by JM Klaire
She was shocked when her lunge made Elam sit back on his haunches. He suddenly grinned at her in that way only canines can, tongue lolling, head cocked as she continued to guard this human from a no longer aggressive Elam.
As Elam kept sitting and grinning at her, a movement behind him caught Emma's attention.
The other cub, the one who had high-tailed it out of the clearing came back, followed by a larger wolf. This one Emma did recognize. She was one of the ones Emma had seen around the pack a few times.
The momma wolf paused, taking in the situation, before shifting into her human form and facing both Emma and Elam.
Elam shifted as well, turning to face the new arrival.
"Gabe told me you were here. He was very excited. 'Mama, the Alpha is sparring with us!' It was all he could say. Ah, Sammy got nipped, huh?"
Emma was more and more confused as the conversation went on between them.
Elam answered her, "Yeah, the twins were sparring. Em and I were just going to pass through, but I decided to have some fun with the pups. Gabe did well. He attacked me and distracted me while Sammy tried to get me from behind. I meant for it to be a close call, but yes, I did nip him in his shoulder. Nothing too bad, though. Plus it gave Emma here a chance to go into protection mode. One look at a wounded and human Sammy, and she shifted, facing down her Alpha and Mate to protect your little cub there."
"I didn't realize you could shift, Emma."
The momma wolf aimed her words at Emma. She tried to respond, but only a half-bark, half-yelp popped out. It was then that Emma realized she was still on all fours, and a wolf.
Elam reassured her, saying, "Great job, Em. Stay in your wolf form, I want to show you a few things before you shift back."
As if I know how to shift back, Emma thought, sarcastically.
As Elam and the boys' mom shared a few more minutes of small talk, Gabe came over and licked his brother Sammy, til Sammy started giggling and stood up.
Emma noticed that the bite on Sammy's shoulder had already mostly healed. Sammy shifted to roll around some more with Gabe, and Elam said his goodbye's to the three as the momma led the two cubs out of the clearing.
One they were alone, Elam addressed Emma, "You did it, Mine! I knew your protective instinct was the best way to push you. Now, I know you are pissed. And I know you have a lot of words you want to throw my way. I deserve them all, I know. But you'd have to shift back to yell them at me. How about we go play instead? I'll introduce you to some of the joys of being a wolf before I poke you back into your human form to give me what for. Deal?"
He shifted then, without waiting for her answer. He padded over to her and leaned against her, licking her snout and nudging her in a playful, friendly way.
He was right, she did want to give him what for. But he was also right about what he'd said earlier, about shifting into wolf form being freeing. She wanted to be mad at him, but what she wanted more was to run with him.
She ached to stretch her new legs and run and jump. She wanted to hunt and eat something, with Elam, and to play and tussle with him.
She decided being mad at him for his methods could wait, so she nipped him on his snout and took off into the woods, fully expecting him to come chasing after her.
19
"So Kate told me about Galen asking you if he could split off from the pack, with your blessing, to be Alpha of his own pack in the adjoining lands. How did that conversation turn out?"
Emma asked the question, lying naked in the pile of furs in the cave she'd found, teasing Elam's nipple with her wandering finger as they recovered from yet another round of hot, animal sex.
Emma's heat had passed days ago, and she'd long since forgiven Elam for tricking her into shifting that first time, but she still couldn't seem to get enough of him. The forgiving part had been easy, since he'd been so patient in teaching her his personal tricks on how to control the shift, making her learning process go faster than she'd imagined it would.
She stretched her naked body, teasing him with it as she waited for him to respond.
Her own thoughts were only half on the question she'd asked, as the other half of her brain was still amazed at how at home she felt as a wolf, and how easily the pair had settled into mated life.
They'd gone for runs in the woods every evening together since Emma's first shift, and had, more often than not, ended up here in the cave for a hot tryst before heading back to hers or Elam's cabin for the night.
Elam still hadn't forced Ziva out of the Alpha's cabin, which had brought Emma's thoughts around enough to ask him how the Alpha standoff was going.
"We're still talking it over. Dividing the pack would be a big step, it has its pros and cons, but I'm willing to listen to both those for and against it. Adjoining packs, run by brothers who respect each other, would give us a chance to grow. We'd know for certain that we could rely on each other."
"So what would be a con?"
"The elders would say a loss of tradition. Running away when you don't like a challenge outcome shows a lack of respect for how it's always been. But, if we still did things 'how it's always been,' we'd still get human sacrifices from neighboring villages in trade for protection. Not all changes are bad, in my opinion. I think I will probably allow it. I want to hold a pack meeting first though, get a sense of who would go and who would stay. You know Kate would leave, don't you?"
"Yeah. I get it, but I'll miss her terribly. You know they plan on leaving, with or without your blessing, right?"
"Galen said as much. I'd like to think he'd calm down and stay, but I honestly think the split isn't a bad idea. We'd just be covering more ground, really. Spreading out, more than totally dividing. Galen said Ziva wasn't thrilled."
"I've yet to see her thrilled about anything."
"True."
With a laugh, Elam rolled Emma over. He put an end to her teasing and stretching by pinning her underneath him and kissing her until her thighs spread wide for him again.
Emma had a few hours before she had to head to the challenge arena for tonight's pack meeting, so she thought she'd spend it exploring the woods.
She'd heard of a not-to-distant natural spring, where you could sit in a bubbling pool hot enough to be a hot tub, so she decided to seek it out in her still new but already beloved wolf form for faster travel.
Emma shifted smoothly, breaking into a fast run before all four paws had completely hit the ground. She loved running like this, her body sleek and powerful as she leapt and weaved her way through the woods.
Her nose picked up the scents of fleeing rabbits and squirrels as they scattered in front of her.
She caught a glimpse of her white paws as they flashed in and out of her vision as she ran. She smiled as well as she could as a wolf, at the memory of Elam telling her how beautiful she was.
It was that first night she shifted, after they'd run and just before he'd shown her how to flow back into her human form again.
"You're a gleaming, bright shade of white, Emma. Your wolf, I mean. Not a spot of color anywhere to be seen, just snow white from ears to paws, except for your black as night nose and your emerald green eyes. I never saw her, obviously, but from what I've heard, your wolf is almost identical to your mother's. She had a forepaw as dark as her nose, but the rest of her was as white as snow, just like you."
She kicked her speed up a notch, reveling in the freedom of running wild and free through the woods. She didn't even have a predator to watch for, really. Humans were there biggest fear most wolf shifter's had. Even bears and wolves tended to leave each other alone out here, both preferring not to fight unless food, mate or cub was in danger.
She decided she rather enjoyed being the top of the food chain, as she startled a small deer and it ran in fear.
Emma wasn't on the hunt though. She wasn't the slightest bit hungry, so she just watched it run, as Elam's words teaching her how to take one down echoed in her ear.
He'd been proud of her; she'd hunte
d well the times they'd gone together. She seemed to be getting quite the hang of this shifter stuff, she was proud to say.
No, for right now, thoughts of the hot spring she was nearing were what was pulling her nose along.
She was getting closer; she was starting to smell the minerals bubbling in the water. The only thing she wanted right now was to get there, shift back, and sink her human bones into the heated, bubbly water and soak a while.
The hot spring was larger than she expected. She'd heard 'hot tub' and immediately assigned the spring a size in her head, so she was pleasantly surprised when the water was the temperature of a hot tub, but the spring itself was closer to half of a normal, human swimming pool size.
She'd already soaked some and swam some, and was reclining against a large rock, letting her head loll back and her mind wander as her eyes took in the woods and wildlife around her when Kate showed up.
Kate stripped down and joined Emma in the spring.
"Howdy, stranger." Emma greeted Kate with a teasing smile.
"I know, I know. We haven't been able to hang out much lately. But hey, I heard you succumbed to the same life changing virus that got me."
Emma raised her eyebrows at her friend in question, too relaxed and sated to actually offer up any words.
"The force of nature that is a werewolf who believes you are his forever mate."
Emma laughed, nodding her head in agreement.
"Yes. Their sexy pull is hard to deny, I'll give you that."
"Are you happy, Emma? I knew immediately what I wanted when I saw Galen. Are you and Elam happy? I know it's only been days, but..."
"Yes. Being here has changed me, in more ways than I can even tell you, actually. Hey, how did you know I'd be here? I snuck out for some alone time before the pack meeting tonight. I figured I was the only one."
"I didn't know. I come out here sometimes, too. Ziva showed me this place. Just good timing, I guess."
"Ziva. Is she any different once you get to know her? She comes across so... I don't know, troubled. Angry. Is she really as angry as she seems? Like all the freaking time?"
Kate focused her eyes behind Emma, thinking of a way to respond.
"Ziva is...well, it's hard to explain. She comes from somewhere I'll never understand. But I think her intent is good?"
"You say that like it's a question."
"She is...protective. She wants the best for her loved ones. Thomas, Galen."
"But not Elam? He's her son, too."
"She says Elam is different."
"Different? How so?"
"I'm not sure. She won't elaborate."
"Elam said she wasn't happy about this dividing of the pack that Galen presented."
"She isn't. She doesn't think she should have to go. She thinks Galen should be Alpha."
"But he isn't. And even if he was, she'd have to give up the Alpha cabin, either way. To you and Galen, if not to me and Elam. Why does she care which son of hers is in charge? Either way she is still revered as mother of the Alpha."
A voice behind her, in Emma's ear, surprised her.
"Because Elam is a devil's spawn, just like you!"
With that, Emma's world went dark.
20
Emma felt a dull ache deep inside her head as she fought her way to consciousness. She instinctively knew that she needed to wake up, but waves of pain and nausea greeted her every time she fought her way to the surface. She knew she needed to fight through it, and open her eyes, but visions of her mother kept pulling her down, down, deeper into unconsciousness.
She'd never really known her mother, since she had died when Emma was so little, but she had no trouble recognizing her in her unconscious, troubled dreams.
The sound of Kate's pained voice pierced Emma's brain, and Emma tried again to wake up, to help her friend, but the pain and nausea as Emma surfaced again was just too much. And the pull of her mother's visions just too tempting.
Emma felt herself sinking into the abyss again, giving herself up to whatever tricks her mind was playing on her, just to see her mother one more time. She was still getting used to the whole 'seeing glimpses of possible futures' thing, so she wasn't quite prepared for her dead mother's visions to propel her into the past instead.
Emma suddenly saw herself at an Alpha Challenge, but this time it wasn't Galen and Elam fighting for position.
Her mother, Reine, stood tall and proud. Her snow white wolf, with its soot black paw, was fighting with a slightly smaller, younger version of what she knew to be Thomas's deep brown wolf.
There was another, already defeated, wolf watching from the perimeter. Emma assumed he was the third challenger Elam had told her about. The one who went after Thomas, just to be taken out by Reine, in defense of her brother, before the challenge had become a two wolf fight.
Emma turned her attention to Thomas's wolf, to start with, zoning in on him.
He was familiar, mostly, and didn't bring the longing that looking at Reine's wolf did as she tossed unconscious, her mind many, many years in the past.
Thomas was vibrant, young and full of life. Emma's reality intruded just long enough to register the thought that she wished she'd been allowed to grown up here, with these wolves, and had known Thomas like this- young and in his prime.
She heard a threatening growl, and turned her dreaming head just in time to focus in on Reine, before Reine's wolf attacked Thomas's wolf and the pair rolled around on the ground of the very same natural coliseum she'd watched Elam beat Galen in not very long ago.
Reine and Thomas fought for a long time, seeming equally matched. But Elam had been right- Reine had just a bit more.
She held a bite just a little longer, biting down just a bit harder. She was slightly quicker, and basically wore Thomas down by being what Elam had already told her, just a bit...more.
Emma could hear and feel the tensions and surprise around her as she sat in the dream coliseum her mother was showing her in visions.
Elam was right, no one had expected her mother to be victorious. This challenge, like Elam and Galen's to follow, was just supposed to be a formality.
Emma looked around in her forced vision, spying a young Ziva. She was perched on the edge of her seat, watching her mate slowly lose to his sister.
Realizing that she could see Ziva, and putting pieces together, Emma looked around for the younger version of her father.
There.
Her dad was there, watching his mate and Emma's future mother bit by bit become the pack's first, and so far only, female Alpha.
She noticed how young her dad looked. Young, and earnest, and worried.
Emma read so much love on her dad's face as he watched his mate.
She wondered what his back story was. How he, a human, had come to be the mate of a shifter. She made a mental note to ask him to tell her his story one day. She also wondered what he would say if he could see her, his future unborn daughter, if he just looked over here in her vision. But he never did.
His eyes never strayed from his Reine, and Emma eventually turned back to watch as her mother pinned Thomas for the final time, becoming in that moment the pack's new Alpha wolf.
There was no time for celebration, though.
A strange, wounded wolf burst onto the floor of the arena, shifting into his human form almost before he'd even come to a full stop.
Emma looked around, watching wolves and humans both react to the intrusion at first with hostility and then with an urgent call to arms once they recognized the wolf as being from the adjoining pack.
Something had happened while the entire pack was here, deep in the woods, holding its Alpha Challenge.
Something very bad, indeed.
Emma started to turn to the person beside her in her vision, to ask what was going on, but a sudden pain in her head made her stop.
She groaned as another wave of nausea rolled through her, and she looked to her dad instinctively, only to watch him shimmer and disappear as her vis
ion faded, and reality came crashing down.
Kate.
She thought she saw Kate, slowly coming into focus as her eyes adjusted to where she really was.
She moaned as she rolled over, trying to get her hands and knees under her and stand up against whomever had attacked her in the hot springs. She fell back over instead of standing up, her wrists and ankles tied firmly with some kind of leather straps.
"Kate. Kate, where are we? What happened?"
"Emma, I'm so sorry. I thought she only wanted to talk to you. I didn't know..."
"Kate. What the hell? Where are we?"
She tried to get up again, the sudden pain stabbing her head, clouding her vision, as she tried to make sense of where she was.
The cave.
The cave she'd found right before Elam had kissed her, right before they'd found out Thomas was dead.
The furs under her were soft, welcoming, and Emma was tempted to give up. She wanted nothing more than to lie back down in their softness, pull a skin over her and sleep until the world made sense again.
But she couldn't.
She realized that someone had hit her in the head. Hard. And someone, or a couple of someones, had obviously brought her here.
She tried to bring a hand to her head and feel out the damage, but she realized again that her wrists were tied tight.
If only she could hold a thought long enough to remember...
Emma shook her head to try and dislodge the cobwebs there, and was surprised to be rewarded with some relief. She felt a bit better. She realized that her wolf's blood was helping her heal faster that a normal human would. She was about to comment on that fact, but decided to keep that little bit of information to herself until she knew more about why she had been attacked and brought here.
"The hot springs." She started to speak. "You and I were talking. And then a voice said something about devil's spawn, and then nothing. Kate, what the hell happened?"