The Second Covenant

“Druex?” I called and he poked his head in my closet. “Yeah?”
“You’d better call your cousins and tell them not to leave the bar.” I said quietly, so my parents wouldn’t hear. I slipped on a sweatshirt and sighed wearily. “Okay, any particular reason why?”
I fought the sniffle threatening me. “I made the corner stones of the building into ward stones. Bad Shadow thing can’t get in. It’s safe.”
He blinked owlishly at me. “You made my de-Club into a safe house?” I knew what he was, who and what his freakishly handsome cousins were. Did he not think I knew where he’d chosen to put his den? “Yes I made your DEN, into a safe house. You probably felt the big surge of power, kind of like an electrical charge.” He looked like he was struggling to understand, okay, maybe he was.

He couldn’t have known about me being a witch, he could only smell power, and wolf. Magic was new to him. Obviously. “Every building, old ones especially, have four stones, big ones, typically granite in Ipswich, that the foundations are built on.” He nodded and I tugged at the band on my hair, putting it up like I had was giving me a headache. Or maybe it was the odd hours. “Granite has flecks of minerals, crystal, precious stones. All of that can be used to hold power. So four stones, North, South, East and West, I had to use the circle on the dance floor to help me work the spell.”

His brow furrowed deeper and he sniffed delicately. “Is that why I smelled your blood after you left?” I nodded and pulled up my sleeve to show him the almost healed line. An angry growl made my womb clench and the inner wolf in me want to drop down and show our belly. Um, no. He was pissed off, so what? “You sliced open your arm? What the fuck were you thinking?” He tried to move closer but I backed up and a hurt expression flashed in his eyes before he stopped. “I’m not going to hurt you Cherish.” he murmured and I nodded. “I know, but every time you touch me I feel like I’ve got fur rubbing against my insides. It’s kind of disconcerting. Right now any way. Usually it’s…comforting.”

A ghost of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth and my mom poked her head in. “Cherish, your dad um…” I caught her looking at Druex’s backside and felt a growl slip past my lips. He was mine, my wolf. My mom lifted her brows at me and held up a shirt. “Your father doesn’t like half naked men in your bedroom.” I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.

I could smell Druex, the comforting scent of wolf, the laundry soap our housekeeper used to wash my clothes. The pair of dirty socks in the back corner of my gym bag. The softer scent of my own body, the masculine pulse of desire rolling off Druex. I shuddered as the wolf inside me rose up, pacing the bars of her cage, wanting to claim the powerful Alpha, wanting to be claimed.

I had to calm my beast, she was running purely on instinct and fumes, I could feel the natural need to put myself between my mom and Druex, show her my teeth, the flash of my claws…But I wasn’t wolf. I was human, witch. This was my mother, she had a mate, she was just looking…but maybe we should claw out her eyes, just in case. I shook that thought out of my head and pressed my hands over my eyes. “That’s good, shirt is good. Real good.”

I had my hands on my face and I could literally smell everything I’d touched today, like a scent map. And under that, was a very soft, subtle smell of wolf. Musky, sweeter than Druex or the others, female. I felt the air around me stir a moment before the scent of dominant male touched my nose. It smelled so good, I knew if I touched it, I could carry some of that good, warm scent with me. Pack.

I still had my eyes closed but I reached out and put my hands flat on bare skin, his scent meant more to me than the image of him. Druex. Safe. It was like my senses were working backwards. Smell, touch, sight. Primates didn’t think that way, but canids did. I vaguely remembered reading something about it in biology class. My hands touched that smooth, muscled body, his scent wreathing around me. He smelled so safe, so warm, and we were cold and afraid. “It’s okay Cherish.” He whispered, and I felt the fur of my wolf rise up inside me, rolling sensuously, rubbing...

The sensation was not unpleasant, it was like the way a cat might twine around your legs for affection. Except that fur was sliding places not even a lover could touch. I could feel his power, a rush of hot, scalding fire that would have burned anyone but me. I felt his wolf, felt the rumbling growl, felt him calling me gently to him. I struggled, if we answered that, we would hurt, we would die. “Smell the pack, know you’re safe.” Druex’s voice, the words sounded like some kind of ritual and my wolf let go of her fear with a shudder.

His hands coiled over my wrists, like he was going to pull my hands away, no! But he didn’t push us away, he pulled us closer. Pulled us into the strength of his arms. Held us safe. My nose was pressed against his chest, breathing in his power, the smell of wolf, and forest, and sky. And desire.

I felt the power between us merge, melt together, the beast rose through my body, like a great leviathan from the depths of a dark ocean inside me, where all my magic lived. It grew and grew until I thought I couldn’t hold it back anymore. But then it touched his beast and stopped. Stood still, hovering in the black water, ears flicking curiously. The two powers floated in that dark water, brushing huge, sleek sides down the lengths of their bodies, our bodies. It was like velvet rubbing inside me, but this velvet had skin and muscle, hard where I was soft.

The imagery inside my mind was that huge silver wolf rolling around inside me, playing, soothing, calming my wolf. “Is this normal?” I whispered and smelled, yeah smelled, him smile. “No, but it’s not bad.”
“It looks bad.” My father said tightly from the doorway of my closet. “I’m sure it does. What happened last night was really bad. I had no idea Cherish was unaware of her wolf.” I almost groaned as I smelled my father’s fury mount. “Daddy, don’t.”
“That was you.” He growled and Druex’s arms around me tightened. “Yes.” I could scent his grief, the pain it caused him for me to hurt. “I’m okay.” I told him softly and one of his hands rose to my hair. “I can explain everything, mostly everything.”

I was tired, so damn tired. I just wanted to sleep, wrapped up in the scent of my pack. My mate. I didn’t have to choose, my wolf chose for me. He was the strongest, most powerful, my equal. Ulfric to my Lupa. “What’s a Lupa?” I asked him and I heard the sound of his heart skip a beat. “How do you know that word?” Druex asked me gently and I shrugged. “Don’t know. There’s lots of words I’m thinking, that I’ve never heard before.”
“Are we going to talk about this in my daughter’s closet or can we move somewhere else?” My father snapped and I flinched, his anger, the smell of it lashing at me, making me want to strike out, my wolf growled inside me. “Somewhere else I think, where the air isn’t so thick.”
“What?”
Mother, safe.

I felt like I was a purely instinctual creature, my eyes closed and my nose telling me where I was safe and where I was not. “What happened last night, what I did, drew out a dormant part of Cherish. The baser nature of her wolf. If she was purely a shifter, purely werewolf, she would have changed last night and been fine. But since she isn’t, she’s kind of stuck in between. At the point where the beast is trying to get out, but you don’t know how to let it.”

He moved his hand down my spine in a soothing stroke and I sighed. “Her senses are overwhelmed with all kinds of things, smells, tones of voice, emotions, all of that isn’t being processed the way a human would think or react. It’s all wolf. Wild, potentially violent. In here she‘s smelling everything, you, me, the pair of dirty socks that fell down behind her dresser over there.”

Behind my wolf brain, there was a human blushing in embarrassment that he could smell them too. “It’s overwhelming her to the point where she can’t think straight. A newly bitten wolf is kept away from the pack, usually by an Alpha until they learn how to cope and differentiate between their newer, heightened senses. I thought she’d been through that phase already. I wouldn’t have come to her yesterday like I did if I’d known that she hadn’t.”