Marvin gave a little squeak of surprise, but acquiesced willingly enough, melting easily against Alec’s aggression. Alec gave a little growl of approval and grabbed that tempting long blond hair with one hand, and yanked the merman’s head around to exactly the right angle. Now, that’s a kiss.
Then he stopped.
Marvin, for once, seemed to have nothing to say. His mouth went open and then closed for a little while in shock. He looked like — well — like a fish. Finally he said, eyes wide, “So that’s how it is?”
Alec, blushing a little at his own temerity, pretended a casual shrug. “You thought I was submissive?”
Marvin nodded, but recovered from his surprise enough to snuggle up against him.
Alec explained. “You thought I was in the closet just because I was gay? Not me, I got far more problems. I’m a closet alpha too. I just act the gamma around the pack, makes things easier. I’m a non-confrontational kinda guy.” The stepladder tilted dangerously at a particularly hard whack from the walrus. They would have to deal with the selkie situation soon.
But Marvin was more interested in the implication of Alec’s kiss. “You telling me you’re an alpha in everything?”
“Do you even know what that means?”
“Apparently not.”
“Well, for one thing people are always trying to follow me places without my actually doing anything. Can get pretty hairy in a gay bar, let me just say. And I am so not into bears.”
Marvin blinked at him.
“I was trying to be funny.” Alec sighed. “So, technically, yes. I’m alpha. That’s kind of what started all my problems. I always knew, you see? Since right after they changed me. You just kind of do know, once you’re a werewolf. Know where you sit in a pack, I mean. But, can you imagine the hell I’d have to pay if it became known by anyone else? My dad already suspects, and I think Biff might too.”
“I thought they suspected you were gay.”
“Possibly. But that’d just be the excuse to fight me. I might be able to take a couple hits now and again, but a real fight? It’s in my nature to have to prove things. That’d just be bad. So I avoid it.”
Marvin looked at him. “You just don’t want the responsibility of your own pack?”
Alec shrugged. “Maybe.”
Marvin blinked long blond lashes at him in a parody of a fifties housewife. “Honey, are you telling me I’m in love with a single dad?”
“If you count about seven grown-up bikers. Yup.”
“That’s how many you think would follow you?”
“If I won alpha, sure.”
“I always wanted a big family.” Marvin didn’t seem to mind this possibility.
“You’re a loon, you know that?”
The most remarkable high-pitched yet melodic keening wail cut through both their conversation and the seal barking. Alec flinched. The sound was so sharp it almost tore through the delicate drum of his hypersensitive ears.
“What the hell?”
Marvin grinned. “I believe my sister has arrived. Cover your ears.”
Alec did so. Marvin threw back his head and let out a correspondingly painful yet lovely sound.
A few moments later a loud banging commenced and then the door at the top of the cellar steps crashed open, breaking the bolt. Giselle appeared. She was shadowed by three large and bulky figures who seemed to have done the brunt of the damage to the door.
Alec sniffed suspiciously. Eau de Dad, brother, and alpha. Just wonderful.
Giselle and the werewolves crashed down the stairs and then paused, confused, at the bottom. For there were Marvin and Alec, clutching each other on the top of a rickety stepladder while at their feet two large furry sausages writhed about in an entirely unthreatening manner.
“Uh,” said Giselle.
“Marvin found their skins and incapacitated them.”
“Makes them mighty difficult to interrogate though.”
“But not so much of a threat,” Alec defended.
Marvin shrugged. “Bundle them up in a couple of tarps, take them back to Alec’s place and dump them in the bathtub with a bit of salt. Should do the trick.”
“Oh, now really. Must it be my apartment? My tub isn’t nearly big enough for a walrus.” Alec protested.
“We’ll be careful. It’s the only way to get a confession out of them. Need to trace the rest of that money.”
“What the hell are you doing on a stepladder with a merman? Naked!” Butch asked in that tone of voice. Apparently, he had finally taken stock of the situation.
Alec sighed. Suddenly he was very tired of hiding everything all the time. His mouth tasted like seal blubber, the man of his dreams was in his arms, and the future just didn’t seem all that bad anymore.
“Kissing him, if you really must know.”
Butch sputtered.
Giselle grinned.
“Would you like a demonstration?” Alec offered. Might as well go for broke.
“No need to press the matter, pup,” warned Fifi in his alpha tone of voice.
Butch, ignoring the walrus, the seal, and the merman, charged down the steep wooden stairs into the basement and leaped at his son, changing form midair in a spectacular display of werewolf prowess. His clothing fell to the floor with a sad little fump.
“Oh, well, that’s just great,” said Alec, falling off the stepladder with his father’s jaw wrapped around his shoulder.
Then he too changed.
Alec had never actually fought his father before. After he became a werewolf he’d fought his brothers, one at a time, and several at once. None of them talked about it, but Alec had kicked their proverbial furry butts. But his Dad was pack beta. And very very big.
He was also, Alec soon found, a tad out of shape and beginning to feel his age.
Alec never understood how any werewolf could lose his human sense along with his human form. It seemed silly simply to let the slavering beast take over. So Alec fought smart, using his intelligence as well as his wolf body. With his father mindlessly attacking, tearing for the throat and scrabbling at his jaw, Alec — quick and nimble — fended off his attack and steered him in a furry, slathering, growing tumble around the basement towards a promising-looking fish tank.
His dad took a particularly nasty nip to the side of the face, under one eye, and backed away, circling his son warily for a moment.
Alec seized the opportunity to dart in at exactly the right moment, and instead of going for a ruff-grabbing bite as one might expect, he nosed under his father’s belly, and heaved upwards, using leverage and supernatural strength to simply flip the wolf over and into the fish tank. There was a tremendous splash and then the glass shattered under Butch’s weight.
Butch took a moment to recover, shaking the glass and water from his coat. He was just about to charge his son again, and Alec was beginning to wonder how he could end this without actually killing Butch, when both Fifi and Biff stepped in.
“Enough, Butch,” said the alpha. “The fight is done. Consider yourself rousted. He’s fighting smart, and we both know what that means.”
Butch crouched down among the remnants of the fish tank and glared at his alpha.
“He’s always fought smart, you just never bothered to ask any of us why we stopped picking on him after he changed. You thought we didn’t test him?”
Marvin and Giselle were occupied trussing up the two barking sea mammals in a couple of tablecloths they’d unearthed from the kitchen stores. But, drawn by the conversation, Marvin wandered over.
Giselle, apparently tired of all the barking, glared the walrus into silent stone stillness. Without him, the harbour seal seemed far more amiable.