A/N: Werewolf the Forsaken and all related names are copyright White Wolf.

Modified chapter IV, check it out if you drop by.

CHAPTER V: Life is getting better

Today was one of those days I can't really put my finger on. I'd say it was a good day, but I'm feeling really weird right now. I can't really classify my feelings as good or bad. I know I never felt this way before, and that makes me a little scared.

So, I woke up early because we had to do the chores Night's Voice promised we'd do for our little night out. And we're getting a disciplinary action tomorrow for our little fight with the vampires. Well, Voice and Shibata got to clean the slaughterhouse, while Fangs washed the blood from the car and Thunder and me cleaned the stables. I don't like the smell of horses, but right now I don't want to smell blood anymore.

As I said, I woke up, had my breakfast, then headed to the stables. I passed by Fangs on the way, and saw her disassembling the car to wash all the bloodstains. When you have enemies who can track even the faintest trace of smell, you need to be extra careful. And we were really careless last Friday.

Anyways, I met Thunder at the stables' doors just as some other lodge members were taking the horses out to bathe them and brush them. They were three young wolves, the oldest of them younger than me. I realize now I'm older than I act or look, because those girls actually called me 'pup' during breakfast.

I'm no pup or whelp, even if I do look like one.

We started slow, taking out the thrash and old haystacks, tools, saddles and the like. The place was awfully smelly, and there was horse dung everywhere. Okay, maybe not everywhere, but it sure seemed like it. Thunder was really cheerful, even more cheerful than usual, and that helped a lot with the mood. By the time we were halfway through taking all the stuff out, she started talking:

"So, did you sleep well yesterday?" She had a warmer smile today, not her usual smug smile that makes me want to punch her.

"Yeah, yeah. By the way, who got me to bed? I think I slept on the car..."

"I did. Helped you to take a bath too, I hope you don't mind. You smelled." She made an ugly face, as if she could smell it again, but I actually took the joke in stride and chuckled a little. It was nice of her to help me instead of laying me down on bed and let me handle the blood soaked sheets when I woke up.

We talked about music, thanks to remembering last Friday. I don't know how she did it, but Thunder made me admit I learned some samba from Moonbiter, and even got me to dance a little while she pretended to play a pandeiro, a hand drum commonly used in samba music. Good thing no one but her saw me dancing, it would ruin my reputation of being a hardass.

But it was also really funny. I don't get to dance that much, specially now after I got kicked out of my pack. Without Moonbiter and Laughing Thunder, I am a very moody person, I think. What I'm trying to understand until now is why I said that out loud:

"You know what's funny? That my first friend in this place would remind me so much of my best friends in my former pack."

The blonde stopped moping the ground and turned to me. She had a confused look in her face, I think for the first time:

"What? I mean, I don't get it..."

"It's just that you're a lot like Moonbiter, you know? You're strong, smart, and have this 'I do what I want' attitude. But unlike Moonbiter, you're not overtly sexual or predatory. Instead you are easygoing and loud like Laughing Thunder, our Rahu."

"Whoa, cool." She smiled "I just got compared in a positive light to the legendary Laughing Thunder. Say, is it true that he got shot twenty times with a fifty cal and still killed the guy firing it?"

That story is so old everyone on the Lodge knows it by now.

"The guy firing it and his two friends. Then he ripped the gun from its nest, and charged the other guerrillas down the road while we maneuvered behind them. They never stood a chance." That had been a very good fight, and reminiscing of it made me let out a long, overly dramatic sigh as I got back to work.

"What's wrong?"

I didn't want to answer that, but her worried tone was so genuine I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I ended up talking, but without stopping my work:

"Say, Celeste, do you ever miss your pack?"

I think using her human name hit some nerve, because her expression changed from beaming to sad so fast it would be funny out of context.

"All the time." She answered with a tired voice. "All the fucking time. Sometimes I wish I hadn't done what I did, but whenever I look back to it, I see no other way that mess could have ended."

When I noticed where it was going, I ran out of words. I tried to focus even more on the ground, on the work we were supposed to be doing. I noticed we'd need some soap and water to clean up the older dirt, so I went back to the tool shed to get them. I also got a scrub, because no way that ground was getting clean without some good scrubbing.

Yeah, I ran from the conversation. I'm not good with sentimental stuff. That, and I was scared of what I could find out. What if this Thunder was a traitor? What if she was just white skinned Moonbiter waiting to happen? I didn't want no part of it.

Of course, my mind had to remind me, as I got back with the cleaning products, that I had been rude. And, worst of all, I felt sad for it. Usually, I don't really care, but by that point Sound of Thunder, Celeste, had got under my skin. She was the only friend I had here, I couldn't let her get mad at me because I was afraid to hear her story.

I got back to the stables and helped her mix the soap with the water. Then we both got on our knees and started scrubbing the ground. It stunk, and it was hot as hell, but I tried to focus on the task so we could finish it faster.

We did finish it fast. I think both of us realized how awkward it had got and wanted to just finish it fast and head to our rooms. Problem is, by the time we had finished, it was past lunchtime and we had lost it because we were so focused. So now we had to wait until dinner to eat a decent meal. We were tired, sweating and I didn't want to send her away without saying I was sorry. So, while the horses were being brought back in, I turned to her and said:

"I'm heading to the mango trees to grab something to eat and rest a little. Want to come?"

She gave me a shrug and a half hearted yes, but that was okay. The mango trees are hidden in the back of the ranch, after the crops and in the margin of the local river. It's a nice place if you want to be alone, or have some private conversation. Plus, mangoes taste good.

So, when we got there I climbed up one of the trees and caught a ripe mango, a big, red and yellow one that looked really juicy. To my surprise, Thunder could climb very well too, and we ended up sitting together on a large tree branch, savoring some fruit in silence.

"So, why did they send you here?" I'm not good with breaking the ice, so I decided to cut to the chase.

"Straight as a razor, huh?"

"Sorry, but I'm not good with words. And you know a lot about me, I know next to nothing about you. You could say I'm curious."

She let out a long sigh, sucked on the mango on her hands and started:

"Well, I guess I could humor you, you little clueless thingy. I was part of a pack operating in the inner marshlands of Mato Grosso. Our alpha was a pretty laid back guy, so when I got a girlfriend, he didn't even bat and eye. Of course, she was a liability, but I managed to keep her safe."

I didn't like the way her story was going. It reminded me too much of Moonbiter and her escapades. Of course, Moonbiter didn't go for a single gender when she could have both, so maybe there was some difference here. I didn't stop her from continuing the story:

"She was a cute secretary for some marketing company, we dated for about one year. Sometimes she would catch a scar on me, or wonder where did my cash came from, or where the hell I worked at, but I managed to come up with good excuses. Then things got real. We were chasing this group of spirit ridden for some months now, they were strong, tied to the drug dealing and gun selling gangs, so we couldn't fight them in a direct way."

She tossed the spent mango seed to the ground below us and leaned to the side to pluck another one. Her hands were slick with mango juice, as were her mouth and teeth. The comparison with blood was inevitable.

"So we hounded them and hunt them down like good predators do. We killed them slow, and culled their numbers while they couldn't realize who was killing them. Of course, by the time we had cut their numbers in half, they got smart. The gauntlet went crazy with spirit activity, and we had to be extra careful to cover our tracks."

I could hear the anger rising in her voice tone. She was taking stronger and harder bites out of the mango in her hands, as if to prove a point:

"But I rode the victory glory for too long and got sloppy. One day I got seen with my girlfriend leaving a restaurant. Those bastards homed on us like missiles. Three cars drove by us, guns firing from the windows. I pulled my girl into cover and called for backup, and one of my pack mates answered it pretty fast. He gave us covering fire so we could escape the gangs' ambush. My girlfriend went mad, hysterical, she had never even seen a gun fire in her whole life and now she was plunged deep into a fight that wasn't hers or even had anything to do with her. But I thought I could protect her, see her unharmed to the end of that crap."

She finished her second mango and absently grabbed a third one:

"We tried to bail out, heads low, running fast, while my pack mate rained hell on them from across the street. He was our irraka, and of course he had a good eye. He made them keep their heads low and not try to hurt me, or my lover. But then he stopped shooting."

Thunder couldn't bring herself to take another bite, so she just held the fruit in her hands, sighing:

"He said later he was ambushed from behind and had to fight for his life. I didn't care, I still tried to kill him. If he had held his ground for five more minutes, I could have gotten her out, unscratched. I doubt she would have stayed with me after that, but at least she would be safe. But he didn't hold, and my love was not safe. Shot in the leg, at the knee, assault rifle. Tore her leg clean off. I raged, I transformed, I killed stuff. Only made things worse."

It was the first time I saw Thunder lower her head in defeat, as she finished her story:

"I thought I was strong enough to protect both of us. What I did was hurting her and making her hate me. She told me that much when I visited her at the hospital. I was a freak and I should leave before she called the cops or the army. And so I left. And I went straight back to my pack and unleashed my frustration into the one who actually tried to help me. I almost killed him."

I didn't even notice I was hugging her while she talked. It felt right, even if I couldn't really embrace her when she had almost twice my size. I guess I just did what I could to show I understood her.

"I thought I had strength. That I could use that strength to protect her. But that was no strength. There is no strength in being strong by yourself. If you cannot share that strength with others, then you are weak. I was weak, so I resigned, even if my pack mates understood my anger..."

"That's something I can understand. Anger, rage, hate, I feel those all too well. But love, that's something I've only read about in books. I think I don't know love, even when everyone says it's something magical and the like. Moonbiter left the lodge because of love, you left your pack because of love. If you want my opinion, love makes more wounds than hate..."

"Clara?"

"What?"

She turned to me and grabbed my chin, turning my head to hers. She smelled strongly of mangoes and soap, and her hands were slick with juice, not that my chin was any better. Her eyes were sad for the first time, but even then they had this spark that made me want to go out and take the world on.

"Quit saying bullshit for a while..."

And then she kissed me. And I guess I kissed her back, because we embraced each other and it felt so good. She felt warm, and I could taste mangoes in her lips, and feel her slick hands push me against her, smashing me against her strong, warm body. It was also very awkward, because I'm pretty sure that was my first kiss. I didn't know what to do with my lips or my tongue, but I tried so hard to do something. In the end, I let her take the lead and I just sunk on her mouth and body. It felt good, it felt safe, it felt right.

It also felt so wrong. I'm not supposed to like another werewolf, that's what they all told me. Moonbiter did it once and got into serious trouble. But Moonbiter did it with a male. Sound of Thunder, Celeste, is a female. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?

I don't know, and back then I didn't care. I liked that embrace so much I almost cried when it ended. Thunder had tears in her eyes too, but her smile was genuinely happy when she said:

"Then I found you, our little miss badass. So small, so frail, so weak. And also so strong, so powerful. I wanted your strength, and I wanted to give you mine. I saw your broken spirit, and mine, and realized we could use the pieces to build something together. If only you accept me."

I wanted to jump on her, kiss her, hug her and say "YES! YES!". But I was afraid that was only because no one ever showed this much love for me. No one. But did I love her back? I could only answer with the truth:

"I wish I could. But I don't know how to love someone. Not like this. I never felt this way before. I don't know what to do!"

She smiled and gave me a light kiss on the lips again. I fought the urge to press myself against her some more, just to feel her warmth again.

"Silly, stubborn thingy. I can show you how."

That was all I needed to hear. I gave in. I hugged her, embraced her, we didn't even kiss again. We just stood there, sitting on a high tree branch, cuddling with each other, for how long I don't know and don't care. I wanted that warmth, that feeling of safety.

We went back to the main house holding hands together and feeling like a pair of children. I felt so good, and so bad at the same time. Someone loves me. Someone loves me! I want to scream it!

But I'm so afraid of not loving her back. So afraid of hurting her again, of shunning her like I was shunned once. I will learn how to love her. I will love her. I just hope loving her doesn't bring me, or her, even more trouble.