Poly World: Wolf Pack (Part One in a series)

Summary:

Charles Swan, a recent police academy graduate has been hired by the Forks Police Department. He and his fiance, Renée Higginbotham, are looking for a place to live. When his second cousin, Billy Black inherits the family home, he invites Charles and Renée to live with him and his new wife, Sarah. But on the Rez, things run a little differently.

There is old magic there, and creatures of lore. Not only that but a tribal law instated by Ephraim Black now allows an adult to be wed to two people at the same time. Is there more to Billy's offer than meets the eye? And what of Sue and Harry Clearwater?

Rated M for mature subject matter, sex, language, and violence. Please read with caution.

Chapter One: An Invitation

I was just coming off of my first stretch of night shifts on the force. It was starting to look like there were going to be a lot of those for me. All the good nine-to-five shifts went to the senior officers. But me? Well, I was the rookie. So after sleeping the day away in my little bachelor pad, I headed out again. Not for work this time, though. I finally had the night off and as such, I had a date planned with my girl. I hightailed it to her place to pick her up. Her mother answered the door.

"Good evening, Mrs. Higginbotham. Is Renée ready yet?" I asked, taking off my hat and holding it to my chest as a show of respect. If there was one thing I knew, it was how to impress the parents.

"Charles, I have told you that you are welcome to call me Marie, Son. You know my daughter, she was born early and has been making up for it ever since. I wouldn't be surprised if she were late for her own wedding, which reminds me, have the two of you set a date yet?" She asked, knowing full well we had not.

"Thank you, Marie," I nodded as she moved aside for me to enter. "And no, Ma'am, we haven't. I've just about saved up for the ring now. I'm going to Seattle next weekend to pick it out. But, to be honest, I'd still like to have a down payment saved up for a house before we tie the knot. No sense getting hitched until I can put a decent roof over her head now is there?" I smiled, knowing that if there was one thing this woman respected, it was a good work ethic. Thankfully, that was one of the few things that I happened to possess.

"Well, I suppose it isn't too big of a rush just yet. So long as you two don't dilly dally once you are wed, and get to work on making my grandbabies. I'm going to need someone to spoil, now that you plan on taking my baby girl away." She grinned, shaking her finger in warning.

"You needn't worry too much about that, Ma'am. I'd like to have a big family one day. And we'll be staying in the area, now that I've been hired on with the Forks PD. I quite like the job, so I don't fancy us moving away. Besides, my mother's family all live out on the Rez and my father's family are all in Forks, so you won't be the only one in the area thinking about grandbabies, Ma'am." I assured.

"Well, that's a relief then! And look, here comes my daughter, so I guess you are saved from listening to me carry on any more, for now." She laughed. "And remember, Charles, that's Marie you'll be calling me please, now none of this 'Ma'am' business." She said, shaking that finger at me again.

"Leave him alone, Mom. I don't want you scaring this one off on me, alright?" Renée grinned, kissing her mother on the cheek and grabbing her jacket from the coat rack.

"This one?" I asked as she dragged me out the door before her mother could say another word.

"Yes, this one. My mother is hard on boyfriends. They never last long around here." She said as I opened the car door for her.

"And just how many did she scare off before me, Renée?" I huffed.

"Why? Jealous, Charles? You don't have to worry. I already told her you're 'a keeper'." She giggled while I chewed on the thought that she'd dated at least a few other men before me.

We were going to dinner at my friend Billy Black's house. He and I had been friends since the playpen because my mother and his father were first cousins and our mothers were best friends. We grew up fishing together with our dads and granddads. Billy's grandpa, Ephraim, and my grandpa, Ezekiel were brothers-in-law. My grandma Dot was Ephraim's sister.

Years ago, when Ephraim was alive and young, he used to take his son, William Black Sr. out fishing all of the time and my grandpa Zeke would tag along whenever they would visit because they lived in Seattle. Some years later, after my mother, Helen, started dating my father, Geoffrey Swan, grandpa Zeke started inviting his future son-in-law to tag along. My dad and Billy's dad, William, got to be quite good friends because of those fishing trips, and my mom and dad introduced William to my mom's best friend, Judith Peterson, who he later married.

My mom and dad loved the Olympic Peninsula, especially the area around Forks and La Push, which they visited frequently during those years. So when they graduated from college, they moved back to La Push to be closer to their friends. So Billy and I spent our growing up years together. In fact, our parents even bought a house together, and we lived in the basement, while Billy and his parents lived upstairs.

Billy used to make a game out of stomping messages to me in Morse code through the floor. I would reply by pounding on the roof with a broom. It was our secret language, though we suspected our parents knew. And our parents used to hang out late at night, so oftentimes, Billy and I would bunk together in his room upstairs while our parents all hung out downstairs. He had bunk beds which were really cool and homemade whereas I only had a trundle for when I had a friend over.

Anyway, we'd been inseparable ever since. Of course, I'd seen a bit less of him since he married Sarah. They were just starting their life together and were still in that honeymoon phase. But we had buried Billy's dad about a year ago, and now Billy was going to be taking his spot on the council. He was pretty excited about it and had invited us over for dinner to celebrate.

We'd always talked about how great it would be to be on the council and know all of the tribal secrets. Now, it was finally happening for him. I knew I'd never be on the council because my Quileute blood came from my mother's line and both my mother and grandmother had married outside of the tribe. So I was only one-quarter Quileute and Renée didn't have any. So any children we had would be even more diluted than I was.

But Billy had promised that whatever secrets he learned on the council, he would tell me, even if he wasn't supposed to. He'd had his first meeting with them a couple of days before, even though his official swearing-in wasn't until the following weekend. I had to admit I was a little curious to see if he had learned anything.

When we pulled up, I walked around to Renée's side and opened her door. We headed into the little house Billy and Sarah were currently living in. It was small but Sarah made it homey and her cooking was excellent which took the focus off of the size of the house. Speaking of cooking, as soon as we got inside, Sarah spirited Renée off to the kitchen to 'help her with dinner'. Having seen Renée in a kitchen before, I knew Sarah probably wanted her there for the girl talk, not for her culinary skills.

Billy offered me a beer and we sat in the living room while the girls worked. "So, I have more good news for us to celebrate. They finally settled the estate," he announced.

A few years back, my parents had taken ill and they'd both gone into a nursing home. It was a huge strain on their finances because those places can be pretty pricey. So Billy's parents had bought them out of their share of the house they'd owned together. They were using the money to pay for their nursing home and medical bills. The Blacks had needed to tighten their purse strings to buy my parents out but they did so without complaint. They were that close.

So, after Billy's mom passed two years ago and his dad's passing last year, the house was supposed to go to Billy as their only son. But his sisters didn't think that was fair and they contested it. Which was why over a year later it was just now being settled. "Yeah, and...? Tell me!" I urged, perched on the edge of my seat.

"My sisters lost their case. Nora's husband is loaded, as you know. Emmie inherited my parent's car. And the twins have already bought a house together, so it was deemed that the will is perfectly fair and reasonable and therefore it stands. The house is mine, Chuck. And I want you and Renée to come and live in it with us." He smiled.

"Wow, Billy, that's…wow! I'm so glad you got the house. You really want us to live there with you though? You don't have to do that, you know. What if you and Sarah end up having a bunch of kids? You might need the space there, Billy."

Billy sighed. "Chuck, we've been trying for months and Sarah isn't even pregnant yet. So, I don't really know what is going to happen for us as far as kids go. But yes, we've talked it over and we are one hundred percent sure we want you to live with us. Besides, the house has three bedrooms up and three down, so that's plenty of room for any children that might pop out. And come on, a chance to see Renée prancing around in her underwear on the daily? How could I pass that up?" He teased.

"I heard that!" Renée yelled from the kitchen. I just laughed. I was used to Billy's sense of humor and we were pretty similar in that regard. I'd made a few good-natured remarks about Sarah, too.

"Alright, well, I'll talk to Renée, but the way the girls get on, I'd say it's a fair possibility we're in." I nodded.

"Great! I hope so."

"So, tell me how your meeting with the council went," I asked, dying of curiosity.

"Well, you better brace yourself for this, because it's going to rock your world Chuck, and I'm not sure if you'll see it as a good thing or not. Apparently, nothing on this Rez is ever as it seems. They want me to submit to a paternity test before they give me the Black family council spot. Apparently, there is a fifty-fifty chance that my dad might not be my dad."

"Excuse me?" I sputtered as I choked on my beer. "They think your mom was with someone else?"

"Not think, Chuck, it's a fact that she was. Apparently, the laws on the Rez work a little differently nowadays than they do elsewhere. We exist as a sovereign nation, to an extent. And when Ephraim Black was chief, he made a pretty big change to the law. Within the borders of La Push, bigamy is legal. My mother legally had two husbands, Chuck. They just didn't widely publicize the fact because the people of Forks don't know about that law."

Two husbands? How could Judith have had two husbands? Surely we would have seen if she was keeping another guy around or going somewhere to meet him, even. The only people the Blacks ever really hung out with on a regular basis were my par… wait a second…

"Billy...who was this alleged second husband of your mother's?"

"Who do you think, Chuck? See why I told you to brace yourself. But it gets even weirder, my friend. My dad also had two wives."

"Are you actually saying…?"

"That your parents and my parents were more than close friends? That all four of them were actually married, by tribal law? Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying."

...

…

…

…

I was silent for a very long time processing that information. So, if Billy's mom was also married to my dad, and Billy's dad was also married to my mom, then the odds were pretty good that Billy was actually at least my half-brother. And for that matter, Nora, Jennie, Connie, and Emmie could all be my sisters, or at least some of them probably were.

"Well, who the heck would they give the council spot to, if it turns out you aren't a blood descendant? You're the only male descendant of the Black family in Ephraim's line, aren't you?" I asked, still shocked at this turn of events. "Can they really take the spot away from you?"

"I might not be. The only one, that is. They want you to take the paternity test too. And if it turns out we both are Ephraim's descendants, it'll still go to you because your grandmother was also a Black, so technically you would have more Black family blood, in that case. And if it turns out we both aren't, you might still get it anyway.

"Deborah and Susana Black didn't have any children and you're Dot's only grandson. So if they can't get a descendant from Ephraim's line, they'd go one generation back and call one from Joseph's. And that would be you, buddy. So the only way I'm getting the spot is if it turns out that William is biologically my father and that Geoffrey is biologically yours.

"It's funny, you always said you wanted to be a chief one day, I just thought it would be a chief of police instead, though you might still be able to be both, I'd have to do some research to find out if that's a conflict of interest. But that's putting the cart a bit before the horse. We still need to take the test. You will, right?"

"Yeah, I guess we have to. That's lame that they won't just give you the spot either way. You've been working so hard to prepare for it and brushing up on the tribal histories and whatnot. I'd say you've definitely earned it." I told him.

"Yeah, maybe, but if it does go to you, I can still teach you everything I've learned so it won't go to waste. Besides, you were always better than me at tribal history and all that stuff anyway." Billy smiled. "So, how much do you wanna bet we're brothers?"

"Probably a pretty good chance. At least half-siblings anyway. I just don't know why they never told us." I sighed. It was a pretty low blow that we had to find out about our own family from the council, in my opinion.

"In all honesty, they probably thought we knew, Chuck. We didn't call our parents mom and dad all that often, like kids are starting to nowadays. It was always 'yes Sir' and 'yes Ma'am'. And think about their wedding album. Or the way they all were with each other. Or the fact that they almost always sent us upstairs to sleep and they all slept downstairs. How much do you wanna bet that was so that we wouldn't know who was going into which bedroom? That guest room in your place always looked awfully lived in considering we never had any guests, didn't it?" He pointed out.

And when he put it all that way, it made sense. I'd always assumed they'd just had a double wedding, not some sort of joint wedding or something. That possibility didn't even occur to me until I thought about the pictures themselves and the way everyone was standing, or the fact that there were just as many pictures of William dancing with my mom as there were of my dad dancing with her, and the reverse was true as well. I had to wonder if I'd still even be able to call him my dad in a few months. Although, I suppose that really they were both my dads in a way.

"You're right, Billy, they probably thought we knew or at least suspected." I was lost in thought for a while before I spoke again. "So, if the law in La Push allows it, I wonder how many other families like ours there are on the Rez." I mused.

"A lot. The council records a total of eighteen homes with at least one person living in them who is polygamously married." Billy informed me.

"Wow. In a village of fewer than five hundred people, that is a lot." I agreed.

"Yep, so they all must be just as hush-hush about it as our family was because I never knew any of this existed here at all." He said.

"No, me neither." I nodded, just as the girls called us in to eat dinner.

That night, Renée and I talked about a lot of things on the drive home. We stopped for ice cream so we'd have a little longer to chat.

"So lemme get this straight. William Black Sr. was married to both Judith and your mom, and your dad was actually married to both your mom and Judith Black? How did nobody know that?" Renée asked me.

"Yep, apparently, on paper the girls were both hyphenated as Black-Swan. But Judith just used the Black part and my mom just used the Swan part, so that no one would know. They probably kept it from us more so that we wouldn't accidentally tell anybody, then for any other reason." I explained.

"Wow, so you and Billy might be brothers?"

"Well, either way, we're brothers to some extent. At the very least, I guess we'd be step-brothers. But likely it could turn out that we are half of even full siblings. We'll know for sure in a few weeks, I think."

"Wow, I wonder how many other families we know are actually polygamous. There are plenty of houses in the village that have more than one family sharing a house. Maybe a lot are cozier than we knew. This is so cool! It's like living on a commune! Hey Baby, would you ever want a second wife?"

Renée asked and I almost veered us off the road with shock. "I doubt there is really a right way to answer that question. So I will just say that I sure am happy with the woman I've already got."

"Silly Charles! It wasn't a trick question. Heck, I'd gladly take a second husband if I didn't think you'd be too jealous and unreasonable about it. And it isn't about being unhappy with the one you've got, Chuck. It's about having enough love in your heart to be able to give to more than one person. Think about it, did any of your parents ever seem unhappy to you?"

I genuinely thought about it. "No, I can't say that they ever did. In fact, the four of them were always happier than most of the other adults we knew growing up. So I suppose, at least in their case, maybe you're right. By the way, what do you mean that I'm unreasonable and jealous? When have I ever been unreasonable or jealous, Renée?" I huffed.

"Well, you were certainly jealous earlier tonight when the topic of past boyfriends came up. And you get unreasonable whenever I try to talk about anything too 'out there' as you put it. Like that time I asked you to come with me for a palm reading, remember?" She pointed out.

"Renée, there is a huge difference. Palmistry is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. All of that hokey new age stuff is. And I get jealous at the idea of previous boyfriends because it reminds me how easy it would be for me to lose you to one of those duffleheads and the thought of losing you scares the shit outta me, Baby."

"Charles, I'm not entirely sure what a dufflehead is, but I assure you that none of my ex-boyfriends still hold any current appeal for me. And as for the palmistry, well, you just can't tell me that there isn't any real magic in the world because I cannot believe that. Some of them may be fraudulent, yes, even the majority might be. But I believe that somewhere out there is a real psychic and I am going to meet them one day, even if it is the last thing I do."

"Alright Baby, well good luck with that." I smiled as I dropped her off at home. "Now, may I please get a good night kiss before your mother chases me off with her broom?" I teased.

"Yes, you may." She said kissing me, and I noticed her lips felt cold. "Oh! Charles, you're burning up!" She gasped.

"Nah, it's just hot in this car because you're so damn sexy, Renée. Now get in there before your mother comes out here!" I demanded playfully, shooing her away.

"Fine, but I'm bringing you by some chicken noodle soup tomorrow. You can't get sick, we have to spend the next few weeks packing!"

"Yes, Mom!" I teased her and blew her a kiss before driving off.

I decided to roll down the windows on the way home because I really was feeling a little warm and a bit tired too, so I didn't want to fall asleep at the wheel. After a few minutes of driving in the fresh air, I was feeling a lot better. That is, until I smelled the worst odor I have ever smelled in my life. It was so damn potent that it burned my nose!

I pulled off to the side, got out of the truck and started shaking. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I felt like I was being watched. The smell grew even stronger and then everything exploded. I felt a rage I had never felt before as I chased after the source of the scent. The creature was close, I could feel it in my bones, as my paws tore up the ground. Paws!? I'd have to think more about what that meant later. For now, I had a culprit to catch.

AN: I'll take thoughts, questions, criticisms etc. The only thing I'm not interested in is silence. Opinions are like belly buttons, everybody has one. And I sure as heck want to hear yours! Er, your opinion, I mean. Not your belly button. Thank you! :-D

Blessings,

-BMW