the drive home.

[Danicka Musil] They've been in the car for perhaps five minutes, give or take, when Danicka -- not silent, but generally quiet til this point, a little sleepy from food and from conversation and the hour, a little thoughtful on doing this again sometime, maybe at Kingsbury Plaza -- turns to Lukas and asks quite simply: "Why wouldn't you let me serve you at dinner?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] They don't make a big deal out of traditional gender roles; over who should pay for dinner, and who should drive, and who should clean the house. Lukas is as comfortable riding in the passenger's seat as he is driving his mate home from some dinner, some social gathering, some outing or other.

And he is. Comfortable, and quiet, and calm: sitting with his hand relaxed in his lap, his head back against the headrest, buzzing gently in the afterglow of one too many shots of vodka. When she speaks, he turns to her idly, lazily. Only a second later does the question really register.

He lifts his head. A faint frown accompanies that spark of renewed awareness in his eye. He's quiet for a moment. Then, "Because you're not my servant. You're my mate."

[Danicka Musil] She drank less as the evening wore on because she knew she would be driving. She wanted to drive. And she could not simply shift in the bathroom for half a minute and be sober again. So she drank more water instead of wine or vodka the late the hour went, and when she felt a little more steady on her feet -- a state which for many people would still be too tipsy, but given Danicka's tolerance was acceptable to her -- and they were ready to go she leaned her head on his shoulder.

Which was enough of a signal to him that his mate was getting tired. Tired of company, perhaps. Tired of people. Tired of being there. And no matter how pleasant, that happens. Eventually you want to go home, and be alone or with someone who makes you feel so much more yourself that it is as refreshing to be with them as it is to be by yourself.

She keeps her eyes forward mostly. The glance given to him was brief, before she turned back to her driving. They're still staying at the den in Stickney. He asked for a couple of days there, and it's only been a single night.

Danicka does not sound upset when she asks. Curious. Maybe a little confused. And her neat little brows pull together a little at his answer. "Filling your plate would not change that."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "It made me think of how you filled your brother's plate in your father's house."

Perhaps it's because he's still buzzed that he answers so simply, so easily, so quietly. And that says something: that he lets himself get buzzed around her. That he has, at least on one occasion, let himself get utterly plastered in her presence.

[Danicka Musil] Because she has never met his parents -- not since she was maybe nine or ten years old, that is -- Danicka has no idea what they are like. She has no idea what changed for Lukas at home when it became known he was Garou. Not to mention when he Changed, when he was named, when he was no longer Lukasek to them but Wyrmbreaker-rhya.

If they called him rhya, that is. The way Danicka was raised, Kinfolk were not to use terms such as rhya, absolutely could never use yuf, could not participate in such things or even, in many cases, know about them. She is surprised when Kinfolk do so. She is a little worried, when she hears it.

Beside the point, which is: she doesn't know that when he goes 'home', his parents fill his plate and do not treat him like their son. All she knows is what he tells her now, which has to do with her own family, not his.

"I also filled my father's," she says gently. "And you are not my brother."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She's driving. Her eyes have to stay on the road. So Lukas reaches out to her, his warm hand covering hers, his fingers curving into her palm.

"I know you don't do it to serve me. I know you do it because I'm your mate, and you want to ... take care of me. But sometimes, especially when we're not alone and there are others watching, it makes me feel like you're playing the part you've had to play."

He thinks for a moment, his thumb tracing a slow arc across the back of her hand; the delicate bones and tendons there subtly felt beneath her skin. Danicka takes care of herself. He sees her moisturizing after baths. He sees her winding her hair up to dry, smoothing lotion into her cheeks, the backs of her hands; her face gently flushed from the warmth of the water, her eyes clear and large without the light makeup he knows she wears sometimes.

He saw a version of her, too, a future version of her projected from everything he knows of her. It was not a vision of the future, or even of a future, but it still rang true with everything he's seen. He saw that version of her, a few years older now, her time divided and her will toughened by three children, at least one of whom will go on to Change, and by a mate who's lived with her as much as he could for five, six years; who at least semi-regularly brings troops of Garou into their home; whom she's had to guide gently and firmly through the paces of Garou fatherhood and the inexorable dichotomy between the need to be close and the need to be away from his own offspring.

That version of her didn't have time to smooth lotion quite so luxuriously across her skin after every bath. That version of her didn't have time to go to the spa, to pay to be pampered, to laze away entire afternoons sunning on the roof of her skyscraper apartment. That version of her still sometimes set aside time on a Sunday afternoon to manicure her nails, though, to take care of her hands and do this one little thing for herself that was entirely for herself.

He thinks of this, and it makes him draw a deeper breath; makes him ache gently; makes him bring her hand to his mouth and kiss her knuckles.

"Maybe I could fill your plate too sometimes," he says quietly. "And then maybe I wouldn't mind so much."

[Danicka Musil] It's worth being thankful for that Danicka chose to buy an automatic car. She doesn't know how to drive a manual, anyway. But it means she doesn't have to shift, and she's gotten enough practice to drive with one hand on the wheel, without much tension in her fingers or her spine or, really, any part of her. She is glad she does not have to pull her hand gently from his at any point in order to drive. She is grateful that they're on the highway and there isn't much turning or maneuvering to be done. She can let him have her hand, and for some time.

He thinks about the version of her that he now knows may never exist. Lukas knows -- well, he can guess -- how rich she is. He knows she bought this car brand new after her old one was destroyed in a wreck. He knows that now she keeps an apartment that is over three thousand dollars a month just in rent. He knows that she goes to school and no longer works. She goes to the salon and she suns herself on the rooftop garden and she has all the time in the world to attend yoga classes, hit the firing range, do whatever she likes. She spends hours on raids on WoW and has multiple characters at level 70.

It's unlikely she'll ever really live a life where she can't afford a nanny for at least a few hours a day so she can continue school. Or work. Or get a massage, when she will probably seriously need one. She might still do her nails at the table on Sundays. She might make cinnamon rolls for breakfast on those days, cover them in thin icing, and get the children they don't have and yet -- albeit distantly -- hope for

sticky-faced and smiling when their father walks in from a night of War or a night with his pack, waving at him from the table because they know better than to get up from their seats without asking to be excused.

Her hands now are soft and delicate, her nails neatly kept, lightly painted. She looks older than she is, because her life has aged her prematurely. She looks like she takes care of herself. And she does, because almost no one else ever has, and she knows nothing else.

She's quiet for a few moments. "Other people watching makes a difference," she concedes (and confesses). "But them being there is also why I felt... a little publically rejected."

Danicka looks over at him again, as though to check on his reaction to that. "I was showing you that I cared for you, and wanted to take care of you," she adds, as though in explanation. "Because I'm your mate.

"But also, baby..." and this she pauses over, smiling gently and quickly at him before turning back to the road, "I just wanted to give you food."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His reaction to that -- a quick flicker of a frown, a furrowing of the brow that passes almost as quickly as it comes. He draws a breath and kisses her hand again, softer this time, meditative.

Lukas has sprawled out a little more as they talked, and as she drives farther from the Krutovas'. He rides with his seatback leaned back farther than he would if he were driving; with his seat pushed back to give his six-foot-four's worth of legs room. His elbow is on the center divide, her hand held in his; when he raises his hand as though to prop his cheek on his fist, it's her knuckles that he rests against his face -- the hard line of his cheekbone and the faint scuffle of his beard-bristle tangible against her hand.

"Je mi to líto," he says softly. "I was so concerned with not making you feel like a servant that I didn't think of how I might make you feel rejected."

He's quiet after that, listening. When she looks at him, she sees his profile, his eyebrows lowered over his eyes. At this angle, side-on, the irises are so clear; refractive even in this dim light of a suburban highway. Ice-eyed. Sky-eyed. Not cold, though: not to her. His hand still clasps hers gently, familiarly. And his thumb still traces the back of her hand, over and over, leaving traceries of warm in its wake.

And then, turning as she does the second time, returning her quick smile almost out of reflex, "Okay." He thinks about this a little more. And then he says it again, a little firmer: "Okay. I won't worry so much about it next time."

[Danicka Musil] "Nebuďte," she says easily, when he voices his apology. And she means it. So rarely does she tell him not to do this, not to do that. Often she tells him what she'd prefer. She tells him when he does something she doesn't like. But this quick, certain instruction not to be sorry is sincere, and considering how rare it is that he apologizes to anyone, how she is one of the only people he ever apologizes to, it means something when she tells him, essentially

there is nothing to be sorry for.

Her hand holds his back now, while he touches her and while he kisses her fingers. He rubs his face a little bit on her knuckles, and she imagines that if they were sitting on the couch at home he might be nuzzling her instead of holding her hand. It is just as intimate. Sometimes it is easier to sling your arm around someone than to hold their hand. Sometimes it is easier to kiss them than to walk with fingers interlaced. They wear human bodies, and human hands are so instantly expressive, and such strong signifiers of sentience and intelligence and the ability to craft whatever one needs for oneself. Their hands are precious.

They hold each other's, and he kisses hers, and she does not want to let go of him lest he feel she's withdrawing from him. So it goes, the moon heavy outside, as Danicka drives them home.

"You worry too much," she says gently. A litle fondly.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's laugh is quiet. That's something she didn't know for a long time, because almost from the start -- from their second start in Chicago -- he was guarded around her, cautious and suspicious of the way she made his heart beat. It was months before she heard him laugh like this, soft and contained without being restrained.

"So you keep telling me," he replies. This, too, is fond.

A few moments of silence. Then he shifts, straightening a little, lowering their hands under their forearms lie parallel to the floor. His fingers open, then, to let her draw away and go back to driving.

"Let's invite them to dinner sometime," he says. "Do a potluck. We can do it on the third floor of the Brotherhood, maybe. It's rare to find Shadow Lords who won't turn every gathering into a show of dominance. It's nice."

He doesn't suggest opening their den to them, though. That doesn't even occur to him.

[Danicka Musil] It isn't, truthfully, an option. Maybe it was even a kneejerk, subconscious refusal in the underworld: he could not imagine bringing a muddy troupe of Garou to the den. He never would. So in the underworld, the keeper of the seventh gate was not at their den. They had a different house, one with a little more room -- though the den does have a back and a front yard, and empty rooms where they could put beds and toys for children, if they had them -- and no psychological boundaries around it keeping the rest of the werewolves out.

So she keeps telling him. Danicka smiles to herself as he laughs, taking her hand back slowly after a squeeze, adjusting the flow of air from the dash, shifting lanes to get ready to take their exit.

"That was what I had in mind," she says, "only not at the Brotherhood. The Krutovas invited us into their home. It would be awkward, I think, to stroll into the Brotherhood and essentially rent out Jenny and Reuben's third floor to have ourselves a little dinner right above the heads of a number of people who would be excluded. It's one thing to gather together. It's another to flaunt it to those who aren't invited."

There's no judgement of his suggestion this. There's just simplicity: no. Not there. And here is why.

"I was thinking of just using my apartment. It's large enough, and still rather intimate. It's also enough yours, as well, to give you leave to oust any Lord who might try to sour it with their dick-waving."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] One can easily imagine situations where Lukas would have been unamused to have his suggestion so flatly negated. In the short time she's known him, he's risen as quickly and ambitiously enough to match any Shadow Lord. He's close to his next rank, which is no longer novice by anyone's standards -- Chicago's or New York's. His introduction is suffixed with multiple titles; two of which he's only passingly mentioned to her, the third of which he's striven for, lost, and won.

The point is: Lukas commands a certain respect now. He's probably not told No. very often. He's not contradicted often, and he does not tolerate disrespect. Even tonight, there was a glimmer of that -- a courteous apology to their hostess that was followed by a subtle and perhaps calculated flex of his proverbial claws:

You needn't apologize.
Of course not.

-- as though his right to act without apology were a foregone conclusion.

There's no hint of that here, though. Not even a breath of it. She vetoes the Brotherhood without judgment -- and that is important, even if Lukas trusts in that very lack of judgment implicitly -- and suggests her apartment instead. He looks at her with quick pleasure, quiet gratitude. The truth is Lukas knows enough of courtesy to know that it's not entirely courteous to trade an opening of one's home with a gathering in what's essentially a public space. The truth is also that he would never demand to use Danicka's home instead, just as he would never snap at her for contradicting him.

"That'd be perfect," he says, and then laughs, a wry sound, as she speaks of ousting tribemates; waving of certain appendages. "And practical."

[Danicka Musil] Oh, but she knows now what he is. Not that he is nearly Adren; she would not be surprised but not would she have the same reaction to it as a packmate or another Garou. His rank ceased to impact their relationship with one another after he achieved Fostern and could honorably challenge for her. Win her. Take her from her brother, and not look back again. Every rank after that does not matter.

She knows his name now. That, like her Adren brother, he has and needs only the one. Maybe when he dies he will have a long string of them like Night Warder. Maybe he will live and die as Wyrmbreaker, no more or less. That does not matter much, either. If they were to be married, which is a laughable idea to them both, she would not take his mortal family's name any sooner than she would take 'Wyrmbreaker' as a surname. He is Lukas and she is Danicka. And that is all.

She knows that he strove for, lost, and won the title of Ahroun Elder. She is not an Ahroun. She is not in any battle that she could possibly run from or be protected from. It made her proud of him, and glad because he was. Nothing more than that.

She knows that he is elder of their tribe in this city, and will remain so unless some Adren rolls into town and challenges him for it, and wins. She knows that regardless of who is in charge of the Shadow Lords of Chicago, she is his, and no other has a claim on her. No matter who leads the grandchildren of Thunder here, her welfare or lack thereof is his responsibility. No other's.

She knows that he is Alpha of his pack, and this means perhaps more to her than other titles. She knows that it means his pack can and will take him away from her at any given moment, because they need him. She knows that it means he is responsible to them in a way, though not the same way as he is responsible for her. She knows that one day it may be Katherine or Theron or whoever who finds her and tells her that he is gone,

and she knows it will be hard for her not to ask them how they justify coming back alive, if he did not.

Alpha of tribe, of moon, of pack. He is these things. And to the Garou, they change everything about the way they interact with him. Even with Kin who are only passingly his by tribal responsibility, though it would be the same with any Garou, regardless of rank or auspice or rage. It is like she told Emanuel, though. She calls him by a name associated with childhood and family because she is his mate. And she is the only one who can. It is not about freedom or privilege to abuse or flaunt her status. It is something else entirely, unnameable and yet ironclad.

"Well, yes," she agrees, turning off onto their exit, which will lead to inroads, then backroads, then their neighborhood, then their home. "To be honest, I'm not as... protective as I used to be of my apartment."

Not said: I don't need to be.

"So it would be alright to have it there, even if certain guests who we could not avoid inviting decided to try and ruin it for the rest of us." Oh so delicately put, Ms. Musil. "Do you want to do some gardening tomorrow? We didn't have much time to work outside today."

Which is the truth. They had to sleep in. And then have that big lazy breakfast and use the waffle iron. And then a little bit of time outside, before having to clean it all up and come in and get dressed to go to Jesmond's. And she still hasn't given him any presents. For fuck's sake, her larger suitcase is still sitting in the trunk of his car.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He's leaning back in his seat again, tipping his head back against the headrest, watching the road rush toward them, slip under them, flash by. When she speaks of gardening, he turns toward her, rolling his head her way. A smile breaks across his lips, slow, longlasting.

"Yeah," he says. "But you'll have to teach me if it's anything more complex than digging a hole and dropping a pre-packaged lump of dirt and roots in."

[Danicka Musil] "Buddy," Danicka says mildly, "you know about as much as I do. My brother was the gardener at our house, not me. However, with determination and Google, we can have pretty pretty flowers and maybe some herbs that don't die when we look at them wrong."

She looks over at him. She smiles. It's not the same as last night, the domesticity that led them to grocery shopping and talk of dentists. But it's similar. Gardening. Going home together. Planning for a dinner that might happen in the forseeable future. Her driving him back to their den because he's buzzed, and pleasantly so.

And undressing after they go upstairs, taking her suitcase up so she can show him the little things she bought around New York for him. Here a watch -- not even a particularly impressive or expensive one, just one that made her think of him when she saw it. There a shirt, which she bought while shopping with her niece, because she thought it would look good on him. A watergun. A children's book involving a little boy and an orange tree, which made her laugh because the boy gets a stomachache after eating too many oranges.

Not many gifts. Not extravagant ones. Just:

I was away from you.

But you were with me.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka informs him that Vladislav was the gardener of the house, and for the first time in a long time -- tonight's earlier mention included -- the very thought of her brother does not make Lukas want to crush something. It's very possible that urge will be back. That it'll rise again, and with a vengeance, the next time he's reminded of Vladislav. The next time he thinks of what Vladislav did to Danicka, how he terrorized her, how he beat her until she knew that the only way to escape worse injury was to simply succumb to it.

Not this time, though. This time, he thinks of Vladislav the gardener and he laughs a little, quietly, because he thinks then of Danicka and her eyes like grass, like growing things, like spring. He thinks of her golden hair and her golden skin and he thinks,

you are the spring,

and he believes they will be just fine planting whatever they wanted to plant.


In the end they'll have flowers and shrubs and grass in their yard. They won't win prizes, and at least in the beginning they'll wilt when they're away from the den for too many days. They might lose a rosebush here, a foxglove there. Then Lukas will dig trenches and bury pipes and set timers, and they'll have sprinklers that'll water their plants when they're gone.

They'll have plants that survive and grow, and though Lukas won't remember their names, he'll see their beauty and their hardiness and feel a quiet pride in that, because it was his mate's hands and his that planted them. Because they would have created something.

The oak sapling will go in the back yard. That one above all others he'll tend and nurture. Sometimes she'll see him kneeling in the dirt, his hands pressed gently to the earth, the bracket of his thumb and forefinger ringing the tiny tree. She'll see it and understand that this, too, is a form of prayer.


That will be in the future, though. For now, tonight, they won't garden. They'll park the car and open the trunk of his, and there'll be a strange sort of pleasure in knowing his car has been parked here for more than a day, that hers has been parked here the entire time she's been away. This is a sort of permanence, too, that's rare in their lives.

He'll help her with her suitcase, carrying it up o the second floor where she unpacks while he takes a quick shower, then stands shaving in front of their bathroom mirror. He's finishing up as she gets to the presents, and he comes into the bedroom toweling his face off and laughing as he sees the first of them -- a watergun -- which makes him ask if one of her nieces or nephews picked that one out.

He'll tell her stories of wanting a super-soaker when he was a child. He'll tell her about the simpler, cheaper waterguns he did have, and how in the heat of summer it would be as fun to get squirted as it was to squirt someone else.

He doesn't read through the book immediately, but he sees the orange tree and the boy and he knows why she bought it, and he leans into her and kisses her cheek and murmurs a thank-you in her ear.

The watch she'll see on him, often. She knows he has a Tag Heuer somewhere, a watch too expensive for him to really afford, but she'll see that less after this. She'll see this one more.

The watch goes on the nightstand. His iPhone, too, retrieved from his pants pocket before he drops it into the laundry pile. Then he's sitting on the edge of the bed, his head bowed as he rubs curiously at an unexpected scrape on his knee -- not from war or battle, for once, but from an unfortunate incident with shards of broken concrete -- and she's coming to stand before him. He raises his head and smiles at her in the lamplight. His hair is still faintly wet when her hands slide into it, cool against her palms, dripping coolness onto her forearms as she wraps her arms around his neck and climbs into his lap.

Later, afterward, they'll lie quietly in bed together, half-tangled still. He'll reach for the book she got him and read it awkwardly, holding it onehanded because his other arm is around her and he doesn't want to move it. She'll know when he gets to the stomachache part because he'll suddenly laugh aloud.

She'll know when he finishes, too, because he'll set it back on the nightstand and reach to turn out the light. And he'll draw a long breath, and turn toward her, and with the summer in full stride it's too hot to hold her very closely, but he lays his arm over her anyway, warm and heavy.

Their windows are open. They can hear crickets; the distant, occasional swish of passing cars. He thinks to himself that maybe they should get an orange tree, but he's asleep before the words make it to his tongue.