Page 133 of White Wolf

“Explain it to us, Sasha,” he urged.

Every face in the room was open, listening. Wanting their young wolf’s take on it.

Nikita felt a surge of warmth. Of belonging. It was a sensation he probably didn’t deserve to feel, given the things he’d done, but one for which he was grateful. Sasha kept calling them a pack, and he felt it now, that sense of being a part of something purely good and loving.

It was staggering.

Sasha set his half-eaten slice of bread down in his lap with a sigh. His alpha female sniffed it, nose twitching with interest, but didn’t eat it out from under him.

“Philippe said it was like a triangle,” he said, and again sketched one in the air with his finger, like he’d done for Nikita outside the abandoned cabin in the forest. When he’d been hopeful and bright-eyed. “Vampire, mage, wolf. The mage and the wolf are the left and right hands of the vampire.”

“Every powerful fucker in the world has a left and right hand to do his dirty work,” Ivan said, tone consoling.

Sasha gave a bitter smile. “I knew that. In theory. But I didn’t expect it to feel like this.”

“Welcome to our world,” Kolya said with a sigh.

“Siberians aren’t used to bending the knee,” Feliks said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“No,” Sasha said. He pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s somethinginside. There’s this voice – I heard it as soon as his eyes opened. It wants me to submit to him, and–” His voice shivered. “I know it’s not just following orders. It’s like he wants in, and if I let him, I won’t be me anymore.”

One of the wolves whined quietly.

Everyone looked like they’d been slapped.

“Can he control you?” Katya asked, tapping the side of her head with a finger. “Like a psychic?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m keeping him out, but, it takes effort.” He hunched his shoulders, looking miserable. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I know that.” Another sad smile. “I can’t let you all down.”

Ivan snorted.

Nikita traded a look with Kolya.

Kolya said, “Sasha, if you want to run away, you can.”

Sasha jerked upright, gaze so startled it was almost frightened. He looked to Nikita. “But–”

“I won’t speak for everyone,” Nikita said, “but I know, personally, that I’m tired of following the orders of maniacs. Fetching you from Siberia was our order,” he said to Sasha. “And letting Philippe…do what he did to you, those were our orders. But nobody knows Rasputin even exists except for us. I say we use him if we can – if he’s useful – but I won’t let him make us worse monsters than we are. Fuck the triangle. Either he helps us beat the Nazis, and the Communists, or he can go back in the fucking ground.”

It was quiet a beat.

“Seconded,” Kolya said.

Ivan: “Third.”

Feliks and Pyotr said, “Fourth,” together, and then looked at each other, startled.

Katya nodded. “I agree.”

Sasha glanced around the room, expression disbelieving – and very touched.

“We do it as a pack,” Nikita said. “Or else we, I don’t know, fuck off to America.”

Ivan produced a flask from his pocket with a grin. “I’ll drink to that.”

~*~

It was sometime in the deep, black dark of the middle of the night when Nikita eased away from Katya and out from beneath the covers. She rolled over and pressed her face into the warm spot he’d left on the pillow, but didn’t wake.

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