It is a sunny and bright day, late in May, when they remember that Heals By Pain had father, a sister, a mate. When they finish informing the wolves of Storm Hammer that, inasmuch as they can control the behavior of an Athro Modi, they should restrict Silence-rhya from trespassing on the borders of the Sept of the Green. Or any sept in the human's state of New York, for that matter. You can't just go around beating Adren Theurges to death for no good reason. It takes time to tie up loose ends, to question packmates, to bury bodies, to reach out to that pathetic, childless mate of his and watch as she dissolves into hysteria, sobbing and crumpling and laughing and half-screaming when they tell her.
Danicka has already felt her clothing start to get tighter. It isn't much weight gain at all yet, barely noticable except in certain pairs of jeans, certain tops, but she can certainly feel it. She has only just recently become aware that she's pregnant at all, and already she's not sure it's going to be all that pleasant. Lukas still tries to nudge food towards her, but most red meat smells like death to her. On those rare but lovely occasions when they get to share a meal, she has sometimes stood up very suddenly and left the table in a hurry. She gets headaches easily, from reading too long or staring at a screen. She seems exhausted, falling asleep if she so much as lays her head down. She's short of breath for no reason, which annoys her because she's taking 'a break' from kung fu but she's still doing yoga. It's just that she gets worn out so easily.
It's her sister, firstborn of their shared father and mother of six children of her own, who makes the call. She and Emilie and the children are staying over at the house where Danicka grew up, watching over each other and over Miloslav. Up north in Stark Falls, they told Milos of his uncle's passing. There was no greater testimony to Vladik's memory then that of that golden-curled young Theurge saying, when asked if he would like to travel to the Sept of the Green for his uncle's Gathering:
no words of mine will ease his spirit's passing.
It's the middle of the day. Danicka gets a phone call. She's in between classes, and it's her sister calling. She answers.
It's late at night. On their shared Google calendars there is a little notation on today's date: Danicka is officially out of her first trimester. Huzzah!
She's sitting in her apartment in Kingsbury Plaza, on the couch where Lukas once gave her a gun, where she's made love to him countless times, where they have argued and consoled each other and watched The Fifth Element together. The enormous television is off, though. Danicka is staring at the black, blank screen. She is still wearing what she wore to school. Her bags are by the door, untouched. Kandovany has snuck off somewhere, entertaining herself.
A few hours ago she texted Lukas: I'm going to Kingsbury. I'd like to see you tonight if you can.
This is where he finds her. The apartment is dark but for the lights coming in from the city. She's never curtained the windows in this place. Every night, moon and stars and buildings gleam into the vast living room. The canvas of her hair and face and environment is all silver and shadow; the lights throw white and gold and blue and green and ultraviolet and red all over her. The door opens, and for the first time in all the years he's known her, Danicka does not look up.
She stares forward, a cup of water on the coffee table standing with undisturbed condensation covering the sides of the glass. Her legs are tucked up. She is holding a throw pillow. He walks into the room, finds her, sees her, and only then does she turn her head to look at him.
"I'm fine," she tells him, her voice a quiet thing that somehow still manages to shatter the dark sanctity he walks into. "The baby is fine. But sit down."
And then, the four most chilling words she could say:
"We need to talk."
LukasI'd like to see you tonight, puts a smile on Lukas's face when he sees it. He's in the passenger's seat of Kate's car, and Kate is driving, and there's tarp and rope and a change of clothes for each of them in the trunk because today they are the judge, the jury and the executioner. My, don't you look pleased with yourself, Kate remarks as Lukas is tapping a message back:
I'll be there after dinner.
and he looks up at him, half-smiling still, saying Hm? and then, quite simply, It's Danicka.
Seven hours later they unroll the tarp at the end of an abandoned pier in South Chicago. They dump mangled body parts into the dark waters. They change their clothes. They burn the old ones, along with the tarp. Kate drives them back to her loft, where Lukas takes a quick shower and picks his car up. It's a quick drive from there to Kingsbury Plaza, where Danicka has two spots in the garage. Lukas parks next to the slate-blue Infiniti; swipes into the elevator and rides it up to 23.
Something's wrong. He's aware of this even before he opens the door. It's a scent in the air, an aura against his skin. It's too quiet inside. The lock unlocks and the door swings open and he pushes in. It's dark inside. He steps out of his shoes and shuts the door and stands there a moment, listening, aware, alert.
No intruders. So there's that. His fingertips brush a switch; a light comes on in the hall. He passes the kitchen, the hall to the bedroom. The windows are all uncovered, as they've always been, and his mate is a shadow on the couch.
Oh no, he thinks, no, no, no, but it's not that -- she tells him straightaway: she's fine. The baby's fine. So there's that, too. His shoulders settle with a sigh. He comes to her, but then she says:
We need to talk
and another thought strikes him like a fist: like a sucker punch you knew all your life was coming. Lukas looks sick for a moment. Then it passes; his face smooths. He comes to sit beside Danicka. Not too close.
"Okay," he says quietly, wondering to himself
how the hell
he was going to survive hearing her tell him she thought it over, she made up her mind, she finally realized it couldn't possibly work out with his rage and his life and her baby on the way, so
she was leaving him.
DanickaThey have been together for over 3 years now. To some human begins, that's nothing. That's a relationship that is only just starting to be taken seriously. To people like them, it's a gift. It's more than they ever expected. It's more than they ever could have asked for. But three years, a house, a mateship, a marriage, a discovery that they have been together in more lifetimes than they can count, a baby, and Danicka still texts him that she'd like to see him. It isn't expected. It isn't certain. It still makes Lukas smile: she wants to see him tonight. And still: over three years since he took the elevator up to her room at the Affinia, trying to figure out how he was going to put himself back together again when she told him it was over, she was done with him, and he still waits to be told that she's leaving him.
If Danicka knew what he was thinking right now, sitting down on the couch but not too close, she might hit him.
She misses that sick look, because she's staring into the darkness. It doesn't look like shock. She doesn't look stunned. If anything, she looks terribly deep in thought, her brow faintly stitched. Her mouth isn't set hard in a line or pulled to a frown. What's unsettling is her lack of reaction. She watches him come sit down, noticing that he sits a little apart from her and thinking only that he must be able to tell she doesn't want to be held right now.
Danicka isn't looking away anymore. She looks a little sad. A little sympathetic. At the moment, that awful thought in his mind seems the most likely possibility: it's over. It's over. She's leaving him and maybe she'll say that they can stay married and mated but in name only, he's not welcome in her home or her bed, and certainly not his heart. Somehow, despite everything, that thought can still cloud and darken their skies.
"About ten years ago, I met Decker Rohl in New Orleans," she says, which is just about the most ridiculous thing anyone's ever said. In part because she calls him Decker, not
"Silence," Danicka adds, just as quietly, "is what the Nation calls him."
And in part because it doesn't fit. It doesn't make sense. Silence-rhya in New Orleans, Danicka in New Orleans, talking about meeting him as though she just ran into him at some social event, some party, even though
that is essentially what happened.
"We had sex," Danicka says, and
the hits just keep coming.
His wife -- his mate -- does not tell him that she slept with Silence. They did not sleep. Nor does she fill in details: how, why, when, where, how many times, what the fuck. She met Decker Rohl in New Orleans. It was a decade ago. They had sex. Well, a little less than a decade ago Danicka was pregnant with an entirely different man's child, and a month before she slept with Lukas she had sex with his packmate in the next room, and they have argued about Martin and they have pointedly avoided ever, ever discussing anything (anyone) they did when they broke up. He knows he's not the first person, or the first man, or the first Garou, or the first Ahroun she's ever fucked. Still: she doesn't give him details, and he doesn't need them.
Danicka goes on, her eyes unashamedly remaining with his gaze. "When I found out he was in Chicago, I was with you and he was with Imogen. I kept my distance. I didn't really have any reason to seek him out. Or bring it up.
"I ran into him again while I was in Minnesota," Danicka admits, taking a breath. So this is it: this is what she was leading up to, perhaps. This is why she's sitting alone in the dark, staring. She was already pregnant with his child then, even if she didn't know it, and she betrayed him. He always knew she would. He always knew: she never loved him as much as he loves her. She never could.
"We drove to the sept where he lives," which is not the same as his sept, "and on the way, he told me about his life, and himself. I told him about my life. When I told him about my brother, he offered to kill him for me. I told him yes. I wanted him to." Danicka's gaze is unwavering. She used to lie, constantly, because she was afraid. She would tell him anything he wanted to hear. She'd look into his soul and find out what he wanted most to make those lies stick. She isn't so easily frightened anymore. She doesn't feel compelled to lie anymore, either. It's odd, how much a person can change in a few years.
Or ten.
"I spent the night in that sept, and in the morning he drove me back to my hotel, and then I flew back here." Danicka's brow is furrowed again, her forehead lined. But only for a moment. It smooths. She goes on, as calm and level as she has said all of these things: "I got a call today from Šárka. According to his pack, a few days ago something called a 'Warclaw' from another tribe showed up in town and beat Vladik to death. As far as anyone can tell, he'd never met or crossed paths with or even heard of this wolf before. No one knows why he came to kill him.
"Except Decker. And me.
"And now you," Danicka finishes, quietly.
LukasTen years ago, says Danicka, I met Decker Rohl in New Orleans. We had sex.
And it's ridiculous, the way he responds to that. The way the words feel just like a punch in the gut, the sort that used to drop him gasping to the ground when he was a cub. Before he learned to tighten his muscles to absorb the blow. Before he learned to twist to take it on his ribs, or his obliques; before he learned to block with his forearms. Before he learned to simply move faster. Hit first.
That's what he was learning, ten years ago. When Danicka was a girl in New Orleans, eighteen years old and turned loose for the first time in her life, going to a party on the wrong side of the tracks all by herself and kicking a beer bottle over the side of a rickety third-floor balcony just because she could, Lukas was a cub in Stark Falls. He was a cub, and he'd been a cub for a very long time, and he was getting restless, getting impatient, hungry for the world and everything in it, all the things he couldn't even name yet.
He didn't even have a name, himself. He hadn't earned one yet, ten years ago, and he'd left behind the one his parents gave him. He didn't have a rank. He didn't have a car. He did still have his virginity. He didn't have the right to leave the Caern without Promised-Rain-rhya's permission, and he certainly didn't have the right to have a girlfriend, or a mate.
He didn't even know who Danicka was. He'd forgotten by then, and it would be years and years before he'd remember again.
He doesn't have the right to feel betrayed. Not in the slightest. And -- he doesn't. It isn't betrayal that he feels, quite. It's just --
like a punch in the gut. Ridiculous; but then, so was assuming she'd called him here to end it with him. Didn't stop him from thinking that. Doesn't stop him from feeling this; pulling his eyebrows together, bending double until his elbows are on his knees. Why are you telling me this, he wants to ask, but in the end he doesn't have to.
She tells him.
And Lukas is quiet, listening. He's looking at the shadows on the floor. There are moments when his brow furrows. There are moments when he turns his face briefly away, unable or unwilling to let her see the expressions that flicker through. I spent the night, she says, and that's the line that sticks, of course, the one that slides between his ribs and makes him wonder.
She finishes. A long time goes by. It's so quiet that they can hear the hum of her refrigerator kicking in. He remembers making love to her on the floor a very long time ago, when everything was shiftless and uncertain. The city lights painted her through the rainstrewn windows; all those colors gliding over her skin.
Those same lights touch his face when he turns toward her. Only half, though: one eye, one side of his nose, one corner of his mouth. The other side is lost in shadow. Just as quietly:
"Why?"
DanickaSome nights she reads him like a book. And when he glances away at the mention of her staying the night with Decker, Danicka would normally feel a hot rush of hurt and anger that he would doubt her now, doubt her for even a moment. But tonight she doesn't feel that way. She doesn't see that flicker or intuit that withdrawal and ask Lukas why, after all this time and everything they've come to know about each other, he would wonder. Tonight,
her brother is dead, and it turns out that she lied to Decker after all. She does not mourn Vladislav in the slightest.
Danicka's brow is furrowed. She tips her head. "Why what?" she asks him, very soft.
LukasWhy.
She's right to ask him a question in return. Even Lukas isn't quite sure what he's asking. He struggles with himself for a moment. Then: "Why didn't you tell me you wanted your brother dead? I would have killed him for you. Gladly."
That one word is a hot flare. A flash of teeth. It passes; it turns out there are other whys, and he spills them out now, one by one, slowly.
"Why did you ask Decker to do it? Why did you -- why did you go to that Sept with him? Why didn't you tell me before?" A pause there. There's something imploring in the way he looks at her. "Why did you tell me now?"
DanickaShe knows all of these questions are coming. He has a right to all of them. Why go to Decker, some wolf she fucked and then didn't see for ten years, and not him? Why would she go to some hidden sept of Fenrir when she's mated to one of her own? They are still sitting a little apart from each other, and neither one of them is talking about Vladik. Danicka isn't weeping, or spilling out words of confused emotion, grief mingled with hatred, any of it. Lukas isn't asking her if she's okay. They aren't talking about plans to go to New York for some kind of memorial, or to take care of their family in this time of great loss.
"I didn't know I wanted him dead -- really wanted him dead -- until Decker offered," Danicka tells him. She's thought about this. She's had a month to think about this. "And I let him do it, and not you, for a lot of very practical and sensible reasons,"
no one knows we know each other
no one would trace it back to me
or my family, my mate, my child
no one I love would be punished
"but the real reason is that killing my brother... cuts Decker off from me forever."
Danicka looks down, and closes her eyes a moment, then opens them slowly. "You and I are always together, even when we're apart. We always have been. Even when I met him, a part of me was looking for you. I never understood it until Prague, but I always... knew it. Decker is different. He and I are just... the same. In a way I can't explain, but... it's true." She inhales, and turns to look at him as she sighs the air out of her lungs. "When I gave him my blessing to kill Vladik, I knew that what I was asking him to do would sever something between he and I."
No. Not sever: "It would...complete it. And I know, without being able to explain why, that I'm never going to see him again. Not in this life."
She shakes her head, small and slow. The words ache when she says them: "I didn't want you to kill him, laska. Not you."
LukasLukas's face changes when Danicka tells him why. Why she didn't ask him to kill her brother. Why it was Decker. Why it had to be Decker. Why it being Decker was a way to put a piece of her life to completion, and to rest. A way to permanently sever her connection to the first Fenrir she ever met,
the first Ahroun she ever fucked,
the first man she ever loved,
the mirror, but never the mate, of her own soul.
This is her mate. The man sitting beside her, a careful distance away. The one who, after three years, after god knows how many lifetimes, still falls back into this crippled way of thinking sometimes. Who sees her sitting alone on the couch in a dark room and still thinks: she doesn't want me anymore. Who thinks of her going into the wilderness with another man and still wonders: did she fuck him?
Lukas wants to reach out to his mate. He doesn't quite know how. His hand makes a small movement that never completes itself. He ends up reaching for her hand instead, touching his fingers to hers; careful. Gentle.
"Baby," he whispers. And he folds her hand in both of his, brings it to his lips, kisses her knuckles with his brow furrowed and his eyes closed and his shoulders rounded as though the whole of his spirit is bent to this one tiny gesture. "Je mi to líto."
DanickaIt's her turn. Danicka looks at him as he bows his head, take her hand, frowning at the way he looks. The way he sounds. The things he says. Her fingers don't move from the pillow at first, but then they unfold, wrap around his, lace their hands together. She lets him draw it to his lips.
"Why?" she asks him, in a whisper.
Lukas"Because I still doubt you."
There's no easier way to say it. No gentler way. So he says it just as it is: plain words, plainspoken, muffled against the tender skin on the back of her hand.
"Because when I walked in and saw that you weren't hurt, saw that the baby wasn't hurt, the first thing I thought was that you were leaving me. Because when you told me you spent the night with another wolf, I wondered if you'd fucked him."
He lowers his hands, and hers with them. He opens his hands to let her draw away if she will. Slap him if she will; he certainly deserves it. A moment passes. Then one more reason:
"Because I don't know if you cut off a man you just called the same as yourself because I might be jealous. Or insecure. Or ... stupid about it."
DanickaDanicka does not draw her hand away. She does look at him as though he's just told her he thinks she looks like a snake, like she has gone back in time and somehow overheard him telling Sam that she's no better, no different, than a cat in heat.
"I should slap you," she says softly, which is just another way of saying that hurt. Her tone is one of disbelief.
She doesn't slap him, though. Doesn't even yank away from him. If he closes his hand around hers again, she allows it.
"I didn't," she whispers, as if this still needs to be said. Though: he just, in a way, told her that it does. "I went to the sept with him so that... he could show me something of his life. So I could understand him a little more. So I would have some kind of context to put him in other than just my memory of him.
"He made sure I stayed warm, and he fed me, and then we slept for a few hours. And I don't blame you if you see all of that as a betrayal. But as far as I can tell by my own heart, I honored this... connection to him that night, and I honored my connection to you, too. To say I would do it differently would be a lie."
She's quiet a moment. "And the first thought I had when I woke up was grief that the wolf lying next to me wasn't you. I felt more sorrow then than I have in the last eight hours."
LukasI should slap you, she says, and Lukas shakes his head, though not in denial.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. And she doesn't slap him. She doesn't even take her hand away. So his fingers close around hers again after a moment. He keeps her hand between his palms, folds his fingers around hers as she tells him --
"You don't have to say that," he interrupts softly; says it before her words are quite out. "I know you didn't."
She tells him what she did do, then. And why. And what she felt, and what she reconciled, and what she woke to. Lukas turns to her again at that, the shadows sliding over his face.
And again:
"I'm sorry."
Danicka"Apparently I do," Danicka says, but it's not the kind of verbal lash she resisted giving him with the palm of her hand. She's watching him, and her voice is soft still, and her forehead is still wrinkled. She doesn't feel grief. She doesn't know, entirely, what she feels. Sad, right now. But it's nothing to do with Vladik. And that feels surreal.
Danicka is quiet a moment. She won't stop frowning. A few seconds pass, and she whispers: "I'm not asking this because I need reassurance. And I don't want you to say that you're sorry again. I just... want you to tell me why." There's that question again, hounding their every step in this conversation. "Why is it so hard for you to believe that I love you? What... am I not doing?" She looks troubled. She looks sincere, which is worse. "What is going on in your mind that makes you think I would leave you, or fuck someone else?"
She stops there, and takes a breath, putting her hand against her forehead. One is cool, the other hot. Her eyes are closed. He's seen this on her face many times in the past few weeks. She keeps getting headaches. Not debilitating, but painful enough to make her sigh when a new one comes on. "I'm not trying to rake you over the coals," she says softly. "I just want to understand. I know how devoted you are to me. And I just wonder what I'm doing or not doing that could make you doubt the same of me." Her eyes open, finding his in the shadows again. "And if it's not me, then... I want to understand what is going on inside of you to make you wonder."
LukasShe's done that a lot recently. Rubbed her forehead because her head was hurting again, because hormones are running wild, because arteries are dilating, because she's carrying a proto-cub inside her. Their proto-cub.
And he's done this a lot recently, too: reached for her when he sees her like this, putting his hand on the back of her neck, kneading the base of her skull with strong, steady pressure. It's almost instinctive now, and while he hesitated to touch her hand, hesitated to put his arm around her, he doesn't hesitate to do this.
Lukas thinks while he massages her. They are sitting in darkness, discussing a darkness at the center of their relationship.
"It's nothing you've done or haven't done," he says at last. "It's not even that I don't believe you love me. It's that some part of me can't ever quite believe you would stay with me forever, knowing what I am, knowing what I can become, knowing my rage can only grow.
"And even if you would ... I can't believe that you would allow our children to grow up with a father they fear. Not after the way you grew up. Not after what happened to -- "
it's the first time he's even said the name of the man this conversation is ostensibly about,
" -- to Vladik."
DanickaLukas would do this if she weren't pregnant. If she were in pain and had already taken something or couldn't take something he'd figure it out. Get a cold cloth, discover that only made it worse, rub her shoulders and discover that makes her feel like her spine is itching, massage the base of her skull until she realizes that -- against her own expectation -- this doesn't make the pain turn into something deep and throbbing but gradually starts to make it abate. He would have done that even if she weren't carrying their proto-cub; tried anything he could think of until he landed on the one that works.
She knows he would do this because he has always done this. This is how he learned to pleasure her. This is how he learned that sometimes all he can do is heat up some soup, keep a glass full of water-diluted Gatorade, and put the little water fountain on her nightstand until she gets better. This is how he learned to lie behind her, one broad hand over her lower abdomen, holding her but not tightly, sharing his body heat with her to ease her cramps. It has been a long while since Danicka thought of him as ridiculous or inane in his repeated, eager, incessant attempts to Figure Out How to Fix It. Sometimes she still tells him he can't, or he doesn't need to, but she understands now.
And right now, when she gives a faint whimper at the first press of his fingertips that is slightly grateful and yet still pained, she's glad he is so eager, and so incessant, and so
devoted.
Somewhere in the moments between then and the name of her brother, Danicka shifts on the couch to be closer to him. She moves into the protective space created by his chest and his arm, still hugging a pillow, hiding her face even from the faint light that enters the apartment. She wonders why proto-daughter can't just pick a symptom and go with it. She's got a solid seven months of this left and she is not looking forward to a day of it, right now.
To what Lukas says, Danicka doesn't assure him that if he ever becomes like her mother, she will leave him. If he treats any Garou children they have differently than he treats the Kin of his own blood, she will call him on it or walk out on him. She doesn't warn him. She says:
"You are not my mother. And I am not my father. Our children will not be me, and they will not be my brother."
LukasAnd so, like this, they breach the gap. They heal the wound, if only a little. His hand on the back of her neck becomes his arm around her shoulders. She moves into the space between his arm and the side of his chest. She hugs her pillow. He hugs her. And what she tells him is not assurance, nor promise, but simply
a fact.
Lukas is quiet a while. Then he turns his face toward her hair; nuzzles her a moment, gently. "Já vím." He exhales; it's nearly a sigh. "Sometimes it's just hard to remember. Sometimes it feels like your brother was the rule, not the exception."
A moment passes. He kisses her hair, raises his hand to his face, pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment.
Soft, "Are you okay?"
DanickaLukas was fostered amidst tales of the only recently-dead Night Warder. He was fostered alongside Garou who were sharpening their teeth on favors, on secrets, on cunning. And his mentor held him back. It must have been frustrating at times, to be so outside the norm. To be different. To be so goddamned earnest by comparison to some of the cubs who were advancing faster than he was. It must have been hard to have so few wolves he could trust. He isn't fooling himself when he says tonight that sometimes Vladik was the rule. Not the exception.
Maybe Vladik was.
Danicka just remains curled. Her headache has not stopped, and there is an emptiness inside of her that is not being filled with grief or shock. She feels a dark, vengeful satisfaction. She feels nausea and weariness that makes her bones feel like they're made of rubber. Her arms stay wrapped around a pillow, a soft shield between herself and the rest of the world. Everything, in fact, even Lukas.
Granted, the baby is inside of that shield. But it has a right to be. Right now the only thing protecting it from nonexistence is Danicka. If she is shielded, so too is the proto-cub.
Or, as Danicka has very secretly begun to call it: Puppy. Not the puppy. Just: Puppy.
"I don't know," she sighs, after a very long silence. "They want me to come out there. My father hasn't even been told yet. They're not sure how he'll take it, and they think I should be there." Another silence, briefer now. "I think I should be with him when they tell him."
It should shock Lukas more. That this golden-skinned mate of his, this woman that carries all the warmth of spring inside her, did this thing. This secret, vengeful, violent thing. Doesn't it break some divine law or other, to call death down upon one's own kin? Doesn't it violate some unspoken pact, some truce between man and god?
But he's not shocked. That in and of itself surprises him -- dully, in some deep place. He's not shocked because, yes, vengeful fury is in Danicka. He knows it is. He's not shocked because Vladik fucking deserved it, and if anyone violated the natural order first, it was him. And he's not shocked because -- in a way -- this has been a long time coming. There's one thing Lukas shared with those other cubs. The ones who were sharpening their teeth on favors, on secrets, on cunning. It's the belief that there's always a price to be paid. Nothing ever comes for free.
He frowns quietly as Danicka says she thinks she should be there when her father is informed that his only son, his only trueborn child, is dead. Lukas doesn't disagree. He thinks a moment.
"Do you want me to come with you?"
Lukas[ignore trueborn child line!]
Danicka"No."
That must hurt. She whispers it, but that doesn't mean it's softened. She exhales, ragged, and then:
"Yes, I do. And I want you to take Irena to Stark Falls to visit her brother while we're there."
Danicka draws back slowly, and looks at him, and her hand covers the lower half of her face, restful and thoughtful and pained all at once. She is asking him for something that sharply, brutally draws that thick line between what she is, what Miloslav is, what Sarka and Renata and Emanek and Emilie are,
and what Lukas, Milos, and Irca are.
She is asking him to leave the kin to their mourning, or their relief. She is asking for privacy in this, one of many things that he and the wolves like him will never experience quite like their kin. And to take Irena with him, when she has not even changed. Show her. Teach her.
LukasIt does hurt. Of course it hurts; it's a line drawn thick and black. Here he is on one side. There she is on the other. Her and her family; her big, sprawling family tree that Lukas is, in all truthfulness, sometimes a little bit envious of. His own family is pitifully small. It's expanding, and it's expanded, on most days, to include all of Danicka's half-siblings and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and parent and all -- but not today. Today, she draws the line. Her family. His. Her mourning. Not his.
Except that's not it. And he understand that when she continues: come with her. Take Irena. Take her to see her brother. So that's where the line is; not between bloodlines or families, but between Garou and kin. Take the wolves to the wolves. Leave the kin to mourn amongst the kin.
That's not a fair division either. It's not a pleasant one, or an easy one. But this division, Lukas can't argue with or fight against. It's preordained by a power far greater than he. And he submits to it, as they all must.
Her mate is quiet for a while. His brow is furrowed; his profile is set, resolute, not without nobility. After a while he turns to look at her; sadness lingers in his eyes. He nods once.
"Does she know already? Does Milos?"
DanickaIt's never been fair. Not fair to fear one's mother. Not fair to lose her so young. Not fair to see the things she's seen. Not fair to spend half his adult life separated from his family because his parents did not know how to deal with what their son was. Not fair that now Marjeta still thinks of grandchildren not just as new babies to spoil but as remainders of her son, beings who might have his eyes or his chin and remind her, painfully and blessedly, of her own second-born long after he has died. It's not fair that this is so. It is not fair that Marjeta expects to outlive him. It's not fair that she is right to.
Danicka nods. "She does. They both do. From what they told me, Milos does not intend to come to the Gathering in Manhattan. I think it was a calculated move; he's a cub, but he's now the eldest Garou of our bloodline on American soil. There are a lot of wolves who owed my brother favors. I imagine the only reason they were loyal to him was because the secrets he knew about them were worse than the secrets they knew about him. I think Milos is sending both septs a message about where he stands and what kind of a wolf he means to be. A small one," he is, after all, only a cub, "but a message."
She does not say that without pride. Her tongue slips out and moistens her lips. She sighs. "We... might want to start telling everyone that I'm pregnant."
Lukas"I'm proud of him," Lukas says quietly. It echoes what Danicka is even now thinking to herself. "It's rare to see so clearly, so young. He's a good boy, and he's going to be a good man.
"I'll take Irena to see him. And maybe introduce her to some wolves at Stark Falls too. She might want to run with her brother's pack after she's done with her Fostering. There'll always be a place for her here, under Perun, but ... she's young, and it's good for young wolves to run together."
We might want to start telling everyone, she adds. He breathes a laugh, which isn't really mirthful at all. What a juxtaposition, he thinks. The death of one, the soon-to-be birth of another.
"My mother will be ecstatic. My sister will never hear the end of it." He's quiet a moment. "Do you want me to tell my parents? See if they can be there for your father?"
DanickaHer smile to that is small, and tight. She's proud of him, too. He's going to be a good Theurge. He's already a good wolf. The Shadow Lords are one of the few tribes that see the inherent, awful strength of being able to speak so intimately with all of Gaia's spirits. Many of their packs are led by Crescent Moons; Vladik's was. She thinks to herself: Milos's will be.
Irena, though. She's ten. She hasn't even changed yet. And that first change could alter her not just bodily but completely. She remembers what Decker told her of his own firsting. She remembers the subtle difference in Vladik's eyes and voice after his. There is almost no telling yet what kind of a wolf Irena will become. A dangerous one: that's all they can know. A strange one: she was born on the night of an eclipse. Beyond that, it is up to her. And to Lukas.
They change the subject slightly. Her brother is dead, and she doesn't think of the juxtaposition; she thinks only that finally, it's safe for her to have this child at all. He's gone. He's finally gone. One more fear will be buried with him. One more nightmare.
He's wry: his mother, his sister, their reactions. But he asks about her father, too, and that isn't wry at all.
Danicka shakes her head. "No. I mean obviously, tell them, but don't ask anything of them. I think... this could bring some things up for them." She's quiet. That settles in: the death of a son. The death of a Garou son. She goes on: "My sister and Renata and Emilie are there for him too. I'll be there. Anyway. It's not worth anything speculating. We don't know how he's going to take it."
She leans over, and covers her face with her hands. Speaks through her palms, muffled. "Could you just... take care of the arrangements? We need to leave as soon as possible. But I just want to go to bed."
LukasWhen she leans over like that, his arm shifts -- unwraps from around her. His hand is on her back, then. Since he reached out to her -- since they sealed that shortlived but awful space between them -- he hasn't stopped touching her.
He touches her now. Warmly, gently, firmly, rubbing slow circles on her back. The truth is their lovemaking has diminished somewhat in the past few weeks. She's tired so often. She gets sick at the most random smells. He's gentler with her; he tries not to badger her with his worry, his concern, but he tries to stay close. Stay near. When he can, he comes home at night. Sleeps behind her, his arm wrapped around her, his hand cradling her breast; sometimes, her stomach. When they do have sex, it's gentler too. Perhaps he's afraid he'll hurt her. Hurt the baby. Tire her out. Something.
Sex isn't on his mind right now. That much shouldn't have to be said. Comfort is, though. He comforts her the best he knows how: which is to say, physically, stroking her back in slow, hypnotic circles. "Of course," he answers quietly. "I'll book the flights and let my parents and your sister know we'll be coming.
"Baby," softer now, "talk to me about this. I know my first response was ... stupid, and utterly inconsiderate. But talk to me. Tell me what you're thinking, how you're feeling."
DanickaShe didn't have to tell him. Could have just told him the story that everyone else, even their family, has been told. Some random monster came and beat Vladislav to death. Left his corpse a mutilated mess. Killed him in homid because he could. No explanation. No reason. No sense to it. She didn't have to tell him that she blessed the wolf who did it. She didn't have to tell him that she knew Decker before anyone living in Chicago knew him, and knew him perhaps in a way that even the woman mated to him for seven years didn't. Understood him. She didn't have to tell him
we are the same.
And they could have dealt with all this: the trip planning, preparing to tell their families that Danicka is pregnant, the trip to Stark Falls, all the very alive and very human shiftlessness that comes after someone else has died. She could tell him: I'm tired and I have a headache and I just want to eat some crackers and sleep.
She doesn't. He wants her to talk to him. She still has her hands over her face, covering her from chin to brow, and she's hunched over, curled up, as self-protective as she gets. He stays near, as he always has, and as he has especially for the last few weeks. It's true: they haven't made love as much. Even when Danicka feels like it, it sometimes changes rapidly. But they do. Often with her on top of him, rocking slowly, gasping at the feel of him, wondering how she lived without this for even a day, for even a week. Her orgasms are slow, too, warm and molten things that roll over her like rain. She falls asleep afterward before he does. It comforts her.
Danicka just shakes her head. "I don't know. I just... I don't know."
Those words usually precede a wave of emotion, of words, of explanation. Not now. She is telling him the truth again: she doesn't know. Not yet.
That comes later.
LukasShe doesn't know. And he -- no; it's not a relenting. He accepts it. She can't see him, her face covered in her hands, her body curled around itself. The only time he can easily remember her curling like this, withdrawing like this,
was the first time they tried to make love. When he threw her back from him. When the change ran over him like flame through a grassland. When he nearly lost control, nearly frenzied, nearly killed the love of this life and every other life: she curled up just like this. Curled up to protect herself, for all the good that it would do.
It aches to see her do this again. He aches, and he leans over her, covers her, holds her arms gently in his hands and bows to kiss her spine. "Okay," he whispers. "It's okay."
And his arms come around her. And he holds her: just like that, if she doesn't want to straighten up, if she doesn't want to uncurl. He holds her with his arms wrapped around her, his chest to her back, his body bent over hers. Waits, patient and warm and present and animal, until she finally does move. Finally does unfold and uncurl.
"Let's go to bed," he murmurs then. "I'll book our flights while you sleep."
