mate.

[Lukas] Danicka's phone rings. It's Lukas. When she picks up, she can hear a car engine in the background; his voice, low and tense, in the immediacy.

No hi, no hey, baby; nothing of the sort. Just: "Where are you?"

[Danicka] It's been, overall, a rather pleasant afternoon. The winter solstice celebration is tonight and with the eclipse, the pagans that Danicka spends some of the major holidays with are in what is kindly referred to as a tizzy. She's not contacted Lukas all day; he's asleep, she assumes, unless he gets in touch with her first. Asleep, or fighting. Or leading something. Being a werewolf. Being the Shadow Lord elder, Ahroun elder, near-Adren, etcetera, etcetera. She reflects on the fact that she accepts this, that she waits for him to come to her, that she doesn't even question it,

and tries not to see her father's face in the mirror.

Danicka is getting ready to go when Lukas calls. She's wearing black, and he knows from experience how rare it is that she dons that most Lordly of colors. The last time he saw her in anything black that wasn't just an overcoat or a pair of boots, it was winter. Last year, and there was a house built out in the woods. They fought that night, and it was brutal as the cold was. They fought because she refused to let Katherine touch her. They fought because he apologized, to Kate, for the behavior of his kinswoman.

Danicka is putting on a different black dress this time, less drenched in a sense of antiquity. She has no wreath of black flowers for her hair, but that might come later. She's wriggling her feet into a pair of boots under the length of her skirt when her phone chimes softly, like rainfall. She smiles at the picture of Lukas on the screen, wearing one of those rare but utterly delighted-looking smiles of his own, and puts it to her ear after thumbing to accept.

"Hey, b--" she's starting to say, her voice like a purr, but he cuts her off. Where are you? Danicka blinks. "At my place," she says, like this is a weird question. There's tension in it, rising with every syllable, til the phrase is almost a question in and of itself.

[Lukas] "Okay." It sounds like reassurance; it's not certain who he's reassuring. "Okay. Listen: something's going on. I can't ... tap my totembond, or my rage, or ... anything. It's all gone."

Something there -- a thread of something that could easily grow to be panic. If he lets it. So he doesn't let it. He chokes it back as ruthlessly as any dogfighter with his prize animals: leashes it down brutally, bites it back. Breathes out.

"I haven't made contact with any of the wolves yet, except Kate. She sounded like she felt it too so I don't think it's just me. I'm on my way to meet them so we can figure this out and --

"Baby, is there somewhere you can go? Someplace safe, where you're not alone? Maybe with Jesmond, or -- Martin, someone?"

[Danicka] The truth is, there's several things Lukas could have called Danicka to say that would turn her blood cold, make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, make her heart start beating a trifle faster. The truth is, in some ways she's no less of an animal than he is. That reassuring tone in his voice does nothing for her but make her think, yes, the storm outside is something to be afraid of. Yes, there is something out there in the dark.

But the darker truth is, Danicka's always known that. Danicka is chilled because Lukas seems afraid, and because Lukas, quite simply, doesn't sound like Lukas at all right now.

"The solstice celebration," she says, after a moment or two. "I'll be surrounded by people. I'll be okay."

[Lukas] "Strangers," he says, a strained sort of protest. "Humans. God, I can't even -- "

protect you. That falls into silence. A beat.

"If word of this gets out, every wyrmling in the state is going to have a field day. Do you still have the talens I gave you? Bring your gun."

[Danicka] "They're not strangers to me," Danicka says softly, and at very least he can comfort himself that it's not the first time or only time he's ever heard her sound like she wants him to be reassured. He cuts himself off in the middle of saying he can't --

but she knows what he means. And she's quiet for a moment, too, until Lukas speaks again. She has one boot on and one off. She is his mate, still, and he knows very well she's going to go to this celebration. She's going to what, for her, is worship. She's going to connect to the spirit world in one of the only ways that fate seems to allow her to do so, even if he's almost in a panic. Even if this is the end, it seems, she is done with the days of hiding under her bed when she's afraid.

"I know," she says, instead of I will. It comes softly. "Call me when you can." Then, as though this took a moment of consideration before she was willing to say it: "If you want me to come to you, I will."

[Lukas] "Okay."

That's quieter. When he woke up, his back was wet with cold sweat before he knew why. Before he swam up through the folds of unconsciousness to understand what that awful silence was, that awful stillness where his pack used to be. He was on the verge of frenzy

-- only he couldn't anymore --

when he called Katherine and, at least, received confirmation that she was alive, and Sinclair was alive.

He's calmer now, though. His pack, most of it, is still alive. His mate is all right. She sounded happy before she heard him so tense; she's going to celebrate the waning of the night. The breaking of day. He thinks briefly of last year, the bitter cold fight, their faith tested and true. His eyes close for a moment, dangerous because he's driving, dangerous because he's only human now, and then open again.

"I'll call you soon," he adds. "Miluji tě."

[Danicka] "Miluji tě, lodní důstojník."

It's a murmur, little more. It's steady. Danicka's not that sort of Kinfolk, the 'soft place' where he can land. She's not his healer. She's not mothering his children and she's not someone he calls to back him up in a fight or clean up after it. She has a singular and separate relationship with him, a life apart from the Nation and all it can do to her.

Sometimes.

But whatever they have, there's a space in his mind where she resides and that place is not defined by spirit or rage or wolf. When they hang up on either side of this phone call, her so steady and so calm and so ready to continue her night as though the world isn't clattering down around her ears and as though she's not wondering what's going to happen if his wolf doesn't come back, as if she's not asking herself if she wouldn't, perhaps --

When they hang up, and he can't hear her voice anymore, she's still there with him. In the way she always is.