Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Six

Notes: Who needs a break from all the violence? Me me me! Have a happy chapter of Reformation. Don't worry, it'll get vicious again soon.

Title: Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Six

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Chapter Thirty-Six

Cody didn’t shut his eyes during their descent.

He probably should have. As good as the shielding was around the bike, it wasn’t tinted, and his eyes didn’t naturally protect themselves against brightness like a normal’s did. He was going to be seeing spots when the fire finally burned itself out, but for now he couldn’t bear to look away. It was all he could do to keep breathing, calm and steady, for Ten’s sake when he really wanted to scream with sheer joy.

This, this was what he wanted in life. Not to be coddled or gentled or taken care of, although sometimes those things were nice too. But Cody wasn’t built for that, and he didn’t know where the urge came from—both his biological fathers were pretty conservative about risks—but he wanted to push himself right to the edge and then stand there, toes hanging over it, take a deep breath, and then think about falling right off.

And now he was falling, plummeting through the sky like a meteor, so shrouded in flames it seemed like it must have consumed him, it must have, because how could anyone live through something like this? Something so beautiful, and so impossible?

Superior engineering, you idiot, he heard Ten say in his mind, and Cody let himself blink for just a second, patted the back of Ten’s trembling arms around his chest and reminded himself that he was still alive, this wasn’t a dream, and he’d better be prepared to handle their landing because it was clear that Ten wasn’t in any condition to.

He watched the numbers fly by on the altimeter, and as the flames finally began to give way to dark night skies, Cody punched the activation for the antigrav drive. It sputtered, electronics probably confused from extreme cold and extreme heat, and didn’t light up. Cody punched it again. Glanced at the altimeter. Did it again. Primed it with oil direct from the engine, dangerous to do but they were under five thousand meters now, and punched it again.

This time the power caught and held. The bike slowed and came to a trembling stop a thousand meters above the roiling sea, its batteries hovering at around five percent. Not good. The shields had drained them more than Ten had anticipated they would. Cody squinted—yep, still seeing stars—and pulled up a map of the surrounding terrain with his implant. Their calculations should have brought them down near the coastline, less than twenty miles away from Pandora City…

There was the coastline, and the great fuzzy blur of energy his implant was showing him in the distance had to be the city, protected from incursion by its own shields. Originally, the plan had been to drive the hovercycle straight to the edge of the city and enter on foot, but even as he watched, the battery went from five percent to four. It wouldn’t recharge until it spent some time in the sun, and there wasn’t going to be any of that on this side of the planet for at least another nine hours.

“We’ve got to set down early.”

“hmsmnggle.”

Cody patted Ten’s arms reassuringly. “It’ll be okay, we’re fine, we’re just low on charge. We’ll make it to the Box tomorrow once we get a little sunlight.” Ten’s solar battery design was ten percent more efficient than the kind that was commonly commercially available, and Cody had seen it in action before. “A few more minutes and we’ll be on the ground.”

“mnfsjppser.”

“Yeah, baby.” Cody aimed them for the coast and increased their speed. Thankfully the sky was pretty clear tonight—hopefully that would last through the morning and a recharge, and they could sleep outside with some of the survival gear he’d packed, although it wouldn’t be comfortable…

But wait, no. Weren’t there bunkers set up along the edge of the cliffs? Cody was almost positive that he’d heard Garrett mention them before, failsafes dating back to the expansion period that had never been decommissioned, just kind of forgotten about. One of those would be perfect. He set his implant to scan for habitable enclosures, and two-point-five seconds later, it outlined a squat, round shelter in his head. Less than a mile away. Excellent.

Getting there was easy. Getting Ten to let go of him long enough to actually dismount from the bike was significantly harder, and involved a lot of petting and promises before Ten could even lift hir head. Cody twisted around in his seat and kissed Ten softly on the mouth. “Okay now?”

“Oh…okay, yes, of course I’m okay.” Ah, that was more like the Ten that Cody knew and loved. “I’d be more okay if my ass wasn’t half asleep and we were inside that bunker instead of out here in the wind and the cold like—” Hir voice broke off for a moment as ze stared quizzically at the bunker. “But this one is already inhabited.”

“What do you mean?”

Ten rolled hir eyes. “I mean the door is cracked open, there’s a dim glow coming from inside, and this close I can actually hear voices murmuring. Did you stare at the fire for too long?”

“No,” Cody protested, not about to confess that maybe he was still seeing a few flashes of light here and there. There was a bit of a glow around the right side of the bunker’s door, but he’d dismissed it as an afterimage. And he didn’t have Ten’s hearing modifications either. “Do you think it’s someone from a Federation ship?”

“Maybe. The only other option is that it’s someone from a pirate ship.”

Oh, and wouldn’t that just be perfect? To get all this way only to fall victim to a pirate once they were on the fucking planet.

They didn’t get the chance to debate it any further. A second later, a cylindrical object emerged from the crack in the door and steadied itself in their direction. Cylindrical…it was weird, but Cody was almost sure that was a—

“Gun!” Ten hissed. “Whoever’s in there is pointing a gun at us! Get the shields back up, now!”

“We don’t have enough power to raise them again!”

“Well, we better have enough power to fly away, because—”

“Identify yourselves!”

That—wait. Cody shook his head. That voice… but no. It couldn’t be.

“Identify yourselves now or face the consequences!”

It had to be. It was impossible, but it had to be. Cody had heard “face the consequences” in almost that exact tone more times than he could remember. He cleared his throat, but his voice was still scratchy as he managed to say, “Dad?”

The gun wavered. “Names, now.”

“Dad, it’s me.”

After a whispered, furious conversation inside the bunker, the door opened far enough for Cody to get a good look at who was behind it. All he could see was the man’s silhouette thanks to the flashes in his vision, but that was all he needed to see. He’d know that person anywhere. “Dad!”

“Cody? What the hell—” As astonished as Jonah sounded, though, his arms were open and ready for Cody when he practically fell into them a moment later. “Oh my god.” His dad’s hand carded through his hair, pulling him in as close as Cody could get. “Oh my god, kid, what are you doing here? I thought you weren’t with the rest of the fleet.”

“’S a long story.” Cody felt almost drunk with relief. But… “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you inside the city?”

His dad laughed weakly and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “That’s a long story too, son. That Ten with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course it is.” He didn’t sound mad, though. Mostly pleased. “You two need to come inside and get warm. The tales will have to wait.”

Under the circumstances, Cody definitely agreed.

An excerpt, because this day.

Hi darlins,

For various reasons, I wasn't able to get the next part of Reformation done today. I know, cliffhangers and winding things up, I'm sorry! I'll be extra generous with words next week. For today, though--I'll give you an excerpt from a novel I've got coming out with Dreamspinner later this year. I posted the first chapter a while back, but it's been months, so I'll post it again and continue it. So, nice long story post for you, just not the story you were looking for. *sad sigh*

And audiobook winners, I'm tackling you next. No, I haven't forgotten, I've just been slammed.

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Chapter One

Ward

You couldn’t sneak up on a werewolf.

It wasn’t possible. Everyone agreed on that, from a million pop culture references to the people who actually ran ops with the real ones. Werewolves had hyperdeveloped senses, and they were incredibly protective of their territory and their pack. You could trap a werewolf, you could trick a werewolf, you might even be able to bargain with a werewolf―I was banking on that―but you couldn’t sneak up on one. They could tell where you’d stepped almost before your foot hit the ground.

So why was I standing outside a chain-link fence in the snowy twilight, slowly freezing to death while waiting for someone to notice I was there? I’d been counting on being found quickly; I really hadn’t packed for the snow. My bad―Davis had told me I needed more than a sweater and a jacket better suited to a California winter than a Colorado one, but I’d been too frantic to listen to him.

If I died clinging to a fence in the middle of nowhere, Davis might bring me back to life just so he could kill me again for being such an idiot.

“Avoid the guardian,” he’d said, thin lips terse as he’d handed me the map. An actual physical map, not GPS—nothing I could program into my phone. “You can’t take the obvious road without getting stopped, so you’ll have to hike in to another part of their preserve. And burn that map when you’re done with it. I’m fuckin’ serious, Ward. If that’s found by the wrong people, it could cause a domestic terrorism incident.”

“I’ll destroy it,” I’d promised hastily, glancing at it before I stuffed it in my pocket. At that point, my daughter Ava had been gone for three months. At least she hadn’t been missing, not anymore. Davis had located the pack she’d been sent to. I’d just had to find it, get the nearest werewolf to ask questions before shooting or biting or whatever appealed most at the time, and persuade them to let me stay.

Well, at least I’d managed the first part of it.

“Don’t you people have cameras?” My lips were so cold I could barely articulate the words, but the act of speaking seemed to break through the layer of ice that had chilled my anger ever since I’d started hiking.

I’d gone seven miles through the snow after abandoning my car, the pale winter sun doing little to warm me as I trudged along, hoping against hope for a sign that I was going in the right direction. Finding the fence had felt like a godsend at the time, but I’d been here for over an hour now, waiting for anything and getting nothing at all. My breath rasped in my thin chest, and I’d had to stop and use my inhaler twice. Much more than that and I’d be courting real trouble, so I kept my breaths shallow and my scarf pulled across my mouth.

“Seriously,” I went on. “What wolf pack doesn’t have cameras covering every part of their territory? How can you not have seen me yet? If you’re not as goddamn paranoid as I was led to believe, I’m going to be so pissed.” Also probably deceased, but that was my problem, not theirs.

Actually, no, I was going to make it their problem too.

“I will climb this fence,” I announced to the growing darkness in front of me. “I’ll climb this fucking fence, and I’ll get all snarled in the barbed wire at the top, and then you’ll wish you’d found me while I was still alive, you assholes, because you’ll be untangling me for fucking hours!” I don’t think I’d sworn this much since my brother’s funeral.

Okay, I was angry, but I was also being serious. Someone should have seen me on camera by now. Davis had been very clear about that. Maybe the one I was closest to wasn’t transmitting—I needed to move, then. I needed to pick a path and go, because if I didn’t start walking now, I might not be able to before long. Right or left? Which direction had the road that passed the guardian been on, again? I’d already burned the map, shit, shit….

I went right. If I hit the road, at least the guardian would probably keep me alive if they  found me. I wouldn’t be able to help my daughter if I was dead. My feet felt dangerously numb, and my nose might’ve been blue by now. The wind made my eyes water, and tear tracks froze on my cheeks. I clung to the fence, using it half for guidance, half for support. “I’m gonna find you, baby.” I would. “I’ll find you.” I had to. I wasn’t going to sit back and let the government take her from me just because she’d turned out to be a werewolf.

The mutation had been around since the early forties, when a super-soldier experiment resulted in men that, instead of having all the heightened senses of wolves, actually turned into wolves. They escaped the confines of Pine Camp in northern New York, crazy with fear and adrenaline, and went on a biting spree. Most of the bitten died after turning into wolves.

A few of them managed to turn back into people, though.

The government took responsibility for their mistake and divided the surviving werewolves into packs. Hollywood loved them, scientists wanted to study them, and bigots wanted to kill them, but for the most part, real werewolves stayed firmly out of the spotlight. The only exception to that rule was when someone turned unexpectedly. Someone like my Ava.

The bite didn’t manifest in lycanthropy for everyone bitten. Some people, a tiny percentage of those exposed to the mutation, were simply immune to the shift. They could carry it, though, and they could pass it on. For Ava, the gene must have come from her mother. Carriers were almost always incredibly healthy, and I was far from a model of vitality. It was just as well I wasn’t usually attracted to people who could get pregnant.

Every now and then, maybe half a dozen times a year, a child would shift. Usually it didn’t happen until puberty, or some other time of extreme stress. For my daughter, it was her first day of preschool.

“Daddy, nooo.”

I could still hear her voice from that morning in my head. I’d been running late, stressed by the start of a new semester and the challenge of trying to get my daughter dressed, fed, and into her car seat before eight in the morning. She’d been clingy, more than usual.

“I want to stay with you!”

“But you’re a big girl now, sweetheart. Big girls go to school. You’ll have so much fun and make so many new friends.”

I’d gotten the call about her change at lunch, right after dismissing forty freshmen from my Physics 101 class at the community college where I’d taught. I hadn’t recognized the number at first―I’d almost let it ring through to my voicemail. “Hello?”

“Mr. Johannsen?” The woman’s words had been almost too warbly to make out. She’d cleared her throat. “It’s Maria Kostakis. Ava’s teacher.”

“Oh, boy.” I’d sighed and sunk down into my chair. “Is she okay? She’s not sick, is she? She was pretty unhappy this morning, but she wasn’t running a temperature back at the house.”

“She’s….” I’d never had a professional trail off like that with me. It made my heart beat harder in my chest.

“She’s what?” I’d snapped. “What?”

“She’s turning.” Those words seemed hard to get out, but once she’d managed them, Ms. Kostakis had continued faster and faster. “She told me at snack time that her hands hurt, and when I looked at them I saw—there were claws coming out the end of her fingers, and her palms were changing color. I got her to the nurse’s office before things got much worse, but our school doesn’t have the sort of containment facilities needed to handle a shift, so—”

“Containment facilities?”

“It’s standard procedure, Mr. Johannsen. If a child shifts in a public environment, they have to be contained immediately so they can’t infect others. The nurse called the police, and when the SWAT team arrived—”

“A SWAT team? She’s four years old!” I knew the basics of dealing with an unexpected shift—I worked in public education—but SWAT seemed excessive.

“A four-year old werewolf. The danger she put our entire school in, I just….”

“She’s a kid, not a bomb!”

“She might as well be a bomb!” Ms. Kostakis had shrieked at me.

It had taken longer than I’d wanted to get the rest of the chain of events out of her. SWAT had come, ushered my baby girl into a cage, and taken her to the nearest government facility equipped to deal with werewolves. By the time I’d gotten there, Ava had already been transported again. And this time—

“We can’t tell you where she’s gone, Mr. Johannsen.”

“The hell you can’t.” I’d never been so angry in all my life. Never: not when I’d been laid up in the hospital for weeks at a time, not when Rick and Davis had enlisted, not when Ava’s mother left us. “She’s my daughter. I’m her parent, her legal guardian. You can’t just take my child from me.”

The state official behind the bulletproof glass had weathered my outrage without batting an eye. “Actually, under the Safety in Isolation Act of 1946, we can. Your child is a member of a protected but dangerous species, and the best place for her is in a pack where she’ll get proper care and oversight. Werewolves need to be in packs in order to be mentally and emotionally stable.”

“How will ripping her away from everything she’s always known make her emotionally stable?” I’d demanded. “Ava is an only child―she just started school this morning! I’m all she knows, and she needs me. We need to be together.”

“Werewolves adapt differently to change than humans, and Ava is very young. She’ll do better in her new situation than you’re giving her credit for. Regardless, Mr. Johannsen, you’re not going to be allowed to see her.” Cool eyes had regarded me dispassionately. “It’s best if you accept the government’s transition payment and forget you ever had a child.”

“I refuse.” I’d stood, furious enough that I barely had any energy left for standing. My breaths had been so shallow I was light-headed, but I’d be damned if I showed any weakness in front of a soulless bureaucrat. “You can expect to hear from my lawyer.”

“If that’s how you want things to go. You won’t get anywhere with it, though.”

“Fuck you.”

I’d left full of righteous indignation, enough to drown out my fear. Eventually the tables had turned, though, and fear replaced confidence as I learned that the official was right. No lawyer would take my case. The law was ironclad: werewolves weren’t classified as human. They were a dangerous subspecies, and they were the property of the government. Any attempt to locate my daughter would result in my imprisonment, which I’d have risked if I could have gotten anywhere, with anyone.

In the end, the only person who would help me was Davis, and I still didn’t know everything he’d had to do to get the information he did. I’d asked, but he wasn’t sharing his sources. I didn’t care as long as he was right. His information had led me here, to Middle Of Nowhere, Colorado, where he said I’d find Ava.

God, I was so cold. And when had my feet stopped moving? I glared down at them through my frozen lashes, willing them to get going again, but they refused. How far had I come from where I’d first found the fence? Was there another camera? My arm felt as heavy as an anvil, and it was so hard to keep holding onto the fence when all I wanted to do was rest. Just for a moment. Just….

“Hey.”

Pressure so light I barely felt it against my hand made me turn. There was someone on the other side of the fence—an actual person. Hallucinations might be able to talk, but I wouldn’t feel them, right? She was mostly concealed by a hooded fur-lined parka, but I could see the top half of her face. Her eyes looked worried.

“Please,” I croaked. The cold had ripped my voice to shreds. “Let me see her. I need to see my baby.”

“Who are you talking about? How did you get here?”

“Ava. My kid. She―I know I’m not supposed to be here, they told me to just forget about her, but she’s all I have. Please. I’ll do anything to see her.” Anything at all.

Her mittened hand gripped mine harder. “What’s your name?”

“Ward Johannsen.”

“How did you find us?”

“Please.” I was so cold, and my hand was so heavy. It fell from the fence, even though she was trying to hold onto it. My knees collapsed, and I heard the woman cry out. “P-please.” I leaned my head against the unforgiving metal links, the only things that were keeping me from pitching into the snow. She knelt down on the other side of the fence and stared at me.

“Mr. Johannsen. Mr. Johannsen! Ward!” I blinked at her.

“Shit.” She glanced away for a moment. “Henry’s going to kill me.” She looked back at me. “Fuck it. I’ll be to you in two minutes, Ward. Do you understand? Don’t lie down.” She shook the fence for emphasis. “Do not lie down! Say you understand me.”

“I….”

“If you lie down, you’re not going to get to see Ava. You hear me? Ava needs you to stay awake!”

My baby needed me. “I’ll stay awake.”

“Good.” She pushed to her feet. “Two minutes, Ward. I’ll be right back.” I heard the crunch of her footsteps vanishing into the dark, and I pressed my forehead hard to the fence.

Two minutes. I could do that.

As long as I didn’t die first.

Chapter Two

Henry

By the time I arrived at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, I’d been in the sky for over twelve hours. Twelve hours was long enough for the stench of my rescue unit’s fear to gradually give way to shivering, sweaty relief. Lo and behold, I hadn’t killed anyone. Not anyone they’d seen, at least.

None of these kids had experience working with a werewolf, and their ignorance showed in the furtive glances and whispered conversations that they clearly didn’t realize I could hear. Probably none of them had ever wanted to work with an operative like me―they weren’t curious or bold enough to ask me any questions. That didn’t stop me from asking them some, back at the beginning of their escort mission.

“What happened to the rest of my squad?”

“They were recalled before they could make their rendezvous with you, sir.” At least the lieutenant managed to look me in the eye while parroting things to me.

“Any casualties taken?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

“I need a line to my commanding officer to verify.”

“He informed me you should check your personal messages, sir.”

Personal messages. Classified data was being left in my goddamn inbox now. That alone told me how pissed off Colonel Hill was at me. I’d made use of the secure phone in the cockpit of the C-17, a completely excessive aircraft given it was transporting just five men, and checked in.

“You returned without the package, beyond the acceptable time table, and almost gave your presence away behind enemy lines. Consider yourself grounded until you get a better handle on your capabilities, Major Dormer.” Click.

Well, fuck. Not that I hadn’t been expecting that, but it was going to make life more complicated for me and my pack. More complications were the last things I needed right now, but at least my original team was all right.

My nervous nannies finally delivered me back home, and that was all that mattered. I needed food, rest, and the presence of my pack to ground me. I needed time, just a little more time. Things would be fine.

They had to be.

Getting out of that plane was a relief. I breezed through my verification and debrief―the on-site special ops director was well-used to dealing with me―and got a ride to the gate, where my sister Samantha was waiting for me in her familiar red 4Runner.

No, scratch that. Her husband Liam was the one who got out of the car as I approached. Tension I barely even recognized I’d been releasing sprang back into my frame, tightening my shoulders. Liam seemed to notice, if the worried furrow of his brow was anything to go by.

“Henry.” His voice was low and clear, just the barest hint of a Quebecois accent evident in his pronunciation of my name. “Welcome back.”

“It’s good to be back.” He extended a hand and I took it, then drew him into an embrace, pressing my nose against the crook of his neck. Humans might see two grown men hugging the life out of each other in a parking lot and wonder, but for me, this greeting was as traditional as a handshake. Liam was pack―new pack, barely pack―but he carried my sister’s scent on every inch of his skin, and the scent of my wolves beneath that.

Liam scented me in return, and I could tell he didn’t like what he smelled. I hadn’t had a chance to clean up, and I still felt bathed in blood, dust, and death. It was no different than a dozen other missions, the price I paid as La Garita pack’s alpha, but Liam had grown up sheltered. I sensed his distaste and pulled back before I caused him any more discomfort. It was enough to have the smell of home in my head again. Soon the ache in my heart would ease.

I threw my duffle bag into the back seat in silence. Liam offered me the keys, but I waved them away. “I’m tired. I might want to nap a little on the way home.” It was a four-hour drive from Colorado Springs, plenty of time to be awkward with my new brother-in-law. God, I hope I slept.

“Of course.” He got into the driver’s seat, started up the car, and turned on the heat. The radio was set to NPR. Naturally. No heavy metal or hard rock for Liam. I was lucky we weren’t listening to fusion jazz or French pop.

“Samantha wanted to come.”

Oh good, so we were going to talk about it. “And she didn’t because?”

“The littlest pup, the new one. Ava? She isn’t doing so well.”

Fuck. “What’s Tennyson’s diagnosis?”

Liam sighed. “Failure to thrive. He can’t find anything medically wrong with her. Her shift isn’t noticeably out of alignment, no impingement on the heart or lungs, but she’s completely listless.”

“Failure to thrive.” I shook my head. “He’s got to hate that.”

“He does, very loudly,” Liam agreed. Tennyson was another of the newer arrivals, a transplant from a disbanded pack on the East Coast. He was one of the few werewolves with medical training for both the human and the animal parts of us, and after what had happened to his last pack, he was edgy as hell. I should have been there for him. I should have been there to ease the way for both of them.

The timing of my latest mission couldn’t have been worse. Three new arrivals in under a month: one who’d just lost his pack, one who was marrying into mine, and a child stuck in her pup form who had howled endlessly, so despondent that she’d refused to eat for almost a week. I was the alpha of La Garita pack. It was my job to welcome new members, to help them integrate and feel like they were becoming part of a new whole. That was what pack was: a sense of wholeness, the anchor for a soul living in an unstable body. It was family, or that was what it aspired to be.

Tennyson had been settling in, his walls still high but his reluctance to socialize ebbing. Liam and Sam had come back from their honeymoon even more ridiculously in love than when they’d left for it, which made it a little easier for me to deal with the fact that I had to share my sister now. Even Ava had finally stopped crying, willing to take food directly from my hand. She was a strong-willed pup, completely adorable, and I had three different couples vying to welcome her into their homes once she shifted back to human. Then I’d gotten the call.

Almost a month later, here I was: returning home without the success that would sate my handlers, wiry and strung out from too much running and not enough sleep and with my own sense of pack so strained it was almost like I didn’t have one at all.

Sam would ask me about that. I knew she suspected, but she’d been too happy to really dwell on it before. I’d have to work at my lie this time if she was going to buy it.

“I’ll go and see her when we get back.” Maybe spending the night with Ava in my other form would comfort her some.

“Samantha has been with her every day since you left. She’s doing everything she can.”

Was that censure in his voice? “I know that,” I said with deliberate slowness. “I’m not accusing my sister of anything.”

“There was much to deal with, while you were gone. Some that was difficult for a human.” Making Sam the acting head of the pack while I was gone was nothing new, but Liam didn’t understand the way we ran things yet. Sam might be human, the only human there, but no one dominated her. If she’d been born a werewolf, I was pretty sure she would have ended up the alpha, not me.

Given the work I did for the military, I was glad I’d taken on the responsibility instead.

“Sam knows how to handle things when I’m away.”

“She would be in trouble if a fight broke out.”

I could feel my jaw begin to creak. That was almost always where my shift began, and the last thing I needed right now was to alpha out on my new brother-in-law. “Did a fight break out?”

“No, but—”

“Wouldn’t you have been there to assist her if a fight had broken out among my wolves?”

“Of course I would.” His voice was soft now, deferent. He knew he’d overstepped—I could smell the faint sourness of his apology—but my easy mood was gone.

“You’ve never really been part of a pack like ours before, Liam.”

“My pack was—”

“Your last pack was a bunch of lone wolves loosely associated because your government didn’t know what else to do with you.” The vast majority of werewolves were American, but the gene had spread to a few other nationalities. There were enough carriers in Canada to form something of a pack in the Laurentian Mountains, but they hadn’t been raised together, hadn’t spent their whole lives together.

“La Garita pack is different. My mother was the alpha before me, and her father was the alpha before her. He was one of the original soldiers infected with the mutation. Our pack is firmly established, and most of our members have been a part of it their whole lives. They know us. They wouldn’t endanger Sam, but if you think she doesn’t have fail-safes in place for her own protection, then you don’t know her very well.” I let my irises bleed from blue to gold. “Don’t disappoint my sister by underestimating her.” Or else, my alpha glare added.

If Liam could have shrunk any deeper into his seat, he’d have been under it. “I won’t.”

“Glad to hear it.” It took more effort than usual to get my eyes to change back. Too much time spent shifted lately. I needed to get home, see my sister, settle in with the new pup, and rest. God, I needed to rest. I felt so tired now that I was back on somewhat friendly ground that I could barely hold myself upright. I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and shut my eyes. I wouldn’t be able to sleep with just Liam in the car, not after our little altercation, but at least I could spare myself the trouble of making any further conversation with him.

Apparently I was more tired than I’d thought, because the next thing I knew I went from dreaming I was hunched and quivering on all four feet over a body to suddenly waking up with a gasp, snapping my half-inch fangs in the direction of the disturbance. Liam had already pulled his hand back from my shoulder, apprehension clear in his face.

My jaw was distorted, painful in the aching, grinding way that always came with a partial shift. I forced my teeth back to human and got my bearings. “Ah.” It was dark now, but the 4Runner rumbled to the beat of washboards in the dirt road, and above the trees I could just make out the edge of familiar, moonlight-limned mountains. We were almost to the guardian’s home.

“I thought you’d want a moment to collect yourself before speaking with him.”

“Thank you.”

“Henry….” I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to say it, but Liam collected himself and pressed on. “Are you all right?”

I wanted to snap at him. Fuck that, I wanted to actually nip him, draw a little blood and put him in his place, but Sam would chew my head off if I did. And he was family. I needed to make an effort, even if it was harder now than I could ever remember it being. “It was a rough mission.” Understatement of the year. “I just need a little time to reacclimatize. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” I could hear the doubt in his voice but didn’t have the time to pursue things—we were already pulling to a stop by the guardian’s home. John Parnell was waiting for us by the road, scowling as usual. His house was well-lit, and I could see the silhouette of his daughter moving around the living room, probably cleaning up plates after another TV dinner. Things had been different for the family since his wife Clara left last year, and not in a good way. John had been our guardian for over two decades, but that didn’t mean he liked us.

He did his job, though. “Fuck, it’s colder than a witch’s third tit out here,” he grunted as I rolled down the window. He passed me a sheaf of handwritten papers. We could have transmitted all this information digitally, but the government was understandably wary about werewolf networks getting hacked. Information isolation was a necessary part of keeping the pack safe. “Upcoming delivery dates, incident reports, and the maintenance log. Camera nine is malfunctioning.”

“Another one?” I frowned as I glanced through the papers. “Last month it was Camera six.”

“They’re not really built to withstand the weather, and your infrastructure’s getting old. You should ask for a system overhaul.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.” I wouldn’t get any favors from my handlers until I gave them a successful mission. I’d already pushed things, lobbying for and getting the new blood.

“Oh really?” John raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “Interesting times abroad?”

“You could say that.”

“Huh. Well, not to heap more damage on you, but you should know that there’ve been sightings of a large white ‘dog’ outside of Monte Vista. Nobody’s caught it doing anything wrong yet, but the weather’s just going to get worse over the next month. If it’s looking for food….”

Fuck. “I understand.” I couldn’t bring myself to think about “stray dogs” right now. Wilson had kept his head for the past fifteen years; he could handle himself for another winter. He’d be all right.

“I hope you do.” He slapped the side of the truck. “It’s out of your hands for now, at least. Don’t let it fuck you up too much. Welcome back, Alpha Dormer.”

“Thanks, John. Say hi to the kids for me.”

“I will.” He wouldn’t. He walked back to his house, and I rolled the window back up. We were almost there. The sense of disruption I’d been feeing ever since I left was finally ebbing away. My home was waiting for me. My pack. My family. It would be all right.

When we got to the fence, Liam opened a program on his phone and typed in a code. The gate slid open for us, automatically closing once it got to its apex. The compound was a little less than a mile ahead. I could already see the lights through the trees.

The first cabin at the end of the road was ours, in front of and slightly apart from the rest of our little town. It was larger than most of the other houses, a throwback to when our family had been more numerous. Dark logs and a tile roof gave it almost a Bavarian appearance, and the porch light glowed brightly. I was out of the truck almost before Liam stopped it, heading toward the front door at a jog. I was home, I was finally—

Wait.

I inhaled deeply, scenting the air just in front of the door. There was a smell here that I didn’t recognize. A person here that I didn’t recognize. Trespasser.

I almost ripped the door off its hinges getting inside. Liam was right behind me, and I followed the smell of the intruder into the living room, feeling the shift pull at my face again, readying my fingertips to burst into claws that would—

“Henry, stop!” Only here was Sam, right in front of me, smelling just fine. A little stressed, but healthy. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a disheveled bun on top of her head, and she was wearing one of my college sweatshirts. She smelled like us. She smelled like home. “It’s okay,” she said, and I wanted to melt onto the floor, collapse with my relief. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.” She smiled at me, broad and happy, and held out her arms. “God, I’m so glad you’re back.”

I hugged her, and it was almost perfect. Almost perfect. The scent of the intruder still lurked in the air, stronger than ever now, and even though I wanted nothing more than to relax at last, I couldn’t. I looked over her shoulder at the couch.

A man sat curled into a ball on the far right cushion, bundled up in what looked like every blanket in the whole house. His hands, clutching a tepid mug of hot chocolate, looked painfully red, and I heard an unhealthy-sounding rasp in his chest with every breath. His thin face peeked out from beneath lank, straw-colored hair, but his expression was blatantly defiant.

He was also completely, utterly human. Not a werewolf―he didn’t even smell like a carrier. He had no place here, in my home.

“Who the hell is that?”

Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Five

Notes: So, quite a bit of resolution here, but there is a graphic description of non-con and murder in the first section. No actual rape, but the insinuation that a person has done it before and wants to again. Please approach accordingly.

Title: Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Five

***

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Shit,” Agnieszka snarled against the rocky ground. “God damn fucking—” She lapsed into a language that Jonah didn’t understand but that he assumed was a continuation of her long string of swear words. “—pirates had to follow me down here too?” She bucked her hips. “Get off me, I’m going to kill him!”

“With what?” Jonah hissed, doing his best to hold her steady and keep her from damaging her shoulder any further. “With the gun you don’t have? With a bunch of angry words? ‘Cause that’s not gonna cut it, kid.” He could hear the man circling, drawing slowly closer, and he scooted them more to the side, tighter against the ruined pod.

“I’m a Federation officer, I’m in control of this situation, and I demand you let go of me!”

“I’m not in your chain of command, darlin’, and thank goodness because if I was I’d have to be real disobedient right now.”

“Let go of me!” she snapped. “Let go of me! Let…let go of…” As quickly as it had flared up, her anger fell away, leaving her shivering against him. “I have to fight,” she whispered. “I have to, I can’t go down like that again, I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” Jonah murmured. “It’s gonna be okay, just—”

“Tell you what,” the pirate called out. “If you just give me the girl, no fuss, I’ll consider letting you leave. She and I can find a way to fill a few hours before I get tired of her.” Agnieszka stiffened, but didn’t speak. “Not exactly a romantic locale, but then I’ve never been much for romance,” the man continued. Jonah knew he was only talking in order to distract them from the fact that he was getting closer, ever closer, but it was a hell of a distraction.

“Me, I like ‘em feisty and bound. That little look of hate a woman gives you when you’ve got her trussed up so tight there’s no escape…mmm, I love it. I love watching hate turn to fear. I love the sounds she makes when I use her and she can’t do nothing about it, and then when I’m done and I get ready to cut her throat…oh, there’s nothing sweeter. Most times she starts to cry, although some girls stay tough to the end.” He chuckled. “What do you think this one’s gonna do, huh?”

There was nothing left but to be reckless. Stupid and reckless and hopefully lucky. It was dark out, and Jonah had his flashlight. It wouldn’t be a permanent distraction, but if he could temporarily blind the man then he could close the distance and…and…and do something to the guy. He wasn’t the fighter Robbie was, of course, nowhere near, and he couldn’t even hold a candle to his husband, but he’d had some training alongside Cody as a matter of course after marrying Garrett. He could…

There was no more time for consideration. The pirate was too close, still burbling away about all the awful things he’d do to Agnieszka, how he’d have her sideways and upside down and everything in-between. Jonah took a deep breath, then turned his light on full power and rolled over onto his back, away from the dubious safety of the pod’s carcass and into the line of fire. A bullet hit the ground next to his head, but after another moment he had the beam of light focused firmly on the other man’s face. The pirate swore and ducked, and Jonah scrambled to his feet and threw himself at him.

The first thing he lost was the light, knocked out of his hand by a lucky kick. Jonah wrapped his arms around the guy’s legs and drove him to the ground, but the pirate was already reorienting on him, raining blows down toward his head while swearing up a storm. Fuck, what was he supposed to do once he got him down? He had to—okay, getting the fucker to stop hitting him was high up on the list. Jonah let go of his legs and climbed his opponent’s body, digging his elbows in every chance he got and biting down hard when a particularly persistent hand wouldn’t stop clawing at his face. He was bleeding—he could feel it, odd heat against the rest of his chilly face—but he didn’t stop, he couldn’t stop. He got on top and threw his own punches, some of them hitting, some of them going awry—fuck, he couldn’t see anything in this gloom and his light was gone, he had to—

Their positions were reversed in an instant, Jonah thrown over onto his back and straddled by the furious pirate. A fist impacted his cheek, stunning him, before the man’s other hand closed hard over his throat. The pirate bent close. “Dumb son of a bitch, you coulda walked away. Now I’m gonna rape you before I rape her, tie her up and make her watch me split you in half and then have her in a pool of your own bloo—”

Whatever else he was going to threaten was lost as a glowing wand suddenly struck the pirate in the back of the head, driving him over Jonah’s body and knocking his weight away. Jonah watched blearily for a moment before he realized that the wand was actually a light, his heavy, industrial flashlight, and the person wielding it was screaming with fury. Agnieszka followed the dazed pirate to the ground and hit him in the head over and over again with the butt of the flashlight, until his swearing turned to groans, then gasps, and finally nothing at all. Jonah finally pulled himself together enough to reach out to her, lay a hand on her arm, now covered in gore.

“Hey,” he said hoarsely. “Lieutenant, it’s okay. You can stop now, he’s dead. He’s dead, Agnieszka, he can’t hurt either of us now.”

“He deserves it!”

“I know.” Her arm trembled in Jonah’s loose grip, but had stopped striking.

“He would have done all of that to us, he would have done worse! You didn’t see them up there, the way they fought. They targeted pods, people trying to get away from the battle. I know these bastards, they killed—my friends, so many of my friends, they’re dead—I can’t—”

“You’re alive,” Jonah said gently. “We both are. We should try to stay that way, huh? Let’s leave him here.”

Agnieszka looked at him, her eyes huge and bright in the flashlight’s wavering beam. “Where will we go?”

Jonah smiled, distantly noting how much the motion hurt his mouth. Split lip for sure. “I’ve got a safe place.”

***

Berengaria had never been brilliant, like so many members of her family. She hadn’t inherited her father’s magnificent spark of charisma or turned out with her brother’s patient, insightful ability at manipulation. For so much of her life, she had simply been, had existed and been maneuvered like the pawn she was. Her earliest dreams of a life of ease and beauty had been dashed with the murder of her father, and as her own opportunities had quickly become circumscribed, she had withdrawn deeply into her shell. She’d created a false beauty around herself, a fake paradise that was as ephemeral and dream-like as her thoughts of independence, of fighting back. She’d tried, here and there, but most of her efforts had been blocked by her brother before they’d even manifested in the slightest bit of change.

Brilliance, she’d decided a few years ago, was overrated. She was never going to be a genius, but some of the greatest creations in the universe were the result of persistence, not inspired flights of fancy. So Berengaria packed away her hopes and dreams and settled into the banality of layering her actions so deeply that it would take her own brother weeks to sift through them all. Boring, dull, basic as could be—therein lay her camouflage. And at the very center of it, she employed a very simple trick.

It had taken a long time, and some help from Garrett and others, but at long last, Berengaria had laid out her own web. A combination of biological, mechanical and combination trackers, most of them so small they could barely be detected from her space-side prison, had been placed on each of her brother’s personal transports. The military ones were swept too frequently for bugs to stick, but Raymond was more arrogant about his personal conveyances. It had taken some of her bugs months to crawl their way into his life, but they were there now. She knew when they moved, and had metrics on how often, and where, and whether or not he was on board. That was the reason the biological ones were so important—they carried a little bit of her DNA, and pinged a match to Raymond when he was in range.

And now he was moving. Fleeing. And he was on the right side of the planet for Berengaria to do something about it. Perfect.

She wasn’t the smartest member of her family, and she wasn’t the most persistent either. But, she thought to herself as she started removing the failsafes on her little island’s directional controls, she might very well be the best at vengeance. Because if she only had one chance at taking out her brother, she wasn’t going to fuck it up.

See if he could dodge her entire space station when she dropped it on him before he finished clearing Olympus’s atmosphere.

Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Four

Notes: Back at last! Sorry for the delay, and the fact that it's not terribly long, but hey--it's here. And Cody and Ten! Yay!

Also, again--sorry for the delay, but winners of the audiobooks for Where There's Fire will be announced tomorrow! The conference was fun, the networking was great, but omg--I'm so tired now.

Title: Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Four

***

Chapter Thirty-Four

It felt different than ze had expected, approaching the planet like this. Ten had done the same exposure and zero-g training that every cadet at the Academy did, and while careening through a planet’s atmosphere in an attempt to safely land a modified hoverbike on its surface was decidedly not one of the training scenarios, it shouldn’t have made any difference. Ze’d been exposed to crashes, explosions, breakaways—every nasty thing the programmers could think of. Hell, Ten had been in actual shuttle crashes, so this really shouldn’t have fazed hir at all.

Which was why ze couldn’t understand why hir heartrate was spiking so abnormally, or why it felt like their oxygen supply had already run out even though ze knew, logically, that that was impossible.

“Everything looks good,” Cody said from in front of hir, his eyes glued to the instrument panel. Never mind that the bike was projecting data that could be read directly through their implants—Cody had never quite attached himself to doing things the easy way, like cadets who’d grown up with the technology. “We should start falling through the top layer of atmosphere in forty-five seconds.” Ten could hear the excitement in his voice. “Time to see how good our heat shielding really is!”

“It’s—the best,” Ten replied, and why was ze stumbling over hir words? “Nat-naturally. I-I-I’m the one who…the one who des-designed it.”

“Ten?” Cody turned his head around to look at hir. “What’s wrong?”

Ten shook hir head. “Noth-nothing.”

“This doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“It’s nothing!” Ten snapped, pleased at how anger kept hir words together better. “I’m perfectly fi-fi-fine!”

“Ten…”

“I don’t know!” ze burst at him. “I don’t know what’s wro-wrong with m-m-me! I feel like I’m having a hear-heart-heart attack! I don’t even know wha-what that feels like, but it must be a lo-lo-lot like this!” Stars that had no place in the sky were swimming in front of hir eyes now, and Ten blinked rapidly trying to clear them. Hallucinations? Ze couldn’t be having hallucinations, there was no reason for it!

“Ten.”

Hir eyelids were fluttering fast enough that they blurred the back of Cody’s head. The stars were getting thicker.

“Ten! Listen to me!”

“I-I am!”

“You need to take some deep breaths before you pass out!”

“My brea-bre-buh—” Ze stopped talking to save hirself the embarrassment. Obviously if ze couldn’t even get a word out, hir breathing wasn’t fine.

“Here.” Cody moved one of hir hands from around his waist up to his chest. His suit was too thick to feel anything through, but a moment later a reassuring thud pulsed through their combined grip. “You feel that? Breathe when you feel the beat.”

Ten would have argued, but ze didn’t have the air to spare for it. Ze pushed hir pride aside and tried to breathe along with the next slow thud. It was…harder than ze’d anticipated.

“Good,” Cody said encouragingly, and it shouldn’t have mattered because being good at breathing was a stupid thing to try and excel at, but the strange, crackling tension in Ten’s chest eased slightly. “Keep it up. Keep breathing with the beat.” The planet grew larger and larger, filling all of Ten’s view, looming immense and inescapable as the light surrounding their shields began to glow with heat. “Breathe with the beat, Ten.” Cody squeezed hir hand. “You don’t have to watch,” he said gently, his voice as sweet as any touch he’d ever shared with hir. “Just close your eyes and feel. Feel the beat. Feel me. I’m here with you. We’re together.”

And it might have been cowardly, and any other day Ten might have scoffed and rolled hir eyes at what seemed like such condescending gentility, but not now. Now ze pressed hir head tight to Cody’s back, closed hir eyes against the brilliant fire surrounding them, and focused on the beat.

Ze didn’t need to look death in the eye when life was holding hir hand.

***

Miles swayed back and forth like he was lying in a wave pool, like the kind he and Claudia had taken the girls to a while back. It had been nicer than he cared to admit out loud, the warm air contrasting perfectly with the cool water. He’d closed his eyes and floated for over an hour, until his kids had pulled him into a water fight. It was like being back there, except…he was cold. And dry. And—fuck.

He forced his eyes open and looked around the darkened interior of the pod. The emergency lights were on, and the locator beacon was beeping soundlessly—the speaker must have broken in the fall. His cadets were still, unmoving on the floor, and Miles reached out to them, ignoring the sudden stabbing pain in his leg. He touched Grennson’s neck—there was a pulse, a strong one, but he had a bleeding head wound. And Darrell’s own heartbeat was thready, and from the odd way his tunic sat against his chest, Miles could guess why. Shattered ribs, in all likelihood. More than the simple Regen kit in the pod could handle, but he pulled it free and gave them each a shot anyway. Grennson’s wound stopped bleeding, and Darrell’s breathing eased some, so it clearly hadn’t hurt.

Cadets stabilized, now he needed to stabilize their craft. Miles tapped into the computer with his implant. Current status?

Pod is 88.5% inoperable. Hull is cracked. The rate of leakage into the space between the outer and inner hull will force complete submersion in approximately five minutes.

Submersion… Outside environment?

H20, Cl-, Na+, Mg2+, Ca+—

Seawater. They’d hit the ocean. Any air?

The top 23% of the craft is yet uncovered.

Then they still had time to get out. The parachute that had deployed to keep them from dying when they hit the surface doubled as a life raft, if he could get it to inflate. Miles crawled to the hatch at the top of the pod and checked for it. Still there, still attached. Good. Activate raft inflation.

Affirmative. The raft puffed into life in front of him, and Miles breathed a little easier.

Location of detachable emergency beacon? It glowed into existence in his mind, much subdued compared to the motion of the other one. He grabbed it and tucked it away in a pocket. “Emergency kit? He took it and stowed it away, then gingerly slid the boys into inflatable vests, careful not to move them too much.

Speed of saturation is increasing. This pod will face complete submersion in thirty-four seconds.

“Shit.” Miles wrenched the hatch open, shivered for a moment at the chill air and the splash of icy water that entered through the hole, then lifted Grennson up. It wasn’t easy, but he got the cadet onto the raft and secured with just enough time to get an arm around Darrell before the pod was completely submerged, and water filled the rest of the interior. Miles held his breath and reminded himself not to panic. He could do this. He’d been in worse situations, and at least the chill of the water was numbing the pain in his leg.

Darrell’s best inflated automatically, buoyant enough to lift the cadet but slim enough that Miles could still get him through the darkened porthole. He followed and pulled the lever detaching the raft from the pod before it dragged the whole thing down, then got onto the raft himself before gently lifting Darrell up after him. He secured the cadet’s vest to the raft, pulled a thin survival blanket out of the emergency gear and nestled in between the kids, then covered all of them with it. They were both still breathing, and the beacon was going. If anybody was looking for them, they’d be found.

Before the next storm, he hoped.