Wolf of War

A Patricia Briggs werewolf fanfiction

Challenges

Sleep wasn't difficult for him to come by, later that night; four days of driving, a day of tension, a good meal and the clear crisp air all seemed to work together to put him out like a light not long after dinner; he heard not a peep when—or if—Tamara came back to the room.

Tamara wasn't in the room when he finally awoke, but he let that bother him not a bit; he gave a fleeting bit of thought as to whether or not she was still on the property, or assuming that she'd stayed, where she might be at that moment, but his own needs for the bathroom and food were more than enough to chase away thoughts of his probable and unseen roommate.

His morning ablutions took not very long at all, and within thirty minutes of waking up he was heading towards the main house, when he sensed, and then immediately heard, someone coming up from behind him. He turned to see who it was, and his eyes took in the generally lithe but small of stature young woman who was jogging in his direction. She was dressed decently for the weather, in what looked to be a leather bomber jacket and jeans, with the jacket zipped halfway. Her skin coloration reminded him a bit of the Marrok, very lightly tanned and olive-complexioned; Native American? he wondered to himself. He stopped and took a step off of the path to let the young woman go by, but to his surprise, she slowed down as she approached him, and was walking by the time she had reached him. She offered the ghost of a smile and a brief nod of her head in greeting, and gave him a faint gesture to keep on walking; he did, and she slipped into step with him.

"Looking for me in particular?" he asked with an eyebrow cocked and curiosity in his tone.

"Not particularly," she returned with a quiet, soft smirk. "But I thought it would be rude of me to run by you when it looks like we're both headed to the same place."

He gave her a brief looking over, and then remarked, "No offense, but unless you age very well, you look like you're probably a teenager. Rudeness is often something of a given for those your age—or at least the age you appear to be."

She smiled a bit more, then, something genuine yet mischievous. "No, I'm as young as I look," she offered to him, "I'm sixteen."

"And I'm Ares," he chuckled, and gave the young girl a mock bow.

"Oh!" she started a little, "I'm Mercedes; my friends call me Mercy."

He offered a slight smirk in return. "May I call you Mercy?" he asked with a wry grin.

She opened up her mouth to speak, and then a slightly wary look crossed her features, and a mirthful smirk shifted over on her lips. "I see what you did there," she returned with humor, and then seemed lost in thought for a few moments as they approached the door of the main house. She finally paused, just a few meters from the door, and turned towards him.

"Is it okay if I say, 'call me Mercedes' for now, and reserve the right to add you as a friend who can call me 'Mercy' later?" she asked, her expression bright but her demeanor slightly hesitant, as if she were concerned about offending him.

He gave her a lopsided smirk. "That sounds fair to me," he nodded softly. "I hope we can indeed become friends."

He didn't give her any real opportunity to say more, instead gesturing for her to close the last few meters to the house with him, and with his longer stride, reaching for the screen door to open it for her. She gave him a wordless thanks in response, and then he followed her in through the door.

Less than thirty seconds into the kitchen of the main house, however, found him with his next bit of excitement, as he and Mercy were brought to a halt by the rather flat and unhappy glare from a young male he assumed was one of the many wolves of the Marrok's pack. He paused largely from the fact that Mercy had ground herself to a stop right in front of him, just about, and her body language fairly screamed that this was a tense and potentially volatile type of situation.

The young man in question was somewhat olive-skinned himself, though his features were more European than those of Mercy. He stood nearly as tall as Ares himself, and had all of the quiet swagger of someone who was used to using his presence to intimidate others into getting his way. Without knowing more, though, he opted to wait and see what happened, and take his cues from Mercy. The wolf barely glanced at him, though, his gaze almost dismissive, as he then turned and focused his attentions on Mercy.

"Babysitting, Mercedes?" the wolf practically sneered at her.

"And hello and good morning to you too, Garrak," Mercy's brighter tones were a snarky and sarcastic contrast. "And the gentleman you're referring to here, standing right here, his name is—"

"I don't particularly care," Garrak snapped, interrupting the young woman, "You know the rule: pack members get priority at breakfast; you and your guest aren't pack."

"Yeah, that's your rule, Garrak," Mercy snapped back, her voice still bright but carrying an edge. "No one else even pays attention to that."

"So how do I handle this?" Ares turned to comment to Mercy.

"Just ignore him; he's harmless," she offered, "He likes to think he can bully me. He thinks he's intimidating, but he's more irritating."

"Ahh," Ares groaned softly. "Gotchya."

"Ignore him?" Garrak shot back at her, "You've been here long enough to know better than that."

"So how do things normally go with breakfast?" Ares offered, partially turning his back to the wolf to address the young girl.

"It's not quite 'fend for yourself," Mercy supplied, "Often there are folks among the less dominant of the wolves who like to cook and will either offer to cook for the others, or they'll simply fix a big breakfast and let you come along and grab what you'd like." She paused for barely a breath, and then added, "You've never seen breakfast until you've seen breakfast in a house full of werewolves; they eat enough for like two or three people each—"

"Hey!" Garrak snapped.

Mercy gave him the barest of glances, before she turned her attention back to Ares.

"—and they're pretty heavy on the protein, but they're not all rabid bloody-rare meat eaters or anything," she continued as if she hadn't been interrupted, "Werewolves do have to eat more meat, and from what I've been told, many of them like their steaks a bit more rare than—"

"Damnit Mercy, I'm—" Garrak interrupted again, stepping forward and dropping a hand onto the young woman's shoulder.

Nearly as quickly as his hand fell upon her shoulder, Ares' own hand latched onto the wolf's arm at the wrist, his grip light yet tight. His eyes and mind registered—just—the look of surprise on Mercy's face as Garrak's hand suddenly gripped her shoulder, and then a further widening of her eyes as she took note of Ares' own actions. Her eyes glanced to Ares, then to Garrak, and then finally back to Ares.

"Whatever you're thinking about doing to her, I wouldn't," Ares offered in a tone that fairly vibrated with energy; silky smooth though it was, it still held an edge of a threat and not an iota of amusement.

"And who are you and what do you think you're going to do?" Garrak fairly snarled, and then snatched his hand off of Mercy's shoulder and out of Ares' grip.

Ares turned to bring the full force of his gaze upon the other male, his dark eyes drilling into the lighter colored ones of the wolf, offering a direct challenge. The wolf seemed to bear that challenge without blinking or flinching, but at the same time, the condescending sneer that had settled into his expression and the air of quietly smug superiority that he wore like a badge both fell away, leaving him looking angered and exposed, not yet sure of what to do in the face of being confronted.

Ares was oddly comforted by that moment of raw vulnerability.

"While you don't particularly care who I am," Ares offered in a low, smooth tone, "what I'm going to do is keep you from continuing to bother Mercy, unless someone more important than you says otherwise."

Garrak seemed to weigh his words before he spoke, then: "And if I decide to rip out your arms and beat you with 'em?"

"You might win in the end, but I'll do whatever I can, and whatever I have to, to make you pay for every moment," Ares returned, "and I'd bet that in the end, the Marrok would be rather….unhappy, with you, for not only failing to control yourself, but for getting into a completely avoidable fight with an ordinary human male."

Ares took an additional step closer to the wolf, who seemed for a moment to vibrate—either with thinly-suppressed rage, or –control, or –fear, wasn't clear.

"Or you can save face, and walk away," Ares continued with the ghost of a smirk. "I'll even throw you a bone; if you really think that you're strong enough to throw your weight around like you're trying to do to a teen aged girl, you wait a couple of weeks, and if I survive all of this, you can see if you really are as big and bad as you make yourself out to be." A dark, malicious smile briefly graced his lips, before slipping away. "But for now, Mercy is off limits to you. Or do we dance, and see what comes of this?"

Though the wolf's eyes were on him, Ares was pretty sure that the fact there wasn't an immediate response meant that Garrak was thinking about what he'd said.

The wolf glanced away for a moment, before returning that piercing gaze of Ares', and gave him something of a low, warning growl.

"Two weeks," he snarled, his voice low, as he spun on his heel, and left the kitchen.