Kali spotted the wolf in the haze of dust alongside the road when she was coming back from town. It was early in the morning, and she'd spent the night at a difficult birth – a beautiful heifer calf, and the mother cow doing well despite the tricky birth – so she was tired and aching and had no patience at all as she bicycled down the road.

"What do you think you're doing?" she snapped as the wolf shied into the long dried-out grass. It was almost crawling along the ground, possibly even more exhausted than she was, and it looked dreadful, filthy with dust and mud.

The wolf turned to look at her with bright brown eyes, and she just tapped her foot and glared. It ducked its head, curled a crooked tail, and looked so resigned that she huffed a sigh.

"You're a disaster. Come with me," she told it, and pushed her bicycle off its kickstand and down the road. When it followed she snapped her fingers and pointed and the wolf came to heel, like a well-trained dog.

One more stray in her life, she supposed. At least this one would remember to look out after herself, unlike the abandoned horse that had wound up at her barn recently, probably the stupidest member of the entire equine tribe, given the animal's love of water and ditches.



The next day at breakfast, Kali was surprised to find her travel-worn wolf was a travel-worn man. Cross-gender werewolves were rare enough in the lake country, though she could name a few even in town. But to have one turn up on her doorstep was a rarity. There simply weren't many of them around – people didn't make matches in the hopes of having cross-gender children here, unlike what Kali had heard of the North, where she was sure her guest was from after one look at his too warm and too worn layers of clothes.

She had awoken to find him out on the porch in the blankets she'd laid out for the wolf last night, a threadbare man with no scruff of beard for all his road filth, and a belly that was rounding out in a manner that would have been ridiculous if the rest of him hadn't looked hollow. And if Kali didn't know how fraught pregnancy could be for betas and zetas—their double-sexed bodies might be capable of pregnancy, but they were not nearly as well suited for it as single-sexed deltas and epsilons.

"So," Kali said as she laid out morning tea and toast, "eggs?"

The man who had been a she-wolf the day before looked at her with exhausted eyes and frowned. "What?" he mumbled.

"Do you want eggs?"

He looked at the iron skillet in her hand, and then around her back porch. The kitchen backed onto it, and the windows were all open with the warmth of summer.

"Eggs...?" he repeated, as if he'd forgotten the meaning of the word.

"Scrambled, poached, fried...?" Kali suggested.

"Fried?" the man asked, or maybe offered his preference. Kali was going to take it as a request, anyway.

"Fried. Over soft..?"

"Over... hard?"

Kali nodded, retrieved two eggs from the cold box, and cracked them as she set the burner alight. It took on a few minutes before she had eggs fried hard, the yolks almost crisp, to go with hot toast and ginger tea. She flipped it all onto a plate and held it out to the man.

"Eat," she told him, as he stared at the plate in his hands with bafflement.

He looked up at her, and keeping his eyes on her, began to pick at the eggs with his filthy fingers. Kali's eyebrows rose, but she shrugged and turned to cook herself breakfast—she liked her eggs scrambled and fluffy.

He had finished everything before she'd even plated her meal, but she didn't give him anything other than another cup of tea. That thin hollowness about his eyes spoke of long days on the road and little to eat, and even with his wolf taking care of him, he'd likely vomit more if she let him gorge. Wolves might thin and fat like the deer they preyed upon, but werewolves were people first and foremost. Too much food after a long period of too little, and they'd be sick.

She'd feed him up carefully, little meals all day and all week, until she was sure that he could handle more than eggs and toast and tea—and he might not be able to handle those either at first.

He looked distinctly uncomfortable as she watched him over the remnants of their tea. He fidgeted, avoided her eyes, looked out over her land, orchard and pasture both, as if he was looking for a bolt hold.

"Gabriel," he finally mumbled.

"Gabriel?" she asked.

He nodded, "Gabriel. My name... Gabriel."

Kali had not been planning to ask, in fact. A werewolf stumbling alone on the road, in wolf-shape with every indication that he'd stayed in wolf-shape for a long time, was a werewolf with problems. She would have patched his paws, fed him trimmings and mush until he fattened, and let him go on his way if he had wanted.

But for some reason he wanted her to know his name.

"Kali."

He looked up at her, and she couldn't quite decipher that expression. Curiosity or indignation or confusion? What an odd creature he was, full of nerves and exhaustion with something fierce buried deep.

"Let me look at your hands? Your paws looked raw, last night."

He held his hands out for inspection, and Kali frowned at the dusty coating them—there were cracks in the dirt around his knuckles, and some of the dirt had smeared into the egg grease and thinned, revealing skin that was shockingly irritated looking, almost pink.

It took her wiping his hands clean with rags, and then wrapping them against old and new blisters for her to realize just how pale he was, and how naturally. He was ruddy from the sun, sun-burned and sun-blistered in places, but his normal skin tone was as pale as holly or elm wood, and his eyes, while brown, were a pale golden brown, a color rare enough that Kali had never seen it before. That spoke of far northern blood, maybe as far as the river-cities, or maybe even further, into the Great North Woods, that were all pine in a country where it was never warm and no one even knew what the sun looked like. Kali had met only a few people from the North, strangers down to earn a living buying up local goods like walnuts and pecans, bolts of cotton and bales of it.

What in the world was he doing here?



Gabriel's she-wolf form was actually shyer than his man shape, if that could be possible. Kali got used to the wolf crawling out from under bed-frames and low tables, and from behind the clutter of her workspaces whenever Kali had visitors; crawling out from the easy shelter of the main floor to hide ever deeper in the warren of house and barn and outbuildings.

She finally had a crate brought to the house, a fine wooden form that she shoved into a corner and lined with straw and an old blanket. It was solid, and the opening in it was small and defensible, like a den dug under a tree, and she thought it might help Gabriel feel safe. He hadn't liked the upstairs room she'd offered him, she had come to realize—too much light, too much space for the she-wolf whose fears were running his mind this late into a pregnancy that he seemed deeply ambivalent about.

But the she-wolf liked the crate, dark and defensible as it was, and Kali liked that she could hear Gabriel and he could hear her, and wouldn't be hidden and frightened with her unaware if things went wrong. She had worried about him slinking away and giving birth under someone's porch like a stray dog.

Pregnancy in a beta-hermaphrodite was such a tricky thing, and could go so disastrously wrong at the last minute.

Which was of course why she wasn't needed at all. She went to bed one night, after checking that Gabriel had everything he needed—the better couch, the soft light of lamp, a book of verse she'd borrowed for him, a clay beaker full of hibiscus tea—and in the morning she found the kitchen bare, no small sweet rolls or hard scones cooling on the sill for her—Gabriel might be shy and retiring as a ghost, but by all the waters, he could bake.

Upon investigating, she found Gabriel's clothes scattered all over her parlor, and Gabriel in the crate, exhausted, thirsty, and curled up around a cub so new that it was still damp. It took some cajoling on Kali's part to get him to let her pick up the cub and sex it—male, at least as a wolf, which meant alpha or zeta, and each possibility meant different problems for Gabriel, based on what little he'd said about his past and very much on how he reacted to her friends and neighbors – namely, he was afraid of alphas and stiffly polite to Tykhe from the road works, the only zeta under Kali's care at the moment.

"Come," Kali said, and pulled herself out of the crate with cub still in her hands. Gabriel whined in distress as she tucked his offspring in the crook of her arm and stood, but he crept out when she went to kitchen.

Two pumps to get the sink going, and then Kali leaned on the foot-pedal to keep the warm water flowing. She washed the cub with water, even as it squeaked.

"It's fine," she said to Gabriel as she heard the click of his claws on her wood floors. The wolf looked up at her from the kitchen doorway, its tail down – it was always down, Gabriel's tail was crooked from an old break, but this was down even for him—but wagging tentatively.

"Four feet, one head, one tail—you have a wolf cub," Kali counted off and finished by holding the cub out.

Gabriel walked forward, and sniffed the cub. Then his front paw lifted, to catch and pull Kali's arm down until he could put his nose on the cub and lick.

Kali braced herself when he shifted, and the cub changed in her arms, following its mother's change.

"Oh," Kali said, looking at the infant girl in her arms. She peeled off her scarf—she'd dressed with idea of making early rounds today, with the idea that Gabriel would need her soon—and wrapped the cotton length around the infant, round and round. It would do for warmth until she managed to get them all upstairs, where the diapers were.

Gabriel looked pale—well, he was always pale, milk-skinned northerner that he was—and very tired, and completely naked. He also looked deflated, like a half-filled water bag, and slightly doughy, like a good poke would deform him. Birth was hard on the body, especially for werewolves.

Kali reached down, and tried to haul Gabriel to his feet. Even with bracing him against the wall and him trying to help, it was awkward with the infant. But Kali wouldn't put the child down, and Gabriel was in no condition to hold his own baby.

"Come," Kali said once she had him on his tottering feet.

"I can't," Gabriel said as she led him to the stairs. His face looked bleak as he contemplated the rise up to the upper floor.

"You can," she said, and then conceded that he might not be able to in that form. "Change if you must."

He changed, the baby didn't, and Kali went up the stairs.

Gabriel followed, one step, two steps, crawling up the stairs in stops and starts. Kali didn't watch him. It would have been an insult to his dignity.

Instead she went into the room she'd given him, that she'd equipped with the first things an infant would need—first off, a diaper. Putting one on the infant took enough time that Gabriel crept into the room, his tongue panting out.

"On the bed, Gabriel," Kali said as he made to flop on the rag rug.

The wolf whined, but moved to the bed. Kali watched as Gabriel changed again, and more or less fell onto the bed, looking even more wretched than he had downstairs.

She pulled the linens over him, layers of warmth even though the day would probably be warm enough on its own. If he overheated, he could kick them off.

"Here," she said, and put the baby down against him. "She's yours."

Gabriel smiled at the baby, and then looked up in shock. "She?"

"She. A girl, at least when human. Her wolf is male."

"A zeta..." Gabriel whispered, and what little color he had fled. Kali hadn't known he could turn ash gray like that, and it was disconcerting enough to make her snap a little.

"Yes." Kali said, and then softened, "It will be fine, Gabriel. You're cross-gendered yourself."

"You..." Gabriel looked up at her, his eyes wide, "I can keep her?"

Kali didn't like the assumption implied in Gabriel's surprise. "Yes. What will you name her? Do your people name infants at birth?" Kali asked, realizing she didn't know.

"I... her name should start with 'Jo'. Her... father... was named 'Joanna'; if we'd been married, she'd be Joanna Minor... but we weren't. But she should have something from Jo, because Jo was kind to me..."

"All right. It's 'Jo' for now, and you'll figure out the rest later?"

Gabriel nodded, and then yawned.

Kali snorted. "I see you need your sleep. Can you nurse, or do I need to bring up goat milk?"

"I can, in wolf-shape. Probably not like this," Gabriel conceded, a shrug indicating his frame with its heavily masculine appearance, "but I can change when she needs me."

"Good, then I'll let you sleep."

"Jocheved," he said, the words coming in a rush, "I want to call her Jocheved."

"All right," Kali said. "Jocheved. That sounds good. What does it mean?"

Gabriel looked a little shamefaced, even as he curled his body tighter around the infant. "'God's glory'."

Kali said nothing—she knew nothing about northern names—and put her fingers down beside Gabriel's. Let him decide whether or not he wanted his hand held, now that the danger of childbirth and the immediate aftermath was past and she didn't need to touch him every moment to keep him alive as she had feared all these weeks – a beta-hermaphrodite carrying a child was in more risk than a woman, werewolf or not, or even a zeta-hermaphrodite with their mostly female bodies.

After a moment, he moved his fingers very gently, very slowly, until his palm was curled around hers in a tentative handclasp. Kali smiled at him, and let him hold her until he fell asleep, curled hand and body around her and his new cub.

Then Kali had work to do, so she slipped off his bed and let him sleep.




"She was named Jo," Gabriel said one day as he was helping Kali shell walnuts—the hard black kind that were prized for their taste and their usefulness.

"Hmm?" Kali said. She hadn't really been paying much attention, being more focused on prying the husks off the shells, and the shells off the nuts. Both would be useful—the husks yielded interesting colors if you knew how to brew the dyebath properly, and the shells were abrasive shards oddly useful for grinding and polishing. The fact the meat was tasty just meant that everything had to be saved today.

"Jocheved's...father," Gabriel said. "Her name, it was Jo. Joanna..."

Yes, she remembered that he'd named Jocheved's father before, a name that meant nothing to her. Kali thought about that for a moment, "So you turned to another herm when you were heat?" Kali wasn't familiar with northerner names, but he'd call Joanna 'her', which implied that Gabriel had been impregnated by a zeta, a hermaphrodite that was more female than he was with his beta-hermaphrodite broad shoulders and narrow hips. They'd have been better off to do it the other way round, but if Gabriel had come into heat before getting his zeta lover pregnant, well, life threw lemons at you sometimes.

Gabriel flushed. "It was stupid. I was stupid. But I liked her, and I thought I needed her... And then... I ruined everything."

"How so?"

"I ran. Jo... I ran."

"Was she the last one to bite you?" Kali asked. Gabriel had a series of overlapping bites on his left shoulder, where some few people had worried are the juncture of neck and body. It was rather inconsiderate to bite a bedmate hard enough that he had scars from the experience, in Kali's opinion, but the world took all types. Maybe Gabriel had liked it every time—there were odder tastes out there, and Kali had seen more than a few of them. Or, and Kali thought this more likely, given what she knew of northerner customs, Gabriel's bedmates had been trying to make a claim on his that no one should make on another – of ownership, not partnership.

Gabriel ran a nervous hand over his shoulder then, even though it was covered. Kali had gotten used to Gabriel's quirks of nerve.

"... yes. I ran, afterwards." Gabriel shuddered out a sigh. "I didn't want to be anyone's, and I took it out on Jo. I shouldn't have let her think different."

Kali rolled her eyes. If she let Gabriel go down this path again, where he talked himself into terror and memory, she'd want to stick his head in a bucket, and she'd doubt anyone would blame her if she did at last. He might often be sweet, but Gabriel could be exhausting as well, and she had reached the end of her tether in regards to his drama and self-blame.


Over the weeks, Gabriel wound up helping Kali and became a fixture in her house. She didn't mind that's he was very shy around strangers – he couldn't help it, his wolf tended to panic and even with Gabriel firmly in man shape, the wolf would urge his to run – and liked his baking. He had one skill, his gift from his marriage to Wotan and from Ellen's tutelage at the Roadhouse, but it seemed enough to earn him a place in the midwife's – well, the locals called her 'tiger', which Gabriel thought was local for 'witch' – life.

She didn't even mind Jocheved, who cried and demanded and was altogether a trial. Not to mention a zeta, and Gabriel hadn't been able to understand that Kali just hadn't cared that Jocheved was born perverse and not in a useful way. Lucifer wouldn't have let Gabriel keep her, not like Father had let Raguel keep Anna when Gabriel's littlest sister had turned out to be a disappointing epsilon. Lucifer wouldn't even have sent Jocheved out for fostering at some client's home – at best she'd have been sent to one the poorly managed baby farms to be lost in the shuffle of work and disease.

But the midwife let him keep his daughter, even though he had arrived in rags and with almost nothing to offer but a willingness to disappear when Kali wanted him to. That, and his way with baking bought his hostess' sufferance, and Gabriel found himself sinking more into her debt and less willing to refuse even her causal requests. He simply owed her too much, at least as much as any client did, and probably enough to commit him to her service, enough that he was as much as debt-peon that had ever worked for the Seraphim.



"That cannot possibly have been legal," Kali said, appalled, after one of her causal exchanges of stories with Gabriel – well causal on her part, as she'd told a story about some of her romantic foolishness when she was a youngster learning her trade – revealed just exactly why he'd run so far away from his Northern home.

Gabriel frowned, but didn't look up. He seemed to be finding it easier to tell his story to Jocheved, who didn't seem to care what her parent did, as long as the patting game continued.

"We're out of different lineages—my mother was Cherubim, his was Ophanim—-"

"But you were brothers!"

Gabriel paused to look up at her, his face bleak. "Yes, but only through our father. It... wasn't a barrier. At least, not one that couldn't be waived away on our pack leader's, our head-of-household you'd say, orders."

Kali wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Who would order that?"

"Lucifer. Well, Heylel, but no one calls him that anymore. He's been Lucifer since I before my first heat..."

"Lucifer?"

"My brother. Full brother—he's five years older than me, and he and Michael—he was the oldest, but he's dead now—are brothers through my mother, though I remember Raguel, my father's second spouse, because my mother died of a fever when I was still a babe."

As rare as it was to get Gabriel to talk about his past, this wellspring of family history wasn't helping Kali understand why his family had pressed him into what was frankly an incestuous coupling, one that he'd fled screaming into the night.

"Why?"

"Why did he die? I don't know... maybe having three children in seven years, being pregnant every other heat, even if he lost the one before me —" Gabriel rambled.

Kali held up her hand, not quite pressing it to his shoulder. "I know how hermaphrodites bear children, Gabriel," she reminded him.

"Sorry. I just..." he deflated a little.

"Why did your brother Lucifer order you into that... marriage."

"Castiel needed children; he was married, but his spouse was barren."

"Needed children?"

Gabriel nodded. "He needed children. Can't get elected Quaestor, or any of the higher offices if you're childless."

"I hadn't ever considered fertility to be a qualification for public office," Kali murmured. Frankly, it sounded ridiculous, but the North was supposedly full of strange customs.

"It's..." Gabriel tilted his head, thinking. That made Jocheved laugh, and Gabriel smiled in reflex at her, and resumed talking. "It's duty. You have children because the state needs citizens. You marry to have legitimate children who can be citizens, and they marry to have children who will be citizens as well. It's like a sheet, unfolding and expanding because of what you did."

Kali raised an eyebrow. "And your marriage to Castiel, that would have given him citizen children."

"Flock children."

"'Flock'," Kali said, and restrained herself from rolling her eyes.

"I know you don't believe it..."

"I find it hard to credit, yes," she said.

"But it's important to us. We are descendants of angels."

"'Given dominion over the earth by the New and Risen God.' Yes, I have heard. I don't follow those teachings."

"You don't follow the Old God either, in any of His rites."

"No, I don't. New or Old, I worship neither one."

Gabriel looked at her sideways, then ducked his nose into Jocheved's hair as the baby chewed on Gabriel's fingers.

"I don't see how you can't... God exists."

"God is a thug, and not worthy of worship," Kali stated.

Gabriel looked up at her with wide, startled eyes. "How can you says that!?"

"How can you not? What happened to you, where was the New God? Why did his rules let your brothers do that to you—take your heat and use you like a brood bitch? What God let's that happen?"

"...We don't always understand what the New God want of us..."

"Hmmmph," Kali said. "He's not a very useful god then, if he can't even communicate clearly."

"I... maybe not?" Gabriel said. He looked confused, and uncertain.

Kali picked up her cup and drank her sweet mint tea decisively. Perhaps she should have let Gabriel talk more—for certain, the flood of words was unusual and probably cathartic for him—but she didn't think she could hear anymore today without going out and killing something on his behalf, and that seemed ... unhelpful.




Gabriel lived in Kali's house, baked in Kali's kitchen, and fed Kali's chickens. Kali milked her own goats—Gabriel couldn't even go near that, because the milking stand made him remember things he'd rather have kept buried, a horrible pressure on the back of his neck that made his breath stutter—and Gabriel helped her make cheese.

All the while, Jocheved slept or not, slung on Gabriel's back with a wide cloth that Kali had given him and helped him tied on each morning. It was quite different from a river-city cradle, but the baby seemed fine, and Gabriel was surprised at how little she cried.

Of course, his only basis for comparison was Gabriel Minor of the Lilim, his and Attarib's son, and he had been so long ago, before Gabriel was twenty. The boy was probably approaching his first heat back home, if he hadn't bloomed already, and soon his uncles and cousins would be looking for an advantageous marriage for him.

At least Jocheved would be spared the marriage contracts, being born a nobody in the south, Gabriel thought. No alpha in the river-cities would have taken a zeta as a lover, let alone a concubine or lawful spouse. Jocheved would never have to go to some alpha's house to further her family, would never be ordered to leave home for the Great Pine Forest, would never be ordered to supply a brother with offspring, will she or nill she.

"She's fine," Kali told him one day as she added cut herbs to the curds they were pressing. "You worry too much."

Gabriel gave Kali a sour look, and stroked a hand back and around over Jocheved's pale fuzzy head. "She's very small."

"But growing. Stop worrying, and help me get the whey out. I want these wheels curing tomorrow!"

Gabriel sighed and nodded, smiling softly.

Kali was abrupt and demanding and yet willing to wait through his moments of airheadness and terror, and Gabriel thought she was better than any three of his family, especially all his brothers together.

Jocheved grew and prospered, and eventually Gabriel met the neighbor woman Maia, who was an epsilon with eight children—eight! and no miscarriages! Eight children!—and a gamma husband that worked on the rails all winter and in her fields all summer, and then other neighbors. He even worked up his nerve, and followed Kali into town for a market day, and no one accosted him as he kept to Kali's shadow.

But that might have been because Kali owned all her large farm, owned it outright and rented out what she didn't use for planting or raising her goats, and thus had many people in her debt and unable to risk criticizing her choices, even if one of them was taking in a worn-out beta under her wing.

That was one of the oddest things to get used to, the way land and houses were parceled and passed around here in the south. Kali owned this house and farm outright, in her own name, and no one thought it strange. When she died, it would go to her nearest relatives, and to southerners meant her own children, not her brothers', because a woman had the same share in her children as a man, instead of being a rented broodmare for the production of heirs.

Gabriel had not believed it, until Kali had sat him down and written out her family tree, sketching out both her matriline and patriline, and explaining what property came from where, and how a parcel of land or an antique and useful object passed mother to son, father to daughter, round and round.

Gabriel had been able to give Gabriel Minor small gifts, books for his education, an occasional toy and the like, but he hadn't had any property of his own. The Seraphim lands and house were his brother's property to control, and when Lucifer passed, they'd go to Castiel, or maybe one of the alpha boys, if Michael or Young Heylel were strong enough to challenge their uncle for clan leadership then.

When they'd divorced, Attarib had taken back everything he'd given Gabriel, and Gabriel took back everything he'd brought to the marriage, down to the copper bells of Attarib's marriage belt. When Wotan had died, Gabriel had taken his dowry back again and left after the funeral and an appropriate month of mourning—though Donner, sweet and kind as he was, had gifted Gabriel with two pieces of Pine Wood jewelry for remembrance, and all the coins that he'd earned managing Wotan's smaller, nearer estates. Woodsmen had their own customs, and paying spouses who worked on their husband's endeavors was one of them. He'd been confused by the coin at the time, but it, along with the little Anna had been able to spare him, had gotten him away later, and he'd always be grateful to his Aesiri stepson for making sure he took it.

Kali neither wanted Gabriel's property, such as it was—the leftover coin from Wotan's property and the small coins he'd earned from Ellen—nor his loyalty. She tolerated him in the house, helped him with Jocheved, and seemed to enjoy his baking, but didn't want anything else from him.

Gabriel wondered vaguely, several months after working for Kali, what exactly they were doing.

"Courting," Kali said, as if Gabriel was a fool who just hadn't noticed.

"I've seen courting. This isn't it." If they had been equals, there would have been decorous meetings chaperoned by family members until Gabriel and Kali's heads-of-house had hammered out a marriage contract. Since they were unequals, and severely so – Kali was a landowner, and Gabriel was little better than a debt-peon, and only because he begged no loan from anyone, because he had no collateral besides himself and Jocheved, so who would take that risk? – Kali would have been able to entertain herself with Gabriel's body if she'd desired during the betrothal process. Well, if she'd been an alpha, back home she would have been allowed to take advantage, and any pup between the two of them would have been acknowledged but illegitimate unless they had married. If she'd been a widowed delta or epsilon, she would have returned to her family for remarriage, and he would have been remonstrated, possible with fists, for daring to court her. There simply weren't women Kali's age who'd never been married at all, not ones who were respectable and propertied, anyway. Gabriel found it terribly confusing, how they did things here in the South.

"No?" Kali raised an eyebrow as she stirred the cauldron—they were washing a great many thing today, and leaving them outside to dry and gain that crisp sunny smell.

"No. A beta marrying, that's about property. I don't have any," Gabriel said. "I have nothing of worth."

"You have yourself," Kali pointed out.

Gabriel stepped back, as if she had struck him. Betrothal rights were one thing, outright stating that one was courting only for the other's body was something else, shockingly rude and explicit. "I am not a whore," he said, and swallowed, because he knew it was a lie. If he needed to, if the situation was dire enough, he would have spread his legs to get away—he had, and it had still been better than remaining under his brothers' roof.

"Gabriel, not like that! I didn't mean— I just meant you have skills." Kali sighed, "You could sell your baking, or singing, or just work as a laborer. There is always a job needs doing, though the pay is poor."

Gabriel unwound a little, and began to pat Jocheved as she made snuffling sounds, maybe hungry, maybe just restless. The cub was greedy that was certain.


It took a long time for Gabriel to get his old humor back, the better part of a year, and he found it right before his world crashed around his ears yet again. His first indication was Jocheved's whining when they were transformed and nursing – the baby noticed the change in the taste of milk from his rising heat and objected. Kali figured that out when he explained the baby's upset and turning away. He felt foolish for not realizing it himself, but to be fair, Gabriel Minor had been a greedy thing and Gabriel hadn't gone into heat again until the boy had been weaned and sent back to his father's family and Wotan had never gotten him pregnant at all. Gabriel didn't want to deal with nursing and heat at the same time; his wolf would make a hash of both, given the course of his life so far.

"You're going into heat, you need to face it," Kali said.

Gabriel winced at her bluntness. She pulled few punches, and didn't seem to care about breaking things gently, at least when they were alone. He should have been used it after over a year, but ...

"It's probably false," he said. "Jocheved is only 10 months old..."

Kali snorted. "False or real, we're going to town. You can leave Jocheved as Maia's if you want," naming the nearest neighbor to Kali's hilltop home.

Maia was willing to take Jocheved in and bed the infant down with her own children, especially since it was close to the heat of the afternoon and the community-wide nap.

Gabriel realized that Kali was going to make him walk into town with her and miss the napping, but there wasn't much he could do. Kali tolerated zipcars if someone else drove them, but she didn't like to drive herself, and Gabriel was a river-city boy. He didn't know how to drive a zip, even if one had been available to borrow. And he still tottered on bicycles – Kali said she was going to commission him a three-wheeler, like a package courier's, but they were expensive and took months to make.

"This is the potter's," Gabriel said as he followed Kali to one shop on the edge of the village center.

"She has glassware too."

Gabriel frowned. "No, she doesn't. She has *pots*. You can't make glass in a pot kiln. It doesn't get hot enough."

"What doesn't get hot enough?" the potter asked as they came through the door.

"Iole," Kali said. "We're here for glass."

"Oh... specialty glass?" the potter said with a smirk.

"Yes."

The potter's eyes flicked over to Gabriel, and then up and down, evaluating. Gabriel backed up a step, unsettled by the frank look.

"Specialty glass," Iole said, with a laugh. "Back in a moment."

"Specialty glass?" Gabriel hissed as the potter disappeared through an interior door.

"She doesn't make it herself," Kali said with a smile. "As you said, a kiln for pots isn't a kiln for glass."

"Here we are!" Iole returned with a nicely pieced wooden box. She put it on the counter and began undoing the latches. "Why don't you look and choose one you think you'd like."

It took Gabriel a minute to figure out what the items inside the box, each protectively padded with cotton wadding, were.

"Those are penises!" he yelped.

"Specialty glass," Iole said with a proud smirk. "For wolf-folk with needs."

Gabriel turned to stare at her. She tilted her head at him, and he felt himself flush red at her knowing look.

Kali, the evil woman, began to roar with laughter.


Gabriel went home with the 'specialty glass' in his pocket. Actually, not his pocket—it was too large for that, being all together more carry-able when wrapped in wadding and stuffed in a sack for transport.

He took it out when he got to his room—not a snug hole under the stairs, no matter how much a tight small space he could defend would have satisfied him—but an open airy room on the upper floor that opened to the porch roof with its railing and staircase. He had sun when he wanted it and privacy all the time and it was enough, even though it was often brighter than he knew quite what to do with.

It was, contemplating the shape, almost ridiculous—a disembodied penis made of solid glass and colored in hues found only in plants and gemstones, never human flesh. Gabriel thought the very ludicrousness of the coloring helped him. It looked nothing like an alpha's penis with those bright colors.

The shape was also helpful, even soothing. It's was smooth glass, no features, no veins or wrinkles or odd kinky hairs in uncomfortable places. It did have some impressive bulges off on each side, but that wasn't surprising considering how it was supposed to be used.

Gabriel tried it out during the first surge of heat that hit him sometime in the night. He knew enough about how sensitive Kali was that she'd rather he just get it over with rather than having to listen to him pant and groan when he denied himself and tried to sleep alone.

Fingers first, to make sure he was slick—sometimes he felt aroused but that didn't make it all the way to between his legs. It was a nice easy feeling, fingers sliding in to second knuckle, and then the third.

Then, the thing. He carefully guided it in, and was surprised at how alien it felt, heavy with no give, no spring, entirely unlike an alpha's penis. Gabriel was repulsed for a moment, and started to take it out. That's when he figured out that alien didn't mean unpleasant, because he twisted his wrist to get a better grip, and thus discovered that it felt better at a different angle. A lot better, with some experimentation.



"So..." Kali said the next morning. "All worked to your satisfaction?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes, and felt his face heat up. "Yes, thank you." He wished vaguely that his skin still had its summer tan, because then he wouldn't be so astonishingly pink, but of course his cycle had restarted in winter and he was paler, not darker.

Kali's smile was puckish. She wasn't laughing at him, quite, but her eyes danced with amusement.

"It's not that funny..." Gabriel complained.

"You have no idea what you looked like when you opened Iole's box," Kali trilled.

Gabriel frowned.

"No, that's not it!" Kali laughed.

"I suppose I looked a lot like a landed fish."

"Just a bit."

"Hmm. So glad to be amusing," he sighed. "We just don't have that sort of thing back home."

"No dildos?" Kali asked. "Then what do you do during a heat if you're unpartnered?"

"Suffer or choose someone. I chose the isolation room. It was preferable, being alone," Gabriel said.

"If that's what you want, I'll make sure you have no one to bother you at all," Kali said, and leaned over to ruffle Gabriel's hair.


Kali thought the courtship was probably the longest, most ridiculous relationship of her life – she'd had lovers before, but the wooing had been all about fun and sexual enjoyment, not convincing a shy werewolf that she wouldn't bite and hurt – but was oddly satisfying. Gabriel was sweet and shattered and so fierce at his core that she was amazed that he'd fallen into her lap, and some days she almost wanted to believe in the New God or the Old, just so she could give thanks. But that would have been ridiculous – Kali's life was hers to own, not some god's, and her choices for good or ill were hers, not some Fate's.

She grew together with Gabriel over the months, finding herself happier every day with her life and with the beta-hermaphrodite with the pale brown eyes and the skin like peachfuzz. Sometimes, unexpected things were the best.

His reaction to Iole's 'specialty' wares was the most hilarious thing he'd ever done in her sight, and he'd done rather a lot of foolish things, mostly overreacting to minor surprises.

The second day of his heat, though, that surprised Kali. She'd gotten up, found Gabriel hadn't – heat could be exhausting – and crept into his room to tend Jocheved her nursery cradle. The baby was trying to pull herself up using the bars, and crowed in delight when Kali approached.

"Ka! Ka! Ka!" Jocheved cried, and reached with her arms, wanting to be picked up.

Kali indulged the child, propping the infant on her hip with long practice. "Hush, Jocheved. You'll wake your mother..."

"No avoiding that," Gabriel murmured in a tired voice from his bed across the room.

Kali turned to look at him.

"You look..." she frowned, and crossed over to place the back of her hand on his forehead. Against the pale sheets, he looked awful, a bright unhealthy pink, like he'd been poisoned by breathing woodsmoke or some such.

He jerked his head back, and threw himself down against the bed, burrowing under the covers. "It's just my heat, Kali..."

"Hmm," Kali said, and ruffled the hair curling around his nape. He was sweaty, and his hair stuck every which way as she ran her fingers through it.

Gabriel shivered, and then groaned, low and throaty. Then he cut himself short, his mouth snapping shut, and turned his face away, throwing the covers up over his head.

Kali's eyebrows raised at that, and she glanced at the baby in her arms.

"I'm going to feed Jocheved, and then put her down for a nap," she said, and walked out of the room.

In the kitchen Jocheved took reheated mashed roots cooked in goat milk easy enough, and was fat and full and burping contentedly when Gabriel finally managed to come downstairs. He'd even managed to find his trousers, so he wasn't naked.

That was a small blessing. He hadn't found a shirt, or possible didn't think to look for one – heat made people stupid, more often than not, in Kali's experience – and frankly, he managed to be more distracting than he had any right to be, sitting quiet at the table and trying halfheartedly to eat an apple. Mostly he was succeeding in gnawing off the fruit's red skin, but not much else.

"I think she'll sleep," Kali said as she laid Jocheved in the downstairs crib, the one that she'd always had for visitor's infants even before Gabriel fetched up on her doorstep.

Gabriel blinked at her statement, and then scrubbed his eyes. "I... I don't even know why I came down."

"Not because you were hungry," Kali replied

Gabriel looked at the apple in his hand, and frowned. "No..."

"Go back to bed, Gabriel."

"All right." He put the apple down, and made to stand. "Join me?"

Kali raised an eyebrow at him, even as he froze, and turned any even brighter pink, flushed almost red with embarrassment. It was astonishing, how pale he was, and how much his blood showed through his skin when his emotions ran high.

"I-I'm sorry," he stammered. "I'm not usually like this..."

Kali smirked, "I would have noticed."

"I'll just... go..."

"Gabriel," she said, and stepped after him, making him turn on the staircase. "Did you mean it?"

"… yes." His mobile face twisted, as he fought with himself over something, "Yes, I mean it. It's not just my heat, I do like you, I like that your courting me, I think I would enjoy sex with you... but I shouldn't impose—"

Kali snorted indelicately, and swept up the stairs until she could tuck his hand in the crook of her arm, and pull him up after her. He stumbled for a step, but followed easily enough. "Horseshit," she said, "I'm an adult, you're an adult, at the very worse it will be mediocre sex that will convince us that it was a bad choice. I'm interested if you are."

Gabriel stared at her goggle-eyed, and nodded cautiously.

"Good, then!" Kali said, and shoved him through the doorway into his own bedroom, and eventually, onto his own bed.

It was not mediocre sex. Not at all.


Three days later, when his heat was petering out into the last grudging impulses, Gabriel awoke in the middle of the night to find himself entirely alone in his bed. Kali was gone.

He sat up abruptly, startled by the realization. She had been beside him most of the days, and when she left his bed, Gabriel had trailed after her, too infatuated from his heat to let her out of his sight for long.

He checked the crib, but Jocheved was asleep. His daughter was so big now, almost ready to walk, already crawling like a bear and needing to be watched every moment she wasn't actually asleep. He wondered what it would be like to actually raise her all the way, instead of relinquishing her to her father's family, the way he had been required to with Gabriel Minor. For a moment, he regretted that he'd never be able to tell Jo that she had a beautiful daughter, never be able to Ellen that she had a grandchild... but there was no way he could do it safely, no letter that would not be a disaster if it was opened in transit. Better for them all if he never tried to contact them.

"I'm sorry, Jocheved," he said, and brushed his hand over her wispy baby hair. "I don't think you'll ever meet your father..."

A thump came up from downstairs. Gabriel hesitated, then grabbed the sheet to throw over himself– there was no way he could find his pants in the near darkness – and went to investigate.

He recoiled in terror as soon as he went onto the porch, his back slamming onto the door. Please, New God and Old, let it pass over us, let it go for me, and not for my Jocheved, he prayed as the huge shape levered itself up over the porch railing.

Then he gasped, as it transformed into the small and now quite familiar figure of Kali.

"Gabriel?"

He made a strangled sound, high and thin in his throat.

Kali dropped the deer carcass she'd been dragging, and crouched down in front of him. Her eyes were warm and worried in the pale moonlight.

"Gabriel, love, what's wrong..?"

"I thought you were an epsilon," Gabriel found himself saying, in a rather stupid tone.

Kali snorted, a grin in her tone. "No."

"You weren't a wolf..."

"No."

"But how..?"

"Not everyone is a wolf. It happens," she shrugged.

Gabriel stared at her. "You were beautiful," he blurted.

She blinked at him, and then smiled. "Flatterer."

"And terrifying."

Kali rolled her eyes. "Terrible flatterer."

"I think I love you."

Kali sat down with a thump. "All right, I admit I didn't expect that," she said.

Gabriel felt himself flush, and hoped the dark night kept her from noticing. Except she put her hand on his cheek and held him for a kiss, so of course she felt how hot he'd become.

"Still in heat?" she asked as she drew away. "I thought you might be ebbing. I know how terribly hungry I get when my heats are winding down..."

Gabriel knew what she meant, that ravenous hollow feeling when a heat was almost over and no seed had set. The only times he hadn't wanted to eat half a pig was when he had been impregnated and queasy.

"No. I mean, not yet," Gabriel said, and tugged her hand, silently asking her to sit with him.

Kali laughed, and ran her fingers through her hair, in the way she'd discovered made him growl happily.

"Well, I can think of a few things to pass the time until then..." she said.

"So can I," Gabriel responded, and pulled her against him. He found her mouth in the darkness, and sighed contentedly. She felt just right in her arms, and her small hands roamed his shoulders and sides, and then down.

Gabriel yelped when she squeezed unexpectedly, and Kali chuckled.

"I thought you said you weren't ebbing..." she teased.

Gabriel stared at her, and himself, faint and pale flesh in the moonlight. Her hands stroked over his penis again, and he banged his head back against the doorframe. He wasn't hard, yet, just sensitized.

"…I don't," he stammered, "I don't normally get my erections back for a week afterwards," he muttered. The impotency of his male parts during heat has always persisted before, through his heat, and pregnancy, and even through the nursing. To have an erection now, when he was in the tail end of his heat, was so alien as to be unprecedented.

"I don't mind," Kali said, kissing his throat, his ear, and swinging herself up into his lap.

"Kal—AH!" he gasped, as she just sank down on him, on his penis, weak erection that he had. He howled under her, as she rocked on him, as his prick thickened and firmed inside her. He was built like a gamma, no bone, no knot, just flesh that wasn't particularly large or thick, but Kali chuckled and kissed him and moved.

It was fantastic.

Afterwards, he was sprawled out on the porch, flat on his back as Kali lay against him, propped on one elbow as she played with his hair with her other hand. It was rather unfair that she seemed energized and he was gasping like a fish.

"That went well," she said.

"Sure," Gabriel agreed. He would agree to anything she proposed right at the moment.

"I think we should marry."

"All right," Gabriel said absentmindedly. Then he realized what he had said, and bellowed, "WHAT?!"

Kali laughed in his ear, and licked him. "Married. You, me, very soon?"

Gabriel stared at her, as she smiled down at him in the dark, only the wetness of her eyes letting him make out her expression.

"Oh. Oh yes."

"That's settled then," Kali said happily, and put her chin down on his chest with a happy purr.


In the end, it was a ridiculously simple ceremony. Gabriel wore two identical bracelets on his arm, bright red in a design he actually enjoyed and picked himself from the varied options that he was offered. Kali also wore bracelets, but hers were more numerous, and maybe even made of something precious.

She was certainly more dressed up that Gabriel could even imagine. Sensible clothes had been thrown to the wind, and she was wrapped in lengths and lengths of crimson silk, in a sari bordered with little foxes.

Gabriel himself was as washed and scrubbed and as neatly put out as he could manage. Pressed trousers, long tunic, a vest and sash, he'd had a decidedly peasant air about him, but Gabriel didn't care either.

Their friends—Kali's friends, mostly, though Gabriel had managed to talk to Maia enough that he thought she's friendly, if not a true friend yet—watched them exchange bracelets so that they each had a mismatched pair.

Then Kali grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down for a long kiss, and Gabriel forgot the world. It was bliss, and he only pulled away for air.

Kali smiled her bewitching smiling, and Gabriel could only gasp and press his forehead against hers, just wanting the closeness.

"Huzzah!" cried Maia once Kali let Gabriel pull back a little more. "I never thought I'd see the day, Kali! And congratulations, Gabriel! You look splendid!"

Gabriel accepted the farmer's congratulations, and several more well-wishers' benedictions without really processing them. He felt dazed, like he was walking through a dream that would fade into watery memories soon enough.

"Come," Kali said, and took him by the hand. She led him to the village record office, and made the clerk take down a register, in which they wrote their names together—and Gabriel bit his lip and put his down full—Gabriel Beta Michael of the Seraphim—because he wanted this to be lasting and he was afraid that anything less would be challenged.

There was also a standardized contract to sign and file, which Kali had explained. Gabriel read it carefully, but it was remarkably even-handed for all that it merged their property into one shared asset pool; Gabriel had to enumerate what he'd brought to the marriage for his own piece of mind, and for his own pride. It was little enough, mostly coin, all but the two amber necklaces from the Great North Wood that he'd carried coiled up all the months of his wanderings, and the simple metal necklace of iron and pyrite he'd been given by his mother's family the Cherubim as birth.

The amber was the most valuable thing he owned—to ignore that he had the strands was to be a beggar at his own wedding, and he couldn't bear to come off as that. Even if most of Kali's friends were looking on him in amused pity, which he thought might be the case.

Kali didn't understand, but she tolerated it and let him enumerated her goods and assets as well. If she dismissed him later, he wanted it obvious that he was not an opportunist or a thief, and he wanted his small dowry recoverable. It wasn't too much to ask, he thought. Even Wotan, who'd married him strictly to further the trade relationship at the start, had been careful with his marriage portion.

They walked back to Kali's home afterwards, and Gabriel was surprised and vaguely horrified to see Maia and many of Kali's neighbors had gotten there before them and set up a party in front of Kali's house. Completely with spitted fowl roasting in the fire pit and a pot full of oil for the pillow-puffs that Gabriel had become ridiculously fond of, especially when served with honey.

"Don't worry," Kali said, when Gabriel blanched at the crowd. "If you need quiet, Jocheved is excuse enough."

Gabriel was grateful for that idea—that he could retreat to take care of his daughter and no one would think poorly of it.

The party lasted long into the dark, until well past moonrise, with singing and funny stories, and Jocheved waking and falling asleep and then waking up grumpy that she'd missed guests. Gabriel finally put her in her cradle for the night sometime before moonset, but she grumbled indignantly about not getting to play with the neighbors until she dropped off like a rock.

Gabriel was so very glad when the last of the neighbors started cleaning up under Maia's directions, and Maia herself shooed Gabriel and Kali indoors.

"They'll take care of everything," Kali said, tired but amused as Maia made a hand gesture, as if she could shove them into the house.

"... it doesn't seem fair," Gabriel said as he watched the clean up. It seemed like an endless round of dishwashing for some youngster or another, among other things.

"We're supposed to save our energy for other things," Kali laughed, and ran her hand up his neck, flicking his hair from his face with a finger.

"Oh... right..." Gabriel said. He turned towards the stairs, and nodded. "Shall we go up then?"

Kali put her hand in his, and said, "We shall."

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