Page 103 of White Wolf

“Shut up.”

Kolya chuckled, a rare and surprisingly-delicate sound from him. It was easy to forget, when faced with his daily scowling countenance, shaggy hair, and the cold way he killed, that he used to be charming and courtly. “I’ve never even see you look at a girl before.”

Nikita stiffened, razor hovering against his cheek. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Kolya said easily, and began to lather his own face. He shrugged. “You’re too tense. Always gloomy. It’s good for you, I think. At least a little.” In measurements, he meant. Enough to cheer him up, but not enough to distract him.

“I’mgloomy? What about you?”

“I’m just very, very proficient.”

Nikita felt something light and effervescent bubble in his chest, and it was such a rare occurrence that it took him a moment to realize it was laughter.

Kolya grinned at his reflection and said, “I wonder how Sasha’s wolves are getting along with being inside.”

~*~

His wolveshatedbeing inside. “It’s alright, it’s alright,” Sasha cooed for the thousandth time.

His alpha girl responded with a doubtful snort.

“It is, I promise.” He scratched her ears. But she didn’t lean into the attention like normal, pinning him with a yellow-eyed, accusatory glare.

“It’s remarkable how they listen to you,” Dr. Ingraham said, circling the steel table where she sat.

“Not really.” Sasha shrugged and took a tighter grip on the wolf’s ruff. “It’s a pack thing.”

Ingraham looked up from his clipboard, pen poised at the ready. “Could you describe that to me? The ‘pack thing’?”

“Oh. Well…”

Dr. Ingraham reached with one finger toward the wolf and she swung around to snarl at him, teeth bared.

“Oh!” he gasped, leaping back, almost tripping over his own feet.

Sasha tried not to laugh. “I don’t think she wants you to touch her.”

The doctor, now white as chalk, nodded and took two careful steps back, until his shoulders hit the bank of cabinets behind him and he was forced to stop, eyes trained on the alpha female the whole time.

“In the pack,” Sasha explained, “there’s always one alpha male, and that’s me. I’m their leader. If I say that it’s safe, they’ll believe me.” Even if they didn’t like it, like right now, indoors and underground. “But a good alpha listens to his pack, and takes it seriously when they sense danger.”

“So they actually speak to you? In words of some sort?”

Sasha frowned. God, this man was dense and overeager. He couldn’t really believe Monsieur Philippe had entrusted this man with their secrets. “No,” he said, speaking slowly, in case the doctor’s poor grasp of Russian was part of the problem. “Some of it’s growls, and yips, and howls. But mostly it’s a…asense.”

“A sense?”

“I can’t explain it very well.”

“Doctor,” Philippe said as he entered the lab, “you’ve studied wolves in America, haven’t you? They aren’t so different in Russia, I wouldn’t think.”

For once, the mage wasn’t wearing his fur coat and hat, instead an outdated suit with a long row of gold buttons down the front and at the cuffs, the collar buttoned all the way up to his chin. It looked like something a military officer might have worn twenty years ago…save there were no marks of rank or accomplishment. Without the coat, under the harsh caged lights, Philippe looked like nothing more than a pudgy old man with bags beneath his eyes and a carefully-groomed mustache.

His presence immediately put Dr. Ingraham at ease. “Monsieur Philippe,” he greeted with a relieved sigh. “Sasha was trying to tell me about communicating with his pack.”

Philippe drew up beside Sasha and offered the back of his hand to the female; she sniffed his knuckles and turned her head away, disinterested.

“Sasha communicates with his pack the same way any wolf would,” Philippe said.

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