CHAPTER 9
Basics
When Eliot got back to the cabin everything was quiet. Almost too quiet. Eliot listened carefully but he could only hear two heartbeats in the cabin, just like there should be. Scenting the air, he didn't pick up any scents besides his pack. He opened the door and found Parker sitting on the floor next to Hardison. She was humming something that Eliot didn't recognize and running her fingers through Hardison's fur.
"What's going on Parker?" Eliot asked as he set the bar across the door.
"Hardison is having trouble being Hardison. So we're waiting." She continued to stroke along the nape of the huge wolf's neck.
"He's having trouble shifting?" Eliot walked around the end of the couch and realized that wasn't the only problem as he stared into the eyes of Hardison's wolf with no evidence of Hardison's awareness. "Parker,…." He wanted to ask how long the wolf had been in control, but he was worried that if she didn't know that the wolf was in control it might scare her when she found out. He knew that nothing excited a wolf toward violence and bloodshed like the smell of fear.
"It's okay Sparky. Hardison keeps coming back just give it a minute and I'm sure he'll be Hardison again." Parker continued to stroke along the wolf's back.
"So you know the wolf is in control?" Eliot asked without breaking the stare that had started the moment he'd walked around the end of the couch.
"Yes." Parker scratched behind the great wolfs ears. "It's okay. The wolf knows that Hardison belongs to me, so he and I are learning to be friends."
Eliot really wanted to look at Parker to see if she was really serious, but he couldn't risk looking away from the wolf that was staring him down. "Parker, can you go stand by the door. And unbar it so that you can run if you need to." Eliot's tone was gentle but serious.
"I'm okay here." Parker looked up to see the intense look in Eliot's yellow eyes. She looked at the intense look on the wolf's face and knew that there was something to settle between the two. Parker got up and slowly walked to the door and moved the bar to the side.
Once Parker was near the door, Eliot flooded the room with the power that made him Alpha. "You are mine. You belong to me." The words were quiet but full of power as Eliot took the two steps needed to close the distance between him and the huge wolf. Eliot put his hand on top of the wolf's muzzle and pressed it gently to the floor. A shudder passed through the wolf, and he sighed relaxing under the authority of his Alpha. The wolf blinked and when his eyes opened again it was Hardison looking up into Eliot's face. "Good to have you back."
Hardison shuddered and Eliot could see the start of Hardison's shift but as quickly as it started it stopped. Hardison whimpered and blew out a breath.
"Okay. I see what's going on. Stop trying to shift for a minute. Let's get you something to eat and take a break before you try again." Eliot ran his hands through the fur on the great wolf's head and Hardison pressed up into the touch when Eliot scratched behind his ears.
"Is Hardison stuck?" Parker couldn't help it as a little of the worry she'd been feeling slipped into the pack bonds.
"I think he just doesn't have the energy he needs to shift. The transformation from one shape to the other requires a huge amount of calories. If he had more control, he could probably force it but that's not safe." Eliot unwrapped several packages of meat and set the meat on the floor in front of Hardison.
Hardison sniffed the meat and whined.
"Close your eyes and smell it." Eliot couldn't help doing the same and his mouth watered at the scent.
Hardison followed Eliot's directions and in no time, he had consumed most of the meat that had been laid out for him.
"Alright. Let's just hang out for a while." Eliot toed off his shoes and added another log to the fire that Parker had started in the hearth. He settled himself on the floor in front of the couch and patted the floor next to him. Hardison waited a moment before curling up next to Eliot. "Come on Parker." Eliot looked back at her. She'd been waiting patiently near the door.
Parker saw that Eliot was making room for her on his other side, so she sat near him on the floor.
When Parker sat near him but didn't touch him Eliot rested his arm on the couch so that she could get closer if she wanted to, but he wouldn't make her. He could feel that Parker was working through some things and that was probably why she didn't want to be touched, and that was okay. Hardison was feeling dejected and had he been human Eliot would have said he was sulking. Eliot felt the need to bring his pack closer to him and decided to follow his instincts. He'd always been careful about touching his teammates, and even after they knew that they were his pack, he still tended to be reserved. Parker had taken to cuddling up with him on the couch, especially if Hardison was busy in his computer world but other than that his pack was fairly hands off. The need for touch was something that Eliot had spent a long-time mastering. He knew that most wolves felt the same as he did so he supposed it might be the same for Hardison now. Eliot ran his hand through Hardison's fur and sighed. Hardison relaxed against him, and Eliot could feel Hardison's contentment wash through the bonds. "I'm sorry you got stuck. It's my fault for not recognizing how tired you really were. I'm still learning how to be a good Alpha. I've never done this before so I'm gonna make mistakes." He continued to pet and gently scratch across Hardison's neck and shoulders and along his ribs.
Parker scooted closer to Eliot, but she still wasn't touching him yet. "If it wasn't safe for him to try shifting, why did you tell him to?"
"It's not safe to shift if you don't have the energy to spare because you are so hungry or tired afterward. I think that's where a lot of the old werewolf myths come from."
Hardison readjusted to stretch his legs out and laid his head on Eliot's lap.
"All the monster stories talk about werewolves as ravenous and out of control and I think… Well, if someone survived a random werewolf attack in the middle ages they would have thought their recovery was a miracle from God and they probably wouldn't know that they had become a werewolf themselves so they would have continued on with life as usual until the full moon. The moon will force the change and if you weren't prepared the calories burned to make the change would leave the wolf ravenous and if the wolf's Alpha wasn't there or was just as out of control then of course the werewolf is going to cause mayhem." Eliot continued to stroke Hardison's fur but now he added a trickle of power. He'd learned a lot about using the bonds to share power when Parker had been hurt. Now he let the energy of the pack trickle into Hardison. "If I had realized how tired Hardison really was, I wouldn't have asked him to try to shift on his own."
Parker finally leaned into Eliot's side, and he wrapped his arm across her shoulders. "Hardison's wolfy likes me."
"Of course he does." Eliot leaned his head on Parker's. Eliot was about to add a warning about dealing with the wolf, when Hardison wasn't in control of it, when the bonds gifted him with a new insight. He knew with a certainty that he couldn't explain that Hardison's wolf viewed Parker as his mate. There was probably nothing that Parker could ever do that would provoke the wolf into hurting her. "Hardison loves you and so does his wolf."
Hardison readjusted again.
"Alright. What do you say to giving your shift another try?" He ruffled the fur on the top of Hardison's head.
Hardison looked at him skeptically.
"Come on. Even if you can't make it on your own, I won't let you get stuck this time." Eliot stood up and pulled Parker up after him.
Hardison stood and shook out his fur.
"Go ahead and try it on your own." Eliot did his best to pull his influence from the bonds.
Hardison took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The shift rolled through Hardison's bones causing him to whimper as it pulled him into an upright position. Once he was on his feet, he held his hands out where he could see them. The shift seemed to be working more slowly as it got to the surface. His hands and forearms were human shaped but still covered in fur. He started to breathe harder as the shift seemed to slow its progress.
"Hardison, don't focus on what's happening, focus on the outcome." Eliot held Parker's hand to hold her back. "No touching. Even though it looks like he's stopped you can feel in the bonds that he's still shifting. If you touch him right now it will sting."
Parker nodded and gripped Eliot's hand harder.
Hardison focused on Parker. On how much he wanted to touch her and with his concentration on her his shift was nearing completion.
Eliot used the bonds to continue to feed Hardison energy and watched as the last of the change seemed to melt across Hardison's skin.
. ͽϿ Ѻ Ͼͼ .
After a big protein-heavy lunch, Hardison settled back onto the couch with his tablet and cellphone and began his digital hunt for Hawthorn. He set his spiders up to search for any new activity on Hawthorn's credit cards or any other digital footprint that might lead to a physical location. With his web crawlers running there wasn't much more he could do until something new turned up. He set his tablet to the side as Eliot joined him on the couch.
"I'm sorry about how things went down after I sent you guys back to the cabin. Your shift this morning went so well that I just figured the next one might be fairly easy too. I should have been here."
"I gotta admit it was pretty weird getting stuck like that, but it worked out." Hardison was a little surprised at Eliot's apology. He knew that Eliot was usually pretty fair, and wouldn't shirk blame if it was deserved, but he wasn't one for apologies. "I heard what you were telling Parker about what might happen if you shift, and you aren't ready for it. It made a lot of sense. But you didn't really explain what would happen if you shifted back to human and you didn't really have the energy for it."
Eliot smirked. "Most wolves won't shift back to human if they don't have the energy for it. The moon will force you into your wolf but nothing forces you back into your human shape."
"So you've never shifted back to human when you weren't really ready for it?"
"A few times. But humans don't really go on a rampage when they're hungry and exhausted so it's not as memorable as losing control as a wolf. The big risk is that you're vulnerable if you are too tired to defend yourself."
"So what happened?"
"Slept like the dead and ate anything that came to hand."
"And what's next? You have some other werewolf game or training or something in mind?" Hardison stretched and looked longingly at the bed in the corner.
Eliot saw Hardison's look and thought it wasn't a half bad idea. "I think we could all use a little rest."
Parker came back in the cabin with a smile. "Sophie said to tell you both hello." She slipped her shoes off and barred the door before she headed for the bed. She snagged one of Eliot's books off the side table on the way past and flopped down on the mattress.
"Hardison." Eliot gave him a meaningful look as he looked back and forth between Hardison and Parker. "Get some rest."
"Like I'd get anything else with you in the same room." Hardison rolled his eyes and moved to join Parker on the small bed.
Eliot pulled the cushions off the couch and stretched out in front of the fireplace. Before long he drifted to sleep.
Hardison and Parker cuddled and whispered, and Parker read to Hardison from the book she'd picked up but eventually exhaustion pulled Hardison into a fitful sleep. Parker couldn't help noticing Hardison's twitching and turning, and she could feel how unsettled he was in the pack bonds. She'd gotten a feel for Hardison's wolf earlier and now she was sure that it was the wolf that needed something. She ran a hand across the warm skin of Hardison's cheek and down his arm and that settled him for a moment, but it didn't take long before he was moving in his sleep again. She gave his arm a little shake and when he opened his eyes, she noticed the color melt from yellow to dark chocolate.
"Take the quilt and go lay next to Eliot." She kissed him briefly before giving him a nudge toward the edge of the bed.
"You kiss me but tell me to lay next to Eliot? Sounds kinky." He sat up and swung his feet off the side of the bed.
"Pretzels." Parker nudged him again. "But you need more sleep, and your wolfy isn't happy over here."
Hardison gave her a questioning look but followed her directions. When he walked around the end of the couch Eliot opened his yellow eyes a slit and scooted to the side on the couch cushions. Hardison hesitated. He could feel the wolf inside wanting to lay down next to his Alpha, but Hardison felt awkward.
Eliot could see Hardison's hesitation and knew why he was struggling. He thought about the conversation he'd had with Nate earlier. "Hardison, come lay down." He put just enough force into it to make it clear that it was an order but, he hoped, not so much that Hardison couldn't protest if he really didn't want to. He felt something relax in the bonds and he smiled just a little.
Hardison wrapped the quilt around himself and lay down with his back against Eliot's side. With a sigh of contentment, he quickly drifted to sleep.
Parker padded silently from the bed to Eliot's other side. She curled into him with her arm stretched across his chest so that her fingers could curl into Hardison's quilt.
Eliot couldn't help his own contented smile as he drifted to sleep with his pack held close.
Much later Hardison woke with an itchy sensation on the back of his neck. His dreams had come up with all sorts of reasons for that itchy feeling and most of them had been pretty strange. He hadn't opened his eyes yet, but he could feel the soft skin of Parker's arm under his hand. The itchy feeling seemed to get stronger, and he was about to let go of Parker's arm so that he could scratch at the back of his neck when suddenly the exact spot was being scratched, by someone else. He startled the rest of the way awake and realized that at some point he'd turned in his sleep, probably reaching for Parker, and ended up with his head on Eliot's chest and his right arm thrown across to tangle with Parker who also seemed to be reaching across Eliot. Hardison turned his head enough to see Eliot's face. Eliot's eyes were yellow and Hardison could feel his own go yellow in response.
"Good you're awake." Eliot dropped his head back and stretched his neck side to side. "Can you pick Parker up and set her on the bed?"
Hardison did as Eliot asked and marveled at how easy it was. Parker was lighter than a small child in his arms and moving her from the floor near the hearth to the bed took no effort. As he pulled the blankets up his left arm was suddenly engulfed in the tingly pins-and-needles feeling of restored circulation. He gasped and clutched at his arm.
"Sorry. Is that better?" Eliot clamped down on the bonds while massaging his left arm and stretching a little.
The sensation cut off abruptly. "What was that?"
"Parker slept on my arm, and it went totally numb." Eliot shook his shoulders and arms a little. "The bonds seem to be really open, between the pack nap, and the moon nearly full."
Hardison scratched idly at the back of his neck. "Do you and Parker always feel what the other one is feeling like this?"
"Not usually this strongly. Some of it is the moon. The closer to the full moon the stronger the pack bonds seem to be. But my connection to you has been stronger than ever now that you're a wolf."
Hardison growled as he scratched at his neck again. The sound cut off abruptly and he looked at Eliot.
"Don't look at me! That was all you." Eliot snorted. "The wolf is closer to the surface right now and with the moon coming up the urge to shift is strong. That's why your neck itches."
"Let me check on the rest of the world before the werewolf games begin." Hardison grabbed his tablet and tried to ignore the itchy feeling.
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AN: I hope the pack nap was 'family feels' and not an uncomfortable 'where are we going with this?'. I enjoy the really tight relationship between these three, but OT3 isn't my jam. If you were hoping that eventually I'd take them in that direction I'm sorry to disappoint. However, there are a lot of OT3 fics out there, so I guess all is not lost. In my little verse here, all werewolves tend to be much more physically affectionate or in need of more physical touch than is normal for most. So again, there may be pack cuddles but there's not going to be anything that isn't PG. I love Eliot but he doesn't need to be in the middle of the very sweet romance that Parker and Hardison have.
BTW what would you guys think of a possible love interest for Eliot in the future? Probably several stories from now. I'd love to know if that's something you would like to read!