A.N.: My friend told me about Bitten and I watched the entire first season in a day. And here we are. I don't like whatshername – Elena. I'd be climbing Clay like a tree!

I find the house in the show very cold; near where I live is Lainston House, which is gorgeous, and I took inspiration from it for Stone Haven.

Call of the Wild

01

No Choice

Scarlet and ochre teased the edges of leaves in a riotous warning of colour signalling the coming of autumn – the woods were being set on fire by the changing seasons, the colours vibrant and awing against the lush dappled greenery all around her, as if the sun herself had traced her fingers over the leaves. She had never seen so much lush greenery – she had grown up predominantly on the West Coast and the desert, and there was nothing like this endless expanse of gorgeous forest, at least not in her experience. And she could taste the difference between an East Coast forest and the burned-out woods of California. Sequoia, Yosemite were the forests of her childhood, and the West Coast sunshine was harsher and dryer than New York State; the air tasted gorgeous here.

Through the open window she could smell yesterday's rain, a crisp wind, the sun-warmed moss, and the delicate dog-violets half-buried in decaying leaves, a sweet tease of honeysuckle and ripe plums. She could smell wood-smoke and, oddly, turpentine. Otherwise, the air was pure.

Despite her anxiousness, she felt like she could fill her lungs to capacity for the first time in months. Pure, crisp air, sharp, full of moisture and gentle warmth and growing, green things. Unpolluted. Her nose twitched, itchy, wanting to go out and explore every scent; she had never been curious about the outdoors before. Her dad used to tease that she was a pampered house-pet; he heard the call of the wild and answered without hesitation.

Pain ripped through her chest, and she gasped softly, wincing, kneading the palm of her hand between her breasts. She had taken her bra off hours ago, aggravated by the underwire digging into her ribs. She hated them – and she'd have to take it off soon anyway. She inhaled deeply, almost unconscious of it, as her mind filtered through the information her nose brought her.

She could smell werewolves.

A lot of them.

She hadn't been expecting that – had been dreading the possibility, but hadn't given it too much thought, or she'd lose her nerve. The Pack were known to live separately except in extenuating circumstances, but unlike Mutts, they were free to claim territory. To lay foundations, and from the look of Stone Haven, they had dug deep and laid very strong ones. Stone Haven was the kind of house that outlasted even the extended lifetimes of generations of werewolves. There was a lot of history within those walls; the future of the werewolves depended on the men who lived there.

Her future depended on them.

Depended on him.

She never thought she'd ever see him again. She had never thought of herself as a masochist until she had left him. And again, now, seeking him out. Leaving him was her choice, made out of grief and heartbreak and betrayal and sheer terror – she had fallen too hard and far too fast, hadn't even realised the implications of what she was getting into. And with whom she was getting into it with. How could she – it was against Pack law to let a human live if they ever found out. It was the law of the Pack, the very first – the secrecy of the werewolf race must be upheld at all costs. Semi-automatics and scientists were a lot more terrifying than angry villagers and pitchforks, but the threat had always been the same. Being hunted.

A frisson of terror shivered through her, and she had to swallow the lump in her chest as she eyed the insignia carved into the gateway columns marking the perimeter of the Danvers' territory. She took a deep breath and hoped. Danvers. She'd hoped never to have to hear that name again – didn't mean it didn't whisper itself across her memory in that delicious place between sleep and awake, when she could still remember dreaming. The place where there was no Pack, no Mutts, no law and no reason for her to flee the only…

Here she was. Years later, she was staring down the barrel of a gun she had locked and loaded herself. Whatever she found over that threshold was of her own making.

She just hoped that…he'd understand why. Now that everything had changed…she could explain.

Would they let her?

She was going to be asking them all a lot – more than anyone could ever ask of family, let alone a stranger, and it made her stomach hurt to come here, after what she had done, asking…for help. She had been self-sufficient to ironically an almost damaging degree – she found it nearly impossible to concede that she couldn't handle everything. Why would he want to grant her any favours, after the way she'd treated him? Her chest felt like a gaping chasm, raw and aching and burning as if lava constantly ate at the edges of the wound. Dread, shame, guilt, curiosity and, worse, anticipation, burned inside her chest and she had to focus to swallow it all down. She couldn't appear as anything but calm and in control – even though she was far from it. She was terrified.

But she was here. And there was nothing else she could do now; her future was in their hands. Either she made a U-turn and just never stopped moving, dreading the future, or she could continue up to the Elizabethan redbrick mansion, and face the ghosts inside. Idling at the front gate, she licked her lips, her fingers shaking with nerves as she reached up to adjust the rear-view mirror, her anxiousness easing as a little face appeared, sleepy dark eyes focused on his Baby. She sighed and frowned at how tall he now was in his car-seat. He'd already outgrown it; she'd have to buy a new one. Just another thing on the list of things she was struggling to provide for him.

He was the reason she was here. He was worth every risk.

If not for him she'd never have come here, never have sought out this place, that man ever again. Too painful. She hated that flutter of anticipation at the thought of seeing him again for the first time in years – hated that she had lived alone since leaving him; hated that he had taken their future.

There was only one reason she was here.

But it didn't mean she didn't have to fight the urge to take that U-turn. Her battered old powder-blue Jeep crawled through a set of redbrick gateposts overgrown with ivy and honeysuckle – ageless sentries posted directly in front of the symmetrical house, redbrick walls winding their way around the sprawling additions to the main house, trimmed with deep flowerbeds. The main house and gardens were protected by the redbrick wall; the five hundred acres of forests owned by the Danvers for generations were protected by the reputation of the people who lived in this beautiful house, by ghost stories and Chinese whispers. She drove through the redbrick gateposts, into a wide courtyard with a perfectly circular green lawn in the centre. The perfect place to take that U-turn. She could just circle the drive and keep going.

Only, she couldn't. She was struck by the beauty of the house, symmetrical, three-storeyed with enormous windows trimmed in white. She half-expected Elizabeth Bennett to traipse out with her muddy petticoats, Darcy pining after her from an upstairs window. Beautiful. A beautiful, historical home, European – English – in design and attitude behind the construction: the redbrick had been meant to last. And because this was New York, not California with its earthquakes or the South with hurricanes, it had. She brought the Jeep to a careful stop in front of the house, behind a Land Rover.

Daunting wasn't the word. She licked her lips, carefully applying the handbrake, practically hearing the car groan from exhaustion and relief, and flipped the visor to check the mirror. She had stopped downtown in Bear Valley to freshen up, change her outfit, eat her body-weight in protein and change Fletcher, and now checked her appearance. Anxious. Tired, beneath the light touches of cosmetics. She sighed, knowing there wasn't much that would change the dark circles under her eyes unless she got out of the car and rang the doorbell. She flipped the visor back up and unbuckled, climbing out of the car. The cold breeze sluiced over her bare arms, but her little dumpling warmed her up as she lifted him out of his seat. He'd been in his car-seat nearly all day and he had been grizzling his objections at being stuck back in it after stopping at the diner. Usually he was the sweetest baby boy in the world, always smiling. They were both tired; and he picked up on her nerves. Yawning, threatening to drop his pacifier on the gravel, she popped it back into his mouth, shouldered her purse and eyed the house before hesitantly approaching. Fletcher sighed and settled against her, familiar against her chest, grabbing for her mouth, his most recent discovery, tangling his tiny dimpled fingers in her long hair.

They would have heard her car approaching, of course; it didn't take long for a werewolf to answer their door – unless of course they didn't want to answer. Hopefully she'd at least get across the threshold. Maybe. Unless he answered. She had no idea how he would react – the man she remembered, the werewolf he was beneath the façade.

Nerves ate at her, boiling in her belly like too much merlot on an empty stomach. She hitched Fletcher higher on her hip and pressed the doorbell, listening to the sound echo with a metallic taste off the walls and soft-furnishings. She had never made it as far as Stone Haven, though she'd heard about it in great detail. She wondered if his artefacts were littered around the house; if the others knew who she was. She dreaded them knowing who she was. And the idea of them not knowing who she was hurt worse than that dread. Because if they didn't know, she hadn't meant to him what he still meant to her.

She leaned down to press a kiss against the soft dark down on Fletcher's head, closing her eyes to focus on listening. As a kid she had always wondered how Dad could hear her unwrapping a Charleston Chew while she hid in her closet: now, she could hear dormice scurrying through the undergrowth, the chirp of blackbirds in the hedgerows, the rustle of the wind through the leaves, the hum of electricity, the static sound of a radio turned low and the rich timbre of masculine voices, six of them. That matched up to the different scents teasing her nose. Of all of her senses, she'd really noticed a change in her sense of smell – everything was dialled up to eleven-million but it was scents that tickled her nose wherever she went.

She focused on the delicate scent of the lavender Johnson's baby-shampoo she used every evening to bathe Fletcher, the herbs in the planters. She listened, heard the men's voices grow softer and drop off, footsteps, and opened her eyes to see a shadow flicker beyond the frosted-glass of the front-door, before it opened.

Her heart seized. She should have known…of course he'd open the door.

The one person she'd dreaded ever seeing again – and the one man into whose arms she would always run.

She had always known that; and she hated that fact.

Sultry hazel eyes locked on hers, angry – dangerous.

She could taste his anger, and his shock.

"Joanna."

A.N.: I loved the flashbacks to when Clay first met/fell in love with Elena, you can really see how their personalities have changed in the four years since. I love the shy man Clay was, as much as I love the tormented man he reveals himself to be.