The Lonely Wolf

by Monica La Porta

  Only that morning, he and Jasmine had been together, looking forward to a future that was uncertain but full of promises. They had shared thoughts, and he had felt whole, at home.

  Panther mine, talk to me, he pleaded, but silence answered his prayers.

  “Lupo?” Quintilius called.

  His name sounded distant, and Lupo had no desire to interact with the world outside his mind. Lost in his memory of Jasmine, he floated away, transported by dark waters deeper and deeper inside his psyche. Memories surrounded him, joyous and sad. He cherished them all, because they were hers.

  The first time he caught a glimpse of her dark, enigmatic eyes. The first time they made love under the stars. Jasmine looking at him as the police car chased them. Her screams when their car rolled down the hill. Her still body when he reached for her.

  Their first kiss. Their last kiss.

  “Lupo?” the archangel called him from somewhere in the present.

  The first time he saw her face. Her sensuous mouth. Her high cheeks. Her imperfect nose that was perfect on her face. The first time he saw her shapely legs. The first time he touched her voluptuous curves. The first time he lost himself in her scent. Her voice inside him.

  “Lupo?” A third, feeble voice joined the first two.

  My sweet, rebellious panther. Come back to me. From wherever you are, come back to me.

  He was crying. Fleetingly, the notion he had seldom cried in his entire life passed through his mind.

  “And she had that night to remember all her life,” Jasmine’s voice echoed loud among his scattered thoughts.

  I can’t accept that, my love.

  “You must do something for him,” Quintilius said.

  To Lupo, his words sounded nothing more than the sum of their separate letters.

  “He’s catatonic,” the third voice answered. “He just lost his mate…”

  Lupo’s brain caught on the meaning of the last sentence, and thought, It can’t be true. Desperate, he summoned Jasmine, and he would have sworn he could sense her presence, her scent, all around him. You can’t leave me.

  I won’t, Jasmine answered.

  His broken heart slammed against his chest at hearing her voice. Where are you?

  Far away.

  Find your way back to me.

  Always.

  Her presence receded, first her voice then her scent dimmed into nothingness.

  Don’t leave me!

  Lupo’s wolf ran after the small dot rapidly disappearing on the horizon of a vast plain bathed in muted grays and browns. Then the panther was gone too, leaving both Lupo and his wolf bereft. A blanket of darkness fell on Lupo. Jasmine’s voice and memories were gone. His voyage into his inner self reached a black wall, and he felt the void calling to him. Relieved he could stop thinking, he embraced it, hoping he could dissolve into the same nothingness that had claimed Jasmine.

  ***

  “He needs time.”

  “He doesn’t have time.”

  “He’ll be tried for manslaughter.”

  “If he doesn’t wake up soon, he won’t have a chance to defend himself.”

  The black veil that had cocooned Lupo receded, and he opened his heavy eyelids one at a time. He moaned, “I’m here.”

  “Lupo—”

  “Quintilius?” Lupo asked, his throat sore and his head pounding.

  “I’m here, son.” A warm hand squeezed Lupo’s.

  Fighting against gravity, Lupo tried to move, but it felt like he was anchored down by strong, silver ropes.

  “Here, let me help you,” Quintilius whispered close to Lupo’s ear.

  Hoisted up by strong, yet gentle arms, Lupo found himself in a sitting position.

  Quintilius smiled warmly at him. Beside him, the archangel stood with one hand laid over Quintilius’s shoulder. The fallen angel, Samuel, was also present, along with Ravenna Del Sarto, both waiting on him at the foot of a bed that didn’t resemble standard hospital material.

  Apart from the alpha who kept smiling at him, everyone else wore a doleful expression.

  “How do you feel?” Quintilius asked him.

  “As if I drank too much—” Reality hit him then as he considered his surroundings, hoping he was still sleeping, and that he would wake from his nightmare any moment. But the people didn’t disappear, the room remained unaltered, and Jasmine was still gone no matter how many times he blinked.

  “Have a sip of water.” The alpha brought a glass to Lupo’s lips.

  Lupo opened his mouth, not because he wanted the water, but because he didn’t care to refuse it. He drank a few sips, then raised one hand to signal he had enough. The gesture made him notice he was wearing a shirt and his arm was free from needles. One look behind the Enforcer was enough to recognize the place.

  “What am I doing back at your house?” he asked Ravenna.

  “We thought it prudent to take you somewhere that was already familiar to you.” The Enforcer gave him a soft smile that resembled the ones he had seen her bestow upon her triplets.

  Confused by her kindness, Lupo turned toward Ludwig. “Why?”

  “Because you are under house arrest until your hearing,” Ludwig answered.

  His gaze roaming from one person to the other, Lupo saw that Quintilius had a beard and he did a double take. He didn’t remember Quintilius having one when he had entered his hospital room earlier.

  “When did you move me here?” Lupo asked the werewolf, who wore crumpled clothes and had dark shadows under his eyes.

  Quintilius hesitated, and Ludwig squeezed his shoulder as if to give him the strength to answer, “Two days ago.”

  The room spun around him, and he let his head down on the pillow, focusing on the Murano chandelier on the ceiling. “Jasmine,” he murmured her name, tears spilling down his face in long streams.

  “Her family held a private funeral yesterday,” Quintilius said.

  “She can’t be gone.” Covering his eyes with his hand, he shook his head.

  A heavy silence followed his statement. No one dared to say the occasional platitude to make him feel better, and Lupo was grateful for their tact. Deep hollowness excavated him from the inside out and the pain went beyond physical. I can’t survive without you, my panther. Please, talk to me. I need to hear your voice one more time.

  This time, he didn’t sense Jasmine, and she didn’t answer his plea.

  He turned, giving his back to the rest of the room, and shortly after heard people shuffling out. Only the alpha remained, his presence radiating affection and understanding, his hand gently resting on Lupo’s shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sitting more comfortably in the chair, Quintilius looked down at his son who sobbed uncontrollably, and wished he could do more for Lupo than caress his shoulder. It was nothing more than soft pressure on his shirt, because Quintilius didn’t dare anything bolder like a hug. Yet, he hoped Lupo would anchor himself to his touch, because he feared his son would drift away.

  During the last two days, he had camped between Drako’s house and the hospital, and never once had he gone back to Casolare del Lupo. Ludwig had brought him clothing, and Drako and Ravenna had offered him private quarters to sleep and shower. He had used the shower, but didn’t touch the bed.

  When he wasn’t at Lupo’s bedside, he was at the hospital, looking at Camelia from the glass window on her door. She had been moved from the intensive therapy unit to a private room on the third floor, but her visits were strictly monitored and he was only allowed to see her a few minutes in the morning and a few at night. The allotted time wasn’t enough for him, and he contented himself to be close to her although separated by a door.

  Quintilius felt powerless and he hated the sentiment. His hands itched to hit something. Not being able to fix his son’s or Camelia’s problems, he would resort to breaking a wall to let out the pain that was devouring him.

  “She can’t be dead.” Lupo’s whispered words were like a stab to Quintili
us’s heart.

  Losing a mate was the worst fate that could happen to a shifter, and Lupo was too young to have to endure such a tragedy by himself. He needed the support of a loving family, but he could barely stand Quintilius’s presence, and that pained Quintilius even more.

  “Jasmine, please come back to me,” Lupo said.

  Quintilius had heard him murmuring the plea a few times already, and he wanted to take his son in his arms and rock him to soothe his suffering.

  “Why her?” Lupo asked, louder, his body tensing under Quintilius’s hand. “Why not me? I would’ve given anything to take her place.”

  “And she would be the one suffering for your loss—”

  “But she would be alive.”

  “And asking herself why you had died and not her.”

  “I love her.”

  “I know.”

  “How can I go on living without her?”

  “At first you don’t.”

  Lupo scoffed at the statement. “Have you ever lost someone you loved?”

  Quintilius thought of the answer, then said, “My best friend is fighting for her life, and the idea of a future without her terrifies me.”

  His big body rippling with the aftermath of one last sob, Lupo turned to face Quintilius. “I hope your friend makes it.”

  His hands now on his lap, Quintilius said, “Thank you.”

  “Is she your—”Lupo let the sentence dangle, but Quintilius heard the unspoken “lover.”

  “She’s been living with me for a long time, and she’s like a sister to me. I love her very much, and we were betrothed once, but we were never in love with each other.” Quintilius shrugged, and with a small smile added, “It’s complicated.”

  “Tell me that story,” Lupo said, his eyes never leaving Quintilius’s.

  Quintilius felt it then, that tenuous connection with his son he had longed for, and it was but a frail thread unraveling from a rope. “I met Camelia almost two hundred years ago…”

  He told Lupo about their unconventional love story, without omitting the truth about Ludwig, a part of his life only Camelia had been privy to. In recounting his long and complicated tale, Quintilius ended up explaining what happened the day he had stood up Lupo, and how Camelia was another victim of Claudius.

  Without interrupting him once, Lupo listened, his expression changing from guarded to open as the minutes passed.

  “So, you see, I can’t lose Camelia,” Quintilius ended, relaxing against the back of the chair and crossing his right leg over his left. “She’s a good person—”

  “And from your description, she’s not the one I talked to.” Lupo, who after trying to sit on the bed and realizing he was too weak had settled for having his head propped higher on the cushion, made another attempt to shore himself up over his elbows.

  Quintilius helped him. “Then you met Iris, Camelia’s sister.”

  “Tall, skinny, and bitchy?”

  “That sounds like Iris.” Quintilius hadn’t seen his secretary in two days, and now wondered why.

  Iris had not shown her face at the hospital. Soon after Camelia had been admitted, he had left a message on Iris’s cell phone to inform her about her twin, but Iris had never called him back.

  “She’s a piece of work,” Lupo said.

  “She isn’t my favorite person for sure, but I don’t understand why she would lie to you about something so important—”

  “It’s true then that you didn’t know about me.”

  Voiced like a question, Lupo’s statement carried an undertone of hope that Quintilius couldn’t ignore and that warmed his heart.

  “Until a few nights ago, I didn’t know you existed. I wish your mother had come to me—”

  “Would you have officially recognized me?” Lupo asked.

  “Yes.” Quintilius leaned forward to take Lupo’s hands in his. “I’ll be the happiest father alive if you’d accept my last name.”

  “I screwed up, big time.”

  “You are my son, and now that I found you I won’t let you go.”

  “I’m broken—”

  “Then I’ll put you back together, piece by piece.”

  “I don’t want to live anymore.”

  “Don’t say that.” He gently squeezed Lupo’s hands. “I longed for you all my life, and I never thought one day I’d be so fortunate to have a son.”

  “Life is strange. When I was a kid I wished you were my father... and I dreamed about our life together.” Lupo regarded him with a sad stare. “We met once—” He hesitated, then rushed to say, “At the orphanage. You gave me that pin.”

  An image formed in Quintilius’s mind, a proud, lanky boy with the most beautiful blue eyes who stood all by himself in a corner. “I remember you.” The memory brought tears to his eyes. Iris had robbed that boy of so much more than his rightful name. She had denied him the love of a father who would have guided and cherished him. “If only your wolf scent had been strong enough, I would’ve recognized you as my own.”

  “No such luck for me. I went through my first change a few years later. And that day, I’d been bathed with so much soap I smelled like a mortal drenched in lavender.” Lupo grimaced. “After that visit, you never came back.”

  “Iris made me notice that while Cradle and Bites was well maintained, other institutions would have benefitted from a personal visit. I kept sending money to the orphanage, but my time has always been limited, so I let her manage my schedule, and I focused on other charities.”

  A polite knock on the door announced their alone time had come to an end.

  Samuel peered inside. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just received a call from the Cannalis family, and they are pressing to have the hearing today. We better talk about your options.”

  “Let’s get it over with,” Lupo said, a resolution in his eyes that scared Quintilius.

  ****

  From the sitting room, Ludwig watched as Samuel announced the news, then he waited for Quintilius to come out of Lupo’s bedroom. When his wolf finally reappeared, Ludwig stood and led him to a corner where they could talk in private.

  “How is he?” Ludwig asked.

  Quintilius leaned against the windowsill of an arched window and looked outside at the Italian garden. “He’s lost.”

  “I can’t even imagine what he’s going through.” Ludwig shivered at the thought of losing Quintilius. Not to a fight or to estrangement, but forever. Among angels, death was an abstract concept, an idea they often philosophized about, but shifters—although a resilient species—could die.

  “My son is suffering, and I don’t know what to do to help him.” Quintilius’s shoulders sagged. “His pain is mine, and it’s tearing me apart.” He thumped his forehead against the glass.

  A heavy sense of oppression lodged over Ludwig’s chest. “We’ll help him.”

  Quintilius tilted his chin over his shoulder to glance at Ludwig. “We?”

  “We. You and I, as a couple.” Ludwig took Quintilius’s hand and pressed it over his heart, then placed his over Quintilius’s.

  Quintilius’s eyes went to their united hands. “Don’t promise something you can’t maintain.”

  “I’m done with politics. It isn’t worth it to live forever if you are miserable the entire time.” He caressed Quintilius’s jaw with his free hand.

  “Why now?”

  “Because you are everything to me and nothing else matters.”

  “What about Claudius?”

  “Even if you and Lupo weren’t part of the equation, I would’ve never accepted a criminal’s terms.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “We start fixing this mess one step at a time.” Ludwig leaned forward for a brush on Quin’s lips. “Whatever happens, I don’t want to be separated from you a day longer.”

  Quintilius’s body relaxed under his touch and his mouth slightly opened for Ludwig. “Aren’t you worried about the Holy Nation’s reaction?” His question was but a whisper. />
  With a finger, Ludwig caressed Quin’s lower lip. “Together, we’ll make it work.”

  A short cough interrupted their private moment.

  Alexander stood a few steps away, a phone in his hand. As everyone else in the house, the Greek looked tired. “I apologize, but it’s a call from Casolare del Lupo.” He walked to them and handed the phone to Quintilius.

  Grabbing the handset, Quintilius frowned, reached for his cell phone in his jeans’ front pocket, and swiped his finger over the screen that remained blank. “Of course, the battery’s dead.” He answered the call then.

  Alexander joined the rest of the group in the sitting room around the corner, and Ludwig followed him. Raphael and Luisa entered the room a moment later.

  “I heard Lupo is awake. Can I see him?” Raphael asked.

  “In a moment. Samuel is explaining to him the legal ramification of his circumstances,” Ludwig answered, one eye on the door for Quintilius.

  The young werewolf nodded, then he and his girlfriend took a seat by the bay window facing the rose garden. Illuminated by natural morning light, the serene scene outside made a stark contrast with the tumultuous atmosphere reigning over the room.

  Ravenna excused herself and left to check on the triplets.

  During the last forty-eight hours, the whole household had bent over backward to accommodate a stream of people coming and going at all times. Quintilius’s family and friends had rallied around him to show their support. Peter and Ophelia had stopped by the night before, Marcus and his vampire wife had visited later, and Samuel’s fiancé arrived with them. People took turns driving Quintilius back and forth from the hospital.

  All along, Ludwig had suffered twice, because he sensed Quintilius’s suffering and he couldn’t take him in his arms and soothe his pain.

  A door opened and closed, a few steps echoed into the hallway, then Samuel walked in. He advanced toward the center of the room and answered the unspoken question in everybody’s mind. “I prepared Lupo as best as I could, but I don’t think he cares one way or the other about the outcome of his trial.”