Fatherhood was different than Draco imagined. For one, it was a lot harder. During the first week after Wilbur and Martin were born, with Hermione mostly asleep from the revitalising potions she was given, it fell to Draco, with occasional help from the pack's females, to take care of the pups. There were moments during that first week where the pups would be fed, clean and peacefully asleep beside their mother, and Draco would look at his new family, eyes moist, thinking he had to be the luckiest man alive. At other moments, Draco would want to cry from sheer frustration when despite all his attempts to get them to settle down his sons would assault his sensitive ears with their angry squalls until they wore themselves out.
Then there was the constant worry. He had not anticipated this aspect of becoming a parent. When his pups weren't around, he worried about their safety. Quite often, just as he would start to nod off, he would wake up in a state of panic, worried that something had happened to his pups. When they weren't around, he worried they may want for something and when they were with him, he worried about failing them. Since becoming a werewolf, Draco found himself to be the most self-assured he had ever been, but fatherhood caused him to revert to the vulnerable teen he was in Hogwarts—one who frequently thought that somewhere he had fallen short of expectations. Back then, as a Pureblood and the Malfoy heir, his father had expected him to prove his superiority over the Halfbloods and Mudbloods. But, no matter how hard he applied himself, Potter still bested him in quidditch and Hermione in academics. After six days of next to no sleep and constant feelings of inadequacy, Draco had a little meltdown as he sat in one spot crying, worried he would fail his sons as he had his father.
Smiling down at their son feeding from her breast, Hermione did not notice him enter. Draco stood transfixed by what a mother's love truly was. While he himself was handling parenthood by fluctuating between moments of joy, laughter, panic and secretly shed tears, Hermione had taken to it brilliantly, as she did all things apparently. She was ever calm and patient and, by the gods, she was so beautiful, he thought, watching her cuddle both their sons in her arms and attempting to sing a lullaby even if she could not hold a tune. The idea of her someday leaving him, leaving them, broke his heart a little, but it was a reality he needed to embrace.
Seeing Hermione and the pups together, Draco understood the significance of family. Members of his pack were a great help, of course. There was always someone available to watch the twins—he suspected some even traded favours for an opportunity to mind Wilbur and Martin. Children were a type of novelty for the werewolves. None of them having sired any since they were turned and very few having children from before, there were barely any with experience in child rearing. However, what they lacked in experience they made up for with sheer enthusiasm, confirming his belief that the pack would look after his pups.
Draco's thoughts often drifted to his former family since becoming a father. By now, news of the birth of his sons would have reached his family, so Draco was surprised, as well as a little disappointed, that his mother had not paid him a visit or even sent an owl so far. Already proud of Wilbur and Martin, Draco was eager to show them off to his mother, especially since she often spoke of how much she looked forward to becoming a grandmother some day. He did not have the same expectations of Lucius. With all his prejudices, no matter how miraculous their birth, for Lucius the twins would be no more than half-breeds.
Draco stretched out on the bed so his sons lay between Hermione and him. He looked at his sons—Wilbur, still completely bundled up while Martin had managed to free one hand so it stuck out of the swaddling cloth—and smiled at the picture they made side by side. He stroked Wilbur's round chin and Martin chubby hand, and sighed with contentment. He could not imagine either of his sons ever doing anything so grave that would make him abandon them the way Lucius had abandoned him. As exhausting as caring for the twins could be, he would willingly die before he let anyone harm them.
As was often the case, these stray thoughts of Lucius led to comparisons with the other man who had sired him. How different would life have been if his sire was someone as cruel as Fenrir or uncaring as Lucius? However burdensome the alpha's commands, Draco did not feel them half as strongly as those unfortunate enough to have Greyback as their alpha and sire. How lucky then for him that his sire was Oskar, one of the oldest members of the pack, an Elder and a former alpha. Draco had learnt much about werewolves and their ways because of Oskar, who watched over him like a father and helped him transition into the man he was today.
In many ways, Oskar was not too different from Lucius Malfoy. Both were regal men whose actions were governed by a set of principles they valued and they demanded excellence from those they called family; neither gave him any quarter. Their differences shone through in how they tackled Draco's successes and failures. Where Lucius had rewarded him with nods of approval, Oskar did not shy away from physical expressions like hugs and thumps to the back to show his pride in Draco's accomplishments. When Draco failed, instead of the disappointment he was used to seeing in Lucius' eyes or the humiliation he received at Lucius' hands, Oskar encouraged him to do better by helping him overcome his weaknesses to achieve success.
Oskar expected him to mate with Hermione as a means to protect her but she could have no real future here, so long as Fenrir ran the pack and the Dark Lord ran the world outside, Hermione would not be safe. Though it hurt him to think about it, in the long term, her best shot was with Potter and the Order. And if Potter was still anything like he was in his school days, he was most likely struggling without his brainy friend at his side.
"You're his sire, did you sense he'd be the one?" asked Cora, biting the head off the chocolate frog in her hand. She never particular cared for Honeydukes' treats otherwise, but in times of stress there was something deeply satisfying about decapitating the confections. This was not, however, a practice she indulged in front of anyone except her former alpha.
Oskar shook his head. "I sensed his magic was strong, if conflicted somehow, but I never thought he'd be the one... As much as I have faith in the legends, I never imagined I'd be alive to see any of these things come to pass."
Cora sighed and pushed away the pile of headless frogs. Seeing them made her feel sick, which was ironic given the kind of experiments she had impassively witnessed the Death Eaters perform on her kind.
"I never believed in any of it," she said, and seeing the way Oskar's brows rose at the statement quickly added, "I mean, I believed it was an interpretation of events that may have transpired, but I never thought the legends were literally true. I know the moon influences us, but I never really believed it was Luna guiding us."
"If I'm hearing you correctly, Cora, it sounds like you're admitting to have never really believed in magic." Oskar's eyes twinkled in amusement.
"I know what it sounds like. Of course, I believe in magic—but for me Lycanthropy was always nothing more than an interesting disease. Now, with the birth of the pups and the fulfilment of the Promise, I find myself looking at it all differently. Do you have any idea what it means to question your existence at my age?"
"You may not be my child, but you never really let go of your bond with me as your alpha," said Oskar, looking at her with kindness. "I know the burden you carry, Cora. I know how you've had to stand by and see strangers harm weres because you believed in the end it would help our people—"
Cora shut her eyes, recalling that wretched feeling of doing nothing. While pack-bonds weren't as strong as the alpha or mate bonds, they were rather hard to ignore from two feet away, which was often the distance she was required to maintain during those torture sessions that passed off as fertility experiments by the Dark Lord and his underlings.
"—I also know how overwhelmed you feel realising there are greater forces at play here."
"What am I supposed to do? I don't know what role I'm meant to play. I've only ever done what I believed to be best, not what the fates may desire of me. I..."
Oskar stood up and slowly made his way to Cora. He may be slightly more nimble in his wolf form, but in his human form, he felt every one of the years he had lived. He placed a reassuring hand on Cora shoulders and felt her lean in. As pack creatures, they were physical beings, gestures like pats and hugs went a long way with their kind. He offered her a hand, signalling for her to stand, and embraced her as he would any upset child. Cora quietly cried against his chest, burdened by the guilt of her own complicity in the crimes committed in the dungeons of Bleidd. It should've been Fenrir comforting her. As her current alpha, their bond was such that even a kind word from Fenrir would soothe her hurt. Unfortunately, Fenrir was terrible as an alpha.
There were times, of course, when it benefited them that Fenrir was such an apathetic leader. Fenrir did not wish for Draco to become a powerful werewolf, so he ordered those he believed to be the weakest members of his pack to attack the Malfoy heir. Fortunately for Draco, Greyback's ignorance of the individual histories of members of his pack meant that an Elder ended up becoming Draco's sire. If not for Fenrir's oversight, Draco would have been turned by someone weak and then who knows if he could have succeeded in impregnating someone as powerful as Hermione. Despite her helpless appearance, the one time Oskar had laid his hands on Hermione, he sensed a great and powerful beast asleep within her. It was safe to say the Muggleborn witch's ancestry was not as strictly limited to Muggles as she believed it to be.
Cora had calmed down by now, so Oskar stepped away from her. She furiously rubbed at her eyes and face to hide evidence of her meltdown. Out of respect for her privacy Oskar looked away and out the window instead, his eyes settling on the fated pair resting under a tree with their sons sprawled on their chests. This serene picture which represented the future of his people soothed his old wolf, knowing he had played a role in making something so incredible possible.
Having noticed the direction of Oskar's gaze, Cora moved closer to look at what had caught his attention.
"Fenrir is a fool, but he isn't that great a fool either—it's hard to see them together and fail to see the bond developing there. He'll soon figure out what's going on between the two of them and put a stop to it."
"He needs to be around long enough for that," replied Oskar and turned away from the idyllic scene. "Besides, he takes no interest in the habits of pack members to pay such attention to them."
"That may be true of others, but not when it comes to Draco. The alpha was already envious of the pup's previous status as the Malfoy heir, which only became worse when Draco ended up being the only creature to show any kind of success with any version of the Fero potion till date... I know Fenrir has secretly participated in some of the tests. I don't have access to any of the specifics but I'm certain we would've heard if he had fathered any children... I saw how he reacted to news of Hermione's pregnancy, which is why I never told him she was carrying twins. Soon as he notices Draco's elevated status in the pack over the birth of the twins he'll do something to either ruin Draco's standing, or raise himself higher."
Oskar raised his eyebrows.
"Yes, I know how ridiculous it sounds to suggest an alpha would envy the status of someone in his pack, but this is Fenrir we're talking about. Apart from brute force, what else does the man possess that qualifies him as an alpha?"
Even as a pup, Oskar would never have questioned why Luna chose to bless so dark a creature as Fenrir Greyback with the powers she did. Oskar himself was sired by an Elder who had taught him everything he knew about their kind, but even before that, he was raised to believe it was not one's place to question who the fates chose to use as their instruments. Despite his faults, or even because of them, without a doubt Fenrir had played a part in the existence of the young family outside.
"Do not dismiss your current alpha so easily," warned Oskar quietly. "He may not be the sharpest knife, but he singlehandedly waged, and won, the Pack Wars—something one does not achieve by brute force alone."
When the wizard known as the Dark Lord commanded Fenrir to build him an army, the alpha went on a murderous rampage biting and turning people willy-nilly. However, lacking any real leadership skills, instead of a pack Fenrir had ended up with a bunch of rogue werewolves. Upon realising his mistake, Fenrir went for the second best way to make a large and powerful pack, by taking over existing werewolf packs. Thus began the Pack Wars of Great Britain, wherein Greyback systematically killed the alphas of all the smaller packs scattered throughout Great Britain until he consolidated them into one large pack that called the grounds of Bleidd Castle its home. Such was their reign that no one in the region even recalled what the place was called before it was renamed as Bleidd, the local name for 'wolf'.
"He is not my alpha," Cora said through gritted teeth. "That monster took my mate from me. He took my alpha from me. I only accepted his alpha bond because I didn't want to end up an outcast."
Sadly, this was true of far too many members of their pack, thought Oskar. The various groups, leftover from the packs destroyed by Greyback, only accepted Fenrir as their alpha and thus bonded with him because the alternative—ending up an outcast—was far worse to contemplate. And yet, while the pack may not have benefitted from his leadership style, older members swore that the insane wolf living inside Fenrir had quietened a great deal due to the stability offered by the new pack.
"You could still end up one, should the alpha hear you speak in this manner. You should be more careful," he patiently told her.
"I am always careful around others. It isn't me you ought to worry about right now; Fenrir will notice the respect Draco gets from the pack for having sired two children, and then he will want that for himself. Coveting is Fenrir's way, and with Hermione being the only witch to fall pregnant after mating with a wolf..."
Cora did not need to complete that statement, Oskar shared her fears. However, he was also hopeful that Draco and Hermione would complete their bond before Fenrir became a serious threat.
"I know you're hoping they bond soon, but—" Cora blew out a breath and returned to the desk with the pile of headless frogs sitting abandoned on it. One at a time, she ripped open the handful of unopened packets left, and looked just a little less frustrated with each frog head she tore apart. She did not resume speaking until she had decapitated every one of them.
"She is far too stubborn and focused on the war outside to understand what is happening under her nose ... It doesn't help that her only friend here hates the Malfoys too much to see the difference between Draco and his father, let alone point it out to Hermione."
"It should be different now with the children here."
"I've spent some time with her. She is loyal only to Harry Potter and the cause to defeat the Dark Lord. The pregnancy weakened both her and her magic, but once she's recovered, I don't expect her to stick around long enough to bond with the pup."
"You believe she'll escape?"
"I believe she'll make a foolish attempt at it, which will earn her a punishment from either Fenrir or the Dark Lord himself. There's nothing Draco will be able to do to protect her then. Our only hope is for Gunnolf to become alpha—"
Oskar cut her off. "You know I agree with you that Gunnolf would serve the pack far better as alpha, but Fenrir would never willingly abdicate, and Gunnolf would not stand a chance against him in a fight." Oskar looked out the window again, to the group of Black Cloaks enjoying a stroll on the castle grounds as well as the pack members standing guard on the outer edges. "Defeating Fenrir would hardly be the end of it... The pack is large right now, larger than any pack ought to be, and we do not know where each one's loyalties lie. Lastly, we cannot know how the Dark one and his followers will react to Fenrir's defeat. With threats both from the inside and out, one misstep on our part could result in a slaughter."
Neither of them said the words but they both shared the same thought: We need allies.
Fenrir was suspicious. The thought had half of Draco panicking over the prospect of getting into the alpha's crosshairs, while the other half remained calm in the knowledge he could deal with him if necessary. Fenrir must have some inkling of the bond forming between him and Hermione, thought Draco, not because the alpha commanded him to fuck yet another omega during the full moon—no, that was just Greyback being a petty arsehole, jealous of Draco's current popularity in the pack. Draco thought something was off because suddenly all the tasks he was assigned were ones that kept him busy and away from Hermione all the time. He could see the pups anytime he liked since they lived with the pack but could not spend a tenth of the time with Hermione and the pups, together, as he would have liked.
With the strain of a month passed under Fenrir's watchful presence and the prospect of another full moon with yet another moon mate who wasn't Hermione, Draco felt sick. Fenrir was called away at the last moment during the last full moon, giving him no time to plan moon mates. Draco had taken advantage of the situation by skipping the festivities to spend time with his pups, managing to surprise Hermione with how careful he could be with their sons even in his wolf form.
Things would be very different this full moon with Fenrir around. Draco recalled his conversation with the head beta just a few hours ago.
"What the hell, Gunnolf!"
"I know ... I get it, Draco. I'll try to talk him—"
"It makes me sick. I could barely handle being with the omegas before Hermione and the pups. Now, the very thought of knotting with someone else—"
"Makes you sick to the stomach, quite literally. Yes, I noticed."
"So there's no way it's skipped the alpha's attention, still he torments me with these commands. I need to be with Hermione. How is she supposed to manage the boys by herself for one whole night? You know what a handful they can be, and if we're all out, engaging in the festivities, who'll be there to help her?"
"What about that friend of hers? Cora said she's been doing a lot better since getting her own quarters."
"Hermione avoids being alone with Ginny when the twins are around."
"She still talks about hurting the pups?"
Draco shook his head. "Hermione's just playing it safe—thank goodness! I don't need one more thing to worry about right now. Now, what's going on with my schedule... all these silly chores he has me running. Is he deliberately trying to keep me away from the main Castle?"
"Looks like it. If you mate with Hermione Granger, she'll be of no use to the rest of the pack."
"It's not the pack's interest in Hermione that concerns me."
"What do you mean?"
"Fenrir's been sniffing around Hermione."
"What're you talking about?"
"He keeps 'running into her' when she leaves her room. He's been uncharacteristically pleasant, went so far as to say he hoped she liked the room he had her moved to after the delivery."
"Ha! Must've looked like a fool trying to take credit for that. We're lucky Cora's really good at lying to Fenrir or he would've had our hides for moving her when we did."
"You're missing the point here. I think Fenrir is trying to woo Hermione."
Even a fool could deduce that it wasn't the Fero potion but Hermione who was special and with Greyback being childless, it was safe to figure out his intentions for her. Draco reminded himself he did not feel threatened that the leader of his pack was interested in his witch. So what if he could not offer her the same protections as Greyback? So what if he had nothing to offer her other than himself? Hermione would not care for those things... The fly in the ointment was that he did not know where he stood with Hermione anymore.
After the birth of their twins, Hermione changed. Without the pregnancy taxing her system, she was sharper and more like someone who held the title of being the brightest witch of her age. Physically, motherhood had been rather kind to Hermione, filling her out so she wasn't quite all skin and bones she was in the months before she gave birth. He could only imagine how good it would feel to grab her hips now, but he refused to act on it. Without the raging hormones of her pregnancy, she was no longer walking around aroused, so, unlike before, he no longer had an excuse to grab her without explicit invitation. He could not assume she wanted to resume physical relations with him just because it was what he wanted. Merlin, she already wanted to escape, he did not need to give her one more reason to do so.
Hermione leaned back on her hands, enjoying the shade of the tree with the twins in a bassinet beside her. She did not notice Fenrir creep up and stand there, watching her, until he snapped his fingers, making her head jerk up in attention. Such was the magic of the alpha that even though Wilbur and Martin were still infants they sensed their leader and opened their sleep heavy eyelids to stare at Fenrir. Without bothering to ask, Fenrir picked Martin, who appeared more awake than his brother, and held him in his arms.
"Hello, little pup," he cooed. "I missed you."
Hermione watched nervously as Fenrir held her son. Based on his last few surprise visits, Hermione did not consider him a threat to her safety, if anything he made her uneasy with how friendly he had started to act since she gave birth. She was nervous right now because, even though he outwardly doted on them, she suspected Greyback actually resented her sons.
Martin cooed and flailed his arms about as if he meant to grab a hold of Fenrir's face as he rubbed his face in the alpha's neck.
"Aw, li'l pup. I wish I was your da... Maybe someday I could be, huh? Depends on your mother, I'd say," said Fenrir, laughing at Martin's obvious fascination. Being pack, the pups appeared to be aware of their connection to the alpha.
During the course of their recent encounters, Hermione discovered Greyback had an odd sense of humour. However, she could not shake off the feeling that he was quite serious about the things he said as a joke. Hermione looked around, hoping Draco would arrive soon and ease the awkwardness of the situation.
"Expecting the Malfoy pup, are you?" Fenrir's quiet question was barely audible. "Thought you were clever, but you're like every other dumb bitch, aren't you? The Fero potion makes my wolves go in a rut so they'll fuck any wet hole put before them. Malfoy's done with you, moved on, he has," declared Greyback. "And while he's fucking and breeding other bitches, you're sat here like a fool thinking you were special in some way." Greyback gave her a menacing sneer before turned around and walked away, leaving Hermione to wonder if there was any truth to his statement.
Hermione stood at her window, staring at the lake with longing. The weather was getting warmer and while she wasn't particularly hot, she thought it would be nice to be outside.
She was startled by the sound of someone clearing their throat immediately behind her. She knew who it was from how close he stood behind her. She would only have to lean back a little to be nestled against his chest. Since the birth of the twins she could not tell whether he had lost interest in her physically or if it was something else, but for some reason, no matter how close he was, there was always just that little bit of distance between them. Frankly, she was tired of it.
"Fenrir's out today, so I'm free to do as I please." He must have watched her for a while before he approached because he said, "Oskar's minding the boys. I thought it may be nice for us to go for a swim."
"That does sound nice." Hermione turned around and wrapped her arms around his waist, adding, "I've missed you."
Almost immediately, the tension eased out of his shoulders and his eyes fluttered shut. "Me too," he whispered into her neck, nuzzling her.
"Fenrir said you were going to be busy for a while. He said you'd be too busy fu-fucking other bitches and breeding them." She did not ask for any of this, yet she could not help feeling hurt by the idea of Draco being with anyone else the way he was with her.
Draco sighed. "He's ordered me to impregnate the pack's females. We're given potions to induce heat; I'm expected to knot with whoever I'm paired with." He kissed her shoulder. "My wolf hates it. I want you." He gently tipped her chin upwards and looked into her eyes. "You can feel it, right?"
She nodded.
"I didn't realise it at the time—that first time we were together. I was just acting on instinct when I initiated the mate bond."
She remembered. Part of her had known even then, there would be no going back from this when he claimed her as both beast and man.
"Fenrir must know it though, and he's deliberately keeping me away from you. He knows I can only sire children with you, but he's still making me fuck others to torment me."
"I think Greyback wants me as his mate."
Not surprisingly, Draco's hold on her tightened and his whole body tensed. She expected him to react poorly when he discovered Fenrir's intentions, but he needed to know what was going on.
"The kind of questions he asks and the way he talks about you, I think he's threatened by you. It clearly bothers him that you have children when he doesn't, even though he's an alpha." In a measured tone she told him, "More than once he's mentioned how powerful and fertile I've proven to be, also, how lucky any witch would be to mate with an alpha."
Draco had started to growl while she was talking and the colour of his eyes changed from their usual grey to the amber shade they took on when he transformed. Odd, since Draco had told her only the alpha could transform without a full moon. His nostrils flared and his hands flexed and relaxed their iron grip on her hips. This would not do. She needed him calm and in control of his senses so they could get ahead of the potential problem.
Hermione held his face between her palms and looked him in the eyes. "I don't want him," she said, pulling his face closer to her and angled her head so their lips were nearly touching. "I want you," she said breathily.
His eyes changed back to their usual colour, though more of a stormy grey now. He sniffed at her, curled his fingers around her wrists and pulled her hands away from his face. Eyes narrowed at her, he asked, "Have you been given any potion today?"
He could probably smell her arousal and given their past, suspected she had been drugged.
She shook her head. "He's waiting for the full moon, wouldn't make sense to leave me in heat around so many unmated werewolves." Cora had been the one to help her arrive at that conclusion.
"So, you'd pick me, a new wolf, a beta, over an alpha?"
Instead of answering, she pressed herself against him and gave his lips a teasing swipe with her tongue. He made a sound she found rather satisfying.
"Granger," he whined, stepping away from her. "You smell way too delicious for me to be satisfied with just some snogging. Even without your heat, your scent makes me want to crawl out of my skin and meld myself to you. It makes me want to fuck you senseless and stay knotted with you till your belly is heavy with my children again."
He needed her to understand exactly what it meant to be with him. It wasn't going to be like any sweet romance she might've imagined happening with Weasley.
She gulped, understanding what he meant. But what choice did she really have here? He was her best hope of surviving this place, and if that wasn't a good enough. there was also the fact that she was in love with him.
"Come," he said pulling her along after him, "let's go for a swim now. You can tell me your decision later."
They waded through the shallow depths of the cool water, splashing about and just frolicking. Draco could not remember the last time he felt so light-hearted. Hermione's normally wild hair hung in limp curls plastered to her skin, the ends covered her breasts, though he'd catch teasing glimpses of the rosy tips of her nipples when she moved. Merlin! He could not get enough of her.
He grabbed her by the waist and ignoring her shrieks of laughter, tossed her over his shoulders and walked out of the water.
"Put me down, you brute," she said, any attempt at sounding stern ruined by the giggle that followed.
He spanked her bottom, continuing to walk on.
"Quiet, witch or I'll toss you into the water."
"You wouldn't dare," she said.
"And why might that be?"
"You'd never risk hurting me."
She said it so casually and without thought, as if he'd never had a part in her personal pain and humiliation. Draco swallowed the lump in his throat, his heart heavy with the weight of her faith in him and the fear that he may not live up to it.