putain.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Evening found Katherine Bellamonte still contained inside the warmth of the Brotherhood. The Silver Fang had spent much of her afternoon being at once entertained and provoked by one of her own cousins, one by the name of William D'Aubigne. Her own research into that boy's family tree brought many skeletons from the closet, some raising even Katherine's eyebrows at the level of concealment one would have had to go to keep such details from the gossip mongers of the Silver Fang tribe.

Now, however, she was quietly nestled on the second floor on a sofa in the common area; a plate of sliced fruit and cheeses sat before her on the low table and a bottle of red wine was uncorked; a single glass receiving the benefit of time to sit before it was sipped at by the blond heiress, she being rather absorbed with her regal nose buried in a novel; feet daintily curled beneath her.

The Brotherhood was still and silent; a rare occurrence in these last few weeks.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] At some point Lukas joins Katherine. He doesn't ask permission; he doesn't greet her or heckle her.

He simply brings his plate from downstairs, sets it next to her and sits down beside her. It's all very understated and natural, like siblings, like close family, like packmates: creatures that would sit next to each other without any forethought whatsoever, or any thought whatsoever of sitting somewhere not next to each other.

Unlike hers, his plate carries herbed red potatoes and red meat: lamb, of course, loin chops tonight, thick nuggets of browned meat still dark pink at the core. He has a glass too, which he fills from her bottle, but not before he refills her glass first -- twisting the bottle at the end both times deftly to catch the last trailing drop on the lip.

Then, setting the bottle back down, he picks up his knife and fork and tucks into his meal.

"Yum," he says at one point. Perhaps he's bragging. She only has fruit and cheese, after all.

[Katherine Bellamonte] The differences in their relationships within the pack are curious. This is not the manner in which Sam would join Katherine; there would have to be some vocal greeting, some manner of deference from the Modi before he sat beside her, before he sampled from her wine bottle. Were it Mrena, she would perhaps have a sketchpad in hand, would stare longingly at the slope of the Silver Fang's neck when she curved it, or adopted a pose crying out for charcoal and paper.

But when it came to Lukas, there was rarely this type of formality.

Oh, they observed their own kind of etiquette toward one another but it was different, somehow, to the rest of the pack. Some might have gone so far as to call it the forced camaraderie of co-conspirators to the crown of Alphaship.

Regardless: he sits down beside her, almost on top of her foot and she slides the appendage from harm's way without raising her eyes from the page. He helps himself to her wine; she frowns before she looks toward the offending party but still does not speak. She shifts her weight against the arm of the sofa and drops her chin down further along her arm as if to maintain her solitude no matter the cost.

It is not until he begins sawing into his lamb that she finally reacts; her head lifts and she closes her book with a long-suffering sigh. "You are the noisiest Shadow Lord I have ever encountered."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Co-conspirators, sadly, is the last thing Lukas would call himself and Katherine. Surely la dame de bellamonte, with her stronger-than-steel thicker-than-blood family ties, felt some shame about the public and brutal manner in which her brother had been deposed and herself raised to the throne. Perhaps it's that guilt that niggles at her now and then -- in between bouts of, let's admit it, sheer and total self-satisfaction -- that makes her look upon Lukas as some sort of co-conspirator, some sort of partner in a most heinous crime.

For Lukas, what had been done was unpleasant, but utterly necessary. As necessary as smacking his kinwoman twice across the face. As necessary as flushing Katherine's kinsman's head in a toilet. As necessary as tearing the entrails from a Dancer Garou that, whatever else, still bore the same blessing of Gaia every last one of them did.

This is war. There are casualties. You accept them; you move on; you do not feel anger, or shame, or hate, or guilt over any of it.

And so he sits by her without discomfort. He might almost seem to enjoy her company -- not for the fact that she is Katherine but for the fact that she is pack. And he eats: with a raw, healthy appetite, uttering a fullmouthed 'yum' when the first perfectly-grilled flavor of lamb and spices and woodfire bursts onto his tongue.

Katherine calls him a noisy Shadow Lord and he laughs aloud, through a mouthful of lamb and potatoes. Picks up his glass and takes a swallow of wine to wash it all down.

"What would you prefer, that I skulked quietly in the corners and plotted evil things?" He stabs another chunk of lamb, eats it, and then picks his glass up again. "Anyway," more serious now, "I thought we should talk."

[Katherine Bellamonte] She wears her guilt over her brother's fall from grace like a pendant pressed close to her heart beneath her clothing. That the two elder Bellamontes had long been inseparable made this betrayal more than simply what needed to be done in Katherine's black and white universe. It was her own great sacrifice, her own scarlet letter to wear -- Gaia had set her on her course and demanded that she shed more than simply Wyrm blood but that sacred blood that subsisted in her very veins.

Her brother's.

She had become her own Judas.
Such was Gaia's will, so it shall be done.

Lukas laughs; scoffs at her with a mouthful of half masticated lamb and potato and the Philodox's expression draws into a mingled reaction of both fond disgust and humor. "Atrocious." She comments without any real rancor and shifts to sit forward and stab a square of cheese with a toothpick, she adds an olive and leans back, brows raised as Lukas turns somber.

"Oh yes? What should we talk about?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Well."

He takes a sip of wine, sets it aside, and turns his head to looks directly at the Philodox. Lukas has a certain innate intensity in his eyes -- the color, the clarity, the rage that, tempered by will, became a sort of inner fire.

"First," quietly, "I wanted you to know that whatever our personal relationship has or hasn't been in the past, you are my Alpha now and I will serve you as I did your brother.

"I will act as your advisor, your enforcer, and your advocate in situations when you cannot, will not or should not be present. In public, you will have no stauncher ally than I. I will back your play, no matter what it is. In private, you will have only honest counsel from me -- even if you don't like hearing it. I promise you now, I'll continue to serve to the best of my ability, with nothing but the best interests of this pack, and you, in mind."

There's a certain naked honesty in all this. If it's a vow of allegiance, it's a startlingly stripped-down one: no ceremony, no pomp, no circumstance. Nothing but a quiet matter-of-factness that makes this less a vow than a statement of self-evident truth. When he's finished, he doesn't wait to see her reaction. He simply goes back to his food.

[Katherine Bellamonte] There is something very hard to bear about a Garou's eyes when they were fully focused upon you. Perhaps it was the sensation that all their inner rage and potential for bloodshed was being force-fed directly into you through some invisible force and only breaking eye contact would free you from it. It was not quite this hard to tolerate when they were among others of their kind but tonight it is with Katherine in particular that the moon sides.

It is her temper that is far easier to fray than most.

Still; she has not yet been greatly tempted to erupt and turns on the sofa to listen to Lukas' quietly impassioned speech -- no, perhaps that is not quite the right word for it for as honest as he speaks there is little emotion behind it -- it is the bare bones of a dedication of purpose; though Katherine seems to find it acceptable enough, for she only continues to look at him; then at the top of his head as he returns to his food for a moment or two more before she turns her head -- "Well, then," -- and reaches to collect her wine glass and hold it upright.

"A toast to the renewed Unbroken Circle."

This time, there is no Edward to interrupt it; Katherine's measured smile, the lack of fire in her eyes suggests she is aware, only too aware, of it.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She reclines on the couch; he leans forward to eat. When she speaks, he looks at her over his shoulder. Lukas has come in from out of doors. His hair is somewhat flattened, as though he's been wearing his newsboy cap (which he has). Though he left his coat and gloves and scarf and cap in his room before coming in here to join Katherine, he's still dressed for the day: distressed jeans, fitted wool vest, both dark; woven shirt, rumpled, light, and no tie.

There's a pause. Then he picks up his wineglass and, wryly, clinks it to hers. He drains it to the bottom and then reaches for the bottle to pour. Once again, it's her first, him second, and that's the last of it -- the bottle is empty, and he stuffs the cork back on, sets it on the floor.

"Now, then. Did you want to continue our conversation last night?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] He refills her glass but in truth there is not so much to refill, Katherine has never been a heavy drinker, her one and only time of overindulgence had been in the (relative) safety of her own home; though her company had been a Kinsman quite out of his senses on various narcotics. Still; she sips from her glass after Lukas refills it a few times before leaning back to rest against the arm of the sofa so that she is facing the Shadow Lord as he eats.

Katherine's outer garments had been shed when she arrived earlier in the day and she now wore only her white slacks and blouse; the pearls she so dearly loved to toy with were strung around her neck however they were black this evening, not their usual gleaming white.

Now, then.

Katherine draws her legs upright and rests one wrist over a knee, casually dangling her wineglass as if uncaring if the substance slopped over her clothing. "That being the conversation you so firmly announced to me was closed for discussion?"

She tilts her head, brows raised. "I am aware that you and Sam do not approve of Ilari's... weaknesses," she stresses. "But it has been dealt with. He is clean. I saw to it." Is that a hint of discomfort, that shades the dear Miss Bellamonte's face? No, it couldn't be.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a very faint little smile tugging at the corners of Lukas' mouth as he quietly cuts another wedge off his lamb chop -- the second out of four -- and dips it in mint sauce before eating it. The meat is well-seared on the outside, but the center is nearly red, very tender. Lukas manages not to say 'Yum' this time.

Instead, "Well; the half regarding my kinfolk was closed. I wasn't sure about yours." And since she continues, he raises an eyebrow as if to say, See?

He puts down his knife and fork a moment later. Simply picks up the lamb chop by its t-shaped piece of bone and, sitting back, begins to eat it with great and tender relish. One thinks of lions on the savanna, licking the flesh of dead prey.

She calls her kinfolk clean, and Lukas gives her a look of quiet skepticism. "For now," he says.

Then he shrugs. "Like I said," he says between bites, "what goes on between you and your kin isn't pack business, so long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to function as our Alpha." He pauses to look at her, directly and gravely. "You don't have to explain yourself to me, Kate. We don't always want what's best for us."

[Katherine Bellamonte] She makes a face of clear disgust as he sets his cutlery aside and begins to gnaw at the lamb bone as if he were a stray dog at a trash-bin. Katherine straightens her wine-glass and leans across her folded legs to set it on the low table. She plucks a vine of grapes from the platter and as if to demonstrate the great and wonderful divide between the Shadow Lord's display and her own, discreetly picks a single grape from the vine and bites it in half, chewing with her lips sealed together.

Skepticism receives a sharp glance: "For good."

The remainder of the fruit is devoured, and the Silver Fang twists another from the collection between her deft fingers. "I know I don't have to explain myself," she snaps back, her temper rising a modicum. She purses her lips, and looks away, chewing furiously with a furrowed brow.

"But you have no idea how careful I must be around Gabriella. If I make a mistake, she will be even more willful than usual." A wryness crept back into Katherine's voice, tinged somewhere in there with a fondness rarely glimpsed in the Philodox if not toward one or the other of her siblings.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] For now.
For good.

And Lukas just makes a small shrug, one shoulder up and down, as if to say: We'll see.

Nothing further, though. He doesn't expound on the qualities of addiction; he doesn't further besmirch Martin's name. And when Kate snaps, he gives her a look, half-curious, half-amused. He keeps eating. She picks off a grape daintily, like a wellbred human being. He sucks meat off the bone, like an animal. In the end, they're both a little of each.

Then the Philodox's hackles settle. She mentions Gabbie, and Lukas is quiet; he's thoughtful. He finishes eating his lamb chop and tosses the bone back onto the plate, picks up another. Leans back this time, swinging his legs onto the couch altogether, facing Katherine now, sliding down until the back of his head is to the back of the couch. Eating grapes, cheese, red wine and red meat while lounging on a couch: how decadent, how Roman.

"I've never seen you make a single mistake, Kate." It must be unexpected, how he randomly bestows these compliments on her. Or -- they're not even compliments, even. They're simply statements of fact. "I've seen you do a lot of petty, shortsighted things that made me want to roll my eyes, but you have never once done something that made me feel like I had to put my janitor cap on and clean up the mess.

"So. If that's any consolation, I doubt you'll do something to set a bad example for Gabriella."

There's a pause.

"Is there anything else you wanted to discuss about Martin?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] It's hard sometimes when she is in this mood to be certain what remark will get her back up, will bristle the proverbial fur of an edgy Half Moon. As Lukas tosses his body back on the sofa and faces her she adjusts her weight and so they become mirrored; on one side the regality of a Silver Fang and on the other the darker form of a Shadow Lord.

The bookends of a pack.

Its strength and its wisdom.

Katherine continues to sample her fruit and Lukas devours another lamb chop. And then he tells her she has never made a single mistake and oh, how the female seems to straighten at the words of seeming praise from her second in command. She does nothing as girlish as glow with delight or break into a nervously exuberant fit of laughter but rather she quietly absorbs his words with her own brand of relish; a smile on her lips.

"And to think, at least ninety per cent of that was a compliment. I am flattered, Lukas. Should I not mark this date for posterity?"

There's a pause.

Katherine's smile dims; it is an opening for a discussion that she could broach but cannot. There are some aspects of her life that she continues to hoard jealously to herself as if fearful they will be torn away by the very war they fight. "Non. There is nothing that needs to be discussed."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A quiet laugh at that, as he tears the last shred of flesh from its bone with his teeth. He tosses that bone onto his plate too, and now there's only one chop left, and some potatoes.

The truth is, Lukas and Katherine have been getting along better lately. Lukas doesn't make any mention of this; neither does Katherine. And neither of them say a word about how this probably has something, everything, to do with the fact that Edward -- the focus and cusp of their attentions and disagreements -- has more or less retreated into obscurity.

Katherine shuts down all further discussion of Martin, and Lukas doesn't seem particularly bothered. "All right," he says, sucks his fingers clean, and then leans sideways to snag the napkin from under his plate. He wipes his fingers clean one by one, methodically. "Because there's something else you need to know."

He folds the napkin before setting it aside. The very fact that Lukas has bothered to preamble this should be a forewarning to her. When he looks at her again, his gaze is very direct, and his tone quite deliberate.

"Kate, I saw Gabriella coming out of a Planned Parenthood." His eyes search her face for some sign of comprehension, and when he sees it, doesn't bother to elaborate on the services provided by the organization. "She admitted she was there for emergency contraception." Another pause. "It was a Garou."

[Katherine Bellamonte] (WP: 'I'm down, I've got the 411 and you are not going out and gettin' jiggy with some boy' aka: don't freak out)

[Katherine Bellamonte] The truth is, Katherine and Lukas have lost perhaps the one true source of resentment that came between them in Edward's fall from grace as Alpha of the Unbroken Circle.

The truth is, Katherine has experienced her first moment of complete peace in the arms of a Kinsman twice her age who was once mated to another of her Auspice and who has problems she cannot even begin to fathom.

The truth is, Katherine Bellamonte has every reason to smile, and every reason to waken in the morning with a renewed sense of purpose -- her dreams have never been so close at hand. The truth is --

Kate, I saw Gabriella coming out of a Planned Parenthood.

-- Katherine's expression slowly hardens --

She admitted she was there for emergency contraception.

-- she stares, unseeingly through her Beta's searching gaze --

It was a Garou.

They can both feel it; the rise of her Rage is like horrid, bitter bile rising in her throat with pieces of half-digested grape and cheese. The grapes lay forgotten in her lap, one hand still grasping the stem. Color begins to wash up the Philodox's neck, the flush is born not of some mortal reaction to embarrassment but is the battle with her inner desire to let the change overtake her; and tear the common-room apart, stick of furniture by stick of furniture.

Her vision does not turn blood-red, though.

She parts her lips, attempts a word and stalls. Again.

Dead calm only strikes before the storm: "Did you get a name?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "No."

They pretend calm very well. Neither of them move, or leap to their feet, or shout, or throw things. She's reacting better to this than to his laughing at her.

"It wasn't Hatchet. Beyond that, she wouldn't say. I didn't press her; I told her I would tell you, and you would handle it as you liked."

[Katherine Bellamonte] "It wasn't... Hatchet?"

She breathes out, and then begins to laugh; her fingers clenching into the upholstery of the sofa hard enough to sever the worn old threads and dig holes where her fingernails slide through. Several of them snap beneath the pressure she exerts; the Philodox bows her head as she laughs; manically, her lean body strained and shaking.

Fur erupts beneath her blouse; splits the delicate silk along the forearms before she swallows her rage back down. "It wasn't Hatchet." She cries, and then with violence throws herself from the sofa, her torn blouse now hanging in threads from her arms like ribbons.

"THEN WHO WAS IT?" She screams, her fingers delving into the lengths of her hair, tearing strands of fair hair from her skull that, most likely, she does not even register. "Who would dare to touch -- to -- to DEFILE MY OWN flesh and BLOOD?" Katherine slaps her palm against her chest; her pearl necklace rebounds against the violence of that action.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Some part of Lukas, to whom control is paramount, must be appalled. Some part of Lukas must be thinking back on his earlier statement, that she's never made him feel as though he might have to put on his janitor cap and clean up after her mess, with great and sardonic irony.

Superficially, however, the Ahroun is still as a frozen lake. He watches the Philodox, well, lose her shit; the angle of his regard changes, but he doesn't get up.

The grapes have tumbled off her lap. They lie on the cushions, some of which are punctured now (again), and if they're not careful someone will step in them. The grapes of wrath, Lukas thinks to himself, absurdly. The grapes of wrath from the lands east of eden.

And, very calmly: "I don't know, Katherine. But I guarantee you, if you go to Gabriella howling and screaming like that, you won't find out either unless you mean to beat it out of her."

Which is, of course, an option in Lukas' mind.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Were she not preoccupied by her own surge of Rage and momentary madness; were her brain not currently firing off the synaptic message that suggested she needed to adopt her war form and storm off across the Umbral plain in search of, who -- every Garou in the near vicinity that may or may not have carried her sister's scent on them -- she might very well have felt some degree of shame for her outburst.

As it stands, though, Katherine is far too preoccupied with pacing back and forth, her hands linked at the base of her neck as if she were engaged in some elaborate pre-exercise stretch, muttering to herself in french. It was no hard guess to wonder what sort of things she was saying; the snarling undertone was quite easy to read.

Lukas speaks; her anchor of calm in a storm and the Philodox whirls around; her eyes wide, wild. She looks at him, her cheeks flushed; hair tousled in all directions from her frantic tugging and seems to find some small hand-hold on her sanity; precarious as it is.

"Oui, Oui. But I must go to her, I must go now, Lukas. This must be answered for."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He'd said not twenty minutes ago that in private, he would advise her in the only way he knew how: selflessly, to what he saw as her best interest, and whether or not she wanted to hear it.

He proves himself honest now when he says, "No, Kate."

Just like that: not a command but a quiet, steady statement. His opinion, offered, neither humbly nor overbearingly. He hasn't moved: he remains relaxed on the couch, half-reclining, though now he's lifted the back of his head from the back cushions. His hands are motionless on his thighs; one foot is on the floor, the other leg folded sideways on the couch cushions.

"I don't think you're in any state of mind to track your sister down right now. Whatever happened, she had the presence of mind to act immediately to prevent any issue." He's using the word in its archaic sense there, and there's no pun intended. "I don't think she'll be off compounding her mistake right now."

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine lowers her arms from behind her neck and runs her fingers -- the motion speaking to her frenetic, enraged state -- through her long hair, spiking it between her hands before she drops them; drops herself with a few energized, jumpy steps back onto the couch cushions across from her pack-mate.

"To prevent any --," she breathes out, once, and raises a palm, fingers curled outward as if warding off his words. "Lukas, if my family discovers what has taken place here, what she has done they will remove Gabriella from my care. They will take her away."

The Philodox seems to lose some of her strength now; sagging against the back of the couch, her noble shoulders lowered in defeat. "I have failed her yet again. This will be thrown back in my face, mark my words."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "You can't be expected to watch your sister 24/7," Lukas replies, quiet and reasonable. "I don't even live in the same time zone as my sister. And it's not your fault that Gabriella is ... willful."

He picks up the strand of grapes she'd dropped. Instead of passing them back, he eats them, stripping the fruit off the vine until all that remains is the vine itself, gnarled and green. He tosses that onto the coffee table and picks up his plate, bringing it onto his lap along with his fork.

"And frankly," low, "while it's dishonorable for a Garou to bed down with your sister without so much as a by-your-leave, it's not the end of the world, Kate. She's not pregnant. She didn't even seem particularly attached."

[Katherine Bellamonte] Muffled, her fingers rubbing at the bridge of her nose: "Is that supposed to be comforting to me? That she simply deigned to turn herself into a --," The lean blond drops her hands to her lap and throws her head back against the sofa; eyes closed.

Comically, her silk blouse now looks artistically shredded and being whom she was there was little doubt that Katherine could march down the stairs dressed precisely as she was and somehow carry the look away as intentional. It helped, one supposed, when you were tall, graceful and in possession of an enviable figure.

"If it were your sister," she offers, wonders, turning her face to regard him. "Would it trouble you?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "If a Garou fucked my sister without so much as telling me, I would be livid. I'd want to tear his head off." Not a second of pause there. The pause comes after, when the words are already scarlet in the air.

Then, "That would be my gut reaction. But if I thought about it, if I didn't instantly fly into a fury and go rampaging, I'd talk to my sister. I'd ask her what the hell was going on and why she thought giving herself to a Garou that hadn't the honor to even tell me he was taking my sister out to dinner, much less taking her to bed, was a good idea. And if she could give me a good answer -- even if that answer was because I wanted to, and I know what I'm doing, and I'll tell you if I'm in trouble -- then I think I'd let her live her life as she pleased."

A beat.

"But that's my big sister, who was my big sister before I was her Garou guardian. And she's nearly twenty-five years old, smart as a whip, and levelheaded. I trust her judgment. Frankly, the only reason I'd even be concerned would be that it was a Garou, which that automatically makes it complicated. So I suppose the question is, do you trust Gabbie's judgment?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine thinks of her younger sister as a toddler, when the difference between them was non-existant. She thinks of her sister when she was fifteen and proudly sporting her first bra and Gabriella was hiding behind doors, stealing peeks of her elder sister in her underclothes because she was thirteen and getting to wear a bra sounded far more glamourous than any other thing in her world.

Katherine pictures her sister the first after she Changed; the way she could scent her fear like never before.

She thinks of Gabriella with Hatchet; of the library and the deliberate manner she stalked away from the car that snowy night. Katherine conjures an eighteen years long historical wrap-sheet on her sister in her minds-eye after Lukas offers her his own opinion and finally, heavily:

"I used to think so, but her decisions of late leave me wondering if I know her in the slightest. I cannot fathom who she would possibly find enough in common with to take to her bed."

[Katherine Bellamonte] A beat. She adds, quietly: "Maybe that is what makes me furious, the thought that she took some stranger to her bed."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas pauses, his fork spearing a potato on his plate.

"I don't think it has anything to do with having anything in common," he says, carefully. There's no easier way to say it; but at least he wasn't screaming kurva at Gabriella. "

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (waugh! halfbaked post!)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas pauses, his fork spearing a potato on his plate.

"I don't think it has anything to do with having anything in common," he says, carefully. There's no easier way to say it; but at least he wasn't screaming kurva at Gabriella. "I think you're right; it may well have been a stranger. I don't think it was about her mystery lover at all.

"My first instinct was that she must've been seeing Hatchet again. But she denied it, and I don't think she lied. Besides -- I don't think Hatchet was interested in her quite in the way you and Ed so feared. And I think that may have been part of the problem."

He resumes eating, finishing up the last of his meal now. All that remains is a lamb chop, which he eats the way he ate the first one, with fork and knife.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine mulls over his words and sits forward to reclaim her half-consumed glass of wine; she drinks heavily from it as if it were a glass of water and sits back, pressing it against her brow like a damp cloth.

"Putain." She surmises succinctly, what Lukas did not say, what they are both thinking, what the situation merits labeling. The revelation regarding Hatchet's interest draws her eyes; and she folds herself onto her knees; her face drawn into a faint scowl at mention of the name alone. "I should have known that he would somehow be a part of this, he probably broke her heart and Gabriella, that silly, stupid girl ran off and -- " Katherine gestured with her wine glass.

"I do not think I shall return to the Loft tonight, I am liable to tear her to pieces. I will bunk with Mrena."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Putain, she calls her sister, and this makes Lukas frown.

"Don't say that," he says -- this is the first time he's spoken sharply to Katherine since she took the proverbial crown. "She's your sister."

[Katherine Bellamonte] "Yes, Lukas, she is my sister. My little golden sister who has been sheltered and protected all her life and now it is my duty to go to her and make her confess to me all the details I do not wish to know about how, when and why she had sex with a member of the Nation without even coming to me for advice."

There is, behind the cruel words, behind the Rage and the fury and Katherine's infuriating proper manner of speaking, genuine hurt. Not the hurt of a scorned Alpha; but simply that of an older sister toward an overindulged younger who had forgotten her.

"And then I have the marvelous duty of finding out this Garou and demanding contrition for what may, for all I am knowledgeable, have been not his idea but hers!"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I don't envy you the task," Lukas replies, gently. He cuts off the last bit of meat, leaving the shreds on the bone that will take hand and tooth to pull off, and looks frankly at her. "Do you want me to go with you, when you talk to her?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] She considers this, her eyes vaguely narrowed in thought toward the far wall. "It is probably best left handled by me alone." A beat, she finishes the last of her wine in a rapid swallow and sets her glass on the table.

"I am not sure even Edward would be of much help, not after..." She grimaces mildly, and fingers the tattered end of her blouse. "I would have you at my side when I discover the identity of the Garou, however. That may be an encounter that requires more than one of us."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Of course." He puts his plate aside, leaning sideways to do so; wipes his hands off on the napkin, tosses that down too. "We may as well bring Sam too, if you think it's going to be rough." Wry, "It's not possible to have too many Ahrouns."

[Katherine Bellamonte] She gives an equally wry laugh, though hers is perhaps more brittle than his. "It would not hurt, I am sure, to arrive with my guns blazing behind me, as they say." Katherine begins to rise, and then, perhaps on a spur of the moment thought pauses and locks eyes with her Beta.

"Thank you for telling me this, I am sure it was not the most pleasant of things to bear to your new Alpha." Quietly, she rises fully now, and rakes a hand over her scalp.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas merely makes a small gesture with his shoulders, something like a shrug.

"It's my duty," he says, simply. And then, looking up at her -- composed again, though her sleeves are torn and her hair is a little disheveled -- he adds, "Goodnight, Katherine."