Comfort the Wolves

10. Bourbon and Red

Trigger warning: this chapter contains descriptions that might be difficult for people who have experienced miscarriages or abortions. Please read at your own discretion. A summary will be provided at the end of this chapter. <3

Once his side of the river, Ivan slunk up a hotel fire escape and kept to the roofs to avoid the main plazas. There were too many people there who liked the feel of a wolf's soft pelt under their gloved fingers as he passed, and the plazas always had some sort of party underway. Ivan could smell the perfume and flavoured smoke even up here, eight stories high and soaring from roof to roof.

The night crowd drifted in steady currents from bars to tramcars to hotel lobbies and back again. The long windows of the buildings stretched down like mirrors, reflecting the light of the street lamps in such a complex web, Ivan doubted the partygoers even remembered the hour. Caught in the glass flute of their plaza, they moved as carefree as champagne, alive and sparkling and golden-pink.

Someone gasped and pointed up. "Moon pelt!" they cried, and a gaggle of Beltan's finest raised their opera glasses to painted eyes. A few clapped appreciatively as he flew over their heads.

A maid on top of the Pink Elephant Hotel nearly fell in her bucket of wash as Ivan landed next to her. He bowed his head in apology and kept running.

Two more plazas, three streets down and there:

The Pack of the White Pined Woods

Offices

"Beta!" the receptionist said, surprised as she scrambled off the lap of a wolf in her chair. She tugged her skirts back down lace stockings and blushed brighter than the lipstick smeared on her cheek.

The wolf sprawled in her chair saw him, choked on his own sated smile and pushed himself to his feet. "Beta, I—"

Ivan turned his great white flank on them and moved towards the elevator. Not willing to wait, he banged his shoulder into the door to the stairs and leapt up a flight.

"Mother of all that's holy." Ivan heard the wolf mutter to the lady.

"He's been gone ages now." The receptionist sounded as awed herself.

Ivan ran up and up the cold marble stairs. Alpha's suite was on the top floor; Ivan's own below that. They had barracks in the woods with no stairs or elevators or human receptionists, but their Luna preferred the city life. Ivan never understood why.

The last floor had a thick wooden door, reinforced with silver bolts and lining. It opened from within as soon as Ivan's paws hit the landing.

"Shift," Alpha commanded, tossing a pair of cotton trousers at him.

Ivan bared his throat in greeting and obeyed, shoving one leg and then the other in the trousers and tying them off with the drawstring.

"In," Alpha growled.

Ivan didn't flinch. He ducked inside and shut the door.

The place was a mess. Ivan never really liked the Alpha's quarters. Red carpets; pink, plush furnishings; dark, gold-lined panelling on the walls. It was somehow both too dark and too bright at once, which left Ivan feeling stifled if he stayed too long.

But that night, the pink cushions were torn to shreds. The carpet was sodden and sparkling with bourbon and broken glass. The thick gold curtains had been drawn to block out the moonless night, and the fire in the hearth only offered a smudgy light.

The fire's orange glow didn't flatter his Alpha any more than it flattered his pink-red furnishings. Alpha's shirt collar was unbuttoned to the dark hair on his chest; his jaw was unshaven, his brown hair loose down his neck in a mane of knots and kinks. He was a brawler breed, like Thomas, so two of Ivan's shoulder widths could fit in Alpha's one. Those big shoulders were tight with anger, his too-long arms coiled with muscle that pulsed for a target.