Title-- Untitled; referred to as Werewolves! or the Denaith Series
Rating and Warnings-- PG for hunting and nudity and implied slashiness. XD.
Species and Characters-- Nicht, city alpha male, and Seyah, country alpha male. :D
Summary and Notes-- This bit comes directly before this one, a few story-time weeks after the first introductory piece--in other words, this is the third installment of the series. XD. This one was totally written by gileonnen, bless her slashy soul, as a gift to me as well as a piece of the overall tale. It's pretty, folks, and plotful. Pet it. Lick it. Read it. ^^;; It's long and full of wolfy and yaoi goodness.


It was the smell that drew Nicht to his feet--the scent of the country alpha, in his very gardens! Whirling so as not to be caught unawares, he leveled his grey gaze on the man who leaned so comfortably on his rose trellis.

"You have overstepped the bounds of territory, you scavenger," he snarled, glancing quickly around the garden to be sure nothing had been defiled.

Seyah only smiled more broadly at the taunt. "I told your omega you wanted to see me," he said simply. "This is a beautiful place--you keep it well."

With a scowl like death, Nicht Marrin resigned himself to the other alpha's presence. Rotten bloody carcasses, what did I do to draw his interest? He turned back to his autumn-blooming roses in a flurry of brown cloth (disconcertingly like Seyah's forest garb).

"This is the part where you sniff the air as if you've been challenged and bring down your brows and ask what I want," Seyah suggested, but Nicht kept his eyes on the cracked-leather green leaves and the achingly red swirls of petals, and on his anger-shaking fingers as they clutched the pruning shears.

"What kind of answer would I receive to such a question?" he asked softly, voice too polite and muscles too tense.

"Perhaps I want to show you the country as you showed the city," the other alpha murmured. "I haven't forgotten the hunt--you didn't distract me." A warm hand enveloped Nicht's bony shoulder. "If you don't want to speak with me, the least I can do is distract you."

The alpha-male scent was overpowering, the feel of breath in his hair overpowering, the need to assert his dominance in some way so real--"I need none of your backwoods distractions," hissed the werewolf, and even as he stood it was like leaning into the pressure of the taller man's hand.

"You can tell me why you tremble with rage but smell like stale fear, or you can bury all of it and hunt with me tonight." Seyah's breath was an amused chuff against his neck.

"The pack--"

"--needn't hunt with us. Must you city wolves always have twenty at your backs?"

At last, Nicht turned, half-hoping to dislodge the other man's hand and not entirely disappointed when he failed.

Seyah was a country mongrel who had dared invade another alpha's most private territory... and at the same time, he was also pack.

He was holding out a hand--in alliance? In friendship?

He met the taller wolf's golden eyes and tried to match his smile. "What, exactly, are you planning?"

With a flicker of a toothy grin, Seyah said, "Come to my garden."



If this continues, my leathers will be as well-used as any back-country flea-farm's, Nicht thought fiercely, his eyes well adjusted to the twilight gloom of the woodlands and his feet comfortably planted on the ground. He was human--human fully, and not the wolf.

Even though his nose was full with the smell of a hundred kinds of preybeasts and his ears twitched at his own footsteps, he was still human.

There was a faint scent like fruit on the air, and Nicht turned his head suddenly as he caught a trace of the other alpha's scent amid the darker, winy smell.

Grapes, he realized with a short bark of laughter that startled him, and as he returned his feet to their habitual heavy tread, he wondered idly if Seyah made wine.

Following the smell of the grapes more than the man, Nicht tread the dark forest cautiously. His ears warned him of a stream (and the smell of water, faint but sweet) in time for him to find a thin stretch to vault, and he wondered again at the good sense of this... excursion.

Before he could fall too deeply into doubt, though, he caught sight of a ribbon of smoke through the trees. Ah. Seyah's house.

There wasn't even a pebbled dirt path through the thick, dead leaves on the forest floor, and if it felt softer beneath his boot-soles, it was also horrendously uncivilized to have one's home like a tarn in the woods, unconnected to the great river-body of roads. Uncivilized, and so very like Seyah.

In such a state of half-amusement, half-offense, Nicht Marrin found the cabin in the woods at last.

It was neat, well-constructed, and kept in very good repair, and the windows glowed warmly, which rather surprised Nicht. It was also deeply surrounded by bushes and the clearing around it hung with grapevines and stretched hides, which didn't surprise him at all.

He was in the lair of the wolf now, and there was no turning 'round.

He rapped his signet ring on the door, heard a creaking inside like a chair, and was greeted with the sight of his fellow alpha with a curved bone needle in his mouth.

Seyah took the needle in his hand and grinned. "Here, we don't knock. Ever so civilized, Nicht Marrin." He gestured into the cottage with one hand and asked, quietly, "Does it feel like invasion to walk through my door?"

Nicht nearly started, then stepped past the other wolf and into the only room.

It was testament to Seyah's prowess as both a human and a lupine hunter--furs were piled on seats and on the cot in the corner, and furs hung drying from the rafters. One great skin hung whole across the wall, its snarling head and long, barbed tail still preserved.

Nicht had only seen its like once--in a bestiary of the strange creatures of uninhabited Chui'techanth. "How did you kill this beast?" he breathed, taking a fascinated step closer.

"With my teeth," Seyah answered coolly, grinning in remembered delight. "I tore out his stomach and dragged his innards across the ground."

Nicht gave his fellow wolf a smile less chilly and more speculative. "You hunted alone?"

He nodded, and his silver-grey hair shaded to golden in the firelight. "For a time," he replied, and pinned his needle in a pair of hides draped over... yes, a rocking chair. And, without preamble, he undid the fur-lined leather vest over his smooth, tanned-gold chest and dropped it on his cot.

As the other man shucked his trousers, Nicht glanced carefully around the room, noting for the first time the low bookshelf beside the cot. Realizing for the first time that Seyah knew how to read, and wondering what it was that he read.

"Well?" Seyah asked, lounging comfortably on his furs with his hair unbound, naked as the sky on a cloudless night. Nicht realized that he had been staring down and unpinned his cloak quickly to cover his frustration with himself.

"Take your time--there are hours of night yet." That secretive, contented smile and the languor of the other alpha's long body made Nicht feel self-conscious--almost defensive of his delicate frame. The country wolf's light smile never wavered, and whether it was appreciative of his body or merely his discomfiture, Nicht didn't care to speculate.

Satisfied at last when the city alpha had removed even his signet ring, Seyah slid to his feet and paced--like a wolf, up on his toes--to the door. He opened it with a careful eye to his fireplace, then stepped into the cool night air with Nicht behind him.

Custom was to close one's eyes when one transformed in a pack; human bodies were not shameful, nor were wolf bodies, but as the body went between one and the other....

It was against custom that both men watched one another solemnly, frankly as they dropped to crouches on the ground before the door and channeled the wolves that lurked in their blood. It was against custom that they watched the shift and heave of bones and muscles beneath human skin until at last the merciful fur came to cover their naked wolf bodies.

Nicht was a small man, but he was a fleet and tautly muscled wolf of a peculiar brown shade that Seyah much admired. He had a long muzzle to match his sculpted, bony face and a long, plumed tail that he carried high, and his pose was graceful in the broken moonlight--less splayed than Seyah's, and yet not uncomfortably tight. If he was still small, he looked and smelled very much the alpha.

Seyah, the larger man and so the larger wolf by almost four inches at the shoulder, still seemed to smile with his golden eyes. The fur of his face and neck was as silver-grey as his hair, but it shaded gradually to a dark tawny-grey on his body and at last to black at his paws. His crouch was almost a sprawl, imminently comfortable more than refined.

The tawny-grey wolf barked lightly and play-growled, hefting himself to all fours with a powerful thrust of his hind legs and darting forward to sniff at the wolf before him.

Alpha. Packmate. Huntmate.

The brown wolf's nose told him the same, and he blew warm breath onto his packmate's fur and returned the bark--a little louder, a little more inquiry and less play. Hunt?

Hunt! came the answer immediately, and the tawny wolf loped into the woods on long, muscular legs; the brown wolf followed quickly, keeping his huntmate close enough to smell clearly even when he wasn't in sight.

Owl, said this smell, or rabbit, said that, but they were not The Prey tonight--there was always one Prey on a hunt, just as there was always one moon. The Prey would be larger, large enough to feed two to gorging; the brown wolf knew as well as the tawny that they were casting for the smell that said herd of deer. They were seeking the scent of an aged or sick beast with wariness in his veins from his lame leg or broken horn or poor eyesight, but no stink of disease.

Bear, said that smell from the west, and the brown wolf broke stride for an instant at the heavy, maybe-threat smell. He could see the flash of silver some twelve body-lengths ahead turn suddenly to the east, and he knew the wisdom in it.

Prey, said that scent.

Prey? said the wolf's thick claws and sharp teeth.

Prey, said the wolf's belly.

The tawny-silver wolf dropped back, letting the brown wolf catch him up and sniffing at the air to locate The Prey more directly. Only a moment told him that the herd (five or six, the human mind said; many deer, the wolf replied) was to the northeast, toward the hills and the streams, and in the tight trees. There was one elder among them, and they were--scent--eating grass. The meadow.

Golden eyes met grey, and the brown wolf knew their plan immediately. It was no trick of magic; it was only the magic of long hunting together, grown to be strategy that they both knew well enough to anticipate. If they didn't have a pack of thirty behind them, they were only seeking one Prey, and he smelled of age.

The brown wolf quietly loped to the northeast, face into the wind and ears checking for any sound of his huntmate. There was nothing; nothing but the tawny-grey wolf's smell.

This would be his kill. This would be his kill.

Cautious, walking only now that he was so close to the meadow where the unsuspecting herd of deer grazed, he passed through the moonlit columns of trees to the very edge of the grasses and crouched there in the bracken, surveying the herd with eyes and ears and nose.

There were five (many) deer in the field, two (some) of them fawns and two (some) adults, and one elder who carried himself well despite his age. His knees didn't bow and his ribs didn't show, although his fur was getting mangy and thin.

Different attack--they had planned for the tawny-grey wolf to steal upwind of the deer and drive them to the brown wolf, who would bring down The Prey easily.

This Prey was no easy kill; he would struggle, and fight, and kick with his still-sharp hooves as the wolves snapped at his flanks and tried to bear him down by the neck. They couldn't attack his soft, sagging belly; they would be kicked for certain.

The tawny-grey wolf would be waiting at the end of a long gully to the northwest, seeing this proud old buck, and so the brown wolf would herd the deer toward him with....

He waited for a few aching moments and edged around the meadow as silently as a faint breeze, and then threw his head back and howled.

The deer spooked immediately, leaping away from the dirge with great bounds, white tails flashing and hooves kicking up clods of dirt and late, yellow grass. The elder--The Prey--ran true and strong, just as the brown wolf had feared, but he ran to the northwest gully, just as the brown wolf had hoped, and in an instant he was in pursuit--galloping, not merely loping, and drawing closer with every moment to the tawny wolf's trap.

There was a fabulous synergy for a moment: kick of Prey legs and frantic roll of Prey eyes and barreling rush of fluid brown predator from behind and (the land dips here) grey-gold predator ahead!

With a snarl like the rasp of a knife-grinder's wheel, the brown wolf lunged at the old deer's hindquarters as the other wolf cut in behind the last fleeing fawn--

--the Prey kicked backwards desperately, and the brown wolf barely struck earth in time to scurry out of the way--

--he came up beside the elder, and as he leapt for the back of the deer's neck, the other wolf hurled his bulk into a sudden assault on the deer's throat--

--the deer spasmed, and blood spurted from his torn throat in a gushing spray across the tawny-grey wolf and the ground. Both wolves withdrew for a moment as the Prey writhed on the ground, but as the shimmer of life left its eyes they were on it in moments.

Thick, hot meat between the jaws; rip it free, tear it from the bone! Savor the shoulder--but share with the huntmate, growling only in irritation and returning to rip at the animal's stomach and haunches. Gulp fast--swallow the meat whole and feel it slide warm and blood-tasting down the throat. Blood everywhere--muzzle, ground, chest and flanks, blood rich and warm and giddy-scented.

This smell said satisfaction.

Their bellies grew quickly full, for these were no hunters who starved for days before a kill; they were well-fed humans who were wolves, and soon the brown wolf was lounging contentedly on the sparse grasses with his belly distended and his paws in the air.

The tawny-grey wolf licked at his chest (cleaning away the blood) and muzzle, and soon the brown wolf caught on to the game; he remembered the scent of the bear, and he knew that it would soon catch wind of all that lovely giddy-smelling blood, and he had best smell nothing like blood when the bear came.

Warm, wet tongues caressed matted fur and cleaned it as best as they could, and in time, the tawny-grey wolf nudged his companion with his nose.

A growl--I don't want to move.

A snarl--You have to move.

A huff of defeat, and the two wolves loped slowly from the scene of their kill.

They moved in near-silence through the silver night, surrounded by the little sounds of a night-bird or a shrieking preybeast or just of the wind in the autumn leaves. They felt the cool breeze at their backs and angled away from it without even thought, and they paddled in cool streams to wash away the rest of the blood and then shook over each other with great, contented shudders.

In time, they came back to lands that smelled of the tawny-grey alpha, and he slackened his pace and led the way to what seemed a clearing, but for the tall trees that colonnaded its floor of soft, green moss.

There, with his belly still full of deer and a pleased little smile in his golden eyes, the alpha curled in the mossy shade of a rock and gave his huntmate a look of pure bliss. The brown wolf, deep in the aftermath of a truly excellent hunt, slunk into the dark, soft place and curled up beside his fellow alpha.

Soon, the two were asleep.



Morning found Nicht human again, and pressed warmly against another man's bare body.

That man was Seyah, and he was studying Nicht with his smile only in his wolf-gold eyes.

"A good hunt?" he said gently, stroking the city wolf's lean stomach with all the careful comfort of a lover, and the moment felt so lazy and warm and beautiful that Nicht just smiled and settled again with every intention of falling back asleep.

"You can't sleep the day," Seyah told him, more amused than chiding. "You have business engagements, I'm sure."

"None today," Nicht replied drowsily. "None until tomorrow."

"And you'll sleep until tomorrow?" Seyah asked. He seemed to like this game far too much, and Nicht wondered exactly how long the other alpha had been awake.

He wouldn't ask, of course. He didn't really want to be told.

At last, unable to postpone wakefulness any longer, he stretched his tired muscles and sat upright, brushing at the moss that had gathered on his side during the night.

"You have a leaf in your hair," Seyah confided, and pulled it free--Nicht caught his hand as it descended toward the forest floor.

He took a deep breath because this was not going to be an easy conversation, and it was too early in the morning to be having it, but the ease of the early morning had dissipated and left him hollow again. "Seyah," he said, and the other man's ears pricked. I can never forget that he's a wolf. "It was very kind of you to take me on this hunt. It was indescribably relaxing," he said, knowing in his marrow that he was unable to dredge up a memory that was as sublimely sweet as this hunt had been to both wolf and man.

"You should hunt more often," the country wolf agreed, and his easy companionship--he had claimed in return the hand that had claimed his--made this harder to say.

Nicht glanced down, but it was impossible now to free his short, thin fingers from the other man's longer ones. "Why?" he asked quickly. "Why do you help me? You hate city wolves and fight me every full moon. Why did you ask me to share this hunt? Why did you wander into my garden when I wanted to be alone, and why did my omega let you? Why do you worry about me when I call you mongrel and half-breed?'

Seyah just raised both brows. "Do you want me to walk away and leave you with whatever makes you so angry that you walk like a wolf although you're a human?" His hand was just a fraction tighter on the other man's.

Nicht raised his eyes, intending to meet Seyah's but instead looking to the high, thin trees with their golden canopies far above. I trust Seyah with my very pack. I can trust him with my troubles.

"There is a woman," he began, forcing himself to lock gazes with the other alpha despite the look of amused condescension on his face.

"There is often a woman," Seyah replied, shrugging.

"She is a human woman, and she wants to take me for a casual mate." The grey-haired wolf bared his canine teeth in a scowl at that--wolves didn't take partners for a night. Even as humans, they might flirt and suggest and play, but they waited for one person alone before taking a mate.

Nicht gritted his teeth against the worry and forged on. "The night of our last hunt, I was at a dinner with her, and she followed me to the door when I made my excuses. She asked me if I were a... a foul, flea-infested werewolf," he spat, and it stuck all the more in his throat for the words he had used on so many occasions with this man. "She was just having her moment of repartee, but she is not stupid, Seyah. She may suspect, and if she suspects, my entire pack--all of the city packs--may be in danger. Your pack may be in danger." His voice was a tight snarl of pain-and-fear with a note like a whimper that Seyah had never heard before, and it was almost as frightening as the news itself.

The expression on Seyah's face, amused and open and touched with concern, didn't waver, but his voice was not as light as his words. "Tell her you have a secret to share with her--a secret that you haven't meant to share with anyone at all, but that she has forced you to reveal with her persistence."

"She would use the truth against me," Nicht said immediately, and Seyah stilled him with a hand to his shoulder.

"Tell her that you have a wife in the country. A beautiful woman who lives in a croft with her family, and your family with her. And she has asked you to visit her every month, which is why you disappear." Seyah smiled. "Would she accept that story?"

"Never." Nicht clenched his free hand and shook his head, making his brown, sleep-curled hair dance. "My pack disappears every full moon as well, and she wouldn't just believe that my wife made my wolv--my staff vanish, too." He clamped down on the human term like his last rope to sanity, heaved a deep breath, and lay back down in defeat. "It wouldn't work. There are ways that we city men conduct ourselves that you can't hope to understand, Seyah. You live out here in the woods, cut off from all--"

"And I don't want to understand city ways." The country wolf leaned back against the stone outcropping, letting Nicht's hand go. "You hunt as I do, and you smell as I do, and if you stopped watching the line between wolf and man--but you don't." He blinked. "What about Hashu? He could--don't say it. I know. He couldn't because you wouldn't let him."

With a shrewd glance over his sharp cheekbones, Nicht turned his full attention to Seyah. "You still haven't answered my question," he said, watching the early sun dapple the man's smooth, tanned face. "Why are you showing this sudden interest in my affairs?"

"Because of her," Seyah answered instantly. "The albino omega who met me in the halls as I went to your office." He smiled, and the grooves that age was steadily wearing on either side of his mouth deepened with the tender expression. There was something indefinably serene in his pose, cross-legged against the mossy stone, that matched the serenity in his face. "I am alpha because the pack knows my strength and skill--if I seemed weak, Inakka might do as I did two days ago. She would come to me, tell me my failing, and try to root it out so that my leadership wouldn't crumble.

"But when I met your omega, she told me to keep away from you because I just aimed to start trouble--she loves you, Nicht, and your betas love you, and I can smell no dissent in your house. Even when you look weak," he said, like raising the hammer (or the needle?), "they love you. And I am trying to help you because I want to know if you are so worth loving."

"Am I?" Nicht asked, and Seyah just patted his hip.

"I'll see."


I love this bit. XD!