Disclaimer: I don't own Les Miserables; the werewolf mythos in this is my own creation.

Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who left kind words! I'll be trying to update both stories once a week, "Dreamers" at the beginning of the week and "Believing" at the end. Hopefully people continue to enjoy! This part takes a brief hiatus from Les Amis to bring in a few other characters.

Part Four: A Place to Rest

The stray slips down the street, arms crossed over his chest, shivering. He has a coat, but the fabric is old, worn, and the winter's wind slices through it with a frigid vengeance.

He sneezes and stops, eyes darting up and down the dark boulevard. His pursuers don't seem to have noticed, though, or if they did they're wary enough of this new pack's territory that they aren't going to risk causing offense just to chase him.

This suits Marius just fine. He doesn't want to fight with the mangy beasts, and he certainly doesn't want to join their pack, so their leaving him alone is the best option available.

He would have appreciated their leaving him alone where he had been, in his small room where he hurt no one and did nothing to attract attention to the pack, but some wolves were far too high-strung about their territory.

It's dark, but by the light of the moon Marius can pick out what he needs to. The edges of everything are crystal-clear, as sharp or sharper than during the day; movement draws his eye, whether it's a forgotten piece of refuse skittering along the street, a hissing cat, or a carriage returning early or arriving late for some fete or another. This is a decent part of town, given the silence of the streets, and he hunkers down into his coat and continues on along the street. He hasn't smelled any of the wolves who marked this territory since he crossed into it. With any luck he won't smell them again for several days, and he can find someplace to stay and avoid other wolves.

What to do in the meantime, though? Sniffing forlornly at the diffuse scents of meals wafting from all the houses, Marius shakes his head. None of these people would offer him shelter. They wouldn't know what he is, no, but they'd see his poor clothing, how cold he is, perhaps catch a whiff of blood from where the pack scored his ankle, and assume him a monster of a different kind.

He needs shelter, though. He's going to freeze to death if he stays out in the open, in the cold, bearing the full force of the wind on his body. Even if he Changes, even if he trades his poor human clothes for his thick fur coat, he'll need somewhere protected from the wind to curl up.

His eyes have been idly tracing the lines of a wall, and he pauses in front of the gate. The garden beyond the gate is overgrown, beautiful even in the sleep of winter, somehow blending the touch of humans with the spice of the wild and making it work. The walls of the garden offer protection from the wind, and the lack of footprints tells him that few people, if any, venture into the enclosure.

It would make a good place to hunker down for the night, at least. Better than continuing to walk and bleed and freeze, and he reaches out to touch the bars tentatively. He'll need to find a way through them or over the wall—a way that doesn't attract too much attention, preferably. He's thinner in his human form, but his head is sleeker in his wolf form. Perhaps if he—

He's still debating what to do when one of the bars shies away from his hand with a sharp crack of splintering ice, sliding over to create an opening he can squeeze through without too much trouble.

Grinning, Marius dives into the garden and carefully replaces the bar in its usual position. Perhaps this garden is meant to be his, a gift from above in return for all the misery of the last few months. Perhaps he'll be able to stay in this place for longer than he has in others, protected by the humans and their walls from the annoyingly tenacious attention of his own kind.

Perhaps. And perhaps he will learn how to fly, and be the only flying wolf ever seen.

Still smiling to himself, Marius finds the least-windy corner of the garden. It's almost warm after the chill of the street, protected as it is from the buffeting wind and swirling snow. Crouching down, he takes a deep breath before struggling out of all his clothes as quickly as possible.

The loss of the heat that the clothing had provided wrings a whimper from his throat despite his best efforts, and he has to work to keep from panting in dismay. With shaking hands he folds the clothes, carefully, or as carefully as he can, before setting them in the branches of a bush, where they will hopefully avoid becoming water-logged.

They're the only clothes he has. If he wants to continue to walk among humans, he has to take good care of them.

His clothes offered what protection he can, Marius settles back with a sigh and allows the Change to wash over him.

It's fantastic.

There's no other thought in his mind, no capability for other thoughts. All of his being, all of his awareness is locked into the confines of his body—a body that is reshaping itself in tingling, shivering, agonizing, beautiful ways.

His fur grows in first, drowning out the bite of the wind, and he sighs in relief and delight as warmth begins to return to his body. His tail comes next, and he can feel it swishing in long, pleased strokes as he continues to change. His ears shift up; his legs shorten and his arms elongate; his jaw lengthens, stretches, his tongue lolling out in ecstasy, and he barely remembers to keep from howling. Inviting a pack here to kill him or maim him for invading their territory would be beyond foolish.

The Change leaves him stretched out on the ground, his tongue hanging out and his unfocused eyes turned to the sky. Bounding to his feet in one eager movement, he snaps at a mouthful of snow and tosses his head. Snow rains down around his ears, settles into his coat, but it doesn't matter. His fur is thick, healthy like the rest of him, and between that and the walls blocking the wind he's perfectly content now.

He mustn't make too much commotion, though. He must remember that he is an invader, a stray, one to be chased away. He must remember that he is pretending to be human, that he is acting human as often as possible.

He must play, just a little bit, jumping on shadows and creating miniature snow-storms with sweeps of his tail and tosses of his head, because he allows himself the release so infrequently.

He tells himself, when he's human, that he doesn't miss this. He tells himself that he doesn't miss pack magic, that he doesn't miss four legs, that he doesn't need any of it because he doesn't believe as other wolves believe.

It's harder to lie in this form, though, to himself or to others, so for a few minutes he doesn't even try.

He hears the door open and freezes. The scent of humans assaults his nostrils—two of them, no, three, stronger versions of the vestiges he had caught in the garden, and he slowly, gently eases his way back into the dead bushes, closer to the ground, closer to the wall.

Perhaps they haven't noticed him. Perhaps they simply wish to take a stroll through their garden, to see for themselves the beauty of the night.

He hopes so. He hopes he hasn't been foolish and given himself away before he even has a chance to enjoy the warmth, to rest, to recover from being chased from his last den. He hopes he won't have to abandon his clothes, because he really has no idea what he'll do then.

"Come inside, Cosette. You'll catch a cold standing in the snow." The voice that comes from inside the house is male, deep, full of the resonance of authority. If he were a wolf, this person would be high-ranked.

"I could have sworn I saw something, papa." The woman steps further out into the garden, turning in a full circle.

Marius doesn't get to see her face well. Her face is a mass of shadows and movement, a rapidly blinking eye, a curved cheek, a determined chin; picking out more than that would require more light and his human eyes.

He doesn't need to see her face, though. He catches her scent, and it roots him to the spot, drops his mouth open, brings all of his thoughts to a screeching halt.

She smells fantastic. She smells like sunlight, like spring, like fall, like water, like trees, like everything he has ever loved and like none of it. She smells human, too; there's no denying she smells like a human.

There's also no denying that he's drawn to her, and Marius feels a whine slip through his lips before he has time to stop it.

The woman turns sharply, toward him, her head moving, her eyes searching.

He should stay still. He should freeze, close his eyes, wait to move until she's turned away, and then flee even further into the shadows. Humans have awful vision at night. The likelihood of her seeing him is slim.

So why is he stepping forward? Why is he whining again, just a thin sound, a strained sound, barely loud enough to carry to her ears?

The woman starts, and her eyes slide down to meet his. She freezes, and her scent shifts, fills with fear and surprise.

He doesn't want her to be afraid. Not of him.

Moving slowly, he stretches his front legs out in front of him. His ears he keeps in a neutral position, neither pricked toward her in invitation or back against his head in submission, because he's not sure which would frighten her more. His head lowers, and he stares up at her, beseeching.

"Oh." The girl laughs, shaking her head, one hand moving to cover her heart.

"Cosette?" The man's voice comes again, closer.

"Don't worry, Father." Cosette smiles at Marius as she speaks, hand moving from her heart to wave at him tentatively. "I'm coming inside. It's just a dog."

"A dog?" A man steps out of the door, standing at the woman's side. His eyes scan the area that Cosette is watching, but Marius has already slunk back into the shadows, away from their view. "Even more reason to come inside. Being mauled by a hungry beast at this time of night, in this weather…"

"I don't think it wanted to hurt me." Cosette pulls her father back into the house, their voices fading. "It seemed friendly enough¸ wagging his tail, and as you said the night's bitter cold. Let the dog shelter in the garden for the night. It does us no harm, and him a kindness."

"If we let it stay once, it might come back again." The man's hesitancy shows in his voice. "I don't want you to find yourself sharing the garden with a stray dog unexpectedly."

"Just let him stay for the night, Father." Cosette's voice is pleading, cajoling. "Please?"

"All right, child." The man sighs, and the door closes, cutting off the rest of the conversation.

Marius heaves a deep sigh, settling down in the snow under the bush, his tail curling around to cover his nose. He'll need to leave early in the morning, to escape before the man comes to reclaim his territory. Thanks to the woman, though, he'll have a night to rest.

He tries not to think about how much he doesn't want to leave, how much he wants to talk with the girl who showed him kindness.

Just because she shows kindness to stray dogs doesn't mean she'll show any kindness to stray men.

He's seen enough people react to him in both forms to know that for the bitter truth it is.