Wolf of War

A Patricia Briggs werewolf fanfiction

Chapter Ten:

Determination

"The Marrok said I should talk to you," the youngest male of the prospective wolves commented as he shoveled a forkful of ham, eggs and pancake into his mouth.

Ares frowned at that, wondering why it was that the Marrok would have said something like that. He even voiced that thought.

"Why would he do that?"

"Cuz now that you're one of his wolves," Tamara tossed in, having just come into the dining room with her own plate of food, "maybe he decided to make you tell us what we want to know." The tone of her voice was sarcastic at best, irritated at worst.

"It's not like I know more about being a wolf than any of the Marrok's other wolves," Ares returned, still curious about the Alpha's reasons.

"He said that you might have some insight on how to survive the Change," Darius answered; his words seemed to bring a slow-motion halt to what all of the other prospective wolves were doing. Darius looked around at the others, and then back at Ares. "Maybe I'm not the only one who would wanna hear that."

"No, definitely not," the attractive Mediterranean Diana offered, breaking into motion once again, reaching for a spoonful of the hashed potatoes to put on her own plate.

"I certainly wanna know," Christopher, the budding collegiate offered behind a swallow of juice.

"I can't imagine what words of wisdom you might have," Tamara chimed in, "but I'll admit, now I'm curious, too."

The other three—Sean, Allen and his girlfriend, Penelope—were only now coming into the dining room, and all stopped at the sudden bit of tension that they walked into.

"So what's going on?" Penelope asked, her tone bright and curious.

"Darius says that the Marrok suggested to him that maybe Ares might know something about how to survive the Change," Diana offered with a smirk.

"Really?" Penelope seemed to brighten.

"Okay, hold on," Ares tossed to the assemblage, holding out a hand to emphasize his words. "Just hold on a minute." He waited until everyone was quiet. "Okay. Darius," he continued, turning to the young male who had brought the subject to him, "What did the Marrok tell you?"

"He told me, that you seem to have an idea about how to survive the Change," Darius repeated.

"So did he just offer that up randomly? or did it come up in some kind of conversation?"

"Oh!" the younger male exclaimed. "Well, I went to the Marrok earlier this morning, and I told him, since you had gone through the Change and you survived, that maybe I was ready to give it a try too. Then he told me to talk to you, and that maybe you could tell me a little bit of how you did it."

Ares gave a roll of his eyes and shook his head.

"I don't think it's really that simple," he told the younger male, "but I suppose I could tell you what worked for me, and maybe you can make it work for you." Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that he had more than just Darius' attention, but he chose to deliberately ignore everyone else.

"Darius," he continued, speaking to the young man, "First, let me say that this is my opinion, my experience, my way of doing things, so I'm not telling you something that is a fact. But it is what I believe.

"The first thing I believe you have to do is to get rid of your doubts. You can't go—I believe you can't go into the Change with any doubt or question that you're gonna get through it. I think that if you go into it thinking that there's a chance you'll die, then you'll die. You gotta be sure in your heart that you're gonna wake up after it's all over and that there's no chance you're not gonna make it.

"And then there's your wolf."

"Huh?" the younger male grunted, "What do you mean?"

"Okay, let me put it this way- my wolf and I had to come to an agreement about who would be in charge. For me, it was like..." He paused for a moment, thinking, trying to put his experience into words for the younger male. "Well, okay- I'm explaining that one wrong. First, you have to know that the Change isn't just like a magical version of a sex change, poof, now you can become a werewolf, but you're still the same you that you were before the Change. You…you go from being all by yourself in your own head, to…to sharing your head, so to speak, with a wolf. And it's not really even that simple. It's…me telling you what it's like to be a werewolf is like the difference between someone telling you what it's like to be a parent, and what it's really like to be a parent.

"What I can say about it is that you have to figure out how to make some kind of peace with your wolf. For me, we fought, and then we bonded." He shrugged.

"That's…helpful," Sean commented with a slight Southern drawl, just as Darius was set to open his own mouth.

Ares shrugged again. "It's what I've got," he tossed back. "The main idea I would tell you, Darius," he turned back to the young male, "is to think about what you wanna try to do to make it happen, not to think about "what if I" type thoughts."

"So, basically, take a leap of faith?" Tamara offered, her tone still rather sarcastic. "Just believe in yourself, and all that jazz?"

"If you wanna look at it that way," Ares offered, giving Tamara back a wry look. "I went into this with the idea that I was going to be a werewolf. I didn't try to think for a minute that I'd fail." He held out his hands, and very lightly gestured to himself. "Here I am. Take that as you like."

"I hear you," Darius offered, thoughtfully nodding his head.

Ares was there, two days later, when Darius went to go through his own Change. Darius had elected to go to the pole barn and be Changed there; he watched as the same wolf he had fought against, the same wolf who had probably been the one to Change him, walked up to the young man, and then, with a quickness that took his unprepared gaze by surprise, practically tore the young man's arm off.

For a few moments, he wondered whether or not the wolf had done that to him, after he'd passed out from blood loss; the seemingly sudden burst of bodies and motion that came seemingly out of nowhere, converging on the now prone and profusely bleeding form of the young man, shifted his focus to just how bloody, how savage the beginning of all of this was. Three people, people he assumed were part of the Marrok's pack of wolves, rushed upon the scene and began tending to Darius.

The wolf in him seemed to awaken at the smell of the blood; it took every bit of his will to resist closing the distance and breathing it in more deeply, the scent thick and strong in his nose, almost but not quite cloying, almost but not quite making his stomach clench in an echo of hunger, and even after exerting his will, he had to force himself to turn away and take a good, long walk. His wolf sat in the background of his psyche—as he was thinking about it—and quietly growled and grumbled at what he thought of his human's squeamishness, until he expressed his feelings in the idea of making a meal out of another wolf simply for the taste and smell of blood.

By the time he turned back to see more of what was happening with the younger male, the wolves working on him were packing up all of their detritus and equipment. Darius had been stripped out of his bloody clothes, and even while he was paying attention, he could almost see the younger male's wounds healing. One of the wolves bent down to pick the young man up from the ground where he had collapsed, and headed off in the direction of the main house.

"He has survived to be Changed," a voice spoke, off to his side. Even as he was turning, he was recognizing that it was the Marrok. His eyes momentarily met with the older male's, before shifting off to the side. "Now," the Marrok continued, "we will see if he survives the Change itself." The older male paused, then continued, "It will be an hour or two before our new wolf regains consciousness. I think I would like for you to join us when young Darius awakens."

Ares' eyes locked back onto those of the Marrok, before sliding away again; his brow furrowed with confusion. "Me? Why me?" he asked, sounding as confused as he looked.

"Because, if you recall, I have set you with the task of taking the survivors on a hunt," the elder wolf commented. "Ares, God of War, look at me now. Look at me as you would with one you wish to bond with, gain the trust of, whom you wish to take you seriously. I will take no offense." Ares could see that the Marrok was quite serious in his words and his body language; if the Alpha had wanted to truly get his attention, he had succeeded.

When Ares did as the Marrok asked, the elder wolf continued. "There are things I have seen in you that are…interesting." The Marrok offered a faintly sly smirk for a moment, before his expression grew serious again. "I will give you this much truth: you are being tested." He paused, long enough to let his words sink in, and then continued, " What I have seen, I feel could be…well, I suppose if I keep saying 'interesting', the word will wear on you." The Marrok offered another smirk. "But I have my thoughts, and I do not want to color your thoughts or your actions with what my thoughts tell me."

Ares took a few moments to think about that, after the older wolf seemed to have finished what he wanted to say. A number of thoughts and ideas rushed through his head, but without any real information to work with, they simply spun in place.

"Alright; so why me?" he found himself asking the Marrok once again.

"God of War, you are—"

"Interesting," Ares finished.

The older wolf gave a bit of a chuckle. "No, not this time. God of War, you are unique. You come to Aspen Creek, to me, to be Changed. You wait less than a week before you not only go through with the Change, you survive as well. And from what I have seen, your physical change from wolf to human, and back again, does not take as long as I known from others new to their wolf as you. Those things interest me. Those things intrigue me. Those things give me thoughts that give me the idea to test you, to test those things that I see.

"There is no pass or fail for this test, God of War. I simply desire to see what more there is to see. And that is 'why you'."

An experiment. A sort of stress-test, his mind supplied him with; there was something about his Change that seemed 'different' from that of others, and so the older wolf wanted to see if there really were any differences, or if it was just coincidence of some sort. He gave a slight nod, both to the Marrok and his own thoughts. He could see the 'why' of that, and that set his mind at ease.

"He should be awakening soon," the Marrok offered to Ares. The sons of the Marrok, Charles and Sam, stood at their father's side. The pole barn wasn't the warmest place to gather, Ares thought, but the Marrok had suggested that for what he wanted to see regarding Ares and Darius, the pole barn was probably the best option.

The Marrok had further explained why he wanted to see what Ares could do with the younger wolf, saying, "I cannot recall that we have had a psychologist here, either to become a werewolf, or to speak with any of our wolves here in Aspen Creek, and I think it would be interesting to see if your education in psychology will have any effects in how you're able to interact with a new wolf."

The Marrok had glanced at his sons, and the three of them had taken a few steps back, leaving Ares as the closest one to the newly Changed wolf, when he began to stir.

Darius awoke both slowly, and with blinding speed.

It was in the almost lazy way he stretched, in his wolf form, canine-like almost in a "man's best friend" kind of way, and then suddenly he was springing up onto all four of his paws, head swiveling this way and that, an almost sub-audible growl caught in his throat. Ares thought that Darius the wolf was both rather beautifully handsome, and almost frightfully deadly.

And then those wolf eyes turned on him, a dark, burnished coppery gold color, and that growl became more than sub-audible.

"Eat," Ares offered, and gestured off to his right, quite a ways past where he stood, almost to the outside door of the pole barn they were both standing in. He could smell the blood, the meat, of the almost freshly taken deer, that even his own belly rumbled in sympathetic hunger, still new to his own wolf as he was. But he held his wolf at bay, at least for the moment; another wolf, a newer wolf, was hungrier than he, and that wolf needed to eat.

"Eat," Ares repeated. "You'll feel…better, after you've taken care of your hunger."

Darius seemed to pause at his words, and took a few looks back and forth between Ares and the side of deer meat in the near distance. At length, his eyes locked onto Ares' own, and he started growling once again, and took a step towards him.

Ares felt a spike of fear rush through him, before both his own psyche and the wolf within both slammed down on that feeling with a heated flash of anger, which quickly burned into a rage that only his human side could find the energy to channel into determination. His wolf practically snarled at him in his head, telling him of the other wolf's challenge, and that he could not let that stand. The human side of himself had a flurry of thoughts that all amounted to what he later thought of as, 'I won't let myself be afraid of you!'

That flash of anger and determination took over his own expression, and without much thought he took a step forward on his own.

"Stand down!" he snarled at the other wolf, feeling a rush of hot and cold at the same time washing through him. Darius' growling seemed to drop to an almost sub-audible grumble, but Ares could still hear him. Both with thought and without, he growled back at the wolf, almost staring him down. The other wolf's growl dropped away, and a faint whimper came from him instead.

"Go eat," he commanded somewhat angrily, gesturing towards waiting meal of the deer meat, though the anger was quickly bleeding away, now that the wolf had stopped trying to threaten him. Darius hesitantly slunk in the direction of his meal.

Ares heaved a heavy sigh.

"It would seem that you are rather competent at what things you do", a voice that was not his wolf's voice spoke in his thoughts, sounding like what his imaginings told him the Marrok should sound like. He spun on his heel, looking for the Alpha and his sons, and noted that they have moved to the other side of the pole barn away from he and the new wolf Darius. The Marrok gave him a slight nod of his head as Ares looked his way.

"I will amend on my previous statements", the Marrok offered in his thoughts, his 'voice' quiet but amused, "You are not simply interesting; you are quite interesting."

One by one, the other prospective wolves took their turns to being Changed.

Penelope was the next person to declare that she was ready; Ares suggested to her that she keep her love for her partner at the forefront of her thoughts, to help her pull through the Change, and for her to focus her thoughts when she met up with her wolf.

Allen, Penelope's partner, followed after her, seeing her survival through the Change as the needed inspiration to be ready for his chance. Sean, hearing that Allen had made up his mind to go through the Change, elected to take the chance as well. Allen didn't take very well to Ares' advice to not try to use his partner's survival as an indication that he too would survive, and Sean didn't want to speak with him at all.

Christopher, the late bloomer into his own charisma, was still resolute to go through with his Change, even when he found out that neither of the other two males had survived the attempt; Ares tried to express to him to search within himself, to find something worth not only surviving for, but worth living for.

Tamara seemed at times both convicted, and terrified, of attempting her Change, and she seemed to carry that with her even as she was facing her trial. Ares attempted to talk with her, but perhaps it was her first impression of him—or so he considered, since he had no proof of the thought—as maybe as much as the ease by which it seemed he passed through the Change, that gave rise to so much general hostility from her towards him, and made her unwilling to really listen to what he was trying to say to her.

Diana was the final prospective wolf to attempt her Change; calmly, she sought out Ares and asked him to tell her, not 'what to do', but what he had done. Once he'd finished his story, she went to the Marrok, and expressed that she was ready to meet her wolf. The Marrok had assented, and Diana had immediately gone right out the door.

"Come with me," the Marrok had said to Ares, gesturing for him to follow the older Alpha wolf. He offered no real explanation, and walked off, seemingly with the expectation that his word and his departure would be followed.

Ares decided to follow him anyway.

The Marrok kept his pace such that Ares was easily able to catch up to him, and when he did, the older wolf slipped to the side of the other.

"God of War," the Marrok started off, as he led Ares away from the house and the barn and other buildings, "I have seen what things I need to see, I believe. There are one or two more things that I think I should see to discover, but some of the important things, I know now.

"For now, I think I will guide you towards learning of your wolf and how that relates to your dominance, and how you may wield the strength of the power your wolf grants to you."

"What do you mean?" Ares frowned a bit, not quite grasping what the Marrok was talking about.

"You are one of the most dominant wolves I have had the honor to come to know," the Marrok replied, "The strength of your connection with your wolf, the manner by which you are able to carry yourself, and the presence you have with those who have come to be Changed during this season, all point to such.

"Those things, come from the power within you, given to you by your wolf and the connection forged between you. And as one experienced with the power of such a connection, it is my privilege to guide you into how you may use that power." The Marrok offered a bit of a smirk. "Your power, that connection between you and your wolf, when it is…when it is wielded, it can be felt by others. The strength of it is a measure of just how dominant you are."

The Marrok stopped, and turned to face him, and Ares did the same. His gaze locked with that of the elder wolf, and only after a few moments to realize this did he shift his glance away.

"And that, God of War, that both tells me that you are indeed quite a dominant wolf, and that there is yet something different about you, something that still bears some understanding. Your wolf is within you; not suppressed, not constrained, and yet while I know he is there, your gaze does not give my wolf challenge. It is like seeing a sleeping wolf; a dangerous being, but a slumbering danger." The elder wolf caught his eye again, and almost stared at him for a few seconds, before turning and continuing to walk—and gesturing for Ares to walk with him. "Quite interesting, God of War." The old wolf gave a bit of a chuckle, and added, "I may have something special in mind for you, God of War; but that, I will determine, after your hunt.

"For the moment, however, learning how to make use of that—both of your dominance, and of your strange ability to look another wolf in the eye without causing challenge, those are what we will be doing today."

The Marrok's gaze passed over Ares and the other four…survivors, as he was thinking of them, and while he couldn't tell right off what the others were thinking, he knew that he could just about feel the weight of the gaze of the elder wolf as his look passed over him.

"One of the things you must learn is to harness…no; poor choice of wording. You must learn to tap into, the power and the abilities of your wolf," the elder wolf began. "And one of the most important abilities for you to wield would be the dominance of your wolf."

"So Teacher? Will this be on the exam?" Darius offered with a grin and a chuckle; Ares also smirked, and he suspected that he wasn't the only one.

"No, smart ass, this is not a class," the Marrok offered with a touch of a smile. "I like you, Darius, but please do not think that I will hesitate to use you as an example when and where needed." He offered up a toothy smile, which both because of his words, and because smiling wasn't something he'd done a lot of in front of the others, made him look decidedly suspicious. The fact that Ares could see that that smile didn't quite reach his eyes made even him want to shudder. Darius did jerk a bit in what seemed to be something like fear, and ducked his head.

The Marrok seemed to take that for what it was, and continued his words.

"All wolves have some measure of dominant ability within them," the Marrok offered with quiet wisdom. "Some have more of it than others; in order to call upon what you have, you must find your wolf, and work with him—or her—to bring that dominant ability to call." The elder wolf offered a bit of a wry smile before he continued. "Some liken it to…flexing a muscle; the more often you practice, the more easily you will be able to exercise that dominant ability within you."

"Can you become more dominant over time?" This time, it was Tamara who spoke up, her voice oddly both strong but tremulous. Ares gave her a look—though she wasn't looking at him, and didn't seem to notice his eyes on her—and wondered at what he was hearing in her voice.

"Some may grow a bit in their ability to be dominant as time passes, but that is not something you should be focused on today," the Marrok explained, his eyes upon Tamara, who couldn't hold his gaze, "Today, your focus should be on communicating with your wolf, and find out how you can use his or her ability to be dominant, when and where you have the need to do so. It is…rather important, in helping you deal with other wolves, and so it is the first thing I wish for you to pay attention to."

"To that end," he continued, shifting his gaze back and forth once again, "I want you to get in touch with your wolf, and work to gain access to the gifts they bring to you, starting with your dominance." The Marrok held still, and seemed to glare back at all of them, individually, at the same time; such seemed the power of his gaze. "Finding your wolf will be the easy part. Hearing what they have to say, and learning what they may have to teach you, that will not be so easy."

The elder wolf's gaze seemed to darken, even while the expression on his face seemed to change not at all. "And the better you do here, the less trouble you have in the long run as you seek to access and wield the gifts within you. But make no mistake; this, my young wolves, this will be the easiest of your interactions with your wolf; trust me on this.

"And while you make your attempts to communicate with your wolves, I will sit and do the same with my own; your wolf is a part of you now, and, in my opinion, you can never have too much bonding between you and your wolf."