta or an epsilon, or New-God forbid, a particularly small and feminine zeta, but by then he didn't care. He just didn't want her to focus on him again.


Gabriel heard a knock at the door, and ran to open it. Anyone who'd come to the house when they were flying keep-away banners must need Kali dreadfully – and there was at least one woman under Kali's care whose pregnancy he knew was likely to go bad at any moment. He couldn't turn the visitors away without telling them where she actually was.

So when Gabriel answered the door, he was entirely unprepared for northerners – guardsmen – come to arrest him on his pack-alpha's orders. He tried to argue, but the moment they mention Heylel Seraphiel, his throat closed up and he whimpered in terror.

At least Jocheved and Sakuntala had been left behind, as they had no orders for the children, and Gabriel was able to argue that they were Kali's legal children, and no part of the Seraphim.

He wanted to curse Samuel Winchester, because the tall alpha had betrayed him, probably to further his standing in Lucifer's patronage network. But even he had to admit that the alpha had probably just fallen into Lucifer's web when Sam was thrust stumbling into the train cabin and the door locked behind him. Fuck...



Sam woke up groggy and disorientated, and it wasn't until he caught sight of Gabriel, huddled on the opposite bench, on the opposite end, as far as he could be and remain inside the same cabin that he remembered where he was and why.

"Gabriel?" he asked.

The beta's response was to lift his head belligerently and growl, his wolf's teeth showing in his mouth.

Sam banged his head back against his seat and sighed.

"I didn't want to, you know," Sam said after a moment.

"I don't care."

Which was fair enough, Sam conceded to himself. He'd have a hard time sympathizing if he'd been dragged home against his will – more against his will, Sam at least could have refused, instead of being arrested and dragged off. But Gabriel had to have known it would happen if he'd ever been found out – he hadn't been emancipated or married off under-the-hand, and Lucifer was jealous of his family prerogatives.


Kali came home to two hysterical daughters and her husband's marriage bracelets twisted on the floor. The houses stank with the scent of strangers.

Strangers. Who had come for Gabriel and taken him out of her house. Who had stolen her husband.

She hissed in fury, and gathered Jocheved and Sakuntala close, soothing her children's sobs. Whoever had done this, they would pay.


It took Gabriel more time than it should have to realize that Sam was under guard as well, but Gabriel put it down to being kidnapped and bound with silver. He didn't know if Sam being locked into the cabin with him was supposed to be a kindness or a torment, but as his blood rose, all he wanted was privacy.

Sam must have too, because he kept glancing at the door and then back at Gabriel when he thought Gabriel wasn't looking. Not that Gabriel could blame him—being trapped with an angry beta in heat was probably not up on any alpha's list of fantasies, not if they really thought it through.

But his blood was rising, he was twitchy and snappish and what he really wanted Kali and three days alone with her, or at least enough privacy that he could shove his hands down his pants and get some relief.

"I hate this," is what Sam said the second day of their trip. Gabriel was bleary-eyed from a restless night draped across the bench seats.

"I'm mourning your distress, I really am," Gabriel replied.

Sam shot him a sour look, which wasn't enough to make Gabriel repent. Sam certainly had more freedom than Gabriel had, since Sam had gone out the door twice already. And come back looking unhappy, but Sam had always been good at making faces.

"It's not my fault! I didn't give the order to arrest you, and I certainly didn't want to escort you home!"

"You could," Gabriel pointed out, "have not told anyone that you'd found me!"

Sam wrinkled his nose at that. He put his chin in his big hand, and sighed heavily. His eyes tracked the landscape outside the window for a moment, the scrubby trees and sere grasses.

However, he didn't deny that he had told someone, some relative or friend so that news of Gabriel's survival reached the river-cities, reached Lucifer's ears...

"I'm still a client, Gabriel. Who else do I have, besides the Seraphim? Who else does Dean have?"

Gabriel gave a snort of his own. Sam was chasing red herrings on a string if he thought Gabriel cared a flip for Dean. He might not remember much about the days in the silver muzzle, the whole ordeal being jumbled and scattered unless he dwelt on it, and he tried not to—but he knew that Dean had Castiel, and Castiel had Dean, and never the twain should part, no matter who it hurt.

"Like I care what happens to your brother!"

Sam frowned, looking startled, then ashamed. "All right, Gabriel, all right. You don't have to..."

Gabriel snorted again, and settled himself pointedly in the corner.


"What?!" Maia yelped as Kali shut the door on her daughters and Maia's brood of offspring. She didn't want the girls to hear all the details, as they were too young to understand and she didn't want them needlessly frightened.

"Northerners kidnapped Gabriel. I need you to watch Jocheved and Sakuntala while I go and rescue him."

"… But that makes no sense! Gabriel, kidnapped? Why?"

"Maia," Kali growled.

"Who would kidnap a baker?!"

Kali glared at her friend and neighbor. Maia had many good qualities, but she was letting herself be confused by the fact that the northerners had acted so outrageously.

"He's a baker, Kali!"

"I know that," Kali grit out. "And he's also the only beta-hermaphrodite among his siblings."

Maia blinked. "What?"

"It's important, in the north. His family may be trying to bring him home."

"With a kidnapping?!"

"Apparently."

"But—"

"I need you to take care of my children, Maia, until I come back. Can you do that?"

"Of course! But... Kali, what if you can't find Gabriel? If he's been taken north..."

"I already know he was taken to the rail-line. All I have to do is follow on a train north." Kali hissed a breath full of rage. "I will find him, Maia. No one is going to take my husband from me. No one."



"Is he expecting us to have sex?" Gabriel asked as their guard laughed and shut the cabin door.

Sam winced. He normally didn't care about the ridiculous gossip about alpha's irresistible prowess, and betas being completely enamored of whatever male was in reach during heat.

"I hope not..." Sam said. He, at least, had an idea of what kind of legal entanglement could become from Gabriel becoming pregnant on the way home, no matter that he was in heat. Sam already didn't like being so beholden that Lucifer could tug him home against his will, if with a less overt invocation of power than one the Flock alpha had used against Gabriel.

"Good," Gabriel snapped, and curled up tighter.

"How bad is it?" Sam asked. Not that he wanted to know, particularly, but he was fond of Gabriel, as fond as he could be of a beta 12 years his elder whom had been married out of the house for much of Sam's youth, and whose reappearance seemed likely to ruin Sam's home life.

Not to mention Dean and Castiel's. And Young Castiel and Deanael as well.

The only good Sam could maybe imagine was that Gabriel was not dead, and his legal situation could be rectified. Of the course, Lucifer would invoke his rights over Gabriel and have him arrested, damn what the locals would think. If Lucifer had simply asked for his brother to come home...

...Gabriel probably would have ignored him, Sam knew. The beta had made a happy life in the south from all indications, and Sam's ill considered sharing of his joy at the revelation that he was still alive had backfired terribly. He wondered which of them had blabbed to Lucifer—Dean or Castiel?

Dean seemed likely, because he and Gabriel had never quite gotten along. Sam knew that all betas clashed sometimes—the pressures of holding home-life together could be extremely draining, especially when one was a family member, and one had only married into the house.


Gabriel woke in the dark, to the clicking of the train and the sticky damp feel of his body running deep into heat. He groaned, and glance across the tiny cabin to Sam, who was sitting asleep across his own bench of seats.

Gabriel bit his lip to keep from whining and waking Sam up, but he had to deal with his heat, at least somewhat, before he started howling in distress. It was a real possibility, if he got frustrated enough.

Therefore, Gabriel shifted himself over until he was facing the seat backs, instead of Sam, and took a bracing breath. He pulled his shirt out of the way, and tried slipping his hand down his trousers. But the silver band around his wrist, uncomfortable as it was against his arm, burned when it lay against the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, and he fell off the bench at the sharp sting.

"Gabr'l?" Sam mumbled as Gabriel lay gasping one the floor of their cabin. Gabriel could have doused his genitals with hot pepper and gotten less pain out of it, and he moaned in frustration. There was no way he was getting either bracelet off, not with the guardsmen being paid so handsomely to bring him back to home and to Lucifer.

"I...it's all right, Sam," he gasped, curling around himself but keeping his braceleted wrists away awkwardly. "I just—"

Sam didn't listen, not that he ever had when he wanted to know, not even when he had been small. The tall alpha clambered to the floor in the dark, and put a huge hand on Gabriel's shoulder.

"Gabriel?" he asked, and gave a tug, as if that could make Gabriel uncurl.

"The silver, it burns," Gabriel hissed through his watering eyes.

"What were you...?" Sam asked, as he manhandled Gabriel up to sit on the floor. Gabriel could barely make out anything between the darkness and the pain, but he was sure Sam had his concerned look on, the one that made people confide in Sam even though they shouldn't.

"I was trying to masturbate, what do you think I was doing?" Gabriel hissed, "But I can't even touch myself with these damn things on!" He held up his arms and shook the wide silver bracelets that were locked on to keep him from transforming.

"...ah?" Sam said.

"Yes, very helpful," Gabriel snapped.

Sam huffed as that, a little noise of displeasure. And then his hands were on Gabriel, grabbing him under his arms and heaving him back onto the bench seat.

Sam knelt against him, pinning Gabriel in the corner between seat back and wall.

"Gabriel, do you want me to...?" Sam trailed off. He looked up at Gabriel, and in the darkness, all Gabriel could see was the curve of his head as Sam looked at him.

"What?!" Gabriel barked, guessing what Sam was offering and not happy about it. He wanted Kali, he wanted Kali so much, and he couldn't have her—because they'd stolen him away from her. His choices were Sam, whatever horror that guard captain came up with, or whining himself into madness as his heat rose and rose without relief.

"Gabriel," Sam said.

"I want Kali," he cried. "Why can't I have Kali?"

"She's not here, Gabriel," Sam said, and put a hand on his knee. The alpha was still crouched in front of him. "I'm so sorry."

"You could have," Gabriel gulped, "you could have stopped them. You could have made them leave me."

"Gabriel, that's not true."

"I know," he said, "I know. But I want it to be true."

"I'm so sorry," Sam said, and sat up, climbing onto the bench seat beside Gabriel.

Gabriel sighed, and leaned into it when Sam ran a hand over his hair. He let out a shuddering breath and allowed himself to fold against Sam's shoulder. The alpha smelled warm, and comforting, and let Gabriel weep bitter tears all over his chest, until Gabriel was worn out and quiet against him.

"Did that help..?" Sam said. He didn't sound calm or patient—instead he sounded hopeful, like maybe Gabriel was through having a fit all over him and would be able to control his volatile emotions from now on.

"Yeah," Gabriel said. He pulled his feet up onto the bench seat. "Help me take off my shoes?"

"Uhm. What?"

Gabriel wiped his nose with the back of his hand and sighed. "You're the best of my very limited options, Sam... unless you weren't actually offering to fuck me?"

"I wasn't, actually," Sam said, though he reached down to pop Gabriel's shoes off, and then slid closer, a huge bulk against Gabriel's shins.

"Oh."

Sam laughed, a short burst of rueful amusement, and he crouched down onto the floor, and pressed his head against Gabriel's side. "I was offering to help, Gabriel. But... I didn't think you'd want me inside you."

"I'm in heat, Sam." Gabriel said. "What I want is all... stupid and messy now."

Sam reached up, and slung his arm around Gabriel's waist, his hand settling to pet Gabriel's side. "I remember what happened, Gabriel. I was too young and too stupid to do anything about it, but I remember. You were screaming, for days—"

"Sam!" Gabriel snapped. "Please. Don't speak of that...please."

"I don't want to make you scream. Not like that."

Gabriel sighed, and turned his face away, until he was pressing his cheek against the back of the seat he was crosswise against. "I won't. Just... ask, and stop if I tell you to, all right?"

"All right."

"You should probably take my pants off too," Gabriel suggested around a lump in his throat.

"Yeah," Sam breathed, "okay."

Gabriel helped, shifting when Sam reached up, and trying to hold his arms away, so the heavy bracelets didn't bang into Sam as the alpha stripped him half-naked. He was shivering, partly in anticipation, partly in nerves, by the time Sam moved down into a crouch in front of him again.

He didn't know why he'd expected Sam to push his legs apart and just thrust in—his first husband had been that selfish, but he'd had better lovers since—but he gasped in shock when the young alpha leaned up and ran his tongue up from Gabriel's knee to his thigh.

"Oh..." he murmured, as Sam continued licking against his thigh and up over his hip. He patted Sam's hair tentatively, awkwardly trying not to touch him with the silver he was bound with. "Oh, Sam..."



Sex with Gabriel was peculiarly joyless – the beta's rising heat pushed them into an intimacy that neither of them actually wanted, and Sam found that he really didn't enjoy fucking someone who cried for someone else all through the coupling. Nor to mention he wasn't all that attracted to betas in general – for some reason, he found deltas more interesting. He was even planning on marrying Jessica delta-Josiah Moore, even though Lucifer had expressed disappointment in the betrothal – his patron thought Sam could marry a Flock beta if he just tried.

"Shhh," Sam said, and brushed his hand gently over Gabriel's sweaty head. The beta was sprawled on top of him, and snuffling against his neck. It wasn't quite sobbing, but it was a tired, sad sound, and if Sam hadn't been swollen and knotted up inside Gabriel, he might have retreated to let the beta cry in peace.

"Uh, Sam..." Gabriel mumbled.

"Shhh, Gabriel," Sam said again, trying for soothing. If Gabriel stopped sniffling, Sam wouldn't feel quite so guilty about how just plain pleasurable it was to be inside Gabriel, to feel his cock swollen and locked into Gabriel's surprisingly tight body. For someone who'd gone to the childbed at least three times, Gabriel was warm and tight and delicious.

"I wanna go home," Gabriel mumbled, and tried to sit up.

"No, no, don't do that," Sam muttered, and pulled Gabriel back down, stroking over his neck and back. If the beta tried to move off Sam right now, it would be painful for both of them, not to mention farcical and futile. It would be at least another few minutes before Sam's body stopped the little orgasmic shivers and his cock deflated enough to slip out.

Gabriel went boneless, flopping tiredly on Sam's chest. "I want Kali," he grumbled against Sam's neck.

"And I want Jess," Sam said.

"Who's Jess?"

Sam peered at Gabriel, who stared back with glaze-eyed curiosity. "Who's Jess?" the beta repeated.

"Jess is my fiancée. She's a delta from the Moores."

"Moores..." Gabriel said. "Rising Folk, clients to the Cherubim?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about her?" Gabriel asked, and sighed against Sam's throat.

Sam shivered at that, the hot damp sensation making his hips twitch and his cock swell up a bit. Gabriel made a strangled sound and clamped his hands tight on Sam's shoulders, even as his passage clenched tighter in a way that Sam enjoyed a lot.

"I'm met her at a symposium."

"Drinking parties are the best..." Gabriel muttered.

"It was for a guest lecturer at the lyceum, Gabriel, not a drunken orgy for the moneyed young clowns of the Flock. You should know better—"

"Why?" Gabriel grumbled. "Not like I ever got to go. Lucifer and Michael, yeah, but I stayed home and was a good little virgin until they married me to Attarib. "

Sam blinked at that. "You were?"

"Yes. Shitload of good that did me, but I was almost untouched at my first wedding."

"Almost untouched?" Sam asked.

"Well, Michael and Lucifer took me to a brothel beforehand, but that hardly counts. It wasn't like I was allowed to let anyone fuck me there – it was purely educational," Gabriel emphasized the word, almost snarling.

Sam craned his neck to look at Gabriel, who sounded much more aware in his anger. And he was tense, all his muscles tight under Sam's hands. The change was startling, and disturbing – "Gabriel...?"

"Sorry," the beta muttered, and just sort of melted into a sort of boneless tenseness.

Sam sighed, and slid a hand down Gabriel's back, and over the beta's thighs. Grip secure, Sam rolled them over with a yelp from Gabriel, until the beta was on his back on the blanket-covered floor and Sam was above him.

Sam would have been pleased at the change in position, at his new and pleasing leverage, if Gabriel's eyes hadn't been wide and frightened.

"Hey. It's all right," Sam said, and ran his hand over Gabriel's cheek and down his neck.

"N-no," Gabriel moaned, and he shivered under Sam. It felt good, but the look on Gabriel's face, half-sick and half-flushed, was repellent. Sam quickly shifted until he was on his side, with one of Gabriel's legs hiked over his thighs and his cock as far out of Gabriel's body as he could manage without tearing either one of them.

"Better?"

"Yeah," Gabriel said, and gave a shaky nod. "Tell me about your Jess."

Sam blinked, and stroked his hand up and down Gabriel's leg, and rolled his hips absently, which made Gabriel whine soft in his throat.

"She's lovely, sweet and supportive and really clever. Her family are clients to the Cherubim, her grandmother was one of their culls, so she's actually blood-kin to them."

"To me too, if her grandmother is an epsilon of the Cherubim," Gabriel said.

"Yeah, that's right," Sam agreed. "Huh, that'd make us... cousins-in-law as well as brothers-in-law?"

"Something like that. Though I wouldn't mention me – this – to her if I were you."

"I'm going to have to, Gabriel. We won't be able to keep it a secret. The guards will gossip and Jess will hear. Better that she hears that I bred someone else from me than from the street..."

Gabriel yawned, and asked, "Would she forgive you?"

"I'm still going to marry her. I hope she will – it's not like I planned this."

"I planned to stay away from any men for the length of my heat," Gabriel replied. "So much for that."

"I am sorry..."

"That still doesn't help, Sam," Gabriel said. Then he sighed, "I wish the repressors worked for me."

"Repressors?"

"Southerner medicine. It clamps down on heats, makes them almost nothing. Works great for most deltas, like this," he said, and snapped his fingers.

"Deltas, but not betas?"

"Made me sick when I tried to use them," Gabriel said forced lightness. Sam suspected there was more to that story, but didn't want to pry.

"I'm sorry..."

"It really isn't your fault. Hmmm, Sam, move. I need you to move."

"Hold on," Sam said, and began to thrust again, just little shallow rocks that got deeper and harder as Sam gradually pushed Gabriel onto his back again, until he was thrusting hard and the beta was mewling under him.

Afterwards, Sam was sprawled half on top of Gabriel, and trying to pull himself free so as not to crush the smaller man.

"I hate this," Gabriel muttered.

"Am I that bad?"

Gabriel glared at him, and then looked away. "No. You're enjoyable enough, for an alpha. Polite. Considerate. But I want Kali. I love Kali. I was supposed to spend this heat with her, not being dragged home and fucked while I'm at it!"

"Gabriel," Sam growled. "I'm trying to make this as nice as possible. Don't make it harder than it has to be."

Gabriel pursed his lips, and didn't talk to Sam for the rest of the day. Even though they fucked twice more, and Gabriel was whimpering at the end of it.



When the train pulled into the great station by the river, Gabriel was numb. It was a sight he'd never wanted to see again, the river and city and the great bridges across—silver steel gifts of their forbearers, that had survived flood and earthquake and still spanned the mother river.

Sam was very careful when he came to look out their tiny window to keep opposite him. Gabriel wanted to thank him for the kindness, but the damage was already done.

"Home again..." Sam sighed in a tone that was more rueful than anything else.

"I never wanted to be here again," Gabriel admitted.

"I am sorry, Gabriel," the alpha said.

"You keep apologizing, Sam. It doesn't help," Gabriel said, and then stared at the cabin door, as he'd heard the click of a key being inserted into the lock.

The guardsmen at the door escorted Gabriel out onto the platform.

Lucifer was waiting there, in his fine clothes and calm, quiet demeanor.

"Gabriel," Lucifer said in a tone that was full of parental disappointment, as if Gabriel were a child who failed to excel on an examination.

Gabriel drew himself up, as much as he could while flanked by goons hired from the city watch. He lifted his chin, squared his shoulders, and resolutely ignored Sam's shuffling discomfit as the plebian alpha stood beside him.

"Lucifer..." Sam said, his tone conciliatory, almost begging. "Look, he's home..."

"Yes, he is," Lucifer said calmly. "And you should never have left, Gabriel. You had no permission, no leave from me, your pack alpha. You were wayward. But you will be forgiven."

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. Lucifer seemed to be waiting for something. If it was for Gabriel to fling himself at his brother's feet and grovel for a place back in the family, Lucifer was deluding himself.

"Gabriel," Lucifer said after a long moment, "You will forgiven. You just only need ask. The family will accept you back, little brother."

"If you think I want to have anything to do with you, Lucifer," Gabriel said, "you've lost more of your mind than I thought."

Lucifer slapped him. It was an open-handed blow, hard against his cheek, and it knocked him off his feet.

"You will be forgiven, once you ask to be," Lucifer said as he loomed over Gabriel. "Until then—!"

He didn't get to answer, because Gabriel took advantage of being knocked off his feet to punch Lucifer low in the stomach, and then in the face when his brother folded over in shock.

It was a short fight, because Gabriel was alone, Lucifer was not, and even a slightly tall beta against several average sized alphas was at an extremely disadvantage.

He was barely aware of Sam hauling him to his feet at Lucifer's command, he was so dizzy from the hits he's taken, brawling in the street like the lowest class Folk.

"He will remember his place," was the last clear thing he heard, "if I have to burn it into him," before he passed out into the cool dark of unconsciousness.



"You are awake. Your breathing has changed," was the first thing Gabriel actually understood as he woke. He was back in the isolation room of the Seraphim House, locked in and sealed, except someone was standing beside the bed.

Gabriel turned over, confirmed who it was, and came out of the bed kicking.

Castiel went down, but hit the ground changed, and sprang back up snarling. Gabriel jumped back on the bed, and over. Being trapped in human-shape meant he could climb and jump much better than four-footed Castiel, at least if he used his brain as well as his nerves.

He even made it to the door.

Dean was there, of course.

Gabriel recoiled, and then was knocked down.

Then he had a small bout of hysterics about being pinned – it was the smell, the familiar closed air and Castiel's own thick furry scent, Gabriel was sure. It was frankly embarrassing to start shrieking like that, even if Castiel did scramble off him while Gabriel flailed and kicked his way until he was crouched against the bedstead. They'd have to peel him away, and he was resolved to bite them, at the very least.

"What the hell?" Sam yelled as he careened into the doorway. "What are you doing?"

"We just came to get him up," Dean said.

"Are you serious?" Sam was glaring at Dean with that ridiculous face he made when he disapproved. Gabriel took one look and started whooping with laughter.

"Gabriel?" Sam asked, and stepped a tentative step closer.

Gabriel shook his head, and shrieked as Castiel tried to follow Sam. He could trust the Folk alpha – Sam had asked him in the train, and took 'no' for an answer – he couldn't trust his brother.

"Cas..."

Castiel looked unhappy, but straightened and backed away. At Sam's following glare, he stepped through the doorway. Sam closed the door in Castiel and Dean's faces, and sat down with his back to it.

Gabriel watched him, and tried to breath.

"Better?" Sam asked, after many long moments.

Gabriel nodded, "Yes. I..."

Sam tilted his head. "Gabriel?"

"...I can't do this, Sam..."

Sam frowned at him – not a disapproving frown, but a concerned one.

"I... Shit."

"I know you said saying 'sorry' doesn't help..." Sam said and climbed to his feet.

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the tall alpha as he stepped closed and held his hand out.

"...but I don't know how much help I can get away with giving you. I'll try, anyway."

Gabriel looked at Sam's hand and sighed. He grabbed it, felt Sam's huge hand wrap around his like a father's around a child's, and let the alpha help him up. He pulled the sleeves of his tunic down and scrubbed his face for the lack of something better to make himself presentable. "Yes..."

"They're going to get you out of here. Lucifer wants to talk to you again."

Gabriel straightened his back and threw his chin up. "Better to go out on my own terms."



"I'm leaving," Gabriel said at the breakfast, just about the first thing he did when everyone was assembled. He stared at everyone and no one, and scrupulously avoided paying any attention to the twin boys sitting off at the children's table. They were nothing to him, and he wanted it kept that way; if he had to acknowledge they existed at all, he'd probably try to gut them out of sheer horror at their existence.

Lucifer grabbed his arm and pulled him back from turning away. Gabriel stared down at the hand on his arm, and then very deliberately lifted his eyes to stare at his older brother.

And growled.

"Are you challenging me?!" Lucifer asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said, and growled again.

The pack-alpha looked appalled.

"Ah... witnessed," one of Lucifer's early-morning guests said. So much for political alliances, Gabriel thought. The man might even be an in-law and yet here he was formally witnessing a challenge to Lucifer's authority.

"Witnessed," agreed another guest, and then it was off.

Lucifer looked appalled that he'd been maneuvered into a pack-challenge by a beta, of all things.



The old arena looked as creepy as ever. Gabriel was mildly surprised that standing on the sands instead of in stands didn't change how unsettling the structure was. Though it did give him an unflattering perspective on many of the people spectating. Odd how he'd never noticed how unpleasant so many people were when he was young – he had been a stupid youth, he decided, and ignorant, and not seen how very ugly the Flock was then.

Gabriel wondered just how many of them had come with the hope of seeing Lucifer dead, and how many were there to see an uppity beta thrashed into obedience. He wouldn't give odds either way, himself.

"You can formally submit and admit your sins right now, little brother," Lucifer said, "and I will forgive you."

Gabriel stared back at Lucifer. "I'd rather die."

"You may have that chance," Lucifer said in his calm way.

"Yes, he may, but not alone," Rachel said from the sidelines unexpectedly.

Gabriel glanced to the side in shock, and saw Lucifer do likewise. He heard the crunch of footsteps on sand, and startled at a hand on his shoulder.

Rachel moved up to stand beside him. His half-sister's face was stern. "You're a menace, Lucifer. You're ambition is becoming madness, and you'll bring the family down when you fall. I won't have it."

"Little sister, go back to your husband. Now. I will forgive this transgression—"

"No." Rachel lifted her chin and threw her head back. She was risking all, to join in Gabriel's fight. It was her right as his sister to back him in a challenge against a dangerous and unstable pack-alpha, but her husband might divorce her if she won, might repudiate their children if she lost and throw them out into the streets as a traitor's brood...

"A beta and a delta, in rebellion. Even if you managed to defeat me, the next pack-alpha will chastise you both severely..."

"I don't care," Gabriel said.

"You can't be allowed to continue," Rachel spoke over him.

"You're too dangerous," a third voice joined in, and Gabriel turned to stare in shock as Sam climbed over the railing and dropped onto the sand himself.

"Samuel. You are my client...this is petty treason..." Lucifer hissed.

"I'm not betraying the Seraphim," Sam pointed out. "Just you. You're going to take everyone down, Seraphim and client-families alike, if you aren't stopped."

Lucifer's face curled, and Gabriel had just long enough to gulp before he was dodging the furious lunge as his older brother let loose his wolf.

Lucifer's wolf had become … wrong. Gabriel hadn't even transformed and he could smell the grotesque stench of the wolf. But it was a fight for his life, with Lucifer lunging like a rabid monster, and he, his sister, and Sam were all scrambling on uneven footing.

It burned, to transform after being shackled with silver for so long, and his wolfshape was so small compared to Lucifer's bulk, but Gabriel changed to sink teeth into his brother's shank. Rachel did too, a small golden shape beside him.

Then the fight was on, and it was a terror – Lucifer was outnumbered, and Sam's wolf was just as heavy as Lucifer's, but Lucifer's had the strength of insanity and the moon. It was blood, messy and too long.

Rachel's foreleg was dislocated Sam was torn all down his side, and Gabriel's neck and shoulder were torn from Lucifer's last ineffective strikes before it was over.

But his brother was bleeding out on the sand, blood leaking out from a hole they'd torn through his gut.

Werewolf family politics always winded up horrific in the end, Gabriel thought blearily, and threw up.



They'd stumbled, all rather off balance now that Lucifer was dead, back to the mansion. Gabriel had felt like he was walking through a dream, covered as he was with his brother's blood, and yet free of the silver bracelets that had shackled him for weeks. He'd tossed off his stole in the atrium, and snarled at Castiel's reproving look.

But after he'd walked away from his younger brother, he'd been lost. He couldn't bear to go to his old room, or any place he'd occupied during the last days, or before when he was muzzled.

At last, Sam had found him in the kitchen, staring into the sink in confusion and still gory from the fight. The young alpha had taken him by the hand and led him to his own room at the back of the complex. He'd stripped Gabriel out of his clothes, pulled a clean tunic of his own over Gabriel's head— which fit Gabriel badly, being entirely too long in the arms, though it came down past his knees at the hem, and thus was more than modest enough—and bundled him to lie on a couch that seemed entirely too small to belong in Sam's room at all. Then Sam stripped and crawled into his own bed.

The next morning, Gabriel woke to the creak of a door. He blinked, realized he was in Sam's room, on Sam's couch, and craned his head to see who was coming into unannounced and quiet. When he saw who it was, he snarled.

Dean stared at him.

Gabriel rolled off his back, sitting up on the couch even as he kept his fangs out.

"Huh? Whu?" Sam said, off on his bed. He was apparently not a good riser anymore.

"Sammy, morning."

"Dean." Sam sighed, and Gabriel could just imagine the put upon look he had on his face, but he wouldn't look away from Dean. He didn't think he could, not now.

"Breakfast. Cas wants to talk."

"Okay. We'll be there in a few."

Dean made a face. "With pants, Sam," he ordered, and then walked away. Gabriel watched him go.

"Gabriel," Sam said after a moment.

Gabriel snapped his head around to look at Sam. "What?"

"Are you..." Sam stopped, and gave him a funny look. "You seem off."

"I had to kill my brother, Sam."

Sam looked shamefaced at that, and rubbed the back of his own neck. "Yeah. I'm sorry, Gabriel."

"He had to die. I would never have been free while he lived." Gabriel said, and then looked down at his hands.

"I'm still sorry, Gabriel."

"Yeah, well..." Gabriel said.

"C'mon, let's get dressed, see what Cas wants now that he's pack-alpha."

Gabriel frowned. "I don't think I care what Castiel wants. I know what I want, and that's passage home."

Sam gave him a weather-eye from where he was pawing through his wardrobe. "You are ... you mean home with Kali, don't you?"

"Yes." Gabriel said. "Home."

"Cas probably thinks this is your home..." Sam said.

"He's wrong. My home is with Kali. This is ... just a place I used to live."

"Well..." Sam said, "Let's get you pants, and then you can make your case to Castiel."

Gabriel gave Sam a weary glare, and shook his head. "It won't make any difference. I'm not staying here... though I suppose I could find some pants to wear before I tell my brother that..."


"Lucifer had plans for you," Castiel said the after the breakfast plates were cleared away.

Gabriel had sat as far as he could from his brother and his brother's spouse, so it took him a minute to realize Castiel was talking to him. When Gabriel finally looked up, Castiel had that sour expression that stared right through one and made you feel like a stupid and insignificant bug. Lucifer had been a master of that gaze, but Castiel had his own variant.

"What?"

"They'll have to be delayed, of course..."

"What the hell are you talking about, Castiel?"

Castiel cocked his head. "Your marriage—there were several advantageous matches that Lucifer was considering, but with the pup, you should marry Sam for the time being."

"No."

"Hey, I'm supposed to marry Jess!" Sam protested.

"Marry her later. Or take her as a concubine. Her family doesn't have enough standing to object, especially given your status and Gabriel's."

"I'm not marrying him," Gabriel stated. He rolled his shoulders and bit back the wolf's growl that wanted to erupt.

"You are pregnant, aren't you?" At Gabriel's hissing indrawing of breath, Castiel barreled on, "Unless Sam refutes it, your pup is his, and thus you are technically married anyway, given that you neither have other attachments."

"I won't refute," Sam muttered.

"I have another attachment," Gabriel snapped. "I'm married in the south. With a child! You can't divorce me from my wife just because!"

"I have not seen this wife, nor this child—" Castiel said.

"I have," Sam said. "The baby is definitely Gabriel's"

"You have confirmation?" Castiel's eagle eyes flicked over Sammy's shabby clothes.

"Yes."

Gabriel bristled, "It doesn't matter, since I'm going home."

"You are home, brother."

"Home to Kali and my family."

Castiel just stared in that long way he had and told Gabriel "You have no standing to abandon us, Gabriel. You aren't old yet, and you have only provided one legitimate child to this house—"

"Three!" Gabriel snarled. If Castiel was going to hold him by his fertility, he'd make sure every child counted, even the ones he still hated for existing.

"One. My sons do not count. You aren't numbered as their mother!" Castiel growled. "If you had stayed and done your duty—"

"I wasn't staying with a rapist, you bastard—!"

"—You might have more than enough to your credit for me to consider an emancipation, but right now the situation is tricky by any reckoning and I need to bind every ally I can to me."

"I am not—!"

"Marrying Sam will give your cub legitimacy and legal standing. After it is born, a quick divorce and you will be able to marry where it will do the most good."

"No."

Castiel blinked at him.

"No?"

"I'm not playing your game, Castiel."

"I don't see how you could stop—"

"I'm hiring an advocate, and suing."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Watch me!" Gabriel snarled, and darted out of the room before Castiel could rise from behind the heirloom desk. He dashed across the atrium and out the doors, into the city. There were still people – kin and ex-in-laws – that he could shelter with, if he were lucky. He just had to reach them.




"Thank you," Gabriel said as he sipped the ritual cup. He'd been shown into an empty room and ignored, probably while the Lilim figured out how to best position themselves before hearing his petition for representation.

"Hmm, you're welcome," Crowley, Forcas 'Crowley' A-Phenumel Lilim in full, drawled. "It's not often I get one of my favorite former in-laws showing up on my doorstep."

"I am not your favorite former in-law."

"One of, darling, one of."

"You didn't even like Attarib."

"Pff. No one liked Attarib. Couldn't get an alpha on any of his spouses, and blamed them and not his own inadequate prick. But he was useful, I'll give him that."

"You certainly didn't like me."

"Of course I did. You had the sharpest tongue in the house. If old Uncle Attarib hadn't been such a jealous bastard, I'd have banged you a few times once you'd kindled. You were quite charming as a young thing."

Gabriel paused in sipping his cup to glare at Crowley. His former nephew-by-marriage grinned at him salaciously.

"I suppose that's something."

"It is," Crowley grinned. "But now, Gabriel, I think we need to get down to business."

"I need an advocate."

"And you thought of me. Charming. Why?"

"Castiel wants to marry me off."

"He's your head-of-house, now. If you didn't want him, you should have waited until whichever spawn is oldest had hit his majority before killing Lucifer."

"I don't want to be married off. I have a spouse back in the south, and I'm not getting divorced just for Castiel's convenience. I want to go home."

"Oh, kitten, you're in a pickle, aren't you?" Crowley laughed. "Well, Balthazar my sweet should be able to find you a room someplace in this pile for the night. We can work on your problem in the morning."


Kali hated the river-cities on sight, beautiful cold stone and brickwork. The buildings filled their spaces up to the very edge of the streets, hoarding space and giving back only severe lines. It was not a friendly or a welcoming place, and she wondered how Gabriel could have come from it.

She didn't even have to ask about him, as it turned out, because he'd already made himself the talk of the town. The Northerners were gossiping about him by name when she stopped off the train, and all she had to do was make politely inquiring noises to get a full if garbled account.

And the location of the house where he'd run to. Northerners, it turned out, were worse gossips than her own people, and very loose with family troubles, if it was not their own family being the scandal.

Kali didn't trust the overly familiar beta who'd let her into the house. Balthazar of the Cherubim, he'd named himself, even though this was the ancestral home of the Lilim, at least if Kali had understood the directions she'd received correctly. She wanted to be at the Lilim home anyway, since that was what all the street gossips and news-readers had said was the place Gabriel had run to for sanctuary.

"You wait here, my dear. I'll be back in a tick," the beta-hermaphrodite said. Kali was glad to see him go, because blatant, obnoxious flirtation was unattractive when the one doing it was much more taken with themselves than with you.

Kali sniffed the air in the entryway, and smelling nothing of her husband, tried the chair, padded with horsehair and full of that scent too. There was a faint trace of Gabriel on one of the small pillows spread haphazard over the surface though, which surprised and reassured her.

Her husband was here, and she would soon be able to take him home.



"Kali..." Gabriel whispered, and rushed to embrace her in her dusty coat and scarf.

"Ah, love," she purred, hugged him back, "I've found you."

"As charming as this reunion is, perhaps inside?" Balthazar said after a while.

Gabriel looked up from where he'd been nosing into Kali's dark hair. "Barbarian. You don't know the meaning of love."

"No, I don't. Naked self-interest and a modicum of decorum, those I do have. Get off the street before word tattles back to Castiel about your lovely friend, Gabriel."

Gabriel side-stepped into the building, and pressed his nose against Kali's cheek, loving the smell of sunbaked clay and Kali's herb store.

"What are you doing here? Where are Jocheved and Sakuntala? Are they all right?" Gabriel babbled.

Kali merely held him calm in her hands and let him burble like a creek, words and words of nerves and relief.

"I came to retrieve you, The children are all right—I left them with Maia. She and her brood will look after them, and the farm as well."

"Ah, now there's a pickle. Gabriel wouldn't get past the gates. He's disputing with his pack-alpha, and the municipal guards have been alerted."

Kali frowned as Balthazar, and then turned to raise an inquiring eyebrow at Gabriel.

"I'm not under arrest anymore, but I will be if I try to leave the city," Gabriel admitted.

"What? Why?"

Gabriel winced – explaining all the ins and outs of the city's legal system was going to be hard. She had never quite believed him about the extent of the laws, or how he was placed in them. It was not too surprising – the South had much less complicated laws, in that one rule applied to all, no matter how inconsiderate that was in the variations of fortune and station. An alpha in the south had no more right to govern his family than an epsilon did.

"I challenged Lucifer – he'd gone mad, his wolf was rotting, it was horrible. My sister Rachel joined my challenge—"

"Explain, Gabriel. You 'challenged'?"

Gabriel gulped, and looked away. Kali wouldn't like how naked and raw family politics in the river-cities could be. "I challenged. A duel to the death..."

"In wolf shape, no doubt," Kali said, her lips tight.

"It's old law, Kali, the oldest, the most respected."

"The most savage."

"That too," Gabriel nodded. "Rachel joined me, and then Sam—"

"And that was allowed?" Kali asked.

"Yes." Gabriel explained, "If a head-of-house becomes senile, or insane, it's the duty of his kin to remove him. Force him to step down – peaceably if they can, but if not, then not."

"Oh love..." Kali said, and put her hand on his cheek in consolation.

"I had to do it. Lucifer would never have let me go home to you..." Gabriel sighed. "Castiel, he's head-of-house now—"

"'Castiel'? I remember that name," Kali hissed.

Gabriel gulped. "Don't, Kali. He's head-of-house now. By northern law, I'm supposed to obey him."

"Horseshit."

Gabriel giggled at Kali's vehement oath, feeling himself more than a little hysterical. He stifled the laughter and blurted, "He wants me to marry Sam."

Kali goggled at him. Then she pressed her nose against his neck, and sniffed in concentration. Gabriel could tell the moment she realized, the moment she registered the change in his scent, because drew back with a ferocious frown.

"I'm so sorry," Gabriel said, sinking to his knees in apology. He clutched at her waist and put his head against her belly, trying for submission and contrition in every line.

Kali's strong fingers carded through his hair. "They took you away because you were alone, didn't they?"

Gabriel nodded.

"You are pregnant?"

"I didn't menstruate," Gabriel admitted. There had been no bloody discharge after he'd fallen out of heat, and he'd done that days earlier than he'd expected, so he almost certainly was – that was the assumption they were all operating under, after all. "My scent's changed."

"I see."

Gabriel closed his eyes against the pain in Kali's words, and tried to explain. "It's not his fault. The guardsmen locked us in the cabin together. I was too hot, too..."

"Gabriel, what are you talking about?"

Gabriel blinked and raised his head to look at Kali. "I don't want you to be angry at Sam?"

"Sam?"

"He didn't have much choice, you know. It's hard for alphas to control themselves—" Kali snorted at that, "around betas in heat. Especially in a room alone..."

"Alone? The entire time?"

"Yes," Gabriel nodded, and sat back on his heels. "If you want a divorce now," he choked on the word, but went on, "I won't fight, but please take me south first!"

Kali stared at him, and then sat down on the couch. She pulled him up by his hand to sit beside her. "I'm not divorcing you, idiot. I came to get you back."

"I'm pregnant. Probably."

"Probably."

"That's not going to be a problem?" he asked.

"You were pregnant when we met, Gabriel."

Gabriel looked down at their joined hands and felt himself flush.

"So... Sam?"

"Yes."

"Just Sam?"

"He kept the guardsmen out, so yes, just Sam. It was... kind of him."

Kali snorted again. Gabriel looked up at her, a question on his face.

"It was not kindness, Gabriel."

"Alphas have a hard time controlling themselves—"

"Alphas are just as human as you or I. They choose not to control themselves, and then blame their biology for their bad actions." Kali said, and reached up with her other hand to smooth a lock back from Gabriel's face.

"But..."

"Do you want to keep it?" Kali asked.

Gabriel gulped. He knew what Kali was asking. There were methods that would insure that he didn't have to give birth again if he didn't want to... but if the child came and was legally a wolf, then he'd satisfied the Law of Three and no one would be able to gainsay that – his right to govern himself would have been earned through blood and children – no matter what happened with the petition.




"Perhaps something more civilized than an all-out street brawl?" Crowley suggested.

"This delta can release all claims to my brother, in exchange for an absolution of her marriage and a one-time payment of 10000 shekels. She may keep her bastards."

Gabriel turned to glare at Castiel and the insult.

"I keep Gabriel, and my children, and your money, wolf. Or perhaps you would like to be mocked as a rapist who prefers his blood-kin," Kali countered.

"Lucifer was within his rights to order that breeding, and Gabriel should have obeyed without question," Castiel said. "Serving as a surrogate for one wolf-pregnancy took barely 10 weeks of time—"

"Are you seriously arguing you did no harm—?"

"Fuck you, Castiel," Gabriel hissed. "You were desperate to advance and desperate to keep Dean, but I shouldn't have had to suffer for your political advancement, not like THAT!"

"You were the one fighting it, Gabriel," Castiel said in his hoarse voice. "If you'd just submitted like a good beta—"

"Fuck you. You broke my tail so that I couldn't block you—"

"Because you had to fight. You were always so selfish, Gabriel.

There was a piercing whistle, and the Lilim advocate Crowley glared at them all. "Children, children. There are better ways to resolve this. You want to brawl it out, fine, but at least have the decency to cry a formal challenge and set it up for the arena."

Castiel turned to stare at Gabriel with that flat considering look. "Agreed. The arena."

Gabriel gasped in shock at the idea. Challenging Lucifer for his place as pack alpha was one thing, because everyone could see he was going to destroy the family. Challenging Castiel now, with no clear alpha-successor should he fall, what with the children all being minors...

"Agreed," Kali said, and Gabriel turned to stare at her. She smiled back at him, and then turned her ferocious, triumphant glare back on Castiel.

"Agreed!" Crowley shouted before they either of them could take it back. "I'll have the paperwork filed in a tick!"




"Kali, please don't kill my brother," Gabriel said as Kali stepped past him on her way onto the sand.

She paused to look at him. Leaning down, she stroked his cheek before she stepped away and said, "Because you have asked, my love."

Castiel stood on the sand glowering, but Gabriel couldn't find himself feeling any sympathy for his little brother. All he'd wanted was to go home, and Castiel decided to stand in his way. Asserting himself as pack-alpha and head-of-house wasn't worth losing a challenge right after he'd ascended. If he lost, the pack might have to descend on Sam as a guardian until one of the children were old enough – and that would be a disaster. The family would lose so much prestige that some cadet branch would have to seize control, and it would be a bloody mess.

Gabriel didn't regret it for a moment.


Kali looked at the man who had been her husband's brother once, before he forfeited it all to obey an order to abuse. He was tall and milk-pale with unsettling blue eyes. The only normal thing about him was the dark color of his hair, and that just made him all the more uncanny.

"You can step back and show throat, now," Castiel said.

"No, I don't think so."

He tilted his head. "I do not want to kill you. Gabriel would be upset."

"What do you care how Gabriel feels?"

"I do love my brother," he said.

"I've seen how you love your brother. I'd rather have hatred."

The man sighed. "Very well. I will try to be quick," he said, and lunged forward, transforming as he did.

Kali dodged backward, crouched, and transformed. Her paw struck him across the barrel, but she had kept her claws velveted. Instead of being disemboweled, he flew into the arena wall, and slid down in a heap. One that was still breathing, but very much out of the fight.

Kali transformed back into human shape.

"I win."

Sam Winchester nodded in agreement, his eyes wide with astonishment.

Gabriel, her dear sad wolf, was howling with laughter and tears.


Sam found Dean in the study after breakfast, looking worried and angry.

"It'll be over soon," Sam said, trying for soothing, and laid his hand on his brother's shoulder.

"Yeah, and whose fault is it that we've come to this?" Dean snapped.

Sam pulled away, and sat on one of the benches along the wall. "Lucifer's? He didn't have to order Gabriel's arrest. Or maybe mine, for thinking that the family might be happy to hear that their brother *wasn't* dead after all—"

"It'd be better if he was," Dean said. "For all of us."

Sam frowned at his brother.

"He could take the kids, Sam."

"Dean, Gabriel doesn't want your kids. He won't even look at them, and the one time Deanael came close to him, he showed his teeth," Sam pointed out. If Dean missed that Gabriel was repelled by the twins and wanted to nothing to do with them—and that was sad, because Young Castiel was a wonderful child who had every hoping of growing into an ideal alpha, and Deanael was clever and charming all out of proportion to his age—then Sam's brother was letting his fears rule him. And a wolf that was afraid was a wolf that would bite, and they didn't need more of *that* in this household, thank you anyway.

"But he could..."

"Dean, Castiel isn't going to let that happen," Sam soothed.

Dean paused in his pacing, frowning as he considered it. "... yeah, probably."

Sam rolled his eyes, but that's when the doors to the study opened, and Castiel walked stiffly in, followed by Elimelech, and then Gabriel, his lawyer, and their respective spouses. Gabriel and Kali were holding hands, and the tiny southern woman was glancing around disdainfully. Of course she was, she could probably kill any and all of them if she decided she need to. Sam was amazed that she hadn't disemboweled him the first time they had met, and Gabriel asking her not to kill him was in retrospective not nearly as lighthearted as it had seemed at the time.

"You are still my brother," Cas said as he walked around to his desk to sit, His voice even more hoarse than usual with his broken ribs. "You would be welcomed home—"

"Let's not do this, Castiel," Gabriel said, his voice flat and bleak. "You're my brother, and I love you, but I don't *like* you at all, not anymore."

Castiel stared at Gabriel with that blank look he had, and then sighed and reached for the documents that were all ready laid out. The Seraphim head-of-household started signing the documents, and slid each one across the desk surface to his brother as he finished.

"Hold a moment, love," Kali said unexpectedly, and stepped up to read the document over his shoulder. Her delicate brows pulled together as she frowned, and she looked around the room, at the lawyer Crowley and his spouse Balthazar, and then at Sam.

"Explain this to me," Kali ordered.

"You have a lawyer," Sam pointed out.

"She's already heard me, darling," Crowley drawled. "You're her second opinion."

Sam looked at her, and then at Gabriel, who nodded slightly. He stepped forward, and bent over the desk and the paper. "Okay. Well, This," Sam pulled the first page up, "is a writ of retirement and liberation—this means Gabriel had fulfilled all his duties as a beta to his birth family, and is free to act as if he was an alpha—he can get married on his own volition, have an independent household, that sort of thing. This," Sam pulled up the second document, "is a marriage contract; it acknowledges your marriage under city law. Gabriel is acting as an alpha, even though he's not one, and you're acting as a delta," Sam glossed over the fact that Kali wasn't quite a delta, because a delta was a woman who had a she-*wolf*. "This means your with Gabriel children will be legitimate and can inherit the portions allotted to them based on their gender when he dies..."

Kali was giving him a hard stare. "Elaborate, Samuel."

"Well, an alpha son gets a full share, and a beta son a half-share, as does a delta daughter. A gamma son gets a third of a share, and an epsilon daughter gets a fourth, to be used for her dowry."

"And a zeta daughter?"

"This family does not produce zetas," Castiel said. "We are Flock."

Gabriel winced, and put his hand on Kali's shoulder. "It doesn't matter, Kali. We're not staying here."

"No, we are not," she agreed, and brought her hand up to caress Gabriel's cheek. Sam looked away, feeling awkward, and flipped through the documents by way of distraction. And then he saw it...

"You can't be serious?!" he blurted, and stared over at Castiel.

"What?"

"It is an ... option," Castiel said. "If Gabriel insists on living in the south and not acting as a member of this family..."

"What? I didn't see that yet. What is it?" Gabriel asked and snatched the papers out of Sam's hands.

"It's a writ of severance," Sam said, appalled. "Castiel—"

"What is a 'writ of severance?" Kali cut him off.

Gabriel had started to read, and now he was looking up from the documents, his eyes bleak as he met his wife's steady gaze.

"It's cutting ties to the family. All ties. I'd lose my *name*."

Kali tilted her head. "You would no longer be part of the Seraphim family?" she asked, in a tone that indicated she thought that might be for the best.

"No. Yes! I mean, I wouldn't be divorced from the family," Gabriel explained, his tone flat in shock. "Not Seraphim, not Flock, not *Gabriel*."

Kali stared at him a long moment, the comprehension slowly filtering into her face. Then she enfolded him in her arms, and let him sob on her shoulder. Sam saw the glare she shot Castiel, and shivered.

Gabriel got control of himself in short order, and turned to face Castiel. Whatever he saw in his brother made him square his shoulders and put his chin up. He picked up the pen, dipped it in ink, and scrawled his name on page after page after page.

"You do not have to sign them all—" Elimelech said tentatively.

"Shut it," Gabriel ordered, and continued to sign.

Sam turned his attention on Castiel, because he couldn't bear to notice how Gabriel's hand shook. Castiel, who had never paid attention to any delta or epsilon, or any beta that wasn't Dean—Castiel, who had just stabbed his brother in the soul, just to protect Dean and his attachment to his children. Sam had always liked his brother-in-law, in a companionable scholarly way, and known that Castiel would do anything to make Dean happy, but it was quite different to know in a vague and abstract way that Castiel was ruthless, and another thing to see the way it was wrecking someone who stood right in front of him.

"There, sigh those," Gabriel said, and thrust the papers are Elimelech. Elimelech signed, and then Crowley and Balthazar. Sam was last, and he picked up the pen reluctantly.

Castiel took the documents from Sam's hand when he was finished, and sorted the documents into two piles. "For your client," he said.

Crowley turned to hand them to ... not Gabriel, not anymore. The Lilim alpha looked as grave as Sam had ever seen him, his usual air of incipient mockery thoroughly suppressed.

"It's done. You're free."

"Free..."

"Thank you, Crowley," Kali said, one hand grabbing the papers and the other around her husband's waist.

"What will you call yourself?" Castiel asked his former brother.

The beta turned and glared at him, his usually soft eyes almost reptilian, harsh and golden. "You've taken my old name away. You don't get my new one." He turned his back on Castiel, and Kali went with him.

Sam watched them go, out through the study doors.

"Well, that was lovely," Balthazar said. "So glad to see you, Castiel, don't bother coming by, I don't think I want you darkening my door for at least a six-month," the beta said, and swanned out.

"Lovely doing business with you," Crowley smirked, and followed his spouse out of the study.

Elimelech just gave Castiel an appalled, thunderstruck look, and left.

"I..I'm going," Sam stammered. "Now." He fled the study.

He caught up with them before they got beyond the courtyard.

"Kali! Gab—" he cut himself off, not sure what to call the man who had been Gabriel, "Wait! Please!"

The couple stopped, and turned to look at him, frozen politeness on their faces as he galloped down the steps and into the street.

"My name. You can still have my name," Sam said breathlessly. "I'm not Seraphim. None of this," Sam waved his hand, "binds me if I don't want it to."

Kali looked suspiciously at him, then sideways at her husband, then back at Sam. "Your name?"

"Yeah," Sam nodded.

"He means for the child," her husband said. dully.

"Uhm, yeah," Sam said. "I... you want to be a Winchester too? I'm the only alpha in the family, I can do that. If you want,,?"

The beta's eyes were suddenly dancing with amusement, in spite of the bleak day. "Oh Sam, you are.." He put his hand to Sam's cheek, and smiled fondly. "Thank you. I'll find a name for myself. But thank you. And for the child, I will ... think about it."

"Okay," Sam said, and then glanced at Kali. She didn't look like she was going to disembowel him, and when he raised his eyebrows to ask permission, her lips quirked. Sam took that for an okay. "Be well," Sam said, and leaned down to kiss his former brother-in-law's brow, then cheek, then lips, a full and formal farewell.

"Be well, Sam."

"Be well, Samuel Winchester," Kali said, and laid her arm around her husband's waist as they turned and left. Sam watched them go, heading for the train station, heading towards the south. He wished them well.

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