Sons of Anarchy fic: A Bloodline Looking for a Root (Donna/Opie)
Barring a partial story that I may finish and post still, this was the last of the Yuletide stories I wrote in the frenzy leading up to the archive opening. I stumbled on this request when all the requests were made available, and as soon as I saw keerawa talk about Sons of Anarchy and werewolves, I knew I had to give it a try.
No one guessed I wrote this, which really, really surprised me; of all of the stories I've ever written for anonymous changes, this one feels the most like a story of mine. Sons of Anarchy focused on Donna and Opie, werewolves, chosen families standing together against the outside world. I had a blast writing this story.
Title: A Bloodline Looking for a Root
Author: escritoireazul
Characters/Pairings: Donna Lerner/Opie Winston, Jax Teller, Gemma Teller Morrow, Clay Morrow, David Hale, Original Characters
Author's Note: This is a transformative work of fiction set before the series. Also, there are werewolves.
Written for: keerawa as a Yuletide 2012 Treat
Word count: 4000
Rating: 13+
Summary: Donna's eighteen the first time she meets them. Him. And at that moment she knows.
I'm pushing back cause my back's against the wall
The sun's setting it's the rising of the moon
You better pull the trigger, better pull it soon
“Shooting the Moon” MONA
Donna’s eighteen and her little sister, Susan, is just about to turn sixteen when they move to Charming, California. Donna wants to crack a joke about that ridiculous name, but exhaustion leaves her brain muggy. They’ve driven all the way from Maine, only stopping long enough to get gas, hit the bathroom, and grab food to eat in the van, Mom and Pop switching off driving all day and all night.
Her muscles feel hardened and gray, like she’s been turned to stone. Too bad her emotions are as raw edged as ever. This is their twenty-fifth move in the past ten years, and even though Pop promised they would stay in one place long enough for her to make friends senior year, they only got a month into the school year before they took off.
Shoulda seen it coming. She knows what Mom looks like right before they move, pacing the length of the house, staring out windows, disappearing multiple nights in a row. Then, one morning, they’ll be throwing their things into bags and away they’ll go.
“It’s pretty,” Susan says, pressing her face against the window. It’s smeared from all the times she’s done that on the trip, bouncing from one side to the other, trying to see everything. She can still get excited about things. That’s good, Donna thinks, but can’t bring herself to feel the same way.
“I guess.” Donna squints. The sun is bright, even through the tinted windows and her big black sunglasses. They’ve never lived in California before, though they’ve lived all around it, Oregon and Washington and Nevada and Arizona and on, and on, and on. If she started listing all the places she’s lived, she’ll never stop.
If she starts thinking about all the things she’s left behind, she’ll cry. Her eyes already ache, she doesn’t need to do something stupid like that.
Besides. There are better reasons to cry. They all know that.
~*~
They go straight to the high school. Mom stays in the van, curled up in the very back seat, sleeping. She makes funny snuffling noises when she sleeps, and if you get too close when you wake her, you’d better watch out.
Pop takes them and their school records inside. The files are huge, bulging, all the schools they’ve been in, sometimes for a few months, sometimes almost a year. Sometimes just a week or two. Susan loves to read, and she’s scary smart.
Donna’s not.
Susan’s bubbly here too, friendly and charming, and strikes up a conversation with the secretary about what science and math classes Charming High offers while Pop talks to the principal. Donna leaves her to it, slumps in her seat and picks at a fraying spot on her skirt. Probably won’t last much longer, but maybe she can patch it.
“Thank you,” Pop says as he comes out of the office with the principal. “Thank you.”
“Hello girls.” The principal is a jolly looking man with red cheeks and a big smile. He’s very tall and very thin, and if he’s always that friendly, she has no idea how he keeps order. “Welcome to Charming. We’re glad you’re here.” His smile looks real enough, it even reaches his eyes, but there’s just something about him that’s a little off. Plus he wears way, way too much cheap cologne. “Come to the office tomorrow morning, and we’ll have a student ambassador to show you around and answer any questions.” He turns to Pop. “We find the students are more likely to ask things of their peers than of us.”
Great, he’s one of those adults who talk about them like they’re not even there. Donna hates that. She looks away, out into the bit of hallway she can see through the open door. Something’s caught her attention, but she’s not sure what.
Then, as she’s staring, the bell rings and the hallway fills. It’s a small school for a small town, but there are a lot of students in a small space. Whatever she noticed is gone, has disappeared into the crowd.
Whatever. Not like it matters. The way Mom’s been lately, they’ll have moved on before the month’s over.
~*~
They start school on a Friday, which is a stupid day to start school; why not wait until Monday? But it’s better to get it over with, Pop says, and Mom’s been up all night, walking and walking and walking. Pop drops them off at the front of the building, and heads off, probably to try to find some work.
Donna’s student ambassador is waiting for her in the office the next morning, being all friendly and shit with the secretary. He turns to her with a big smile when she and Susan walk in; Donna’s pretty sure the secretary’s smile is more for Susan than her.
“Hello, Susan. Hello,” there’s the slightest of hesitations. “Donna. Donna, this is David Hale. He’s volunteered to show you around the school, help you find your classes and your locker, answer your questions.”
His grin grows even bigger, and he actually holds out his hand, like he’s some sort of dumb shit grown-up. Donna shakes it, but she eyes him all the while. He’s cute enough as pretty boy jocks go, in his football jersey and blue jeans, and that smile is earnest as all hell.
Probably that means she could eat him alive and he’d never even put up a fight, but that’s not what she’s going to do here. She doesn’t believe in new starts, not anymore, each place is the same as the one before, even as they’re very, very different, but she’s not looking for trouble.
(She doesn’t have to look for it.)
David leads her out into the hallway. Donna glances back at Susan once, the skin down her spine prickling at the thought of leaving her alone, but Susan is laughing at something the secretary says and doesn’t notice. Well then. She’ll be fine.
In the hallway, David waits for her to fall in step with him before he leads her around the corner. “All the senior lockers are on this floor,” he says. "Junior lockers too. Underclassmen are upstairs. Not that you probably care about that.” His grin wavers a little when she doesn’t respond. “Mrs. Philips gave me your schedule yesterday. I made you a list of good things and bad things about all your teachers.” He hands over both the schedule and surprisingly detailed notes, written in neat block print.
“That’s sweet,” she says, and means it. “Thanks.”
His smile is stronger, more real, and she lets herself grin a bit back.
~*~
Donna makes it through the day. There’s a lot of standing awkward at the front of classrooms while teachers introduce her, all the faces of her new (temporary) classmates staring at her while she keeps her face blank and her mouth pressed closed over her teeth.
By the end of the day, she’s worn out from all the hostility. Some of it’s probably imagined, she always gets tense in new places, but some of it is not. Many of her classmates might as well have been carrying signs written in big red letters: Keep Out.
Charming is a close-knit town. She gets that. They’ve been in plenty of places where newcomers weren’t welcome. There’s something a little weird about Charming though, she’s just not sure what. A feeling to everyone around her or something; they’re scared.
Of her, maybe. Or maybe of something else.
If she gets bored enough, she’ll try to figure it out, but she doubts she’ll have time to find any answers.
David’s waiting for her outside her last class. “I’ve got study hall last period,” he says, smiling. He never stops smiling. It’s getting a little creepy. “Thought I’d walk you out, see if you had any questions. We’ve got a game tonight, so I don’t have to go straight to practice.”
He doesn’t offer to carry her bag, which is good. She wouldn’t let go anyway.
There’s a breeze blowing at them across the parking lot in front of the school, cool enough it makes her shiver. Isn’t California supposed to be sunny and warm all the time? Especially someplace called Charming, which may be a cute little town, but hasn’t turned out to live up to its name.
Sure, she’s been there less than twenty-four hours, but that’s one thing she’s picked up over the years, how to judge a town fast. People, too.
That’s when she sees them. Him. There are two of them, both sitting on big black bikes, helmets dangling negligently from the handlebars. One of them is talking to a girl Donna vaguely recognizes from a couple of her classes, but he is just staring across the parking lot, floppy hair falling down into his face. She can’t clearly see his eyes, but some tilt of his head makes her think he’s taking in every last thing that’s going on around them.
As she watches him, breeze in her face, she knows what he is, and in that moment, she knows why they’re here too.
“You should stay away from them,” David says, and for the first time, the smile disappears. He’s absolutely glowering. “They’re nothing but trouble. They’re dangerous.”
They’re something all right.
“Thanks, but I can take care of myself.” But he knows more than she does. “Who are they?”
He shrugs and turns his back to them. “That’s Tara Knowles,” is all he’ll say. It’s not what she wants to know, but it’s a start.
“Thanks, David.” But she doesn’t look at him, because that guy is watching her stand there and talk to him, and she doesn’t want that.
“Donna!” Susan runs up, grinning, backpack swinging, three other girls with her. She rattles off their names fast, but Donna’s not really paying attention, not with that guy watching her still. Not with his friend watching her too, both of them staring so intently.
She tilts her head, staring right back, hands on her hips.
Slowly, both of them start to grin.
~*~
The kitchen’s full of food when they get home. That’s a good sign. Even better, Mom’s not pacing. She’s sitting on one of the kitchen counters, kicking her heels against the cabinet doors, tearing pieces of fried chicken off the bone with her fingers. Grease glistens at the corners of her mouth.
“You stink like chalk and teenagers,” she says when they walk in, but she’s laughing a little as she says it. “Grab some food and get cleaned up. We’re going out tonight.”
Donna slumps into one of the chairs and grabs some roast beef, shoving a slice into her mouth. It’s salty and warm and, if not perfect, about as close as they can get to it with lunch meat.
“Where?” Susan asks. She goes to lean against the counter next to Mom, ever a momma’s girl, and Mom wraps an arm around her, hugging her closer.
Mom’s mouth twists, and she looks cagey. “To see some people we need to impress.”
Donna stops chewing, wad of meat still in her mouth. That’s never happened before. Mom doesn’t make friends anywhere they go. She doesn’t like people. She stays away from them, happy to spend all her time with Pop and Susan and Donna.
Sometimes, she goes off on her own for a run, but that’s it, she's either alone or she's with her husband and kids.
“Why do we need to impress them?” Susan asks, but Donna bets there’s only one answer. There’s only one real answer to why they do anything anymore, ever since Mom and Pop went jogging back when they lived in Wisconsin, and got bit.
Ever since, it’s been about surviving and hiding and finding a place to run where they’ll be safe.
Just cause they haven’t found one yet doesn’t mean they won’t, but Donna’s starting to give up hope.
~*~
She can smell him when they hit the parking lot, and the long row of black bikes only confirms what she already knows. Donna wipes her palms on her jeans; they’re all dressed casually still, because clothes don’t have anything to do with impressing these people, Mom says.
Donna’s not sure how she knows so much about it. Not like they’ve met too many other families who’ve gone through the same thing.
Big bay doors are open, but the garage looks empty. Mom angles toward the other building, which smells like sweat and blood and alcohol, and they follow behind, Pop at her heels, Donna and Susan side by side a couple steps back. It’s darker inside the bar, gloomy, and Donna blinks hard to clear her vision.
There’s way more than one family waiting for them inside. She can hear them, their breathing, the ruffle of their clothes as they move around. She can smell one regular human, vaguely, maybe two, but no more than that.
“Well, well.” It’s a woman’s voice that greets them, slick and cold. “Look at the little family of fakes.”
“Gemma.” That’s a guy, rumbly voice. She tracks them to where they’re sitting in the center of the room. There’s less than twenty of them in the room, but she can’t tell quite how many. “They’re wolves enough.”
“Something like that,” Gemma says. Her lips turn up, but that’s no smile. She’s baring her teeth in a challenge, and Donna can hear the rumble Mom makes in her throat in response. The hair on the back of her neck and along her arms is standing up, and her jaw aches. She wants to snap, to bite, to tear into whatever upsets Mom.
“We’ve come to present ourselves to you,” Mom says. There’s something strangely formal to her words. Where could she have learned that? “To ask for permission to spend the full moon here.”
Gemma tilts her head, looking down at them even though seated she’s much shorter. Donna can’t help it, she shuffles her feet, stepping lightly to the side. She can’t stand still under that heavy, haughty gaze.
“We protect this town.” That’s the man again, leaning forward, elbows resting on the table, fingers pressed together beneath his chin. There’s a glass of whiskey in front of him.
“We don’t hunt humans,” Mom promises. Those words must be carefully chosen, because they’re true, but they’re not the whole story. She’s not lying, but there’s a lot of room for accidents even if you’re not hunting.
If they aren’t going to ask about it, Donna sure as hell isn’t going to bring it up.
“Of course you don’t,” Gemma says. Her lips are dark with lipstick, her eyes thickly lined with black liner and plum shadow. The man leans toward her, and places one hand on her shoulder. They don’t say anything for a moment, but it’s clear something passes between them. Finally, she shrugs, slow and negligent. “Yes, Clay.”
“You may stay,” he says. “For this full moon. After that, we’ll see.”
“Come here,” Gemma adds, gesturing to the two seats at their table. Mom starts for them immediately, but Pop hesitates. “Your girls will be fine. My boys know how to treat bitches.”
There’s that rumble again from Mom, but she’s forcing a smile. Finally Pop follows her. They sit on the edge of their seats, pushing their chairs a little apart so they can get clear of them fast if need be.
Movement off to the side draws Donna’s attention. He’s there, slipping from the shadows, worn jeans and black leather and a dark gray t-shirt stretched tight across his chest. He’s got maybe a year or two on her, and goddamn, if he isn’t one of the sexiest guys she’s ever seen.
His friend steps up in front of her, between them. “You’re Donna,” he says. He's got pretty eyes and too long hair and a crooked grin. He’d be a charmer, she thinks, if she hadn’t seen his friend. “I’m Jax. Come talk to us.”
Back in the corner’s the girl she saw earlier - Sara or Clara or something like that - and though Donna’s not sure how she feels about being surrounded by so many strange werewolves, she goes with him. At the last second, she snags Susan’s hand and pulls her after. No way she’s leaving her sister alone in this room.
Jax puts his back to the corner, that girl tucked in at his side. (Tara, she says, and okay, Donna’s not great with names, but she was close. Tara's human, maybe the only one in the room, but she doesn't look too shook up about that at all.) Donna really wants that spot, but there’s no way for her to get it, so she settles for angling her chair so she can see most of the room. There’s a guy named Juice sitting with them too, baby-faced, head shaved, and then there’s him: Opie.
Jax peppers her with questions. Susan answers a lot, more than Donna would, but Donna’s never been able to keep her quiet. Donna holds back her words, talks a little about moving around so much and all the places they’ve gone running under the full moon. The air is heavy with the smell of cigarettes and cigars and alcohol and hormones, and it fills her senses, leaving her giddy and overwhelmed.
She gets up abruptly, pushing away from the table. “I need some fresh air,” she says, and admitting that much is hard. Jax starts to say something, but Opie stands too.
“Come on,” he says. Jax shakes his head a little, but when Opie ignores it, Donna does too. He leads her out the back of the building; there’s a big field back there, and the sky is wide and bright with stars. Not a lot of streetlights around them, and she likes how many stars they can see, even if she can’t name more than a couple constellations.
“Must have been hard,” he says. He’s quiet, and his words come slow. She likes how he sounds. She likes how he smells, leather and gasoline and a little bit of cologne and cigarettes and beneath it all, a wolf-smell that appeals to her.
“What?” she asks.
“All those years with no pack.”
Donna glances at him quickly. “You’re a born wolf,” she guesses, and even though it doesn’t sound like a question, he nods. “My family’s my pack. Mom and Pop got bitten, then they bit us.”
“It’s not the same,” he says. “A pack’s more than just family.”
“In the wild, wolf packs are families. Breeding pair and their pups.”
She's done a lot of reading, more than she'd like, and there's a lot of contradictions out there, but that much, she thinks is true.
“We’re not wild wolves.” He leans back against the building, and after a second, she does too. The bricks are cool and slightly rough through her tank top, and she can feel the heat radiating off him. The air’s cool enough it feels nice, and she wants to tuck herself into his side, maybe bury her fingers in his hair. “Humans form groups.”
“A family is a group.”
“It’s not the same.” His eyes are very shiny when he looks down at her; her mouth goes dry, and she licks her lips. He’s wary and watchful, and the weight of that on her is almost too much, but it feels good at the same time. “Moon’s full in two days. You’ll see.”
“Yeah?” She angles her body toward him. The light of the almost full moon strikes the bare skin of her throat and shoulders; it feels like a caress, like real warmth, not just reflected sunlight. “You gonna show me how it’s done?”
He pushes off the wall and steps into her space; normally, she’d either lay him flat or get out of reach, but for him, she leans closer, tilting up her face, taunting him with her mouth. He ducks his head and breathes in deep, scenting her; she draws the smell of him in her nose, over her tongue. It’s enough to make feel drunk and giddy, and she sways in toward him.
Opie catches her, hands on her bare arms, and the heat of his palms scalds her.
“Tell me after,” he says, breath moving her hair, “how much better it is with a pack.”
The promise in his words shoots straight through her.
~*~
The moon rises full and bright, and they gather beneath it up in the mountains away from Charming. Donna shivers and shifts from one bare foot to the other; she’s not used to stripping down in front of such a big group. She’ll have to strip down soon enough, but for the moment, she tugs lightly on her t-shirt and digs her toes into the dirt.
Gemma stands before them, glorious and naked in the moonlight, dark hair a wild mane around her face. Her eyes shine bright, and her teeth are white and sharp. She puts her hands on her hips as she surveys them.
There’s a lot of hairy asses and bare dicks. Donna looks down, cheeks flushing. She’s spent almost ten years changing shape with every full moon, running with her family in the darkness, but this feels different. And maybe she gets it a little, what Opie was saying, but he made it sound like a good thing, and this feels too much, dangerous and violent and all-consuming.
(She could lose herself to this pack, in the heated rush of them through the trees.)
Opie’s still wearing his jeans when he comes up to her, leaving Jax with Gemma and Clay on a little rise above the rest of them. He shakes back his hair, baring his throat to her, and she snaps her teeth at the air.
He laughs, full throated, and it sends a pleasant chill down her spine. She tugs off her shirt, pulling it over her head fast and letting it fall from her fingertips. He watches every movement, and she wants to kiss the slow smile that follows.
“Lone wolves are dangerous wolves,” Clay says, his voice ringing out across the clearing. “Stay together tonight.”
Donna tilts back her head, letting her hair brush her shoulders and staring up at the sky. The moon isn’t quite that high yet, but it will be soon. She can feel it all the way down to her muscles and sinews, the ache in her bones; her body wants to twist and stretch and change.
“Run with us?” Opie asks, tilting his head toward Jax. She glances at her parents, but they are staring at Gemma and Clay. Susan’s with them, and Donna is going to let them worry about her tonight. She’s eighteen, and for the first time, there’s an entire pack of wolves around her. The woods are thick, and teeming with wildlife, and all she wants is to run, wind in her fur, and to feel the rush that comes when she flushes prey and takes it down.
She nods and twists her body toward him. “Yes,” she says, voice quiet beneath the background noises of the wolves. “Yes, yes.” She tears off her pants, and steps forward, leaving that remnant of humanity behind.
“It’s time.” Gemma draws a deep breath, and without meaning to, Donna finds herself breathing along. “We run.”
A shudder goes through her, one that’s echoing through all of the others. If this is what pack means, the throb of anticipation, heartbeat and breath aligning, that eagerness she feels before each shift rising from all of them until she can feel it run along her skin, Opie's right; it is the greatest of all things.
Gemma springs forward, woman then, effortlessly, wolf, and the howl that sounds rises up from Donna’s throat as she falls and shifts and the hunt rushes up to meet her.
This entry was original posted at http://escritoireazul.dreamwidth.org/361561.html with
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No one guessed I wrote this, which really, really surprised me; of all of the stories I've ever written for anonymous changes, this one feels the most like a story of mine. Sons of Anarchy focused on Donna and Opie, werewolves, chosen families standing together against the outside world. I had a blast writing this story.
Title: A Bloodline Looking for a Root
Author: escritoireazul
Characters/Pairings: Donna Lerner/Opie Winston, Jax Teller, Gemma Teller Morrow, Clay Morrow, David Hale, Original Characters
Author's Note: This is a transformative work of fiction set before the series. Also, there are werewolves.
Written for: keerawa as a Yuletide 2012 Treat
Word count: 4000
Rating: 13+
Summary: Donna's eighteen the first time she meets them. Him. And at that moment she knows.
I'm pushing back cause my back's against the wall
The sun's setting it's the rising of the moon
You better pull the trigger, better pull it soon
“Shooting the Moon” MONA
Donna’s eighteen and her little sister, Susan, is just about to turn sixteen when they move to Charming, California. Donna wants to crack a joke about that ridiculous name, but exhaustion leaves her brain muggy. They’ve driven all the way from Maine, only stopping long enough to get gas, hit the bathroom, and grab food to eat in the van, Mom and Pop switching off driving all day and all night.
Her muscles feel hardened and gray, like she’s been turned to stone. Too bad her emotions are as raw edged as ever. This is their twenty-fifth move in the past ten years, and even though Pop promised they would stay in one place long enough for her to make friends senior year, they only got a month into the school year before they took off.
Shoulda seen it coming. She knows what Mom looks like right before they move, pacing the length of the house, staring out windows, disappearing multiple nights in a row. Then, one morning, they’ll be throwing their things into bags and away they’ll go.
“It’s pretty,” Susan says, pressing her face against the window. It’s smeared from all the times she’s done that on the trip, bouncing from one side to the other, trying to see everything. She can still get excited about things. That’s good, Donna thinks, but can’t bring herself to feel the same way.
“I guess.” Donna squints. The sun is bright, even through the tinted windows and her big black sunglasses. They’ve never lived in California before, though they’ve lived all around it, Oregon and Washington and Nevada and Arizona and on, and on, and on. If she started listing all the places she’s lived, she’ll never stop.
If she starts thinking about all the things she’s left behind, she’ll cry. Her eyes already ache, she doesn’t need to do something stupid like that.
Besides. There are better reasons to cry. They all know that.
~*~
They go straight to the high school. Mom stays in the van, curled up in the very back seat, sleeping. She makes funny snuffling noises when she sleeps, and if you get too close when you wake her, you’d better watch out.
Pop takes them and their school records inside. The files are huge, bulging, all the schools they’ve been in, sometimes for a few months, sometimes almost a year. Sometimes just a week or two. Susan loves to read, and she’s scary smart.
Donna’s not.
Susan’s bubbly here too, friendly and charming, and strikes up a conversation with the secretary about what science and math classes Charming High offers while Pop talks to the principal. Donna leaves her to it, slumps in her seat and picks at a fraying spot on her skirt. Probably won’t last much longer, but maybe she can patch it.
“Thank you,” Pop says as he comes out of the office with the principal. “Thank you.”
“Hello girls.” The principal is a jolly looking man with red cheeks and a big smile. He’s very tall and very thin, and if he’s always that friendly, she has no idea how he keeps order. “Welcome to Charming. We’re glad you’re here.” His smile looks real enough, it even reaches his eyes, but there’s just something about him that’s a little off. Plus he wears way, way too much cheap cologne. “Come to the office tomorrow morning, and we’ll have a student ambassador to show you around and answer any questions.” He turns to Pop. “We find the students are more likely to ask things of their peers than of us.”
Great, he’s one of those adults who talk about them like they’re not even there. Donna hates that. She looks away, out into the bit of hallway she can see through the open door. Something’s caught her attention, but she’s not sure what.
Then, as she’s staring, the bell rings and the hallway fills. It’s a small school for a small town, but there are a lot of students in a small space. Whatever she noticed is gone, has disappeared into the crowd.
Whatever. Not like it matters. The way Mom’s been lately, they’ll have moved on before the month’s over.
~*~
They start school on a Friday, which is a stupid day to start school; why not wait until Monday? But it’s better to get it over with, Pop says, and Mom’s been up all night, walking and walking and walking. Pop drops them off at the front of the building, and heads off, probably to try to find some work.
Donna’s student ambassador is waiting for her in the office the next morning, being all friendly and shit with the secretary. He turns to her with a big smile when she and Susan walk in; Donna’s pretty sure the secretary’s smile is more for Susan than her.
“Hello, Susan. Hello,” there’s the slightest of hesitations. “Donna. Donna, this is David Hale. He’s volunteered to show you around the school, help you find your classes and your locker, answer your questions.”
His grin grows even bigger, and he actually holds out his hand, like he’s some sort of dumb shit grown-up. Donna shakes it, but she eyes him all the while. He’s cute enough as pretty boy jocks go, in his football jersey and blue jeans, and that smile is earnest as all hell.
Probably that means she could eat him alive and he’d never even put up a fight, but that’s not what she’s going to do here. She doesn’t believe in new starts, not anymore, each place is the same as the one before, even as they’re very, very different, but she’s not looking for trouble.
(She doesn’t have to look for it.)
David leads her out into the hallway. Donna glances back at Susan once, the skin down her spine prickling at the thought of leaving her alone, but Susan is laughing at something the secretary says and doesn’t notice. Well then. She’ll be fine.
In the hallway, David waits for her to fall in step with him before he leads her around the corner. “All the senior lockers are on this floor,” he says. "Junior lockers too. Underclassmen are upstairs. Not that you probably care about that.” His grin wavers a little when she doesn’t respond. “Mrs. Philips gave me your schedule yesterday. I made you a list of good things and bad things about all your teachers.” He hands over both the schedule and surprisingly detailed notes, written in neat block print.
“That’s sweet,” she says, and means it. “Thanks.”
His smile is stronger, more real, and she lets herself grin a bit back.
~*~
Donna makes it through the day. There’s a lot of standing awkward at the front of classrooms while teachers introduce her, all the faces of her new (temporary) classmates staring at her while she keeps her face blank and her mouth pressed closed over her teeth.
By the end of the day, she’s worn out from all the hostility. Some of it’s probably imagined, she always gets tense in new places, but some of it is not. Many of her classmates might as well have been carrying signs written in big red letters: Keep Out.
Charming is a close-knit town. She gets that. They’ve been in plenty of places where newcomers weren’t welcome. There’s something a little weird about Charming though, she’s just not sure what. A feeling to everyone around her or something; they’re scared.
Of her, maybe. Or maybe of something else.
If she gets bored enough, she’ll try to figure it out, but she doubts she’ll have time to find any answers.
David’s waiting for her outside her last class. “I’ve got study hall last period,” he says, smiling. He never stops smiling. It’s getting a little creepy. “Thought I’d walk you out, see if you had any questions. We’ve got a game tonight, so I don’t have to go straight to practice.”
He doesn’t offer to carry her bag, which is good. She wouldn’t let go anyway.
There’s a breeze blowing at them across the parking lot in front of the school, cool enough it makes her shiver. Isn’t California supposed to be sunny and warm all the time? Especially someplace called Charming, which may be a cute little town, but hasn’t turned out to live up to its name.
Sure, she’s been there less than twenty-four hours, but that’s one thing she’s picked up over the years, how to judge a town fast. People, too.
That’s when she sees them. Him. There are two of them, both sitting on big black bikes, helmets dangling negligently from the handlebars. One of them is talking to a girl Donna vaguely recognizes from a couple of her classes, but he is just staring across the parking lot, floppy hair falling down into his face. She can’t clearly see his eyes, but some tilt of his head makes her think he’s taking in every last thing that’s going on around them.
As she watches him, breeze in her face, she knows what he is, and in that moment, she knows why they’re here too.
“You should stay away from them,” David says, and for the first time, the smile disappears. He’s absolutely glowering. “They’re nothing but trouble. They’re dangerous.”
They’re something all right.
“Thanks, but I can take care of myself.” But he knows more than she does. “Who are they?”
He shrugs and turns his back to them. “That’s Tara Knowles,” is all he’ll say. It’s not what she wants to know, but it’s a start.
“Thanks, David.” But she doesn’t look at him, because that guy is watching her stand there and talk to him, and she doesn’t want that.
“Donna!” Susan runs up, grinning, backpack swinging, three other girls with her. She rattles off their names fast, but Donna’s not really paying attention, not with that guy watching her still. Not with his friend watching her too, both of them staring so intently.
She tilts her head, staring right back, hands on her hips.
Slowly, both of them start to grin.
~*~
The kitchen’s full of food when they get home. That’s a good sign. Even better, Mom’s not pacing. She’s sitting on one of the kitchen counters, kicking her heels against the cabinet doors, tearing pieces of fried chicken off the bone with her fingers. Grease glistens at the corners of her mouth.
“You stink like chalk and teenagers,” she says when they walk in, but she’s laughing a little as she says it. “Grab some food and get cleaned up. We’re going out tonight.”
Donna slumps into one of the chairs and grabs some roast beef, shoving a slice into her mouth. It’s salty and warm and, if not perfect, about as close as they can get to it with lunch meat.
“Where?” Susan asks. She goes to lean against the counter next to Mom, ever a momma’s girl, and Mom wraps an arm around her, hugging her closer.
Mom’s mouth twists, and she looks cagey. “To see some people we need to impress.”
Donna stops chewing, wad of meat still in her mouth. That’s never happened before. Mom doesn’t make friends anywhere they go. She doesn’t like people. She stays away from them, happy to spend all her time with Pop and Susan and Donna.
Sometimes, she goes off on her own for a run, but that’s it, she's either alone or she's with her husband and kids.
“Why do we need to impress them?” Susan asks, but Donna bets there’s only one answer. There’s only one real answer to why they do anything anymore, ever since Mom and Pop went jogging back when they lived in Wisconsin, and got bit.
Ever since, it’s been about surviving and hiding and finding a place to run where they’ll be safe.
Just cause they haven’t found one yet doesn’t mean they won’t, but Donna’s starting to give up hope.
~*~
She can smell him when they hit the parking lot, and the long row of black bikes only confirms what she already knows. Donna wipes her palms on her jeans; they’re all dressed casually still, because clothes don’t have anything to do with impressing these people, Mom says.
Donna’s not sure how she knows so much about it. Not like they’ve met too many other families who’ve gone through the same thing.
Big bay doors are open, but the garage looks empty. Mom angles toward the other building, which smells like sweat and blood and alcohol, and they follow behind, Pop at her heels, Donna and Susan side by side a couple steps back. It’s darker inside the bar, gloomy, and Donna blinks hard to clear her vision.
There’s way more than one family waiting for them inside. She can hear them, their breathing, the ruffle of their clothes as they move around. She can smell one regular human, vaguely, maybe two, but no more than that.
“Well, well.” It’s a woman’s voice that greets them, slick and cold. “Look at the little family of fakes.”
“Gemma.” That’s a guy, rumbly voice. She tracks them to where they’re sitting in the center of the room. There’s less than twenty of them in the room, but she can’t tell quite how many. “They’re wolves enough.”
“Something like that,” Gemma says. Her lips turn up, but that’s no smile. She’s baring her teeth in a challenge, and Donna can hear the rumble Mom makes in her throat in response. The hair on the back of her neck and along her arms is standing up, and her jaw aches. She wants to snap, to bite, to tear into whatever upsets Mom.
“We’ve come to present ourselves to you,” Mom says. There’s something strangely formal to her words. Where could she have learned that? “To ask for permission to spend the full moon here.”
Gemma tilts her head, looking down at them even though seated she’s much shorter. Donna can’t help it, she shuffles her feet, stepping lightly to the side. She can’t stand still under that heavy, haughty gaze.
“We protect this town.” That’s the man again, leaning forward, elbows resting on the table, fingers pressed together beneath his chin. There’s a glass of whiskey in front of him.
“We don’t hunt humans,” Mom promises. Those words must be carefully chosen, because they’re true, but they’re not the whole story. She’s not lying, but there’s a lot of room for accidents even if you’re not hunting.
If they aren’t going to ask about it, Donna sure as hell isn’t going to bring it up.
“Of course you don’t,” Gemma says. Her lips are dark with lipstick, her eyes thickly lined with black liner and plum shadow. The man leans toward her, and places one hand on her shoulder. They don’t say anything for a moment, but it’s clear something passes between them. Finally, she shrugs, slow and negligent. “Yes, Clay.”
“You may stay,” he says. “For this full moon. After that, we’ll see.”
“Come here,” Gemma adds, gesturing to the two seats at their table. Mom starts for them immediately, but Pop hesitates. “Your girls will be fine. My boys know how to treat bitches.”
There’s that rumble again from Mom, but she’s forcing a smile. Finally Pop follows her. They sit on the edge of their seats, pushing their chairs a little apart so they can get clear of them fast if need be.
Movement off to the side draws Donna’s attention. He’s there, slipping from the shadows, worn jeans and black leather and a dark gray t-shirt stretched tight across his chest. He’s got maybe a year or two on her, and goddamn, if he isn’t one of the sexiest guys she’s ever seen.
His friend steps up in front of her, between them. “You’re Donna,” he says. He's got pretty eyes and too long hair and a crooked grin. He’d be a charmer, she thinks, if she hadn’t seen his friend. “I’m Jax. Come talk to us.”
Back in the corner’s the girl she saw earlier - Sara or Clara or something like that - and though Donna’s not sure how she feels about being surrounded by so many strange werewolves, she goes with him. At the last second, she snags Susan’s hand and pulls her after. No way she’s leaving her sister alone in this room.
Jax puts his back to the corner, that girl tucked in at his side. (Tara, she says, and okay, Donna’s not great with names, but she was close. Tara's human, maybe the only one in the room, but she doesn't look too shook up about that at all.) Donna really wants that spot, but there’s no way for her to get it, so she settles for angling her chair so she can see most of the room. There’s a guy named Juice sitting with them too, baby-faced, head shaved, and then there’s him: Opie.
Jax peppers her with questions. Susan answers a lot, more than Donna would, but Donna’s never been able to keep her quiet. Donna holds back her words, talks a little about moving around so much and all the places they’ve gone running under the full moon. The air is heavy with the smell of cigarettes and cigars and alcohol and hormones, and it fills her senses, leaving her giddy and overwhelmed.
She gets up abruptly, pushing away from the table. “I need some fresh air,” she says, and admitting that much is hard. Jax starts to say something, but Opie stands too.
“Come on,” he says. Jax shakes his head a little, but when Opie ignores it, Donna does too. He leads her out the back of the building; there’s a big field back there, and the sky is wide and bright with stars. Not a lot of streetlights around them, and she likes how many stars they can see, even if she can’t name more than a couple constellations.
“Must have been hard,” he says. He’s quiet, and his words come slow. She likes how he sounds. She likes how he smells, leather and gasoline and a little bit of cologne and cigarettes and beneath it all, a wolf-smell that appeals to her.
“What?” she asks.
“All those years with no pack.”
Donna glances at him quickly. “You’re a born wolf,” she guesses, and even though it doesn’t sound like a question, he nods. “My family’s my pack. Mom and Pop got bitten, then they bit us.”
“It’s not the same,” he says. “A pack’s more than just family.”
“In the wild, wolf packs are families. Breeding pair and their pups.”
She's done a lot of reading, more than she'd like, and there's a lot of contradictions out there, but that much, she thinks is true.
“We’re not wild wolves.” He leans back against the building, and after a second, she does too. The bricks are cool and slightly rough through her tank top, and she can feel the heat radiating off him. The air’s cool enough it feels nice, and she wants to tuck herself into his side, maybe bury her fingers in his hair. “Humans form groups.”
“A family is a group.”
“It’s not the same.” His eyes are very shiny when he looks down at her; her mouth goes dry, and she licks her lips. He’s wary and watchful, and the weight of that on her is almost too much, but it feels good at the same time. “Moon’s full in two days. You’ll see.”
“Yeah?” She angles her body toward him. The light of the almost full moon strikes the bare skin of her throat and shoulders; it feels like a caress, like real warmth, not just reflected sunlight. “You gonna show me how it’s done?”
He pushes off the wall and steps into her space; normally, she’d either lay him flat or get out of reach, but for him, she leans closer, tilting up her face, taunting him with her mouth. He ducks his head and breathes in deep, scenting her; she draws the smell of him in her nose, over her tongue. It’s enough to make feel drunk and giddy, and she sways in toward him.
Opie catches her, hands on her bare arms, and the heat of his palms scalds her.
“Tell me after,” he says, breath moving her hair, “how much better it is with a pack.”
The promise in his words shoots straight through her.
~*~
The moon rises full and bright, and they gather beneath it up in the mountains away from Charming. Donna shivers and shifts from one bare foot to the other; she’s not used to stripping down in front of such a big group. She’ll have to strip down soon enough, but for the moment, she tugs lightly on her t-shirt and digs her toes into the dirt.
Gemma stands before them, glorious and naked in the moonlight, dark hair a wild mane around her face. Her eyes shine bright, and her teeth are white and sharp. She puts her hands on her hips as she surveys them.
There’s a lot of hairy asses and bare dicks. Donna looks down, cheeks flushing. She’s spent almost ten years changing shape with every full moon, running with her family in the darkness, but this feels different. And maybe she gets it a little, what Opie was saying, but he made it sound like a good thing, and this feels too much, dangerous and violent and all-consuming.
(She could lose herself to this pack, in the heated rush of them through the trees.)
Opie’s still wearing his jeans when he comes up to her, leaving Jax with Gemma and Clay on a little rise above the rest of them. He shakes back his hair, baring his throat to her, and she snaps her teeth at the air.
He laughs, full throated, and it sends a pleasant chill down her spine. She tugs off her shirt, pulling it over her head fast and letting it fall from her fingertips. He watches every movement, and she wants to kiss the slow smile that follows.
“Lone wolves are dangerous wolves,” Clay says, his voice ringing out across the clearing. “Stay together tonight.”
Donna tilts back her head, letting her hair brush her shoulders and staring up at the sky. The moon isn’t quite that high yet, but it will be soon. She can feel it all the way down to her muscles and sinews, the ache in her bones; her body wants to twist and stretch and change.
“Run with us?” Opie asks, tilting his head toward Jax. She glances at her parents, but they are staring at Gemma and Clay. Susan’s with them, and Donna is going to let them worry about her tonight. She’s eighteen, and for the first time, there’s an entire pack of wolves around her. The woods are thick, and teeming with wildlife, and all she wants is to run, wind in her fur, and to feel the rush that comes when she flushes prey and takes it down.
She nods and twists her body toward him. “Yes,” she says, voice quiet beneath the background noises of the wolves. “Yes, yes.” She tears off her pants, and steps forward, leaving that remnant of humanity behind.
“It’s time.” Gemma draws a deep breath, and without meaning to, Donna finds herself breathing along. “We run.”
A shudder goes through her, one that’s echoing through all of the others. If this is what pack means, the throb of anticipation, heartbeat and breath aligning, that eagerness she feels before each shift rising from all of them until she can feel it run along her skin, Opie's right; it is the greatest of all things.
Gemma springs forward, woman then, effortlessly, wolf, and the howl that sounds rises up from Donna’s throat as she falls and shifts and the hunt rushes up to meet her.
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