Saturday morning came early for most of the pack, but not for Florence. Down at the pack community hall where most wolves took their meals, breakfast came and then passed once again. Florence had been surprisingly absent; she had never failed to show for a meal, or a sunrise for that matter. She was always up before everyone else, pushing herself to be the best and making damned sure that she worked harder than anyone.
So people talked, well... wolves communicated, even if it wasn't out loud. Most of them sent silently to one another, wondering about her absence. Generally wolves are incredibly open, even fearlessly rude creatures, but this was Florence they were dealing with, and she had very sharp claws indeed. Most of the members of the pack had scars... deep scars, scars with her name on them. Wolves being wolves though, they preferred the physical scars to the mental ones like the ones that afflicted Florence.
Back in her cabin, all alone in her bed, she was deeply asleep face down in her sheets, still dressed in her jeans and boots from last night. She was completely dead to the world when the Alpha knocked on her door. There was no answer, and after waiting a bit, he knocked again, louder the second time, but again there was no response. He knew she was home, he was a wolf; he could smell her.
Steeling himself, he took a deep breath and let himself in. Normally, John would have rather bearded a bear in her own den rather than face Flo's wrath, but he was the Alpha and it was his job when a member of his pack had a problem, even if she was exceedingly slow to admit that she did indeed have one.
He took a quick look into her sleeping area and catching sight of the fact that she was still dressed in her previous night's clothing, he headed into her small kitchen area and began to rummage around, looking for coffee. It wasn't hard to find, she didn't keep much in the way of foodstuffs in her cabin. Why should she? She took all of her meals in the main hall.
Finding the coffee, he looked at it doubtfully. It was old, really old.
Do they even make Brim anymore
? Not finding any better options, he blew the dust off the tin, found her prehistoric stovetop coffee percolator and began to heat the water.
Through this process, Florence never budged. John was sure of this, he'd checked, deciding that she was still breathing and didn't smell like she was hung over.
Maybe she just got in really late
, he thought to himself. As the water began to heat, he found himself remembering the day when she'd been brought to him. She must have been about three years old at the time, although no one really knew for sure. She had been found just outside of the Billington land, living ferally as a wolf, and even after the pack had managed to catch her, she'd refused to shift for several months. When she finally did shift for the first time, they discovered that she didn't speak a word of English or any other language for that matter, evidently she had never learned how.
As she'd grown, she'd eventually caught up with the cubs close to her own age, not that she had often spoken with any of them. She had never really fit in; nor had she ever made any close friends within her age group. Alpha John acted as her de facto father, but as his human marriage had ended badly and he'd then never found a mate in all the time that he'd been a wolf, Florence grew up without a mother figure. She had always opened up for Beth, but then again, Beth couldn't be described as maternal in any tangible manner.
For years the pack had worked to discover Florence's origin, and with the paucity of packs within North America, it should been an easy task to find a pack with a claim to her; werewolf births were so rare, especially female births- and cubs were treasured beyond measure. John had made enquiries from the tip of Baja to the straits of Newfoundland, but no one had a clue about her parents or from where they might have come.
Every pack he'd contacted had made the offer to adopt her and take her off of Billington's hands, but by the time he'd finally given up on the search, she had started to seem a little bit more comfortable. She had even begun to laugh occasionally, so he adamantly refused to send her away. She had always been a mystery, but she was
his
mystery, and he was determined that she'd turn out better than his own children had.
Startled out of his reverie by the sound of perking coffee, he headed back into her kitchen and began looking for a cup. Finding only an ugly dust covered mug with a yellow smiley face upon it, he washed it off, filled it to the rim, and then entered into the she bear's den with some trepidation. He considered placing the cup on her nightstand and backing out of range before noticing that it had a lot in common with everything else he'd seen here; it was disused and covered with dust.
"Florence, it's time to wake up."
"No," she grumbled back.
"C'mon Flo, you have not missed a day of work in twenty years. Wake up and talk to me. Here... I've brought you some coffee to help."
Grumbling, Florence struggled into a sitting position and took the mug from his hands. She took a quick sip before frowning in shock and saying, "Good Goddess! That is awful!"
"How long have you had that can anyway," John asked.
"I'm not sure, I don't really drink it; I only bought it in case I had friends over."
John frowned at this and said, "Here, let me try that."
Florence gratefully gave up the mug and watched John try a sip, and then just as quickly, spit it all back out, saying with a gasp, "Throw that coffee away; if you give that to friends, you will lose them."
"I'll get right on that," Florence grumbled.
"Oh, c'mon on Flo..." John started before being cut off.
"I hate that name, Alpha; you know that!"
"But it's just the two of us right now; would you prefer it if I called you daughter?"
Surprised, Florence's eyes darted up to meet her Alpha's. "You've never called me that before. Why now?"
"Because it's something I should have done a long time ago, Flo. I let you grow up mostly alone because I thought that's what you wanted. Hell, my own children were such a complete disaster. They were spoiled, vain, entitled, and a dozen other things, none of them good; I'm deeply embarrassed by how they turned out. I know it was my fault; I was a lousy father before I traveled to the new World. And then, once I got here, I was turned against my will and had to disappear for a while.
"Since everyone in the colony thought that they had successfully hung me, if I came back after being executed, they would have been sure that I was a demon of some sort; it was like that then, it was a superstitious time. So, by the time that Sam and Tom could bring me back, it was many years later and there was no one left alive who had known me. After that, centuries passed and I never found my mate. I just figured I had blown my chance. I guess that I kind of missed the fact that
you
were my second chance."
"All I ever wanted was to impress you," Florence replied softly.
"I finally figured that out. Hell, I should have figured it out when you started knocking off the male warriors one by one. I think Sam might have tried to get that through to me a few times, but by then I had started thinking that maybe you were one of the two-spirits and it was best to let you fight your way to the top like a male. Heck Flo, you know that I'm the only wolf in the entire pack who lacks a single drop of Native blood in my veins. I was born in Lincolnshire County surrounded by all those religious zealots. It took me years to overcome that upbringing, and when I had finally managed to do it, then I was forcibly turned and found myself fully immersed directly into the Wampanoag mysticism... and after that, into the different mysticisms of each tribe that we met as we were forced farther and farther west."
"By the time we had arrived here, I wasn't sure what I believed anymore. We had passed through so many tribes, spoken with so many shamans and continually picked up pack members as we moved west. There are bits of Wampanoag, as well as Lakota Sioux, Crow, Hopi, and even Zuni tribal lore in what we believe now. I guess our pack's beliefs are sort of like Universalism, well...the wolf equivalent anyway. Florence, I'm an honest man, I have no idea if what we believe is true or not, but our beliefs work for us. All of our wolves are happy...except for you, and maybe me."
"So Father, have you decided to bare your soul in hopes that I would bare mine?"
"Is it working," he asked with a grimace.
"Well, I'm not a two spirit; the other bitches don't appeal to me at all."
"Yeah, I got that when you started in with the men, but then that phase didn't last long, and eventually you stopped altogether."
"Alpha, you know I couldn't let them top me if I was going to pass them, and the only wolves that were left were Uncles Sam and Tom...and you. It didn't leave me much to work with, humans never much appealed to me."
"And now you are lonely."
Florence merely frowned and looked away.
"So you are just like your father?"
"Fuck you."
