Long hours later, Gemma sat on her own half way up the curving hillock dotted with trees in the centre of the park. She was watching the many battle-weary but contented adult wolves weaving a little painfully back and forth around the pond at the foot. The adults were gently circling among the crowd of uneasy, half-awake cubs, stepping carefully over the sleeping ones, nuzzling some. Each adult left the pond-side with a pair of youngsters frisking, sleepily complaining, or trotting silently, wearily at their tail. The four-legged forms of adults and cubs blended smokily with the darkness and the light mist floating under the dim light of the stars. A distant streetlight at the entrance to the park reminded Gemma that they were in the centre of the city, but her nose assured her that there were no humans close enough to witness this strange assembly.
The news filtered into her mind, she could catch stray thoughts flying between the wolves below like echoes of shouts, keeping her ears twitching. The thoughts were overlaid with layer upon layer of emotion, and the light breeze also carried their scents to her, laden with half-understood meaning.
There was a thickness of seething anger because neither the Marsh nor the Mackeld had gotten close enough to stop Grey getting away, and Nicolas had ripped Johnson badly when the aging Alpha had attempted to hold him. Sadness at the three cubs lost, but pride that the others were now free. Deep revulsion and guilt at the horrors perpetrated on the wolves freed from the deepest rooms, the torture chambers and the whoring dungeons. The chained inmates had stunk of blood and pain and human seed, or had had that disquieting lack of scent and hard-chilled flesh which indicated the presence of silver.
Karim Marsh - the wolves who had found him were nauseous. He had been steam-hammered onto a bed of silver spikes by an industrial carpet press, Grey testing his latest implement of torture just before he fled, to avenge himself on the Marsh. Karim was still clinging to life, and his physician was fighting to remove enough of the shards that he could heal, without bleeding to death, while his father was straining to feed him enough shiele to keep his heart pumping and halt the bleeding. But his natalí still had not recovered consciousness, a bad sign.
It was unbelievable that one wolf do such things to another.
Why had they not listened to the Mackeld
?
Deepest was the hollow disquiet in those who had seen the chemical factories underneath the vast complex, and the live experimentees. Revolted incredulity was raging, seething through them. How could a wolf do that to his own pack? But the shudder of repugnance and nausea was tempered by a steely resolve: they had stopped it. It would stop, never be allowed further. Grey would no longer be abusing his drug-and-blood fettered wolves, or manufacturing his potions and poisons; they had captured the formulae, too. They would destroy them. And destroy him, as soon as they found his final bolthole, and -.
Natasha Vanilchov.
The Aster wolves winced away from remembering the raw, grief-stricken, explosion of guilty rage when the Vanilchov Alpha had found out the truth about his natalí. She was not here, she was hidden elsewhere, not one of the Grey wolves knew where. It had taken the Marsh, the Mackeld, the Silback and the wounded Johnson to restrain the powerful wolf, and shock at the sight of their Alpha losing control like that was still shivering across the skin of his pack.
A shudder of sad guilt traced across Gemma's skin. Nick had escaped; she so hoped that the Vanilchov sjeste wouldn't pay for the events of tonight. The toppling of Nicolas Grey's powerbase, which she and Jasmine had precipitated.
She remained sitting on her haunches, ears alert, and tail tucked around her, slightly wary of the powerful, graceful creatures as she watched them pass back and forth at the base of the hill. She felt as though she didn't really belong, like a stranger amongst a party of close friends, unsure of her welcome. Out of place. But neither did she want to leave; contrarily she felt connected, safe, a bond with these creatures.
Plus she didn't have any clothes.
When she had first arrived in the park she had shifted into a wolf - a loup - instinctively, without conscious thought, in order to reassure and nuzzle the melee of tired, excited, scared four-legged cubs trembling around her under the low bushes by the pond. She had realised as soon as she did so that all the cubs had instinctively shifted for warmth, their thick wolf pelts easily keeping out the slightly damp night.
In her furry, four-legged form, she had had no clothing. She now remembered standing on ripped denim after she'd shifted involuntarily, when that first tiny cub had whined plaintively, shivering against her. And ducking swiftly out of her loose, in-the-way jacket and T. Her underwear had also been annoyingly constrictive, and she'd soon ripped it off with her teeth. The cubs had helped.
Later, she had noticed many scraps of denim and soft cotton being used in tug-o-war by various of her charges, but had been too frazzled and freaked out at having to suddenly babysit hundreds of wolf cubs to really register what they were playing with.
Doh.
She'd also been worried. What would she do if some enemy found them? She couldn't fight a wolf as a human. And she couldn't seem to walk more than a wobble as a wolf, sorry loup. She had to
learn
.
The cubs had found it hilarious, watching her efforts to walk, and then, as she grew slightly less incompetent on her four tangling feet, to run. The majority of them had thought that it was a fantastic game, and had joined in cheekily copying her, running circles around her, or playing dare by trying to dash across in front of her embarrassingly inept lope without tripping her, or being licked in the face by her long wet tongue. The ones she managed to catch had squealed disgustedly at the wet slurp she had dealt out.
Annoying. She had seen Marsh shift wolf with his clothing disappearing with him, and he had originally shifted to human from wolf, sorry,
loup
, with his clothing
appearing
on him. Later she had seen Mac do it too, and Jasmine.
But right now, it looked like she was stuck in four-legged form, or stark naked in a park in the middle of Medway.
Bother.
So Gemma sat on the grassy hillside as a wolf, watching the wolves below trotting backwards and forwards among the sleepy cubs, hoping that Mac or Jasmine or even Marsh would appear.
Someone she would feel slightly less of an idiot asking.
The huge, frosty-coloured male was standing at the foot of her hill in the centre of the remaining cubs. He was obviously directing matters; the others adults approached and received a look, or a twitch of the ears, before weaving among the young pups and sniffing noses, nuzzling ears.
A few of the tired, torn and bloodstained adults curved immediately, without instruction, towards one specific pair of youngsters and had to hush echoing yips of joy as their offspring pounced on them in delight, or whiny complaints when they nudged tired children awake and into motion. Gemma felt her ears curving back in a smile as she watched a nearby set of four or five-year-olds tumbling ecstatically over and around their parent, trying to obey his gruff coughs for silence as they bounced up to nip under his jaw, quivering with joy when he nuzzled them affectionately and licked their small ears.
She also thought she had caught a glimpse of Ada, limping three-legged out of the darkness at the far side of the dwindling circle of cubs, but the mother wolf had disappeared again even as Gemma had risen to her feet to see better. Two exhausted little cubs had wobbled at her heels, and the mother wolf had been too intent on nuzzling them along and licking them over to look around. Besides, Gemma had never seen Ada as a wolf. But for some reason she was sure it had been her.
When the last pair of cubs had been settled with an adult and stumbled off into the darkness, the tall, frosty-coloured leader turned and looked at the lone female sitting on the hillside, the slight, rising breeze ruffling his fur towards her. His ears tilted towards her in query.
What did he want?
A number of other adults were appearing out of the darkness, hunting around in the bushes, settling wearily into places not taken by the families for what remained of the night. Others congregated by the edge of the pond and took long drinks before beginning to clean their fur and teeth, licking gently over closing wounds.
The frosty wolf ducked his head and began to advance gently towards Gemma, body swaying slightly in welcome, head tilted to one side. Gemma relaxed a little at the smile in his eyes as he approached, and she stood up, dropping her own head slightly, curving her back and shoulders into a wary arch as she looked up at him. He seemed friendly.
He slowed his trot a few paces away, halted, and then carefully reached his nose forwards. Gemma found herself responding automatically, extending her own nose and sniffing the warm, male scent of his breath against her nostrils. The hair on her back began to sink slightly at the lack of threat in his musk, and then a different ripple flowed along her skin as he circled carefully around toward her hindquarters, nose leading.
