Ivan Press

Ivan

Eastward they fly, accelerating the natural turning of the sun as though they, in all their purebred glory, could control the flow of time itself. Hilary sleeps, and so does Ivan, and when he wakes it is dark outside the portholes. He closes the shades, and he sets the bedside lamp to its dimmest setting, and though it's deep black night outside his body tells him it's dinnertime. So he goes to find food, and he brings some back in case Hilary wakes, and sometimes he does these things without even recognizing that he is performing the same covenant, the same consecrated act of bonding that males and females have performed across the ages.

If she wakes, they eat together. If not, he watches over her anyway, lounging half-dressed in bed, reading quietly on his tablet.

They land in far-northern Reykjavik just as dawn begins to touch the horizon. Ivan goes forward to confer briefly with the pilot. Neither of them bother to get off the plane. Ivan has never been here before, this fabled land of ice and Fenrir. The last times he flew to and from Novgorod - for Anton, and for his own training long before that - they didn't stop here. They didn't stop again. This time there are more people aboard; and besides: on some level Ivan wanted this small reprieve. Just in case. Just in case Hilary changed her mind...

She doesn't. She stays in the back or she comes with him. He looks through the cockpit windows at the Icelandic tarmac, the buildings dark shapes against the glow of approaching sunrise, the ground still iced over from an overnight frost.

A little later, they take off again.

Biologically, it is the dead of night for them when their sleek little jet begins to descend. Outside, though, the sun is dazzlingly bright. It's a good time of year to visit. The summers here are mild and warm, with days that stretch forever, but the winters are brutally cold, utterly dark. There are days when the sun barely crests the horizon before it's gone again, but

those days are behind them now, and the land they descend into is green with spring, awash with sunlight. Novgorod is a city of stone and water; an ancient city bisected by one river and embraced by the curvature of another, situated upstream of a lake. Well over a thousand years old, vestiges of medieval Russia still remain: cathedrals, walls, fortresses from an age when the Silver Fangs held this land in an absolute, iron grasp.

As their plane descends, Hilary, if she chooses to look, see the city where her son is growing up. It's a little reminiscent of Paris: the sun glancing off a river spanned by bridges both modern and ancient; the low, elegant buildings reminiscent of an older age; even the layout of the streets converging on the center of the city much as the Parisian streets converge on the Arc de Triomphe. It's much smaller than Paris, though; not a nerve center of the modern world but merely a town that echoes with the past. Just outside the city, farmlands and fields sprawl over the largely flat land.

Ivan's father's plane touches down in a private airport on the north side of town. Novgorod doesn't have its own public-use airport. Ordinary citizens get in and out by rail or bus or car. They, however, are hardly ordinary. Just look at the way they deplane: personally bid farewell by the pilot, attended by their staff. Ivan slips a pair of sunglasses on. He showered somewhere between Reykjavik and Novgorod; changed into fresh clothes that look summery and casual, that make his body look lean and toned and elegant. There are cars waiting for them: a vintage convertible for Ivan and his companion, and a larger, more sedate SUV for their entourage. The SUV has a driver. Ivan, however, elects to drive himself, familiarizing himself with the controls for a moment.

Their servants are still finalizing whatever uninteresting little details they need to finalize when Ivan pulls away. They don't head into town. He drives east, toward the river. Perhaps in deference to Hilary's preferences, or perhaps simply out of practicality, he puts the top up.

"I haven't had a chance to tell them about you yet," he says quietly when they can hear each other speak again. "Miron and the rest. I'll tell them when we get there, though I suppose they'll understand the moment they set eyes on you."

Sometimes, particularly after he has wrecked her, Hilary sleeps as deep and heavy as the dead. She stirs only to his touch, his demand, his desire. Sometimes the more he abuses her, the more innocent her sleep becomes, peaceful and calm and dreamless.

It is not like that, on their way to Russia.

Hilary wakes often and sleeps fitfully. At one point she opens her eyes to see those dark portholes, the sky black outside, and she starts shrieking, still half-caught in whatever dream was wrenching her just a moment ago. She is caught, for a few seconds, in something akin to panic until Ivan's voice reaches through all that. She's fighting his hands before he starts to talk to her, twitching slightly in his grasp when he catches her, holds her, keeps her still. She closes her eyes while he whispers, promises to her that he'll close the shades, it's all right. It's all right. She nods understanding, keeps her eyes shut tight while he closes those shades, turns on that dim light. She is not scared so much of the dark. She is scared of its emptiness.

It is better, after the little lights are on. She looks drowsy, exhausted by her own terror, and deep in her own mind she is determined to be brave. It is okay if he leaves her, she tells him, it's okay. He's going to get food. Yet: when he comes back she's curled up a little tighter, her breathing a little ragged, and she cannot eat very much. Anxiety rules her right now. He helps her eat what little she does, and she calms gradually. She doesn't move from the bed except once, to use the head, and the moment she's back she's curled again under the covers, using Ivan's pillow now as though the smell comforts her.

She sleeps again, a little better than before, while he reads beside her. She doesn't wake as often, but when she does it is just before dawn, and her body is already confused. She doesn't remember much, is groggy, is abrupt with him and then instantly, woefully apologetic, and he

is forgiving.

In Reykjavik she disembarks. There's no need to. She wants to, she says. It is not the dead of winter but it is deeply cold outside all the same. Standing outside while the plane is being fueled, Hilary stares at the eastern horizon and lets the wind wrap around her, somehow closer to her skin than even the coat she's wrapped in. She looks paler than usual, her hair unpleasant, her eyes underlined by shadows. It is not quite daylight outside. She lets the touch of sunlight burn her eyes a bit before she closes them, thinking how cold the sun is here, as though it is different than the one anywhere else. Her eyes open again and she sweeps back into the plane, her skin cool to the touch and her eyes brighter than before.

She is braced by the brutality of the cold. There is something of their heritage, their blood, in her. She is, in fact, part wolf.

So: she sleeps again, just for a couple of hours, but it is deep and full and determined. When she wakes she eats a real meal. She showers. She tasks Darya to her hair and her makeup. She dresses in linen slacks and a soft-colored blouse that does not bare her arms and is actually quite billowy but, through just enough transparency to the fabric, it reveals her figure a bit. The darkness of her hair against the peach of the silk blouse is striking. Her cheeks become creamy. Her lips become a gentle pink. Her eyes are ferocious, though.

Hilary carries a light jacket and a single shoulder bag when they leave the plane again. She ignores the pilot as he bids them a good day. She was not looking over Novgorod as they flew above it; the thought didn't occur to her as Darya was fixing her up and as she was getting dressed. Now she scans the horizon from behind large sunglasses with some designer's gold symbol at the temples, a breeze blowing a few single hairs prettily across her cheeks and jawline. She brushes them away in annoyance.

Truthfully, she hasn't spoken much. She seems to be building herself to this, drawing in her reserves, and talking and discussing and feeling things with other people will only distract and drain her. Darya and Carlisle go with the other servants to the SUV, while Ivan and his matching partner walk towards the convertible. "I didn't bring a scarf," she mentions, and so he puts the top up when he understands that driving with it down will muss her hair. She slides onto the leather seat and lays her jacket across her lap, looking out the window for a moment.

Ivan begins driving, and she startles, as though she thought this was as far as this would all go. Calms instantly after, but it was there. It happened. She glances at the city, curious, but then out the window. It is like the way she watched the countryside when they were in Mexico, and despite her heartburn she craved the spiciest of foods, always. Ate peppers like apples. She thinks of that now; it passes.

And Ivan speaks.

Her lips twist in a small smirk. "What was the lie? That I lived just long enough after his birth to adore him, dote on him, lavish attention on him, before my tragic passing? I suppose that fits." She looks deeper into the sky, as though there is something behind it she is waiting to see revealed. "They weren't hired right away. They would have noticed he was only a day or two old, one would think."

The smirk fades, and so does the bitterly light tone in her voice. She exhales. "He's almost a year old," she murmurs. "We should stay for his birthday. At least til it passes." A beat goes by. Her voice is heavier. "If he likes me, we should stay the full week...week and a half, however long it is. I don't know what day it is."

Hilary's throat moves. She exhales quietly through her nostrils. "If he likes me... I would like to stay for his birthday. I will make him a little cake."

In the middle of the night, the middle of the ocean where nothing is above or below or all around them except darkness and emptiness, Hilary wakes and is terrified. Ivan's heart breaks, even as he's holding her, hushing her, murmuring to her, reaching through the terror to show her

it's okay. It's all right. He's here, and see: the shades are closing. The light is coming on.

Sometimes he thinks about those cloudy years of her past, when she had no servants, no money, no one to wait on her, no one to protect her. She doesn't like to speak of them. He doesn't like to think of them, nor what she did then when she woke in the night, alone, her brother swallowed, the darkness swallowing her.

Later, in Reykjavik, he doesn't deplane but she does. She stands in the bitter cold morning, below freezing even so close to May, and he watches her from the doorway. It's so cold that he wraps his arms around himself, squints his eyes. She seems to draw strength from it, though; carries that strength into sleep and then into Novgorod.

He is strangely, achingly ... proud; is that even the word? He doesn't know of any other to describe the feeling in his breast, though even that is not quite right. Close enough, though. So: proud. Proud of her. Proud of her strength shining through the bitter cracks where she was broken so long ago. Proud that she chose him.

When she comes back up the steps, he wraps his arm around her waist as she's passing him. She is chilled from the outside, but there's warmth beneath the skin. They are warm together when he draws her to him, kisses her, strange and silent and a little bit savage.

In Novgorod, neither of them mention but both of them think of that strange, bittersweet day in Mexico; that foreshadowing and pre-echo of this day. Anton was only a tiny developing lump of flesh then, but he was as much in the back of their thoughts as he is now. They drove together through a foreign country, then as in now. And even though Ivan lived here for a few years, trained here, learned to be not too bad of a Garou here (even though he's really, quite frankly, a terrible human being), Ivan is not really Russian. Of Russian descent, certainly. Russian-American, even. But set him beside a man of the fatherland, a Garou of the old country, and there would be no questioning it.

He's too flashy. Too agile, too quick, not nearly morose enough. He barely knows what it's like to spend winter after winter here in this stark northern land, when the sun shuns the earth for months at a time, when it's so cold water cast into the air would be solid before it hit the ground. He barely knows what it's like to stand guard in that frigid darkness, to fight in it, to hunt and rule in it.

He knows this much, though. He knows what it's like to love an older woman, a married woman, a woman who can never be his. He has tasted, intimately, that exquisite heartbreak.

"That's exactly what I told them," he replies, his mouth twisting - sardonic and wry and rueful at once. "And yes; they were hired over a period of a few weeks, about a month after Anton was settled here. I think Polina might already have doubts, but if she's smart enough to figure that out she's smart enough to keep it to herself. However, I'm quite certain both Miron and Izolda will be appalled to discover they've been lied to this entire time."

She goes on. His edged humor departs with hers. He glances at her, his eyes hidden behind those ever-so-stylish sunglasses. He aches all over again. It's a physical sensation, in his teeth, in his stomach, in his heart.

"I think he'd like that." Ivan opts to stay light, in the end. "I'm told he's developed quite the sweet tooth."

Hilary huffs a breath, not really a laugh, when Ivan says that Polina may already know. The least innocent of the bunch, the one with the hardest eyes; Hilary wouldn't be surprised if Ivan is right and the young woman does have doubts. Well. Izolda and Miron could do with a little loss of innocence. A little raw truth. A bit of bitterness to chew on.

Meeting Hilary ruins people's lives. She rips away innocence just by walking through the room, opening her mouth. And they are about to unleash her on her own son, so much more vulnerable than Ivan, or Polina, or Miron, or Izolda. She could destroy him if let around him too much, shatter him from an early age, and not even try.

Yet there's this: Hilary does not care if she ruins Miron or Izolda or Polina's lives. She does not care if she ruins Darya or Carlisle's. She doesn't care if she crushes someone like Christian just by fucking him, or shreds someone like Cordelia with a few words. What she's done to Ivan is despicable; any decent woman would have left him alone, would have made something like the honorable choice and let it end when they ended it instead of going to him because she was exhausted and he made her feel safe. And yet his life isn't ruined, or so he seems to feel: he keeps loving her, doesn't he? So she must not have destroyed him.

Those that are destroyed must deserve it.

But then there is Anton.

She will claw Ivan's future bride's throat open if the girl touches Anton. She wants his nursery to be a good color, she's not sure about the yellow. She wants him to have a photograph of his supposedly dead, doting mother. She wants him not to be spoiled by half-birthdays and --

Hilary frowns, looking sharply at Ivan. "They mustn't let him get fat and sickly," she says suddenly, snapping the words, an order to him as much as to the servants through him, as though she isn't about to meet him. "A little cake on his birthday should be special. A treat. Izolda will rot his teeth with her cooing," Hilary says, looking out the window again, "he certainly won't need any help from sweeties."

She begged Ivan to take Anton away from her so she wouldn't hurt him. She will, it's not hard to imagine, outright attack anyone who might.

Something's surely wrong with the world when Ivan is the more tolerant, levelheaded, mature member of any pair. When Hilary abruptly snaps about Anton's sugar intake or lack thereof, Ivan looks mildly at her for a moment, eyebrow up, then turns back to the road.

"Look at us," he says, smiling. "I think he'd have trouble not being skinny, let alone fat."

They are crossing a highway, which they do not merge into. The roads here are only subtly different from those in the United States, or any other major industrialized country: the building materials vary a little, the dimensions, the road marking. All the signs, though, are in Cyrillic - likely as incomprehensible to Hilary as to glyphs and runes, unless her lessons with her little maid included written Russian as well. She can't read that the highway would take them to St. Petersburg in one direction, downtown Novgorod in the other. Ivan thinks to himself, idly, that perhaps in a couple days they could visit Novgorod proper together. Walk the streets of that tiny, ancient city together. Cross those bridges. Visit the Novgorod kremlin, where his ancestors ruled. Perhaps they could even bring Anton.

They pass the highway. It recedes behind them, and the farther from the city and its thoroughfares they go, the quieter and narrower the streets are. Their path begins to wind. They can see the river now, glistening behind a screen of trees.

"Don't worry about him so much," Ivan adds quietly. "He's doing well. He's ... good, Hilary. He's not broken, or weak, or sickly, or damaged. You don't need to be afraid for him."

This does not quell Hilary's disgruntled look. She hmphs -- in a most delicate, ladylike fashion, of course -- and looks out the window again. No, she can't read any of the signs. She recognizes some letters, a word here and there, but they don't coalesce into anything meaningful. They go by too fast for her to study. Her mind is elsewhere, anyway.

Ivan's is, too, for a little while. He thinks of a day trip with their son. Their son. Mother and father and baby, touring the town he lives near. Taking pictures together. The servants, at least one or two, to take those pictures and feed the little boy and change his diaper when necessary and carry Hilary's things. Hilary, not knowing that this is on Ivan's mind, thinks suddenly and wildly of staying here. She's faked one death already. She can fake her own. She'll come live here in the countryside with her servants and with her son and when Ivan comes to visit them -- she doesn't imagine, for some reason, that he lives with them, away from a large city -- he will be so pleased with all of them. He'll tell her what a good girl she is, and fuck her in her bed there, leave her in the country where she can just

disappear

forever.

But Hilary doesn't think of Anton growing up. In this fantasy, though, Anton's perpetual infancy is the least outlandish of all suspensions of disbelief necessary to sustain it. She closes her eyes and leans her head to the glass, something she often does as though the cold hardness of it comforts her, and exhales slowly. She tries to make her mind a blank. She's losing her strength and the terror is coming back in. She breathes slowly to try and settle herself inside.

And Ivan tells her not to worry too much about Ivan. A sad, aching smile touches and tightens her lips. She lifts a fair hand and lays her fingertips to her mouth, feeling her breath pass her nails. "Stop, please," she whispers, when he tells her that he's god, he's not broken. That is where she cuts in, only whispering, not sounding shattered but merely a little overcome, asking for reprieve as though the words harm her: "Pozhaluiista. I'm getting so tired already. We aren't even there."

Ivan looks at her again. Quick glances is all he can manage, but even with a quick glance he can see how she's leaning to the glass, she's receding, she's fading into a sort of animal panic at the enormity of it all.

So he pulls off the road. He signals, and then he pulls to the side, and anyway this road is quiet and only the occasional car rushes past them. He pays them no mind. He takes his sunglasses off, and his eyes are dark and complex in the light beneath the convertible's soft-top. He unbuckles his seatbelt and turns in the seat, facing her, reaching out to lay his forearm over her shoulder, his hand behind her neck. His other hand on her cheek, the side of her face, when she turns to face him.

"Come here," he says. And so they come together, awkwardly in the small confines of the circa-1960s roadster, his arm coming around her, his hand holding her head to his body, her brow to his shoulder or the juncture of his neck.

"It's okay," he goes on. "If you get too tired, or you can't bear it, or if you have to leave, or even if you stay twenty minutes and want to fly back to Chicago: it's all right. Whatever you want, okay? Whatever you can handle."

Ivan quiets, and Hilary's eyes are closed and she is breathing, calm still but tired. Her eyes open when she feels the car begin to pull over, though, and she sits up. "No," she says, a little too quickly. "No, don't. Don't stop," as though it's imperative he keep driving. Her hand even goes to the gear shift, the wheel, as though she has the skill to make him keep going, her head shaking. "No, don't stop. Please."

So: another glance, concerned now; but he doesn't stop. He drives on. A silence elapses.

The road curves gently with the river; office buildings become fewer and farther between. They are in the suburbs now, and denser suburbs rapidly fade to sparser ones. The houses are larger here. They sit on expansive tracts of land. In ages past, these lands were precious: some of the rare farmable lands in this cold, sprawling country, at least for those short summers. These days the farms are pushed farther into the countryside, and the wealthier subset of Novgorod's citizens live here.

After a while, Ivan speaks again:

"It's okay," he says quietly, "if you get too tired, or you can't bear it, or if you have to leave, or even if you stay twenty minutes and want to fly back to Chicago. It's all right, and I won't think poorly of you for it."

Another brief silence.

"I just wanted you to know that."

Hilary gives a soft exhale as Ivan goes back to driving on the road, pulling into traffic again. She relaxes against her seat, calmed somehow. She couldn't explain how she feels right now if she tried, but then: she almost never can. She watches the road ahead of them. They're getting closer. There are cues in the landscape but it's something else. A sense of rising action, swollen potential. She can feel it.

Ivan tells her they don't have to stay. That they can leave anytime. Whatever she needs. And with that same resolve that he saw in Iceland, the kind that made him feel pride and love and possession, finds a minor echo in this moment. Hilary merely nods.

"I know," she says quietly. "I know you wouldn't."

Ivan only smiles a little at that. He says nothing more. There is only the sound of the tires on the road; the wind flowing over their dynamic little car. They've left their entourage far, far behind. For a little while they're alone in the world. They're anonymous. They could be anyone. They could even be one another's.

In the end the drive isn't so long. Perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes in all. A few turns, always to smaller and smaller roads, until the last: a private drive passing through a wall of hedges, emerging into perhaps half an acre of trimmed grass, graceful shade-trees. Flowers and flowering bushes. The house is, by Ivan's standards, rather humble: a Queen Anne's of moderate size, with steeply gabled roofs and bay windows, perhaps four or five bedrooms in all and at least a hundred years old - though recently renovated inside and out from the looks of it. The backyard runs down a shallow slope to the very banks of the river, which flows clear and blue this far upstream of Novgorod.

Ivan, like Hilary, has never been here. But this is his house nonetheless. He drives right to the end of the driveway, parking there. The air is cool but the sun warm when he gets out, circling around to open Hilary's door for her. Before she's even out of the car the front door is flung open. Miron, tall, floppy-haired and a little bit older and a little less gangly than he was on videochat six months ago, steps out to greet Anton's farflung father.

"Hello!" he cries. Then an exuberant burst of Russian. Then,

then he sees Hilary. And it says something about how pitifully incapable of deceit or deception he is, how truthfully necessary it was that Miron not know about Hilary at all if anything remotely resembling discretion could be maintained around Anton, that he doesn't even manage to pretend not to be shocked. The boy stops short: he stares.

"Hilary," Ivan says levelly, shutting the convertible's door as Hilary rises out of the car, "allow me to introduce Miron Pietrovich, Anton's trusted valet. Miron, this is Hilary de Broqueville.

"Anton's mother."

They -- these three servants and the rest of the household staff -- do know that Ivan is on his way. A room in the house has been made ready for the father who has never been here yet engineered its purchase and demands constant updates. The father who, in a year of his only child's life, has never once come to see him. Has never once asked to be put on the phone with the cooing, gurgling son who will be his legacy when the war takes him. There's little explanation; maybe they imagine Ivan is coming to celebrate the boy's upcoming first birthday. Maybe they will all find out soon whether or not the boy is Garou.

They do not know that Ivan is bringing with him not just his entourage, but ...a ghost.

Soon they come to the estate. Hilary sits up a little straighter, the edges of her body taut with apprehension. She looks out as though she will see visions of Anton in the shrubbery, as though he's some fey thing that can change his shape and his age and his wisdom at will. That's not the case.

The beauty of this place isn't lost on her, but she doesn't seem to notice it outright. She pins her eyes on the house as it appears, a home that at one time might have been a farmhouse. The convertible pulls to a slowing stop right in front of the house, the SUV at least five or more minutes behind them. The front door is opening as Hilary sits in her seat, waiting for Ivan to ...wait on her, essentially. Her eyes are sharp through the glass of her shades, the glass of the window, at the young man who rushes out. The realization that Ivan has brought a guest -- a female guest -- hits Miron only seconds before she swings her legs out of the car and rises, which is when

the familiarity of her face, even with sunglasses on, slaps him hard across the face.

He stares.

Hilary slides her sunglasses off and stares right back at him the same way she stares at Garou. Ivan introduces them to each other. Hilary makes no move toward the steps, toward the young man, or toward the door. She does not offer quips or explanations. Her very presence is cool, as though she really did just rise from her grave and her heart no longer beats, no longer keeps her warm.

"You will stay with me," she says, and her tone is one of granite demand, no less compelling than an Athro's at this moment. "Ivan will go explain things to Polina and Izolda. You, though, will take me to Anton and stay near in case --"

a shift, a hitch

"-- in case he cries."

With that, she starts up the path and the steps to the house. "Ivan, when you are finished with the girls, join us. Quietly. So you don't frighten him."

Though right now, truth be told, Ivan is hardly the more frightening of the two of them.

Miron is quite frankly gaping, his mind trying to put disparate pieces together. The story was so simple and believable before. Now it makes no sense, and there are entire stretches of information he's missing, holes that will have to be filled in later, slowly,

after Hilary has seen her son.

When the woman begins to move, Miron snaps out of it. He reacts almost out of reflex, performing the role that has been drilled into him almost from birth, just as about as soon as it was determined that he was not purebred enough to be mate material, not wealthy enough to be independent. He bows, surprisingly sharply and smartly, before flanking Hilary into the house.

Ivan's household is already fairly lenient. His relationship with his servants is a bit closer than, say, Hilary's or Grey's. Anton's household, given the infancy and dependency of its nominal master, is downright casual. No one is in uniform. Miron is in comfortable jeans and a light sweater. There is a paperback novel on the windowseat of the front-facing bay window, where Miron was doubtlessly camped awaiting Ivan's arrival. Someone's coat lays over the sofa, and one of the girls - Izolda, probably, given her wide eyes and, frankly, her generous bosom - scrambles to clean it up even as Hilary is sweeping through. Hilary's presence seems to alter the mood, though. Makes it colder, more formal; inspires Izolda, like Miron before her, to dip a curtsey out of sheer subservient instinct.

The stairs are, as in all houses of this particular architectural style, rather narrow and steep. They don't creak, however. The ceilings are high, the windows surprisingly plentiful given the climate of the region. There is one at the turn of the stairs, and someone has hung a prismatic star there, catching and refracting the light. Upstairs each of the servants has their own room. A fourth room serves as a small library, which will undoubtedly see more use as Anton grows up. Another flight of stairs leads to the attic space. At the rear of the house, facing east, facing morning, facing the river, Anton has his bedroom in the master suite.

Hilary can hear Ivan's voice downstairs, greeting and being greeted by Izolda. They lapse into Russian, the master's voice quiet, the maid's voice hushed. Questions, no doubt. Miron, wiser than to attempt conversation with Hilary, leads the way to Anton's room but stands aside as she enters. The walls are still cheerful yellow. Bay windows in here, too: large, but hung with heavy curtains that can be closed against a storm or nightfall. Anton's crib rests against the lefthand wall, beneath a smaller window - in view of the outside, but out of the direct sunlight. There's a small dresser beside it, and Hilary's picture, years old and haunting, is set on it.

The other girl is here as well, small and slim and a little severe with her straight bangs and her small, unsmiling mouth. She is reading quietly under the bay windows, sitting on the floor with her knees demurely together. She looks up as Hilary enters; one eyebrow twitches almost invisibly under the curtain of her bangs, and her eyes flick quickly to Miron and back. Then she gets fluidly to her feet and, like Izolda, curtseys.

Hilary may not notice any of that, though. She may only notice that there is a thick rug here, and on that rug is her son. He is almost a year old. He has golden hair and golden skin and black, black eyes, and he is busily, noisily, and rather heedlessly banging two plastic alphabet blocks together.

The valet's breeding is so dim that it barely registers him as kin to the Fangs at all. His looks are better; he's good-looking, he has the grace and fairness of a Silver Fang, but it's impure. It's faded. The records of the last Garou his family line produced are crumbling too fast for digitization. Yet: there is enough blood in him to be the servant and companion of a well-bred son of a well-bred Garou. There is enough purity in him to recognize something regal in Hilary when she exits the car. And that is even before she begins to speak to him. Instinct that the other tribes find warped snaps in; he obeys.

Hilary walks inside, and the house is cooler than the outdoors. She breathes in deeply as though to smell it, glancing around but only briefly. Izolda sees her and her eyes widen, her knees bend before she knows what she's doing, and Hilary merely looks at her for a long moment. She looks at the woman's breasts. She thinks of Anton suckling at them, not multiple times a day now but just once when he wakes up and once before he goes to sleep for the night. Hilary tears her eyes away and nods to Miron, following him. Her sunglasses go into her purse as they ascend.

She does not seem to notice the star, though it casts brilliant little rainbows everywhere. She slides her hand lightly along the banister as she walks. Her eyes ignore the doors that Miron does not lead them to. They pass a set of narrow stairs to the attic. They come to the master suite, which when this house was built would have only been another room, maybe a few feet larger than the others. Renovations. It is much more than that now.

Though she saw it through the webcam, the sight of the crib strikes some deep, unpleasant chord in Hilary. A cage. She thinks of broken necks. She thinks of falls. She thinks of him alone behind barred walls, staring through them, unable to move, to run, what if something comes after him. He's trapped. Her heart is seizing up and she is refusing to look at the center of the room, absolutely refusing, so she decides

that the walls are a more tolerable shade in the daylight than they were in the video,

and the windows are plentiful and the curtains are thick enough,

and they put her photo near enough that he can see from where he sleeps,

and the rug on the ground looks soft,

and Polina must put so much effort into being unimpressed by everything,

and Hilary says, firm and flat and very quietly: "Get out."

Polina hasn't even finished the curtsey before the order is spoken. Hilary is finally looking at the floor, and the rug, and the boy on it. He is chubby like all one year olds are chubby, but not so much that his eyes squint or his body is hard for him to move. He is sitting up with a straight back despite all his activity with his arms. He's dressed in a pair of long, soft pants and a simple t-shirt, and this is because Izolda insists that his knees be protected as he crawls and that his feet be bare as he starts pulling himself up to stand and walk. Miron and Polina have learned most of what they know of childrearing from books and experience; Izolda has two children of her own and comes from an enormous family. They argue sometimes about what to do with him. What way is best. Polina loves beating Izolda's anecdotes with research. Izolda loves that when Anton is wailing because he's fallen, he would rather be comforted by her than Polina.

Get out, Hilary says quietly, and Anton goes on ignoring them, banging his blocks together, his hair combed but drool on his chin, yelling occasionally just to hear his own voice. Vowel sounds. Hilary's eyes widen a bit, then narrow, as she stares at him, as Polina exits.

That, Anton notices. He looks at Polina when she gets up, and looks at the door when she goes that way, and sees Miron, and someone else who gets his attention only briefly. Instantly, with one caretaker leaving and the other bringing a stranger in, Anton drops his blocks and swings onto his hands and knees with such quickness it's obvious that crawling is No Big Thing to him now, it is his fastest and surest way of getting around. He crawls rapidly over to Miron, making noises that can only be called 'worrisome', because all of this

is very strange. Not crying yet. Not screwing up his face and wailing. But uneasy. Needing something familiar. Hilary, as though by instinct, steps away from Miron to make Anton's path more clear. She stares at him. Just stares. He wants to be picked up. He wants to observe this New Thing from a place of safety. He needs to know Miron is not about to leave, too, with this Strange New Thing here.

Hilary steps away, and away, and finds the rocking chair in the corner. She licks her lips and sits down in it. She's barely blinked since she entered the room.

"Just... play with him," Hilary says quietly. "I'll just watch." A beat, and because she does not understand children: "Tell him it's okay."

With the same thoughtless instinct he'd bowed to Hilary with, Miron picks Anton up as the boy seeks him for protection and reassurance. The infant goes into his arms, and his back straightens, and now that Anton can look at the Strange New Thing from a safer perspective he stares. One small fist is in his mouth. He slobbers.

And Miron hesitates. The truth is he's rather fond of Anton, and of all of them is perhaps the most playful, joyful, exuberant one. Sometimes he swoops Anton around like a miniature airplane. Sometimes he tosses him into the air and catches him again, making the boy squeal with glee. Sometimes he builds things with Anton just to smash them up, because Loud Noises can be so startling and so fun, making the baby boy's eyes go round with shock before he erupts into giggles.

Miron doesn't know what to do now, though. He doesn't know how to play on command, with Hilary watching him like some ... some regal phantom still chill from the grave. He swallows. He is, in truth, only a few years younger than Ivan, and fewer years still younger than Ivan was when Hilary met him at the Orrington and told him,

I'll just watch.

But Miron is cut from a wholly different cloth. He is innocent, in his way. He has a good heart. Sometimes he looks at Anton and thinks of him a little like family, like his own brother. Sometimes he forgets this is his job, his livelihood, and begins to think of this as his life. His own strange little family, he and Izolda and Anton and even taciturn, occasionally sour Polina.

This is a stark reminder that this is not his family. This is Ivan's family. And, he supposes, this woman's. This woman, who is so much older and colder and madder than the image he had of Anton's lovely, tragic mother. This woman, who burns with a sort of dark, damning fascination that she doesn't even seem to be aware of. For a moment, Miron thinks maybe he understands. He understands why the deception, why the story they were all fed; why Anton's parents don't live with him; why Anton even came to be in the first place. Ivan always did like the edged, dangerous things that shattered into lots of beautiful pieces.

Eventually Miron says, softly, a little hesitantly: "He doesn't really understand words yet. But I think ... he feels okay right now. He's just curious and a little unsure of what's going on. He's not used to strangers coming into his room." He catches himself; winces. "I just meant, it'll take him a moment to remember. That you're his -- his mother."

Hilary gives Miron a flat, dry look that -- for a moment -- lends her at least a mockery of humanity. Her eyebrow is cocked. "He won't remember," she says, level, then remembers the lie. The perfect, sweet lie that Miron must know already can't be true. This woman is not the young ballerina in the photograph, though she is. She would not dote on a child, nurse him, stroke his hair, coo to him the way Izolda does. And he might realize that was the image he had: something that looked like Giselle risen from the grave but behaved like Izolda.

Not this woman.

She exhales. "Ivan brought him to Novgorod before he was a full day old," she says quietly. "He never knew me."

Her eyes go back from Miron to the baby boy, who gnaws on his fist and observes the dark-haired woman with wariness and curiosity. Not fear. Miron seems tense but calm enough. The room hasn't changed. Miron isn't leaving, and he isn't fighting with the woman. So he observes. He lays his head down, gets bored with that a few seconds later and lifts it, seems quite content to be held and to stare for now. Hilary looks back at him, her own eyes reflected back to her.

"Just play with him," Hilary says, more quietly. "Maybe then he will know it's okay for me to be here." She watches Anton, then her eyes go sharply to Anton and her voice is edged for a moment -- not knifelike, but firm, royal again: "Don't make him do anything he doesn't want to. None of that. You are not to bring him to me or... or try to get him to look at me, or... any of that. Anything like that. He will come to me on his own or not at all. Is that understood?"

Why? - the question is on Miron's lips. Literally: Hilary can see his mouth opening to ask. Why was Anton brought to Novgorod? Why, when he was so young? Why was he never allowed to know his mother, when that mother is obviously alive and well - perhaps not the young, warm, doting mother Miron imagined, but still,

still, a mother who cares enough to come visit again. To return from the grave for her son.

Miron knows sometimes his heart is too soft. He knows sometimes he paints a rosier picture than could possibly exist. He is not a fool; he knows when something like this happens most often the baby is unwanted, or dangerous to the parents somehow; he knows already that Ivan was not wed or mated when this son was born to him.

He knows, also: that it's not his place to ask. So in the end the question dies on his lips. He looks down at Anton, who is looking at Hilary with intent, wary curiosity. His eyes flick back to Hilary, and then quickly and deferentially down, as she issues commands.

"Yes ma'am," he says. And with that - awkwardly at first - Miron sets Anton down and folds his long legs indian-style. There are toys scattered around the room. Occasionally Polina comes by and cleans them all up, puts them all in their proper places, but by the next day they're everywhere again. Miron picks up a toy car - large, very colorful, with no small parts, wrought out of lightweight plastic that won't hurt an infant if it fell or hit him - and pushes it around. Gently, with the ease of long association, he turns the boy's attention away from the stranger and back to his familiar little world of Bright Things That Are Good To Play With.

Ivan, lean and silent as a feline, has come to join them as well. He stands in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest, saying nothing, doing nothing. He watches Hilary a moment. Then he watches their son.

They all are a little in love with Anton. And how could they not be? Even kin can scent the hints of breeding, though they don't understand it or recognize it for what it is. He is a beautiful child, his smile sweet and his eyes inquisitive. He is loud and engaging and already developing quite a bit of independence. He is, literally, the center of their lives -- and what a golden, lovely center he is.

He was born under a waning crescent moon, so thin as to be nearly new. That darkness, though, is only one of many shadows that will follow him. When he speaks to spirits there will be a molten charisma that will trap them like flies in honey; they will flutter for his attention, and yet: there will be a hard-edged coercion to it. He has his father in him. He has his mother, too. And though he looks golden, though he will turn his face to the Lodge of the Sun, and though his charm and agility will captivate Garou and kin and mortals and spirits alike,

he will never be far from his shadow. And it will always be cold.

Still: Miron is fond of Anton. So is Izolda. So is Polina, in her stiff way. Why would anyone give up this boy, never come to see him, rip him from his mother's arms when he'd barely had time to exist within them? How could anyone bear it, much less his mother?

He doesn't ask. He lowers himself down and begins to play with Anton, who sets off crawling after the car as soon as Miron sets it rolling. He lifts one hand from the floor and puts it on top of the car, moving it back and forth, his arm at an awkward angle and his head tipped funnily. Back and forth. It slips from his grasp and rolls away and he crawls after it again, palms smacking the ground as he scoots his knees quickly along.

The air in the room shifts, changes, the colors growing a little brighter and the temperature a bit hotter. Hilary looks to her left at the doorway, seeing Ivan. Their eyes meet. Their eyes part and return to the little boy, who has noticed Ivan instantly. He rocks on his hands and knees for a moment, bouncing his diapered butt against his heels, then yells.

"BA!"

It means nothing. He starts crawling around the room, forgetting the car, and just starts getting his little fabric baskets off their low shelves, dumping out the toys and things inside. He doesn't really play with them, he just tosses them around, making an enormous mess, yelling BA BA BA over and over, sometimes quick: babababababa and sometimes baaaa and then ba-BA-ba-ba. He makes other noises, too. Mostly they sound alike. He talks to himself. Or them. Or Miron.

He stops and looks at Ivan and Hilary, looking between them, because that one is still there and this one is new. He checks to make sure Miron is still there, then goes back to playing. And by 'playing' we mean here: 'tossing toys around'. He finds one that is soft and good for gnawing, a plush cube with a velcro flap and a couple of holes just big enough to stick a ball or such in. He doesn't play properly with it, just stuffs it in his mouth and gnaws on it.

Hilary laughs. Anton doesn't even seem bothered or startled, he just grins, his nose wrinkled and his eyes squinted nearly shut, his grin and his chortle sounding very stupid, another laugh sounding like a shriek. Hilary's laugh was brief, and sedate, and nearly nonexistent if one compares it to Anton's. He goes back to gnawing on the plush toy til Miron finds -- and offers to Anton -- something that actually is made for chewing. It's soft plastic, filled with some sort of liquid so it can be frozen, but right now it's just a good place to put Anton's growing teeth, scratch that abominable itch for him.

Her smile, faded from the little laugh, is aching as she watches him. She wants -- many things, right now-- but she does not indulge any of them. She sits. She watches. She exists there while Anton entertains himself, no more than a presence. This seems to satisfy her. For now, this is enough.

She wants so badly to hold him. More, though, she wants to hold him and not feel him crying, squirming away from her touch. So she will wait.

For such a little thing, Anton certainly makes an enormous mess when he puts his mind to it. Miron, who usually ends up having to clean up because Polina thinks they shouldn't indulge him by allowing him to make the mess in the first place and Izolda just thinks it's charming, maybe they could just leave it that way -- Miron looks exasperated, calls after the boy in Russian, gets nothing but gibberish and more toys on the ground for it.

By the door, Ivan's eyes meet Hilary's. He doesn't really ... feel like a father, or how he imagines fathers are meant to feel. He does recognize the boy, though, on a level deeper than the cognitive. He stands here in the doorway, looks at the almost-toddler that he hasn't laid eyes on since he was a newborn, and he feels -- profoundly -- that this boy is his. Anton is his, his boy, his cub, his progeny and Hilary's. He can smell it.

And Ivan smiles a little, crookedly, watching the mess. Miron has given up trying to make him stop; he's just resignedly picking up. Ivan -- who is perhaps the most intimately familiar with this sentiment of all the people in the room -- says, "Perhaps it's time to get him new toys. Is there a toy shop in town?"

And Miron tells him there is, and where, and seems to light up at the prospect. Ivan suspects Miron still enjoys shopping for toys. He moves into the room, and when he passes Anton the boy looks up at him with wide eyes, some toy or other in his mouth. Like a cub, Ivan thinks, but doesn't stop, nor bend. He goes to Hilary instead. He sits on the ground beside her, crosslegged like Miron had been. And Hilary

laughs.

Ivan looks at her, surprised. He thinks of her, vividly and suddenly, flirting about her kitchen the night they dined with Dion. He thinks of her murmuring in French, cupping her breasts and spanking her ass, playful; his mouth tilts, he smiles. Miron just looks a little shocked. Anton shrieks with glee and goes back to doing whatever it is he's doing, and...

Ivan watches. They both watch. After a while Anton crawls over. Ivan gives him a finger to grasp. Anton is interested for a while, and then disinterested, and as he crawls off to find another toy - or perhaps Miron - Ivan gets up and murmurs to Hilary that he's going to go oversee the rearrangements that will convert the attic space into a fifth bedroom. For them.

He leaves Hilary there, though. Watching her son, wanting to hold him; not daring to, yet.

Gibberish. It isn't as though Anton doesn't entirely understand that he is being spoken to -- his name is in there somewhere and he does look at Miron -- it's simply that Miron is mistaken about the conversation they're having. There's a sense that only one person in the room has any idea what's really going on, and that is Anton, and the rest of them just haven't caught up yet. This is at least partly true.

With a longsuffering patience, Miron begins to gather up toys and put them in their little bins again. Seeing that this is a new game, Anton crawls over and promptly dumps them back out, actully throwing the little fabric drawer aside afterward and clapping his hands enthusiastically together. He is very impressed with himself.

Ivan mentions getting him new toys. Miron lights up; Hilary doesn't seem to get where Ivan got that idea. She looks from them to her son, back again, then Anton. Anton is chewing on everything. He crawls toward Ivan, who sits near Hilary, and he can hear her hold her breath behind him. She almost recoils, deeply wary of something happening, though what is hard to tell. Yet all that happens is that Ivan gives him a finger, and Anton bats at it once or twice before grabbing it soundly, since he's still on all fours. He seems disappointed that nothing interesting happens as a result of him grabbing the finger, other than Ivan moving it around a little, so he laughs, lets go, and wiggles off again.

Ivan gets up to leave, too. Hilary follows him with her eyes, quiet. She touches his hand as he murmurs in her ear, and nods. He leaves, and she...

stays in that corner. In that rocking chair. Just watching. Only once does Anton approach her, rather out of nowhere, trying to hold something up to her. Nervous, Hilary takes the toy. She doesn't know what to do with it. Anton looks at her for awhile, expectant, so: she offers it back to him. He takes it eagerly, sitting up on his knees in a wobbly-ish fashion, bouncing his butt on his heels again when he has it. A second or two later, he hands it back to Hilary. Again, she takes it. They repeat the exchange. She looks at Miron, bewildered, who just smiles to her and gives a shrug: babies.

Hilary returns her gaze to Anton, head tilted, doing this a few more times with him til he stops being entertained by the giving-things-away-and-then-being-given-them-back game.

Quite a lot of time passes before Ivan hears Hilary's footsteps coming to find him. She is avoiding Polina and Izolda. Everyone, in fact. There is not enough room in this house for Izolda, Miron, Polina, Anton, the two of them, and every last one of their servants, and she wants to tell him that an addition should be built to the house. Maybe she means this afternoon, so that everyone will be ready tomorrow. Hilary is not foolish enough to think this is necessarily possible, but she also thinks Ivan can do anything, particularly with enough money.

When she finds him, though, all she says is: "I would like to get him a little bed,"

and this is whispered, as she comes behind him and slips her arms around his waist, lays her cheek to his back. This is hesitant, wary, afraid she'll be denied. "Not high up, so he won't fall, but... I don't like him being caged when he sleeps."

Quite a lot of time passes, and in that time Ivan goes up to the attic space, inspects the furniture that was moved in, inspects his living quarters, inspects the rest of the house as well. He talks to the servants - the two girls he's never actually met before, and has spoken to only on very rare occasion. They know the truth now. He told them while Hilary was upstairs watching her son: he told them everything except who Hilary was married to when she delivered their boy, and who she'll be married to again in a matter of months. He told them she was married, though, and that she will be married again. He tells them,

though he doesn't have to,

that they were all bound in this truth now, and that secrecy was imperative. All their lives could hang in the balance.

Curiously, it's Izolda who's more matter of fact about it, and a little pitying, too, of the boy and his father and his mother. These things happen, she thinks. They are Silver Fangs, nobility across the ages. Of course These Things Happen.

And it's Polina who seems a little taken by it; by the postmodern, bitter, stark romance of the tale. The sad little cross-angles of their lives, which can never quite intersect. It appeals to her sardonic nature. She's always suspected life was full of hard edges and hard choices, and no one ever gets what they really want. She likes being proven right.

In the end, though, what the servants think matter very little. Their lives are bound to Anton's now, and if nothing else, Ivan trusts Dmitri's insight; he trusts the people Dmitri chooses to trust. By the time Hilary comes to him, he's no longer conversing with the servants - not even to acquaint himself, to work his charisma, to bind them into his service as much by personality as contract.

He's upstairs again, in the tall, sloping spaces of the attic, which has been renovated as much as the house below. It's surprisingly spacious, running almost the entire footprint of the house, and a surprisingly modernized contrast to the victorian-era architecture below. Freshly installed outer walls diminish the sense of the roof sloping claustrophobically down to the floor, while loft-style walls - open at the tops - divide the space into a bathroom and a bedchamber. The floors are hardwood here, as they are downstairs, accented with thick rugs. Windows and skylights spill light in. There is a bed here, high and comfortable, and a small sitting area with two sleek armchairs.

Ivan is at the window, looking out over the river. Hilary comes up behind him. Her arms circle his waist. He puts his hand over hers as she lays her head against him. It amazes him sometimes, pains him a little, how much she loves the child she never even wanted. Hated, even, while he was in her womb. Would probably hate even now if he screamed, if he fussed, if he was needy and clingy the way all infants are. Sometimes it makes Ivan feel a little inadequate in his affection. He likes the boy. He thinks he's quite a beautiful baby, and intelligent, and generally pleasant-natured. He doesn't think of the things Hilary does, though. He doesn't worry, and ache, and dwell the way she does. Sometimes he wonders if it's just another symptom of his intractable disease: that madness that infects his pure, pure blood.

"Polina mentioned," he says, "that some child development specialists are recommending just placing a little mattress on the ground. No bed, no frame, no bars. We could try that, if you'd like."

She nods against his back. No words. Polina says it, and Polina is very bossy, and Ivan repeats it, and Ivan is Ivan, so Hilary will trust it. She does not want Ivan to be caged; the rest is not her concern. Teaching him to sleep differently, training him to stay in bed when it's time: these are things the servants will do. That is their problem.

How Ivan feels about Anton never quite registers with Hilary. He shows as much concern for the boy as her own fears and worries seem to demand. She wants something for him; Ivan makes it happen, and in this way she seems content to believe that they are matched. Or perhaps what Ivan feels for him does not matter. She takes for granted that if anything happens to her --

if she is mated away, for example,

-- Ivan will see to it that Ivan is raised in the way she wants. Of course he will. Ivan adores her, is obsessed with her, will give her anything she wants. If she tells him that his new young bride is never to lay a finger on her son, she has faith that she could die tomorrow and Ivan would not let it happen. Ever.

She gives him so much power, in her thoughts. He is a god. He is her god. He can do anything she prays for. And she never imagines if he loves his son or not; she never feels it necessary to explain to Ivan why she cares so much for the child she hated, loathed, wanted gone. She has never told him how she screamed, how she lost her mind, how she wailed in grief, when she woke to find Anton lost from her arms. As omniscient, as omnipotent, as Ivan is, she does not have faith that he could understand it. He would not know what to do.

There is nothing to do.

Miron still needs to be filled in on what the hell is going on. Maybe it will matter less, now that he has seen Hilary with Anton. Maybe it will matter more the first time Anton starts crying and won't stop and all of them see the violence and the hatred in her eyes. Then again: even Hilary does not know, now, how she will feel when he is not so golden, not so perfect, as he was today. Maybe indulgent. Maybe tortured.

She breathes in deeply and exhales, stroking her hands loosely over his abdomen. "He didn't cry. He let me play with him a little."

This requires no answer. She kisses him through his shirt, to his shoulderblades. She steps away, and looks around the room with a critical eye, thoughtful. Looks at him again. "We can stay through his birthday? We'll get him toys. Anything he wants."

As though he 'wants' anything now, as though he has a wish list, as though he is several years older than he is. But still: it is sweet, and frightening, and aching, all her caring. Her insistence on fulfilling that lie they told everyone:

his mother adored him. doted on him... before she was taken away.

Hilary can't see it when Ivan smiles. She might hear it, though. "Did he?" he says. Her hands move over his abdomen - the toned flesh there, sleek and sheathed beneath the skin. Nothing about Ivan is overt; not even the cut of his muscles. "I didn't think he would cry, for what it may be worth."

His eyes close when she kisses him. He shivers a little, just a tightening in the skin, his nipples hardening from sheer reflex. His fingers stroke between her knuckles, then interdigitate with hers. He opens his eyes again.

"We'll stay through his birthday. Maybe a day or so after. We can go into town tomorrow. We can even have Miron along with Anton. Look at toys, and a little bed for him."

A small pause. "I should have put a little kitchen up here," he adds, quietly. "In case you visit and just want to have a little time to yourself."

If Ivan is Hilary's god, what is the word for what she is to him? His body lights up, alert, when she strokes his skin through his shirt or gives him that soft, tender kiss. He follows her with his eyes, follows her scent, destroys his reputation in and out of the Garou Nation for sheer obvious want of her. Look at this house. Look at what he's done for her. Look at how he reacts when she so much as brushes her lips over him. Is there a word for that?

The way he touches her hand is soothing. Hypnotic. She lets him move his fingers between her knuckles, and she doesn't leave his body after all. She stays where she is, looking at the room from that vantage point instead. Her eyes are drowsy.

"Yes," she murmurs. "Miron should come. Give the two girls an afternoon off while we take him out."

Ivan mentions a kitchen. She huffs a laugh against him. "When would I visit?" she asks in a whisper. "When could I?"

Ivan winces. She can't see that either. She can feel the way his hand tightens on hers for a moment, though. The twist of his neck, felt in his upper back.

"Don't say that," he whispers back. "Who knows what could happen, what lies we could feed Grey. And even if you can't visit here, perhaps somewhere else. I could move to England. I could bring Anton with me. I could build a house there just like this, with a kitchen in the attic...

"Don't talk like this is the last time you'll see him. Or me."

"I'm not," she whispers, recoiling a little -- but not enough to let go of him, not enough to remove her arms. She just tucks into herself a little, chastised. "I'm not, vladelets."

She holds him tighter, though, as that word leaves her mouth. "I'm just afraid of what they will do to you if they find out how we've lied," and this is the thing she -- the less practical, perhaps, the less sane -- always worries about. She wouldn't go out and fuck him on his yacht the first time they set up a little tryst because it would be unseemly for the people at the club to see her boarding with him, unchaperoned. She always thinks of these things.

"His eldest is a Philodox," she reminds Ivan quietly. "And I think he already dislikes me."

There's a longer beat there. "He looks like me, too." Not John, not Grey's oldest Garou child. They both know who she is talking about there.

She recoils. He presses back against her a little, sealing that distance again. Pulls her arms a little tighter around him. Holds her in this strange, achingly reversed fashion, and never says a word about it. He doesn't need to; the communication is nonverbal.

It's okay.
I'm sorry.
Come back.

"John Grey doesn't matter." Ivan is coaching Hilary on how to lie to a Philodox. Of course he would; he's a Ragabash. "Don't ever answer him directly if he asks you about me, or Anton. If he presses, be affronted and turn to the father. Edmund Grey and what he thinks, what he believes, is the only thing that matters. If he doesn't suspect you - and he won't, not without proof - none of the others can do a damned thing."

A longer beat. And a harder topic: proof. Ivan strokes his lover's hand for a moment, thinking.

"He does," he admits then, soft. "He has your eyes. But then, we're all Silver Fangs. I could probably pass for Edmund's son, if I had to. So when we visit you," when and not if, "we'll cut his hair like mine, keep him close to me, make it so that no one not looking for a resemblance will see one.

"We're hardly the only Fangs in history to run int these difficulties. It's been done before. It can be done again."

Ivan makes a good point: this sort of thing happens. One sighs, and lies, and it's a great scandal that you keep from everyone, but everyone within the tribe knows. There are affairs. There are mistakes. There are bastards everywhere. This is a tribe that, in these wasted latter days, freely removes mates from their Garou and moves them along as soon as they have produced an heir. The children are left behind, owned and raised by the Garou's family. The kin -- the pure bred ones, at least -- move from mate to mate, children essentially abandoned except for the pretense of letters and connection and meaningful realtionsihp. They fuck and they breed as much as the tribe can get from them. It is barbaric. It is done with class and self-righteousness, as is everything among the Fangs. The servant class, too ill-bred to be useful like this, is lucky.

And they have so many common roots that what Ivan adds is also true: he could pass for Grey's son if he had to. Hilary could pass for Margaret's sister. So he coaches her. John Grey doesn't matter. Never answer him directly. Be offended if he pushes. Cry. Tell Edmund about his horrible, rude, impudent, mean son and how disrespectful he's being to this beautiful, haunted, haunting woman that he's taken as his fifth -- perhaps final -- mate. His prize near the end of a long, fruitful life of service. His reward. His gift to himself. Hilary imagines it. She could play the long game. Distant and a bit wistful, sad for days. Make Grey ask. Make him wonder. Make him grow more and more agitated while he tries to figure out what is wrong, why she's so unhappy,

then tell him what it is that he has to fix. Unleash him on her son. Not because she's angry, no. Hurt. Frightened, maybe, of John. Lonely, in a household that owes her nothing. Insecure. Oh, he would lap it up. He would love to be her guardian. All his other mates... they didn't really need him. They had amicable partnerships, but this is supposed to feed the part of his soul that he's been denying all this time. This one is supposed to love him, need him, be precious to him.

Hilary exhales slowly. He would never suspect her. If she dotes on Anton when Ivan visits and brings his son, if she seems overly fond of him, if she's attached, well

the woman lost the only child she ever bore. Lost it the very day it was born. It was a son, too. Of course she might have a strange attachement to her good friend's child when hecomes around. She realizes something then, though:

"It won't be safe for him to know that I'm his mother," she whispers. "Will it?"

The breath he takes heaves the walls of his chest gently against her arms, her hands, her cheek where it rests against him. He wants to lie to her, but he doesn't.

"No. It won't."

Ivan puts both his hands on Hilary's then. Holds her hands clasped beneath his, protected, but also gripped - held - caught. Their affection, their caring, is always laced with such undertones of dominance and submission. He wishes he could have had a collar made for her before she was lost to him. Something solid, something a little jarringly brutal against her fine throat. Something that was bolder in its statement of claim; something that didn't reflect how aware he already was of the flickering, fading claim he had on her.

Something she would have liked. Something that would have reminded them both of who she belonged to, even when she belonged to someone else.

"But then," he goes on quietly, "it's not safe for you to know me either. It's not safe for you to fly overseas with me to visit our son. It's not safe for you to fuck me. It's not safe for you to have a sable coat in your closet, and a red diamond on your hand.

"It doesn't matter. He should know you're his mother. If you're going to be in his life, he should know who you are. We'll just have to teach him to lie. It's not as though he won't have to learn sooner or later."

The truth doesn't shatter her. Not this time. A year ago -- almost -- he so much as mentioned this baby to her and she screamed. She lost it. She thrashed on the ground til he made her be still. Somehow, in the past eleven months and change, it's become clear why: she wasn't angry at him for bringing it up because she wanted to forget it ever happened. She was grieving, and could not cope with the weight of it. She was grieving because she loved the stupid brat. Love makes her feel grief. And so love destroys her.

Now, though, she doesn't flinch away or break down when Ivan admits that no, it isn't safe for Anton to know that Hilary is his mother. They can't tell him that truth. He'll grow up in this household, rarely if ever seeing his father, who

has a mate that is not Anton's mother, who

will never tell him who his mother is, only that she was beautiful or a dancer or things like that, who

may have children with this mate, children who are validated by marriage, children who are connected by blood to a vast family of Garou and kin under the gaze of an honored patriarch, children who aren't

Ivan's bastard.

Of course, when Ivan does bring him to visit this vast family, because Anton is still his son and Anton deserves his claim, there will be this dark-eyed woman with no children of her own, no blood relation to that enormous clan, just as displaced as Anton himself is. Eyes just as haunted and malevolent and vulnerable as Anton's own. There will be this beautiful woman who is always curious about him, has been fond of him ever since he can remember, who frightens him a bit because he cannot understand her and yet wants to for reasons he can't fathom. Maybe, bastard that he is and disconnected as he is, there will be a friend for him among his father's wife's family.

Hilary buries her face against Ivan, unable to think that far ahead, thinking only of the sorrow of now. She is held by him in return, her hands clenched as though to keep her from running, and the dominance of it

comforts her. She holds him more tightly, like lashing herself to a mast in a storm.

And he goes on. Tells her that it isn't even safe for them to remain in each other's lives. He shouldn't marry Grey's very eligible daughter just so he can keep seeing Hilary, keep visiting Hilary, keep fucking Hilary every time he gets the chance. She shouldn't keep the sable, shouldn't wear that glorious diamond that makes her wet whenever she looks too long at it because it reminds her of him, reminds her of his claim on her, reminds her of the way he holds her down, ties her up when he wants to fuck her all night. They shouldn't be here. Anton shouldn't even exist, but she doesn't say that.

Ivan says: he'll know.

It may warp him forever, keeping that secret. But so would loving this woman who is not his mother, feeling cast off by his father, never being allowed to even see a photograph of his mother, while everyone in his life -- even those he trusts the most -- lie to him every day. Like a true Ragabash, Ivan says: bring him into the lie. It will be theirs. Hers, his, Anton's. Her servants, his servants, Anton's servants. Their own clan, broken apart and held together by their shared deceptions.

Something in that feels right to her. Feels safe to her. Somehow. She kisses him through his shirt again. She slides her arms away, but only because she is reaching to her chest now, unbuttoning her blouse, wordless.

There's no clean, neat, painless resolution possible here. The moment Ivan decided to claim the boy, the moment Hilary decided to give him up, the moment they tangled in each other's arms and peeled the clothes off each other's bodies, tumbled into bed, fucked like animals - the moment they did all this while she was off the pill, fertile, married, not his and not likely to be his -- that was the moment a neat, clean, painless resolution spun out of reach.

All they have now are secrets; the strange, invisible bonds between their fragmentary little family. They have servants that know. They know. And now their son, growing up here in what one might consider their shared home even though neither of them have ever been here before, will know.

Hilary draws some oblique comfort from that. And Ivan, sensing that she is settled somehow, grows settled himself. He's the one that arranged all this, set it all up, kept their son safe. He's the one that did this, but she, who barely knows how to love at all, is still the one who loves the boy more. Almost everything Ivan does has Hilary first; Anton second.

He is like a god to her. But she is like a focus to him, a fulcrum, the point on which his universe turns. She touches him and he is aroused. She weeps and he breaks in half. She wants or she needs,

and he gives, and gives, and gives.

Hilary draws away. He turns. He sees why she drew away, and his face changes. He looks at her; their eyes meet. This, at least for the next week or so, is their den. It is, for a brief and transient point in time, as close to the family-pack even Ivan instinctually longs for as it'll ever be. He feels his own presence here, the safety of being on one's own territory. He feels the presence of his son, and the kin that serve him,

and the woman who must be his mate, because he can think of no other name for her. Strange, that they live in such times now, such a tribe: where true mateships are irrelevant, and amicable partnerships and trophies play their part instead. He could grow so angry. He tries not to; he cannot change it, and Ivan has never been one to dash himself bloody against a stone wall.

He puts his hands on Hilary's waist instead. She was a dancer once. She still dances now. Her body is so graceful and light; he can imagine her soaring in the hands of her partner, so lovely, so cool, so perfect and yet so warmthless. Only she's not warmthless, with him. He lifts her and she wraps her legs around him. He watches her undo her blouse, and when it slides off her shoulders, when she bends her arms behind her back to let it fall to the floor and then to undo her bra,

he puts his mouth on her breasts; he pours such molten attention over her that this is when the first dim sound murmurs from her.

There is a bed up there. Like the one in their cabin, it stands alone, central, the visual and literal focus of the entire suite. He lays her down. He lays her out, strips her naked, and the skylights overhead wash the sheets in a diffuse daylight that he shadows when he moves over her. She puts her hands on his sides and, later, her nails in his back as he moves in her, fucks her, gathers strength and ardor like a hurricane. When her cries can no longer be masked

he turns her over, he gives her the pillow to bite on, the sheets to grasp in her hands, and he fucks her harder than he had on the plane, harder than he has for the weeks or months when they've really barely seen each other at all, until

at the end she's not biting her moans into the pillow at all but into his mouth, because he's turned her face to the side, he's ravaging her mouth, his arms are wrapped around her body and his hand is clutching her side, covering her breast; he's pounding his orgasm into her the way he does as though this, and this alone, would mark her indubitably as his.

Later on, Izolda makes dinner for them all. Anton eats a bit of solid food now, nursing only twice a day, morning and night. There's the sense that if Ivan and Hilary weren't here, they would all eat at the table together. It's not large, and it's not ornate; it would not be unseemly for the help to dine there. There is no separate table in the kitchen, either. But now that Ivan and Hilary are here, it is undoubtedly inappropriate for servants to eat at the same table as their masters -- and yet by the same token, it's fairly obvious neither Anton's mother nor his father have any idea what to do with an infant at dinnertime.

In the end the matter is settled simply enough. The servants eat at the foot of table. Miron sits closest to Anton and spends an absolute eternity trying to get Anton to eat the soft, easily digestible, bland foods Izolda makes special for him. Anton doesn't cooperate. More ends up on the floor than in his mouth. A few peas end up on Hilary. Ivan watches, bemused and amused both. At some point Polina loses her patience, gets up, switches places with Miron. Anton, seeing her coming, suddenly becomes rather biddable, and manages to finish his dinner. There's a sense this is a nightly ritual of sorts.

Afterward, Izolda starts to take Anton upstairs. This too is ritual, but she stops before she leaves the room, turning to Anton's rightful parents. Her English is not as fluent as Miron's. She asks, hesitantly, if they would like to watch her put Anton to bed. Whatever Hilary decides, Ivan stays where he is. He has things to discuss with Miron, after all.

That Hilary loves anything at all is bewildering. Half the time she scarcely seems like she loves Ivan, though she says she does. It is a love, an adoration, a worship, that she no longer questions. She is odd in her thoughts, though, too: she thinks that once spoken, once sealed, she never needs to say it or show it again. He simply has to know. The rest will come naturally or not at all, maybe. It's hard to know what she's thinking, how she believes people work.

She does love Ivan, though. She loves him helplessly, like it's beyond her own choice now. He is the only one who understands her even a little. He is the only one who does not try and make her anything else. He is the only one who seems to love her brokenness as much as he loves anything else about her. Perhaps a better word for what she feels for Ivan is not love but need. She did not know what it was like to not be truly alone until she was with him.

What is inside of her for Anton is... something else. Wild and unthinking, not need and not responsibility but something else. It is primal. It is not simply something that she's incapable of rationalizing, it's something that blocks her ability to rationalize anything at all. It frightens her. It upsets her. And she is as hopeless, helpless here as elsewhere: even if she wanted to hate him, she couldn't. Even if she wanted to never see him again, she has proven to herself this year that she would not stay away.

Ivan is her god, and her mate, and her beloved.

Anton is her child.

They fuck. Or make love. They do whatever it is they do. Rougher now. No servants ascend those stairs, never would unless summoned or in the case of an emergency. It's in their blood now, to serve. They stay away on instinct because it is the master's den, the Garou's den, and not their place. They turn blind eyes because that is what they are bred to do.

He holds her by the hair at times, fucking her soundly, firmly into the mattress. He all but snarls in her ear, holding her tit in his hand, crushing her with a bite to her shoulder, and it makes her come. It makes her dissolve, shaking, that tight wet pussy of hers clenching hard on his cock, when he starts fucking her harder through her orgasm, using it to only tear her apart a little more, a little more, a little more, til there's nothing left. He devastates her and she is grateful to him, so grateful.

They sleep a little, in the afternoon. They don't know it, but Anton sleeps as well. He sucks his thumb the way he always does, still does, his fingers splayed across his face. He sleeps with a toy now, just one, a soft-bodied thing with a plastic face that Ivan finds more than a bit creepy, but it lights up with a soft glow when the toy is hugged. Anton has to press down on it with all his weight when he wants it to light up, and he wears the batteries regularly because he plays with it. It is not a source of comfort in fear so much as a favored toy, because it was the first and so far only thing he was allowed to take to his bed with him. So it's in his crib with him now, and he sleeps the heavy sleep of someone who is exhausted merely by crawling around for a few hours.

Above him, for the second time in his life, his mother and father sleep nearby, naked and close to each other.

When Ivan wakes up, Hilary is gone. Perhaps he stirred when she left him, went to bathe, dressed herself, and went downstairs. Perhaps he didn't. When he finds her again, she is not in the nursery but in the library. Polina is holding a still-sleepy, still thumb-sucking Anton and reading aloud to him. Her voice is firm and clear but surprisingly soft, as the boy is still waking up. They read book after book, and the active little boy from earlier seems quiet and content to simply wake slowly like this, be read to forever. Hilary sits to the side, listening. She doesn't understand Polina's Russian at all. She doesn't really recognize the stack of children's books, but she can guess what they are about.

This one is colors. This one is shapes. Numbers. The alphabet. Polina reads to him in English, too. Polina's English is not as good as Miron's, but it is a far sight better than Izolda's and it is worlds beyond Hilary's Russian. Anton looks over occasionally at Hilary, noticing her like he noticed her before, but again: sleepy. Content. He's with one of his guardians, and though he notices the change in his routine, he is not upset by it.

There is less play, later. Anton is taken downstairs and Izolda gives him a snack, which consists of some pureed vegetables and fruit followed by some teething biscuits that he gnaws into mush. Hilary stays there at the table, too, then. She doesn't eat. Anton stares at her while he's getting his face wiped with a warm, soft cloth. After that, he follows Izolda around. She is beginning to prepare dinner the way she always does, though she's nervous as hell with Hilary watching her, with Ivan and Hilary here at all.

Ivan has been managing servants, or at least getting Dmitri to do it. They can't stay here, after all. There's no room.

The bottommost drawers and cabinets in the kitchen are either child-proofed or filled only with things that are safe for Anton to dig around in. And he does. He likes opening drawers. He has already learned what happens if you shut them quickly and your fingers are in the way, as all children learn rapidly and permanently from such experiences. He pulls things out and Izolda simply steps over them, around them. Hilary frowns, watching this. She does not share Izolda's sentiment that Anton's messes are 'charming'. She does not think he is just a one year old, though. She thinks: of course he likes making messes. He's Ivan's son.

Anton wants attention, though, and Izolda pours it on him. Every time he tugs on her, every time he makes a noise for her attention, every time he starts jabbering and smacking things. She thoughtlessly caresses his head, and Hilary's eyes go hawklike onto the gesture, though without anger. She gives him tastes of things. He is a happy child. He rarely cries -- Izolda was not just lying in those early letters to suck up. Anton simply... has no need to, most of the time. He never has to seek attention. It is always, always there for him, in one form or another.

They sit down to dinner later. Anton is definitely noticing that Ivan and Hilary aren't going away. He's very distracted during dinner, babbling to get their attention, making noise with his hands smacking against his tray in his special little seat, opening his mouth wide only to look away right as Miron is trying to put a spoonful of food in his mouth and end up with it smeared all over his cheek. It now becomes clear why there is a stack of those moistened washclothes beside Miron's place at the table.

Hilary barely eats, because she is watching Anton so much. There is also the matter of Izolda's rather bland, down-home, boring culinary arts. Hilary determines quietly that they will hire a cook for this little house, one who speaks Russian but is not Russian, or at least does not specialize in solely Russian 'cuisine'. A man, because she believes firmly that too many women in the house will make Anton weak. And someone firm, like Polina, because Miron and Izolda are already too soft with the boy.

The boy flings some peas and a few hit her plate, roll across her fork, hit the napkin on her lap. Hilary's eyes flash at Miron, a look grave and vicious enough to turn a man limp. It passes. Ivan touches her hand. She looks at the boy and says, not even noticing Polina's movement:

"Anton," which makes the boy go from staring wide-eyed at the approaching maid to sudden and full recognition of his name from a strange voice, "that is not how one behaves at dinner." As though he could understand this. Maybe to some extent he does. He knows his name, he remembers words, they just lose their meaning so quickly with him. He is starting to screw up his face, though, because the way she said his name was sharp even if the rest was light, soft, regal.

Polina sits on the other side of his chair, giving a thankful Miron a chance to eat a little of his own meal, and Anton squirms defiantly before opening his mouth and letting Polina feed him.

Hilary seems startled when it's time for Anton to go upstairs. He's only been awake for a few hours -- four, five at most -- and they're putting him to bed again. She's shocked. He's already had a bath today, though, to prepare him for his father, so it's just right into pajamas and books and nursing and his whole bedtime ritual. He knows it's coming, too: he has his head on Izolda's shoulder already, knowing it's almost his nighttime. Hilary looks a bit stricken at the question.

"But it's so early," she says, sounding like a child herself. She reins it in. There are servants watching. She exhales, all but through her teeth. Shakes her head. She does not want to see Izolda change him into his pajamas, cooing at him as she changes his diaper one last time. She does not want to watch Izolda cradle him in that rocking chair, nursing him in solitude and silence, the time of day that is special and singular to Anton and his wetnurse. She can't bear it. She can't.

Hilary gives a single firm shake of her head. "Nyet," she says very softly. Looks down, picks up her fork, goes back to eating her dinner.

Say this much for Izolda. As soft-hearted as she is, as incredibly over-attached as she is to this child that is not even hers, she is not truly a fool. She knows emotion; she sees it clearly, even when it's so vestigial and vague that Hilary herself may barely comprehend what she feels.

A flash of comprehension and compassion goes across Izolda's face. Perhaps it's best that Hilary is looking at her plate, and doesn't see it. She might hate Izolda for it. She might already.

Izolda, her arms occupied, dips an unobtrusive little curtsey. "Yes ma'am," she says, one of the few English phrases she doesn't even have to think about. She leaves the dining room, and a little later they hear her steps on the stairs, then overhead. Miron and Polina, their primary reason for being at the master's table gone, make short work of their dinners and clear their places. They, too, bow to Ivan and Hilary as they depart. They, too, are ignored.

Ivan is looking at Hilary, see. He's looked at Hilary almost as much as Hilary has looked at Anton. He watches her finish her dinner, and when she is done -- if she looks up -- she finds Ivan still looking right back at her. He looks thoughtful; a little sad.

"It seems like Anton was eating solid foods just fine tonight." His tone is light when he speaks, though. He doesn't say a word about how Hilary didn't want to let go. Not yet. Not so early. And - how she couldn't bear to watch. He doesn't say a word about any of that, but he says this instead: "Now that he's nearly a year old, I think it may be time to wean him altogether.

"We can transition Izolda to keeping the household if she's interested in staying on, and Polina should begin learning to facilitate Anton's interactions with the outside world. As he grows older he'll need tutors and schools and drivers and, if he's anything like me, more maids to clean up after him. Someone will have to find them and vet them for him."

Izolda nurses another woman's son. Has done it daily since almost a year ago. He took so eagerly to the breast once he realized that it was good, it was better than hunger, it was better than the bottles he was getting. He was a hungry child, starved for the closeness as much as for the milk, and ate as though the sorrow born into him by blood would be slaked, would be healed, would be erased, by satiating himself this way.

Anton has much of Hilary and Ivan in him.

The woman, the wetnurse, the soon-to-be nursemaid and nanny and later simply: maid, dips her knees while holding Anton and then leaves, taking the boy upstairs to change him, nurse him for at least a few minutes, rock him, and settle him into his crib. She at least waits until they are upstairs before she begins murmuring to him, the sort of tenderness she shares only with him, the sort of tenderness his young mind is already beginning to associate with secrecy, with privacy, with things it is not all right to show around anyone else. He will, perhaps, associate affection with utter devotion to him for the rest of his life, never understanding it when others have lives and wants and needs of their own, but

he has much of his mother and father in him.

Hilary lifts her fork downstairs and resumes eating, quiet. Miron and Polina quickly finish and excuse themselves; she ignores them. Just Ivan and her now. Just their meals, half-eaten, and barely palatable in Hilary's mind. She glances over at him and finds him staring at her. Her head tips a little; as focused on the boy as she is, she is still aware of Ivan. She is still grateful to him, in her way. She has not forgotten him.

He says: maybe they should wean him. He's almost a year old. He's only nursing twice a day now. Izolda can stay, be a household maid, and Polina can stop cleaning up so much and start learning how to, essentially, be another Max. Hilary gives a small, tight smile.

"He is a lot like you," she says quietly. "He likes to make horrible messes, and he yells when he feels he is not being attended to."

Hilary shifts some of the food on her plate around, looking down at it still. "He can nurse for as long as he likes. I simply have no desire to see Izolda with her tit out. I'll go see him later."

She looks over at Ivan, finally.

"Does it bother you, that I love him so?"

A faint, lopsided little smile drifts across his face once and again. When it's gone there's little sign it ever was, except in some softness in the way he looks at Hilary. Or perhaps he always looks at her like that. He loves her, after all.

Ivan shakes his head. It's a slow gesture at first; then a pause; then again with more certainty. "No," he says, "but it does make me wonder if I should love him more. I feel... responsibility toward him. He is mine and I will take care of him. But it doesn't hurt me to think of him when he's not around. It doesn't even make me long to see him again."

Another pause.

"I do with you, you know." Softer still. "When you're not near me and I think of you, I want to see you so badly it burns."

Hilary isn't even pretending to eat now. No one is watching her but Ivan. She isn't even hungry right now. She just looks at him, wondering at his smile but not enough to ask, not understanding the way he looks at her

even when she looks at him the same way.

For a long time after Ivan explains as he does -- responsibility but maybe not love, possession and care but not necessarily love, the lack of pain and how intimately he associates pain with how he loves her -- she says nothing. Finally, though, she looks at him and sighs softly. "I think about him all the time," she confesses, like purging a wound. "I'm thinking about him right now. I don't even... I don't know what I would do with him if I were with him, I am afraid I would grow sick of him and hate him, but I can't bear the thought of losing him."

Her eyes, so dark and so deep, are wet. She looks down, overcome for a moment, exhausted by her own emotion, staring at her peas. "I don't care if you love him. I don't care if anyone loves him. I don't know that I could love him the way ... any way ... that would make him okay. I just can't bear to be without him."

Hilary is numb, almost, to this reality now: "And yet I will be. Most of the year, every year, I will be. And you. Even with visits, even when you come and bring him, I will be. Without him. Without you."

Her head gives a small, deadened shake. "All alone. All without anything I love."

Her words strip him to the bone. And he must be stronger than he thinks, able to bear more love and devotion than he thinks, that he can even remotely bear this right now. That what she says doesn't send him running from the room, howling from the country.

He stays where he is. After a while, he reaches out to her. He puts his hand over hers, gently at first; then gripping.

"What can I do?" he whispers. "Tell me how I can make you feel even a little better."

They sit across from one another, and the table is narrow and old-fashioned, small enough for a family and large enough for...an extended family. Hilary's hand moves gently under his, sudden, reminding him that she is a living thing. And a feral one. Furtive. She stares at him, not shedding any of those tears in her eyes, unable to. She cannot comprehend what he's asking her right now. She shakes her head.

"Come live with us," she murmurs. "We'll be old-fashioned. His daughter is a new moon and estranged from the family. Attach to their pack, serve them, be invaluable to them. You'll be his son, their brother -- your son will heal the loss in the heart of Grey's new wife. We'll all live together, or close enough together. Ingratiate yourself. Fuck me when he's away, when his sons are away. Chicago doesn't matter. Novgorod doesn't matter."

She stares at him, her voice still so quiet. "Don't make me be without the two of you."

What she asks is insanity. What she asks is risk beyond risk, danger beyond danger. And what she asks is deadly and seductive in its brilliance. It's perfect.

Ivan thinks in a flash of his home in Chicago. His incomparable penthouse and its glass, its view, its light and its wood and its stone and its art. He thinks of his lakehouse, too, the long halls and high ceilings, the silence there at night. The lake lapping against the shore. The little cabin he built for his beloved. He thinks of his yacht; he thinks of his cars; he thinks of the parties and all those empty, beautiful people he would invite - everything, everything he would leave behind, everything that

simply

doesn't matter.

He clasps her hands in his. He presses his lips to her knuckles, like sealing a promise. "All right," he whispers. "If you want me to, I will."

She's not thinking at all about how much they both enjoy Chicago, or what she told Grey: that she fell in love with the city, her 'friends' there, all that. She isn't thinking about the beautiful cabin or the lovely studio he made, all of it for her, just her, just for the two of them. She isn't thinking about the yacht or the penthouse where he fucked her in front of all those strangers, she's thinking only

how scared she is to go back to what it was like before she met him, loved him, had a child with him. Became his, deep as blood and bone and eternity.

He clasps her hand and Hilary exhales, comforted by even the faintest hint of pain from him. He bows to her, kisses her knuckles, promises anything she wants, anything that might possibly make her happy. Anything for her. A better woman would say no. A better woman would ask him if he wants any of this.

Hilary only tips her head to the side, brushing her knuckles against his lips, then unfurls a finger and strokes his lips with it.

"I want you," she whispers.

A better man would have never called out to her from flybridge to flybridge in the first place. A better man would never have flirted with her so shamelessly, asking her to come aboard, asking to go aboard, asking about her husband, asking who was taking her home. A better man would have never gone to her table at the club; would have never followed her down the stairs. Would have never, ever gone to a hotel with her,

and then another one,

and then his home, and his yacht, and Lausanne, and Paris, and all the places he's had her. A better man would have never started this at all. A better man would have never loved her, and made her love him, and grown so addicted to it that he couldn't let go.

They are not better human beings than they are. They are not even better silver fangs, better garou, simply better than they are. They don't really stop to consider what it the nobler decision. They very rarely think of anyone other than themselves, and when they do, they're almost always only thinking of one another. And their son. They think of him, too.

And so, thinking of one another, thinking of their son, thinking very little of consequences and risks - or, even, of the other lives that orbit theirs, the lives that would be ruined by this - they strike this mad little bargain of theirs.

She wants him. So of course: he'll go to her. He'll leave Chicago and Novgorod, all these properties peppering the world. He'll keep them, of course; he'll keep the houses and the cars and the yacht, but he'll live in England, or wherever it is Grey may be. He'll worm his way into their pack, into their family. He'll wed their daughter. He'll bring his bastard son. He'll live in their midst, a son to the father, a brother to the brothers: a parasite, a turncoat, a sly and deceiving thing who will

at every possible turn

fuck the woman that isn't his. He'll do this, and the reason is, ironically, as pure as it comes: he'll do it because he loves her.

And - because he wants her.

His lips part under her finger. He nips at her fingertip, his flat human teeth just grazing the skin. His eyes are anything but human, though: golden-green, with such enormous pupils, dilating because of what she said, dilating because there's a way, there's a chance, even when she's gone from his presence he'll follow her.

Their plates are still on the table. There's still a little food left. Later in the night he might come down from their attic suite, slink down two flights of stairs with absolutely no sound at all. He might fetch food and water for his female, bring it back up to the privacy of their bed.

Right now, he leaves everything where it lays. He stands, pushing his chair back. Upstairs Izolda is tucking Anton in. Upstairs, Miron and Polina are talking, and Polina is quietly telling him what Ivan told her. The servants will soon shut themselves into their own rooms; live tiny slivers of their own lives. Miron will write to his parents. Polina will voice her opinions on some internet forum or other. Izolda will Skype with her own children, and her own family, and assure them that she'll be by to see them again as soon as she can.

All their lives will be turned upside down, too, when Anton goes to England. Ivan doesn't think of that, either. He thinks of how Hilary looks in the sunlight, her skin bare, her eyes closed, her body taking his the way she does. He thinks of how she smells when she's asleep, when he's fucked her over and over, when she's utterly his. He thinks of how she wept when he told her he couldn't keep her anymore. He doesn't want her to weep. He never wants that.

He gives her his hand, and he pulls her to her feet. "Let's go to bed," he murmurs. As though this was really their house, where they lived. As though they all lived together; or close enough together. "Tomorrow we'll take Anton to town."

They both started out innocently enough -- or at least, started out with what passes for innocence for the two of them. A dalliance, brief and sensual and exciting, fucking secretly in hotel rooms or in yacht cabins, no different from any other affair. That's what they both signed up for. That's what they expected. That's why she ruled him that first time, leaned back in that chair and told him to undress for her, stroked her eyes over him, sucked his cock and gently stroked it without so much as taking off her jewelry. She hadn't expected any of her young men to give her what she really wanted -- needed -- for years by then. Not since her first husband died.

Then something came roaring up out of Ivan, every time she told him harder. It was black and furious and hungry, needful, violent, achingly perfect. It was like no one else, nothing else. She mocked him when he pulled back from it. She urged him to come back to it, embrace it. She took pleasure in it, and he destroyed her. He terrified himself. He tried to fuck her -- if not gently -- like a normal person in the shower later, and found her only borderline responsive.

So the next time, he fucked her harder. He let it out again. He came so very close to outright abusing her. And she adored him for it, came to need him for it very quickly. Relied on him for it. Felt... safe. Protected. Understood.

Because every time, afterward, he took her and he bathed her. Stroked her back, rubbed her sore muscles where he'd kept her tied up or pinned down. Healed friction burns on her wrists or bruises on her ass. Held her until tremors stopped going through her. Knowing, all the while, that bringing her back to herself would inevitably lead to her distance, her coldness, her return to how she always is, he did it anyway. He cared for her, because she was already his.

They are not good people. Not at all. But they do love each other. Ivan, always. Hilary, when she can, which may not always be enough, but it is what he accepts.

"Slowly, at first," she whispers, as they watch each other, as he runs his teeth over her skin and makes her shiver. "Let Anton and his servants stay here for another year or two. Move him with you later, when he begins needing tutors and a larger staff. This will be his summer home, his vacation home. I don't want him utterly rootless as I was. I want him to love this land more than the ugly autumns and winters of England, always be tied more to it because it is in his blood. I want him to visit the States with you later, when he's a bit older, so by the time he's in his late teens he will be quite familiar with it and unafraid by it."

Hilary takes a sip of air and closes her eyes, then opens them again. "I'm going to press for Grey to find mates for his sons sooner rather than later. That will shut the two younger bastards down a bit, I think. Their eyes are a bit too eager."

She is pouring ideas out, just like that night when he held her and she told him all the ways he could restrain her, hurt her without hurting her, play with her. All the things he could do with his precious little toy. She looks up at him as he rises to his feet, and though it's hard to tell, this close he can see the dilation of her own pupils. It only makes her eyes more black.

"I love you," she whispers, so different and so the same as what she said a moment ago. "I always do love you."

Which may not be a perfect truth. But the truth, for them, is a hateful and painful thing these days.

Once in a long while Hilary, who otherwise can be so reticient or simply so empty, seems to find that she has opinions. Ideas she wants to share, almost as though she vents them while she still can. She told him once, the morning after a surreal orgy of a party where half a dozen of his unsuspecting guests fucked her while he held her, watched her, protected her - she told him, afterward, of all the other ways they could play. All the other ways she's thought about playing, and wanted to play, accrued up over god only knows how many weeks or months or years.

She tells him, now, of all her thoughts on how their son should be raised. She wants him to have a home in his heart. Novgorod, because this is where his blood is tied. The United States as well, Chicago and New York, those glittering tall cities of a younger, faster bloodline - because that is where his father grew up, that is where his father is from, that is who his father is.

Not England. Not that land of green and grey, not that dreary, damp, polite land with its brutal and blood-soaked history. Not Grey's, and not Grey's daughter's. Not rootless, either, as Hilary herself was, with her muddled history and forgotten family roots somewhere in Belgium or Aquitaine or Anjou or ... perhaps she doesn't even know. She was so young when her family devoured itself, so young when her House fell, so young when all those stories were stricken from the records, wiped from the slate, swept under the rug.

She was a kin of Austere Howl, and then she simply wasn't. That entire House simply wasn't. She became Gleaming Eye. She became Unbroken Hearth. She was - so briefly - Crescent Moon. And now she's becoming Gleaming Eye again.

Rootless, she calls herself. He takes her hand and he kisses her, fiercely, his lips burning her palm.

Hilary's thoughts stretch so far into the future. In truth, their scope frightens Ivan a little. Twenty years, almost, she looks ahead. He can't see that far. He might be dead by then. If not, then he might be an Adren himself. He might even be Athro. She would be as old as Grey by then; older. He wonders,

for a painful moment,

if he would still want her then the way he wants her now: that black hunger, that brutality, that utter adoration in its wake. If she looked like one of the respectably married women at the yacht club, with their perfectly coiffed hair and their perfectly tailored dresses that never bared too much skin; their skin creams and their subtle surgeries to maintain an illusion of youth, or at least agelessness. He would still love her, he thinks - he's sure - but he wonders if it would be nothing but pain by then. If he doesn't play with her anymore, if he can't bring himself to string her up or tie her down, if the only sex they had was plain, staid, wrapped in each other's arms in bed. If he couldn't give her what she wants anymore, he wonders if she would still love him then. There are times even now when she looks at him with disinterest, with the sort of passing curiosity one reserves for inanimate art, until he breaks her down from that. Tears her down from that apathy and distance.

He can't think that far. He doesn't want to. He kisses her hand. She muses about Grey's sons, the ones that eye her with avarice. He wonders if she'll fuck them, too, if she'll pass her time fucking those beautiful young men because Grey was away but Ivan couldn't get close, and

he doesn't want to think of that, either.

So he stands. And she looks up at him. He has an image, mad and howling, of pinning her wrists to the back of the chair; fucking her face until she wept with gratitude. She tells him she always loves him. His smile is crooked, and looks a little like a wince.

"No, you don't," he says quietly. He draws her to her feet and he kisses her, and it's rather forceful, his hand grasping the back of her neck. "But you love me enough when you do that I can bear it when you don't."

She sits, he stands. He has her hand and kisses it, burning, and she looks so lost right now, looking up at him. Her brow wrinkles, tight with sudden sorrow, but he pulls her up, his mind reeling from thoughts she can't read in his eyes, can't imagine, doesn't want to think about, either. And he kisses her, forceful and in that way comforting, and she wants to slap him and she wants to cry because of what he said just before his mouth took hers.

"Don't say that," she says, her voice harsh from emotions that she seldom feels and is seldom capable of and can never, ever quite cope with. "Don't say that to me, how could you --"

Hilary pulls away, looks down, looks grieved, looks petulant at the same time. "I always love you," she says. "Always, even when I --"

don't, she might say.

"Can't."

is what she does say.

In all the time he's known her, after all the terrible things he's said and done to her - and only some of them at her behest - she's only slapped him once. Just the once, when he asked her to, told her to slap him as hard as she could so not one would suspect what really happened in that elevator. And why he really gave her that coat. And what she really felt when she saw it, put her hand on it, felt the luxurious fur give beneath her fingers.

She doesn't slap him now, either. He wants her to. That sharp sting would drive these thoughts from his mind. It would make him angry, angry and aroused, angry enough to drag her up the stairs, aroused enough to throw her over the bed and rail her until they both forgot where they were, who they were, what lay in their future; forgot everything except

how wet she is, the way she sounds, how her fingers clutch the sheets, how his hand leaves her ass bright pink where he slaps her over and over to make her scream.

But she doesn't slap him. She says: don't say that. She says: how could you. He feels wretched, mean. Then she pulls away and he flares with anger and hurt and rejection. Not yet, some part of him howls; not yet, it's not June yet, it's not even May, not yet. No; she tries to pull away. He puts both his hands on her, wraps his fingers behind her head, grips her where she is and bears down on her, kisses her again, harder.

"Say it again." He's so close to her. A moment ago he was going to take her upstairs. Maybe they would have undressed gently, like lovers who belonged to each other, past that first rush of passion. Sometimes he likes to pretend that's who they are. It's a pleasant fantasy. Maybe he would have pretended tonight, except

now he's turning on her, he's crowding her back against the narrow table where they had dinner with their son and his servants. The dishes rattle when the back of her thighs hit the table. It's dark outside now, and it's dim in the dining room with its high victorian ceilings, its tall wood-framed windows. He's hotblooded and dark with emotion, almost snarling. "I believe you when you say it, so say it again."

There have been times Hilary has tried to slap him and he's caught her, stopped her. He'll always be faster than her, stronger than her. He may not live to be as old as she is now, though. They don't know it yet, but chances are, she will even outlive their son. Who will also grow faster than her, stronger than her, more given over to death than her.

Ivan wants her now. Wants her violence and her darkness, wants to hurt her, make her scream into their pillows upstairs like before, because he needs it. He needs to forget, to stop thinking, to stop hurting. He can always trust Hilary to help him lose himself. She's a void he can pour himself into, where some things in him will never be found or spoken of again. He needs that. He loves that in her, as much as he loves it when she coalesces.

As much as he hates it when she pulls away. Hilary lets out a yelp as he grabs her, fighting him, struggling with him, but not quite enough. She's crowded to the table and upstairs, upstairs, Anton is just now being settled into his crib, Miron is trying to make sense of what has happened today, Polina is writing I KNEW IT in all caps into her secret Twitter account, and Hilary is breathing faster, shaking a little as Ivan holds her, grips her, presses her, that hot blackness rising up in him.

"I don't want this," she's gasping, trembling, tears in her eyes. "I don't want this, I can't, I'm sorry, I don't want this right now. Please stop." She's trying to cover her face then, truly and well ashamed, hurting because she's saying no to him, and

she hates saying no to him. She hates that she can't right now. That grief can do this to her. She hates that she can't be everything for him, be empty for him, can't even be filled with herself. Every time her heart opens now, it fills with sorrow like a boat with a lethal leak. She drowns in it. "Mne ochenʹ zhalʹ. Vladelets, ya ne mogu."

So rarely does Hilary say no to him that Ivan hardly knows how to respond. It's different, this no, from the all the no's she gave him on Christmas Eve. She means it: she can't, she doesn't want it, she can't, please stop.

Some part of Ivan doesn't want to stop. He's terrified to discover this every time, terrified to find there's a part of him that's never really playing when they play. A part of himself that enjoys the way she screams when he hits her. Enjoys how tattered and broken and placid he can make her; enjoys the power, enjoys the violence. It's the part of him that hit her across the face, once. And the part of him that lashed her with his belt, a different time.

And the part of him that wants to throw her face-down over the table right now. Rip her clothes and pin her down, fuck her until the dishes jostle off the table and break. It would make him feel better. It would make him feel good, and

it would make him horrified, disgusted at himself, ashamed. He's horrified and disgusted and ashamed already to even think of it. This is the part of himself he's always afraid to let loose, and with good reason: the part that he tries to protect her from, and always tried to protect her from, telling her no, they can't do this, he can't let himself go that far, lest he become a monster.

The violence in his eyes flares and dies. His grip on her gentles. "Okay," he whispers. "Okay. Hilary, it's okay."

He's wrapping his arms around her now, drawing her against his chest, drawing her into the shelter of his body. She doesn't want this. He doesn't either; not really. He wants her, painfully, in a way he can't really have her. There are any number of reasons. They're not entirely external. He turns his head, kisses her temple, holds her as overhead their servants and their child settle into their nighttime rituals; as dinner grows cold on the table.

"Let's go to bed," he says again. They're circled back to this. "There's a rather large tub upstairs. Let me take care of you."

She hates saying no to him. She hates it right now, hates herself, because on some level she does want him to brutalize her anyway. Maybe it would make her forget, but

not in the right way. She would leave herself instead of coming back into herself. She would use Ivan's anger and rage and, let's be blunt, rape, to go away from all of this. All the grief. All the pain. All the fears she has. She would become dead, numb, not at all what he loves, not at all what she really is. And so, in one of those rare moments of understanding, of self-actualization, Hilary tells him no, even though it makes her weep to do so.

She curls against him the moment he relents. She clings to him, wraps her arms around his neck, hides her face in his chest. She does not care if a second ago he was thinking of just taking her anyway. She doesn't care, though she should, that there is something horrific inside of him. Hilary knows that she is no different, and no better. There are dark things in both of them.

They choose the better things, tonight. She chooses the grief over the numbness. She chooses him over the monster. He chooses comfort, chooses care, chooses loving her. It won't make it easier next time. But for tonight, it's enough.

Hilary's breath is heaving, as though she's been running for her life. It slows gradually, and she keeps her eyes closed, keeps herself near Ivan, as he kisses her temple and holds her.

She nods at what he says. She thinks, passingly, that perhaps it's best they do not live together, with Anton: she struggles with the idea of playing, being played with, while the baby and the servants who care for him sleep nearby. Her eyes flutter open. She looks at him.

"I do love you," she whispers, just as before, before Ivan's want for her just grew and grew, before the violence, before the denial, before all of it. She answers him the way he told her to just a moment ago. She's pliant now, weakened by her own refusal, cooperative. Submissive.

This time he doesn't slam it away, throw it back in her teeth. This time, Ivan's arms tighten a little; he holds her closer. "I know," he whispers. "Love, I know."

He kisses her forehead, like a blessing. He kisses her mouth, like worship. And it does not seem to matter to them right now that he thought terrible, inexcusable things. That she flashed into murderous rage the last and only time Anton wailed in her presence. It doesn't even seem to matter that this -- all this -- is only a temporary reprieve at best. That all they've ever had, or will have, are temporary reprieves.

They unwind from each other, but not very far. He takes her hand. The stairs in this house are steep and narrow by modern standards. He lets her go ahead of him, following her up one flight. Polina's door is closed, light under the crack. Miron's is open, and he is sitting on his small bed, typing on a laptop. He smiles at them - earnest and a little hesitant. Down the other way, through a door open a crack, is Anton's warm little bedroom. They can hear Izolda humming. In some ways, painfully, she's more of a mother to him than Hilary will ever be.

Neither of them ever speak that aloud, either.

And up they go again: a second flight of stairs to the attic, which was once dusty and dark, but is now sleek and modern in a way even the rest of the house is not. Ivan closes the door soundlessly behind them. Up in the privacy of their own space,

which he must have had built because he intended to visit his son at some point, and he must have had built because he thought maybe, just maybe, Hilary would come too,

they undress without words. He turns on just enough light to chase the shadows from the corners. He leaves his clothes on the bathroom counter, turns on the faucet in the large, garden-style tub. Though he didn't abuse her, though he didn't brutalize her, he washes her as gently as if he had. He kneads her back and rubs her shoulders, and when he's done they lay together in the water a while, her back to his chest, his back to the sloping wall of the tub.

They don't say much then, either. When the water starts to grow cool he urges her to her feet. They shower the last of the day's travel and grime from their skin. Ivan's sense of time is confused. It may have been one endless day from the moment he woke in Chicago, knowing he was to meet Grey and Hilary for lunch, knowing what that lunch would be about. It may have been a week since that morning. There's an odd sense of timelessness here in Russia, where he's thrown back into memories of his own fostering, his own past, his own history, his own ancestry.

He turns the shower off. He wraps her in a towel as they go to bed.

They don't make love after all. They don't fuck. He lays on his back when the lights are turned out. His lover lies close to him, curled against his side. He loves her so dearly; he didn't think it was possible. He didn't think any of this is possible.

Sometime in the night, perhaps Hilary wakes for a while. It is dark in the room, and Ivan is no longer beside her. He's left a light on, though - dim and far away enough not to wake her, bright enough to keep the utter blackness at bay. She can see him in that light. He's standing by one of the low-set windows in the wall. He is naked, sleek, savage, eldritch: looking out over the lawn that runs down to the river. Watching over his land.

He turns when he feels her eyes on her. He comes back to bed, sliding under the covers on her side without a word. His mouth is on hers, and his hands are in her hair, down her back, cupping and lifting her hips against his. He fucks her silently, fervently, a short and potent coupling punctuated only by gasps. A low groan, when he comes.

He falls asleep like that, tangled up with her. It feels right. He feels calmer; settled in some way he can't quite define.

Walking upstairs, Ivan is the one who catches Miron's eye. Hilary is, as ever, ignoring the help except when she needs something from them, wants something from them. She hasn't told Ivan that she's going to need Darya here in the morning when she wakes up, but presumably Ivan already has the staff aware that they should be arriving at dawn -- essential members, of course. The rest can stay in the little hotel they've taken over in town. Miron watches them go upstairs. A little while later, he gets up and gently closes his door. The house feels strange, with Hilary and Ivan there. It is strange.

Anton is taking longer to go to sleep than usual. The day was different, was exciting, and he's curious and doesn't understand. Still, he's sleepy and heavy in Izolda's arms. Hilary physically flinches, hearing the humming. There's anger in it. She wants to march down that hall, slam open the door, and beat Izolda til she's bloody. She wants to break her neck.

That passes. She is too worn out, right now, to feel something that strong.

She's silent. While he washes her, while he holds her, she doesn't speak to him at all. Telling him one last time that she loves him took the very last spark out of her. Every time her mind is anything but blank, she feels the way she did that day in her hallway last year, when Ivan threw the fact that they had a son together at her and she shattered like ice. Occasionally, while he holds her, shudders go through Hilary that are more like miniature electrocutions than shivers of chill or pleasure. She has no pills with her. Darya has them. She wasn't thinking. She should have known she'd need them. She doesn't want to be here right now.

She doesn't want to be anywhere, right now. She doesn't want to be.

The woman Ivan loves sleeps because she can do nothing else. She is exhausted. She is broken. There have been moments over the past twenty-four hours or so when she could feel hope, when she could feel some sight of land, but so far sleep has been the only real escape from what is happening to her life. When he helps her to bed, she folds into it, curls on her side, and does not even have the strength to lift her leg or her arm and drape them over his body when he comes to lay beside her on his back. He puts his arm around her all the same.

She curls in the hollow against his side, moving only as she breathes. She wants to cry. She doesn't have it in her to do so. So she closes her eyes, and she begins to focus on the warmth emanating from Ivan. She focuses on his breathing more than her own. She thinks of nothing, nothing at all, but him. Near the end she moves her hand to cover his chest, laying lightly on his ribs. She is asleep seconds after.

When he leaves the bed -- his bed, their bed -- she does stir. She wakes, as though even in sleep her entire being is focused on him as a means of survival. He is stalking in the dark toward the window, looking out at his land. She's never seen him do this before. Not in Chicago. Not at the lake house. He has no fear or self-consciousness of moving around a space naked, she knows that, but she has not seen him do this before. He looks different.

There are kin who are close to the wolves in their souls and blood, kin who might see a Garou doing this sort of thing and understand on some indescribable level. They would feel close to that primality and know it for what it is. A kin like that would welcome their beloved back to bed with open arms, a warm mouth, an arching back.

Hilary is feral, is part animal, but she is like a wild thing brought into captivity shortly after birth. She's cut off from something vital in herself, so disconnected that it's a wonder she hasn't perished from the grief of the severance. She will never be wild. She could not survive in that kind of life. She will never be able to hunt for herself, defend her own territory. She cannot even feed or protect her own offspring. She is an animal, but one so confused by what life has wrought that she does not know what she is.

When Ivan comes back, he slides closer to her, puts his hands on her, his mouth on her. She melts gently, slightly, but she shudders when his hands run down. Sadness washes over her again, so deep and so sudden that it's bewildering. The one thing he knows to do that can always heal her, make her whole again, make it okay, she turns away from now. She wants him -- her body feels it, her body responds to his body, but her mind is disconnected from that body, her soul is gone, hiding where it can't be reached. She can't bear to feel him in her, loving her, making her whole, when the knowledge of what she has lost and what loss is still to come weighs so heavily on her that she is crushed by the thought of it.

This time, Hilary doesn't say no. She wants so badly to submit to him, to give him what he craves, what some part of him feels is right and understands and wants and even needs. She wants so badly to be able to. She hates that she can't. Every time he touches her, looks at her like that, she feels how much she is failing him, and sorrow stacks upon sorrow. Her face turns away as Ivan recognizes the resistance in her body is not an invitation to push her down, hold her, make her take it. They aren't speaking at all. There are tears in her eyes again, shedding to the tops of her cheeks, and all he can do

is hold her.

Hilary does not sleep again soon after that. She rests in his arms, staring into the darkness and the shadows cast by lamplight, til she shifts. She moves. She sits up, and she touches Ivan to see if he's awake, if he's coherent. Still no words, still no talking. The entire house is silent, only making the noises any house this old would make in the night as it settles. She draws Ivan with her as she leaves the bed, dragging the sheet they were wrapped in around her, wrapping it around Ivan as well.

They walk down the stairs, as soft as they can, and at the first turn, he knows where she's going.

Anton's door opens without a creak; Miron's only tendency towards madness seems to be an obsession with making sure things work correctly, smoothly, fixing what is broken, preventing what he can, avoiding direct conflict. Of course all the hinges in this house are well-oiled. The room is dark, because Anton needs no nightlight, the curtains drawn so that the dawning sun will not sear into his eyes when he wakes. The toys are all tidied up. The only sound in the room is the child's breathing, steady and soft.

His mother walks over to his crib and gets down on the floor beside it, on the rug in the middle of the room. She aches at the sight of him and yet she seems softer, more tender, more happy right now than she has since Izolda took the boy upstairs. She looks settled, almost. She looks like she can breathe again.

She reaches through the bars, which are reasonably wide, and wraps her hand around Anton's foot through the light blanket over him, the footed pajamas he was changed into. She rests her forehead on the bars, watching him, holding him just like that,

just the way she did right after he was born. And just as he did then, Anton gives a twitch, kicks gently, but then settles, sleeping just as deeply as he ever was, ever has.

If he wants, Ivan holds her then. She lets him. She wants him to. She leans against him and against those bars, her eyes closed, her hand on her son. She imagines it is a year ago. They are all together. No Dion to come hunting Ivan down or threatening her child's life. No Silver Fangs scolding them for making another bastard in the ranks. No fear that she will hate the baby, that Ivan will run from it. No fear that the baby will reject her. For the first time since she got up in the middle of the night, lifted Anton from his basinet and carried him at her breast back to her bed to hold him between her body and Ivan's,

Hilary feels that deep, primal rightness that comes so much more easily to Ivan than to her. Her mate. Her cub. Their den. Their land. Their kin. The warm darkness surrounding them, breathing with them, not full of terrors or hunger but peace and rest.

It's like this that she finds her way. She remembers what is not lost as well as what is. She accepts that some things that will be lost are not yet. She realizes, too,

that she does not fear death or shame.

Hilary's eyes open after a long time. She thought it would be unbearable to leave Anton after she entered his room. But no: she gently slips her hand away from his foot and back through the bars to herself. She breathes in and exhales quietly and turns in Ivan's arms, kissing his jaw, then his mouth, encouraging him with brushes of her lips to turn his head, kiss her, stay there and kiss her more deeply.

They say nothing. Still: nothing. But they rise together and he follows her up the stairs again, the two of them close, sharing a covering. She takes him back to bed and

this time, she welcomes him with open arms, with a warm mouth, with an arching back. Her palms slide up his back. He's hesitant now, wary of hurting her, wary of her grief rising up again, but it doesn't. She opens her legs and wraps them around his body, and

she is tight and wet and perfect when he pushes into her, sharing her gasp. Hilary holds him tighter between her thighs. She moves his hand to her mouth to cover it when she starts to moan. The moon streams in through the glass. She clenches around him when she comes, arching her back deeply to take him further. His gasping grows faster, shreds apart into a low groan when he follows her, comes in her, fills her.

They fall asleep like that, tangled in a sheet and in each other. It feels right. It feels perfect.