“I see you care for him, Yuri.” Eresna’s face softened some as she continued. “Perhaps we can work something out. What type of servant did you get?”
The question was directed at Yuri. Garvey laughed before answering. “She got some sort of animal trainer with a paunch and a gambling addiction.”
Eresna made a face Tovin couldn’t quite interpret. She turned to Nadine, who quickly answered with, “Hobo.” Eresna’s eyes continued to probe. Confused, Nadine went on qualifying. “Drunk, sort of crazy, smells like urine, bad teeth.” She shrugged. “Hobo.”
Eresna’s frown said no to Yuri and Nadine’s bloodservants. She touched the side of her subordinate’s face with the tips of her fingers. “I’m so sorry, Yuri.”
Tovin repressed another whimper. For whatever reason, he was so sure this was going to work out. Now that it wasn’t, he tried without result to crawl his way out the door. Where was he going? He didn’t know. Away. Away from this mess. Or two feet. Yeah, he got as far as two feet before the pain cramped him.
Yuri watched him with tears in her eyes. Nadine focused on the floor.
Garvey called out before Eresna left. “Wait!”
The hem of her long robe skidded on the smooth marble of the floor. She turned back around, considering the wolf. “What is it, Garvey?”
“Take him for political reasons.”
Eresna indicated he should continue.
“Control over Tovin gives you some measure of control over Lavario.”
“Perhaps. Why would I want this?”
Garvey tilted his head to the side as though he couldn’t believe she asked him such a question. “Because he’s powerful. Because he’d owe you a favor if you kept Tovin. Because you want to fuck with him. Pick a reason. Use your imagination. I’ve never known you to be a thoughtless killer. You know, like—”
“You?” Eresna finished for him.
“You got it.”
Mad as hell was the response Tovin expected after Garvey’s rant. The accusation at the end made him wince. Eresna, however, appeared amused. The smooth lines of her face rippled into a smile. “Something is off here, Garvey. I’m starting to think you’re smitten with this boy. Odd for a Moondog. Tell me what you got out of this mess.”
“Going to release vampires. Kill some people.” While everyone laughed, Garvey mashed his lips together. Tovin saw something dark in his former date’s eyes, quick flashes of real anger. The moment drifted away. Humor settled over Garvey’s features like a fog over a valley. Fog was dangerous. Unwary travelers who thought they knew the terrain always got in the worst sort of accidents. Garvey laughed, too—a long, clucking chuckle that made Tovin uneasy.
Yuri saw it, too. “You’re going to kill people with vampires? How?”
Nadine sighed at her friend and said, “Lighten up, Yuri. Vampires are dead. Garv is just being himself.”
Garvey agreed, “Yes, I know. I’m so silly. Really, though. Eresna, I bonded with Tovin in the woods. He’s a tricky little devil.”
Tovin’s heart squeezed. Somehow, it felt true, too.
For the first time since she’d walked in, Eresna actually assessed Tovin. Contemplation made her brown eyes dark tunnels. Tovin could only hope he’d see the light at the end. “Please,” he begged her.
Eresna relented. “Very well, we will keep him for political reasons. Our official story is we spared him for Yuri’s sake. Understood?” All the werewolves nodded. Her lip curled some when she said, “Garvey, since this is your handiwork, find the healer, get him some clothes, check in with distribution.”
“Thank you, Guardian,” they all said at once like a room of schoolchildren.
Another day for them. They were ready to move on from it.
Tovin wasn’t. Yesterday, or was it a week ago, he was standing in the grocery store aisle sniffing bottles of deodorant, taking all the time in the world to make what—at the time—seemed like an important decision. How was he going to smell for Garvey, the date that was going to change his life? His sister had leaned over his shoulder. Overthinking it, she’d said five minutes into his process. Really overthinking it, she’d chastised him after ten. In the end, he’d walked out with the same brand he’d always used.
Change had always been small, controlled, and on his own terms, meaning mostly nonexistent. Things were not going to work that way here. Invisible, he sat off to the side while the three werewolves planned his future—his clothes, his smell, his food. Judging by their level of interest, none of them were going to take the care he’d take.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE BOO HAG EXILE
Guest halls were meant to be a place of celebration where the pack gathered to bless its accomplishments. Lush gardens, gushing fountains, and foods from all over the world were available to any wolf who wanted to take part in the festivities following a successful hunt. The bloodservant system was the pride of the Isangelous pack—hated by the False Moons, who derided it as cruel and lazy, but coveted by the Varcolac wolves. Today, the hall was a place of awkward, forced socializing. Lower-ranking wolves, or the submissives as they were called, were there, but none of them were in very high spirits given the atmosphere.
Eresna sat at the head of the table. The Alpha Guardian took several token sips from her wine glass, nibbles from the honey ham. Other Isangelous wolves did the same. The two guests from the Varcolac—Lavario and Mazgan—hadn’t touched any of the food.
Mazgan hovered, grinning from ear to ear with an erratic manic energy that no one could mistake for actual happiness. Beneath it all—as always—was a violence that could manifest at any time, for an insult real or imagined. Since he refused to sit in the presence of the submissives, the chair placed for him at the table remained empty.
Lavario sat. Good manners were important to him even under the worst circumstances. Eresna acknowledged his courtesy with equal grace. There was a time when the two of them would have talked early into the morning hours about old times, great adventures and pack politics. But Lavario was Varcolac now. Neutral was the most forgiving word Yuri could think of to describe the relationship between her queen and the exile.
Tovin slumbered. He was propped on the chaise off to the side, the only bloodservant in attendance. A healer tended to the boy’s wounds. Contusions, deep cuts, and broken bones all mended under his skilled fingers. “Want me to fix the eyes or do you like the glasses?” The healer asked once all the critical injuries were attended to.
“Fix them, please.” Eresna favored him with a nod and a smile. “It would be a shame to obscure his best feature with those hideous things.”
Mazgan turned to Eresna and said, “Even cleaned up, this one is not quite as handsome as the servant you selected. Your people went beyond their duty to extract something so special for you. Such a shame for Lavario to snatch it away and replace it with this.”
It was a shame. Eresna was no doubt furious. Lavario too. Hard feelings were set aside for the sake of pride. Neither guardian would admit they’d had something taken away from them by Mazgan, who gloated inelegantly, constantly drawing attention back to the botched extraction. The more he went on about it, the politer Lavario and Eresna became until they were eventually talking about the entire situation with a strained good humor.
When Eresna responded, her tone was light, musical. “Tovin is a dear boy, I’m sure, Alpha Guardian. Lavario gifting him to me was quite thoughtful.”
“Indeed. We all know how much Lavario likes his pretty boys with no real substance.” Mazgan looked to Lavario and then to Garvey as he said it.
Garvey waited for the focus to shift from him. He then batted his eyelashes at Nadine and mouthed, I’m so pretty!
Nadine smirked. No real substance, she mouthed back and licked her tooth.
Garvey nodded, mouthing, Sounds about right. He held up his index finger before he continued. But pretty!
Lavario ignored Mazgan and Garvey. “Thank you for accepting my gift, Eresna. My apologies for the circumstances. I only h
ope you understand my distress regarding the boy’s situation.”
Although her queen went through all the motions of accepting Tovin into her service, an uneasy feeling landed like a persistent fly in Yuri’s subconscious. She swatted it and tried to focus on a short list of her duties. Be available, be silent, be knowledgeable, and be a representative of the Isangelous above all else, especially with Varcolac wolves present. Mazgan in particular. She wouldn’t disgrace her kind by asking her queen out-of-turn questions.
Mazgan disgraced his kind well enough for all of them. “What is Tovin again? Some sort of salesman? The other guy was a cellist? And a boxer in college? Athletic. Good looking.”
“Yes, I believe so, Alpha Guardian.” With thin-lipped patience, Eresna changed the subject once again. “Where is Kijo? She normally loves the pastries.”
At the mention of his daughter, Lavario’s jaw clenched with a spasm. He gave them a quick explanation everyone understood to be a lie. She was in the car. Tired, Lavario explained, from the stress of the day’s travels. The entire time, his face was pinched, angry.
Mazgan rushed in as if he’d been waiting for that moment the entire night, “I wonder why she remains there. Perhaps you can tell us, Lavario.” He didn’t give his second-in-command any time to respond. He continued, “She did not want to watch you humiliate yourself over some human. That is my guess.”
“Plausible.” Lavario sounded bored with the topic. Yuri knew him too well to be fooled. Transformed into a wolf, he kept his human eyes—a light green that stood out in stark contrast to his black fur. It was unique to him. Other wolves had yellowish, golden eyes regardless of their human features. When angered, Lavario lost some of his control. The animal took hold and flecks of gold yellow began to creep like sap seeping out through timber. Yuri saw it now.
That’s when things went from awkward to bad.
“You forget yourself again,” Mazgan’s nostrils flared. “Address me properly. I earned my rank. I am no pampered Boo Hag who runs about creating False Moon bastard wolves.”
“We prefer Moondogs over False Moon, Alpha Guardian,” Garvey said with a smile.
“And we prefer Isangelous, Alpha Guardian,” Eresna said without one.
Mazgan snorted at them both. “I will use whatever term I wish.”
Wolf eyes, full like the moon but glowing hot like the sun, took over Eresna’s face. She was about to respond when Lavario cut in. “You earned that title, Alpha Guardian. You bit, you fought, you warred, and you killed for it. And I did none of those things.”
“Yours was given,” Mazgan snarled back.
Lavario nodded. He had regained his calm. His green eyes were sharply focused. “Undeserving as I am, perhaps you challenge me, Alpha Guardian. Challenge me. Defeat me. Cast me down to live with the low-ranking wolves.
Speechless at last, Mazgan considered Lavario with claws drawn and teeth bared. Anger gathered up as a tight ball of energy in the room, concentrating around the irate Alpha Guardian, who was a few moments away from losing control entirely and transforming. Loose cannon, rule breaker, human-lover, and possessing all the mannerisms of Isangelous royalty, Lavario was everything Mazgan hated.
Wolf it up, Yuri said to herself. Fight Lavario and see what an Isangelous guardian can do. A Boo Hag in charge of Varcolac wolves would be the sweetest revenge for the arrogance Mazgan and his kind showed. Yuri knew Eresna, for all her power, wasn’t in the position to do it herself. It wasn’t her place. She wasn’t Varcolac.
“Challenge me,” Lavario said again in a way that gave Yuri a thrill.
Control was regained in patches. First, Mazgan pulled back his teeth a little bit, claws followed. Eyes lost their golden hue and became the same brown that reminded Yuri of dung—both in color and density. His white skin, which had turned into a sort of ugly red, turned back to its normal bloated macaroni state. He was human when he approached Tovin. “Such a pretty one,” Mazgan brushed the hair back from the boy’s face.
Lavario stood.
Even Garvey, who had watched everything with an amused, casual air, popped to attention. It startled Nadine, who was nodding off.
Eresna arched her brow. “He is mine, Alpha Guardian.”
“Not yet,” he responded.
True. Eresna had not bonded with Tovin yet. By their own rules, it wasn’t official until she did. Mazgan knew it. The Varcolac loved to exploit such policies. He shook Tovin awake with enough force that they heard his teeth rattle. Eventually, the boy woke up. Upon seeing Mazgan, his face leering down with incisors slightly extended, Tovin drew back with a yelp.
Mazgan shushed him. “I want to show you what these Boo Hags mean by ‘companionship.’ This will only hurt for a bit.”
Yuri was bonded to Tovin. Pain shot through her the moment Mazgan’s fangs punctured his jugular. Fear followed, then the desperate, panicked realization that this was how death came.
Luckily, Eresna was too busy being outraged by Mazgan’s gall to notice Yuri’s extreme discomfort. “That’s enough. You made your point.”
He pulled back. Blood ran down his chin. “Lavario, have I made my point?”
Lavario lifted his head. For a moment, Yuri thought he was going to continue his defiance. Tovin was already almost dead anyway. Then, finally, “Yes, you made your point, Alpha Guardian.”
“Tell me what my point is.”
“I am a Boo Hag, Alpha Guardian.”
“To the bone,” Mazgan responded.
Lavario was cursed. Unlike all of her other brothers and sisters, Yuri understood that to be the truest thing about their exiled guardian. Being forced to feel for humans was called a gift, a way for wolves to understand their servants and live fully through them. Bullshit. It was all about resource management. Humans were food, but wolves couldn’t afford to cull too many. Her kind went through the motions knowing this, bonding themselves so that they’d be more likely to conserve rather than kill or discard.
As a pack guardian, Lavario was the first to take the gift back when it was conceptualized. It worked a bit too well at first. He became an empath, able to feel emotions and sense general thoughts. Another way he was unique.
Until Tovin, Yuri only understood the burden of it on a surface level. In the moment she thought the boy was going to die, she was a pinball machine. Bells went off. Lights blinked, blinked, blinked and stopped as the ball plummeted right down the middle. To feel that for every human as Lavario did would be a terrible thing. To live that way as a Varcolac would have been torture.
PART TWO
THE WORST WEREWOLF
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FATHER AND DAUGHTER
Lavario sat inside the comfort of his limousine while Kijo discussed the night’s events with Mazgan. He could hear bits and pieces of their conversation, mostly loud posturing from Mazgan. No doubt their Alpha Guardian stressed the prostration that occurred after he nearly drained Tovin. Thinking on the night’s events made Lavario extend his claws in agitation.
The bloodservant he only knew as Not-Tovin sat on the floor, a gift from Mazgan. A chance for you to bond with your new companion, he said as though he were the smartest wolf to ever howl at the moon. Lavario did have to admit this was good. One of Mazgan’s plans might pay off for him.
Much depended on Kijo.
“She is my daughter,” he said to himself. “She will not challenge me.”
His fingers tapped as he said it. He wasn’t so sure. Kijo adored him, he had no doubt, but she also loved her pack and they her. Thus far they had endured her relationship with Lavario, hoping one day she would cut ties as progeny often did, but they grew tired of waiting. Century reminders became decade reminders became yearly reminders. She needed to choose her camp.
Lavario came to the Varcolac as the lusty, foolish guardian of the Isangelous who usurped the power of his alpha and made his human companion a wolf. He came as a rule breaker. Garvey. His first stupid thing. His accident.
Varcolac wolves cared little for the transgre
ssion itself. Members of the pack could turn humans with pack support, only with the understanding that the test would weed out the weak, the unworthy. But a wolf had to have a certain respect for rank, and Lavario had defied his leader without directly challenging him for power. Only the weakest of wolves wangled results. The noble among them achieved their ends legitimately. Lavario was simply a powerful cheat to most of his brothers and sisters.
Lavario sighed. Nothing he could do now but wait.
Memory kept him company. Sometimes it was a polite guest, letting him dwell on the happy parts of his long life. Mostly it pricked, needled, and twisted the knife far better than Mazgan ever could have.
There was the conversation he had with Kijo before they went to collect their new servants.
Boo Haggish, Kijo called his eagerness to meet Tovin. It was said with more force than normal.
Daughter, he had responded, it is the same as it has always been.
Now he knew exactly how different it was. Now he knew Boo Haggish was the worst thing she could have called it.
Beside him, his sleeping bloodservant farted. Lavario wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell, but allowed himself a dark chuckle. Life cared little for his situation. It went on, and on, and on, and on.
* * *
Kijo got in the car with Lavario. A good sign. Once again she was by his side, her black eyes fierce and distant. She looked down at the sleeping servant before addressing him. “Blood is blood and tastes like metal, salt, and oxygen no matter whose arteries it comes from, Father.”
“It is not the blood I want to taste.”
She snorted and shook her head. “Your stupid thing was unraveled by your previous stupid thing.”
She was, of course, referring to Garvey’s role in this mess. It was one thing to be thwarted by the Boo Hags, who were well known as rigid, long-term thinkers with single-minded devotion to duty. More than a few wolves had seen better plans fall apart due to their interference. It was quite another to be thwarted by Garvey, who was seen—even by his own pack—as Lavario’s accident, a farce.
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