by JM Klaire
"I'm just sayin'? Since when are you down with old human lingo?"
Emma couldn't help teasing Galen. She was so very happy for her friend, and she had an inkling she was carrying her own cub as well. She turned down her own glass of wine, feigning recovery. She hadn't told Elam yet, she was waiting to be sure. Hell, he'd probably scent the change before she could tell him anyway, but she was waiting just the same.
"Hey, I'm down." Galen responded, teasing back.
"Oh jeeze. Don't. Just don't."
"You think humans are the only ones who can be hip?'
"Oh God, hip? Seriously. Stop before you hurt something."
Once the teasing passed, and everyone was sitting together once again, Galen cleared his throat, and addressed the group in a more serious tone.
"If you think Elam and I being half-brothers is wild, wait until I fill in more gaps."
"There's more?" Emma asked, sipping her fruit juice out of a wine glass.
"Lots more," Galen continued, settling in.
"After you two first arrived with Henry, but before the challenge, Thomas called me to him. He knew he was dying, of course, and at the time, I was still favored to be the next Alpha. Plus, being his blood son- well, let's just say he had a lot of stuff he wanted to tell me before he passed on. To get off his chest, so to speak."
Emma tucked herself against Elam's body, smiling as he draped his arm around her as he sipped his wine and listened to Galen.
"Thomas knew he wasn't long for this world, so he didn't pussy foot around. He told me his story and wouldn't let me interrupt very often. I think he was afraid he'd pass before he got it all out."
"Before he got all of what out? How many secrets could he have?"
"Quite a few, apparently. He started at the beginning. Thomas told me that when he was younger, about twenty five or so, he heard his parents discussing him when they thought they were alone. They were discussing whether or not they were ever going to tell him that he was adopted."
"What?"
"You have got to be kidding!"
Galen shook off the reactions with a wave of his hand, carrying on over the interruptions.
"He said his dad, Alpha Aiden, reminded his mom that they had planned to tell him once he reached adulthood, but they still hadn't. It was his mother who didn't want to do it still. He listened in as they debated it, and learned that his parentage was, at best, a rumor.
It seemed that at the time, his mom had yet to be able to carry one of Aiden's cubs to term, so when a baby boy was dropped off at their den, they took him in. They tried, at first, to figure out who the cub belonged to, but all they ever heard in return was rumors.
The most insistent rumor being that Thomas was the son of a shape shifting father and a witch mother. I guess they reminisced, as Thomas listened in, about shape shifting things Thomas used to do as a young child, before they were able to corral him some and turn his shapeshifting into more of a wolf shifter only situation. As welcome as wolf shifters are, shape shifters are a totally different breed, and aren't welcomed usually. The shape shifter's history..."
Emma nodded her understanding, saying that Elam had told her some of this already.
Galen continued on, "Well, it seems that Thomas didn't take the news well. He started hanging out with those the pack didn't approve of. Witches, mainly, as shape shifters are harder to find. They introduced him to certain herbs and plants in the woods, and taught him spells and what-have-you.
Thomas said that since his parents never bothered to tell him of his origins, he never bothered to tell them who he had started hanging out with, or what they were doing when they were all together."
"Wait," Emma raised her hand, interrupting for a second. "What about Reine? Was she also adopted?"
"No. It seems that sometime after Aiden had taken Thomas in as his own, he sired Reine. Reine was the only cub the pair managed to actually have, together."
"So Reine and Thomas were not biological brother and sister after all? Wow. And Thomas never confronted Aiden? Or his mother?"
"No, he said he never spoke of it to anyone before telling me."
"So Reine never knew, either?"
"No."
Emma nodded her understanding, putting puzzle pieces away in her mind and turning her attention back to the rest of Galen's story about Thomas.
Galen continued.
"Thomas said that during the time he was hanging out with the witches on the edge of the pack's territory, without anyone's knowledge, he'd gotten involved in some questionable practices. The roots and mushrooms they partook from, and the spells and skills he learned from the witches, led to many a crazy afternoon. Afternoons that he was never quite sure actually happened, or if they were just herb induced hallucinations."
Galen paused then, allowing the rest of the group a moment to ponder everything.
Elam was the first to press.
"Hallucinations? Like what? Did he say?"
Galen nodded.
"Oh yes. He said."
27
"Thomas spoke of one such hallucination, in particular.
He said that the group had been partying pretty hard there for a while, lots of herbs, lots of sex, lots of drunken tutorials on how to shift one's shape and wreak havoc on the general population.
He told me of this one time where he was still learning how to shift into things other than his wolf form. He remembered being pretty high when he was practicing, and horny as hell because they wouldn't let him join in with the group sex part of the party until he proved he really could be one of them.
So he threw his essence out into the forest.
He said that when he materialized again, there was this beautiful girl there with him, all alone. He thought it was one of the witches, teasing and testing him by taking on a human appearance in the middle of this clearing. So he took her.
He said he pounced on the female, there in the woods, and took her there, on the forest floor. When it was over, all of the others celebrated with him, and the party continued on into the wee hours of the night.
He said he never really thought about it again.
Until the night his father pulled rank and made him attend a meeting between the two adjoining packs.
As the meeting was getting underway, one of the other pack's females came in. Thomas said he recognized her immediately, even though he hadn't seen her in about a year or so. He asked around discretely. He said the people he asked took his interest to be from more of a primal place than a curious one, something about the look in his eyes and the strain to his voice.
They told him she was available. She was, of course, Ziva."
"Holy shit." Elam was the only one who spoke.
Galen just looked at him, and continued.
"The rumors around her pack were that she wasn't right in the head. That she'd gone out by herself into the woods one day, and when she came back she'd told stories of a mist-man. A mist-man who came out of nowhere and raped her. The pack never mentioned the child, though. They probably felt like they needed to give the amorous Alpha's son some kind of a heads up, since she was so damaged mentally, but no one spoke of the babe she'd recently had. And wouldn't have anything to do with, apparently.
So Thomas said he claimed her because he felt guilty. He knew she was the female he had taken in a drugged, shifting stupor in the woods that day, not one of the witches playing around. He knew that he was responsible for breaking her, for her being the way she was.
So he claimed her and took care of her. And having his actions staring him in the face every day made him step away from the witch crowd he'd been running with, and really take his place in the pack as someone who had a future in the pack instead of as a spoiled Alpha's son going through a rebellious phase.
He said she never recognized him as the mist-man she'd come across in the woods, and he never told her that he knew anything about it. He said he planned to, at first. That he wanted to come clean, to confess and do right by her
, but that she never would talk about her life in her old pack. Not after her old pack was wiped out, anyway.
So he never spoke of it either. He just took care of her.
He said that after he lost the challenge, she turned away from him some. And that once she was with cub, with Galen, she really didn't do well. She kept to herself a lot, taking long walks in the woods alone.
Thomas said that he was never completely sure, but he thought that she had something to do with Reine leaving the pack.
Thomas grieved his sister leaving, but he had his hands full with a newborn Galen, and then almost immediately after that, trying to lead a pack that was angry and confused when their Alpha walked away.
He said Ziva got better, eventually, after Reine left. And he felt that he was able to be a good wolf to her over the years, and that somewhere along the line he realized that he did love her. And that she loved him as well."
"He just told you all of this? Out of the blue?"
Kate asked the question this time.
He nodded at her.
"Yes. He said that as his son, he owed me the knowledge that his parents had hidden from him. He told me to be careful, to be aware, that shape shifter blood coursed through my veins, too, and not to let that fact change anything when I became Alpha. He wanted me to learn from his mistakes, but I've never felt any kind of ability to shift into anything other than a wolf. I'm certainly not going to seek the witches out though, just to find out for sure."
Galen sighed, and went on some more.
"Thomas also said he realized over the years that family was everything. That's why, when Henry mentioned the trouble you were getting into in the human's world, Emma, he pushed Henry to bring you here. Against Ziva's protests."
"I've been meaning to ask," Emma piped in. "How was it that my dad was still in contact with you all? If he and mom walked away still pregnant with me? I remember him saying that pressure from mom's family was one of the reasons he sent me here instead of leaving me in jail to deal with my own consequences."
"After you were born, and your mom died, Henry got the job with the Sheriff's department. For a while there another pack, over the mountain, was starting to cause trouble in the nearby towns. The Sheriff at the time, when Henry was still a deputy, needed someone to head up some kind of wolf posse to trap and kill or relocate the suddenly troublesome wolf population. Your dad, of course, knowing the things he did, knew that it probably wasn't a wild wolf issue but a werewolf issue. He volunteered to look into the problem for the county, and he came back here to see Thomas.
He told Thomas about your birth, your life as a small child and of Reine's passing.
Together Henry and Thomas were able to keep the other pack's wolves mostly on their own side of the mountain. Their friendship continued. Henry eventually became Sheriff, and kept coming to visit.
Thomas often asked Henry to bring you back here, for you both to stay here, but Henry wanted to honor your mother's wish that you be kept away. He never knew exactly why Reine wished it to be so, but he honored it. Until he felt like he had no other choice, that this place probably was the best choice for you when you wouldn't stay out of trouble."
"Why didn't you say anything before? About Thomas being the mist-man, about any of it?" Elam asked, as Emma still chewed on all of the new knowledge.
"There wasn't any reason to. We were going into the challenge soon, and I figured it was knowledge that would stay with me forever. If he had made peace with it, and Ziva never said anything, well, I couldn't see any reason anyone else needed to know."
"And then I won the Alpha challenge." Elam sighed.
"And then you won the Alpha challenge," Galen echoed. "By turning into a fucking bear."
28
"So that's why Ziva flipped out after the challenge," Emma said. "I thought she was terrorizing the pack even more because Elam won instead of Galen. I thought she was angry that Galen didn't win, that her favored son wouldn't become Alpha, not freaked the fuck out that Elam did. And how Elam won... Oh my, no wonder she was so bitchy in those next few weeks!"
Kate wasn't quite following.
"What do you mean?"
"Can you imagine? Put yourself in Ziva's shoes for a minute. On top of being traded to the wolves to begin with, she's raped, by a shape shifter. She abandoned the baby that resulted from that rape, who we now know to be Elam, from everything she said in the cave. Then she finally moves on to a new pack, a fresh start, and her old pack gets wiped out, wait...I thought no one survived the human's attack. How did Elam? And wasn't Elam found wandering alone in the woods at about two years old? And didn't Ziva say she killed his 'fake parents?' Wait, I'll come back to that. So Ziva abandons Elam, only to find herself raising him anyway, somehow, after she thinks he's dead. Then he goes and beats her favorite son, with the shape shifting skills he got from his rapist father, who we now know is Thomas. And Thomas had no idea?"
Emma aimed the last bit at Galen.
"Thomas had no idea that Elam was his?"
Galen shook his head saying, "Not until then."
"I remember, right after the challenge," Emma said. "Elam won and Thomas said, 'I knew that boy was special, but even I didn't expect this. Who in the hell were his blood parents?"
Galen said, "Yeah, that was his first reaction. My understanding was that Ziva's crazed, desperate mutterings around him when he was weak and she thought he was sleeping finally tipped him off. I talked to him again later, right before he died and I went looking for Elam in the cave. He figured out that when he took Ziva, having sex with her in the woods like he did, Elam was the result. He put all the pieces together- her having to raise her son, her not ever telling anyone that she ever even had one before me. Keeping all that knowledge from everyone, especially Thomas."
"And then there was Thomas, keeping his own secrets about being the mist-man, and never realizing until right before he died that he was raising both of his biological sons. Wow, that is crazy," Kate said, shaking her head in wonderment.
"Ok, so go back some," Emma jumped in. "After Ziva's whole pack was wiped out, and she thought Elam and his wet nurse were dead too, obviously they weren't. How did they escape? Where did they go?"
"I'm guessing the wet nurse ran to the village, with Elam. She knew Ziva was originally from the village, and she knew she was nursing Ziva's abandoned baby, so she went there. They took the pair in. I'm guessing that when Reine went there and made that 'we will leave you alone' pact with them, they were in that crowd of women and children. Ziva would have recognized them, but she wasn't with them, she was still in the woods, on her knees, where Reine and Thomas found her when they went back to take care of the dead."
"So the village raised Elam until he was two? Ziva said she killed Elam's 'fake parents' in the woods, and Thomas found Elam wandering around in the woods all alone. So either they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when Ziva stumbled upon them and recognized them..." Emma was thinking out loud.
Galen added his thoughts to hers, "Or they were on their way here to bring Elam to her. Maybe he started shifting, and to the village he was a constant reminder of the wolves? His wet nurse knew he was Ziva's, and had probably heard the story of her rape, but maybe him shifting upset the balance and the village decided to give Elam back to his mother? Or yeah, wrong place, wrong time, with them all just ending up at the same place in the woods and Ziva realizing who they were? I guess that part we will never know."
"Well, we know she killed a man and a woman in those woods. She said so herself. I guess Elam got away and was found later?"
"The whole pack knows the story of when Elam was found, that part of it was never a secret. Thomas was out in the woods, heading out to hunt, when he found a two year old boy wandering by himself. He was shifting already, so Thomas knew he was a wolf at least. There was no mention of Elam ever shifting into any other form as a child, but they knew he was a wolf shifter from the moment they found him. The story Thomas told was that he aband
oned the hunt once he found Elam, and was heading back to the den with him when he came across Ziva and the two dead humans in the woods.
He said that Ziva said she found them like that, alive but quickly dying, and that she tried to help them. They died anyway, and Thomas assumed the pair was the boy's parents. Although, the male was quite a bit younger than the female. Maybe one of the teens from the village that had grown into a young man. He was probably escorting them on their way to the pack, or whatever they were doing. Ziva probably killed them, and was looking for Elam to kill him, too. Only Thomas found him first."
"And took him in, much to her dismay." Kate added.
"Never knowing until the end that it was his own son he was taking in." Elam said, of himself.
"Well hell, no wonder Ziva was bat shit crazy."
"And then, after everything else, Elam turns into a bear and beats Galen. Then Thomas dies. And Galen wants to move Ziva back to the territory where it all began for her. Reine's cub is back, taking over in her eyes, and she is forced to move. Not only out of her cabin, but back to where it all began."
"So when Ziva saw me all alone, headed to the hot spring, on the very day that the pack was to meet to decide about the split..."
"She decided to kill you, too. Only you shift, and kill her instead."
"Wow. Just, wow. That is a lot to take in right after being shot."
"Well, you've got to admit," Kate said to Emma with a grin. "Our time here has not been boring. I'm thinking my parents in Africa have nothing on our adventures here, so far."
Epilogue
A month later, after the two packs had settled in, on adjoining lands, co-ruled by two Alpha brothers, both packs all got together for Kate's birthday.
Henry had been invited, and came to see how the girls were doing, and was shocked when he heard the story of everything that had happened since he dropped the girls off not very long ago.