MIAKODA
Bobby Singer was a wary man.
Miakoda knew that a man whose entry to the Life was having his wife be possessed by a demon and having to kill her wouldn't necessarily be all the warm and fuzzies but he was nice enough. She could smell not only the affection that he had for the Winchester brothers but also what Sam and Dean had for him. Even if Sam was missing an integral part of his psyche.
After getting some things from her house – her laptop, clothes, and other necessary things – and noticing how jumpy she was there, Dean had phoned Bobby. The gruff man had offered to let her stay at his place. "Anyone with reliable knowledge of the lore'll be useful."
She sat, in soft clean clothes, in the living room, the scent of old worn pages and leather perforating the air, along with the sharp bite of alcohol. Miakoda knew that feeling worn and tired was only the start of the road to recovery but she felt violated. Hunters had broken into her home, her den, and had stalked her for nigh-on weeks. The last time that had happened, her home and her Pack went up in flames.
Was Dave the one that told the Campbells about Evdokiya?
Was the photographer angle a disguise?
Did he have one of the stalker walls up in his house somewhere?
Bobby watched as she flinched when he set a capped bottle of water on the coffee table in front of her. The doctor was quiet, watchful, would go in on herself a few times a day and every time one of his boys would come in, she'd scent the air as if trying to smell blood. Even if all that they had been doing was bringing Miakoda's car and bike to his place.
"What are you going to do about your job?" he asked one night as they ate.
Miakoda stabbed her spoon into the chilli she had made, it started to taste like ash in her mouth "I have the lectures uploaded into the College website and I'm going to email the TA the transcripts about them but…" she rolled her shoulders and neck, "last time my place got invaded like that, Bobby, my Pack was burnt alive. I can't go back to that life."
He nodded. "Right then, that means ye can help 'round here. We got plenty'a Hunters lookin' for Lore on things? Someone who has a background in 'em, and is a monster, well even better."
"Hunters only usually go after the outliers anyway," Miakoda shrugged, fingers going up to play with that arrowhead of hers, "the ones that endanger exposing the human world to the supernatural. Some specific families will target certain types though. Say they have a Code that they stick to, but in all honesty…"
"They go after them regardless." Dean weighed in and Miakoda nodded. Miakoda wouldn't say that the relationship between her and Dean was the same after her secret was out but over time, his scent became less sharp when he was around her and they fell back into the rhythm they'd established before. Just now she didn't have to hide anything from him.
"Hey, Vince." Miakoda smiled to herself as she sat on the front step to Bobby's house. She could hear the Humans bustling about not only inside – where Bobby and Sam were both reading through lore books for Hunters on cases – but out in the garage where Dean had been trying to fix the squeaking noise that had occurred when Sam had been driving her Jeep over from Massachusetts.
"You're okay?" his voice came through the tinny speakers but his tone was clear, relief profound.
She ran a hand through her newly cut hair where it brushed her jawline again. "I'm not coming back. I can't, can't be there anymore."
"What are you going to do about the house?"
A smile pulled up onto her lips and she cocked her head as she picked on a loose thread in her jeans. "You and Danny still planning on movin' in together? I know how much you love it."
"Are you seri- Koda, are you giving us the house?"
Miakoda huffed a laugh, staring out to the car yard. "I'll still own the house because I don't think you two want to be paying a mortgage on top of your loans but I'm sure we can come up with a reasonable price for rent. 'Sides, I don't want Humans that have no idea about us Creatures nosin' about my books. And I might need you on hand to act as a librarian."
"Consider it done." Miakoda could picture him nodding with a big grin on his face. "Also can we have pets?"
"Would you be opposed to a grown cat?" she remembered Evdokiya's cat, Caspian.
"No. If anything that means we wouldn't have to litter train them. Hey did you find Evdokiya yet?"
Her heart pulled and her Wolf whined in the back of her chest. "She's gone, Vince. I felt it snap."
This silence wasn't a good one. Miakoda heard him take a shuddering breath over the phone and his hand go down his face. "I didn't know her but fuck I'm sorry, Miakoda. Is this her cat we were talking about?"
"Yeah." She cleared her throat, "There should be a phone card on the table in the hall by the mirror of a Betty? She was taking care of him when I was down at her shop. Didn't know if she could take him when she was going to the nursing home. I-I don't know if she's phoned. I didn't check."
"Spare's still in the same place?" Vince pulled himself together, knowing that whilst they'd just started talking, Evdokiya's death would hit Miakoda hard, especially when her Wolf had already decided upon a Pack Bond.
"Yeah." She nodded again, standing up and brushing her jeans off when she sensed the end of the conversation. "I'll contact the realtor and email you when everything is sorted, okay?"
"I'll let Danny know. Both about our new digs and our new fur child." Vince seemed to grin over the phone before becoming serious. "Hey, Koda? Just 'cause you're not my professor anymore don't mean that we aren't friends? Keep in contact, girl. Stay safe."
"I will." Miakoda nodded. "To both. Bye, Vince."
"Bye Koda."
Instead of going into the house, Miakoda moved to the backyard. The smelt of heat warmed metal greeted her as she settled down on the back stoop where Dean was under the hood of her Jeep, hands greasy and slightly sweaty. "Who was that?"
"A classmate that I ended up teaching. He's a good friend. He and his boyfriend are looking for a place, both in the know, and I offered to rent them the house. I can't go back, don't want to, but that house was the first place I'd considered home since the Fire. They'll look after it."
His green eyes seemed almost yellow in the light as he looked over his shoulder towards her. "You also don't want Humans nosing around your books."
"I let you read them!" she laughed a little, chucking a beer bottle lid at him. "I just didn't want certain other Humans, that, if they went nosing around my library-"
"And any free shelf."
"-to think that I was into the occult and call a priest to exorcise me."
"Koda." Dean leant against the front of the Jeep with his hip, raising an eyebrow towards her. "You've two doctorates dealing in the occult. You're gonna look hinky regardless."
"Did you get the squeaky sound out yet?"
Dean let her change the subject, though not without giving her an amused look. She knew he was right. "Yeah, it was just your brake pads."
"Urgh." Miakoda's head fell back against the door with a slight clunk, with a face on her. "I thought I only changed them before everything happened."
"Yeah," Dean stepped forward, snatching the cloth off the workbench and wiping his hands, sitting on a cooler after handing her a beer. She popped it open with two claws and swapped with him to repeat it. "Okay, one, that's cheating and two, Sammy and I had to drive from Massachusetts to here with the car and bike in the back."
"I didn't ask you to do that though. I woke up and Bobby told me what you two were doing."
He tipped his head a little before the silence fell comfortably for a while. They sat drinking the cold beers in the shade away from the South Dakota sun.
Miakoda spoke quietly, as if afraid that if she said her words any loader it would reveal a secret to the entire world. "I can see why you respect him so much. Why you care for each other. He's a good man."
"Yeah, he is."
The silence fell again but was broken when Miakoda fell backwards into the kitchen with a distinct animal-like yelp. The beer nearly upended over her. She stared up at Sam as Dean fell about laughing in the garage.
"Lunch is ready."
"Ain't you wolves got sharp hearing?" Bobby's amused voice came from the kitchen and she clambered up, brushing passed an amused Sam as she did so. If her cheeks were flushed, well it was warm out.
"That's rude, though. I don't eavesdrop. Any Wolf properly taught by their parents don't eavesdrop unless its birthday and Christmas related."
"How far can you hear anyway?" Sam asked as Dean came laughing into the kitchen, sitting down at the table. She kicked him under the table. "Does it change because you're a werewolf?"
Miakoda shook her head, pulling the salad bowl over to her from the middle as the four sat down for lunch of roast chicken, salad and some fried potatoes from last night's dinner. "No, not really. I mean, I haven't tested it but if I really give a shit…"
The Humans watched as she cocked her head a little to the side and focused a little. The cars were going back and forth on the road outside of Bobby's car yard. There were a few deer – she couldn't tell from here what type - in the acre behind his place and, over the sound of chewing, the faint sound of a diner mid lunch rush.
"How far's the diner from here?" Miakoda asked like it was just about the weather.
Bobby blinked under his cap, "Near gone 10 miles."
She shrugged. "It'll probably be less than that if we had trees and stuff but my siblings and cousins and I used to make it a game when we were younger. The Humans would run into the woods and we'd have to rely on scent and our hearing to find them."
"Wouldn't you just be able to track'em by their scent alone?" Bobby asked, coming from an actual hunting background.
Swallowing a bit of chicken, Miakoda shrugged again, leaning back in her chair. "Nah. The whole point of the game was to test all of our senses. Our eyes are weaker when we shift in the daytime – yes, the whole needing the moon think is complete shit, sorry – so we relied on our nose and ears to make up for it."
"Then why are there more werewolf related deaths 'round then?" Bobby asked and Dean pointed to her.
"In the prison, you said something 'bout having an anchor?"
"First off," Miakoda raised an eyebrow, lowering his finger to the table, "it's rude to point. Secondly, yeah, any Wolf, whether they're born or Bitten should have an anchor." Seeing Bobby's confused face, Miakoda elaborated. "Normally, if you think of an actual anchor, it's what keeps a boat from going anyway, right? Well, it works the same way when it comes to Wolves and control. Sometimes it can be a person – though not always, as it's not fair on the person who's usually a human because Bitten Wolves tend to gravitate to them – or Pack or even an emotion or feeling."
She scratched her head. "After the Fire, I nearly let myself go feral. The shock of losing Pack, especially so many, it drives some Wolves to insanity. The only thing that anchored me was the fact that I didn't want the Hunters that set it, to have the win. If it hadn't have been for Elias, a…family friend," they didn't notice the slight hesitation, "I know I wouldn't be here. But yeah, when you're born a Wolf like I am, control kinda comes naturally the way Humans learn how to walk and talk and stuff. When we're kids, we get taught that revealing fangs and claws to unsuspecting Humans is a bad thing."
"What're you doin' for the Full Moon?" Bobby asked and Miakoda could smell the tension in the room.
"Um…" she looked between them all, "I was planning on sleeping through it, you know after I dealt with the irritating raccoon that's been keeping us all up. If I get snappy, well, emotions tend to run closer to the surface."
"Wait, you're gonna get the raccoon with your bare hands?" Dean asked, now rather confused.
"No?" Miakoda looked between them again and saw the confusion they were trying to hide, "Wait, you lot don't know that we can fully shift?"
"No?" they chorused and Miakoda got up with a heavy sigh.
"I'll be back in five minutes."
With that, she stepped out into the hall and made her way to where she had been sleeping. Slipping out of her clothes, she let the shift take over. It wasn't exactly comfortable, having her bones snap and reshape and stuff, but it was just like having cramps, you got used to them. Padding into the living room, she plonked down on her haunches, tasting the shock in the air as she sat there.
Miakoda tugged them via the Bonds – Sam and Bobby's having been cemented by her Wolf a few weeks back – and they moved as though they wanted to. She knew she was bigger than the average Wolf, all of them were but it could be a bit of a shock for Hunters. Miakoda had to tuck her tail away so they wouldn't see the fact that it wagged a little. They smelled nice when she was like this, as her ears and nose compensated for the lack of colour and 20/20 vision.
She couldn't tell who was where exactly, they were just blurred and their scents had slightly overlapped but Dean's leather, gun oil, excitement and cotton had come closer and she nudged his hand up to land on her head. Honestly, she had no shame in this form. And ear scratches felt nice.
"Are you sure you're not a dog, Koda?" Dean's voice came as he crouched a little in front of her, hand moving down into her thick scruff. There were two coats, like a husky, and she leaned into him when he scratched at the softer undercoat, a slight groan coming from her throat. Her tail wagged a little causing the Humans to laugh. She came up to Dean's elbow from shoulder height, so he had to go to his knees, in case he got shoved over by potentially a 100lb wolf.
"Shit," Bobby stated. "You really weren't kiddin'."
Realising that they may have questions, Miakoda pulled herself away from Dean's hand that had been getting at that spot right in the back of her neck that her paw could get at, and came back bi-pedal, pulling her shirt down over her stomach.
"You can all do that?" Sam asked as they settled in the kitchen again.
Miakoda nodded a little. "I mean, yeah, they should at least know how to. Some Bittens struggle with finding the balance between both sides, they think of themselves as two different mindsets – the Wolf and the Human – and can't work out that they're both them if that makes sense?"
She got slightly tentative nods.
"Usually, the Alpha of the Pack will teach them how to shift into the full form once they have the Beta shift – my eyes glow, teeth become wolf-like and my claws will come out – down pat. I don't know why you haven't come into contact with full-shifted Wolves yet though."
"Maybe it's a culture thing." Sam offered and she finished off her food as they chucked ideas back and forth before moving onto cases that Bobby had been delegating.
Miakoda sat back in her chair once she was done, listening to the conversation, occasionally giving a tip of a certain Creature. Whilst, yes, she wished that her secret hadn't come out the way it had, feeling her Wolf settle down for once, Miakoda didn't think she'd have it any other way.
This is just a slight filler chapter - mainly to get Bobby into the know about Miakoda being a Wolf and all that.
Thanks so much to Mo for your review - really glad that you're enjoying this.
In terms of additional chapters, I've just started 6x16 (...And Then There Were None) and apart from Appointment in Samarra, every episode is split into two because when I start hitting double digits in pages, I get lost on where the plot is going, and I also feel like they can drag on and become dull. I'm really looking forward to what you lot think of my take on 6x15, which should be soon; don't know when but it's done and dusted so I don't have to worry about it.
Will say though, I start back to Uni (last year) on the 3rd of March - technically, I start back on the 28th but my classes are just on a Tuesday and Wednesday so I'll need to work out an update schedule for that. Hopefully they will stay consistent - I've surprised myself with Monsters honestly, it's the longest fic I've published - won't say written because shenayeelizabeth have a Captain America and a Harry Potter collab that have been brewing for a long time; whether they'll see the light of day, I don't know.
There's also a link to my tumblr (doaspeggy-says) on my profile where I upload chapter aesthetics and such, you're welcome to take a look at it.
Anyway...
Enjoy!
K x
