AN: Thanks to my amazing beta, Blythechild, who has helped me get the foundation of this complex tale into some sort of reasonable state.
This is not a love story. Or it is, but not the traditional kind.
This is the kind of story where loving something more than you can possibly imagine won't stop that thing from being taken away, and these are the kinds of characters whose worldviews don't involve standing by and letting that happen.
Warnings for: dubious consent, possible character death, sexual content.
Updates weekly on Wednesdays.
Enjoy the journey.
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Full Summary:
'Agents Emily Prentiss and Spencer Reid are the latest victims in a long line of what authorities are only now admitting could be serial abductions ranging back over a decade. Dubbing the abductor 'The Ghost', the only thing authorities seem to be able to agree on is this: no victims have yet been recovered.'
For Aaron Hotchner, it was his worst fear come to life. Forced to work alongside Jason Gideon and the human members of the elite BAU, Aaron and what remained of his pack found themselves fighting against everything they'd ever stood for in order to bring their people home.
For the missing agents, it was life shattering. Trapped almost four thousand miles away and forced into betrayal by their captors, a desperate flight into a deadly blizzard made them realize how precarious their grip on survival truly was. But that didn't matter. There was no giving up.
It wasn't only their survival they were fighting for.
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Arc One: Chapter One to Three
Chapter One: Wolf Winter
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It wasn't that she was unhappy with her life, it was just that Emily Prentiss was of the firm belief that life was more than ticking off a series of checkboxes: learn to walk, learn not to bite people you shouldn't, go to school, go to college, get a career, get a mate, puppies by forty with the right kinda wolf, retire, die politely without making a mess. Life done, good job you.
And yet, here she was. Sitting at a high school reunion in a dress that said nothing about her, telling absolutely no one about her life to avoid their judgemental eyes. Tick-box labelled 'dreg up the past for impractical validation': checked.
"I'm just saying," slurred the drunken—Annabelle? Jocelyn? —woman, leaning heavily on Emily's shoulder as though she'd forgotten the years between them and the inherent awkwardness of coming to a high school reunion. "You were always the best at what you did and, you know, some guys dig that thing."
"That thing?" Emily asked dryly, tracing her finger around the rim of her sticky cocktail glass and half-heartedly hoping that her phone would buzz with a cheery oops got to go, someone's being murdered horribly text. Anything to save her from Ms. Two-Point-Five-Kids and Mr. White-Picket-Fence at her side.
Emily despised mediocrity.
"You know," the woman said, leaning in close as though the crowds of people around them gave a single fuck about this mind-numbingly boring conversation. Carly. That was it. Carly Buck-teeth, and she'd once thrown eggs at Emily's locker "That thing."
Oh.
That thing.
Emily had forgotten how much that thing had bothered them all back then.
"Oh yeah," Emily said, smiling with all of her teeth and a shade too much gum. "You mean the werewolf thing? Well sure, shit, I should date a guy who fetishizes a fundamental part of who I am. That's sounds great."
Carly swallowed, eyes widening, and Emily smirked.
Later that night, her phone buzzed with an expected text—and Emily felt a little bit guilty for wanting it now it was here—but it turned out to be more pleasant then she'd first assumed when the vibration had kicked up in her handbag.
From Bossman: Having fun?
The jolt in her gut had nothing to do with the outside chill of the dying winter or the sight of his name on the cell phone screen. It had nothing to do with her flirting with mediocrity with a man she had no reason to be testing those waters with. It maybe had a little to do with his cautious smile—a little sweet and a lot hidden—or possibly it was his infuriatingly perpetual professionalism, even when he was making her an offer that would see them both in the doghouse down at HR.
To Bossman: It's stupendous. I can't believe you wouldn't come with me. I'm wearing a dress and everything. Knees galore.
From Bossman: I do like knees. And I knew you'd hate it. Would you like to run instead?
"Emily? Are you listening?" Carly was drunk and stupid, eyebrows furrowed together. Emily looked up at her remembering, suddenly, the dead rabbit they'd shoved under her windshield wiper when she was sixteen. "I was just saying—"
Emily got up and walked—stumbled—away. Away from the bar and the people she didn't care about, tapping at her phone as the door swung open and a blast of unsympathetic air slammed into her unprotected skin and face. It was, for a moment, brisk. A shocking reminder of an oncoming threat of snow. She tipped her mouth up to the sky, shivered once, and felt the chill melt instead into a slow, pleasing sensation of pressure against her body.
Cold was nothing to the wolf.
To Bossman: Sure. If you can catch me ; )
The chase was half the fun, after all. Even with a man who was all suits and hands and regulations. She kicked her shoes off and darted across the damp surface of the parking lot with feet that burned from the frost until she found her car. The lock beeped open automatically as it registered the microchip in the dog-tag around her neck, an alteration she'd finally conceded to after the first time she'd been trapped as a wolf outside a locked car containing her pants and gun. She considered her next step as she leapt inside and dragged the door shut behind her, foot tapping on the carpet. The car would be fine here overnight. There was a gate into the green grid nearby. The air was cold, her blood was up, and if she timed this right…
Well, never let it be said that she was mature.
Thanking whoever had invented tinted windows, she shucked her dress gleefully and shifted; bare to the world for a second with nothing on but the chain and its clinking tags. The cold ebbed, the world changed with her fluctuating eyesight, and she yawned and stretched with claws catching on the fabric of the seat cover.
Great, she thought, looking down and wrinkling her muzzle with distaste. Fur everywhere again.
Technically, technically¸shifting outside of the green grid was discouraged. But if she drove all the way there to make use of the changing rooms supplied, she couldn't do this…
Nose to the button on the inner handle, the door sprung open to allow her to bound out using her shoulder to nudge it shut behind her. Carly stepped out of the bar, laughing and tugging her coat on over her too-short cocktail dress. Emily dropped low and wiggled her haunches. This is for the rabbit, she thought wryly, and leapt forward to hurtle past them as a blur of black fur and muscle. Carly shrieked as she stumbled back, and Emily bounded down the street with a cheerful awoof!
Real mature, lady, another shifter out of sight nearby scolded. Emily howled in reply and ran faster, disliking the heavy impact of paws on cold cement but vividly alive with the power and speed this form allowed her. People stepped back warily as she raced past, but tonight, drunk and wild, she didn't really care. A great black wolf was an intimidating sight, especially with the bulk her winter coat gave her. They didn't know her, the her that was under the fur coat, and that was a kind of euphoric freedom.
Distantly, a pack thought reached her. Not words—the sender was far too distant for distinct words or even a sense of who the speaker was—but it had to be someone with whom she was intimately acquainted with for her to even be able to get the curious sensation at all: a whisper of feeling only translatable as where are you?
A gate yawned across a moderately busy crosswalk. She skidded to a stop, wagged her tail at a startled schoolgirl in a bright orange parka leaning on the button, and sent back a playful running. The ticking walk indication clicked overhead—tick tick tick tick—the cars hummed past, the people stamped their feet, and Emily shook her coat out and ignored them all. She sent another feeling, this one private and only because she knew exactly who was on the other end: come find me with a longing heat behind it. Want you. Across the road, buildings vanished and trees yawned behind a chain-link fence overgrown with barely restrained creeping vines.
District of Columbia Green Grid: in collaboration with the United Persons Authority. The sign repeated every block, solid black against a white background with a list of rules below and written in thick, heavy lettering that even canid eyes could discern. Emily crossed the road as the tick tick became a tickticktickticktick and bared her teeth at the new signs, replaced every few months as protestors ruined the old ones.
No pack activity
No hunting
No pets
No loitering
Registration mandatory for access to Green Grid therianthropic services
Around her neck, the chain clicked accusingly. Four tags: one to unlock her home, one for her car, one with medical and emergency contact details.
One with a sharply inscribed EEPren509399:094, rimmed in grey rubber with the FBI insignia stamped on the back. Federal dog that tag covertly pronounced, moderately dangerous. Do not pet. Working animal. She huffed angrily at the implication, and nudged the clack gate open to feel grass and dirt under her paws rather than cement and salt from the icy roads.
Good mood gone at the reminder, she sped into the woods at a speed she wouldn't be able to keep up, feeling her muscles burn and stretch and burn again as she pushed herself to the limit and beyond. One tenth of a mile in width and stretching across DC in a wide lattice of twenty-five intersecting routes, the green grids were a governmental concession to those therianthropes living within the city and suburbs who moved on paw or hoof rather than foot. Some attempt to obscure the tightening of their fundamental human rights by saying but look, we wrote off valuable developmental land in order to give you people some pretty trees.
Annoyed, came the emotion from behind her, moving quickly onto her trail. A feeling now instead of an idea, and a hint of person behind that feeling. Her tail waved, her whiskers twitching with interest and paws kicking up in a feisty kind of excitement as her body recognised him seconds before her brain caught up. Male. Grumpy. Anal retentive. It was a mind-voice that sounded at home wearing a suit, even when wearing a fur coat instead. And it changed abruptly as he caught her scent on the damp wind: eager, focused, pleased.
She was being hunted now.
She ran because that was the game. The winter was closing around them and it wasn't just her blood stirring and calling her to turn back, go to him. He howled once, low and provoking, and it was a huffing call designed to catch only her attention. It made her feel soft and warm inside, the wolfy part of her brain purring and coaxing her to lay down and open herself to him, to that rough masculine song.
It was a far cry from the shy offer he'd made her three months before, expressing his interest with a barely concealed flush to his cheeks and the clear expectation of rejection in the set of his shoulders. This is unprofessional and thoughtless, he'd said, swallowing hard. I'm in a position of power over you as your superior officer. If you feel at all trapped or uncomfortable, I've failed in my duty of care to you…
Are you asking me out? she'd responded, choking back a laugh. He was just so reserved. She doubted he'd ever given in to the 'throes of passion', despite having a werewolf son who was absolute proof that he'd allowed himself at least once to do exactly that. Why now?
I don't want the… season… to influence your answer, he'd replied after a moment, and her body had immediately heated at the implication. Unprofessional or not, she'd immediately pictured his hands on her in every way and by the increasing stiffness of his stance, he'd done exactly the same. The date was fine, they hadn't slept together, and he'd held the door open for her despite her rolling her eyes at the act.
The next date was better.
On the third, she'd taken him home and found out exactly what laid beneath those careful suits and practised expressions. But they were human still. Two people finding comfort in each other, on the possible cusp of more.
Tonight, he caught her. Broad-chested and taller than her by almost a head, his fur as black was as her own but marked with splashes of white on his muzzle and chest and a grey mask around his dark eyes. She heard the padding of paws heavy on the peat-soil behind her as the trees flashed by; heard his panting breath and a low warm growl. In response, she howled and hurtled forward as he ran by her side, their shoulders brushing together. Every touch sent a thrill zipping down her spine, their tails high and teasing. He caught her again, nipping at her flanks. Despite the season still being a month away from hitting them both, she knew her brain was busy flooding her body with every chemical it had at its advantage to coax her into more. She couldn't name them all. Reid could no doubt, but he was probably out under the same yellow moon playing the same timeless game with a faceless stranger. In these months, most did. Even the reclusive ones.
Except for her, this year was different. Every previous season she'd taken part in, she'd simply found strangers. Pleasing howls. Friendly faces. Wolves she could stand and trust. But Hotch wasn't a stranger. And spending the whole season with the one wolf…
That was a commitment.
I don't want the season to influence your answer, he'd said, and then he'd introduced her to his son as his potential mate, not just another pack wolf. Wooed her. Taken her on dates and wordlessly expressed that she was beautiful and desirable with his body and his actions. He chased her tonight because the winter drove them, but there was something else below the wanton hunt.
Tonight, they were wolves and their minds curled together as their surroundings became recognizable and sparse, turning from the unfamiliar runways of the green to the thin woods that ran behind the home he shared with his son. She tasted his excitement in his scent and in his mind, and she tasted the something else below it. A deep craving that wasn't just for her body, despite the way it called for him, but for everything else she could offer as well, and everything he wanted to give her.
Home; family; love.
Mediocrity, maybe, but a tempting mediocrity.
She gasped at that touch, whirling on the spot. Her paws kicked up loose earth and the air became thick with the smells of the land. Pines dry with the cold winter air. A passing deer, its trail murky with fear. A distant hint of Hotch's home; the even more distant tang of JJ and Will on the wind nearby. And then he was there: large and male and dancing with her, muzzles brushing together as they moved together and away. On two legs and four, chests heaving and his tail curving high over his spine as hers curled to the side.
They could speak. They were close enough.
They didn't.
A wordless come here from him, lined with longing, and she whined and arched her throat. His muzzle was soft as he nuzzled against that offered vulnerability, leaning heavily on her side. The weight was foreboding, but she hummed under it and followed him as slid off and padded towards the gate behind his home. Around his neck, the chain of his own tags stood out vividly against the black and the moon cast silver highlights in his fur. Shadowy eyes flickered back to her as he nudged the gate open—clack—and he made a soft woo noise deep in his throat. A strange noise. An intimate noise.
She slipped through after him, crossing a silent midnight road and through the open gate into his darkened yard. The door unlocked with an electronic thunk, the handle giving way to large paws as he reared and pressed down on it. Inside, the home was silent, alive with scent, empty except for them as though this night was made only for two.
Claws clicked on the tiles; they were wordless still. The door thumped shut behind her and he turned with a spurt of ferocious speed, pressing his muzzle to hers and breathing in keenly. She pressed back, eager and shaking, her hind legs slipping out beneath her with a combination of her brain whispering yes and the shitty grip her paws had on the slick surface. It was a wolfy hug and his heart was beating powerfully against her side as she nestled under his chest.
She gave in first, shifting. Human and cold on the kitchen floor, her bare legs chilled instantly but her back and side warmed by the touch of his fur. With a hiss, she unfolded her legs and reclined back with one arm propping her up. She knew she was exposed and open; she knew this was it. The fur against her vanished as he shifted too, suddenly human with light casting outlandish patterns on fluctuating skin and fur. Still overtop her, still a heavy weight; he was on and in her in a heartbeat and she cried out with the moment as he worked her open with steady sways of his hips. Lips against her collarbone and breath hot, neither could find their voices as the wolves gripped their minds and pressed them onward.
It was raw, animalistic, but still he kissed her as she shivered through a tense release. Both already on edge from the chase and the hunt, he followed her with a moan and a soft oh that was surprised and pleased and satisfied all at once. His eyes shuttered and mouth turned up into a shy smile as he added to the mess they'd made on the foggy tiles.
"Gorgeous," he whispered, as he tugged her up from the floor. Stunning, he'd whisper again as they stumbled halfway to the bedroom and ended up making out against a doorframe like bawdy teenagers.
Oh god, Emily, EmilyEmily, he'd moan, as he took her again and again; she'd mangle some reply and think of nothing at all, really, except the fingers tracing lines of heat across her skin. And at some point during that night, she'd wondered if there wasn't something to this. Something offered. Something to gain.
They'd sleep tangled together and in the morning they'd do it all over again. And again as winter waned and something within them whispered more. Any chance they had, they'd repeat the dance. Everything within them begged for it. A yearning emptiness that only reared its head as the snow and ice melted, reminding them that they were less.
Half.
Checkboxes left unchecked.
Spring approached, and their wolves drove them.