Author's Note: This is a fifteen-chapter, incredibly self-indulgent little story wherein some of the Ace Attorney characters become werewolves. I'll be updating the story weekly until it's done. There are spoilers through Dual Destinies. On an unrelated note, I'm helping to run an Ace Attorney mini fic and art exchange! Look it up on AO3 or on Tumblr (aceattorneyexchange) and come join us, please!
Prologue: An Accidental Induction
Juniper doesn't mean to bite him.
There are very strict rules, after all. No changing in public places. No telling anyone about the gift without clearing it with the packs in the area. No Changing anyone who hasn't asked for the gift. No Changing anyone without a pack handy to help with the initial transformation and the adjustment period.
It's not something she would even have considered doing, were she thinking rationally. She was born to the gift; it comes to her as naturally as breathing. She has seen those who aren't, though—those who have had to find a balance between who they were and who they have become, and it is not always a pretty sight. She may have dreamt, sometimes, about telling Apollo what she is. About him reacting with joy and enthusiasm rather than terror and disbelief. About him smiling for her, that big, glorious, gorgeous grin of his, and telling her that he wants it.
About running with him, under a full bountiful moon, the calls of the pack around them and the scent of him filling her nostrils and he would be gorgeous as a wolf, sleek and small, his fur dark until the moon catches it just right and shows that there are more colors than just shadow in it.
She has dreamt of him bowing down, inviting her to play, and she could wag her tail before dancing away and—
And she wishes, sometimes, that she hadn't met him in the fall, so shortly after the October full moon. Wishes she hadn't gotten his scent and his kindness all mixed up in the mating season, because it doesn't seem to want to stop being mixed up in it.
Though mating is really the last thing on her mind as the courtroom erupts into panic. She heard the proclamation that the bomb was about to explode, but everything after was lost in a sudden influx of far too much information. Sometimes her sensitive ears and nose are a blessing; sometimes they are a curse, and now is one of those times. She cannot seem to find her balance, her body wanting to shift as the scents of panic and fear and urine permeate the air. She cannot shift, though. She has been taught far too well what the consequences of Changing in public would be, and so she holds on to her human form by sheer stubborn determination and tries to figure out what she is supposed to do.
Eventually the press of bodies fades, and a single voice manages to pierce through the cacophony.
His voice.
He fought through the crowd to her side, and there is nothing of her wolf in the tears that rise to her eyes, the joy that rolls as a mewling keen from her mouth. He does care about her, as more than just a client, as more than just Athena's friend. Even if he isn't currently enamored with her as she is with him, he must care, to have bothered to—
The explosion catches her completely unprepared, a wall of heat and dust and ash, a pelting of small stones and a grumbling of the whole building that shakes her twitching bones and pushes the Change ever closer to the surface.
He protects her.
She doesn't realize that until blood is already flooding her mouth, iron dripping from where her too-long, barely-human-still teeth have sunk into the flesh around his collarbone.
"It's fine!" His voice is barely loud enough to be heard through the ringing in her ears, and she can feel his heart beating too hard where his body is pressed against her. "We're fine! Everything's—"
Another piece of the ceiling caves in then, and Apollo yowls, a primal sound of pain, but he doesn't move from his spot defending and protecting her.
Juniper presses her face to his body, inhaling his scent in deep droughts, drawing her humanity back around her until it is tears that run down her face rather than whimpers that slide from her throat.
She forgets, by the time the paramedics find them, that she bit him, and since Athena doesn't know about what she is, it is not one of the things her friend helps her remember.