Chapter Text
Prologue
I was a child when the lesser fae were revealed to the public by the Gray Lords. I can vaguely remember sitting on the couch with my mother watching the trial of Kieran McBride, a gardener accused of murdering his elderly billionaire employer with a pair of garden shears. When the prosecution had finally been goaded into asking Kieran to hold the shears he had taken them; and promptly dropped them as his hands began to smoke and blister. My mother and I leaned forward on the couch, holding our breath with the rest of the watching world as Kieran showed his mangled hands to the jury. Then on a cue from his lawyers he dropped the glamour that hid his true appearance from human eyes.
That had been the first time that real magic was ever revealed to the public, in the most public way possible, live television. And I had learned later it had all been planned to work to the fae’s advantage. Fearing that they couldn’t hide their presence in the new age of cold iron, technology and forensic sciences the masters of the fae, the Gray Lords, had forced the weakest and most attractive into the public eye.
For a short while people had been enamored with the magical beings. I could remember going to the theaters to watch a new version of Peter Pan starring a pixie and a boy who could really fly. But inevitably people began to remember the older fairy tales, where the fae weren’t always nice and friendly. Hatred and fear forced most of the revealed fae into living in four large reservations spread across the United States. It had been that way for nearly three decades now.
Eventually people in high places began wondering about other supernatural beings of the old stories. Werewolves and Vampires were sought for by foolish humans, and Government organizations. But other than the fae, no more supernatural beings stepped into the lime light.
Not until last year that is.
It was only a matter of time after all. Werewolves are much harder to hide than the fae. Or rather, the aftermath of werewolves is harder to hide. For the most part werewolves are controlled by the packs and the packs are controlled by the Alpha wolf in charge. In charge of all of the packs and all of the Alpha’s in the United States is the Marrok.
No one is really certain how old the Marrok is, I’ve heard rumors that he came to the United States from Wales in the 1800's with a Welsh fur trapper and map maker. It’s believed that he is far older than that. But I’ve also heard rumors that he is omniscient and an all powerful mega-wolf, so I’m not sure I should pay too much attention to the rumors. I’ve never met him myself. The Marrok and his pack live in Montana, the only place I've ever visited in the west is LA.
Of course I discovered the world of werewolves much earlier than the rest of the world. I know that they aren’t all the military heroes that the Marrok likes to use as poster boys. If it could have been possible I would have preferred to stay in the dark, but I guess that would have meant that I’d have died fifteen years ago. Although sometimes, when life is really getting me down, I can’t help but think that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.
Becoming a werewolf isn’t so simple as being bitten. No, to become a werewolf a person has to be mauled so thoroughly that they are left an inch from death. The bodies immune system rejects the wolf's magic and it has to be completely torn down for the magic to slip through and take over. If by some chance the person survives the initial attack they begin to heal at an amazingly quick rate. They think that the terror of their nightmare is over and for awhile it is, until the full moon rises into the sky and their wolf is called to the surface.
Most wolves are changed by family members, people who care about them and are there to help them survive. But every now and then a rouge wolf will come around and loose themselves to the madness of the predator inside. Those wolves don’t live long. The packs hunt them down and execute them, for the safety of everyone, human and wolf alike. But they leave a trail of destruction in their wake and lots and lots of bodies.
The year of my fifteenth birthday, as celebration for being accepted into MIT and finally getting the cast removed after my crash, my uncle had taken me camping. It was late in the year and the air was beginning to chill, other than us the campground was deserted. Our first day out was wonderful, since Dad was deployed at the time I hadn’t had a male role model for awhile. Uncle Thomas took me hiking and fishing and we cooked our spoils over the campfire. I remember getting ready for bed, unzipping my sleeping bag when Uncle Thomas heard a noise just outside the tent. He had brought a shotgun with him, to deter bears. I remember him grabbing it and then nothing.
I woke up the neck morning, naked in the county morgue with a tag around my toe. Uncle Thomas was on the table next to me, he didn’t wake up.
I think I scared the coroner so bad he wet himself, I was extremely worried when Duck recently had a similar experience. But he seemed to handle it okay. They wanted to hold me at the hospital after I finished healing two days later, it was miraculous they said. They pestered my mother for our genealogy, kept asking if there was any fae in our blood. I was confused, Mom was confused and grieving, I was discharged against medical advice and we hurried home. The local Alpha and his second were waiting for us when we got there.
Pack hierarchy is determined by how dominant a wolf is. Some wolves are so dominant that their very presence makes less dominant wolves fall onto their bellies, turning over to expose their vulnerable throats. The most dominant of all is the Alpha, he is like a dictator in his pack, no one is allowed to go against his will. For the most part that's all well and good. The Alpha isn't just there to rule over the wolves. He takes care of his wolves, like a family, keeps everyone safe, sane and in control. For the members of his pack his stable presence is the ultimate defense.
After the Alpha the next two wolves that are most dominant become his second and third. The are his right and left hand men, in charge when he is away or incapable. After that the dominance wars continue until you reach the submissive wolves. There aren’t many. To survive the change most wolves have to have some amount of dominance in them. It's believed that the gentle people who would become submissive wolves don’t have what it takes to claw their way back from Death's grasp.
I think that some people just have an extraordinary will to live.
Being a submissive wolf is...difficult. Everyone in the pack is in a higher position than you. Everyone except the unmated females that is, female werewolves are just about as rare as submissives. Although to be fair when a female takes a mate she takes her position from him. She has a chance to advance in the world, unlike me.
After my attack I had a summer to learn to control the beast inside me. The Alpha near Alameda that trained me was amazed at how easy it was for a non-dominant wolf. To not free the urge to attack anyone that challenged me, to not grow hungry at the scent of blood. I hated my new instincts. How every time a dominant wolf near me threw a temper tantrum I found myself stretched out on the floor.
When summer was over I was accepted into a pack in Massachusetts, close to MIT. Worst decision ever made for me, in my entire life. There were no other submissive wolves in that pack, no unmated females. I was situated at the bottom of the totem pole, submissive to everyone in the pack.
It hadn't been so bad at first. The Alpha was a good man, strong enough to keep all of this thirty wolves in check. Two months after I joined the pack he was in an interstate pile-up. If he hadn't been decapitated he probably would have survived. Not many ways to kill a wolf. Decapitation works well, so does silver. Drowning does the trick as well.
With the Alpha's death his second took control of the pack. As a second he was a good man but he wasn't cut out to be Alpha. Unfortunately once he'd gotten a taste of the power he could draw on, the strength of every wolf in his pack, he was not willing to let the position go. Not only did he not have control of the pack, wolves died needlessly in dominance battles that should never have been fought, he didn't seem to care about our well being. For four years I lived in hell. Sane dominant wolves don't normally trouble submissives I've been told, but when and Alpha is unstable he brings the whole pack down with him. It was chaos until the Marrok caught wind of the situation and sent his enforcer, his son Charles, to clean up the mess.
Charles Cornick is the third most powerful werewolf in the United States. He is his father's enforcer and executioner, he is a force to be feared.
When he arrived unexpected during a pack meeting there was chaos. Fearing for his position the Alpha attacked, several of the more dominant wolves close behind. None of them lasted more than a few minutes.
I remember the panic in the room being overwhelming. People began shifting forms against their will as the wolf inside surged forward to defend it’s survival. Then Charles took control of the remaining fifteen wolves, his yellow eyes, with the wolf peeking out of his human body, forced everyone to the floor. After everything had calmed down he informed the pack that it was official dissolved and we would all be reassigned to other packs. I was the last to be reassigned, since I had hidden myself in a corner at the beginning of the meeting and not moved at all. By the time Charles reached me, we were the only wolves left.
He had looked at my bruises and frowned at my skittishness. He asked where I planned to go after I graduated MIT. He promised me that wherever I wanted to go he would find me a pack with and Alpha that would take care of me. It’s hard for wolves to look more dominant wolves in the eye. They tend to take things like that as a challenge and the instinct to survive is deeply ingrained. That night I looked into Charles eye's and asked him if there was any other option. He put me in touch with a wolf named Gerry Wallace.
Lone wolf.
I had always heard the term. Hell, I’d been called it a few times back in high school! But now that I had been changed it had a new meaning. Lone wolves lived outside of the pack hierarchy. On the bright side I would have no one dominating me on a daily basis. But on the downside, I was alone and the wolf is not a solitary creature.
Gerry and I talked for a long time, he told me the honest truth. All the facts, straight, with no sugar coating. I would be my own boss, do things on my own time. But I would be constantly alone, with no one to comfort or protect me. The security that a pack ensured would be gone. Although after the previous four years, solitude had sounded heavenly.
So I became a lone wolf. I attended Johns Hopkins, after gaining permission from the local pack to live in the area. I constantly had to skirt around their presence, but a predator doesn't enter another predator's territory unless he is looking for trouble. It wasn’t difficult to avoid them, it was just more instinct.
As a child I had always wanted to be in law enforcement and now I actually had a chance of making that dream come true. After I had finished at Johns Hopkins I applied at FLETC, werewolves thrived in law enforcement and the military. However I wanted to apply for a position where there would undoubtedly be very few other wolves, NCIS. Naval Criminal Investigative Services. Werewolves didn’t to do in the navy. It probably had something to do with the fact that we sink like stones in the water. Our muscle mass is much to heavy and dense for us to be buoyant enough to swim.
It was probably a little reckless, but I knew that to be positioned as Agent Afloat they only took volunteers. I didn’t doubt that I would have to get on a boat at some point in time, but I told myself I would be extremely cautious when that time came. Norfolk hadn’t been my first choice of where I would have liked to be placed, I wasn’t a full time field agent, but it wasn’t something I would complain about. There was no local pack for miles around Norfolk, I didn’t need permission to live there or have to avoid certain locations. It was great, for awhile.
Leroy Jethro Gibbs changed all of that.
It was hard to believe that one man could have been the undoing of my perfect lone wolf lifestyle. Let alone a man who was one-hundred percent human! I had heard stories around the office about Special Agent Gibbs, he was practically a legend to a green probie like me and when he arrived on scene for that first case, he took a perfect position on the pedestal I had built him in my mind.
At first I had wondered, how would these people act towards me if they knew what I was? Agent DiNozzo and Agent Todd would probably not have hazed me as much as they did, out of fear that I would eat them. Gibbs though, I never had any doubt that Gibbs wouldn’t have changed a thing. At first he had completely ignored my presence. For all that I was a fellow NCIS agent, I was just as stuck in the background as the base MP’s. But not for long.
“You’ll wanna avoid Captain Veitch. Well, I met him once, before, he can be very…difficult.”
I’d never seen a human whip around so fast. For the first time he actually looked at me, got right up in my face and looked me straight in the eye. For a moment I had been afraid, afraid that my wolf would, for once in his life, take up a challenge. I didn’t want to hurt Agent Gibbs, but I had no doubt that I could have.
“And you don’t think, that I can be difficult?”
My eyes had dropped of their own accord. I had to plant my feet so that I wouldn’t drop to the ground. This was a man before me, a man who was one-hundred percent human, and it took every ounce of my being not to just roll over and give him my throat. I had stuttered back a response, just barely. They left without me which I was thankful for. I took a quick minute to get my bearings back before I followed them.
After they returned to DC I did something I had never done before. I took the night off and jogged out into the middle of nowhere. As soon as I was sure that I was completely alone I had taken off and hidden my clothes and shifted.
The change isn’t quick or easy. Your bones and skin have to completely reshape themselves. Sometimes it takes as long as fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of pure torture. Fifteen minutes that would go by so much faster if you have a pack shifting with you. When I was finished I shook, sending sandy brown fur flying in all directions, trying to get used to my other form. Then I ran, I ran away from civilization, as far as I could get. Eventually I stopped, exhausted. And I cried.
My howls shook the sleeping birds from the trees and frightened away all the animals in the area. In the distance I could hear my native cousins cry in sympathy, but they would not approach. No wild animal is stupid enough to approach a werewolf.
I cried for a long time. Before I had never known what it really meant to be part of a pack. When I was first learning the ropes I was only there to learn, I didn't belong with them. And when I was part of a pack, I was only a punching bag. I’d never known what a true pack felt like. I had my family sure, they were great and I loved them with all of my heart. But it wasn’t the same.
But that day I had gotten a taste of what being in a pack was like. Sure they weren’t wolves, Gibbs and his team were as human as it came. But they were a pack, a family, and I had never realized until I met them, just what I was missing. So that night I cried my loneliness to the beautiful moon high in the sky and the next morning I arrived at work with a new determination. I would work hard and I would become a member of Gibbs’ team. I would find somewhere to belong.