Vesper didn't wake up until she felt and heard her car door being pulled open. Batting her eyes open slowly, she found herself gazing into the hard gray eyes of a stockily-built man of average height. The way he held himself, however, let her know that this man was very much in charge of the people in his life, and the idea of that made her shiver.
He reached towards her to remove her from the minivan and Vesper jerked away from him, wrapping the blanket a little more firmly about her body.
"You shouldn't touch me." She explained, though he didn't seem to really need her to.
"If you didn't alter Anya or the pups she carries, I have no fear of you changing my ability to shift into my wolf form. Please, let me take you inside, you look very uncomfortable. I'm Sergei. This is where we live." He said and moved in to scoop her up in his arms as she looked at the enormous house nestled into a backdrop of tall, green trees.
"You live here? It's huge." She whispered, her awe of the structure evident in her voice.
Sergei chuckled as he carried her in through the front door. They were followed by Yakov, who carried a sleeping Penny, and Grigory, who was carrying Sam. He knew that Anya had been scooped out of the van by Yegor, who had pulled her with him straight into the house as Sergei had gone to her door.
"It's a little ostentatious, but it was a gift to Anya, to us all, from the father of some of her children." Sergei explained as they walked into the front entryway and he set her on her feet.
"Oh." Vesper was curious about that, but thought it would be rude to ask.
"We have a lot to talk about, but I am sure you would like to sleep first." Sergei looked to where Anya and Yegor were standing huddled together by the back window in the dining room. He could hear Yegor chastising her, and new the younger wolf's blood was on fire that his lover was merely placating him with yeses and nos. He would have to deal with her later.
"Grigory, put Penny in on the daybed in Dina's room and Vesper can sleep in her room. The pups aren't likely to go in there in the morning. They generally go to Sam and Oscar first.
Vesper couldn't help herself, "Pups?"
"Yes, sorry, you've kind of come to a house of children. Anya had four children with her first husband when we met her. Sam and Penny, who you've met, Dina and Oscar. But she also has four children with a family of dragons. Ju-Long, Mei, Zhen and Li. Once we bonded and mated, Anya had my litter of seven pups; Catarina, Ava, Fiona, Gertrude, the girls, and our boys Boris, Egor, and Demitri. Now she is pregnant with six more, from my pack." Sergei explained as he took her hand and led her upstairs.
"That'll be 21 children! That's amazing!" Vesper gasped.
"Yes, Anya is a wonderful mate, and mother." Sergei was not going to mention the offspring she'd had with Chrysanthulus.
"Is she like me, older than she looks?" Vesper looked around her as she asked quietly, he'd led her into a very pretty, young girl's room.
Sergei shook his head, "For a nonhuman, Anya is actually quite young. She's only 28 years old in human years. I have great-grandchildren older than her."
"You have great grandchildren?" He must be very old.
"Probably generations beyond that, but my kind spread out. We focus more on pack than family. Though Yegor did come find me at one point. He's my grandson. His mother, my daughter, was a favorite." He smiled as he grabbed extra blankets out of Penny's closet.
Vesper took them from him and thanked him. Werewolves seemed to have lots of babies, or pups as he had called them, how was the world not overrun by them? He must have guessed at where her thoughts were running because he shrugged and looked over at her.
"Werewolves have had many enemies over the years, we don't expect our whole litter to survive to adulthood, plus, there are diseases that affect us more harshly than they affect humans. Throughout my life I have lost a great many children. Anya knows this is our reality but I don't think she'll ever fully understand the loss until it happens."
"So she knows that her children could die? It sounds very morbid, expecting such a terrible thing." Vesper frowned.
Sergei shrugged, it was something he had been very aware of for a long time. Humans were so used to having their children grow old that they forgot that death was so common for the other species in the animal kingdom, in all the other kingdoms actually. Anya was adamant that her children would live and he hoped she was right, but he had lived long enough to lace his hope with a little bit of reality.
"She does, but I understand that she can't hear it, that it sounds unreasonable to her. If it should ever happen, we will all be here for her." He smiled, hoping that was the end of that conversation. "I'll fetch you your backpack. The bathroom is out this door and to the right down the hall before the turn left." Sergei told her before he left her alone in the spacious room.
Vesper sat down on the soft bed and felt her body finally start to give in to the exhaustion that had threatened to overtake her since her mother's stroke. She shifted the bed sheets to move herself under them and by the time Grigory stepped into the room to set her backpack on Penny's dresser, she was sound asleep, her breath escaping her soundlessly through her softly parted lips.
~*~*~*~
It was mid morning the next day when Vesper woke up. She felt her breath rush from her when something heavy jumped on top of her stomach, and then a warm tongue begin licking at her face. Opening her eyes, she tried to grab whatever fur covered creature was on her as she heard a little boy's squeals from next to the bed. It was pitch black with big gray eyes, like his father, Vesper thought to herself as the little menace jumped around on top of the bed for a few moments before jumping off.
She gasped as she watched him shift into the form of a child slightly older looking than the one who had brunette hair that was giggling at his side.
"Sorry, Boris is bad." The younger looking child said and the other one looked at her with an eyebrow raised. He didn't look apologetic at all.
"Boris! Oscar! Back downstairs, stop annoying our guest." Their mother came into the room, a tray of food in her hands.
"Sorry about that," Anya said cheerfully as she put the tray over Vesper's lap on the bed, "I told Oscar to come and check on you and Boris overheard. I swear, that one is more work than all the others combined. It's hard to believe he's still got about four more years before he goes off to college." Anya made sure everything looked right on the tray before she stood back up, her hands on the swell of her stomach.
"Four years?" Vesper asked, she'd sat up against the headboard and felt her stomach growl from the smells of the hot food on the tray.
"Werewolves mature fast, like dragons. It takes them around five years or so. But Oscar is actually older. Sirens are slower to grow. It's one reason we can hide so well among humans. Did you age like a regular human?" Anya asked.
Vesper nodded, "At first, then it seemed like I just stopped aging at all."
"I'm sorry I made you so uncomfortable last night. I'm still pretty new to this world myself. I didn't know I was a nonhuman until last year. It was kind of like I took a crash course in it." Anya chuckled low in her throat.
