Ivan Press

Ivan

In the early weeks of April, as the weather turns slowly and sleepily toward summer and tax accountants everywhere make their killing, a letter arrives for Hilary. It is hand-delivered by a courier in a sharply cut dark suit. Not one of Ivan's usual servants, that smart young man, even though the letter he bears rather pretentiously proclaims itself from the desk of Ivan Press.

That, it turns out, is also a lie. It is almost certainly not penned by Ivan. First, Ivan rarely writes to Hilary, or anyone else. Second, it is short and direct, almost curt beneath its courtesy, and the language is not his. She is informed that Ivan's esteemed friend and elder, a certain Mr. Edmund L. W. P. Grey of the House Gleaming Eye, will be visiting Chicago in a few days' time. He is here on Silver Fang business and looks forward to meeting his tribesmen and kinfolk in the Great Lakes area. Therefore, the letter goes on, Mr. Grey would be honored if Miss de Broqueville would join him for luncheon at Oceanique this Sunday at noon. Of course, as Mr. Grey is traveling with family and will be joined by Ivan as well, Hilary is welcome to bring any guests of her choosing.

The letter concludes with an assumption of attendance: she need not worry herself over transportation. A car will be sent to her city residence at eleven thirty in the morning.

And so, a few days later, on a mild Sunday in April, a car is sent. It is a Rolls-Royce, of course, smoky silver with windows that reflect the sky. It parks at the curb and a door opens. The driver waits in the car, gazing straight ahead, while a second servant runs upstairs to escort Hilary down. Both men are dressed in black, with crisp white gloves; they speak deferentially and very little. On the elevator down, Hilary is accompanied by her small entourage: her maidservant Darya, her driver Carlisle, and her personal assistant Miranda.

The Phantom has enough seats for all, but that would diminish its luxury. Hilary shares the passenger cabin with Miranda only. Darya and Carlisle follow in the Jaguar. Hilary's conveyance is enormous, spacious, silent and soft-rolling as a cloud. There is whisky and wine; some tasteful reading materials. The windows shut the outside world out so effectively that, if she listened carefully enough, she would hear Miranda's breathing. Only sight transmits: the deep blue of the lake, the cloud-streaked sky. Trees bursting so suddenly into bloom that one season seems to have simply plunged into the next. They are heading north, away from the glass towers and edgy pace of downtown; into the self-assured, understated opulence of Chicago's North Shore.

Nothing, not one bit of this, echoes Ivan's touch.

In about half an hour's time, the Rolls-Royce comes to a stop in front of Oceanique. The restaurant is not large, nestled in a lowrise crafted in the characteristic brick-and-stone vocabulary of North Shore architecture. On a typical day, broad windows in the front would give a view of diners inside enjoying seafood with a French twist; on this particular Sunday, the windows are draped, the interior made private. Hilary's escort exits the vehicle again, coming around to sweep the rear-hinged doors of the Phantom open.

Carlisle, like the Phantom's silent driver, stays with the car. Edmund Grey's servant gets the restaurant door for Hilary and her duo, too, murmuring a polite Enjoy, Madam as she passes. He doesn't follow her in; he goes back to the car, his role momentarily finished.

The restaurant is curiously laid out; an elongated L with the bar along the short leg, facing the street, and the restaurant proper delving into the building. There are more servants in here, inconspicuous, awaiting direction. Hilary might recognize Dmitri. The other three - one to serve, one to pour wine, and one to tend to whatever may be asked of him - appear to belong to Edmund Grey's party. On an ordinary day, there are over a dozen tables laid out in the dining room. Today, there is only one: a large table set at the back of the restaurant, presently occupied by five, the seat at the head of the table - the traditional seat of honor - conspicuously left empty.

Apart from Hilary's party, the entire population of this restaurant is male. The other five guests are all men, or what appear to be men: wolves lounging relaxed around the table, a phalanx of dark suits and hard bodies. Their eyes turn to Hilary as she approaches. There is a beat; dilating pupils. Flaring nostrils. Then civility reasserts itself. Chairs slide out. Feet shuffle. The table rises to greet her.

There is Ivan to the right of the empty chair, taking his position there as her ostensible guardian. He looks at her without evident emotion, but his wineglass is half empty before the appetizers are on the table. Across from Ivan is a tall, solidly built man, a curious blend of dignity and brutality. Heavy shoulders and sandy hair, a square jaw, a brow that seems prone to frowns. He is, in fact, frowning right now, though surely he must not be aware of it, or else basic courtesy would compel him to stop. He wears a light, trimmed beard, and is perhaps closest to Hilary in age; mid thirties, possibly a year or two younger. To Ivan's right, a younger man, long and lean, late twenties or so, the blondness of his close-cut hair and the cut jawline marking him a brother of the first. There's something effortless and confident and magnetic about his smile: here is a player, every instinct whispers. And across from that man, by far the youngest of this group: a man-boy of perhaps twenty or so, blond as his brothers, his swagger still more adolescent bluster than adult experience.

The last man to rise sits at the foot of the table: the seat of the host. He takes the time to button his coat before he turns. His suit is impeccably pressed. His tie is impeccably knotted. His hair is impeccably grey, and his eyes are grey as well; smiling as he looks upon Hilary. Not a single occupant of that table is truly human, but he is most evidently a wolf. It's something about the lean planes of his face. A quiet animal assurance in his manner. Though not the largest nor the physically strongest, his presence utterly dominates the room.

Ivan speaks softly:

"Rhya, may I present Miss Hilary de Broqueville, Kin to our noble Tribe."

Edmund Grey takes Hilary's hand as she steps forward; touches his lips to her knuckles. "Miss de Broqueville," he greets her, "it is truly a pleasure. I am Edmund Grey, of the House Gleaming Eye. These are my heirs: John, Oliver, and Richard."

"My friends call me Dickie," the youngest says. "Technically I'm not my father's heir yet, seeing as my Rite of Passage is scheduled for later this summer. But who's counting technicalities."

"Please." Hilary's hand still lightly held in his, Edmund guides her toward the sole remaining seat at the head of the table. "Join us. I understand you spent time in France as a child; I hope the cuisine here does justice to your memories."

[oceanique: http://oceanique.com/content/view/14/26/

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OH GOD IT'S SO LATE I'M GOING TO BED!]

It's Darya's job to get the mail and disseminate it to Miranda, Carlisle and Hilary once she gets upstairs. In most cases, even mail addressed to Hilary goes to Miranda, who makes sure that the bills and the credit cards get paid, who makes sure that papers are in order before they ever go to Hilary to be signed. It is also Darya's job to answer the door or intercom promptly, particularly when Hilary is still asleep or napping. It is Darya who opens the door for the young man in the suit, and she has a Russian sense of her own and knows that this can't possibly be one of Ivan's.

Though they are kin, and poorly bred kin at that, Darya still knows that she is of Clan Crescent Moon, that Miranda is of House Gleaming Eye, and that Carlisle is of House Wyrmfoe. Darya knows her own family line, knows how many centuries upon centuries since the last time her lineage bore trueborn fruit, knows that she is no prize, knows that the best mate she would be given to would be a half-impotent drunkard who might kill her or their children, and if a close cousin to indentured servitude is salvation from that, it isn't even a choice. Darya, her blood barely sputtering with the touch of silver and rage, looks at this servant and knows instantly that he is kin to their tribe and that he is of a different house. She takes the letter, and a little while later, hands it to Hilary.

The letter remains unopened til much later that day, after the sun has set and the moon has come out. Hilary ignores it and goes about her business. It lies on the counter while she cooks herself a small dinner. It sits there, neglected, til after she has retired to the small glass box of a sunroom she has, floating above the street, where she holds her third glass of chardonnay. She breaks the wax seal and scans the letter, her insides made of ash and lead, her eyes abyssal, then drops it to the concrete and pours the wine over it til the letters run, bleeding, reminding her of mascara broken by tears.

Darya cleans it up after Hilary goes to bed.

"Mr. Edmund L. W. P. Grey," she tells Miranda later, a day later, annoyed by tax things Miranda is trying to settle with her, "of Gleaming Eye. I want to know about him."

Of course, Miranda says, and when she tries to get Hilary to sign something, Hilary throws a fit and hurls the pen across the room. Miranda forges the signature later that afternoon, which is when her e-mail chimes with the dossier and pictures and family tree for Mr. Edmund L. W. P. Grey from the Silvertree Genealogical Society. Hilary texts her and says she wants to see Anton. Miranda tenses but goes to the safe to get the iPad, taking it out only to get another text saying Nevermind.

It is not the first time that's happened. Miranda puts the iPad back in the safe, locks it again, hides it behind the work of art in a horizontally hinged frame. She analyzes, cleans up, and forwards roughly 8% of the information she receives on to Hilary, who wouldn't understand or care about the other 92% anyway.

Sunday rolls around, and by then a careful and concise response in the affirmative has been sent, though it was not asked for. The name used is Mrs. Durante, a subtle but firm reminder that her divorce is yet to be finalized. That, legally at least, she is still married to Espiridion. No real matter; the mateship was over almost a year ago. It was over as soon as the baby was born dead.

The day is mild, the sky actually rather sunny, when the car arrives. Darya answers the intercom and presses a button to open the door, informing Hilary that the car is here. They get their things. Hilary walks down with Miranda to her right and Grey's servant to her left, Darya walking behind them with a valise that holds what is effectively an emergency kit for dealing with Silver Fangs of higher standing and more insane breeding than her own. Carlisle meets her down in the basement after Hilary exits onto the curb, but they don't gossip. Darya has her hair up, and a sense of sobriety and seriousness hangs over them even when they're separated from their mistress today.

Hilary does not speak to Grey's servants. Miranda gives them quietly-voiced communication but, overall, they are all silent. She does not try to speak to Hilary in the car. No one does. Hilary herself stares out the window. The way she looks at the city could bring back winter.

Carlisle, as it turns out, does not stay with the car. This is out of order, unexpected, but it happens. When Hilary exits the Phantom and walks toward the restaurant, all the servants fall behind, fall back, including Edmund Grey's, who only steps forward at the door itself to let them in. They come in in a row, a procession, Hilary followed by Miranda followed by Carlisle followed by Darya.

They are all dressed in black.

Darya, with her fair hair up and tied with a black velvet ribbon, in a plain sheath dress that bares her arms and does not invite speculation as to what is beneath it, walks in very low-heeled black ankle boots and opaque black tights. Her makeup is minimal. She looks like a child whose soul has aged decades past her given years, her eyes wide and round and ethereal.

Carlisle's suite is jet black and cut to make him look even moar broad-shouldered and imposing than he is, his pocket square a brilliant white against that, his tie a black-on-black pattern of gloss and matte. He wears a signet ring with the crest of his family, which used to be respectable but is now mostly forgotten.

Miranda, her skirt and jacket black reminiscent of charcoal, her blouse more like steel, her thick black hair hanging on her shoulders. She is businesslike, with faint pinstriping on that skirt and jacket, jewelry nothing but cold silver on her fingers and in her earlobes, her heels plain and black and unadorned but sharp-toed.

Hilary's dress is short enough to reveal the length and grace and perfection of her bare legs, just long enough for class and demurity. There are black bows made of some sheer ribbon on the tops of her heels. The sleeves are long. The neckline is a wide slit, shoulder to shoulder, but even covers her clavicles. There is a necklace around her throat, a chain bearing an ornate setting for a large but coal-black stone. Her hair is straightened, long and face-framing, hanging in a silk curtain down her back. She has removed her sunglasses at the door, handing them to Darya.

The ring on her right hand, third finger, catches the light and does not throw it back, but absorbs it, drinks it in, the vivid red gemstone on it as ravenous as a soul.

Marry me, he said, fool that he is.

Wolves gathered around the place where they will tear apart a carcass and devour it sniff pure blood on the air and, down to a man, they want. The stoic Adren Philodox and the aged and wise Theurge are not even above it; the sudden and slight boiling to the blood, the flashing thoughts of violence against the other males they were previously sharing water with, the bone-deep knowledge that if it came down to it, yes:

they would kill their brother, if they had to.

Hilary thinks of Ivan's penthouse on Halloween night as she watches the five males shift their chairs backward and rise. Her eyes scan over them all, lingering over none, her footsteps paused as though waiting for exactly this courtesy before she graces them with her approach. The younger sons look much like their father, though she knows they don't all share the same mother. The older son, oldest Garou child, must take more after the female who bore him. He is a bit different. The other two...well. In many ways they are remarkably like Ivan. She thinks of what the stone table in Ivan's apartment felt like as it scraped her knees, while she was -- to put it crudely -- getting pounded from behind.

As she walks toward them, her eyes taking them in, Mr. Edmund Grey receives a formal introduction to Hilary from the only guardian she really has now. She extends her right hand, the ring Ivan gave her the only spot of color in her entire party, allowing him to brush his lips on her skin. Grey will know what Ivan does not right now: her hands are cold, her circulation numbed. "The pleasure is mine," she murmurs, appropriately.

Her eyes scan the brothers again as they are introduced, and she inclines her head to the three of them at once. 'Dickie' explains that he's not really an heir, and the slight lift of Hilary's eyebrow at him -- tolerant more than patient, patient more than interested -- could make a man of Grey's age feel like a toddler. God knows the effect it has on 'Dickie'.

Grey doesn't let go, and he guides her past Ivan to the seat of honor. Hilary moves without much investment in where she's being led, a state Ivan has seen her in more than once before. But this submission is different, so different.

Ash and lead.

The chair is pulled out for her; Hilary sits and is tucked back in. The servants have dissolved like sugar in the rain to their stations, their places, fading away as though they don't even exist. As it should be. Hilary refuses to glance at Ivan as Grey says he hopes the food 'does justice' to her memories of France. They would share a Look. They would both be amused. And they can't do that here, now, with these men.

"I'm sure it will be lovely," she says quietly, crossing her legs under the table. The toe of her shoe brushes Ivan's pant leg beneath the tablecloth. It's an accident the first time. The second time is a gentle stroke, up and down, a hello so tender it's heartbreaking.

They are all such wellbred beasts here. They all hide their claws and teeth beneath an effortless veneer of civility and civilization. Even in that moment when they are closest to their natures, that moment when a female of their kind walks in smelling of fertility, not a one of them prowls closer. Not a one of them circles her, sniffs at her, pushes his nose into her hair and his hands into her dress.

They stand, like gentlemen. They watch her, like wolves. And later, the eldest of them leads her to her seat while the almost-youngest, and the only one with anything remotely resembling a claim to her at this moment, looks at her. Looks at her hand, the ring she wears. Feels like he's starving to death; suffocating.

She sits. A beat later, so does everyone else except Edmund Grey, who pushes her seat gently in for her. That is when her foot brushes Ivan's leg the first time. He is taking another sip of wine, not caring if it is a little improper to be drinking quite so much before the first course. He sets the glass down as Grey is walking back to his own seat across the table, and

that is when she touches him the second time, intentional now, a tender little greeting that they can share in secret. All they ever had were secrets.

He looks at her a beat. His lips move a little, his smile faint and sad and barely there. Then the line of vision is broken; the servant with the wine pours from Hilary's right, as he should, and blocks her from Ivan's view.

Edmund Grey takes his seat again at the far end of the table. He settles in comfortably, his posture erect but relaxed. As if responding to some unheard cue, his servants move silently and efficiently into action. Their first course begins to arrive, ferried out from the kitchen by Grey's own staff, the chef and his waiters out of sight and earshot; tiny plates of artfully arranged little appetizers laid out before each of them, beginning with Hilary, counterclockwise around the table. "Please," Grey invites when they are all served. Napkins unfold. Silverware moves and flashes with hardly a clink.

Conversation begins: light, entertaining. None of the Greys is a lousy conversationalist; not even the youngest, Dickie, nevermind his overly loose tongue earlier that earned him the sort of look that, along with the quietly quelling presence of his father, sent him into a good five minutes of silence.

They talk about all manner of things. Themselves at first, mostly, as though to acquaint Hilary. It turns out Oliver sails, and he and Ivan embark on a discussion of the sailing here versus the Caribbean; and then the east coast of Australia versus the west coast of Scotland. Dickie, who turns out to be twenty years old, talks about his transition from Cambridge to the private tutor who will provide the rest of his adult education as he himself transitions from the mortal world to the Garou. As the appetizers are cleared away and the soup is served, Hilary learns through casual asides that Richard is an Ahroun, and John a Philodox. Oliver invites her to guess his auspice. Whether she does or not, she discovers - either through Oliver's own confirmation or his older brother's commentary - that the secondborn heir is a Galliard. By the time soup is replaced by salad, she has added to her knowledge that the family runs as a single pack. Rather like the true wolves, Oliver puts in. As it should be.

It turns out they have a trueborn sister, too. The Ragabash. Quite a complete collection, Ivan compliments them; receives only a gracious nod from Edmund Grey. And of course, they have their kin - the other nine members of their family, sons and daughters. One of them is studying at Harvard, Dickie comments. And John is already mated and married, though the Philodox is rather tightlipped about his wife.

Truthfully, he's rather tightlipped, period. He looks mostly at his food. When he speaks, his voice is low and clear, certain and confident; so it's not shyness. He simply doesn't say much. He eats heartily. He almost never looks at Hilary, and when he does it's a brief glance, quickly turned away. That's in direct contrast to his brothers, both of whom all but carry the conversation on their backs. Both of whom look at Hilary at nearly every opportunity, the youngest all but staring.

And then there is the father, who says almost nothing; who listens to everything. He barely touches his food. He sips his wine. He leans back in his chair, and his head tilts sometimes. His eyebrows rise and fall and occasionally move together. His lips turn, a twist when he disagrees, a smile when he agrees, or when he is pleased, or when he is amused.

His eyes move, following the flow of conversation around the table,

and return, again and again, to the woman he came here to see. Between him and his possible future mate is a long stretch of pristine tablecloth. Six gleaming place settings: plates and silverware and two glasses each, and their ever-changing array of courses. As it is not dinner, there are no candles to reflect in their eyes. Every time his eyes are on Hilary, he smiles. It softens his regard. Still, there is no question, none, that he is watching her, measuring her, weighing her.

And later: appreciating her.

By the time the fish course is on the table, the Greys are divulging more intimate details of their lives. Hilary, if she bothered to read what Miranda sent her, already knows Edmund Grey hails from an astoundingly long lineage. The Society has exact records of his ancestry back a dozen generations or more; has the roots of his house back even farther. From the Chilterns to the Norman Conquest; from Normandy to the Dane-mark. And Hilary, if she bothered to care, knows Edmund Grey has had wives and mates before. No fewer than four, all but one still alive --

but she learns, now, that every one of Grey's trueborn children were borne from a different mother. John's is the one who passed, and was Edmund Grey's first mate. John does not speak of her, either, a frown cracking across his brow as Oliver starts to comment on her grace and beauty. His brother gets the hint. The conversation turns away from that. No one speaks of why Grey moved on from each of them, or when.

The fish course is cleared away. The main course at last, then: shellfish and steak. Ivan has drank two or three glasses of wine by now. He eats the bloody center of his steak and pushes his lobster tail around the plate. The focus of the conversation turns, at last, toward Hilary herself. Oliver praises her ring. Lovely, he calls it. That is the Mousaieff, is it not? Your former husband must have loved you dearly.

To Hilary's left, John clears his throat faintly. This is the first thing he's said for some time:

"When your business with him is resolved," he says, "have you any plans to relocate? Try a change of scenery?"

"Overseas, perhaps," Dickie puts in, and there is a sense, a very distinct sense, that the Greys are moving as a pack. That they have been this entire time, laying the course of conversation as methodically as any hunt. Parsing out the idle details of their lives, filling in any blanks that might remain after Hilary's investigation into their family, before turning their direction ever so gradually and ever so inexorably

toward the reason their father came here. Edmund Grey is watching Hilary again, his eyes keen now.

There are three females in the room when they enter Oceanique, and when the servants dissipate, there is one. A thousand years ago they would have fought for her. No challenges, no formality, just tooth and claws and whoever dominated the others with strength and spirit could have her, mount her right there, but,

a thousand years has changed their species a great deal. Dickie and his brothers might not recognize the formality and the significance of Hilary and all her servants being swathed in black as they are, but their father will. The oldest might. They have to remember that it has not yet been a year since the wife of Gilded Honor, Foretells the Dawn gave birth to nothing, to death, to grief and shame and abandonment. She's in mourning.

But Ivan's seen her in all the colors of the rainbow since the day Anton was born. He knows that Anton is alive and well, robustly healthy, hungry, mobile, adorable, beloved. He knows how the boy sleeps, thumb stuck in his mouth, fingers splayed, and he is getting big enough now that they have allowed him a single stuffed toy in his crib with him. It's some floppy stuffed lamb that he happened to touch in a shop and would not let go of. It's quite the joke: the little boy, son of a wolf, whose favorite toy is a limp-limbed lamb. Ivan knows what Hilary really gave birth to that day. He knows, too,

what she is really mourning.

Lunch passes... uneventfully. Hilary eats quietly and not very much. She listens more than she speaks. She does not smile and laugh, really -- the most they see are a few thin smiles, but that pall of grief hangs so heavily over her. The parts of them that do not want to sniff and mount her are twisting, howling with protectiveness, gathering around her because

she is soft and she is weak and she is wounded and their hearts tell them to do this even though she isn't theirs. Not really. Not yet.

Theirs. Let's talk about that a moment. Hilary picks up on that early on. She would belong to Edmund, yes, but his pack are all his blood children, a matched set -- a silver pack. She would be theirs, too. And she can sense the strain that causes in them, the tension. It isn't empathy. It's a survival mechanism, it's part of her blood, it's in her bones. She would be theirs to protect as much as their father's, and

they would not be allowed to touch her. Maddening.

She does ask about the sister who is not present, wondering aloud why not. She does not comment on the food unless asked, and if asked, is very polite. She doesn't guess about Oliver's auspice when it comes up, only smiling and saying Oh, I wouldn't be able to. She does not inquire much about the rest of their family. The mates who are gone. The one who died. The wife that John won't talk about. The children of different women, all tied together by their father.

Who watches her. She watches him back occasionally, because every moment is a struggle not to look at Ivan, ask Ivan with her eyes what to do, see if he is happy, if he is miserable, if he wants her to get on his lap and let him pet her until he feels better, if he wants to bend her over and thrash her until he feels better, until he remembers who she belongs to, until he forgets for a few seconds that he's going to lose her. She wants to ask him if they can see Anton, if they can run away and nevereverever come back, please, please Ivan.

So she doesn't look at Ivan. She pretends he is next to nothing to her, pretends she cares more about this Theurge who wants to take her away, who is slaughtering her life and her freedom and her thin, sputtering connection to Anton, who essentially ripped away and shattered that collar Ivan tried to give her. Even her first mate never collared her. This man is taking everything from her that she really wants, that really means anything to her. And she pretends, through lunch, that he's the one she's here to see. Smile at. Get to know.

Occasionally their eyes meet. It is a good thing that Hilary is numb to the world today. It would not do for him to see blind hatred burning in her gaze.

Under the table, she keeps her legs crossed so she can stay in contact with Ivan, the top of her foot resting against his calf.

Unfortunately, then, they begin to focus on her, ask about her, talk directly to her, wonder aloud about her and wait for her to ask. She has barely touched her wine, a single glass of something pale white. Oliver praises her ring and her eyes flash at him for half a second as though he's trespassed somehow. She reins that in and says the only words with any edge to them that she's shown all day: "If he did, I don't think we would all be here today. Don't you agree?" There is a deceptive lightness to that. There is also hardly any way to answer it.

She sips her wine, and does not otherwise correct Oliver's assumption that it was Dion who gave her the ring. She isn't wearing any jewelry on her left hand; nothing that Dion gave her, nothing left of him. She hasn't had his scent on her for nearly a year -- not even that.

John speaks. He asks a direct question, one of the only ones and one of the first things he's really said to her. Her eyes find him, then flick to the youngest present as he adds his two cents to that. She looks across the table at Grey, though, when she speaks.

"I hadn't planned on it," she says quietly, knowing this is not the most accomodating answer. "I've... become very fond of Chicago. At first it was just another place to be, not the finest city in the world but ...there aren't any quite like it," she adds, with a small smile that speaks of that fondness. "I made friends at the yacht club who have been invaluable to me this past year. I'd thought to..."

Hilary pauses, as though embarrassed, and glances downward a moment. She breathes in and continues, quietly: "I thought of getting a house here. Near the lake, perhaps, nothing too ostentatious." She permits herself a small smile. It fades just seconds before she lifts her eyes again, looking down the table at Edmund with the sort of depth in her eyes that has made other men stop breathing.

"I wasn't expecting, after... what happened to me... to have many more introductions such as this in my life."

The Silver Fangs, in some ways, have fallen as far from their animal selves as the Glass Walkers have. More so. A thousand years ago there would be no silverware, no tablecloth, no luncheon at all. There would be teeth and klaives, claws bared and hackles raised to see who will have this female. A thousand years ago there would be no dancing of words, no oblique questions leading to a singular inquiry.

They would simply close on her. Sniff her. See if she will let them mount her, and if so, then which one.

They have fallen away from that. They go through the motions now. They converse -- really, the younger brothers converse while the elder brother frowns at his food and the father looks on -- and for the most part Hilary says little. That is fine; that is what many Fang kinswomen would do. They each form their opinions on that, make their assumptions. Perhaps she is demure. Perhaps she is shy and innocent. How thrilling that would be; the worldliness of her experience, the fragility of her sorrow,

and innocence, beneath that.

At one point, she does ask why the sister has not joined them. It is the only hitch in the conversation - a moment where the Greys look at each other. A beat of silence. And then John answers:

"We are our father's heirs, and we'll carry on his pack when he is gone. That's why we accompany him on most of his business. But by the laws of our forefathers, a female cannot stand heir to the scarps and vales of our territory. It is out of our hands; we cannot defy a decree laid down by the sires of our line."

At the end of the table, Grey stirs faintly. "Eleanor has never quite forgiven her exclusion." It is, in this strange playacted conversation, a moment of blunt and painful honesty. "Of all my children, she stands farthest from her family. Even if I had tried to bring her, I doubt she would have come."

Later: that moment of sharpness, which rewrites some of their assumptions. Perhaps not quite the gentle dove, then. Perhaps this one, despite all that has befallen her and her House, still has some bite. The reactions are varied and quick. Oliver's eyebrow hikes up, but there's something else there, something behind that gesture that is neither surprise nor mild offense. Dickie simply looks startled. John's eyes take a quick, rare flick toward Hilary, and then he goes back to eating his steak.

Edmund Grey is watching her again. His eyes are faintly narrowed, though not displeased - thoughtful, as if he's caught her scent.

And later again. They ask her plans. She mentions: perhaps a house. Near the lake. Small, private. Because she loves this city so; she has friends here, attachments that have borne her through her tragedy. The way she asks, the way her eyes lift. Hearts could break. It was the sons that asked the questions, but it's the father she looks to. Everyone at this table is wearing layers and masks, but in this moment the fiction and the truth dovetail. Everyone at this table knows Edmund Grey's word is the only one that matters.

Everyone knows. Ivan can't bear it. He looks at no one; his fingers are on his wineglass, forgotten. Hilary's foot has rested against his leg this whole time. He has not drawn away from her. It's the only contact they can have, and perhaps the only he could bear. He feels the way they circle her with their questions and their conversation. He senses the way they sniff at her with words, glances. He knows where this is leading,

knows that once she promised to be his, knows that once he promised to always protect her, though he never said as much aloud. What a fool he was, he thinks, and

"Of course," Edmund Grey replies softly. "I understand your attachment completely."

They are in the middle of the main course. Their wine has been steadily refilled by servants that never fail to materialize on time; that never fail to disappear immediately after. There is still dessert to be served. And this is when Edmund Grey leans forward in his seat, folding his napkin from his lap and laying it gently to the side of his fork. He looks to his sons first, and then to Ivan.

"Gentlemen," he says, "would you mind excusing us a moment?"

Instantly his sons begin to move. Amidst of course nots and certainlys napkins are folded, silverware laid down. One by one they rise and excuse themselves from Hilary's presence. Ivan is the last to mobilize, rooted to his seat for a moment, his calf hard with tension against Hilary's foot. Finally, long seconds later, just when any longer a delay would be suspicious, he tosses his napkin on the table. Nods to his Elder.

"Of course, Rhya," he says. Under the table, for the first time since she sat down, Hilary's foot loses contact with his leg. He stands - his eyes meet hers for a second - and then he follows the younger Greys out. Hilary can see them go, their backs disappearing out the door, their shadows cast onto the drapes that cover the front windows as they stand outside.

The chef stays in the kitchen. The servants do not disrupt them. There is only Grey and Hilary left, and after a moment the former rises, taking his wine with him, leaving his plate where it is. He comes around the table. He sits where Ivan sat, to Hilary's right hand, setting his wineglass down with a faint click. This close, Edmund Grey's eyes are pale and misty, the color of unpolished silver. She can smell his aftershave: faint, woodsy, crisp. Even Hilary can intuit this much: he dressed for her. He dressed up for her, to meet her, this wolf with more names than most wolves ever accrue, with more children than most packs can manage, with more ranks below now than above, and a son as old as the woman he came here to meet.

"I confess," says Edmund, "I hardly expected to find myself in this position again after the dissolution of my last mateship. I have all that could have wanted as a young cub: rank, renown, title, land, and strong heirs to carry on my name. But some instincts ... some desires, some hopes -- they confound even the most perfect logic, disrupt even the most rigid plans.

"Since you are here, might I hope that you would agree?"

[MARGARET.]

[MARGARET. :[ is dottirname.]

The sad, aching truth right now is that Hilary would let any one of them mount her. Right here on the table if they wished. Yank the hemline of her dress up, pull their cocks out, fuck her until the bisque sloshes out of its bowl and onto the tablecloth, fuck her until she's keening, fill her one after the other.

But only if Ivan liked it. Only if he was watching, touching himself, touching her, only if he was stroking her hair as she sucked him off and telling her what a good girl she was, what a perfect little slut. Only if Ivan said it was okay. Only, in fact, if Ivan wanted that.

The thought doesn't even enter Hilary's mind but that she knows he doesn't. They don't want this. She's finding herself more and more certain every passing day, every hour, and she's never been more certain of anything else in her life. She would fuck them if it pleased Ivan, if he wanted to share her, entertain her with other men's cocks, but she doesn't want to be with them, or go away with them, and she definitely does not want to belong to them.

What she wants makes no difference. She has known that for longer than she has known Ivan.

Her eyebrows flick at the explanation of Margaret, and her absence. She makes no comment.

Hilary doesn't bother confirming or denying where the ring came from. He knows its name; she didn't. She even had to think a moment before realizing he was talking about the stupid ring. Hilary is no fool, though, as much as she distances herself from interest in the world at large. If he knows its name, he may know other things. He may wonder at others. Let him. Let him believe whatever he likes. Hilary sips her wine and decides what she will do, but says nothing of it except the other part:

if Dion had loved her dearly, maybe he would not have cast her out of his heart and his family name when she lost his child. They wouldn't be here.

What she says of Chicago is honest. For the most part. She is an isolated woman, even for one of her standing and class. She is not human and perhaps they even understand that her 'friendships' with these humans are paltry at best. Entertaining, distracting, good to keep her mind off her many tragedies. Likely they know more about her history than she does, just as Dion did. Likely they know of her truly mad, wild-minded parents and their murder-suicide, their insane pact, their obsession with replacing themselves on the earth in the form of one son and one daughter. Likely they know that Hilary has no memory of them whatsoever, had pictures but cannot even bring their faces to mind.

Likely they know what happened to her beloved brother, why there were no remains to bury or burn, though the fact that Hilary witnessed this was well and deeply hidden by her servants and the Gaoru around them at the time. No one would have ever wanted to touch her if they'd known how close she came to that sort of... tawdry experience. What marks it might have left. What scars they would unearth, running their hands over her. But what happened to the much older young man, only Garou heir to their line, that would not be hard to figure out.

How her servants dwindled along with the family fortune and her inheritance. How she danced in Lausanne. How she studied cooking in France. How briefly she was mated when she was fresh and virginal (or good as) and new. How long the gap between coming of age and being mated even then, and then a long stretch of solitude after that Ahroun died. Likely, it was Oliver who ferreted out most information about her. One wonders how much he chose to share.

But there's no way he could have known that she would talk about Chicago like this, about wanting to stay, about her fondness for the place. Grey is listening, though, and when she mentions that she wasn't expecting to be sought after again, he excuses the rest of them.

Ivan's leg moves, and she loses the warmth against the top of her foot and nearly cries out. Only the slow reaction time of her drugged mind stalls it, stops it, but she cannot help but look up at him, almost startled, as he departs. She does not watch him leave. She can't risk it. They can't be rude. Her eyes swivel toward the father as the sons and her guardian leave the single, odd-shaped room of the restaurant.

He comes nearer and she watches him.

He sits beside her, in Ivan's chair, and her dark eyes spiral further into the abyss, sinking away from the lightness of his.

As his scent touches her nostrils, her head tips a bit to the side. She is gorgeous. She can light up a room with her smile, but she has not smiled like that for them at all today. One could hardly think her capable of it, to look at her right now. Her breathing has gotten a bit faster with his nearness. He can read that as he likes.

Instinct, he says. Desire. Hope. She wonders what those feel like. She's certain she's felt them before. She fells very little right now. He hopes she agrees, and her regard is quiet for a few seconds.

"Forgive me," Hilary says quietly, "but I don't understand." She feels foolish, or at least, seems to feel something, and that something is foolishness, so she hesitates and then explaines: "My life is not lived according to ...desires or hopes I may have."

Of course it isn't.

She's kin.

But in essence, she tells him that no, she doesn't agree, can't agree. They are not playing the same game, they are not on the same field. It is not to her to make rigid plans to begin with. It is not to her to disrupt the rigid plans of the tribe with silly things like hopes, desires, and instincts of her own.

In truth, Grey's sons are very little alike. Beyond a father, a pack and a certain similarity of face and form, they share almost nothing. The youngest is either immature or a fool, or both. On his way out Richard "Dickie" Grey smiles at Hilary, mischievous; he even has the audacity to wink at her, which makes his father's lips thin briefly with exasperation. It's doubtful that he sees that. Too young and self-absorbed to notice very much beyond himself, he sees only Hilary's beauty, none of her pain, none of the darkness, none of the sorrow. He wants her. He can't have her. But that's all right, at least soon he'll be around her quite frequently. Maybe he'll even get a taste.

Then there's Oliver. The second son is not a fool; not by far. He is charming and gifted with genuine charisma. He too smiles at Hilary on his way out, but there's something knowing there; thin and calculating and sly. One wonders how much he knows about her; how much he suspects, how much he has ferreted out. One wonders just how little he's chosen to share; how much he keeps close to the vest for his own purposes.

On the way out his younger brother jostles him playfully. A blind man could see the younger adores and idolizes the elder. When Oliver tosses his arm around Dickie's neck and pulls him close for a quick, rough hug, a blind man could see the elder is merely tolerating and placating the younger - and, incontrovertibly, asserting his dominance.

John is the last to leave, before Ivan. He is very different from the other two; quieter, far more reserved. He has barely looked at Hilary at all in all this time, but he looks at her now, and it's likely a glance too complex for her to understand. There's something dangerously close to aversion there, and yet - something far more like compassion than either of his brothers are capable of. And beneath it, something simmering and dark, gone as he turns away.

Hilary does not cry out as Ivan walks out. And outside, he stands apart from the Grey brothers, taking out his cigarette case, lighting up. He doesn't offer to share.

No, Hilary tells Edmund Grey inside. She doesn't agree. Their lives are not the same. Her life is not her own; and to that, Grey's mouth gives a faint, gentle turn.

"Of course," he murmurs. "I apologize. And of course I could never understand what it is to adhere so closely to another's plans and ambitions in your life. But for what it may be worth, I do understand what it is to never quite live for yourself. In a sense, that is why I have come to you.

"I think ... we have played enough at courtesies and proprieties, Miss de Broqueville, and the time has come to speak plainly of what this meeting is really about. Allow me to lay my reasons and intentions before you. Miss de Broqueville, nearly everything I have done was done for a greater cause. Everything I have was won for that cause, and will be given back to that cause when I am dead. This has, by and large, encompassed even my mates. All but the first, John's mother, whom I chose above another against the protests of all around me, because I loved her. It did not end well. And thereafter my mates were prescribed to me by the Tribe, by the spirits, by Falcon himself. I took them when it was asked of me, and I gave them up when it was asked of me. I have obeyed the will of Gaia. I have fought wars and fathered warriors. I have accomplished everything that was asked of me.

"I am tired of it. I am fifty-four years old, and that is not young for a Garou. What I want in what time I have remaining is to be a little selfish. I want a mate who is lovely and gracious, who intrigues and inspires me. I want to choose her because I want her - nothing more or less."

There is a beat. And then, carefully, as though despite all her history and experience this might still startle her:

"I want you. I need nothing more than to dine with you, to sit across from you, to see you, to simply feel your presence, to know that beyond a shred of doubt. I knew that the moment you walked in:

"I want you."

Another pause then. A break in the intensity. A sip of wine, and then a gentle settling of the glass. "Naturally," Grey continues softly, "I see the hypocrisy of indulging my own desires by asking you to submit to mine. I don't pretend that this is fair, or perhaps even right. I don't expect you to love me for it, or perhaps even to like me. If all you ever feel for me is tolerance, patience, and perhaps a little fondness, that is sufficient. But I don't come to the table empty-handed, Miss de Broqueville. I know your family has met unfortunate ends, and your mateship to Espiridion,"

he says that name in a way Hilary may have never heard it before: carelessly, as though he knows the man, knows he is subordinate, and thinks rather little of him,

"ended unpleasantly. I know he treated you unchivalrously and uncharitably in the wake of your tragedy, and I know he has left you quite alone; without any family or guardianship beyond one small Cliath with no particular pack, renown, or lineage of note. I could offer you safety, Miss de Broqueville, and security for the rest of your life. I will give you anything you want. I will protect you to my last breath, and my sons will protect you thereafter. You will be a Grey of the Greys de Wilton, foremost amongst the bloodlines of House Gleaming Eye, and you will never want for anything again.

"All I ask from you in return is the pleasure of your company."

She barely looks at them as they leave. Her eyes have flicked across them, she knows offhand how she would fuck each of them, and yet: she feels almost nothing one way or the other. If the Ahroun who vaguely reminds her of Ivan is a snake or not, if the younger one who she could tie like a ribbon around her little finger is an idiot or not, if the eldest Garou child of this Athro likes her or hates her or if she reminds him of his mother or if he resents her because she isn't a decision made for Grey by the tribe -- her mind does not wheel through these things. She feels Ivan's departure like a knife, taken from a freezer and left inside of her to warm it back up.

Her heart cannot muster itself enough to feel much else, as she turns her attention to Grey and as he comes beside her, explaining himself to her. Curiosity for John is beyond her. Loathing for Grey is, too. She knows what is expected of her in this exchange as well as she knows how to dice a tomato or stretch out on the barre -- she could do this in her sleep, or on far more potent narcotics than she's on right now. She does not find him particularly attractive, and she knows that does not matter. He is not repulsive. She does not feel any liking or disliking for him, and she knows that does not matter either. It doesn't matter that it doesn't matter.

Those dark eyes of hers are shuttered a moment, closing in a slow blink, long lashes across her cheek. It is a lazy, sleepy thing. It makes the breath catch in the throat. She would wonder when all this would be over, but for all she knows, the luncheon ends with her returning to her apartment to pack, never to see her servants or that interior or Ivan or her son again. And she cannot bear to feel that, so she is quite glad she functions so well on drugs.

Everything he's done, he's done for the war and the cause and his children and the tribe and so on and so forth. Blah blah blah, there was this one mate he loved and everyone was so against it, blah blah, ended badly -- she wonders if maybe he killed her or she killed herself, then realizes she doesn't care. John is probably a mess of emotions and things. It takes effort to keep her eyes on Grey as he talks instead of letting them wander. He's fifty-four. His oldest child, who isn't John -- but that isn't important to her either -- is likely her age or potentionally even a little older, and he could literally be her father. And what he wants is to --

well. As he puts it, 'have a mate' who is pretty to look at and graceful enough to be seen with, who can he paint his own desires and thoughts onto and imagine into a whole human being. He wants a prize at the end of his time, who will want almost nothing from him, demand almost nothing from him, and give him the satisfaction of looking at her, fucking her, having her, owning her, taking care of her, according to his instincts, which

will dissolve into madness as he goes on further, into senility, into

that last time he walks out and does not come back, when something stronger than he is gets past his children and past the spirits and tears him limb from limb, and oh,

maybe then all of them would be dead and she could walk away, they could all say she killed herself for her dead mate and his dead sons, they could say she vanished into the mist like a myth.

But until then, all she would have to do is submit to him. Not love him. Not like him. Thinking she could grow fond of him is wildly optimistic and a bit foolish, but then, he doesn't know her at all. He wants her because of how she looks, because of what she is, and has no idea, no thought in his mind, of what's lurking underneath it all. He would be horrified, she thinks, and this slightly amuses her.

Which is why she smiles, so gently, as he says that he understands what her needs are. He has things to offer her. He knows of all her many tragedies, all her burdens, and he will take them all away, make it all better, because he's just. So. Rich.

He speaks of Ivan, then. One small Cliath, he calls him, no particular pack or renown or lineage. She looks downward and to the side, a lock of hair covering her cheek, offering her things she doesn't particularly crave or much need. She will be a Grey. Not a Durante or an Allegre or a de Broqueville. And she'd have that name even after he was gone, because unlike Dominique, Grey would not let her want for anything after his death, he would not keep forgetting to put her in his will so that she'd have something at the end, he would take care of things long before he died. That's because he's already old and a Theurge.

Dominique was a young, hot-blooded Ahroun with enough money and renown and charisma to land her. And even then, she realizes, she was damaged goods. All but penniless. Servantless. No family to speak for her, no dowry, nothing, no one, and a slightly shattered mind that she had not learned yet to perfectly conceal. She was everything her first mate could have ever wanted.

She's everything Grey wants now.

Hilary looks back to grey and her eyes are sad, dark, bottomless. She has been quiet for several long moments.

"You know, I take it, of Mr. Press's particular... fondness... for me?" she asks him, the hand wearing the red diamond curling slightly atop the tablecloth. "You've heard these rumors?"

A moment ago Edmund Grey was ardent, nearly passionate: leaning forward, eyes sparking, voice low and urgent. A different woman, a younger kin, a girl with less to lose and more to gain might have been moved. Surely he's met the sort; found himself mated to the sort, likely, over and over again.

Hilary is not moved. Grey is at once puzzled and oddly gratified. What she says, though, makes his face still a little. Those angular, noble features become neutral, thoughtful. They all look a little alike, these Fangs. Hilary drew the comparison once between Ivan and her long-lost brother. She drew another one today between him and the younger sons, and if she looks now the father has the same look. The lean face, the long nose, the deepset eyes, the tall frame. These Fangs literally hail from opposite ends of the European continent ancestrally, the opposite sides of the planet by birth - and yet still, the resemblance is there.

A few moments pass. Then Grey nods once.

"I had heard rumors to the effect, yes. But such rumors are so regrettably commonplace amongst our numbers now. I merely chose to disregard them as malicious and unfounded slander. Should I not have?"

Inbred scum, say the other tribes, even ones who look very much alike themselves. And they do not say it aloud, they do not broadcast their disgust for the Silver Fangs freely, because strength is strength even when it is tinged with madness.

Talking to Grey like this is a risk, and a calculated one. Hilary is watching him, but sidelong, hesitant, touching her napkin on the table, unease tight in her shoulders, but there is something molten in her eyes that is intoxicating even when she isn't telling him what she's going to do to him, what she can do to him, what he doesn't dare ask for.

"He tried to give me a sable coat at his Christmas party," she confesses quietly, as though Ivan is just on the other side of the room and not outdoors now. She's leaning forward a bit, looking embarrassed. "In front of everyone."

She doesn't tell him that the ring came from Ivan. She didn't wear that for Grey's sake, and she would claw his eyes out if he asked her to remove it. He would be suspicious if he knew that Ivan gave it to her, proposed to her with it, and that she wears it anyway. He would have reason to be.

"I don't tell you this to warn you, or anything like that," Hilary adds, calming a little. She shakes her head. "He is... flighty. As inconstant as a summer storm. Even Dion, who was... obsessive at times, did not think Ivan's infatuation a matter of concern. It should not be to you either."

With these words, Hilary reaches across the table, touching Grey's hand as though she isn't thinking, as though she is merely moved to do so. She even pauses then, as though realizing what she's doing, and hesitates, beginning to draw back,

just slow enough that he can stop her if he likes without using any of the speed or strength he's capable of. She looks down and aside, then back to him. "I just... ask that you forgive him, if he is difficult with you in... these dealings. He steps out of place, but he has been a true friend since I came to Chicago. He's entertained and protected me when Dion was out of the country, and he has taken care of me since... "

She pretends that her throat closes up. She looks down, and this time she does not look up again quickly.

Beneath Hilary's hand, Grey's moves ever so slightly. A twitch of startlement - excitement - that ricochets right into his eyes. Here is a wolf who has done everything that was asked of him and more. Here is a wolf who is a hero to the tribe, proud and honorable proof that old blood is not foul blood, that the tribe is not lost yet. And yet when she touches him like that,

he thinks of all the things, all the places and ways, that he is far too polite to speak of. I want you, he said, twice, and nothing more than that. His hand is only beginning to move, uncurl, when she draws back. He doesn't stop her. They part again. But then: she goes on. She breaks off. Her throat closes; his heart twists. She looks down.

He reaches for her hand this time, his longer fingers folding over hers, wrapping her knuckles under the cover of his palm.

"You needn't say it," Grey says softly. "I know. And I am so sorry for your loss."

A few moments pass. When Edmund Grey thinks she has steadied herself again, he goes on, "As for Ivan, I understand completely. He is young, and I can hardly blame him for being infatuated. I will remember him kindly for keeping you safe all this while, and forgive any minor trespasses he might make.

"Shall I begin discussions with your guardian, then? Or would you prefer that I wait until your ties to Espiridion are fully severed, and your mourning period has ended?"

There are things about this that are real.

Her and her entourage wearing all black in mourning; that's real. Her foot against Ivan's calf. The way she almost cried out and begged him not to go when he stood to leave. Her telling Grey that she likes her apartment, she wants a house here, she has friends, she hadn't planned on leaving. The fact that she loves him, and she wants her son: real.

When she looks down because she can't speak of carrying a child to term only to lose him that very day, she is only pretending that her throat closes up for the first moment. Tears, real ones, spring to her eyes. She breathes differently. Her mind is awash for a moment in the screaming wail that overtook her when she woke and found Ivan gone, Anton gone, her bed empty and her heart

gone.

When he touches her, she wants to grab Grey's hand and break it. Twist his fingers back til they tear at the seams between finger and hand, split open, bones visible, the fine figure of a dextrous hand distorted like clay. She wants to take her fork and stab in his face again and again, pierce him with neat little pinpricks all in a line. She wants to dig it into his forehead til it begins scraping at his skull. She wants grotesque, horrific, skin-crawling things.

Hilary feels sick. Not from disgust, not from fear, but from how strong this is, even past the numbing cloud of tranquilizers. For a moment, she can't breathe.

Her hand is cold, the circulation sluggish, beneath Grey's hand. She remembers what Ivan told her. He'll find a way. He'll come to her. He'll bring Anton. He'll figure it out. He will. He will. She's his. She belongs to him. He'll take care of it. This is better than what has come before, and it is better than what might come after. He doesn't want to lose her to some wild-eyed Ahroun who will beat her, or some drunkard who will leave her wasted and penniless, or some fool who wants to breed on her, will breed on her no matter what has happened in her past. She breathes more steadily, or tries to. She has to do this. She must. This is what's best. This is -- oh, the fucker is talking.

Hilary swallows the knot in her throat, then exhales. She rests the back of her cool hand to her forehead, her eyes and her face shielded for a moment. Sorry for her loss. She tastes ash.

A few moments later, she composes herself. She breathes, murmuring a apology that he likely dismisses, and lifts her head and shoulders. A true queen. Realistically, it was only a moment or two that she was overcome. She's quite strong, you see. She's so perfect. Perfect, perfect, exactly what he wants. Even her sorrow is alluring.

A thin, faint smile touches her lips as he promises her, this woman he wants to mate himself to and marry and protect and take care of forever and ever even after he dies even after he's gone and her sons begin to circle her, seeing which one will get her now that the sire has passed,

that he will forgive the man she loves if he struggles to let go of her. "Thank you," she murmurs, though she knows what the word 'minor' means. It is something, though. Better than nothing. Just like always.

He wants her. Hilary is almost startled -- would be, if she weren't so stoned -- when he immediately asks her if he can begin discussions, if he can have her, seal this. She thinks of the fact that the date of Anton's birth is so very close, which means that to the world, her year of mourning would be ended. That's traditional, at least. Widows for two years, everyone else for one year or less. She plays it.

She lets the startled look touch her eyes. "Oh, Grey," she murmurs, like it's his name, already her pet name for him, a color that sounds soft on her lips. "I can't... before the period is over. That would be so --"

There aren't even words. She's very near aghast, as politely and demurely as she can be. How could she possibly.

The faintest smile again, an aching turn to the corner of her lips, as though she is allowing herself this girlishness, this hopefulness, this sweetness despite all her heavy sorrow: "A June wedding," she murmurs, as though fantasizing

about something other than how the gag and crack and last groan of breath would sound if she were just strong enough to snap his neck.

Hilary is fantasizing. Just not about what Edmund Grey thinks she's fantasizing about. He doesn't know her at all; he can't read her any more than she can read him. Strange that a Garou so proficient with spirits, who understands them as intuitively and easily as he understands his own breath, his own pulse, barely understands the inner workings of the human mind at all. But then again, Hilary is hardly a typical human. Most days she's hardly human at all.

So: June, she says. And he thinks it's a little bit charming that she wants something so classic and idealistic as a June wedding - as though in this, with him, she's found hope again. Innocence again. He thinks maybe, just maybe, what he felt the moment she walked into the room,

which was want, as deep and powerful as any he's felt, stirring his blood and aching in his bones,

might just have some hold in her as well. And so he smiles, that thin proud mouth of his curving, and he takes her hands in both of his, bowing his head to her. Kissing her hand, far more lingeringly and fervently than he had when they had just met.

"June, then," he says.

The servants are sent to fetch the younger wolves. They come in much as they had left, single-file, Ivan last. Grey doesn't move from his seat, and so Oliver unhesitatingly takes his father's place at the end of the table. John and Dickie sit where they sat before, leaving Ivan to take Oliver's place.

Edmund Grey makes no mention of what was discussed, nor what was settled. His sons don't ask. Grey calls for the next course, and Ivan stares at Hilary a little longer than he should from his place, a question twisting in his eyes.

It's a good thing, in a way, that Hilary is so horrible at understanding people in any light. Or rather: it makes so little difference right now whether she can or not, wants to or not. She looks at Grey and she knows what he's thinking of her, what he wants from her, how she should behave. This is not empathy; this is training. This is not the ability to read people; this is just how she was brought up. What she feels in this situation really doesn't matter. Feeling anything at all, in fact, is more distraction than help.

So it is not hard for her to smile, perhaps a little sadly and a little tenderly at the same time, as he kisses her hand so ardently, while she is imagining the ways she would hurt him, if she could, and if she could bear the risk.

They draw their hands apart, for the sake of propriety, as Grey summons the servants and then his son, and also the Cliath -- with no pack, no renown to speak of, nothing to offer her -- who is her 'guardian'. The young men come back in, and Grey doesn't move. Hilary feels her chest on fire, a hard knot coated in tar and set aflame right in the center, because he doesn't move. Ivan is so far away now. She glances at him when he sits there, but only for a moment, before she smiles at Grey again. As though she's hopeful, as though she could possibly even feel gratitude or some kind of love for him.

Grey calls for the next course, and Ivan stares at her, and she doesn't dare look at him any longer than she would look at a potted plant. The next course is a light dessert, cool and splashing fruit essences on the tongue. She smiles, and she says the food here is very good, and her conversation is... worthless, really, which is as it should be. She's only kin, after all.

Ivan hardly has a chance to talk to her for the rest of lunch. The two younger sons keep talking to him, and even when they don't, Hilary is effectively cordoned off behind Edmund and his eldest. John eats everything on his plate, slowly, deliberately, methodically, patiently. He says no more than he had for the past hour or so, and when he is done - while his family is still seated around the table with no sign of mobilization - he folds his napkin and leaves it on the tablecloth, standing.

"I have other business to attend to," he says. And, addressing Hilary for what may as well be the first time, "It has been a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Durante. I hope we meet again soon."

It's impossible to tell how much or how little of that he means. John's eyes are dark and his thoughts are hidden. When he leaves, a share of rage departs with him. Ivan eyes the empty chair, but in the end, he doesn't move. He doesn't dare.

And soon after that, lunch is coming to any end, anyway. There are a few more meaningless pleasantries. The food here is very good. The company was very good. They drive up was very good, and of course on the way back Edmund Grey will send Hilary back in his car again, as though she was already his. As they stand, the men buttoning their coats, their servants move in unobtrusively with their things. They meander toward the door. There's a moment, just a few seconds, when Ivan is beside Hilary. When Grey is walking ahead with his youngest; when Oliver's head is turned.

The backs of Ivan's fingers touch Hilary's. Briefly, so briefly. He murmurs something. It's in Russian. Who knows if she understands.

[He sez: "Meet me at our house." Up to you whether or not she understands!]

She doesn't look at him. He doesn't know what she said to Grey while he was gone, but she doesn't look at him, doesn't reach for him, doesn't visibly ache for him at all. She focuses almost all of her attention on Grey, her mood lightened as though she's cheered by something that, for now, is secret between the two of them. They don't go so far or familiar as to do silly things like feed one another, and Hilary doesn't lay it on too thick, but anyone looking at them could see the sparks of infatuation, the hints of actual desire. Like true Fangs, they keep their flirtations deeply subtle, carefully crafted according to rules of ettiquette laid down long before they were born.

Even John gets a small smile from her as she leaves, nodding her understanding. She and Ivan share the barest, briefest glance as he's eyeing the empty chair. It isn't intentional, but he can see the flicker of warning, of wariness, in her eyes before it's gone. It was an emotion. Given that she is such a blank canvas right now, it is not hard to see a vivid splash of red across the emptiness, even if it's somehow magically erased a moment later.

Lunch meanders to an end, finally, and it's now nearly dinnertime. Darya and Miranda are there, where they somehow were not before. Carlisle is out in the Jaguar, appearing like a magician. Hilary has moved sunglases to cover her eyes, her dress and her legs and her form so much easier to appreciate while she's walking toward the door. Ivan is beside Hilary for a moment; maybe this is one of those minor trespasses that she begged Grey to forgive.

She looks startled when he whispers to her, and her face is a blank of...well, one would assume non-understanding. She gives him a patient smile, pats his hand, saying nothing, and they all step out into the sunlight. There are various cars lined up, waiting to take them back to their various homes. She has so much to do, she tells Grey as he and she are saying their goodbyes. She says it with a little laugh. She kisses the air beside his cheeks with their hands held between them; so French. Such a good wife-to-be: she doesn't even wheedle or whine or ask about whether or not he'll let her keep her apartment, her servants, the yacht, buy a house here; that might displease her good husband-to-be, and she can't have that.

Hilary doesn't look back at Ivan as she slides herself into the Rolls Royce that Grey sent for her. Darya does, as she's about to get into the Jaguar with her valise. He probably doesn't notice, but she does look at him. Of all Hilary's servants, she's the only one who has seen the woman with Ivan near those intimate times, those quiet times. She's done the woman's hair and helped her dress with Ivan standing right there, seen things like a real smile, or heard Hilary laugh with something like happiness.

She feels quite bad for him, she decides, as she gets into the car with Carlisle.

Five minutes later, more or less, Ivan's phone gets a text from Hilary's number: I want to go to Novgorod. Now.

A moment later, as though she thinks this may be too vague, another text: Today.

Five minutes isn't enough for her to get back to her apartment. It's not even close. They're possibly barely on Sheridan right now, barely beginning that long luxurious cruise down the waterfront.

Ivan knows this. He knows: this is a risk. Just as his words to her had been. Just as his very presence there, the way he kept looking at her, the way he'd considered that empty chair just to be close to her, was a risk. He understands. He does. But it still doesn't prepare him for what she writes.

Who knows how he reacts, really. With disbelief or rage or shock or -- it doesn't matter. Hilary doesn't see it. There's only a long silence. And then, in the end, Ivan can no more deny her than the sea can the moon. So there's a text back, her phone vibrating in her hand:

Meet me at the usual airport. 1 hr.

There's no answer to that. He can only assume her silence is confirmation: yes. okay. i will.

In truth, Hilary turns off the screen of her phone, puts it back in her clutch, and leans against the interior of the door again, looking outside. She has said nothing to Miranda, not in a text or aloud. Miranda sits in the back with her, on her phone, legs crossed and a glass of some of Grey's fine scotch close at hand. She uses the time on the drive back to work. Hilary uses the time to stare out the window, hating everything she sees.

She is gracious when they exit the car, thoroughly pleasant, because if Grey's servants are going to become her servants as well, they will have to be able to deal with her at her worst. They will need to think to themselves, when she abuses them, how they could possibly complain even at the most vile treatment, when they never said a word in the month and a half before the wedding. She was so sweet then. They will have to believe it is a passing phase. She has done this before. Only one servant in any of her households has ever really seen through her, and that is because Dion's little bitch of a daughter was there to gossip with the old hag.

Carlisle and Darya are already upstairs, waiting for her. Hilary snaps through the door and walks across the concrete in those sharp heels of hers, giving instructions immediately, harshly, suddenly a hurricane of rage, of grief, of demand, of power. They are startled. Shocked, even. Miranda nearly drops her phone, and it's Miranda, the one who is always bored with life and unimpressed by everything.

A moment later they're in action. They have so much to get ready. They want to ask questions, but as soon as Darya opens her mouth, Miranda gives her a Look that cuts the words out of the air. They start packing, and this seems to be exactly what Hilary intends: Carlisle and Darya are going with her. Miranda, of course, will stay here to field visitors or callers, to re-route things if necessary. To watch her back.

There is nothing, nothing at all, in the entire apartment that Hilary really needs. They have the money, even before Grey, even without Ivan, to buy what they might need. They pack a bit anyway. They leave the apartment still in those mourning clothes of theirs, and Carlisle drives fast.

All the way back up the shore again. The airport Ivan uses is up on the north shore - a small, private airfield that is home to a small squadron of executive jets and quite a few two-man Cessnas that the more adventurous privileged entertain themselves with. When Hilary arrives, the security guard at the gate checks Carlisle's ID against a guest list and waves them in. They drive across the tarmac, stopped for a small plane to bump its way past, then pull to a stop a hundred feet or so from Ivan's father's jet.

The high, mechanical whine of turbines is in the air when Hilary steps out. Ivan is waiting at the foot of the boarding stairway. Behind him, the airport personnel and his own personal staff are scrambling to finalize preparations. Change the towels and the linens. Load the food and the entertainment. Run down the preflight checklist. Restock the closet. Ivan has packed almost nothing. Dmitri is with him. Max is not, but she's on the phone already, informing the appropriate parties, making arrangements. The moment he sees her, the moment she rises out of the car, Ivan starts toward her. The distance between the Ragabash and the woman he loves,

and is losing,

diminishes to nothing. He grabs her in his hands, his fingers digging into her arms, and he kisses her there on the tarmac, brutally, not even because he's aroused or wanting but because he needs to. Their servants avert their eyes. When it's over, Ivan lays his brow to Hilary's for a moment. Then he draws away, his hand sliding down her arm to take her hand.

"My people are making preparations in Novgorod as we speak. We'll need to stop to refuel in Reykjavik, but it won't take long. I haven't mentioned the purpose of the visit, nor who is accompanying me, to Miron or the others yet. What do you want me to tell them?"

They are boarding the lithe little jet. A sort of point of no return, that.

No one has changed clothes. Carlisle has her bags, Darya's bags, and a single one for himself. He packs light. He needs little. That's part of why he was hired in the first place. He works well with Ivan's staff, partly because though not Russian himself, he's spent enough time around them to know how to talk and when not to and how much to absorb before giving as good as he gets. They begin loading things up, and Darya quicksteps over to Dmitri, who -- for better or worse -- she views as a sort of safe haven among the madness that is Ivan's life, and Hilary's intersection with it.

All that chaos around them. Darya still holding her little valise while the rest of the luggage is loaded. Hilary exiting the Jaguar, striding across the tarmac in those black stillettos, that dangerous skirt, that blood-red ring. Her hair is more tousled now, less silk-straight, and it whips around her shoulders and behind her as she walks. Ivan meets her halfway and she

grabs him, kisses him, biting at his mouth, only to find

that he's meeting her there, too, grasping, bruising, devouring.

It goes on for a very long time, in the end. She has her hands almost tearing at his shirt, her lips in a snarl, shaking with what seems more like anger than anything else, and she wants to slap him, and she can't seem to cope with him touching her afterward. They part and he reaches for her hand and she all but throws a fit, shaking him off, shaking everything, her hands even flailing slightly, jerkily, as though she's caught up in ropes and webs that she's trying to throw off. She does not move away from him, though. Walks close with him, but doesn't touch him, as though she simply can't bear it.

Hilary can't say anything. She's so exposed here. She walks ahead of him to the stairway and goes up, goes inside like it's a cave, no hesitation, no turning back, no thought of turning back, no acknowledgement of anything he's said. When he follows her inside she's already in one of those enormous plush chairs, and she's still shaking.

He tries to take her hand. She shakes him off, all but throws him off, whips herself clear and then walks closely to him anyway. His anger spikes, but it's not really anger at all. It's desperation and terror and the panicked fury that comes with it: his back to a cliff, his teeth bared. Their nerves are jangling. He wants to grab her, haul her back, hurt her for daring to throw him off; he doesn't want to hurt her. No. No. That's the last thing he wants. And the one thing he seems to be good at, nonetheless.

Hilary disappears into the plane. After a moment, Ivan follows. Their servants finish up whatever they need to finish up and hurry aboard, but they know better than to disturb them. Dmitri goes into the cockpit. Carlisle and Darya make themselves scarce with excuses of chores, going to set Hilary's things in the tiny sleeping cabin in the back, perhaps, or going to the galley to see about refreshments. Hilary, meanwhile, throws herself into one of those four enormous chairs. By the time Ivan catches up she's already there, and her pale face looks paler still, and her body is shaking.

It's rage. Or terror. Or both. Ivan can't tell. He looks at her a moment. And then, instead of taking the perfectly good seat across from her or beside her, he goes to her. She didn't want to be touched earlier. He doesn't touch her. He crouches before her, one knee to the ground, and he looks at her until she looks back at him.

"Are you angry with me?" he asks, quiet. And the truth is: perhaps she has a right to be.

The woman is not curled up, is not tucked into a ball, hyperventilating, but there is the sense that were she not still on the tail end of some choice pharmaceuticals, if she were not exerting exacting control over herself, she would be. She is paler than usual, almost gray, with bright spots of color on her cheeks. She looks dizzy, and it's a good thing she's sitting down. The servants vanish as best they can, and their best is quite good. Ninjas could learn a thing or two from well-bred servants.

Ivan comes to her and she isn't looking up, looking at him, isn't doing any of that. She's taken off her sunglasses, she isn't blinking, but she doesn't look at him and he comes nearer, getting on one knee -- which under the circumstances is horrific and funny and rotten -- and she slowly, slowly begins to stop shaking. She looks

numb.

After awhile she flicks her eyes down at him, then away, as though the image of him burns her eyes. He asks her, so quiet, if she's angry at him. Hilary is still for a moment, then finally does turn fully and look at him. Stare at him. She tips her head at him as though studying him.

"No," she whispers, and it could be that she's shocked he's asking. It could be that she's shocked that she isn't. "No, not at all," she says, still barely audible, reaching out with her still-chilled hand and touching his face. Caressing it, following the perfect lines of his cheekbones. There are tears in her eyes that she doesn't understand, so she ignores them, pretends they aren't there. Her head shakes gently. "No. I'm so sorry."

Ivan's hand catches hers against his face. She can feel the smooth lean planes of his cheek against her palm; the crisp line of his jaw. He shaved so recently, so cleanly. Made himself presentable because he was entertaining his elder. He was presenting a kinswoman in his care to his elder, as a potential mate.

It breaks his heart a little that she isn't angry at him. She doesn't hate him. Some part of him doesn't understand why not. Didn't he engineer this? Didn't he fend off letter after letter, suitor after suitor, before finally deciding: this one? Couldn't he have stopped this, shouldn't he have stopped this, isn't it his duty as the man she loves, the father of her son, to protect her and keep her as long as he could? Even Edmund Grey was willing to give her that much. I will protect you, he said, as long as I live.

No, she says. She's not angry. She's sorry. And his brow furrows hard; he turns his face and kisses the center of her palm, kisses her hand as fiercely as he'd kissed her mouth outside. Rising on his knees then, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her bodily against him, clasping her close. The seat, her positioning - it makes the embrace awkward. He doesn't care. He wants to be close to her, as close as he can.

"Whatever for?" he whispers. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"Don't," she says, sudden and sharp and -- this may shock -- agonized. "Don't talk like that, don't talk like him, don't -- 'whatever for'," she echoes, and curls up in the large chair, covering her face with her hands. One of those hands, bearing the ring he gave her, proposed with, absorbing more light than it reflects. In its depths it looks like it's on fire.

He is wrapping his arms around her, crawling beside her in that overlarge chair, and she is repulsed, wracked with it, trying to catch her breath. "I'm going to poison his food," she mutters against her palms. "Something tasteless that will rip his insides apart."

"Hilary -- no, don't say that. He is an Athro Theurge. Chances are it won't even touch him, and if he finds out what you've done, he could have you killed. He would have every right. Don't even say it." Her hands are over her face. He takes her by the wrists, by the palms, gently tries to uncover her face. "Hilary..."

"I'm still going to," she snaps, and he pulls her hands down but she's petulant, she's letting him, only pretending to resist. She is scowling at the floor. "And he'll deserve it. I have a baby. I'm going to go to my baby and if he wants me he can come get me. I'll tear his lungs out."

She's dead serious. It's insane, it's ridiculous, and all of it is impossible and she knows it. But she's so serious, at the same time: she's going to her child. And nothing, no one will stop her. She doesn't bat an eyelash at Grey's rank or auspice, just as she's never batted an eyelash at Ivan's, or Dion's, or anyone's.

Hilary relaxes in his arms. She leans against the back of the chair and looks out the window. They haven't taken off yet. She's growing impatient. "How long?"

It's impossible. It's insane. She must know it; and if she doesn't know it, he has to tell her. But not right now. Right now - after that miserable 'luncheon', those miserable hours spent watching another wolf slaver over her - Ivan can't bring himself to say it. Not again. He's ruined enough of their pretty little delusions. That night after dinner with Dion - another miserable meal, that - when she was happy and he could not help but ruin it. That day, her birthday, when she was happy and he could not help but open his mouth.

He keeps his mouth shut for now. She relaxes a little. They are rather cramped in this chair, which is enormous and spacious for one, but a little small for two. She wants to know how long. They aren't even off the ground yet.

"About seven hours to Reykjavik," he says quietly. "Another four or so to Novgorod, after that." And then he reaches over to the chair's arm, holding down the button for the cockpit intercom. "We're ready," he says. "Let's get underway."

Ivan does her the mercy of not asking why, why now, why must she go see Anton right now when all it can do is hurt them both, create lies in Miron and Izolda and Polina's hearts that Anton will not be able to help but discover as he grows older, undermining the very trust that he needs to have in them so badly. Ivan gives her this. He does not shred her open with questions. He answers hers, and she reaches for his hand and pulls it to her hair, touching it to her temple. Stroke her. Pet her. With his other hand, he tells them to hurry it the fuck along, and she settles, gentling under his fingertips.

"What time will it be there, when we land?" she asks quietly. "What will he be doing?" There's a pause. "I don't want them to do anything differently with him. I don't want him to realize anything is different. A normal day. There should be rooms prepared for us and the staff, of course, but... quietly. Let him explore while they put the linens on the beds and air the rooms. Let him think this is normal, this isn't strange or worrisome, this is just... normal. I don't want anyone to worry him. Or excite him."

Her eyebrows draw tight together and she whips her head around, all quite suddenly. "Darya!"

The girl appears out of nowhere, startled into existence, her hair taken down now, wavy around her shoulders. "Da," is her only answer, giving a short bob of her head.

"Did you --"

And this, this is unthinkable, what Darya does. She frowns a bit. "Na russkom yazyke," she says, with the sort of gentle firmity a teacher might use with a young child.

Hilary looks like she is about to lunge across the room and tear the girl limb from limb for a moment. The rage on her face is an ugly thing, but she corrals it, exhaling hotly. "Chto ... Vy ... polozhitʹ v sumku?" she forces out, searching for words that at least approximate what she wants, even if they aren't quite there yet, perfect yet.

Darya speaks slowly in response, but not haltingly, as Hilary did: Ne volnuĭtesʹ, Khilari. Prognoz pogody yestʹ teplye i gentle pryamo syeĭchas, no vlazhnyĭ. Vy budete chuvstvovatʹ sebya komfortno." There is a pause. "I took care of it. Don't worry."

With that, she dissipates again, turning and ducking away, joining the others once again. Hilary exhales through her nostrils and curls up again next to Ivan, because as long as he strokes her hair she is calm, she is able to soften herself, she can relax. She moves her hand to his free hand, linking their fingers. "They've seen the photograph of me, though. There will be no disguising who I am from his servants."

[JOVE WTF]

[Darya: In Russian.

Hilary: What... you... put in bag?

Darya: Do not worry, Hilary. The weather there is warm and mild right now, but humid. You will be comfortable.]

Dimly, they can hear the engines cycling up. Soon they'll begin to taxi, and not long after that they'll be airborne, the planet falling away beneath them, the nose of their jet turning eastward across day and night to that distant, distant land Hilary has never laid eyes upon. She is settling. He lets her. She urges him without words to touch her now, stroke her, comfort her where moments ago she couldn't even stand to be touched.

And he does. He strokes her hair, as gently and soothingly as if she were a child or a doll or a pet, something to be caressed and coddled. He doesn't flay her open with questions. He knows better. She thinks to ease Anton into it, to not overwhelm him with excitement or confusion, to let him think it is only normal that these two people he does not recognize at all, has not seen for nearly a year, have suddenly come back into his life. It's might be the first time Ivan can remember Hilary thinking of anyone beyond herself and maybe Ivan himself. It's more than he's ever seen before.

It's not enough.

So he doesn't tell her of the damage this could cause. The trust their son has for the only caretakers he's ever known broken. The changes wrought in his young life, no matter how much Hilary tries to insulate him. The fact that her coming back into his life could only be intermittent, temporary, more painful every time as he grows up --

All of that. He doesn't tell her any of this. Perhaps she knows. Perhaps he knows, too, or at least believes, fervently: even this is better than nothing. To have a mother, no matter how distantly or occasionally, is better than nothing.

Or perhaps he only cares about her. That, too, is wholly possible.

So she startles. She calls Darya. Ivan stays where he is, tilting the back of the chair back a little, stretching out beside his lover. They are squeezed together as though this might make up for their hours apart. His fingers pause in her hair as she speaks to her servant, as she manages those halting words that she learned for this very purpose, for the very purpose of going to see her son one day even if that day never came. Darya comforts her too, and in that moment Ivan is grateful. When the girl departs, he kisses Hilary's temple, gently.

"Yes," he agrees, "they'll know who you are." His fingers spread. Hers intertwine. His fingers close again, firming their grip. "It's all right," he adds. "I trust them. And perhaps it's better this way, if the truth simply comes out. If Anton simply grows up knowing ... everything, I suppose."

They're moving now. The ground shifts beneath them, and then the scenery outside begins to slide. Ivan looks out the window a moment. It's midafternoon in Chicago. Bright. In Novgorod right now, it is the middle of the night, and Anton has been asleep for several hours already. He sleeps through the night now, mostly. He is no longer a newborn, and in another year he won't even be an infant.

"You should try to rest during the flight," Ivan says quietly. "Sleep if you can. We don't have to deplane in Reykjavik, and it won't take long to refuel. It'll be around noon when we land in Novgorod. Another half an hour or so after that and we'll be -- home."

There's a hesitation there. It's strange to use that word. He can't think of anything else to call that house by the lake where their son lives, though.

Sometimes it seems Ivan would throw himself on a sword for Hilary. Certainly he would hurt everyone, including himself, including her, to please her. His adoration borders on obsession, and yet: she counts him as the only one who understands her even a little. She doesn't think to be grateful at how patient he is, how much he'll break his back to give her what she wants, what he'll put at risk. She doesn't think to remark on how strange it is, how powerful it is, that when pushed against a wall where keeping her could cost them both his lifes, he realized that the best thing to do -- for her -- would be to let her go.

She closes her eyes when the plane begins to move. Watching the window when they're taking off makes her nauseated. She closes her eyes and listens to him. No: she isn't thinking about what this could do to Anton, or them, or any of it. Perhaps she already has, a dozen times. Perhaps she's known from the start that there is no way Anton could have a happy childhood, a loving family gathered around him always. He would have distant, barely-present parents or none at all. Perhaps none of that matters now, in the face of what is happening to her. She thinks of what she could possibly tell him as he grows older.

It is mad that she is thinking of telling him anything. Hilary opens her eyes again and looks -- not out the window, but -- at Ivan. Fully, for the first time since unshed tears burst to her eyes a little while ago.

"I love you," she says quietly. "You know I love you. I don't love him. I'll never love him. I've never --"

"That's not true."

Quietly, so very quietly and yet so firmly, he contradicts her. They are nearly reclining now. They are lounging as though they were at their cabin, lying together on those loungers by the window with the lake lapping at their feet. The little jet is smooth and efficient: a few turns and they're on the runway, pausing. There's a faint chime, a discreet little reminder to buckle in or hold on or whatever it is they're supposed to do during takeoff. Ivan ignores it. So does Hilary.

"That's not true," he says again. "You don't love him the way you love me. I know that. You don't love him the way a mother should love a child either. I know that, too. But don't say you've never loved him, and never will. That's not true, and you know it.

"If you didn't love Anton at all you would have never given him up the way you did. You would have never cared enough to ask after him, or look at pictures, or read journals to see how he was doing. You would have simply let him go and stopped caring.

"You do care. You do love him. It doesn't make you a better or worse person. It doesn't excuse anything, and it doesn't exacerbate anything. It's simply the truth."

The ground drops beneath them. Up they go, their stomachs pulling downward with gravity. Ivan's arm tightens a little around her, and he kisses her temple again, strokes back her hair. "I love you," he adds, no more than a whisper. "You know that, too."

[DLP!]

"I know that."

His words come so close on the end of hers that he nearly interrupts. He's quiet; he's adamant. He knows this. He does.

"Oh, Hilary," softer, "I know that. I never for a moment thought otherwise. Maybe it would be kinder if you could, and did. You'd be happier, at least. But ... "

I'm not happy, she said to him. As though this defined her, encompassed her: some people are happy. She is not. And he knows this, too, as certainly as anything. Her happiness is as rare and shortlived as an arctic summer, and more often than not, he seems to be the one that ends it.

They are nearly reclining now. They are lounging as though they were at their cabin, lying together on those loungers by the window with the lake lapping at their feet. The little jet is smooth and efficient: a few turns and they're on the runway, pausing. There's a faint chime, a discreet little reminder to buckle in or hold on or whatever it is they're supposed to do during takeoff. Ivan ignores it. So does Hilary. Acceleration pushes them back in their seats, and then the ground drops beneath them. Ivan's arm tightens a little around her, and he kisses her temple again, strokes back her hair.

"I know that," he murmurs again.

Hilary can't even hear herself until those last words, and she cuts them off before she sickens herself with them. I've never loved anyone but you. Who talks like that? Who says a thing like that, even if they think they believe it? She is grateful, in her way, that he cuts in and stops it. Ivan always does protect her, she remembers. Even from the stupid things she sometimes thinks to say. Her dark eyes close and she turns her body toward his, tucking her face against his shoulder and his neck. He'll take care of her. That is what he is for. That is why he is here. He will give her what she needs.

And he understands. Maybe it would be kinder if you could, Ivan says, and she knows he understands that she can't love Grey, even if she wanted to. Love doesn't just happen for her. Love is not an everyday occurrence. Love is a horrifying thing, a toothy maw trying to drag her in, and down, to constrict and to crush and to dissolve and to absorb her. Love makes no sense. Love...

She doesn't even know if she really feels it or only imagines it.

Ivan goes on touching her, holding her, kissing her, petting her like some precious, beloved thing. She does know she loves him. Right now, at least, she's certain of it. She knows she isn't imagining it. She wants with all her being to stay with him, even if half the time they can barely stand each other. She knows that in the coming weeks, as her marriage to Dion officially dissolves and as Grey gives whatever chiminage or challenge that he and Ivan agree upon -- the bride price, if you will -- she will be expected to be seen with Grey more and more. She'll have so much to do, planning a wedding worthy of her persona within a month's time. She'll need to talk about him, mention him, a whirlwind romance, for the sake of the humans around her. He will want to court her, she imagines, at least a little, in private. So of course she had to say now, today, for Novgorod. She is not sure she'll have another chance.

Ever.

She curls tighter against him as they take off, lifting into the air. She shakes a little, shivering. And without opening her eyes, without anything else, she whispers: "Make love to me."

When they stepped out of Oceanique, Ivan couldn't walk Hilary to her car. Grey had that honor, strolling beside her with his hands behind his back, so tall and proud in the afternoon sun that his silver hair seemed fashionable, a mark of dignity. Grey had the privilege of taking her hand as she stepped into the car, and Grey had the honor of bidding her farewell. Grey was the last one to lay eyes on her face as the door closed, and the window rolled up. Grey even owned the car that took her away.

Ivan stood at the curb and watched the Rolls Royce disappear. He'd barely spoken to her. For all he knew Grey was going to take her away tomorrow, immediately, gone. His stomach was a sour knot and he wanted to smoke again, craved it in a way he almost never does. He's not a smoker, not really, just has a cigarette now and then when he's bored or when it looks right, but by god he wanted one then. He wanted something harder than cigarettes, something that would put him out, take him out of his misery if only for a while.

He couldn't, though. He couldn't even slink away to lick his wounds. Grey came back and then Grey wanted to talk. Of course he did. So Grey drove Ivan home, too. Dmitri tok the Lamborghini, handling the car with far more care and conservatism than Ivan ever does. Ivan sat in the back seat of Grey's chauffeured sedan and tried to look interested and pleased and all that crap while Grey told him in that polite roundabout way that he was very interested. Very pleased. That Hilary was, so to speak, officially off the market now, and Ivan can stop fielding calls from all other takers.

A June wedding, Grey said, smiling. Just like in the storybooks.

Grey said other things, too. Ivan hardly listened. June, he heard, and his heart was breaking and yet at the same time he was glad. He was glad that it was June and not May. Not April. Not tomorrow. It hadn't even occurred to Ivan -- still hasn't occurred to him -- that 'a June wedding' doesn't mean he gets to keep her until June. It doesn't mean they can spend the next month and a half, two months, gallivanting around Russia pretending they were a family.

Two weeks. Maybe two days. That's as long as he has with her, and then

she'll belong to someone else again, will make overtures toward publicly becoming the Wife Of Someone Else, and Ivan, again, will be the young man on the docks, the young man outside the gates, the young wolf slinking around the shadows while an older, stronger wolf mounts the female he loves.

Make love to me, she says, knowing this more certainly than Ivan does. Make love to me, she says, which is something she never says. They call it fucking; sometimes, if there are certain parameters and events involved, they called it playing. They don't use the word love very often. Maybe after she's mated to Grey she won't use it again at all. Maybe it'll feel off-limits, then, a lie. Maybe,

but he doesn't think of that right now. The plane lifts. His head turns; he looks at her. She is curled against him, holding on to his as though there was strength enough in his lean body to protect her. He puts his hand behind her head, his fingers in her hair, and he kisses her, slow and sure and firm, because no matter who she belongs to he's the one that understands her. He knows that, he knows that.

The seats in the main cabin recline flat. There's a perfectly nice bed in the aft cabin, but Ivan doesn't bother. This is his plane, his space, and she's not exposed here. He puts the seat down flat and he's kissing her, he's rolling to brace himself over her, reaching under her slender back to find the zippers and fastenings of her mourning clothes. The neckline sags; then she can shrug the shoulders down. His mouth is there to discover every inch of skin as it appears; there to close over her nipples as her lingerie, too, comes undone.

The first sound he makes is low, aching, moaned against her breast. He starts to undo his tie, and then his collar, pulling the crisp costume of his fine clothes apart, revealing skin, revealing muscle, revealing the beast he really is.

She never calls it making love. She almost never says she loves him. She says it now as though to cast how much she does not love Grey into even greater contrast. She says it now because she finds herself wanting something different, recognizing that she wants him to take care of her, wants him to love her back, wants him to make everything okay. And that isn't quite fucking. And that definitely isn't playing. She doesn't know what else to call it.

God only knows what he and that other male talked about as she was driven back to the city. She doesn't know that Ivan got her text mid-conversation with Grey, that he told her to meet him at the airport to take her in his father's jet to see their bastard son while he was talking to the man who is going to marry her in less than two months. So far, she hasn't asked any of those questions, just as she hasn't come up yet with a decent explanation for anyone in Russia as to what the hell she is doing 1) alive and 2) in Novgorod. Hilary's mind can only take her so far before it crumbles to pieces.

The Silver Fangs who keep records of these things will know by sunset across the Eastern Seaboard that this female is now going to that male, that she can be cross-referenced with her multiple mates and guardians, but considering how many cousins-issues they have to deal with, her story really isn't so tangled as far as family trees are concerned. She is a footnote on other people's family trees. She is the end of her own.

As far as they're concerned.

Ivan always was afraid of becoming like one of Hilary's other boys, one of those other pathetic young men howling at the gates, screaming at her window, being carefully but firmly sent away because his infatuation was not longer entertaining. That feeling drips closer, like drop after drop of icy water rolling down the back of his neck, chilling him through to the marrow of his bones.

And yet:

she's under him now, shifting her body as he covers her, looking up at him, and the circulation is coming back into her fingers. Her hands are still cool but her body is warm and lithe as ever, nothing like it was when she was rotund with his bastard inside of her. Those dark eyes of hers are drowsy, are vulnerable, are predatory, and he sees her, knows her, like no one else. Hilary begins to hitch up that short skirt but Ivan isn't having it. He pulls and tugs and unzips and unclasps until the dress is being pulled out of the way, the seams threatening to tear no matter how careful they are. She draws her long soft arms out of the sleeves and wraps them around him. That heavy jet necklace hangs between her breasts within their seamless bra, which he removes while he kisses her, deeper, slower, harder.

Fills his hands with those breasts. Fills his mouth with them. Hilary helps him with his clothes, lifts her hips so he can help her out of the rest of hers. Her heels drop to the floor. She's unclothed so much quicker than he is, naked but for his ring, but for that necklace, which he discards -- it's in his way -- with a flick of that clasp and a toss of the hunk of metal and stone to one side of their chair.

"I want a blanket," she whispers, while he's shrugging out of his shirt, undoing his belt. There are blankets nearby, of course, light but warm ones fit for napping in the chairs if one pleases. Not very large, but enough to cover them, cover her, create a humid, unbearably warm cave between their bodies. She's so pale that she shines, in a way, in that cave. She looks as uncertain of what to do next as a virgin, naked and concealed, looking at him with an ache in her eyes.

There goes the bra. There goes the dress, slithering down her legs, then a scrap on the floor. There goes the necklace, and there goes her panties, all of it stripped off of her so quickly, so easily, until nothing remains but Hilary herself.

And the ring he proposed to her with. That red, red stone, older than they are, older than their Houses, older than the Silver Fangs, older than wolves. He saw it when he saw her today. Saw it instantly and remembered that Christmas, just four short months ago: remembered how she said no in front of all their guests because she had to; remembered how she said yes when they were alone because she wanted to.

She would have said yes the morning after, too. Even if he grew to hate her for it. Even if he would have grown bored, listless, and then increasingly panicked and trapped: she would have said yes. Only he didn't ask again. Ivan, with his hands on Hilary's body, with his mouth on Hilary's skin, with Hilary inexorably slipping from his grasp all the same,

can't help but wonder if he should have.

And then he's drawing back. He's stripping his shirt off, his skin golden over those supple muscles, those long bones. She asks him for a blanket. She asks him to cover her, protect her, shield her, and his eyes change. He leaves his shirt on the floor. He comes back to her, kisses her, his arms wrap around her and for a moment she might think he means to fuck her right then, damn the blankets; be inside her right then.

He wouldn't be her vladelet if he was like that, though. If he would ignore one of the few times she ever asks him for anything. That's a strange truth: Hilary, who sometimes seems to expect so much - who expects a certain standard of behavior, expects a certain level of decorum and grace, expects to be treated a certain way and spoken to a certain way, expects him not to drive her around in that ridiculous car - really asks for so little. So of course he doesn't ignore her. Of course, when he comes down to her, wraps her in his arms,

it's to lift her off that sprawling leather seat. His belt is undone, the loose ends swinging against his thighs. His shirt is gone. His pants are riding low on his hips, but even so, compared to Hilary, he's very nearly decent. Modest, even. And he carries her back, past those seats, past the lounge area with the plasma screen that rises out of the cabinet, the couch large enough to nap on - back until he slams through that narrow door into the aft cabin, where their poor servants are doing their best to stay out of the way. Heads whip around. Eyes widen for a second, then instantly turn away.

"Out," he says.

The plane banks. Ivan doesn't so much as sway. He's holding Hilary in his arms, holding her close to his chest, his body slightly angled - protective, shielding her from eyes that don't dare turn her way in the first place. Dmitri, eyes still averted, exits; the others follow seconds later. The door shuts quietly. Ivan lays his lover on those cool sheets, turns the covers down, helps her underneath and follows, covers them both, draws the covers up until they're lost in a private little world, dim, the sunlight diffuse through the layers of fabric.

She looks so uncertain. She looks like she's aching, and he understands because he is too, and so he kisses her, his hand behind her neck; he whispers, even though he has very little idea how he'll make this promise come true, with Anton or with Grey or with any of that:

"It's okay. We'll be okay."

He might have asked again.

She might have said yes.

It wouldn't have saved them.

Marriage is a formality, even among the Silver Fangs. Even other Garou forget that they once ruled them all and that not every yoked neck was resistant. Other Garou, born and bred into human bodies and human mindsets, think of their name and consider it hoity-toity, fancy, look at us with precious metals in our name. They are Garou who have never felt the sink of silver burning through their flesh in a wound that will not heal like the others, a wound that sucks the soul out of them, forces them to weakness, forces them to submit.

The Fangs have become weakened by their own purity. They have fallen so far, but that purity brings strength as well as madness. They are powerful beings, coming from winters just as frigid and painful as those the Get are so proud of. They come, too, from bloody cultures that even the twenty-first century has not softened or tamed. They come from lineages and lines that stretch back farther than any. Their ancestors are still with them. Falcon flies high, sees everything, is lover to Helios and Luna both.

If a Fang greater in rank and renown and power had seen Hilary and wanted her, he would have taken her. Nevermind if she was wed. Nevermind if she was mother to a Garou son. Nevermind all that. That is the way of their people. It has always been the way.

It will always be the way.

The only way to keep her is to grow strong enough to hold her.

Her hands run up over him, up his abdomen, up his chest, across his shoulders. She follows his slowly undressed body, draws him back to her and wraps those warm arms around him, contrasted against her chilly hands. He aches for her so badly she can feel it even before he kisses her again. And he does kiss her again. Harder now, closer.

She does not expect him to lift her up, but she does not fight him. She wraps her legs around him, too, lets him pull her up in the cabin, carry her naked to the room where she has slept before, pregnant and not, on her way to or from one place or another. She ignores the servants. He orders them out. She clings to him as they turn, a shake going through her. She hears the click of the door shutting and nuzzles his neck as though this is what she was waiting for before she could do something like that.

When he lays her down her eyes open up at him, her hair spread out, lifting her hips when he reaches to pull the covers aside, watching him as he strips out of his pants, finally, dropping them to the floor and crawling in over her, with her. He brings his warmth with him, and the warmth of the covers, but she isn't saying anything, anything at all. The sheets come up over their heads and she breathes in, exhales quietly.

He makes her a promise.

She bursts into tears.

Every time Hilary bursts into tears, Ivan is at a loss. He never knows what to do. It's not as though Ivan hasn't been called upon to comfort a crying woman before. It's not even as though he hasn't comforted them right out of their clothes and into his bed before, or as though he hasn't had to comfort them because he was, in reality, kicking them out of his bed, out of his life. It's not that.

It's that for once, he cares. I've never loved anyone before, she wanted to say earlier, stopped herself because it was so foolish. Who says things like that? Who thinks them? Certainly not them - worldly, fashionable, jaded as they are.

Except: he does think that. He thinks things that are stupid, wild. He thinks about running away with her, deep into the wilderness of Russia, as if an Athro Theurge wouldn't be able to track him to the ends of the earth and beyond. He thinks about marrying her, staying with her, being her mate and the father of the child they made together. He thinks ridiculous, impossible things, and he makes her promises that he doesn't know how to keep.

She cries. Maybe because she knows he doesn't know how to keep this promise. Maybe because he wants to make promises to her in the first place: foolish boy. And he touches her, he runs his hands over her face, he wipes at her tears and kisses her, kisses her cheeks and her mouth, tastes salt on her lips.

"Shh," he whispers. "Oh, moya krasivaya devushka. Shhh."

"Don't stop," she pleads, through her tears, trembling and holding him as he kisses her, touches her, wipes her tears off with his fingers. "Please --"

And she can't kiss him, not well, not easily, but she can arch for him, beg him to hold her. It isn't very erotic, but then, this is his fault for making her a promise like that. She can't bear not to be with him right now, though. She can't stand the thought of falling asleep, she can't stand the thought of not knowing when, if this is the last time, she doesn't even want to think about it. She just wants him. Needs him.

But Hilary doesn't have words like that in her to give him. Not right now. She tries to make the tears stop, and the harsh truth is that she's very good at that sometimes. When he can't do anything, when he can't make it better, when the end of the matter is that she is irrevocably damaged, Hilary can make herself stop crying. It doesn't mean she isn't in pain. It just means she isn't making noise about it.

Christ help her when she gets around a small child who, when he is hurt or hungry or scared, cannot make himself stop. Relies entirely on adults to help him, soothe him, give him what he needs so that he can get better.

Or maybe she'll understand him better than anyone.

Hilary cups Ivan's face in her hands, one finger glinting in the light. "Don't stop," she breathes, sniffing once, kissing his jaw, and then his neck, and whispering against him: "I need you. I need you to make me yours."

Or maybe she does have the words.

Ivan is uncertain, wavering, the first time Hilary begs him not to stop. He doesn't know how to go on; how to proceed, what to do. What she wants. How to give it to her. She doesn't kiss him, but she does arch her back; slide those silken thighs up his sides. He closes his eyes; his breath shudders. It seems wrong to fuck her

(or make love to her)

when she's like this, torn apart and falling asunder. But then she says it again, and this time she says something else, something that he understands on a primitive, visceral level. Make me yours, she says. His eyes snap open, find hers, and oh, he's a wolf; he understands territory and claim, he understands, even if he does not want to, mateship. Mine.

His hand behind her head grasps her firmly now. He kisses her, and it's fervent. It parts and he gasps; he's reaching down and looking down their bodies, looking at the lithe plane of her abdomen, the way her legs part. He touches her and his brow furrows, the insides of his eyebrows flick up like he's wounded, like the feel of her moves him in some elemental way. He catches her mouth again, kisses her as he slides his fingers into her, whispers the words against her mouth:

"You're mine. You'll always be mine."

He pushes up on his forearm. His fingers withdraw; he rubs her slick onto his cock, shamelessly, slicking himself down for her. When he fits his cock to her cunt he comes back to her, wraps his arms around her, guides her mouth to his shoulder to muffle what sounds she might make, give her a point of contact, some leverage, something. His hand tightens on her back as he pushes into her. Firm, thorough, filling her up with a groan low in his throat. So many times before he's taken her so much more roughly, treated her in a way neither Dion nor Grey would have fathomed in their wildest, darkest dreams, made her scream for him, cry for him, made her his. Compared to that, the way he enters her now is nothing, is gentle almost, and yet still - he touches her hair, he kisses her neck.

"Mine," he whispers; it doesn't even really make sense. Moving inside her now, the musculature of his flank and back moving seamlessly with every thrust: "You're mine. You're mine."

No one could blame Ivan for hesitating right now. He tried to comfort her and she began to cry, and even then was pleading for him to love her, have sex with her, make love to her -- it was bewildering, upsetting. Some trigger in his brain associates tears with no, and yet

it's superceded, instantly, by the trigger in his brain that responds when she tells him to claim her.

Mine, he says, rough and needful, taking her then. By the hair, touching her cunt, kissing her mouth, pushing into her. She gives a great shudder of relief when he comes to her like this, but her fingernails don't scratch at him and her teeth don't bite. She just strokes him, holds him, moves with him in that cave of diffuse light he created for her, to keep her protected, to keep her safe. The servants outside can't hear them over the wail of the engines, and they aren't sure what's happening now. They know what Ivan and Hilary are like, but they hear no screaming, no abuse, no snarling as he ties her up and fucks her for all she's worth.

They hear almost nothing at all, and wonder if something happened. They don't gossip, though, of course not. A few glances are exchanged.

In that cabin, though, they are just... making love. According to their tastes it is quite vanilla, would normally be the sort of thing Hilary would find oppressively dull, but today is different. She holds onto him with her hands and her legs, arching for him when he thrusts particularly hard, slowing him down with the aching control of her body when he gets eager, when starts going at her savagely, hungrily. They kiss. He holds his mouth to her neck as he works her up, brings her closer to that peak, listens to the sounds she makes, as she hears his gasping and kisses him, soothes him like he's in pain.

They make love almost like they're normal people, who love each other, who want to please each other.

And no, Hilary's orgasm doesn't shake her apart to her bones, make her flail or scream or sob. It comes in like the tide, a slow and unfolding thing that takes forever, that is beginning well before Ivan is alerted to it and crests over her so gradually that even her moans are elongated. She tightens around him, panting, holding him, holding him like she always has been.

They never make love like this. Never. They are so quiet, so gentle, so close and aching and passionate that on any other day Ivan would wonder if something was wrong. He doesn't wonder today. He knows. But it's all right. At least right now, it's all right, because when he fucks her like this,

loves her like this,

he remembers: she's his. She is. Even when she's mated off. Ivan supposes when she's mated off to yet another Athro, yet another highly ranked Garou whose power and prestige far outstrips his, he will want to fuck her like this, always. Someone like Grey will assume this is what Hilary wants, that of course a creature as fine and lovely as Hilary would never, ever want it the way he secretly wants it: rough, primal, mounting her from behind because her blood is so potent, she smells like desire; she smells like everything he's ever wanted.

Grey will never fuck her like that. But Grey will fuck her like this, and maybe in some oblique way

that's why they fuck like this, too. Because she needs to be protected right now. Because she needs to be close to the man she does love. And because: now even this is his. Is theirs.

It's strange. As broken as they are, as corrupt, as deviant - something about what they do to each other is incorruptible. There's an odd, counterintuitive purity in it all. Even when it's rough. Even when it's harsh, and a little bit frightening. Even when it's gentle,

and terrifying because he's never felt like this before, either.

Afterward, he gathers her in his arms. They haven't really separated at all. They lay in bed together as the jet climbs higher and higher, turns eastward. Their trajectory will take them past the house Ivan grew up in. Past the estate Grey owns. Past the now-dilapidated mansion that Hilary barely remembers. Past all that, and deep into the homeland of their Tribe, where their son is slowly, surely growing up.

"I have to tell you something," he whispers. "But I don't know if it'll hurt you or give you hope."

This is one of their rare moments that they come close to normality. There were also those days in Mexico when she was pregnant and insisting it probably wasn't his child, and cooking for him, sitting with him out on that shaded, greenery-covered patio just watching the wind move in the trees. Somewhere down the list are the couple of hours they laid in her bed together, their newborn between them, sleeping as deep as he's ever slept because he was so tired from the trauma of being born, sleeping deep because his sense of smell was telling him that the two creatures on this earth he is most tied to in blood and spirit were surrounding him, cocooning him, protecting him.

They are rarely normal. There is no normality for them without concurrent agony.

The first mate that took Hilary took her because he was such a prize himself, young and yet heir to vast lands and even vaster fortune, proven in battle after battle and yet scarless with victory, skyrocketing to his rank. Of course he was given a well-bred young woman like herself, so beautiful, so graceful, virginal, demure, perfect. He could save her. He could take her out of her impending poverty and raise her back up to the status she was born to. They would have gorgeous, strong children, and as many of them as he could give her.

But first he would train her, play with her, dominate her. First he would experiment, see how far he could take her, how much she would allow. They got so lucky, the two of them, to find one another. He let her find herself inhabiting her body as he abused it, and she let him indulge his madness and grow only greater, only stronger, outside the walls of their home. Hilary never loved him. She appreciated him, enjoyed him, feared him terribly, craved him, hated him when he left her alone in that enormous estate, tried so hard to pretend to be happy so that he would be happy, but never loved him, despite all he gave her, did for her.

He died within the first two years of their mateship, left her with almost nothing, never managed to produce an heir that would carry on his great name, and Hilary

almost never thinks of him. Sometimes she quite forgets his face.

There was another, still far from Athro partly because of his renunciation, partly because of his inherently changeable nature, partly because he is a Galliard and they advance so slowly regardless of tribe, and he found her to be A Suitable Mate. A Good Wife. His daughter hated her. His son was obsessed with her. Their housekeeper, who knew his first mate and knew the children since they were zygotes, suspected the worst of this woman. Hilary discovered pharmaceuticals while in Dion's grasp. She discovered a bit of freedom to be had with a mate who was often gone. She resigned herself to childbirth, but that was nothing new to her.

Dion never loved her, never understood her. She was a blank canvas for him and he painted anything he wanted on her. When he was blank and away, intellectual and philosophical, he imagined her to be the same, and happy enough to be alone like he was. When he was with her, infatuated with her, craving her, fixated on her, he assumed she met and matched his feelings, was as wild for him as he was for her.

The first time that illusion wavered was when he awoke and found her gone, escaped, her scent still everywhere in their room, her car gone, and he was at once livid and terrified. He chased her down and found her at Ivan's penthouse.

Of course Hilary never loved him. Their sex was boring, and it wasn't gentle or sweet but rough and grunting and onesided, an exhausting effort on her part to feign interest and orgasm. At least he didn't want closeness, didn't stare into her eyes, didn't try and get her to respond to him emotionally. She could lie there and make noises for him while he did what he pleased and let her mind wander. So long as the rhythm of those noises was right, he didn't seem to notice or care.

Truth be told, if Grey wants to look into her eyes, love her, feel like maybe she wants him back, it will be even worse. Not just boring, not just exhausting, but mentally draining to the point that her reserves might break. It's possible she'll encourage him, gradually or suddenly, to flip her over and pound her, hold her in his teeth, so she can pretend he's anyone. One of his sons. Ivan. A ghost. Anything. Maybe then she can come. Maybe then she can at least check out and ignore him til he's done.

Grey doesn't think he would ever take a mate like that.

Grey, like many men in Hilary's life, thinks he is above his own desire, thinks he can control it, reign over it, surpass it. He has not really met her yet.

This is the first time in Hilary's life she has had sex like this and not been mentally elsewhere. She lies there afterward, pure somehow, purified, clean, her head turned on the pillow, her breathing slowly, slowly becoming steady, her pale skin flushed still with arousal. She still has Ivan inside of her. She thinks, too, of where the plane is carrying them. She is thinking so much about Anton it is as though the last year is catching up with her, drowning her, and she wants to know everything, everything, she cannot get him out of her mind. Right now, likely only because Ivan is holding her so close, she can stand this. She does not shatter from the unbearable pain of her own love.

She does not open her eyes when he speaks. She breathes a bit differently to let him know she hears him, inhales more deeply, exhales a sigh. She gives a small nod, saying absently, like a reminder,

"I don't hope. I would rather hurt."

"Well," there's a gentleness in his whisper, an underlining of fondness that one would never, ever have suspected either of them to be capable of, "that may be so, but I don't want you to hurt."

He shifts a little. He doesn't draw away; he doesn't rise. He shifts just a little closer, and just a little over her, and his lips touch her collarbones. He kisses her, soft-skinned, fine-featured Hilary, who almost no one suspects is anything but demure and graceful and charming and elegant because she's just. so. beautiful.

"Grey talked to me in the car," he says quietly, "after you left. It seems word of my unseemly infatuation with you has circulated to him. He wanted me to know he wasn't angry, and that he didn't blame me. He remembered, he said, what it was like to be young and nameless. What it was like to watch the loveliest, worthiest kinswomen of the tribe always mated off to stronger wolves. What it was like to envy those wolves.

"He made me," Ivan's voice is all irony, "a very generous offer. He has several daughters. Virtuous kinswomen all, in his eyes, a better mate than I would deserve. A consolation prize of sorts, I suppose, and a token of his gratitude for giving him ... " the cutting lightness is gone from his tone now. He nuzzles Hilary for a moment, brooding, aching, " ... you."

A pause.

"I would have turned him down, but -- the daughter of an English Athro, even if she were mated to an American Garou, would expect to be allowed to visit her father and her siblings several times a year. Perhaps for weeks at a time. Her mate would even be expected to accompany her.

"It would bring us together. Even if you lived with Grey for much of the year ... I'd get to see you sometimes."

There's nothing to say to that first bit. She knows he doesn't want her to hurt, or feel pain, or sorrow, or the things she has felt in his presence that don't have human words to describe them. This man who strings her up -- literally -- and beats her -- also literally -- is yet the only one who wants to hold back, the one who aches at the idea of harming her, who twists and knots inside when he sees the marks he's left on her even if she is tracing those marks lovingly and gratefully with her fingertips. He is so tender to her that he would give her up rather than see her, later on, given to someone who really will hurt her.

She watches him, her eyes dark as a deer's, as he moves over her. She is docile now, but very still and very quiet. She is not content, not happy, but right now she is safe, and she is okay. That is enough, or: it will have to be enough.

What Ivan says then quakes through her, shocks her, but one would never know to look at her. She is so very, very still, so calm to the touch, her eyes limpid, but inside she is stunned. For a long time she has no idea how to react, so she doesn't. Hilary merely watches him still, as though nothing has changed. Everything is as it was just a few seconds ago. She says nothing, nothing, for a long time.

"You would have turned him down?" she echoes, turning the words into a question.

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

[She's mostly just in shock, and kind of... not reacting yet.]

Ivan hesitates, just a second. It's as though nothing has changed. He is still where he is. She is still where she is. They are still so closely in contact, entwined, connected. When she breathes he knows she's alive. When she breathes,

he feels it, her chest expanding against his.

"I didn't turn him down," Ivan whispers. "I didn't accept either ... I told him I needed time to think about it, to consider whether or not I was ready to even capable of giving his daughter the life she deserves, etcetera etcetera. The truth is I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to see what you thought."

Another small pause. Ivan shifts a little, and then he does prop himself up on one elbow, the heel of his hand to his temple. His other arm is draped over her body. Sheltering. A slash of sunlight crawls slowly across the rumpled bedsheets as the plane banks. They are over lake michigan, deep and blue. They are so high in the air, and some animal instinct in him, dim and barely present most the time, is uneasy. It doesn't seem safe. Nothing's holding them up. What if they fall? He wants to protect her.

He always wants to protect her. He's wanted it since the first time she took him to that hotel on the north shore, told him to undress, fucked him, unleashed him, let him do terrible things to her. He's not by far the only man who's hurt her, physically or emotionally or sexually or -- any of that. He's not even by far the only one to do so with her approval.

He's the only one who's wanted to protect her, though. All her life she's been told she was precious, she said once. He's the only one who's made her feel that way.

And
he is
talking about getting mated to another woman. For her.

"Should I turn him down?"

She gives a short, small nod at his explanation to Grey for not giving an immediate answer; of course not. "He knows you're overly fond of me," she says, because it is not the same as Grey knowing that Ivan is in love with her. Overly fond, she says instead, as though the reality matches the shameful rumour-fodder the rest of their circles think it is. "Also, you weren't lying, you would make a terrible husband."

This, actually, is strangely fond. Or rather: matter-of-fact. He currently has his cock sunken into the pussy of a woman who is still another man's wife and soon to be the fiance of yet another, the man who is the father of Ivan's as-yet unnamed, unchosen bride-to-be. He would make a terrible husband even if he were not also flighty, independent, skin-crawlingly horrified at the idea of committment.

Hilary's eyes follow him everywhere now, in the aftermath. She does not need care. She isn't shaking, isn't broken apart, isn't crying anymore. He doesn't need to help her walk to get to the shower and hold her up there while he tenderly washes her, wraps her up in towels or robes, and brings her back to bed to rest. She rolls her head on the pillow to watch him, not able to intuit the animal side of him that knows her, claims her, worries about her in this irrational, insane way: what if she falls? What if they fall right out of the sky? How could he keep her safe, then?

Maddeningly, sickeningly, her shoulders give a soft, small shrug. "It would be as dangerous as it would be helpful," she murmurs. "It's hard to go sneaking off during a family reunion, particularly when the other parties involved know of your... silliness, where I'm concerned." She is quiet a moment, then a frown wrinkles her brow, making her look childish and petulant. "She would have to know Anton. And I will claw her eyes out if I see her with him. I will. I'll crush her windpipe if she touches him."

Matter of fact or not, strangely fond or not, she's right. He would make a terrible husband and mate. It's not even his pathological inability to commit; it isn't even his infidelity. It's the very fact that the only reason he wants to marry this girl is because it would bring him closer, just a little closer, to the woman he really loves.

It's a terrible reason. It's shameful, hurtful; he would be ruining the life of yet another kinswoman, perpetrating a sort of vicious cycle. Ask him if he cares.

He does care about Hilary, though. Painfully, strangely, and deeply: he cares about her. And her eyes follow him, and it seems his very presence calms her; his very claim calms her. So: she must care about him, too. They care about each other. They love each other. And Ivan, selfish thing that he is, can't think of any reason why that shouldn't be enough for him to do anything, hurt anyone, in order to be close to her.

"She would," he agrees about Anton. "And it would be dangerous. But it's the best way I can think of for us to see each other. And maybe the only way for you to see Anton with any regularity." Ivan's turn for a deep breath. And he lowers his face to her skin again, nuzzling her blindly and gently with his nose, his lips. "I won't let her touch him, though. He's my son, and yours. He's not her concern, and I don't want her to try to make him her concern."

"You'll have to have babies with her," Hilary says, suddenly and quietly, but her voice no different than anything else she's said since he dropped this latest bombshell. They are talking -- she is thinking, nonstop and in wild circles -- about Anton. He nuzzles her, caresses her, and they talk about this wife he's supposed to take, or going to take, because it might give him more excuses to be near her.

There's the other possibility: to refuse. It would be an enormous insult to Grey, given the generosity of the offer. It would make Ivan even more suspect. There would be no reason for Hilary to see Ivan ever again, of course. He would give her servants as gifts to take with her whenever she wanted to visit the States. Perhaps one or more of his sons, to guard her from Ivan.

But if Ivan were to marry one of Grey's multitude of daughters -- out of 13, he must have several options who are of a good age to be married off -- then they could just be family. Good friends who have been through struggle together, only now he would be her Step Son-in-Law and she his Step Mother-in-Law, in a manner of speaking. No need to come up with excuses to visit. It would still be dangerous.

But it would be possible.

She doesn't sound sad. It's just one more reality. "You should keep her fat and disgusting all the time," she says, very nearly amused by her own maliciousness. "And tell her you mustn't touch her while she's pregnant for the baby's sake. Grey will be so happy."

Suddenly: "I wonder how many grandchildren he already has."

Hilary is very nearly amused. Ivan is not. He is uncomfortable in a way one would never expect a cad like him to be. He frowns as she says he'll have to have babies with her. He draws away from her when she says he ought to keep her fat and repulsive and impregnated. It's not sudden; he doesn't tear himself away. He doesn't want to tear himself away. But it's a withdrawal all the same. He slides himself out of her at last. He flops on his back, closer to the sloping fuselage. The plane is small. The bed is small - a fullsize at best, really. It's not like he's miles away, but --

even so, a space that wasn't there before.

Ivan tucks his hands under his head, frowning at the ceiling. He glances at Hilary as she wonders about his grandchildren. "I think his eldest - a daughter - has two or three. I'm fairly sure John has at least one or two. I'm not sure about the rest," he breaks off suddenly, "I don't want to fuck her. I told you already. I haven't wanted anyone else since you left for Mexico and tore a hole in my life. I don't want her, I don't want to make babies with her, I don't want to be attached to her. The one thing that holds me back from accepting Grey's generous offer is the fact that if I bind myself to this girl, it's that much more unlikely I'll ever get you. Even if Grey dies, even if you were free again, I'll still be shackled."

That's how Ivan talks about mateship. Shackles. Imprisonment. The distinct and utter lack of freedom.

"I don't want her," he repeats again, quiet, almost sullen. "Don't even joke about it."

Hilary does not quite know what to do when Ivan moves away. Some small stirring humanity in her wants to keep him, hold him back, ask him not to leave her like that, but she is so quieted, so calmed, so ...far away, in a sense, from her own pain. She feels soothed, and she is loathe to give that up. So she watches him as he withdraws, moving to lie on his back, staring at the low ceiling. She waits awhile. He speaks.

After a little while longer, she rustles the bedclothes as she turns on her side and lays her hand on top of him.

She does not know what to say. There may be nothing she can say.

It seems to be enough. These little sputtering flickers of humanity in Hilary. These things she does that make him feel - make him believe, anyway - that she loves him. It must be: he's still with her. He's still so in love with her that he can't pull away. Not really.

So. She comes closer. She lays her hand on his body, and his chest rises, falls. After a moment he covers her hand. Moves it until it covers his heart. That seems to calm him, soothe him in something rather like the way she is soothed when he covers her. His eyes close. His breathing evens a little. He is quiet, quiescent. She might think he's about to sleep, but - no. Moments pass. His eyes open again. Slowly, unshuttering like windows, like curtains drawn up on some grand stage.

"Even if Grey dies," he whispers, "and even if I weren't mated to his daughter ... the Tribe would still never give you to me, would they?"

"I don't know," she says, her tone gentler than the answer. It's the truth. The truth is rarely gentle.

What Hilary is with Ivan cannot quite be called tenderness. Not often, at least. What she gives him can't always be called love or even consideration. Her care is so broken, ultimately so selfish, that when she says she loves him it is hard to believe she even knows what that would be like. That's what they've sad to each other, isn't it? How could either of them know what love really feels like? How can they trust it, when the other says it?

And yet: she doesn't anymore. Ivan adores her. Loves her, puts his neck on the line for her, would possibly die for her, gives her anything she could desire, dashes his reputation against the rocks for her, would marry a woman he doesn't want who would hang around his neck like an albatross forever if it meant that he could be closer to Hilary, could continue to see her and,

yes,

give her what she wants: nearness to her child, who she never wanted before he was born.

Hilary covers his heart, though, and then comes nearer, laying her head against his chest to feel and to listen to its beating, deep in the hollow of his body. It isn't really hollow, she knows. She closes her eyes and sees vague, half-remembered images of one war-formed Garou devouring the remains of one who had already died and reverted to his human birth-body. She knows what is inside. It isn't hollow. Hilary doesn't know if she really remembers all this or if she's imagined it.

Her eyes open, unchanged. She looks at Ivan and thinks of what it would feel like if she lost him, if he were torn asunder, and decides that would be worse than never seeing him again. Her arm slides further around him, and she says perhaps the most loving, supportive words she will ever say in her life:

"I think you should do what you think is best," she whispers. "I will love you no matter what it is."

What she says is almost unbelievable. When he met her nearly two years ago, or even two months ago, he never would have trusted those words from her mouth. What do they know about love, anyway. What could they possibly know about love, and support, and all these normal, sweet things couples are supposed to do for each other.

Even now, she says it, and he simply exhales. Half a sigh; half a scoff. He's quiet then, though, thinking. He doesn't know what's best. If he knew, he thinks, he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. He wouldn't have pulled that yacht alongside hers. He wouldn't have shouted to her from the flybridge, asked her to come over, have a drink, be seduced. He would never have instigated this, and so he would never have found her, found this; he would never have to lose this. Lose her.

It would have been nice to have a stone heart, he thinks. Untouchable, airless, black. Well. Too late now.

"Let's just go see Anton," he murmurs. "Let's go see Anton and forget about this for a while. We can deal with it when we come back." And he shifts again; he draws her nearer, he holds her fast to his side. "I'll deal with it when we come back."

That's how they fix these things: a sumptuous gift, a racy fuck, a nap, putting it out of their minds. Hilary doesn't argue; she wouldn't. She curls against his side, his to care for and protect though he is hardly the best man for either of those jobs, and yet

the only man who has ever managed to do them for her. She closes her eyes as he says Anton's name. Twice. Anticipation aches in her chest. She wishes she were miserable again, angry, anything but this. This hurts too deply, fills her so utterly, and she is so afraid that he won't let her hold him, he won't let her anywhere near him, and all she wants to do right now is keep him so tightly that he nearly suffocates to her chest. She is so afraid he will hate her, though she would deserve it.

Anton, Ivan says, like he's a person they both know.

Her arm wraps more around him, her hand curls over his ribcage, her eyes stay closed. If he marries Grey's daughter she will love him. If he fucks her pregnant over and over again she will love him. If Grey's grumpy Philodox son takes her aside and asks her, point-blank, if she's fucking Ivan, the tribe is too civilized to kill her and too desperate to kill Ivan but there are worse ways to punish people.

Hilary decides not to think about it anymore. She can love right now, can be content and soft and trusting right now, so she does. She finds, for once, that she can even bear a momentary pang of longing and fear without collapsing. Not for long, though. Never for long.

She submits to his will again. She knows he wants her to sleep now. She keeps her eyes closed, obedient, and stays curled up against him, under the sheets, willing her breathing to steady and slow down. Maybe if she sleeps, Ivan will feel better.

So she does. And maybe he does, too, but,

whether he does or not, it doesn't stop the jet from flying

inexorably

towards Russia.