Feral Snippets

Lily B65

Set between chapter 65 and the epilogue of Bonds.

"Oh hey." Lily grabbed Nat's arm and the wolf paused, looking up at her and cocking her head. It was a few days after the battle and they were packing up the wolves' houses. "I meant to tell you, I met your dad once."

Natania's lip quirked. "Which one?"

"Alistair." Lily barely remembered, there had been so many visions since then, but she'd recognized that wolf and had asked Ray about it and he'd remembered. Ray was good about things like that, but he didn't have to deal with potentially dozens of visions everyday.

Natania growled under her breath and Lily ruffled her hair. He was dead, and he'd never hurt her again. "Made a bargain with him, did you?"

"Nope." Lily shook her head. "It was sixty or seventy years ago, he was around your age when we met. I don't fully remember so this is Ray's take not mine, we did a lot of jobs in pairs back then, before we got stronger. I just recognized him. Thought you'd want to know."

Natania put down her box. "I'm listening." She looked torn between curiosity and exhaustion and Lily frowned. The wolf caught her look and laughed. "It's okay, Lily. He's dead. What did he want?"

"Information," Lily said and Natania hummed in acknowledgement. She watched the wolf's reaction as she added, "He wanted to know where every pride in the country was."

Natania tensed. "Why?"

"We were under the impression that he wanted to kill them all."

Natania put her head in her hands. "Oh, that fucking bastard."

"We didn't help him," Lily continued. "We're not in the habit of assisting in extinction events. So he tried to attack us." She snorted. "He's lucky we didn't kill him."

"You should've," Natania muttered.

Lily flicked her nose. "You weren't born yet. That's actually when I had my first vision of you. They didn't really start until decades later, but Ray told me I said your name and then never elaborated. He didn't link it to you until I asked him about Alistair." She wished she could remember what the vision had been about.

"Glad to know I haunted you for sixty years instead of ten." Natania looked at her hands. "How many prides did he wipe out?"

Lily sighed. She had expected the question, but she knew Natania would feel guilty about it, even if she hadn't been alive yet. Everything was somehow her fault in her mind. "A dozen. We warned them, but that didn't save them all."

Natania scoffed. "He fucking started this." She started to pace. "They always told us that the pridelanders started it, that they wanted our territory. That we had to kill them on sight or they would kill us. That we were the wronged party."

"There were territory disputes before this," Lily corrected. The wolves and wildcats hadn't gotten along for centuries. Alistair had just pushed matters along.

Natania paused and looked at her. "But did we hunt each other just for being in the same city?"

"Not nearly as often," she conceded. But it did happen, there were always deaths within the supernatural community. An unavoidable risk when you had creatures who could gain power by feeding on others.

"All those raids on our territory," Natania snarled. "And then I," despair coated her voice, "I did the same fucking thing. Wiped out a whole pride."

Lily put a hand on her shoulder. She knew that night still haunted their wolf. Vincent regretted giving her the information, but had taken Lily's word that they had needed Nat to want to come to them. There were other master vampires around, and they had needed to give Nat a reason to go to them, and needed her to not die doing an exchange with some newly created vampire that couldn't control themself.