Fic: Homo Homini Lupus Est -- Part One

[neotoma]

Anna lived in the back of an island – not a real island, but the great rambling buildings that snaked down the streets and up three and four floors into the air. She and Nathan had a lifetime free lease on the rooms, because his father was Erelim and brother to the current pack alpha and thus had a hand in disposing of family property. Nathan was neat and organized, and his father had more than once lamented he was born a gamma instead of a beta, but it meant that Nathan and she had been married, instead of Nathan marrying some alpha wanting sons. Anna herself would have been married a gamma anyway – one disappointment married to another – or maybe to a beta who'd finally aged out of fertility and was being allowed a retirement and a wife, so she rather liked who she ended up with.

At least Nathan's family promised to adopt back into the Flock any wolf-child they managed to produce between the two of them, and to fund the education of any gamma or epsilon child if that's all they managed. It was miles better than many wolfless children received from their families.

Nathan kept books for a number of shops up and down their street, and Anna worked at a printer's. She had hopes of someday buying the shop from her employer, an older epsilon whose own children had been even more disappointing to her as adults than Anna had been to her own mother at birth.

With Nathan away on work – auditing some warehouse discrepancy downriver – she was alone this night and the gray drizzling misery outside was not helping. She had three books to proof before letting them through, and the baby was making itself know in nausea and ill-feeling.

"Baby," she said to the lump rounding her belly, "Mommy needs to eat, and needs to work. You're not helping with either."

The baby in her womb didn't respond, but there was a tapping at her back door, out in the garden.

She looked through the paned glass of the door, and her jaw dropped in shock.

"Gabriel?!" she gasped as she flung open the door.

"I cry your sufferance...?" Gabriel gasped breathlessly.

"Come in, you idiot!" Anna hissed, and pulled her older brother through the door.

He looked... well, he looked a mess. He looked haggard and bloated and there were shiny red marks on his face that looked rather like silver welts, but what they were doing on his face..?

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you in weeks!" she said as she pushed him to sit at the kitchen table. He'd been remiss in his visits, not that he'd ever been precisely good about it, but she'd usually get a note from him every week or so, even when he was living in the Great Pine Forest with that northerner Lucifer had married him to. Since being widowed and returning home, he'd even managed to see her once a month or so, usually by turning up at the printshop and dragging her off to a restaurant that was a little fancier than Anna fit into on her own and more than a little lower-class than Gabriel would fit into on his own – but one that suited them as a beta and an epsilon sibling pair separated by their genders and united by their background. How Gabriel had even found a place that catered to meetings between disjunctive family members, she had no idea. He was good with odd things like that, her singular beta brother.

Gabriel stared at her and then buried his face in his hands as he burst into snotty tears.


Gabriel didn't quite remember how he got out of the house, but the satchel that was outside his door smelled of Samuel – the alpha boy must have mustered some nerve to defy Lucifer even covertly. Risking patronage is exceedingly dangerous for Sam, even with being Lucifer's brother-in-law. He's only a generation from base Folk, and his honor name was from his mother's father – it could be revoked easily if he was caught violating the charity of his host family. Who knows what would happen if Lucifer was enraged enough to throw the Winchesters down – Castiel might challenge for pack-alpha, or both Dean and Sam could wind up out on the street with nothing – they're sons and grandsons of veterans, true, but themselves they have nothing but what has been settled on them, and maybe a farmhouse out in the countryside that they've never seen.

Anna, bless her, doesn't ask questions until after he stops sobbing. It's a disgusting, sloppy process, weeping – and Anna doesn't need his woes dropped in her lap. She and her husband – a gamma culled from the Erelim – make do for themselves, but neither of them needs the attention of their relatives. Gabriel just couldn't think of where else to go, though, so he came to her.


"You can't use your name, Gabriel," Anna said.

Gabriel felt her words hit him like an icy wind, biting down right to his heart. "It's my name..."

"It's theophoric! Anyone who hears it will know it's a Flock honor-name. You can't pass as a gamma with an honor-name!"

Gabriel sighed and looked away. She had the right of it, but giving up his name...

"I know it hurts, but you'd better go by the base version – Gabe, or Gabron."

He sighed, and nodded.

"It won't be so bad," Anna said. "It's only one less syllable, you'll get used to it in no time."

Gabriel glared at her. "You didn't. You cried for weeks when Father changed your name. Anael."

He knew he shouldn't have said that the moment he spoke. It was cruel and bitter, and Anna had done nothing but help him at risk to herself. Lucifer would make her divorce Nathan if it came to light that she'd helped him run away, and probably marry her to the most disgusting old coot of a political contact he could find as well.

She stood up and stepped away from him, turning on the taps of the sink and going through the motions of washing out their cups.

"...I'm sorry, little sister. I shouldn't have said—"

"Yes, it hurt. I was six, and I didn't understand what I'd done wrong."

"You hadn't done anything wrong, except..." Gabriel trailed off. They didn't talk about this, inside the family. It was rude – gossiping about other families' wolfless children was one thing, but their own were not to be spoken of.

"...be born without a wolf."

Gabriel looked away and shrugged. Anna was an epsilon, there was no denying it. There had been no denying it when she was two, but Father had given her the traditional six years to prove herself possessed of a wolf, and she hadn't. At least she'd been raised in the family and well-educated and eventually as well-married as she could hope for. Some families – like his former in-laws the Lilim – disposed of their disappointing children much earlier and more carelessly. There was an entirely industry of child farmers to deal with inconvenient children like the spurious and the wolf-less.

"I'll give you some of Nathan's older clothes. You'll look poor, but that's all right – you don't have any useful skills anyway—"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, you don't. You're an administrator, Gabriel, not an artisan. You can't hire out to oversee a workshop without showing your qualifications – what are you going to do, give Lucifer as a reference?"

Gabriel winced. "I see your point."

"You're going to have to, I don't know, take odd jobs and be willing to sweep floors – and sleep on them, probably –"

"I'll manage, Anna."

Anna turned to give him a long searching look. He couldn't help feeling judged and found wanting.

"I will. I have to. I can't go..." he choked. He couldn't say 'home' – home was safety and comfort, and his mind balked in terror at the idea of stepping back under the roof his family lived under, even for a moment.

Anna put her hand down over his cautiously. Gabriel was proud that he didn't flinch more than a tiny bit.

"You can go south, or west. There's plenty of countryside where the river-cities barely touch. You can go there, and be just a lone gamma."

Gabriel nodded, and swallowed against the lump in his throat.


Gabriel took Anna's money and her husband's cast-offs and made his way to the train station in the dark – trains left all the time, going in and out on their own schedule. He bought the cheapest fare for the next train leaving for somewhere further than a day's trip. It got him a ticket for a berth on a freighter hauling manufactured goods out to some godforsaken mining town up in the western mountains. He didn't care what or where, just that it was far far from the city and the surrounding countryside. That far away from home, there were less likely to be Flock, especially Flock who knew him on sight.

He had let Anna cut his hair, her slim elegant fingers surprisingly deft as she shortened from shoulder-length to up around his ears, like gammas tended to wear theirs – it was utterly practical and yet odd. He kept seeing the short ends at the corners of his vision and being disconcerted by his own hair.

At the end of the line, Gabriel walked out of the uncomfortable passenger car he'd been in for days and up the road into the center of town, such as it was. His body was still rattling from the poor condition of the rails – it was like being in a zipcar for hours on a gravel road, not anything like the smooth travel between cities he'd experienced before. The hinterlands had been neglected, and at the moment that suited Gabriel perfectly. First things first, he had to find a place to stay, somewhere that were he could disappear into the background, but still safe enough that he would be able to sleep at night.

Harvelle's Roadhouse, the sign declared, looked like it might be a likely opportunity.


"Gabron," Gabriel said. This was the first time he really had to put Anna's suggestion into use. None of the railmen had cared what his name was, just that he'd had a ticket and money to pay for it. "Call me Gabron."

The innkeeper's brows went up on her forehead, but she didn't comment about his name. Gabriel was glad, because while the lie was as thin as onion-skin, but he didn't think he'd be able to remember another name, and he knew his accent marked him as Flock or at least higher than the Folk who frequented this tavern. Using the base version of his name reserved for wolfless sons and other disinherited disappointments seemed the most useful compromise, just as Anna had suggested. His little sister was wise it seemed.

"That'll do," Ellen says. "If there's any more to your story, I don't care. You sweep the floor, serve the customers, and do as I say and we'll get along find. There's a space up under the eaves where you can bunk."

When Gabriel was married north, he had to learn to bake bread and brew beer, because no alpha there would accept a spouse who couldn't feed their family. Never mind that Wotan of the Aesir had a house with fifty rooms – a certifiable palace in the mountains – and had a staff of fifteen just for his kitchen; his spouse had to be able to make bread and beer, and serve it graciously too.

The drilling in customs and language that Lucifer had arranged had taken weeks, even with Gabriel studying all morning and evening, and baking between times. The children – Azazel Minor, Helyel Minor, Uriel and Ariel, Anna, Michael, even Samuel, had eaten his attempts with some cajoling, even when the bread was good. The northern style loaves had simply been too strange at first, and had sat poorly on their tongues. The beer, horrible stuff – thick and bitter, completely unlike wine, even unwatered wine – had been distributed to the workmen who would have it. Surprisingly, the gamma servants of the household staff liked the style.

At Ellen's Roadhouse, Gabriel didn't make the rye bread his second husband had ate at every meal, but he made plenty of beer and more than a little mead, when the honey was cheap but not adulterated good with bad. He kneaded bread in the morning, and the evening, and carried endless pitchers and plates about, swept floors, and worked until the great clock struck two. Then he swept and cleaned and climbed stairs four flights up to a bed in a tiny garret under the eaves.

No one paid him much mind, and he was completely satisfied with that.


Jo came home from a week in the woods – hunting and trapping fur and bush meat, it supplemented her family's income from the tavern, made for little luxuries from time to time, and a store of emergency funds in hard times – to find her mother had hired a barman and general dogs'-body.

He was older, much nearer her mother's age than her own, and quiet in a way that said it wasn't his natural temper, but a profound sadness after a terrible shock. But he was good at keeping the ale flowing to the customers, and he didn't try to press attention on Jo when she joined him working the floor or later on.

Of course, he barely spoke to her, just enough for Jo to hear how clean and rounded his voice was, a touch of the north over an accent that screamed Flock. Her mother's stern words – "We'll call him Gabe" – made sense, because he was almost certainly a disinherited gamma from some Flock family or other, and probably only recently thrown out of his family onto the mercy of the world. Jo had seen more than one gamma wander through with that shell-shocked look, and even a few epsilons, who had outlived a father who had kept them close to find their alpha cousin or even brother had no use for them now that he was pack alpha and head-of-household.

Gabe at least seemed not likely to drink himself to death, or turn to whoring from lack of other skills or options.



The smell was maddening, and Jo cursed whatever delta had wandered through the taproom in the beginnings of her heat. It was fucking inconsiderate and just what Jo had come to expect from a wolf-bitch – or at least a certain type of she-wolf. There was always some woman or another who figured out that alphas would be stupid for her during her heat and that she might as well get while the getting was good. Jo despised that kind of thinking, because it made it that much harder for all the other Folk with wolves to keep – the Flock would just look down on them as no-accounts if things got out of hand because a delta in heat didn't have the sense to stay home and managed herself. There was a least one ruckus a month down along the train tracks because of deltas and alphas setting to. Three months ago, it had been some poor beta boy who had had no idea – at least he'd gotten taken in as a concubine by one of the administrators from the city, or at least that's what Jo had heard.

Thank the New God and the Old, Jo thought, that zetas didn't go into heat. It made passing as an epsilon so much easier.

So she was surprised as anything to follow the scent up and up until she was at the attic stairs. There were only a few rooms up there, storage mostly, and Gabe's little room.

...Gabe's room? Which the scent trail led right to? Jo found herself standing at the thin door and breathing hard against the sweet scent of someone else's heat.

"Gabe?" She asked and rapped on the door.

There was a rustle of fabric and a muffled groan and then Gabe answered, "what?"

"Gabe, answer the door." Jo pressed her ear up against the cheap wood and was off-balance when Gabe cracked it open. She stumbled, almost knocked herself silly on the jamb, and inhaled.

Sweet, and heady... a wolf in heat.

Jo saw Gabriel's eyes wide and startled, and shoved the door back far enough to eel inside. Gabe looked a mess in the dim light of his cheap lamp – sweaty and disheveled and unbelievably attractive despite that.

"... Want to have sex?" she blurted, and then winced at herself and Gabe's outraged look.



Gabriel lifted his head to glare at her.

"I'm just asking," she said with a bit of smile.

"You're swaggering is what you are," Gabriel grumbled, and sat down on the bed. His entire body throbbed, and while he knew another orgasm or three would help, he'd passed the point where his own hands were going to suffice and yet he didn't think he could bear having another lay hands on him. He was afraid what his body would do, given what it had done when he'd been trapped in the silver muzzle – betrayed him again and again.

"Seriously, you look awful."

"I feel awful, but you can't help."

Jo rolled her eyes, and dropped to sit on the bed next to him. She put her hand on his arm, and looked confused when Gabriel flinched.

She tried again, and he flinched again, jerking away from her and losing control enough to flash a mount full of wolf's teeth at her. His bitch growled through his throat, warningly.

He was utterly shocked when she growled back, with a deep dog-wolf's voice.

"God's BALLS! You're a zeta," Gabriel gasped.

"And you're a beta," Jo hissed. "In heat. I thought we could help each other."

Gabriel froze, and looked up at Jo and her honest, sweet face. It was wrinkled up into a frown right at the moment, but she was looking at him, instead of through him in the way that Lucifer had always had, the way Castiel had adopted in those 10 weeks of misery.

"I don't want to get pregnant," Gabriel said, and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Agreed. It would be hard to pretend to be a gamma if you did," Jo said.

Gabriel sighed, and fidgeted. His skin was prickly tight, and his nipples were tender. Not to mention the heat tickling between his legs. He dreaded the thought of stripping and turning his back to her, even if he didn't transform – and he didn't think he could, for all that his bitch had growled. The wolf wouldn't come out from beneath his skin, not if the risk was being trapped again. He had learned his lesson about that at home.

"I won't transform."

Jo's eyebrows went up. "You won't..?"

"No."

"But..." Jo tugged on the ends of her hair.

"No. I won't."



Jo was... well, Jo was a zeta, and Gabriel had no idea what to do with her. He'd had sex with a zeta all of once, or more accurately, he'd had a castrated zeta whore suck him off once, when he was still an unmarried boy and Michael and Lucifer (Heylel then, before he'd earned the byname, he'd just been Heylel, after a dead uncle) thought he should get some experience before his marriage. There had been a whorehouse they'd liked, and they'd dragged him along and told him to watch closely. It had been a bewildering experience for him, and he hadn't liked it, even when they had hired him a beta to talk to him – at least that whore had some practical advice for him.

Not enough, as it turned out, because Attarib of the Lilim had been pleased enough to mount him during his heats, the alpha had also liked fucking him in the ass all the rest of the time. His husband had been of the opinion that a vagina was slimy and disgusting and only fit for breeding into – Gabriel had put up with it as long as he could, but when Attarib had all but thrust a divorce onto him after the birth of Gabriel Minor in disappointment that this child was also a beta (Attarib had been twice married before Gabriel, and had nothing but beta and delta children) Gabriel had leapt at the chance to be away from him, even if it meant giving up Gabriel Minor as soon as the boy was weaned.

Wotan had been a much better match, for that it had been more overtly about commerce. Lucifer had gotten access to the iron and gold mines that Wotan's clan controlled, and Wotan got access to southern luxuries to bribe his client-families with, as well as Gabriel for a comfort in his age. Gabriel hadn't minded being Wotan's featherbed – they'd been so delightfully spiteful together.

He missed Wotan, with his scratchy voice and his scratchy beard, and his habit of calling Gabriel pet names, like 'Gaesling' and 'Barni' and 'Loki' – gosling, child, and air-spirit – Wotan had never quite viewed Gabriel as something other than a cross between an wholly bizarre entanglement and a pleasant diversion for his age, but at least he'd been kind and considerate.



"Gabriel," Gabe said after a while, when Jo was absent running her fingers up and down his thighs.

"huh?" Jo said.

"Gabriel. My name, it's Gabriel, not Gabron."

"So you're actually Flock. I mean, real Flock, not just raised a servant in a Flock household."

Gabe turned his head and gave her a sad smile. "I could give you my house-name too, if you like..?"

"No! No. It wouldn't help, would it?" Jo said.

"No, I don't think so." Gabe sighed, and turned a bit more on his side, rolling to tuck his head under her chin and nuzzle her neck. "Thank you."

"Huh? I mean, thanks." Jo said, and moved his hand to pet his hair, even though her fingers were sticky.

"… Put that back...?" Gabe murmured.

"You're kidding?"

"You're gentle," Gabriel murmured. "I like that."

"You're insatiable." Jo grumbled.

"… no," Gabriel said, and shifted away from her. Jo could feel him shiver beside her.

"Gabe?"

"I'm not. I'm not." Gabe hiccupped.

"Hey," Jo said and laid her chin against his shoulder, carefully putting her body along his so that he could feel the soft mounds of her tits and the padded curve of her hip. He'd been fascinated earlier, and had said something about her being 'different' and that being 'nice' like he didn't quite have the words to describe what he was feeling – Jo had been left wondering if he'd ever had sex with a woman before, delta, epsilon, or zeta. She kind of didn't think so...

He froze for a moment, and his face twisted in confusion in the candlelight, but then he sighed, and turned his head to look her in the eyes.

"You're Jo."

"Yep, that's me."

"Just Jo – nobody else," he muttered and nosed into her hair.

"That's nice," she said.

"You're nice," he replied. "Gentle hands and patient..."

"My hands are callused," she pointed out.

"I said 'gentle', not 'soft'," Gabe said, and brought one to his mouth and began licking her fingers.

Jo giggled at that, ticklish instead of stimulated.

Gabe looked dismayed, like he expected a different reaction from her.

"Sorry," she said, not actually apologetic.

"Why didn't that work?" he asked.

"Because I'm not whoever you were thinking of?"

Gabe frowned. "I... how do I offer, then?"

"Offer what?" Jo asked, genuinely confused.

He stiffened, then dropped to the bed again and buried his face against her, hiding in the hollow between her neck and shoulder. He whined as she stroked his hair carefully.

"You were nice, and you only used your hands. I can't let you fuck me," he mumbled against her skin, his breath warm and damp against her neck and over her breasts, "but I could let you use my mouth... if you want, if you'll tell me how."

"What?"

"I'd use my tongue to—-"

"I know blowjobs, Gabe," she said. "I have had sex with other zetas and epsilons before, even a gamma once. I'm just surprised that you don't know how to give one! Weren't you married?!"

"Twice," Gabe said quietly.

"And you never licked your husband's pri—-"

"Of course I did," Gabe snapped. "But I've only ever done it to alphas and betas. You're a zeta... it's got to be different."

Jo chuckled and patted Gabe's arm. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

He did, with some coaching. Jo laughed only a little at his bafflement when he actually looked at her genitalia, instead of just fingered it blindly. But despite her odd shape, he figured out how to spread her open. In short order was licking her softly with the determined attention that had her biting her lips and digging her hands into the bed linens. She knew she couldn't grab his hair and direct him – he'd already panicked over hands at the back of his neck. It was equally hard to stop herself from wrapping her legs around him and shoving up, but she managed not to do it, at least not more than a bit of wriggling.

He didn't mind the size of her clit or how it was almost a small penis itself – in fact, he made an appreciative noise when she managed to brush it against his cheek. He used his fingers on it, and when she whimpered, he pulled himself up to peer at her curiously. Whatever he saw there made him grin, and he ducked back between her legs with a will that undid her completely. She had to bite her own wrist to keep from howling.

"Hmm," Jo said sometime later.

"Jo..." Gabe whined, and vibrated against her. "Please...?"

Jo rubbed her eyes, and looked at him. That hadn't been a shiver, that had been wriggling.

"What do you want?"

"Your hands again?" Gabe cocked his head to the side, and then looked away. "Maybe... your mouth?"

"I can do that," Jo agreed. "You'll want to sit on the edge of the bed."

Gabe let her haul him up, and didn't shiver more than once or twice when she tried to nudge his knees apart with her hands. When the shivering started up, Jo just sat beside him, and let him clutch her hand. Waiting was no fun at all, especially with Gabe's scent everywhere in his tiny attic lair, but it was worth it when he nodded at her, and braced his knees apart himself.

He looked like he was about to swallow his tongue when she went down between his thighs, and ran her tongue as well as fingers over his skin. His prick was flaccid this deep into his heat, but he made soft happy noises when she traced a finger over it, before dipping below and behind. She'd already had her fingers in him, in the wet place that betas shared with every other child-bearer, but he whined at her again as she put her fingers in him again, just two, crooked up to press on his prick from the inside. He was so wet and musky from his heat.

Jo pushed him back a little with her other hand, making room for her to work. Gabe tasted salty, tangy, an odd undertone that she'd never known before. She suspected it was what betas tasted like. He gasped and raised his knees around her. She pressed them back down.

Gabe whimpered. Given that she was she tonguing his soft prick and down around his balls, she didn't think it was distress. But she pulled back to look at him.

"Do you want me to stop?"

It took Gabe a moment to recognize that he had to answer her. "God, no..."

"Okay," Jo chuckled. "Just asking. Let me know if you do."

Gabe garbled an incoherent answer as she bent her head down again. She slipped another finger into his wetness, and pressed up. Gabe lifted his hips this time, and bore down. Her fingers slipped in to the knuckles. He could probably take all her fingers, he was so deep in heat – all her fingers and her hand up to the wrist, he was so greedy – but she wouldn't try it until she'd taken his edge off with an orgasm or two. And asked him if he wanted that, because she knew how brave he was being.


"What are you doing with my daughter?" Ellen asked one day, after Jo ruffled his hair on her way out the door.

Gabriel looked up at the innkeeper with what he was sure were wide eyes. He could lie with the best of them, but he could tell that Ellen had already come to her own conclusions.

"Nothing she doesn't want me to?" he offered and gave her a weak grin.

Ellen narrowed her eyes at him.

"Truly."

"Don't get her pregnant, boy."

Gabriel managed to smother his giggle half-born. "No, no chance of that, ma'am."

Ellen gave him a long dubious look. "I'm not apt to have a son-in-law my own age, so make sure it won't be necessary."

"I will – I have," Gabriel agreed.

Ellen went back to her work, and Gabriel went back to his sweeping, and then Ellen said, "Well, at least you make her smile. That's more than most, so I'll let you stay. For now."

"Thank you, Ellen."


Gabriel had let things shuffle on a while, and once winter had truly settled in, let Jo drag him off on one of her hunting trips – and Ellen let him go, because the deep winter after the holiday season was a dead time for the Roadhouse. He'd be more useful hauling pelts than serving the few customers.

It worked out well, he thought. Jo taught him to shoot – he'd never held a carbine before, because it was just something that betas didn't, at least if their husbands had the wealth to keep them as they should be. He hadn't liked the loud retort, or the way it kicked and bruised his shoulder, but he liked being useful to Jo.

And they curled together in the night, in the rough shelter of tent and blankets. They were so utterly alone, that Gabriel even felt brave enough to transform when it got cold enough. He'd been afraid how he'd react as a wolf to Jo, but it had been utterly uneventful. The next night, Jo had transformed while he stayed human, and he knew that was just as much a sign of trust for her as for him – his wolf might be traumatized from the forced breeding, but her wolf had never really been with other wolves at all, and was wild and wary as a bison calf.

The night after that, the slept in the tent as wolves, curled around each other asleep in their fur. Gabriel showed Jo how to hunt for voles under the snow the next morning, scenting and pouncing. It was something he'd learned from Wotan, in the long winters in among the pines. Jo had never risked hunting in wolf shape, but they were a long way from anyone else.

It was probably inevitable that they became to close – not in love, Gabriel didn't really believe in love, but entwined and entangled in all the most useless ways. It took a persistent alpha and his next heat to break them apart.



The alpha was one of the rough ones, some son of lower-class Folk who thought because he had a wolf and a bone in his penis that he could bully everyone around him. Gabriel had disliked him on sight, and on smell – he might not transform outside of the few trips with Jo during the winter, but his wolf-bitch was still within him, and distrusted anything that smelled too strongly of other wolves, besides Jo's well-mannered alter-ego.

"Outside," Gabriel growled at the alpha the night he came back after being told not to. Ellen had been firm; the alpha wasn't welcome in her tavern. Gabriel's wolf wanted to go for the man's throat, a clean quick kill, but he didn't want to do it in the taproom, not in front of all Ellen's customers.

"Piss off, you dickless gamma," the man responded.

Gabriel's wolf growled, showing her teeth at the man.

The man blinked in surprise, and then smirked, a cocky alpha's grin. "Well well. That's different, then. Outside?"

Gabriel nodded.

"Gabe!" Jo hissed as he began to step backward towards the door, watching as the alpha paced him with a confidant stride and a cheerful grin. It was cold outside, still crisp and windy despite the spring thaw that was coming.

Gabriel paced down the street, and turned, not towards the railway but opposite, further away and towards the forest. He looked sidelong at the alpha who persisted in following, and asked, "We don't get many wolves, and you were told to leave... so why did you come back?"

"Oh come on," the man laughed. "I could smell a bitch in heat but no dog. Who wouldn't come back?!"

"I'm not interested in fucking you."

The alpha rolled his eyes. "You're in heat, bitch. Of course you are."

"No, I'm not. Go away and don't come back."

The alpha turned and lunged, shoving Gabriel up against the stone wall of that fronted the river bank. "You're in heat. I can smell you."

Gabriel stared at the man's throat, and found himself more angry than afraid. This wasn't like home at all – he might be outweighed, but he wasn't restrained. He could fight, or run if he had to.

"I said 'no'. I don't want to fuck you."

"You don't know what you need—"

"He said 'no'. You need to leave."

The man turned to stare at Jo, and Gabriel winced. He hadn't wanted her to follow. This was Gabriel's mess to deal with.

"He doesn't know what he's saying. Betas in heat need to be fucked. It's their nature. I'm doing him a favor."

Jo frowned harder and made one step closer. "Leave. Now."

"No. Your beta needs this. His bitch needs this—"

"His bitch is fine. You leave. Now."


Jo couldn't have explained it later. One minute Gabriel was being crowded up against the river embankment by some stranger, the next all three of them were in wolf shape and she and Gabriel were teaming up to savage the alpha. It was like her wolf shape ran wild, just wanted to tear into the interloper who was after her beta, her sweetheart who smelt wonderful with heat. Hers, hers, hers – no one should try to take Gabriel from her, and no one would once the alpha was dead.

Sinking her fangs into the stranger's throat while Gabriel tore at his belly just seemed right.


The strange alpha was dead at his feet, and all Gabriel could feel was relief, and the throb of heat. He looked at Jo, who was staring thunderstruck at the corpse. In the moonlight, the blood disappeared into the earth, but the scent of violent death was unmistakable, piss and blood and shit all mixed together. Gabriel wondered if Jo had ever participated in a killing challenge before, even just as a witness. It seemed unlikely, with her hiding her zeta status – no hunt would be safe, since most ended with everyone transforming back to human-shape to cut up the prey, and while Folk might murder each other in the dark to solve disputes, only Flock and some of the higher Elect did it public duels.

"Gabe," Jo whispered, "what do we do?"

Gabriel didn't hesitate even though he was beginning to shiver. "We can dump him in the river. Let him be someone else's problem."

"Are you crazy?" Jo asked. "Everyone saw him follow you out. Everyone saw your wolf's teeth."

"I... I had to..." Gabriel stammered, and began to shake in earnest.


"Are you alright? Are you alright?" Jo yelled, pressing her hands against Gabe's flesh, checking for damage with unschooled fingers.

Gabe could only shiver and nod for her. The alpha was dead, she was alive, Gabe was alive, they were alright. Even if they had a body to dispose of – they were not throwing it in the river, as if that would even be possible.

"Gabe, talk to me!"

Gabe frowned at her.

"Gabe?" she asked again.

"...I'm alright."

"Thank God," Jo sighed. She smiled at him, and wrapped her arms around his neck. It was easier to think now that she wasn't in wolf shape; there were things to do, and one of them was to get rid of this stranger's corpse.


He returned her hug awkwardly, his nose buried in her hair. He was shaking from nerves, he was sure. Nerves and heat, a bad mix.

Jo pulled back to give him another searching look. She looked worried, which was silly. Gabriel was alright.

"Hey," she murmured, and pulled him into her arms again. He felt awkward, sticky with the blood of the defeated alpha, and too jittery, but it was nice to put his head on her breast and just be for a moment.




"Take off your trousers," Gabriel said.

"Hey, no," Jo retreated.

"Please?" Gabriel asked again, and sank to the ground, crouching on all fours in a manner that was so directly blatant that Jo recoiled.

"What? No! You don't want—"

"I changed my mind," Gabriel said.

Jo found herself taking one step trembling step forward, and then another. She should know better, but Gabriel smelled so enticing, and she was still full of fire from killing the stranger with him. When she got close enough, she reached out her hand, and carefully stroked it over Gabriel's soft hair in its terrible shorn state.

The beta shivered under her touch, but when she yanked her hand back, his hand darted out and grabbed her wrist. He wove his fingers into hers, and licked her palm and down.

"Oh, God's balls, Gabe..." she muttered.

"Take off your trousers," Gabe repeated.

She didn't like how he was acting – shivering one moment, almost flirtatious the next, round and round like a whirly-gig. What was going on inside his head? But maybe going along with his demands for the moment was what he needed, so she reached down and began to unbelt her trousers.

"Gabe!" she yelped, as lunged at her, his face pressed against her belly, and then down as he pulled her unbelted and unbuttoned trousers down her thighs. His tongue was... his tongue was... Jo gasped at him.

"Is this good?" he pulled back to ask. "Am I good?"

"Gabe," she lifted a hand and risked a gentle pat on his head. "Calm down."

"Jo..." he whined.

Jo rolled her eyes and got down on the ground with him. "Breathe, Gabe. You need to breathe."

He sighed all at once and went boneless, collapsing against her, his forehead coming to lie on her shoulder as he all but folded into her lap again. She let him curl up against her, and stroked his hair until he stopped shivering so badly. Each brush of her fingers stirred the air, bringing ripples of heat-scent up off Gabriel's skin. Every breath she took made it harder to think, made that odd heavy feeling spread from her chest down into her belly, and sink lower.

"Change," she said, after a long time of just petting him, soothing him as he curled in her lap and let his fear leak away. There was a little bit of a growl in her voice as she ordered him to change, to be his she-wolf again. Feeling detached, she felt her own wolf still moved restlessly under her skin in the wake of the fight, unable to calm down with Gabriel's heat-scent in the air.

Gabe stared back at her, his amber eyes huge, but he twisted in her arms, pulling away. When he was out of hand's reach, he shifted, and Jo could look at the brindled she-wolf that was Gabe's other self.

It took only a moment for her to change.

Gabe jumped back at that, and whined. His crooked tail clamped tight down the back of his leg, and he retreated, legs bent as he scuttled away. His ears were pinned and he panted at her.

Jo tilted her head and gave a soft woof. She wasn't any bigger than he was like this, being a very small he-wolf. There was no reason for Gabe to be afraid, especially since they'd already killed the interloper.

Gabe stopped retreating at that, and his ears pricked up.

Jo wagged her tail hopefully, and bent down into a playbow.

Gabe stepped closer, his head down shyly.

Jo bounced on her front paws, and did another playbow. This time, Gabe mirrored her, a slow gentle stretch into that splayed his front paws and pulled his jaws into a silly grin.

Jo bounced up onto her feet and woofed again.

Gabe woofed back at her.

They mirrored each other for several long moments, bounce, woof, playbow, jump into the air, until Jo spun into a circle and slammed her wolf-shape against Gabe. The brindled she-wolf went down sprawling.

Jo rushed over in concern, because Gabe looked stunned and confused. She whined at him, and when he lifted the she-wolf's head, Jo licked out over his eye and ear.

Gabe's she-wolf shivered at that. At first, Jo thought she'd hurt him, but when she moved a step away, the she-wolf whined at Jo's wolf, and Jo stepped him back. The she-wolf's neck arched, and Jo poked her wolf's nose against Gabe's neck.

The she-wolf climbed to tawny feet, and stepped away to shake dust off. Jo woofed in amusement, and ducked out of range of the dust, and thus was off balance when Gabe came barreling out of the cloud of dust to slam into her bodily.

Jo chuckled and huffed as she climbed back onto her feet. Gabe peered down at her with his head cocked and his crooked, broken tail wagging close to the ground. Jo nipped at him playfully, which caused him to collapse and flail, as if she'd fought him to submission.

But is wasn't submission, it was heat, and her wolf knew what it wanted from the she-wolf rolling on the ground. Oh new god and old, Jo thought, before she stepped forward on wolf feet and things got completely out of control.

It's heat and wolf shape, that's what she told herself, even as she put her paws around Gabriel's barrel. After that, she didn't tell herself much, because she was too busy feeling.


Jo woke up alone. She wasn't worried, at least at first.

She went into the inn, but Gabriel wasn't in the taproom. Or the kitchen. Or the storeroom. She looked all over the public rooms, asked her mother and Bobby and the one scullion scrubbing pots – but he wasn't to be found.

Finally, she went up to the attics, to the tiny room that Gabe had for his own.

His jacket was off its peg, and his clothes press was open and empty.

There was a folded scrap of paper on his cot, with her name written across it in a beautiful round hand. When she opened it, it said, I'm sorry. I can't stay. I can't I can't be what you want. Please don't follow. Gabriel Β Mik. Seraphim

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