Gabel spun around to his wolves, “Come! We shall run in full cry, then share food!”
He leapt forward, twisting out of his kilt as his body stretched and reshaped into his terrifying, leathery wolf form. He landed on the stones at the base of the steps, his claws cracking the flagstones, and turned his head to me, maw open and immense yellow fangs dripping spittle, his eyes yellow fire in the lamplight.
He waited for me, a guttural growl sliding through the howls and barks to summon me to his side.
I pulled my dress over my head, flung it away, and did as commanded.
He sniffed my silvery ruff. All Oracles were silvery-grey wolves with dark points, no matter our pedigrees or hair color. Cautiously, I sniffed the long, oily fur that clung around his neck where a full ruff should be, and smelled only Gabel, nothing more.
Hix and Eroth barked commands so we wouldn’t trample each other on the run. Flint sat nearby, wagging his tail. His tawny-gold wolf form stood out like a miniature sun.
He extended one foreleg to me and bowed low.
Gabel flung his head back and howled the Alpha’s song of summoning, and as one, we plunged off into the night in full cry.
Old Customs
My heart lifted as we crashed into the underbrush of the forest. I howled to the sliver of moon, and the pack answered with their own yips and barks.
Master of Arms Flint ran easily to my left, and I ran on Gabel’s left as he led us through the nearly-black forest.
One of the males behind us accelerated between Gabel and I, splitting us apart, and lunged at Gabel with a snarl.
I swerved and fell back a few paces while the two males snapped and snarled and swiped at each other as the run continued.
“The old custom,” Flint said.
Of course. Because IronMoon was all about the old customs: the claiming run. Silly me, I thought we had just been going for the typical celebration run. The other males of the pack honored the female by trying to “steal” her. It was an ancient custom, and the last “chance” for a male to stake a claim on a female. Gabel fought off the wolf, some fur and blood flew, and the male fell back into the pack.
The more males that attacked, and the more fiercely, the more desirable the female.
(And the more powerful the male when he vanquished each opponent, and the more prestige it granted him to have a mate that others desired)
Flint barked a little laugh at the tumbling. “These are dangerous runs, Lady. Enjoy the blood offered to you!”
Another male pounced, tumbling Gabel off his feet. Excited barks as the story made its way down the pack. Gabel fought off that male, and another, and another.
He threw off every wolf, laughing at them and summoning me to his side with a triumphant bark after each one.
We ran down a steep hillside and leapt into a clearing, splashed across a slushy, half-frozen creek.
Then another shadow moved in my vision, blotting out the faint starlight over Gabel’s right shoulder. Fangs flashed, a snarl, and then Gabel went down like a ragdoll. His momentum carried him and the other wolf sliding across the terrain. He got to his feet, the other wolf pounced again, and they locked together, snarling and flailing. Blood splattered the snow-layered ground as claws met flesh, and the forward run became a thrashing, snarling fight.
I slowed, and Flint slowed with me. The pack poured around us to watch, giving the two wolves a wide circle. It was Gabel’s leathery, nightmare form versus a large wolf with short, plush, dark fur: Hix.
The males broke apart, and Hix slunk sideways, circling Gabel, body crouched low, snarling and fangs bared. Gabel matched him, his talon-like claws ripping up huge clumps of the earth and snow, the starlight sliding off his oily hide.
“This can’t be real,” I whispered to Flint.
Flint shifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Perhaps it is. Perhaps they are just honoring you with blood and fangs. As Shadowless did not.”
Gabel and Hix clashed together again. Hix snarled and snaked forward, shoving Gabel back onto his hind legs, and with a sharp twist of his head, bit down on Gabel’s shoulder. They struggled, blood dripping onto the ground from the bite wound, until Gabel managed to get Hix off balance and flung him to the ground. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I heard wheezing and panting. I could feel Gabel’s bubbling rage within me, his enjoyment of the fight and the blood.
He pressed Hix into the dirt by the throat. Hix struggled a few breaths, sides heaving, just to prove not even Gabel’s fangs on his throat would compel his immediate obedience.
I leapt forward, “Enough!”
Movement stopped. Gabel growled in his throat. He turned his head to look at me with one yellow eye, dragging Hix a bit in the snow as his head moved.
“Blood has been spilled,” I said. “It is enough. It is more than my birth pack saw fit to do when one sought to claim me.”
Gabel spat out Hix’s neck. Hix jumped to his feet, teeth still barred and hackles still raised. Gabel sniffed once and walked away, and Hix waited a heartbeat before he too went back to join the pack.
I wagged my tail at Gabel as he approached and licked his snout once. He swiped at me with his teeth, harmless, and growled, “Well played, buttercup.”
“Would you really have killed him?”
“No, I would have made him submit.” Gabel pivoted about to restart the run, despite deep bloody rakes in his shoulder to match the barely-healed wounds Romero had left.
“I didn’t want to see that.” I sniffed his shoulder wound carefully. He also smelled of exertion, pain, effort, the fight and rankled anger.
Roiling anger and jealousy, but mixed with enjoyment. “I’ll keep it in mind you favor him.”
“He is a good Beta.”
“Of course.” He chortled. “A Beta should have the Luna’s favor. It is wise politics.”
We bounded back into the darkness, Hix taking his place at Gabel’s right shoulder for the balance of the run. A few miles from home, Gabel told me, “Lead them home, buttercup.”
“Where are you going?” I barked after him as he stretched his legs and accelerated away from us into the forest.
I had never led a run or a hunt before. I had rarely even been near the front of the line.
The path was easy enough, and since we were just running, I didn’t really need to do anything besides not step in a hole and break my legs. I yipped to the pack, and all down the line came the barks and howls answering back. Higher toned, different calls because I was a female run leader.
I crested a final, short hill, and the groomed grounds of the house beckoned. I barked the command to slow and eased into a jog. In the lights of the patio, we milled around, panting, tails wagging, yipping and howling. Flint jumped up onto a planter and howled praises to the Moon for Her blessings, and we all howled with him.
The wolves parted as Gabel returned from the woods, something clutched in his jaws. I waited at the top of the steps, tail up, ears forward, half-expecting him to be carrying something horrible and violent. But all it was was a rabbit. A half-white winter hare.
He clicked up the flagstones, further shattering them under his claws, and then dropped the hare at my feet.
We were being traditional.
I picked up the hare, carried it backward one step to indicate my taking it for myself, then settled down and began to eat. Gabel sat opposite me, close enough he could have snatched it from me if he had wanted to. The IronMoon watched with more confusion than understanding of the ancient and long-forgotten ritual.
I gnawed on the delicious rabbit for several moments. Then I paused in my chewing, looked at him, thumped my tail exactly twice, whined once, and nudged the carcass toward him. He crouched down onto his forelegs, his claw tips touching mine, and gnawed on the rabbit with me. Flint started a song of celebration.
“You are traditional,” I told Gabel under the song.
“Kings are traditional.” He chomped off part of the rabbit and gulped it down whole.
“Where did you learn all this? Flint?”
“Some of it.” He chomped off another leg. “We’ve had our appetizers. Run as wolves, eat as humans. We can negotiate the form for what comes after the meal.”
“Human,” I choked as if I had gotten a bone lodged in my throat. He couldn’t seriously be suggesting something else.
“You object to a litter of lupines?” Gabel licked his chops.
Lupines were werewolves born as wolves, not humans. They had always been rare, and in modern society, virtually unheard of due to practical matters like birth certificates. They had always been difficult to integrate with human society, being feral. They reached physical maturity within two to three years but missed out on learning as human children do. By the same token, human-born werewolves could not fully integrate with wolf packs most of the time. We did lack a certain feral edge, and there was even a language gap. Our minds remained the same, not quite fully human, not quite fully wolf. But humans were more tolerant of eccentricities and aberrations, while wolves instantly distrusted such things that did not conform to expectations.
There was debate about whether or not wolves were wolves first, then gained a human-form, or if they were humans who had gained a wolf form, and which was the “intended” birth form for us.
“Now you’re just watching me squirm.”
Gabel actually wagged his tail twice, got to his feet, and melted upward into his human form, a smirk stretched across his lips. “You are still a little bashful, buttercup. I really must remove the maidenly blushing from you.”
My eyes were drawn to Gabel’s ripped up shoulder, the deep scratches across his torso, and a thin slice that had peeled up a strip of flesh from his left thigh. The burning pain only goaded his ego; the pain was laced with victory and triumph. He was still, unquestionably, the Alpha of IronMoon.
“Human it is.” Gabel grinned, his lips still stained with rabbit blood. “Wolves of IronMoon. Now, we dine!”
Hix approached. He bled from his wounds. Gabel had bit down hard enough to puncture the skin and draw blood. A few centimeters more, and the punctures would have been fatal. Hix brought his arm across his torso and bowed to me. “My blood is always well-spent when spilled in your name, Lady Gianna.”
Struck by his sincerity, I only managed, “Thank you, First Beta.”
I turned to Gabel when Hix had left, noting the wounds that really did need stitches and proper dressing. “So was that little demonstration planned?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“He warned me. Something to the effect of I had won you by conquest without actually having conquered anything?” Gabel smirked, enjoying the challenge and conquest. He pulled at the strip of hanging skin on his thigh. He yanked it free and flung it away into the flowers.
“Sounds like it was planned, and perhaps you were unprepared.”
“Buttercup, so fierce, so fierce. I almost felt that. Perhaps if you stuck your finger into my shoulder.”
“Ug!” I recoiled, “Gabel!”
He laughed and gestured with his good arm for me to precede him to the festivities. “After you, my Luna. After you.”
Glimpses
“Gabel, you need to start getting proper stitches.”
“Do you object to scars?”
“No. I object to you bleeding all over the sheets, pillows, your shirts, and me.” I slapped his hand away as he picked at a flake of blood.
“They will just think I had a virgin in my bed last night.”
“They’ll think you sacrificed a virgin,” I retorted.
He glanced at the bloody sheets and pillowcases. “You are right, buttercup. I would not want Hix storming in here thinking I had been violent with your tender flesh.”
The chortle on his voice and the cruel smugness slithering through the Bond made me roll my eyes. “You said you liked him as First Beta because he growls at you.”
“He does more than growl.”
Clearly, because I stood there trying to figure out what to salve and what to clean and how to wrap his shoulder. “You should have the doctor look at this.”
“Is it infected?” Gabel turned his head to eye his pulpy shoulder.
“No, but I’m not a good nurse.”
“I am not giving Hix any more of a victory that you stole from me,” Gabel growled with sudden annoyance.
Stole from him? Because him riping Hix’s throat out was a victory worth having. I sighed again. “This isn’t about Hix, this is about your damned shoulder looking like a rabbit leg.”
“He would have submitted. I would have made him.”
“You can’t make Hix do anything he doesn’t agree with. That’s why he is your First Beta.”
Hix was an enemy Gabel couldn’t afford to have. That’s why Gabel liked him. That’s why Hix liked Gabel.
But mix some masculine egos and the scent of a female, and all bets were off. Hix was probably stitching up himself for the same reasons Gabel didn’t want to get the doctor involved.
Too bad for Gabel that he wasn’t a bachelor with no one to look after him. Or decide it was simply time for professional help.
I hadn’t seen the doctor since the night I’d arrived, and when he showed up, I remembered why I didn’t like him. He was competent but had the bedside manner of a sadistic prison warden. He enjoyed his work a little too much.
While the doctor did what could be done, I ripped the sheets off the bed.
“You do not need to do that.” Gabel told me.
Normally I didn’t: Violet did. I ignored Gabel’s mild tone of disapproval. Ripping sheets off a bed was not beneath anyone. “It took less than a minute. Now it’s done.”
“You should be watching. Learning.”
The doctor had to cut out the edge of some of the slashes so that he could then sort of stitch and glue the edges together. Gabel refused anything to numb the skin, and it must have hurt like fire and stomach flu as the doctor cut the skin away and stitched everything shut. Gabel reveled in his victory over the pain. I did not enjoy it at all.
“Would you watch your own belly surgery too?” I asked, angry at having to watch it. If I didn’t focus on being angry and annoyed, I was going to puke. It was one thing to see grisly sights in my visions, but the real, corporeal manifestation made me gag, and feeling the echoes of his physical trauma didn’t improve anything.
“Quite likely.”
If he really thought I was going to learn to stitch wounds just so he could avoid the pack knowing someone had dared damage his skin, he had another thing coming. “Flint is expecting me.”
Master of Arms Flint held his own little combat court in his usual place, wearing one of his usual battered kilts and seemingly immune to the biting cold. How Flint didn’t freeze to death standing in one place baffled me, even if he was shouting and gesturing every thirty seconds. How he maintained his tan in the dead of winter was another mystery. It didn’t have the orange look of tan-in-a-can, and he never left the estate, as far as I knew. I wasn’t aware of any tanning beds around, unless he had one in his rooms. Which was possible but seemed terribly frivolous for Flint.
I looked around for the First Beta, but he was nowhere to be seen. I hoped it was not him being too badly hurt, but it probably was.
“Lady Gianna!” Flint shouted a greeting to me. He jumped down off his crate and bowed to me. All movement ceased, and all eyes turned to me, just like my first day at IronMoon.
If this was going to be how it was every morning I showed up, it would get old quickly. I hadn’t made the promises to Gabel yet. I wasn’t Luna yet.
“Hix is occupied elsewhere today. You will have to train with me.”
“Ah...” I dared not refuse to utter a word of complaint: it was an honor to work with him, especially a little runt like me, who would probably never find herself in combat again. The wolves looking on scowled at my unearned privilege.
“Excellent!” Flint declared before I
even made a sound. He spun around and jumped on his box. He flicked his fingers at a wolf standing nearby and pointed to the spot at his feet. That’s where I was to wait until he was ready.
I waited, and waited, and waited. That wasn’t unusual. I enjoyed watching the warriors train and Flint shout directions and ease drop on the wolves around me passing commentary between themselves. But knowing that I had to work out with Flint had some appointed hour made things a little different.
Finally, Flint ordered the ring cleared. I went to the center.
He bounced off his crate, strode over to me, and without warning snapped his right leg into my thigh.
I dropped to the ground like a doll.
Hushed silence.
I shook myself, spitting sand out of my face.
My left thigh pulsed with my heartbeat.
“Get up,” Flint ordered.
I spit another grain of sand out, braced myself on my hands, and pushed myself upright. Sensation started to come back to my leg as the nerves recovered from the explosive trauma; real throbbing pain mixed with adrenaline flooded my brain.
“Well, this is different,” I told Flint, breathing hard already. Nothing like getting clocked, decked, or flattened to test the cardio.
He twitched his head negatively, then I found myself back in the dirt, my other thigh exploding in pain.
Absolute, total, hushed, horrified silence.
If Flint expected me to just lay there, hell no. He’d had his chance the previous night if he didn’t want me being Luna. My legs shook and tingled. I couldn’t feel them so well, but my brain commanded them to move from muscle memory.
I expected a kick to the head next.
But Flint turned to the shocked audience (a few of which shot glances toward the house, expecting Gabel to appear at any moment and descend upon Flint like a Hound) and said, “Wolves, I have spoken to you of a female’s courage before. And how heart and and guts,” he made a fist and punched himself several times in his own stone-like abs, “cannot be taught. A good trainer knows how to push a student to their breaking point. It is only at that breaking point that we know who we are. It is mental, wolves. It is in our heads and our hearts. Observe how a trained Oracle is able to withstand what would have any of you whimpering for mercy.”
The Alpha's Oracle Page 25