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The Other

Another werewolf.

Peter cannot say how he feels about that.

She is unremarkable; he thinks he would not have noticed her on the street even if he had an eye for the ladies. Her scent is mostly covered over by an intense, floral perfume, and something else even more nose-confusing underneath. But all the same she smells familiar. He knows that smell, too well to miss it, it welcomes him home every day the way its possessor does not.

She smells like Lucius.

That is not to say she smells like him in such a way that he would assume they were related. But there is something in the multifaceted scent of her, in its memories and stories and nearly-hidden traceries of glass, steel, water, wood; something like to him in its transience.

They have both been many more places than Peter has gone to or will probably ever go in his most-likely short lifetime.

He knows her then, by what Lucius has so grudgingly given him, by her Line name, Hekatoi. She knows him too, sooner than he realizes, crosses a crowded mall to stand beside him and murmur, "Son of Brenin Llwyd."

He's never enjoyed shopping malls; too many people. He likes people in general, but not this many, milling about, spending money they don't have, money they'll regret later. He wants to edge away from the woman as she approaches him, but a noisy group of teenagers barrels past, reeking cigarette smoke and too many perfumes and the stiff plastic-and-talc of makeup.

So she stands next to him and she murmurs: "Son of Brenin Llwyd," only she has a lilt to her voice and in her mouth it's a beautiful song, not a label he hates, not a thing to edge away from.

He wonders, however briefly, if she feels the absence-fueled heat that he and Lucius felt when they first met each other.

"We don't go into Heat," Lucius had said with disdain, "except when we've been away from our own too long. Preservation of the species."

Preservation of the species. He thinks he would preserve a lot more if he went into heat with this female, rather than with Lucius. But he's never been inclined that way.

"Hekatoi," he replies to her, and then: "I'm Peter. And you are?"

"Jessica," she says, and her voice is halfway inviting, half-forbidding.

He holds his hand out to her, and she slides her long brown fingers against his palm. He thinks about Jackson Rayne when those fingers cross his skin, even if her nose is more like Aslan's: Leonine, high-bridged and sharp. Her eyes are blue, like some flower he doesn't really know the name of. He's seen huskies with such bright eyes. Are there wolves like that, he wonders? Or is she forever set apart from them, like Lucius with his yellow, inhuman irises?

But if he thinks really hard, he thinks he's seen a picture of blue-eyed wolves.

Maybe he's just trying to convince himself she's not special. But he knew she was, from her scent. She's Hekatoi.

Like Lucius.

"I've been looking for you," she says, and he holds his breath, feeling for all the world like a child in a fairy tale, about to realize he is the hero of the story. And then she laughs and the spell dissolves: "Well, not you specifically. But you keep company with the Hekatoi. Conall's child."

Conall? So was Lucius's father Conall O'Conall, or was Lucius's surname merely a further declaration of his Pack and kin? Or did she merely mean to break his last name into its roots?

He squeezes her hand before he lets go. "Lucius? Yeah... We... share an apartment."

He glosses over the truth without thinking, not understanding it himself.

"Is he here?" she asks, and her lilting accent is stronger, and she seems eager to meet him if she can.

"Yeah," he says, and he's disappointed, but secretly. He tilts his head in the general direction of Express for Men. She looks past it to the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore.

She starts to say "Of course," but then Lucius walks out with two bags in hand and the nearest thing to a smile on his face that Peter has ever seen. He's not smiling, but he looks content. Pleased, even.

The expression disappears immediately as Peter walks towards him, and the woman follows. Lucius's eyes fall on the woman, and his nostrils flare. Peter expects an attack, challenge, insulting words, but instead Lucius turns his face away a little, drops his gaze.

"Hekatoi," he breathes, and there is something like reverence in his voice, or at least the constant snarl is gone.

"Beloved," she says. "Brother," she says. "My beloved brother," and she holds her hands out, and he takes them, hesitantly. Abandoning his bags by Peter's ankes, even.

All in all it is a very strange scene for a mall.

Peter picks up the bags, resists an urge to scratch his head.

He is not the hero of this story. ~*~

She comes home with them of course, and certainly Lucius is not really her brother. Her hair is deep brown, her skin like tea-with-milk. She watches everything with an intensity that makes Peter feel as if she is memorizing it all, to take away later.

"There were many rumors," she says while the buildings speed past, "The Hekatoi who would form a Pack again."

Lucius is sullen. "I gave that up."

"Did you?"

Peter does not look but he thinks she is studying him.

"What?" Lucius snaps. "Are you looking for one to join up with?"

She laughs, but Peter can smell Lucius's anger rising. He tries to change the subject: "What do you guys want to eat?"

But at the same time Jessica says: "You know I am a wanderer."

"I'm not hungry," Lucius mutters.

Jessica answers, "Anything spicy." Peter wonders if her accent is Middle Eastern. He thought she was unremarkable at first, but now he thinks she's very pretty. "Maybe Thai?"

Lucius hates Thai. But he did say he wasn't hungry. Lucius hardly ever eats. "Thai it is, then," Peter announces, trying to sound cheerful.

He gets carry-out from Siam Gardens, and the ride back is relatively quiet. She asks him harmless questions: "You are a mixed-blood, no?" "How long have you lived here?" "Where are your parents?" "Have you met others?"

She does not ask about the relationship between them, between Peter and Lucius. The werewolf bond, or any other.

Would she say something, Peter wonders, if he grabs Lucius like he wants to, kisses his scowling mouth and his bent neck?

Lucius would kill him. The thought makes him smile. Lucius has never been so well-behaved as he is in front of this other werewolf he respects. Respect. Does he respect Peter, sometimes/most of the time/rarely?

The thought occupies him until they are back at the apartment, sitting on his floor with their take-out feast spread before them.

It strikes him then that it's strange that they've taken in this stranger like she was kin.

He eats some spicy fried fish, over-heavy in his stomach, his tongue on fire. He gulps at a Labatt's to cool it off, but the heat only intensifies. The woman laughs when he fans at his mouth and sweats.

"Drink some milk," she says, looking very wise.

Peter drinks milk and it helps. It occurs to him that she knows some secrets, after all.

"Eat something," she tells Lucius, scraping out some phad thai onto a paper plate for him.

But Lucius doesn't eat, even if he does pick up a pair of chopsticks.

"Tell me something, Lucius," she says quietly. "Why do you want a Pack? Are you hoping we will return to our former glory?"

"That's like asking why humans want to live in houses!"

"Is it?"

There is a long pause where Lucius refuses to answer. Jessica turns her strange blue eyes on him. "Do you know why we stayed behind, child, why we chose to mingle until we disappeared?"

Lucius is on his feet, hands and teeth clenched. "We were left behind!"

"Were we?" Jessica asks, but Peter knows she was right all along. He isn't even entirely sure of what they're talking about, but he knows she's right and Lucius is wrong.

"Don't mock me!" Lucius rages.

She picks herself up, smiles to Peter, but her words are for someone else.

"Our Packs became theirs, Lucius. That's why we stayed. We *are* them, in heart, if not in body. The ones who left us-- they were the ones that didn't belong."

Peter knows Lucius would rather die than accept that.

Truthfully, he's not sure he believes it, either.

~*~

Lucius bleeds.

Peter watches Lucius bleed, his arrogant facade gone flat, and he knows he is no hero.