home and hearth.

[Lukas] They greeted each other first like humans - touching hands, drawing, washing. Now they greet each other like animals, or perhaps simply like themselves: nuzzling heavily together, her mouth finding his softly but unequivocally, her hands on his face keeping him from shying away. Afterward, he rubs against her, cheek to cheek, neck to temple, her hair trailing over his face, his eyes closing. She doesn't need to say it. Neither does he, his hands framing her waist, holding her near.

What she does say instead makes his eyes open. He draws an inhale, looking about; then he smiles. "I'll get the rabbits ready," he says. "I brought some salt and spices, if you want to help me make a rub."

Danicka would recognize the intent behind that, too. A sort of protection: something for her to do so she wouldn't have to watch her mate skin and gut the thing that he had just killed not twenty minutes ago.

[Danicka] They both have to take steps. He has to come to her in homid, because he doesn't know yet how she'll react if he were to return to their little camp wearing fur and carrying dead animals in his jaws. She has to wait alone in the dark, making their fire, while her mate hunts for her, because she can't join him. He has to clean himself off, wary of disgusting her or making her genuinely sick. She cleans him off, so that he won't be afraid to touch her. So that he can come closer. He shies from kissing her, even when he's done his best, and she kisses him, because his best is more than good enough.

They both take steps towards each other, so that he doesn't have to pretend to be human, so that she doesn't have to pretend not to be.

Danicka smiles while Lukas nuzzles against her, as though kissing him unlocked him a bit, let him come near to her. He rubs into her like a dog, like he's forgotten his hands, and she remembers all the times he's just like this, searching her out with his nose and not his fingertips. And she holds him, arms loose and hands stroking, til they gentle a bit and she murmurs what she does.

"Oh, that's easy," she says tenderly, then gives him a kiss to his temple and eases back, reaching into the basket again. Digging around for a moment she finds the knife they brought and turns it around, holding it out to him, handle first. "Do you want to make a spit or use skewers?" she asks. "I have some sticks I didn't use for the fire that might work for a spit, if you want to do that. There's foil in here, too, if you'd rather do packets."

She frowns. "Why didn't we bring a bucket to drain the blood into? We thought of everything else. I barely stopped you from getting ice cream, but a bucket? No, we don't even think of it."

[Lukas] Sometimes he's like that. Moves like he's forgotten the use of his hands. Nuzzles her instead of caressing her. Bites her instead of holding her. Sometimes he loves her like that, mounting her from behind, standing on all fours, gripping her with his teeth. Sometimes, half-awake, when she's getting out of bed so early in the morning to go to school, he throws an arm over her and rubs his face against her back, murmuring wordlessly, asking her without asking to stay, stay, just stay a while longer.

Right now, though, Lukas is using those strong, dextrous hands of his. He's picking the kills up as she speaks so baldly of blood, of the dirty work that goes into making an animal into a meal. He turns the rabbits and the muskrat over in his hands, thoughtful. "We'll just drain it into the ground," he says eventually. "It seems appropriate, anyway."

Then -- putting his hand behind her neck for a moment, kissing her again, quick but firm. Grateful, perhaps. "Let's make a spit," he says. "Then we can just let dinner roast over the fire."


Lukas doesn't, in the end, take the kills out of her sight. He doesn't exactly flay the carcasses before her with in-depth explanation and bloodthirsty relish, either, but he doesn't hide what he does. The rabbits are drained, skinned, gutted, washed out; when he gets to the muskrat, Lukas notes that he has no idea what spitroasted muskrat would taste like. He wasn't, he explains -- almost shyly, really thinking at that point. Mate was hungry. Meat, any meat, is food.

By then the herb rub is ready, and the spit. They mount the rabbits and the muskrat, then skewer them closed to hold them in place. Danicka, science- and engineering-minded as she is, rigs up a string to the end of the spit to turn it slowly from a distance. Lukas washes his hands, then shakes out the blanket again, laying it smooth over a soft patch of wildgrass.

Their fire pops and crackles. The rich scent of roasting meat rises. Fat sizzles as it drips into the flames. They lie together on the blanket, the stars bright overhead, and eventually Lukas begins to tell Danicka of Istok teaching him how to dress a kill. It was one of the first things he learned, along with philosophy, ancient history, the ways of the tribe -- back when he was much more eager to learn how to swing that sword. How to use that newfound body of his. Istok didn't teach him any of that, not for months on end. He taught a young Lukas, far more impatient then than he is now, the butcher's art. Brought fresh-slain prey before the stripling boy; taught him where to slice, what to cut. Where to separate the cuts of meat; where the muscle peels easily from the bone. How to dress and prepare the meat so that the pack and the kin and the sept could eat. How to sustain his people, and how to find honor in such a menial task.

And later -- how to hunt, showing him how to flush prey, how to confuse it, how to pursue it, how to kill it swiftly and cleanly. Not like a beast, not even like a wolf, not through instinct and blundering experience, but like a garou: with a single sure bite. And so he graduated from butcher to hunter. Learned silence and stealth, speed and strength. Learned what prey to take, the old and sick, the young and weak. Learned what prey to spare, so that the next year's herd ran stronger than the last.

"Much later," he finishes quietly, "Istok finally taught me how to fight with all the weapons I'd been given. And I saw that he had been teaching me all along."

[Danicka] They cook. Danicka ties her hair back again and mixes seasonings together. She does this the way she works in that makeshift laboratory of hers, meticulous and thoughtful --

and curious, and a bit wild, and quite mischevious in a way. No telling how secretive she can be when she's in the university's labs for her degree program, coaxing her project partners into ignoring this or that element of the rubric so they can do something really nifty, even if it is a bit outside of the requirements. This is why Danicka's mind, turned to scientific pursuits, turned to elements of engineering, is as brilliant as it is. This is why she plays with numbers the way she does: she is both very bright and a fucking deviant. Her creativity may come flying in the face of what is accepted, and it may sometimes fail, but her pleasure and sense of accomplishment comes from doing it the 'wrong' way. And sometimes the 'wrong' way is so very, very right.

Why would a woman like that be afraid of a little blood? Or a woman like his mate, wolf-blooded if not wolf-bodied, who was fascinated and morose at the same time when her father took her fishing and with a chop and a slice and quick work of his hands he dismantled that once-living thing into a filet they could fry up with butter and lemon and pepper and make into a meal. A woman like Danicka, no, she plays with the spices and sniffs at them to see if the smells go together, because if the smells do then the taste likely will, and all she does is remind him that he might want to dig a little hole to drain the blood into, then bury it.

She doesn't say why. If it's for hygiene or to keep away vermin or to not disturb hikers later on. Or if it's a ritual, in and of itself. She just goes about her work. And builds three spits, in the end, because that's how many tries it takes before it quite... works. In the meantime Lukas butchers small animals. Gets to the muskrat and she raises her eyebrows. Of course he doesn't know how it would taste roasted, she says, since he's likely only had them raw. She shrugs, though. If he wants to cook it, she'll eat it. She's never eaten muskrat before.

Granted, Danicka doesn't sound terribly enthused about eating muskrat, either, but then she's tearing some string with her teeth because the knife is in use, and he's asking her what the string is for. And then she shows him.


Later on, before the scent of cooking meat quite begins to fill their nostrils, he begins to tell her about Istok. He lies down and she stretches out alongside him, resting her head against his arm and his chest, listening to his heartbeat. While he talks she idly unbuttons his shirt again, and lets it lie open, nuzzling it out of her way til her cheek rests against the skin of his chest instead of the soft, thin fabric she was feeling before.

Istok was so mean, she thinks, making him cut before he could hunt, hunt before he could kill. So mean, thinks the little deviant, but she never says it. Istok is a great part of why Lukas is how he is. But she will never, ever know that man the way she was able to meet and know his parents. She knows, just from what Lukas says, that the time where Istok could have become more like Lukas is now is gone. She would never be more to that Philodox than an honored kinswoman, the mate of his former fosterling. He would never know her. It's a passing thought, and not one she truly dwells on or sorrows over, but she thinks of how Lukas became the man he was when she met him. And how he's become the man he is now.

She knows he wouldn't be who he is now if he'd never met her. If he'd never let her in. So she turns her head as he finishes, kissing his chest, closing her eyes against him and breathing in the smell of him, all woods and smoke and sweat now. She says nothing, though, merely laying her arm over him and wrapping him up in it, holding him closer.

[Lukas] There's blood buried in a little hole nearby, a little grave that Lukas weighs down with a flat rock without needing to be reminded. No other marker or monument stands to the lives taken on solstice night, and no other is necessary.

There's a fire licking beneath the spit, and their dinner is turning slowly over it. They take turns pulling the string, a little at a time, keeping the heat even over the meat. He tells her a story, and she listens and thinks thoughts that are passing, not truly sorrowful, but true. She thinks of who taught Lukas to be Wyrmbreaker; she thinks of Wyrmbreaker becoming Lukas. Her Lukasek.

Her cheek is against his bare chest. It's warm out, and he doesn't mind the breeze soft over his skin. He doesn't mind her arm wrapping around him, sliding under the brushed-aside shirt to wrap around him. He puts his hand over her forearm after a moment, holding her back.

"Let's just stay out here tonight," he whispers. "I want to love you again before the sun comes up."

[Danicka] "Mm," she agrees softly, curled against his side, sleepy as well as hungry now, nuzzling him in a secondary answer. "I was thinking we were going to go home afterward," she tells him, while he turns the rabbit and muskrat on the spit, while she drapes one leg across one of his, entangling their lower halves. "Make love in the woods. Fall asleep in our bed. Feels like we should, somehow."

She breathes in deeply and snuggles closer, smiling against his skin. "It's all right if you want to stay out here, though. But then I'm getting a massage tomorrow."

[Lukas] A little huff of a laugh -- his chest moving beneath her arm, his hand stroking up that arm and down in a thoughtless caress. "Okay," he says, quite amenable, "we'll do that. We'll go home."

To their quiet little den with the trees in the front yard and the back. The concrete that's finally been broken up and moved out; the earth that's finally been plowed and topsoiled and planted with whatever they planted it with in the spring. The open rooms that could support parents or cubs or visiting relatives, though never septmates or even packmates. It's not a house for war. It's a house for their family-packs and, profoundly and indelibly, for them.

Their handprints are in the wall by the door. Like a marking of territory, a silent claim in and of itself.

Lukas nuzzles Danicka again where they lie. He shifts beneath her, encourages her to rise with the rolling of his shoulder, the lift of his arm. "Come on," he murmurs. "Let's eat."

[Danicka] That is the difference between the Brotherhood and the Loft, the Loft and their den, the den overall and their bedroom upstairs. Ever-tightening circles of privacy, of protection. For sept, for pack, for blood, for themselves alone. If there are cubs one day, they'll run rampant through that house, as wild and free as they could never be anywhere else, but even then that bedroom will be a place they only go sometimes. Even they will recognize, possibly easier than any adult, that their parents' room and their parents' bed is only for when they are at their most frightened, their most vulnerable, or when they are all together as a family, tumbling over one another with mock growls and playful wrestling. Tickles. That is the place where their parents' scenes permeate the space, the place where they are closest to the core of their family.

Danicka hopes so, at least, when she thinks of such potential futures. She hopes it's not a place they fear to tread because that is the place so closely associated with their father, who is so very terrifying. She hopes they can feel safe there. She hopes that when they are very small and know the world only through scent and blurred lights and strange sounds that they will learn their father's scent to the point that when they are older, some part of them will feel pangs of comfort, familiarity, and warmth no matter how scared they may be of him.

She knows better than anyone that even this will twist them a bit. To want to be close, to love, that which could kill them without a thought, in the blink of an eye. She knows what it is to live like that, to grow up with that conflict, and all she can do is hope that she can make it easier on them. Make sure they come out of it sane, and safe, and able to love and be loved.

Summer is at its height. She planted deep indigo irises outside their house and they bloomed for such a short time, as irises do. A neighbor passing by as she watered them said not to worry, they'll come in thicker next year, be stronger. Told Danicka a thing or two about rotating flower beds, at which point Danicka was both fascinated and considering hiring a gardener and also asking herself if, really, gardening is worth all the effort. Her mind goes a mile a minute. She thinks of children and their bed and the garden and that neighbor and rubbing her bare breasts on that chest of his all in the time it takes for her to give a soft, slow blink, drowsy and content.

Though hungry. The meat is sizzling, cooked through, and Lukas can smell something in that which she can't quite, even though she's a perfectly decent cook. He nuzzles her, shifting and rolling, and she resists -- almost childishly -- until she flumps gently to the blanket as he sits up without her. Danicka just grins at him from the blanket where she lies, complacent and yet defiant, the mix she's always carried swirling around in her.

So: Lukas cuts meat off the spit, tears it off in strips. He piles a plate with fruit and cheese and wine and bread from that overloaded basket, but mostly its meat. Even now he can't quite make his head wrap around the fact that his mate eats mostly vegetables and lean chicken or fish, and that her stomach is much smaller and her metabolism much slower than his. He thinks: this is meat, and it is good to eat now, and it will fill his mate's belly right up, and then she'll be strong and the days getting shorter won't matter, she won't get cold, she won't.

And he climbs back to her, his shirt still hanging open if he doesn't just shrug it off entirely, and shares his plate with her. She's lazy, won't even sit up at first, just opens her mouth and makes him feed her until it's bite after bite and she's trying not to laugh, covering her mouth with her hand and he's telling her that's what she gets.

But of course, she's hungry, and she sits up and pours wine for both of them. She all but force-feeds him green things, green plant-food and he insists, wrinkling his nose, that the rabbit ate plants, he's eating the rabbit, so clearly he doesn't have to eat his vegetables. Danicka isn't drunk anymore, isn't drunk again off the new wine, but she grins, and she says she can't argue with that logic, which only means she won't.

After a few glasses of wine though, they've eaten so much -- more than he usually ever sees her eat -- and Danicka is lazily stripping off her shirt, taking off her skirt, then (almost grumpily) peeling off her knee socks like they suddenly annoy her. She clambers over him, bare naked, like none of this was to awaken his lust or even grab his attention but just because there's really no point to having clothes on,

and she gets the chocolate bars and marshmallows out of the basket. "S'moooorrresss," Danicka all but purrs, though she's forgotten the box of graham crackers in the basket. With her naked, Lukas can even see the faint swell of her normally flat stomach from eating. Danicka almost never eats until she's 'full'. Now she seems like she rather intends to do so, adding dessert on top of it all. "S'mores," she says again, more insistently, pushing the candy into his hands and then bumping her head against his shoulder. "Make me s'mores."

She tips her head back up, grinning at him, her eyes gleaming. "'Kay?"

[Lukas] Let's be honest. As much as Lukas pretends to grumble about his lazy mate and spoiled little brat, he's more than happy to feed her. Bite after bite after bite, until she's covering her mouth and her laughter is muffled with food and he's telling her that's what you get and passing her a glass of wine to wash it down with.

The rabbits are wild, which means they're rather skinny, the meat lean and juicy; the spices give them a kick that fits the cheese and wine, but doesn't really fit the way he took them. The muskrat is ... not terribly good, but Lukas eats it anyway, loathe to let a life go to waste. Danicka makes him eat some vegetables. He comes up with the same excuse he used years and years ago, though it works better on Danicka than it did on his mother. Then again, perhaps it's only because it's solstice night. Or perhaps Danicka knows he doesn't really need to eat as many vegetables as your average human. He isn't, after all, human. Or average.

And let's be honest here, too: when they're full, when they're lolling about and Lukas is lazily nibbling the last shreds of meat off a rabbit-bone -- when Danicka gets up and starts to undress, peeling off shirt and skirt and knee socks, Lukas's eyes flash with sudden attentiveness. Sudden interest. He watches her as fabric gives way to skin, as skin is lit by fire. Danicka can see him lick his lips, a quick unconscious motion.

But she doesn't push his shirt from his shoulders. She doesn't climb into his lap. She clambers over him, and his hands follow her, stroking up her thighs while she --

picks up chocolates. And marshmallows. Dumps them in his hands, bumps her head against his shoulder. S'mores, she demands, and Lukas snaps from quizzical to laughing in a second, throwing his head back, laughing so quick and bright and loud that somewhere birds are frightened from their rest.

"You're mean," he complains. And he kisses her as she looks at him, not on the mouth but square between the eyes, on the bridge of her nose. "You're lucky I'm so nice." And he gets up to grab graham crackers. And make s'mores.

[Danicka] Danicka eats like this normally at the end of finals weeks at school. She eats like this when storms have passed, when the stress has abated. There have been nights, a few, though it's occasional, when she goes from intense studying to climbing on top of him in bed,

fucking him almost like it hurts, like she's seeking relief from pain,

gripping the pillows beneath him so that she doesn't clutch at his scalp, her eyes closed as she comes in sweating, gasping orgasm,

and while he's lying there trying to put his head back together again, she collapses for a few moments only before going to the kitchen. Suddenly ravenous and infintely relaxed then, Danicka goes and eats hard-boiled eggs and apples and string cheese and crackers and one time she made a pot of pasta, munching on a handful of Peanut Butter Crunch while she waited for it to cook. Occasionally she is such an id-driven little thing -- in fact, most of the time she is an id-driven little thing -- that it's hard to imagine how she can exist so easily in the human world.

No one can blame Lukas for associated Danicka stuffing her face with Danicka feeling happy, Danicka feeling at ease, Danicka comfortable and Danicka close to him. It isn't that he's never seen her happy and calm otherwise, it's simply that on those very rare occasions when she fills her belly like this, she is without fail also very pleased with life and almost languid in her relaxation.

So of course later on she tosses off her clothes -- it's the summer solstice, it's hot and muggy out here and she's sticky from sweat and from sex earlier and from woodsmoke and, truthfully, they're both getting rather filthy. Of course she rolls around on their blanket naked and climbs over him, ignoring that flash in his eyes, that subtle moistening of his lips. She laughs as he's stroking her thighs, getting quite drunk now but fully aware that he wants her. That he wants to open her legs and wrap her in his arms and lay her body under his so he can fuck her again. She is drunk enough to be very torn between that and s'mores. And to choose s'mores.

Candy lands in his lap and she beams at him like she does, biting playfully at his bared chest while he laughs, nomfing one of his pectoral muscles affectionately. "I'm not," she retorts, when he claims she's mean, lifting her head abruptly. He kisses her between her eyes and she wrinkles her nose again. Lets him go, so he can get new skewers.

They argue about how to properly cook a marshmallow. Whether it's simply best to let them catch fire and blow it out, or if you should slowly turn it over the heat til it roasts golden brown. It always takes too long, Danicka complains, and lays on his lap, asking him to make it go faster. But not burn it. But stop wiggling so much.

[Lukas] There was a flicker there when this might have descended into something more serious. When he playfully called her mean; when she reacted immediately, abruptly. He almost stopped. He almost told her, no, she's not mean. He knows that now. There was a time when he didn't, but he knows now.

He doesn't tell her that. He kisses her instead, on that little indent where brow meets bridge of nose, and it's warm and gentle and, yes, playful -- and she wrinkles her nose and he tries to remember if once upon a time she did that as a little girl,

and that makes him mull over how different they were as children, and how different they are from their childhood selves. One would have never thought, watching the two of them play together as small children, that the boy would grow up to be the more restrained of the two. The more cautious. The less -- ironic as it is -- wild, at heart.

They argue about marshmallow roasting. Lukas says it's like roasting meat: slow and easy, turning on a spit. Danicka thinks maybe it's easier just to let it catch fire and then blow it out, but in the end Lukas is the one holding the stick and Danicka doesn't really want to eat burnt marshmallows, anyway. It takes forever, even with four or five of them on one stick, watching them slowly puff larger and larger, waiting until their skins begin to turn crispy and golden-brown.

And then Lukas is handing the stick to Danicka, and he's preparing graham crackers and hershey's chocolate, and he's telling her to bring the marshmallows over, quick quick, now smush! and they have s'mores, suddenly, hot and gooey and so very sweet.

"Don't let me eat until I throw up, okay?" he says, handing her hers, picking up his own. "If I start saying 'what harm could one more do,' that's your cue to intervene."

[Danicka] Of course for Danicka, there wasn't a serious bit of it. Not a whiff of real displeasure, real hurt. Not that it would need to be real -- phantoms of feelings have hurt them both in the past, and they both know better than to ignore the teeth of ghosts. So Lukas, at least marginally more sober or feeling particularly protective tonight, almost stops to assure her no, no, he'd never think she was mean anymore, not cruel or cold or heartless, and it was so long ago that he did. He learned that lesson so quickly that the length of time they've been together when he's felt her warmth far eclipses the few weeks when he thought her to be a stone egg.

So funny, that his own spirit and mind thought Danicka would use that as inspiration for a name for a son. Even if he doesn't like the name, doesn't want the boy to get teased, this boy that exists only in memory and perhaps the spirit world: he'd give in, if that's what Danicka wanted, and if she explained why the name appealed to her. Even if now, outside of that realm, he knows that all those names came from him, came from his perception of her and her powers of perception, her ability to close herself off so completely, her beauty all but blinding him.

In truth, those three children in the underworld were all his. He gave them Danicka's eyes and hair and chin and backbone and smile here and there, but in every speck of their imaginary existence, they were his children alone. She knows that, feels it instinctively -- will not want to use those names for the cubs they may one day have, because those names belong to Lukas's spirit-children. Those names are taken.

Sacred, like the solstice and the equinox. And this. And them.


"Ack!" she says, being handed a skewer. "You can't make me do things, I'm drunk!" she says, looking genuinely startled and concerned about managing this highly difficult task he's given her. She clutches the skewer in both hands, staring wide-eyed at the marshmallows, and she looks ridiculous doing this with tousled hair and naked flesh, but thankfully Lukas relieves her soon enough and smoosh, smush,

s'mores.

"Okay," she tells him very seriously, nodding to his request. She has seen this before. She was there on Thanksgiving. With the kolaches. And in the common room of the Brotherhood. And her kitchen in her mother's house in Queens, where no one knew how many of the things Lukasek was stealing until they heard him throw up and Danicka was standing there looking pale and wide-eyed and Lukas was standing there looking glassy-eyed and wobbly, oh and his father hollered and her father was trying so hard not to laugh and Anezka just laughed anyway and Marjeta, Marjeta was just horrified.

All of which Danicka says aloud. "She clapped her hand -- whap! -- right over your sister's mouth and half-dragged her out of there because I think if she hadn't your father would have gone after little miss 'you-have-to-share-your-crayons-we're-your-guests' too. Oh, your dad could yell. What made him so quiet? You'd never know to meet him now that he has one of those forehead-veins that bulges."

She taps her forehead as she describes this, and leaves a smudge of chocolate.

[Lukas] It's a funny story to begin with. After quite a few glasses of wine and a s'more -- a large one -- already stuffed into his stomach, it's an absolutely hilarious one. Lukas laughs; he can't seem to stop, laughs at hearing him throw up and glassy-eyed and wobbly and at how horrified his mom was and the whap! and the yelling and --

then there's a smear of chocolate on Danicka's forehead, and now he's laughing so hard he can't even look at her, it just makes him laugh harder, he puts his hand over his eyes and half-hides his face, shoulders shaking, trying to say something but all that comes out before he bursts out laughing again is:

"There's choc-- there's ch-- baby, okay, okay, I'm gonna stop laughing, baby, there's a big blob of -- there's a big -- "

And he's gone again.

[Danicka] "There's chocolate on my forehead," Danicka says peevishly, leveling a flat stare across at him. She's kneeling on the blanket now, her bum on her heels, her hands on her legs, and she's just as unruffled as you please except for the fact that he's giggling at her. The nerve. "I don't see what's so funny about it!"

[Lukas] Now it's even more impossible for him to say anything. He tries to explain why it's so funny, but of course he can't because, A, he can barely speak, and B, it just is funny. So after several fruitless, laughing attempts, he simply takes her head gently between his hands and -- well. Licks the chocolate off, plants a sound smooch in its place, and then flops down on his back.

A little later, his guffawing dies down to chuckles, then the sort of contented sigh a person lets out after a bout of truly side-splitting laughter. He waves their little marshmallow-skewering stick at Danicka, handing it to her. "More s'mores," he says. "And to tell you the truth," sobering a little, "I don't know what made my dad quiet. I think he mellowed out a little as he got older. But I think maybe it's also because ... well. Me. I changed."

A bit of a pause. Then he amends: "Changed."

[Danicka] "Ack," she says again, flapping her hands -- which are chocolatey, as is the smudge on her leg where she put her hands -- at his chest to get him away as he leans over and licks her forehead. She wrinkles her nose. She rubs at the spot with her forearm, which is blessedly chocolate-free. "Now my forehead is wet," she complains, as he's flopping down to laugh at her, and then he quiets.

She realizes the chocolate is coming from her hands as Lukas is settling down, and gets a towel and some water to wipe it -- and her leg -- off, waving off the skewer he tries to hand her. Five s'mores -- meaning two to her and three to Lukas -- and she doesn't seem willing to do any more work. She looks full. She is full. So instead of cooking another marshmallow, she tosses the towel away and crawls over to Lukas's side.

Curls up against it, as she was before they got up to eat, only now she's naked. She nuzzles against his chest as he tells her about his father getting quieter over the years, of his father no longer being the head of household, his father doing what every bit of Shadow Lord upbringing told him to do and submitting to the Garou he was related to.

Even if the Garou was his son. Even if he was older and more experienced, older and stronger, what-have-you. In a way, Danicka wonders why some Kinfolk don't understand that. Why other tribes aren't more like the Shadow Lords in this respect -- however much the Shadow Lords, many of them, have warped it. She wonders what is so wrong in the end with accepting that you will never be as strong, as powerful, held as accountable. There is so much sorrow and loneliness in fighting it.

Of course, she is different. The Garou she's lying so very close to is different. Her hand resting on his chest shifts slightly, moving to just below his pectoral muscle. She covers his heartbeat, instinctively and silently protective at hearing the note in his voice. "Yeah," she says quietly, in agreement and understanding. "I think you're right."

She rubs her face into his side. "Now I'm sleepy," she tells him, as earlier she informed him that she was hungry, it was time to hunt. There's a beat. "And I have to pee."

[Lukas] So much would be different if they both weren't who they are. If he were the sort of Garou to abuse the strength and power and responsibility given to him by their society and, in truth, by the universe itself. If she were the sort of kin to abuse the sort of influence and sway she held over him by the simple fact that she is his mate, his beloved.

Look at how easily his mood changes when she covers his heartbeat like that. When she rubs her face against him and tells him that she's sleepy, she needs to pee. Look at how that soberness dispels like a vapor in the wind, leaving his face to break into a grin again, leaving his ribcage to contract under her cheek as he laughs. She could have anything she wants from him. All she would have to is put her hand out and ask. Except -- she's not like that. And that's precisely what allows him to trust her so, adore her so.

He wraps his arm around her for a while. She's naked, he's halfnaked, they're both full to bursting but he's still contemplating another s'more. "I changed my mind," he murmurs, the lower registers of his voice radiating through his chest wall. "You go pee. I'll pack our stuff up. And then we should go home and get clean and make love in our nice, soft bed.

"And then," he finishes, sitting up, "we should sleep roughly forever."

[Danicka] "You always say that," Danicka informs him, "but we never really do," as though this is news.

"Also," she says, wrapping herself around him from behind as he sits up and nuzzling his back, "when we go home I want to take a shower and then make love in our nice, soft bed. Just so you know. There's a process here. There's a --"

Danicka yawns

"-- set order of things."

He tries to move. She grumbles, hugging him tighter around the middle, and wraps her legs around his waist as well. So for a bit, Lukas is made to just sit there, asking her lightly if she's going to take a nap first. She, of course, informs him that his back is not as comfy as he seems to think it is, mister.

Fondly, he covers her hand and calls her missus and that just makes her laugh, holding his hand. It's the sort of sentimentality they never, ever would have shown each other even a year ago. All those soft, tender, silly thoughts they held back are allowed to be said now. So they say them, easily, and without being afraid of being laughed at, because they've learned that making the other laugh is actually.. rather pleasant.


Everything in between is filler. Danicka traipsing off into the woods with laughter, her form slender and golden and flashing in the dark. Lukas putting out the fire, mixing water and ash til it's safe to bury the pit again, til not even a drought would make the embers come to life again and risk the woods. He buries what remains of the animals they devoured, and Danicka is coming back then, tugging on her shirt and her skirt and helping him pack up the basket and everything else. She tells him, looking up at the sky again before she puts away the telescope,

"You know, the night after Fritz Houtermans discovered the thermonuclear process necessary for the stability of stars, he went on a walk with his girlfriend. And she looked at the stars and said, 'don't they shine so very beautifully?' and he said, 'yes, and right now, I'm the only one who knows how.' That always seemed so very sad to me. And lovely, all at once."

And in a way it is: sad and lovely, to be the only one looking at the stars who understands how they even exist. She puts the telescope away so gently for such a tipsy woman, and slips her feet into her shoes. Lukas shakes out the blanket and wraps it around her, because she shivered and he noticed and she smiles at him, before he leans over and kisses her.

They walk back through the woods, leaving behind a grave for blood and a grave for bones and a grave for ashes, the area marred by their noise and their scent but healing already, as soon as their part-human footsteps walk away. The world, when left alone, can heal, like all the human bodies that echo it. Not perfectly, but in a sort of reparative evolution.


Wrapped in a blanket, driving through the dark, Danicka falls asleep in the passenger seat. She wakes before the car stops, sensing the change when it slows, when it turns into a driveway. Their driveway. She breathes in deep, looking over at Lukas.

"Home?"

Yeah.

hunt and worship.

[Danicka] They take Lukas's car from across the street at North Kingsbury: it's a little less new, it's heavier, and to be frank, it's less pampered than Danicka's. It's a big bigger on the inside, and since any time liquor is involved he ends up having to drive since he can shift away the effects of the alcohol, he offered. They both know some degree of it is simple pleasure in taking care of his mate. It may be a car he drives, but in a way he's carrying her, and she's entrusting him with herself, and from the very start that's been a significant thing. A special thing.

They stop by a Walgreens, grabbing s'mores fixings and a little travel bottle of Scope and skewers and so on. They have to go elsewhere for a bundle of firewood, and end up getting two. The car is heavier still when they get back into it, and the sun is almost entirely gone now, the sky almost black. Danicka smiles at him as he drives.

And that is all she'd do, all it would be, until they got out to the Cook County Preserves, until they got out to the forests near the den he found for her, fixed up for her, sometimes takes her to when they need home, when they need each other. They'd get out there, and go find a nice spot for a fire and a blanket, except well into the dark drive, Danicka -- leaning back in her chair, smiling at him, her eyes warm and her body still feeling the revels of earlier, exhales a soft sigh.

"Pull over," she tells him gently.

[Lukas] There are two bottles of wine clinking in the backseat. There are two bundles of firewood rolling around the coupe's trunkspace. There's a little box of graham crackers and some Hershey's, some bottled water, a light blanket, a little telescope. A star map. It's almost completely dark now, and Lukas drives steadily with his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the gently curving road ahead.

They drive for some time without words, a warm familiarity between them. The first time he followed her into the woods on the longest day, the shortest night, the blackest moon, the height of summer, everything was still so uncertain. Now, they're mated, married, about as joined as two individuals possibly could be in the eyes of Garou and human law alike. Even so,

sometimes there's a space between them. Perhaps that's why sometimes when he drives, Lukas reaches over and holds her hand on his lap or hers, or over the gearshift.


When she speaks, he looks at her gently, curiously. His eyes are clear and penetrating even in this light. He studies her a moment; then, without a word or a question, he pulls to the shoulder, and then off. Their tires sink in the softer soil beside the blacktop. He puts the car in neutral and pulls up the gearshift, then starts to reach around for their things in the coupe's cramped backseat.

[Danicka] They're not at the preserves yet. Just a long stretch of empty road, some streetlights here and there, a back way they take sometimes that takes longer but is less crowded with drivers, more scenic. More trees. Closer to the earth. It wouldn't be unthinkable to pull over here, to stop and get their things and go out onto the ground, but even Lukas knows that this area wouldn't be good for hunting in, wouldn't necessarily be good to shift in. Still too close to civilization to feel right.

Danicka unbuckles her safety belt as he's reaching into the back seat for their things, but as the belt is snaking back to snap against the side of the car, she touches his wrist and catches his eye. When she does, she shakes her head. The doors are locked.

She reaches down and unfastens his safety belt, too. Her eyes watch his. She doesn't wait, however, to see if he'll react, if he'll let her do this, or that. Danicka waits for his seatbelt to get out of the way completely, and then crosses over the center console, climbing onto his lap. Her legs spread over his thighs, knees wedging into dark, cold, hard corners. That skirt of hers, already a few inches above her knees, tugs up towards her hips.

She breathes in at the sensation of her hem rising, his warmth filling the space between her legs, his chest under her hands, as she sinks down on him. Watches him, and the light sparking off in his eyes.

[Lukas] The truth is, he intuited what she wanted long before his conscious mind realized it. Her hand on his wrist meets no resistance. He stops reaching for the things in the backseat immediately; his hand comes around to cradle her forearm instead. She moves over him and he drops the seatback, their eyes meeting and holding through light and shadow.

His hands follow her thighs down, cup over her knees a moment as they wedge into the edges of the bucket seat. He moves the seatbelt socket out of the way; tries to make it more comfortable for her. Her skirt rides up and his fingers follow, his hands riding up her thighs, his wrists pushing her skirt up.

Her hands on his chest feel the rise as he inhales. She sinks down and he lifts up toward her, his mouth finding hers - just contact at first, just warmth and contact, his lips to hers, then parting. He takes a breath from her before he kisses her in earnest, eyes closing. And under her skirt, his fingers find the strap of her panties; start to peel them down.

[Danicka] He intuited it because he wants it. Even if it wasn't anywhere in his thoughts, even if he wasn't thinking how nice it would be if Danicka would just climb over and fuck him, there was something in her eyes as she smiled at him during the drive. There was something about her touch to his hand that made him know, quickly, to lean his seat back -- but she stops him there, holding his arm, whispering:

"Don't." Her eyes look the way they did two summers ago, deep and verdant, secretive in their way. "I want to be close to you."

Danicka kisses him then, even as he's leaning forward towards her mouth -- her fingers sliding over his jaw, into his hair, her arms coming around his shoulders. It was like this at her place not so long ago, or it wasn't: she told him she remembered the first time they made love. Of course it wasn't like this. It will never be like that again, and that's probably for the best -- they knew nothing then. She thought he hated her, and he thought she would never stay, she would only tear him apart.

Nothing will ever be like this again, either. So it is every time.

She breathes in sharply as his hands run up the outsides of those smooth thighs of hers. Lukas's breath pushes his chest to hers, and she imagines she can feel his heartbeat, or the echo of it, in her own. She presses closer, aligning their forms, her mouth opening further, drinking him deeper, as his fingers search higher up her legs, palms finding her hips, fingertips stroking flesh.

He peels nothing down. And the more his fingers search, the clearer it becomes that he has to understand now, the more Danicka's kiss falters. She grins against his lips, unwrapping her arms from him briefly to reach down and pull up her shirt, bare her belly and her breasts to him, before she presses close to him again, the fabric of his shirt stroking her stomach, her breasts, her nipples.

Danicka kisses him again, not saying a word.

[Lukas] Close to you. The words echo in him, like light cast down a well. He kisses her -- but she's kissing him, and so they meet in the middle, her fingers smooth over his rough jaw, into his soft hair. When her arms encircle him, so too does her scent. He breathes her in, drinks her in; slides the seat backward instead, opening space for her between the steering wheel and his body.

That kiss deepens as he reaches for her panties. His fingers skim higher and higher, but there's never a line of fabric, a scrap of lace, a span of silk -- nothing but her skin, her thigh and her hip and her waist, and

by then that kiss is breaking because Danicka is smiling, grinning; that side of her that's a little subversive, a little deviant, that delights in breaking the rules and getting away with it because by god, the way she grew up, the only freedom there was was stolen. He used to be afraid of that side of her, only he mistook fear for hatred. Now it only makes him laugh, breathless and near-soundless, a huff against her mouth as he discovers yet another small, secret truth about this mate of his, this creature of the summer.

She draws back. He opens his eyes, looking at her curiously, expectantly. She more or less flashes him, and it makes him throw his head back in a short, unchecked laugh; makes him slides his palm around her ribs and cups her breast in his hand and find her mouth again, closing his eyes. He holds her on his lap,

close to him,

stroking her breast under her clothes and sipping kisses from her mouth until she can feel him hard under his pants, starting to breathe hard against her mouth, starting to eat at her mouth while his free hand grasps and rubs over her bare ass.

[Danicka] The chair moves back then instead, and in that swing of motion Danicka ends up pressed harder to him for a moment, closer to him, gasping softly for it. Rather shamelessly she rubs her breasts against his chest, reveling in the sensation of rough-soft fabric on her hardened nipples. There's something gleeful about all of this, but they stay so quiet at first. Lukas doesn't ask her why, why did she so suddenly ask him to pull over, why now, why here, why, and Danicka feels no pressing need to explain to him.

That they were just driving, and she was letting her mind wander as she stared at the stars or at him. That she thought of that night she drove him from Katherine's Loft to her apartment and stroked and sucked his cock, literally led him around by it, would have sucked him off in the abandoned elevator if there weren't cameras. That she thought about the night they went to some rooftop steakhouse and before they even ordered drinks they went down to his car and fucked in the back seat, sweaty and eager. That she thought about the night on the way home from Szalas, when she was so drunk that the stars spun overhead and it was Lukas's body, Lukas's warmth, that brought her back down to earth.

That she thought of how it feels to be like this on his lap, legs parted, feeling him harden even when they aren't taking off their clothes, even when she isn't telling him without words that she wants to have sex with him, feeling him warm and close and holding her. That she thought of how solid he is, how hot to the touch, how much he is hers, and how very nice it feels when his arms are turning to rock from how tightly he holds her, how hard he grinds into her, how hitched and rough his breathing gets when he comes inside of her, the way he thrusts mindlessly in those moments and those just after.

That's all it really was. Her mind wandered. She thought about sex. And realized, thinking about it, that Lukas was drawn to the changing of seasons as much as he is drawn to her. And that she wanted him.

And that he was right there.

So right here, on the side of the road, she lets him feel her bared lower half, her skirt pushed up around her hips. And lets him see and feel her breasts, her shirt rucked up to her shoulders, her arms still wrapped in her sleeves, her sweet, pink little nipples hardened with anticipation. One of his hands caresses her there, feeling her breast, weighing it in his palm, sensing her heartbeat at the heel of his hand. His other hand rubs her ass, and she whimpers at the touch, bouncing gently on his lap.

If anyone drives by they'll see by the light of their headlights this half-bared woman, her torso a sweetly arched length of flesh, her hair golden in the yellow light, her mouth locked onto her partner's. And his hands all over her -- god, anywhere he can touch her.

Danicka starts to grind against him, her hands searching for the buttons or the hem of his shirt, and finding them, starting to bare his chest to her, open up and unwrap his body like a gift. She gasps, whispering as their lips still touch, her voice simultaneously apologetic and delighted -- and something far more knowing, a dark sort of lust: "I'm gonna get your pants all wet, baby."

Almost as if she's asking him, while she runs her hands over his sides, what he's going to do about it.

[Lukas] If anyone were to drive by now they would see, also, the flash of Lukas's brilliant eyes turning to meet that intrusive headlight glare; the spreading of his large hands over his mate's body, the closing of his arms -- instinctively guarding, shielding, protecting her. Saying without words:

mine.

Mine is what his hands on her body say now, though far differently. Not with his back to his mate and his teeth to the world, but achingly, wantingly, opening as though to try to touch all of her at once; closing as though to hold her right there, right there. He kisses her as she thinks of nights they've spent together, the way they staggered home drunk from a polish restaurant where they ate enough for a family of four or five; the way she nearly drove him out of his mind once, stroking him not-quite-off in her car and her elevator, led him to her door by his cock, gave herself over to him in the entryway because they didn't even make it to her couch.

He leans back to give her room to work when she undoes the buttons of his shirt. It's summertime, and too warm for undershirts. Beneath the light cotton is his skin, darker and hotter than hers. The muscles of his chest roll beneath her palms as he raises his hands to slide them into her hair, combs her hair back from her face to cup her mouth to his again. Another kiss, his heart skipping a beat faster beneath her fingertips; pausing to moan wordlessly against her mouth when she warns or promises him

that she's going to make a mess of them both; that she's going to mark him with her scent, with her slick, as her own.

Yours, is what the kiss he gives her then says: hard, almost-biting, eating at her mouth with his hands passing down her arms, sliding off her elbows to hold her by the waist. He lifts her off his lap, and then his hand is between their bodies and between her legs; his knuckles brush the insides of her thighs as he fumbles with his belt and his button and his zipper, gets himself undone, lays himself open for her like a gift,

yours,

his shirt open to either side, his pants pushed apart, his boxer-briefs pushed down so he can get his cock out and he's so hard already; there's precum wet on the head of his cock already as he takes himself in hand and rubs it against her cunt, slides and rubs and explores the heat and the wetness of her pussy while he tips his head up to hers and catches her mouth again.

[Danicka] Quickly, and quietly, and yet without a frantic, fumbling dash, they go together at Lukas clothes. Danicka unbuttons his shirt and moves it away from his chest, opening it up with a sweeping caress of each of her palms before her body is against his again. Bare skin flows against bare skin: the dark, faint scattering of hair on Lukas's chest brushes against her breasts, and she feels the hitch of his breathing in his abdomen against her.

"God, I love your body," she whispers as she's touching it, as her hands and the writhe of her on his lap is saying it for her. She bends to him, puts her mouth on his neck to kiss him there, gasps against him as the warmth of his skin floods her.

They kiss again, harder this time, Lukas searching for and finding her mouth, his hands rougher on her body then, picking her up off his groin. Danicka lifts herself up, wantonly reluctant, and satisfies herself while Lukas unfastens his belt and his pants by rubbing herself gently against his stomach. Her head tips back slowly, eyes closing, and not a single car passes, not a single set of eyes sees.

It's a brief scuffle, a wrestle, Danicka bending against the roof of the car, Lukas leaning back, lifting his hips to shove pants and underclothes out of the way. She looks down now, watching his hands, watching him take his cock out, and there's not much he can do after that because she lowers herself to him again, stroking her pussy against his cock, shuddering as the silken head nudges her clit. She moans as she folds over him again, forgetting that she has arms. Danicka just moves against him like that, riding the shaft of his cock, pressed against his chest, into his arms, burying her face against his shoulder.

[Lukas] There's something so primitive, so primal, in the way they press themselves together like this. Her body to his. His mouth to hers. Her face to his neck. His cock to her cunt.

Lukas's breathing is audible and rough in the confines of the cabin. Her arms are forgotten around his neck. His hands hold her by the hips, but it's really only to feel the motion there; the winding and grinding of her body as she rubs herself wantonly, mindlessly against him. She leaves him wet and slick and hard, as though he's fucked her for some time already. He groans into her ear, fixes his teeth in her shoulder,

and that's really all the warning she has before he shifts under her, sudden and strong, presses against her and moves into her.

His arms wrap around her so tightly. He's muttering half-coherent phrases against her shoulder, muffled with his teeth set in her flesh - oh god and slowly and yes - but it's the clasp of his arms, the arching flex of his body, that speaks for him.

A breath of summer over their skin, dampening already with sweat. The windows are open, the night warm and humid. Under the noise of the engine, over the sound of their breathing, their shifting clothes, they can hear insects and creatures of the night.

[Danicka] They have nowhere to go. She can't bounce energetically on him the way she does sometimes at home, at a hotel, straddling him on the couch or in bed or the floor. He can't bend her backwards and climb over her and nail her to some big, soft bed behind her, smelling her in the sheets as much as he feels her body against his own. They grind together in a confined, dark space, filling the air with gasps, making up for in closeness what they lack in freedom to move.

Breeze filters through, curling on Danicka's sides, stroking her ribs while Lukas holds her hips, moves her on top of him with those sounds he makes, those mindless and wanting gasps, those soft grunts of need and pleasure both. And she's whimpering, god, she starts whimpering against his throat and his shoulder while she rubs herself on his cock like she has no intention of doing anything but using it for her own pleasure, making herself come while he sits there panting

so he bites her, and lifts her hips, shifts her a bit, and slides his cock into her suddenly enough that she yelps, holding tightly to him and then wrapping her arms around him again, holding on as though for dear life. It's almost funny, her quick, surprised hug, and yet there's something desperate and aching about it at once.

Danicka moans, quivering around him, the muscles in her thighs trembling. Sometimes she forgets the last time she had him, sometimes she forgets whether it's been a day or a week, sometimes he feels so new, sometimes she feels like a virgin, and that's so strange to her as to be both frightening and laughable.

Lukas can feel it when she's ready for him. She doesn't gasp or tell him to stop, but the way she trembles, the way she holds herself against him, so steady and so strong and so solid. But he can feel it, too, when that quivering turns to a slow, purposeful squeeze inside of her. He can feel it when her body -- her legs, her thighs, her hips, the slope of her lower back -- move together and he can definitely feel it when Danicka takes him a little deeper. Pushes herself on him and groans, loudly against his neck,

feel it when she starts to move faster, and he has to groan

slowly

yes

as they start to fuck in his car, some midway point between Chicago and Stickney buzzing in the dark with the noises of a summer night. Sweat makes his arms stick to her back. Makes her breasts press and stay to his chest. Makes her shudder from the heat, which feels like it might overwhelm her any moment. She lifts herself, pulling her shoulder from his mouth, and finds his eyes with her own for a moment.

Watches him as she lets him fuck up into her, that long, slow flex of his groin accepted again and again by her body. Kisses him then, slow and wet and inexpert, lost, hopeful.

[Lukas] They've known each other so long; most of their lives, if you counted those first, glancing years when he was a black-haired boy with no English, and she a little blonde girl too small for her age.

They lost each other for so long in the middle, and even now it breaks his heart to think of it. He knows, of course, that those years were necessary -- that they wouldn't be who they are without them -- but sometimes he grieves for the time they spent apart. Sometimes he wishes he had all those years back, could bring them back and have them again, have each day like this one.

Except -- he can't. There's never been a day like this. Never will be again. And that's true of every day, and that's the beauty and the ache of it; why sometimes

they feel so new,

why sometimes when he pushes into her she gasps and clutches at him and he stills like it's the first time, like it's never been like this before. They hold each other, tight, desperate, aching embraces, their breath panting past one another's ear, her body wound so tight, his hands on her back stroking, stroking,

jsem tady, shh.

He can feel when she's ready for him. When her body pulls at his, accepts him, takes him deeper. They don't have the freedom to fuck so playfully, so energetically, as they sometimes do on her bed or his or their shared bed in Stickney. What they have instead is an incomparable, fragile nearness. He can see her eyes, and they're unfathomable in this light, lost, hopeful, vulnerable without being weak. His hands are on her face then, stroking her cheek and her temple as he kisses her, meets that vulnerability in her with his own, shows her

i'm here, i'm right here
with you.

There's enough room between their bodies for him to look down, see where he penetrates her. For once, he doesn't need, or want, that additional stimulation. He wants to look at her face. See her. His hands slide under her clothes now, search for her skin, as much as of as he can take, and hold, and touch, and have. His mouth finds hers again and again. There's room only for a gasp in between.

[Danicka] Later tonight he's going to hunt for her. This body she's so familiar with, so enamored of, is going to change. Every cell, every inch of skin, every length of bone is going to be drastically altered. He'll be covered in fur even darker than his hair, and though his eyes will retain their piercing blue color, they will not be the same eyes. Lukas once lunged in front of her in hispo, tearing into a vampire she was fighting with. With its blood dripping from his muzzle, he'd turned and looked at her once before bolting away again

and she had not recognized him. She did not know him, even as he protected her.

There's another time, not quite a year ago, when she saw him in that form. Coming for her. Advancing, bloody, hungry. He looked at her with those brilliant eyes and he did not know who she was to him. He didn't recognize her as his mate, didn't recognize her at all. She saw him coming, knew what was happening, and remembered

this is my mate. this is my Lukášek.

so she protected him.


There is a part of him that doesn't just want to protect, doesn't just want to keep her safe, but wants to show her how strong he is. How he can feed her, and feed their cubs, and they will all be warm, and protected, and it will be good. Danicka understands this on such a deep level that she can't find the words to tell him so, just the way she knew he thought he was hunting her that first solstice night, thought he was pursuing her through the woods because she was running, until he realized how deeply she'd drawn him in, how inevitable it all was that he would follow her, and that she would respond to him, on that of all nights.

So he will hunt for her. And she'll understand why, and he'll understand how much her own humanity tries to distance her from him then, how much the eons of human development will push against his savagery, how much they will sometimes have to fight and struggle and leap blindly in order to be with each other. To be close. To have this.


Danicka holds herself close to him while she moves on his lap now. One of her hands is in his hair, holding the back of his head, her eyes closed as she kisses him. His hands' roaming over her skin, sneaking under her clothes, makes her shudder, makes her cunt clench in gentle, warm waves on his cock. They could have been here for hours for all she knows, but it isn't so long at all: it's minutes, really, each one unspooling into its own little eternity, when he hears some hitch in her breathing, some catalyst in a particular stroke of his cock into her.

Her mouth falls away from his, her body folding over his chest. This time it's Danicka who opens her mouth and sets her teeth in his shoulder, groaning as she begins to grind on him in aching, hard little circles, arching her back to rub herself off on him. Her teeth leave his skin so she can breathe -- so she can pant, gasping as she works herself faster, starting to bounce on him, her cries getting louder, even more incoherent.

A car zips past, headlights on a dark road that only peripherally realize, several yards away already, that in the car pulled off to the side there were two people entangled in the driver's seat. Danicka doesn't even notice the car passing by, her orgasm lifting her already, elongating her spine, making her arch. Her head tips back, hair spilling down, her face pulling in a mask of pleasure. In the enclosed space of the car he can hear her, only her, no more sounds of the wind or the insects in the night, just Danicka losing herself, wild and plaintive and triumphant.


Moments later and she's still moving on him. Gently, gently, swaying on his cock, whimpering as he kisses her, as his hands touch her, as she trembles. Rocking on his lap as her eyes come back to his face, as they open, begging him for something.

For closeness. For union.

[Lukas] The concept of protection has been entangled with who they are to each other since the very beginning. There was a time when he swore he wouldn't protect her. There was a time when she didn't want to protect him. There was a time when he didn't think it even remotely possible that a creature like her -- so small, so frail beside a creature like him -- could give him any measure of protection.

And then there came a time when he realized he would protect her from anything. When she let herself protect him. When he let himself be protected by her and,

a little later,

let himself admit that maybe protection isn't his first duty to his mate after all. Love is.

Still, these old habits: hard to break. Just moments ago he thought to himself that if some car happened by, if someone's headlights swept Danicka's nakedness out of the night, he'd cover her with his hands. Bare his teeth at the light, like a dog snapping at sunshine. He thought it; knew he'd do it; knew she was his to protect; knew it.

And then the lights came, lighting her up the way she seems to light up from within, blazes with the intensity of her orgasm. They carved her out of the darkness, cast her into gold and pale and green, all the colors of the summer, and

all he could do was hold on to her. Hold her by the hips, press his mouth to her collarbone, kiss and suck at her skin there, groan against her breast as she rode out her orgasm on him.

The lights fade into darkness. Her eyes are faintly luminous in the wake of it; he can see her so clearly even now, more clearly than he ever sees her when he's not inside her, when they're not together like this; more clearly than he ever sees anyone. Her hands are hot on his skin. Her body trembles under his hands. He kisses her, open-eyed, over and again, kisses her until his eyes close and he cups her face in his hand, spreads his hand over her back, searches for her in that kiss like delving for treasure; reaching for light.

A moment later he's moving inside her again; bracing his feet against the floor, lifting his hips to slide deeper, more powerfully into her. His mouth hardly leaves hers, even when he starts to gasp again, moan again. No words here either. Nothing but the sounds leaving his throat, vibrating in his chest; nothing but the rhythm of his breath to tell her how close he is. Nothing but the grasp of his hands, the clasp of his arms, the way he all but crushes her against him, holds her so very close when he drives into her, quick and deep, pounding, to tell her he's there, he's close, he's coming inside her the way he has before more times than he can count;

the way he never has before, because nothing was ever quite like this before.

[Danicka] So much of what they are, tangled up in one single problematic concept -- one so easily corrupted, strong enough to take a person over. There was a time when he thought she didn't want his protection, because he didn't understand that she simply did not believe him, or any other Garou, capable of it. It may still be that he doesn't understand why she rejected it, why she didn't care if he protected her or not, why it mattered so much when she finally let him, why it still stirs uneasiness inside of her when he does no matter how necessary it is.

He's the big bad wolf in the shadows outside, battering down all her walls. And somewhere inside of her is still this fragile little girl who wants to hide in the darkest corner of the most well-hidden cupboard and close her eyes and cover her ears until he leaves her alone. That little girl who had to make herself believe that he only wanted in so that he could be closer to her. So that he could keep her safe.

But oh, it's such a frail thing in the end, broken in half by a choice here or a choice here. Protection. Trust. Trust, most of all, less easy to corrupt but easier to make you blind, and therefore the most frightening thing of all to someone like Danicka. There is much they can do to earn it from each other, but in the end it's choice after choice. Is it worth it. Do they deserve it. Choice after choice. Day after day.

Some are easier than others. And those days, they don't need to argue or struggle. Those days they're so happy that there's no question of how worth it this is, that they'd do anything, bear anything, overcome any stupid little fear that seems so big when you face it and so tiny in hindsight. Those days, Lukas realizes there's nothing fragile or small about Danicka, inside and out. And she's not afraid of any wolf: she is one.

This is only the second summer solstice they've had together. Last year she was so far away and she couldn't hear him if he howled for her. His heart was breaking at the loss of her, the feeling that he must have done something wrong, something unfixable, something that made her have to go away, and it didn't make sense and he knew it wasn't like that at all but oh how his heart was clawing at his insides all that time, missing her. Needing her.

And somewhere miles upon miles away, she was lying in bed staring out the window, staring at the solstice moon, wondering what there was to life when he wasn't beside her. Wondering how it would feel if that separation lasted forever, because inevitably they will lose each other. Asking herself why she couldn't remember what it was like to be the person she was before she met him, when she didn't ask about 'meaning' and she didn't let anyone protect her and she could care less if anyone needed protection from her. Asking herself how she was bearing it, day to day, staying away from him.

Once upon a time they thought they could live without each other. That this would be a tolerable solution. Surely they might have survived it. They just didn't want to. So they did the only other thing they could, the only other option other than Lose Each Other:

they gave everything they had. They held nothing back.


When Lukas looks into Danicka's eyes as she comes down from her orgasm, as tremulous as a thousand pieces of shattered glass or the petals from a dandelion in the wind, all he can see is that she wants him to come with her. Be with her. She could be murmuring it in his ear then, he hears it so strong in his mind

be with me

be with me

be with me

like a heartbeat, or a drum. And those eyes of hers are so deep and dark without the light shining directly on them, without the light turning them cloud-pale blue. Her eyes are gleaming like a beasts', the way they did that first summer they knew each other, when she was looking over her bare shoulder at him and no matter what words came out of her mouth, those eyes of hers were telling him to be with her. Be with her. Be hers.

Lukas answered her then. Answers her now. He doesn't have to chase her into the woods. He doesn't need to hold her against him in a copse of trees to feel her heart pounding at him through her skin. She's already right here. He's already with her, just as he already belonged to her then.

So her mouth opens to him like a lock to a key. Her body lifts on his when he thrusts into her, a sea creature riding a current. Her hands clench down on his shoulders in something like demand -- no pleading now, no fragility, none of that shattered seeming she sometimes has when he's made her come. She breathes in his kiss and drinks his breath and tells him with a counterthrust of her own not to stop. Tells him that he's hers. Her body moves on him and the rhythm of it, the sound of their heartbeats' drumming, tells his body and the ghost inside of it that it's summer.

Summer for hunting. Summer for bloodshed. Summer for mating, hot and savage, grinding together in the dirt as though each drop of sweat will be a new tree, a new blade of grass, a fraction of new life.

The sounds she makes are almost snarls. Til he comes, and some groan of his sets off a cry in her, a shockwave of concurrent pleasure vibrating up her form to accept -- and answer -- his own.

[Lukas] One thing toppling into another. When that last savage thrust of his hips sets off that shockwave of a cry in her, his hands grasp at her back; he twists and opens his mouth and seizes her shoulder in his teeth, those last fabric barriers of her dress muffling against his tongue as he bites her as though to hold her for the mating.

Because that's what this feels like. Not just sex, not just making love, even; not fucking, not even renewing of vows. Mating. Like the season coming into bloom. Like they were the first of their kind, or the first of any kind. Like what they do here tonight will echo through the land,

and through the year,

and lay the groundwork and the seed for some warmth or closeness that will carry them through even the bitter winter, through to the spring.

He's panting against her shoulder afterward. Their bodies are so close, still joined; he's wrapped her up in his arms and she surrounds him utterly, and before this -- any of this -- he hadn't thought it was possible for two people to do this. Hold each other like this. Join with each other like this, with no sense -- or only a shifting, liquid sense -- of who was above and who was below, who was surrounding and who was surrounded, who was strong and who was --

well. Neither of them are weak. Not even when he turns blindly to kiss her neck, kiss her jaw, kiss her mouth like he needs her.

[Danicka] The very first time they made love it was like this -- well, no, not like this. But he was leaning againt the pillows and the headboard of that dingy motel bed, holding her atop him between his thighs and his chest. When it was over she'd folded against him and he'd clung to her, pressing his face to her as though to hide from those searching, seeing eyes of hers. And she'd whispered to him, over and over, that she was there with him. She'd touched his hair.

Now she can't ever do that without calling to his mind what he feels like in blasted, surreal moments like this, when reality comes crashing back to him, when he is shaken and overwhelmed by what he has, and how bereft he'd be if he lost it.

Somehow she always seems so self-contained, even afterward. There's moments when she's tremulous and pleading, but he wants so badly to see her come, to get her off before he lets himself go, and the way he comforts her in that post-orgasmic vulnerability is by holding her. By following her. By joining her there.

The way that she comforts him is like this:


Danicka holds him to her, her rucked-up shirt muffling his teeth and his breath where his mouth opened over her shoulder. She closes her eyes and lets her head loll against the side of his, hair spilling everywhere. Her breasts press to his chest, heart pounding a little bit slower than his right now, her breathing panting softly. "I'm here," she whispers. "Oh my beautiful boy, I'm right here."

[Lukas] And his eyes are shut, this beautiful boy of hers -- this monstrous changeling she would fear if she weren't a wolf herself. They're shut and she can't see the sky-colored brilliance of them; his eyelashes are black as soot and her hair catches across them, across his face and the smooth plane of his cheek where he's shaved so recently that she can barely even see the shadow of his beard.

He rubs his face against hers, his cheekbone to her jaw, his temple to her cheek. He makes some answering sound, incoherent, not even a word; an overcome noise, a moan. And he kisses her again wherever he can reach her, leans into her rather than falling away from her until they're one against the other: the steering wheel, his arms, her back, her chest, his. His heart is still pounding through his breastbone. He still moves inside her now and then, overstimulated, reflexive.

"Já vím," he says, breathless, almost soundless. "Vím."


Moments go by before his breathing is steady again. Before his heart has slowed from its mad rhythm. Before he can move against her, rolling his brow to her jaw instead, kissing the base of her neck. Once he came at her without recognizing her, and she still protected him. She's never told him that. Not the details, not the hard, painful truth: i would rather die on your teeth than harm you. Perhaps that's for the best. It would break his heart; it would make him want to do something stupid and noble, shut himself away from her, step backward two years into the willful, naive idealist he was, the strange sort of optimist who believed in self-sacrifice.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps he already knows that. Intuits it, knows it deep in his heart because he was frenzying and she was there and there were no bullets in his body; there were only corpses when he came back. Corpses, and her. So perhaps he understands in a way he cannot express, understands what she meant, really, when she admitted

all those months ago

that she wasn't really okay. That what he is, and what they are to each other, and that fine, dangerous line between protection and possession, best intentions and terrible outcomes, will always be something they'll have to struggle against. Something they struggle against all the same, though. All the time.

Because they have this.


"Do you want me to stay with you tonight," he whispers later, much later, when he can string thoughts together again, when the sweat on his back is cooling, "and not go away to hunt?"

[Danicka] She'll never go as mad as he does when he frenzies. It's not possible for her to do so, not possible to lose her mind so completely just because she's pushed hard enough. At Lukas's limit, there is death for her. At her limit, there's only walking away, and asking herself if he'd dare to follow. So he holds back the worst he could do, and she stays with him. They do what they can. Most of the time, it's enough.

Danicka strokes his hair as they hold each other there in the driver's seat of his car, her eyes closed and her breath slowing down. Another car passes, as quickly as the other one, only this time Danicka and Lukas can't help but notice. She stirs on his lap, eyelashes lifting and head turning slightly towards the window, then just as easily closes her eyes again and ignores it. No longer caught up in sex, she still does not care what is seen, what is said. She drowses slightly.

And awhile later, Lukas speaks, and she huffs a soft laugh at what he says. Her head lifts, eyes opening to his, and she smiles at him gently. "Then what would we eat?"

[Lukas] His eyes open with a laugh, a quick-breaking grin that lights his face. He tips his chin up and kisses her gently, gently. "I won't be long, then," he murmurs.

Lukas draws back from his mate, then. With tender fingers he combs through her hair, touches her body before he covers it, gently, unshyly, lovingly. When he's lowered her dress, or she has, he smiles into her eyes again.

"Ready?"

[Danicka] "Yeah," she whispers, and kisses him softly. Lukas tugs down her shirt, and she slowly lifts herself off of his lap. It's another awkward wrestling match, and she laughs as she's reaching into the glovebox for some napkins, unabashed and unashamed. Sooner or later she smooths down her skirt and sits in the passenger seat again, buckling herself in. Her chair is leaned back a bit, and she smiles lazily, sleepily, as Lukas gets back on the road to finish their drive out to the depths of half-civilized space.

"We have fantastic luck," she muses aloud, glancing out the window at the starlight. "All this public fuckery, and we haven't been arrested once."

[Lukas] Earlier, while she reached into the glove compartment, he'd held his hand out for a few napkins himself. There's something frank and oddly tender about they way they clean themselves up without embarrassment, without a new couple's modesty and mystery. Later, he's a little lazier himself, Lukas is: sitting a little farther back from the steering wheel, seatback a little lower. Laughing again as Danicka muses aloud about their luck.

"Now you've done it," he says. "We're jinxed for sure now." And a little later, he holds his hand out for hers, lacing his fingers through hers.

[Danicka] "Eh, we'll talk ourselves out of it," Danicka says, unconcerned. The way she talks about being arrested, it doesn't sound like this mysterious, terrifying thing to her. The way she talks about just weaseling out of it, too, doesn't sound particularly worried.

He reaches for her hand. He finds it there, her palm warm against his own, and they drive in near-silence until the woods are everywhere. Until the roads they turn onto aren't paved, then aren't even covered with gravel. Until there are almost no lights but the ones his car sheds. Until they find a safe place to pull away, and spill out of the car together, reaching into the back for wine, for her basket, for the blanket.

There was a time when he asked her if she expected him to protect her. And she wasn't lying to him when she said she didn't. When it had nothing to do with wanting or not wanting it -- she simply would have ignored it if he had promised it. Refused to rely on him, refused to rely on any werewolf who tried to assure her that she would be safe with them, like such a thing existed.

Yet now, walking out into the woods, she half-stumbles on a piece of too-soft ground and instantly grabs his arm as she laughs, knowing he'll be there. She knows he'll hold her up. Knows he won't condemn her for needing him, won't be irritated, won't treat her like a weakling because of it. Knows that, in fact, he'll be terribly pleased to feel her lean on his strength like that, as pleased as dog who is being scritched and praised for a job well done. Even if, as they walk and she stumbles and he helps her steady herself, he teases her about still being drunk.

"Well, a little," she admits, though she holds it well -- always has, ever since he met her. Can very nearly keep pace with him while tossing back shot after shot of vodka, based on sheer built-up tolerance. If she ever stopped drinking on a regularl basis she'd be a mess by now, but it says something that she's still a bit tipsy after something like an hour and a half since the rituals she spent with the Chicago pagans. Lukas makes some comment to that effect, still lighthearted, and Danicka does what she's never really done before:

she talks to him about those pagans, those rituals. Tells him about some of the people there, the circles, the breaking of bread and drinking of wine, the dancing. Watching the sun go down with these people, witnessing the end of the longest day as though it means something to all of them. Walking from Lukas's car out into the thick of the preserves, she tells him how much things have changed in that group since she got here two years ago. How differently they do things, the difference in vibe.

And he comments that he's not surprised that knowing her has changed them. She doesn't demure, or argue, or feign irrelevance of her influence. She tells him, arms linked and feet sinking into rain-dampened earth, that feeling like she makes some kind of difference with these earth-worshippers is why she still goes, season after season, to try and use their energy and their will to serve Gaia. To help Gaia. To save the damn planet.

But the closer they get to the treeline, the deeper they get into those trees, the less they speak. The more silence weighs down on them, the shift of fabric where their arms touch one of the only sounds they can hear.

They don't enter the woods to recreate a ritual done two years ago. They don't enter the woods to try and call back a moment in time that is, for them, sacred. They are wiser than that. But they remember it. And the memory settles over them like the moonlit darkness itself, or like a blanket, and they grow quieter and quieter as they walk. Quiet, as they find a little cleared spot with a good view of the sky. Quiet as the unfurl the blanket he gave her on her birthday from the basket he gave her, too. Lukas holds the flashlight while Danicka gets out the planisphere, holds it for her while she sets up her little telescope on her little tripod, smiles to himself at the expression of delight on her face.

God, how they've changed. How two years ago he never would have thought to put together a stargazing kit for someone like her on her birthday, had no idea she was such a nerd. How two years ago she never would have let him see how happy he could make her, because then he'd know how cruel he could be by taking it away, and she couldn't trust him not to be cruel. How much they've changed, and how quickly, as though they never forget how little time they might have.

They don't.


The flashlight clicks off and is tucked back into the basket so their eyes can begin adjusting to moonlight and starlight alone. The time is coming, and Danicka knows it. She finds him in the dark, curling up beside him atop the blanket they spread out beneath them. Her hands touch his face, smoothing over his jaw, searching him out in the darkness beyond twilight. It's warm tonight, muggy and humid every night now. She has taken off her shoes, and her hair is tousled from lovemaking earlier and from walking and from the humidity.

Drawing his face near, she kisses him, and doesn't say a word. It's a soft kiss at first, like a blessing. Then a deeper one, fuller, as though her breath mingling with his is a howl, summoning something out of the dark.

[Lukas] It's hard to imagine that a forest as dense and alive as this will be nothing but bare trees and white snow a few months from now. Then again, it's always difficult to imagine the bitter end of things. But they're realists, the Shadow Lords, and perhaps this Shadow Lord in particular, this warm, golden woman who was nonetheless born of storms and lightning, knows just how abruptly death can come for them.

They know the end is there; they know their lives, and their time together in this life, is finite. Small wonder, then, that they live so brilliantly. Burn so bright.

Yet in the darkness and humidity of this summer's night, they don't even speak. They let the sounds of the night take over: the insects, the small animals, the wind; somewhere, quite distant, a brook or a stream, perhaps. They're neither of them avid astronomers, though they both love the skies and the stars. When they spread that blanket out and lie down, it's to one another that their gravitate, Lukas half-absently tilting the telescope nearer so he can peer through it at... whatever.

The time is coming, and they both know it. They can sense it like a storm on the horizon, a wildness beneath Lukas's skin, held like a fire in his heart.

His fingers slip off the scope when Danicka comes closer. Finds him in the dark. The telescope is forgotten when she kisses him, and he's languid where he lies, his fingers stirring in her hair. When she kisses him again, it's deeper, and he responds to it: rising to one elbow, meeting her and pressing to her, opening his mouth to her, closing his eyes.

When they made love earlier, she rode him the way she did the very first time: their bodies close, pressed together. His hand pushing into her hair now becomes the beginning of a logical motion -- his broad shoulders turning, his body shadowing hers, turning hers under. He covers her like he might love her again, but

his body only weighs hers into the ground a moment, like a seal or a promise. He kisses her a third time, and this one is firm, even hard. When he pushes up over her his eyes glint in the darkness. She hears him draw one breath -- then he springs into the night, the change accomplished in a heartbeat, the greenery shivering as he vanishes, his paws a soft thunder on the wet ground.

A moment later there's only wind in trees.

[Danicka] It can't be hard for Lukas of all people to walk through these woods and imagine how they'll be in winter. He was born in winter. He looks like he belongs in winter, in snow and rock and barren ground. He looks like he's strong enough to survive a life spent in the wind and the cold. He looks like he is just as brutal and unforgiving as winter itself.

And he mated her. When every single thing about her -- the way she looks, the way she smells, the intoxication of her breeding, the bloodlines that both recall and feed her soul -- brings his thoughts to summer. He met her in winter and she didn't belong there. Disturbed his senses with how very much she stood out, like she wasn't retreating into any caves like mortals do when the cold comes, like no matter what she wore or how her breath steamed she just wasn't aware what season it really was. Or didn't care. Like it couldn't touch her.

Like he couldn't, being so much a creature of winter himself. Her scent made him think of not just holding her up against some wall and fucking her but taking her back to his bed, his den, covering her over and holding her there to sleep until summer came again.

And for Danicka, the first time she felt close to him -- not the first time she wanted him, not the first time she ached to be near him, but the first time she felt like she was -- was when he was laughing. Lit up, like he might be on a day where the sun was actually shining. Not cold. Not hard. Warm, suddenly, like daylight flooding the fields with gold. Right then she wanted everything they've built, wanted to be able to rush over to him and lift herself up against him, kiss him drenchingly, feel happy with him.

Feed him. And pleasure him. And make him stronger by her urging. Make him see starlight. Make him see eternity.


The telescope is hardly up before Danicka is moving towards him like that, though. He peers through it, and Danicka is coming over to him then, taking him away from the mortal construction, the ingenious little device to bring the heavens closer, examine them, understand then. Such a magical thing, really, and the shifting they feel in the earth wouldn't happen if not for what happens in the skies, the earth's movement through those skies, but she draws him back from it. Back in time. Back to that earth.

They both feel that stirring. He presses his mouth against hers in that second kiss, answering that howling feeling with rising hunger. Hunger. Danicka lets out a soft gasp when he moves over her, rolls her under him like he's going to take advantage of the nakedness he knows is under that skirt, and Lukas can feel her arch a bit, can see her face as her eyes spark and her head tilts back. He can feel her thighs open gently, just a bit, knows she'd accept him again, right now, knows this time he could strip her bare and devour her, all of her --

Over and over his thoughts turn to hunger. He feels her, slender and pliant, remembers her hunger, remembers blood and meat and fire, feels her teeth in that third hard kiss where her gasping sounds ravenous, remembers the ecstasy of hunting, the joy of life extinguished between his jaws, the strength in feeding his mate, the claim it allows him to lay on her, mine, mine, mine

if he can protect her. If he can keep her safe. If he can make sure she is warm, and fed, and safe, then she is his.


That kiss tears away and Danicka looks at him. She knows. She looks right into his eyes, her breath heavy with anticipation, and in that breath Lukas takes he could kiss her again, love her again,

or hunt.


She feels the burst of Rage snapping him into another form, like heat rushing out of a broiler, like a blast of wind across the desert, and is sitting up as he's bounding away. Her eyes follow the place where he was. He can hear her laughing behind him, suddenly, a human sound that startles all the nearby prey -- too small anyway, too small, too small to eat, to share with mate -- as though she doesn't mind it being a challenge for him. As though she prefers it that way.

Lukas is not there, not nearby, when Danicka begins to build a fire. He isn't there with her as she digs out a broad hole in the sod and arranges dry wood they brought with them. She keeps her long hair tied tightly back, and she coaxes sparks and embers into flame with the sort of patience she probably never showed that Silver Fang girl she used to govern, but flame is trickier, flame is more shy. Danicka understands that: dangerous, bright things that hesitate to show their true faces.

She builds a fire while he hunts, and even with the telescope there, she watches not the sky, nor the flames, but the dark.

[Lukas] That laugh she lets out bears him into the night. Bears his heart aloft, as sudden and instinctive as --

well. As a wolf harking to his mate's call. The Shadow Lord's ears prick, swivel backwards; seek the last sounds of Danicka's laughter as he plunges into the darkness. Prey scatters before him, and before that foreign, human sound, but they're too small anyway. They can't feed him, can't feed her, can't be enough to warm her and provide for her and give her the strength she needs to bear cubs, bear the autumn, bear the winter.

He goes deeper, and in this form his mind is so immediate, so instinctive, reacting without thought. In this form his senses are so broad, his horizons so far away. The night comes alive, scents and sounds. He flushes small forest life from their sleeping-holes. He sends rabbits fat with summer skittering from their burrows, terrified by something far larger and wilder than anything they recognize in their primitive memories. Dirt churns under his paws, flies from his claws, and then he can smell it, panic and flight, the burn of small muscles straining for all they're worth. The first snap of his teeth misses, but then

there's blood, hot and salty. The fading beat of a tiny heart. The last spasmodic kicks of the hindlegs. Then nothing.


Panting from the chase, his every breath colored with bright copper, the wolf lowers his prey to the ground. Noses it carefully, even gently; licks tenderly at the blood, sniffs the scent of small-life turning into filling-food. He thinks of his mate waiting in the dark. He thinks of filling her belly, filling her body; he thinks of how closely entwined such things are, life and sex and death and the seasons.

He thinks, shifting back to a form that can hold such thoughts, of an article he read once, on one of those nights when the rest of his pack slept and he stretched out on the couch and took a little time for himself. He thinks, walking back through the terrain he's covered, much slower now on two feet instead of four, but with two hands instead of one set of jaws to carry his bounty in -- he thinks of the postulation that since injury releases endorphins, that perhaps fatal injury releases such a burst of those neuroactive chemicals that those last, catastrophic instants are filled not with horror and agony but euphoria. Bliss. A sort of final mercy built into a harsh natural order otherwise utterly devoid of it. He thinks again of how close such things are, how blurred the lines: life and ecstasy and death and the summer. He feels close to the season, and the earth.


Earlier, his mate told him quietly about the rituals she attends, the ones she's guided subtly since her joining them. He listened, and he was glad to know, but somehow he knew he could not ask to join. They are distinctly human rituals. He would be an alien element. A threat, and a disruption. They each have their own ways of keeping the season.

And then, together, they have this.


Lukas looks human when he comes out of the darkness. He looks savage, though, and untamed. There are smears of blood on his face; less than war-blood, because his prey were all small. But blood all the same, black-red in the firelight. His hair is tousled. The rabbits and the muskrat are in his hand. He pauses at the outer edge of the light, like primitive man seeing fire for the first time. His eyes are on Danicka, wiping his mouth on his palm. When he comes forward, it's deliberate, one step after the other, toward the warmth and the light.

[Danicka] Next to that modest but warm fire, Danicka knows Lukas is hunting, but she can't hear or see or smell him. All the sensory evidence tells her she is alone. He left no clothes behind as archaeology of his previous presence there. Too much food and far too much wine for one woman alone, two glasses, but none of that really confirms that he was there, or that he is still there, or that he would hear her if she called. She has no proof that she is not alone. She has only those intricate pathways of human thought and memory particular to her species. She has only that glorious trick she learned while still in infancy after countless 'games' of peek-a-boo of believing in things she cannot see or sense, of knowing that just because it's hidden doesn't mean it's gone.

She can hold whole universes inside of her mind at once, calling a few to mind here or there and discarding them just as quickly. She can imagine every work of art she has ever seen and then she can create new ones. She can remember stories, piece them together from a hundred different books, a thousand. She can unlock the mystery of creation and death. She can look at the fire she called out of wood and earth and a tiny stick with a rough red tip and remember through all the ancestors who daren't speak to her until she reincarnates as a wolf that there are many very good reasons why humanity has swarmed across the globe, why they conquer every place they go, why they can and do subjugate every other living thing at their whim.

There are humans who think that the last terrestrial frontier that will remain unconquered by people is the sea. Too deep, too cold, too dark, too full of life that is larger and more dangerous than us, predators without fear of humans. Danicka sits on a bench outside the lion enclosure at the Lincoln Park zoo and she knows better. Asks herself why Gaia would make humans so very powerful, so very brilliant, so very dangerous -- dangerous enough to kill all of their own gods. Dangerous enough to destroy themselves. She realizes, sipping crystalline and cold water from an aluminum bottle with a pretty design on the outside, that even being able to ask that question is why they reign so very, very supreme.

And she realizes, sitting alone on the blanket she did not weave with a telescope she did not build and fermented grapes that will not poison her, that her mate's people are dying out because no matter how strong they are, how fast, how full their rage, they are being choked by humanity and its influence. The kin that are lost, or run away. The human parents who don't know how to connect their children to the earth. The life they have to pretend within, telling lies to everyone around them in the clothes they wear and the cars they drive and, for some, the jobs they hold. It's all killing them, as deception and cowardice masquerading as self-protection gradually dismantle the soul of any thinking, feeling being.

Her eyes close. She breathes deeply. Lukas is hunting. Because he wants to. Because -- and she knows this too is true -- she permitted it. So that his soul will not wither. So he will remain a wolf. So the earth won't forget, and may lend the Garou a little more strength. So that he can feed her and know in a way a part of him would never trust otherwise that she loves him. That she's his.


Out there in the woods, Lukas's senses tell him his mate is still nearby. Even when his mind narrows to the hunt, to the pounding heartbeat, to the stench of panic, he could find his way back to her unerringly in moments. His ears are cocked to listen for her howli-- her crying out. It is hard to remember in this form that his mate does not howl, that she has two legs and no fur and always stays in one shape. She is a scent in his memory right now, and calling the image is harder, is so hard, because the image doesn't matter much in this form. Her scent, though. Her voice. If she cried out, he would hear her. If there was danger, he'd know. He doesn't stray too far. Only far enough to find meat.

Rabbits are good meat. Not so tough or heavy to make his mate sick. The marrow tastes good, good, so saltyhotgood broken fresh from the bones, oh, he can taste it. Tempting, tempting to just tear it open and devour it right now, all his, he can find more, but

his mind is capable of great leaps. Of shapechanging. Of holding a universe in one hand and a hunt in the other. His mind changes, and so too does his body. His hands, no longer padded paws and curved claws, can recognize just how soft those ears are, how silken that fur, as he carries it. His ears feel dulled and stuffed with cotton, but he can hear fire crackling as he gets nearer, just as he can see the trail of smoke above the trees and smell it, too, smell the burning wood and something in him even remembers that this is a human smell, it's a dangerous smell, one even wolves in the wild should know to run away from lest the very forest come down in cinders around their ears, burn their tails as they dash for their lives, carrying the smallest cubs in their teeth, nudging the ones that can run ahead, nipping their heels.

Blinking clears the memories. Sort of. Ancestors, quiet in Lukas's soul, still stir, like old people who never sleep deeply anymore, as though to dream too far into the dark would be a pool they can't ever surface from.


Danicka still has her hair tied back when he sees her. She's sitting on the blanket, her legs bare and her body lying down, green eyes peering out into the woods. She sits up when she hears noise, when the trees move, and when he comes into view she's got her legs tucked up, her hands on the blanket, her eyes on him.

"Here," she whispers, rising up on her knees when he comes close. She puts her hands on his, and is easing the dead prey out of his grip without fear or disgust, at least not that he can see. Working them away from him like she has a right to his kill, like the very sight of it undevoured means it's hers, give it up.

Yet she doesn't snatch the rabbit or the muskrat away and bring them to her mouth, tearing away flesh and fur to get at the still-hot meat inside. Danicka is not a wolf. Mate, but not she-wolf. Mate, with fingers and thumbs and a mind. She draws the prey away and lowers the bodies to the ground, not to tear them open but to get them out of her way. She draws Lukas towards her. Down to the blanket, to his knees or to sit, while she reaches for paper towels and bottled water.

Puts water on the towels, and water on his hands, and gently begins to clean them.

[Lukas] Freely, he gives up his kills to her. He would never do that for anyone else, not even his packmates -- even they must wait until he's had his fill, symbolic or otherwise. But not her. Not his mate. For her, he would give up his kill, as much of it as she needed or wanted. All of it, if need be. He would stay his teeth, restrain his instinct to tear into fresh prey; he would rein in his wolf self and come back to his human.

He would not become a wolf at all, if that is what she wanted of him. But if she wanted that, she would not be his mate at all.

So she takes the rabbits from him. And the muskrat. And she draws him down, and he goes as willingly as he'd given up his prey. She pours cool water over his hands. He watches her clean them, quiet and rapt, because sometimes coming back to the skin he was born in is such a revelation. Here are the four fingers. Here the miraculous, opposeable thumb. Here are the agile joints, the long spans of bone, cleaned free of mud and dirt and detritus.

Lukas takes the water bottle up when he's remembered how to use his hands. When his mate has cleaned his right hand. He gulps and swishes, turns his head and spits. Again, and again, and a fourth time, and by then she's finished washing his left paw --

left hand, and he puts that hand on her face instead. Draws her forward, until he can set his brow to hers, kneeling on the blankets that will be their bed tonight. Like prayer. Like worship. "Here," he echoes her, whispering also. "I'm here."

[Danicka] Even in this body he can smell how ...Danicka she is. And how much his mate. He came inside of her, and she licked his sweat off his shoulder. Her nipples tasted sweet, somehow cool on his tongue. Smells like fire, now, too. She gets blood on her hands as she cleans his, cleans her own along with them. Delicately, carefully, she cleans under his nails and in the folds of skin over his knuckles. When he gets the water and starts rinsing out his mouth, she reaches into the basket and smiles at him as she hands him the little bottle of mouthwash they bought at Walgreens.

That smile of hers is almost apologetic. Almost sad. As though she is sorry for being so human, or making him so human, but the simple fact is, his breath smells like blood, and fear, and a dying life.

Lukas rinses out his mouth. Danicka dries off her hands, makes sure they're clean, and puts the used towels in a bag to dispose of later. Such an odd thing. She feels him move to her and looks up and over at him; he touches her face. I'm here, he says, and instead of echoing himself back to him, she just tips her head into his palm, watching his eyes. "Yes," she assures him. "You are."

[Lukas] There's no hesitation or rebuke, only a sort of mute gratitude, as he takes the little bottle of mouthwash. Rinses again, two or three times, thoroughly. Even so -- later, when he puts his hand on her face, puts his brow to hers, he doesn't kiss her. There are limits. This is one.

I'm here, he says. Yes, you are, she answers. He smiles, his eyes opening. Nuzzles against her for a moment, his brow and his nose, never his mouth. A moment after that, he sits back on his heels and looks over at the small, furry things he's brought back to eat. Then back to her.

"And now I'll stay," he says. Not because she doesn't know, but because he wants to tell her.

[Danicka] Danicka is astute enough to recognize that he's avoiding her mouth. Lukas, who kisses her sometimes just because he looked outside and it was raining, who can hardly greet her without kissing her, who only avoids doing so in certain kinds of public, who has laid his mouth on almost every spot of her body, every inch of her flesh, who kisses her hair and her navel and the small of her back with equal adoration. It's hard not to notice it when he's not just nuzzling her, he's also not-kissing her. Which is a very different thing from simply not kissing her.

So she kisses him. Catches his face in her hands and doesn't answer his promise, but cups his jaw in her hands and lays a very soft kiss on his mouth. Surely his return to humanity makes him think about how there might still be particles of rabbit or muskrat, fur, bone, blood, in between his teeth no matter how he swished with water and a mint-flavored alcohol mixture. Surely the way she kisses him will remind him not to let go yet. Not entirely. Not forget the hunt so soon.

Danicka draws back a bit then and nuzzles him. Forcefully, loosening her hair from its ponytail, rubbing down his neck to sniff at him. She breathes in his scent and then stays close, dwelling in it. She missed him. She doesn't need to say it.

What she does say, after awhile, is this, and a whisper: "I'm hungry."