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Tonight wasn’t a full moon, but one wouldn’t have been able to tell given the way half the pack was howling—some sort of competition to see who could come closest to getting an accurate rendition out of a human throat, Saw wagered. He hadn’t asked. Nor did he bother to wonder why they’d started this. He already knew the explanation would be incredibly childish and stupid. Besides, he had much better things to do, such as pilfering half the meat that came off the grill and enjoying Jyn’s presence.She was here for the whole weekend, as eager as they all were to take advantage of the unseasonably mild weather and spend one more evening outside before the cold winter months set in. She’d even put in extra hours during the week to free up her Friday so she could come down one day early.Saw made sure to let her know how great an idea he thought that was, and to do so loudly enough for everyone hovering near the barbecue to join in when he moved on to the next step, which was suggesting she make it into a habit. But instead of squirming and preening at his praise—and trying to hide it under a show of marked indifference—Jyn suddenly grew awkward.“Actually,” she said, “there’s a reason for that.”The reason was that she wouldn’t be able to come the following week.“What? Why?” Saw asked, suddenly feeling incredibly stupid and childish himself.Jyn looked at him for a second, then let out a forceful breath. “Okay, here goes,” she muttered. Then she straightened, and said more clearly, “I have a date. On Saturday.”Every howling attempt and every conversation in a fifty feet radius stopped abruptly, replaced by a deafening silence. Jyn’s right eye twitched, but her spine remained straight, her chin resolutely lifted.“A date,” Saw said.“Yes.”“A date?”“Yes,” she repeated, teeth gritted.“But—” He exchanged baffled looks with several of the pack members around him. “With whom?”“His name’s Cassian. And—” she added quickly, “—that’s all you’re getting from me.”“But—” Saw tried again.Jyn pinned him with a glare. He stopped, let his breath out. Waited.“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Jyn snapped. “I can date, I can—"“Of course you can, it’s just—”It was just that she…didn’t. She never had. Sure, there had been, er. Dalliances, so to speak. But dating?That was unheard of.“Just?” Jyn asked, daring him to say it.Saw chose the better part of valor. “Nothing,” he said. “How—Can I ask—How did you two meet?”Jyn scowled at him, but replied, “At a bar.”“And…you asked him out?”“…No, he asked me,” Jyn eventually said.Saw sat with that information for a second. On the one hand, he could appreciate it. It showed that the boy had good taste, if nothing else. But on the other hand: how dare he? Having the gall to think he was worthy of—“Don’t,” Jyn said warningly.Saw blinked at her. “Don’t what?”“Be weird about this.”“Oh,” Saw said. “No, no. Of course not.” - Saw didn’t raise the topic again until after Jyn had left on Sunday evening. He watched the back of her head in the passenger seat of Lorc’s car until it disappeared around the bend of the dirt road leading out of the pack’s territory and towards the nearest train station.Once the rumble of the engine had faded even to his ears, he turned to the rest of the pack and said, “You heard her. So be discreet.” - As expected, pretty much everyone volunteered to go spy on Jyn and her date with this ‘Cassian’. Saw didn’t change his mind, though, and sent Magva as planned, because she was the only one he trusted to observe efficiently without being noticed.Not that there was much to observe, she eventually reported: according to her, the date had been the most excruciatingly boring outing she’d ever witnessed. But at least she could provide a description of the boy: definitely human, definitely male. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a narrow face and stubble on his cheeks. Between 1,75 and 1,80 in height and—in her own words—scrawny.She had brought back a couple of pictures as proof, taken from afar with her phone. They didn’t show Saw much beyond the boy’s mop of dark hair and the fact that he was indeed rather on the lean side.“Very quiet too,” Magva added. “He definitely spoke, but I never once heard his voice from where I was standing.”“Uh,” Saw said. He was still staring at the blurry picture, at that thin silhouette in unassuming, neutral-colored clothes standing beside Jyn. It had never occurred to him to try and picture who Jyn might choose as a partner, be it for a night or for longer, but now he realized he must have, if only unconsciously, because this—this wasn’t at all what he’d expected.But then, he hadn’t expected Jyn to ever go for a walk in the park on a date in the first place—a date on which the wildest thing that had happened, if Magva was to be believed, was some atrociously awkward handholding.And yet. - Jyn and ‘Cassian’ hadn’t spent the whole afternoon in the park: the fall weather hadn’t held that long. The rain had started as they were finishing the circuit around the duck pond and so they’d taken refuge in a caf’ shop, where they’d spent the next couple of hours drinking tea, sharing biscuits, and not even talking all that much, as far as Magva could tell.The only upside to that whole painfully tedious scene was that it gave the pack a chance to gather more information on the boy by getting his credit card information from the cash register.“Wait,” Rai’sodan suddenly said once the breaking and entering was done and Sul had entered the credit card number the twins had brought back into his computer. “He paid? For them both?”“And she let him?” Saw added, equally flummoxed.But that was nothing compared to what they found in between Sul’s digging through public records and some careful monitoring once they’d stolen the boy’s current address.‘Cassian’—or rather, Cassian Jeron Andor—was indeed a human male, born LY 3237 in Fest in a family of four—two parents and two siblings, all since deceased.“Ouch,” Maia said, because she was a softie.Raised in foster care, he’d studied at Yavin University and was now, at 26, living in Alderaan, where he rented a two-bedroom flat on the third floor of a quiet building in the eastern part of the city. He had a roommate, a young man his age who almost never went out and worked nights to boot, in something that had to do with computers. Cassian Jeron Andor, for his part, was an employee at a blood bank, of all places, although his title there was so generic it was difficult to say what his actual job was. Administrative, probably. He bought groceries once a week at the store near his flat, where it appeared he never purchased any meat.“A vegetarian?” Saw couldn’t help but exclaim, aghast.“Pescetarian—looks like he still eats fish,” Rai’sodan corrected, only to quake under the withering look Saw sent his way.Meanwhile, Magva was simply laughing at the absurdity of it all, shaking her head as she said, “Oh, this is even worse than I imagined.”It really was—and it didn’t stop there. Cassian Jeron Andor woke up early on Saturdays to go jogging, unless he was out of town on an outing with his climbing club, which he also visited every Wednesday after work to practice indoors. Last but not least, he gave his blood regularly, every three months on the dot, which wasn’t much of a surprise given his workplace but was also the cherry on top of a cake that was so—so neat and normal and wholesome that—“I guess I see why Jyn’s afraid we might scare him off,” Choyyssyk said, scratching at his jaw.“I guess,” Saw replied slowly.Mostly he was even more confused than he’d been before because—really? This guy? This scrawny, squeaky clean, boring guy? This was the person Jyn had agreed to date?Because date him she did. After that…thing at the park, which everyone in the pack had agreed had to have been a disastrously failed experiment and which they all expected would lead Jyn to swearing off dating forever and ever, there had instead been a second date. Then a third. And a fourth. And on and on—and given that ‘Cassian’ worked during the week, it meant that somehow Saw and the entire pack now found themselves in competition with him when it came to whom Jyn was going to spend her weekends with.Saw didn’t like it.But mostly, he didn’t get it. - “Maybe it’s some sort of delayed teenage rebellion?” Moroff said, although he didn’t sound like he believed it himself. “You did deprive her of the chance to go through that when you sent her off to Tamsye Prime.”“She needed to be among her kind,” Saw retorted, only to realize how defensive he sounded, and how unwarranted that was. Moroff wasn’t accusing him of anything. He never had: he, like everyone in the pack, had understood perfectly the reason behind Saw’s decision to enroll Jyn at that boarding school.It was Jyn who hadn’t understood—who’d refused to understand. Jyn, their collective child, their human child, who wasn’t quite and couldn’t be one of them, who’d wanted to belong so badly—who’d started asking for the bite.No one in the pack would ever have given it to her, though. It wasn’t just because of how small her chances of survival would’ve been. It was because they’d wanted the best for her. They’d wanted her to have a choice. The pack didn’t. Oh, sure, they were lucky: not all packs could boast a territory like the Onderon National Park, the swathes of land they’d been allowed to occupy and treat as their own in exchange for its upkeep and some population control. But it was still a park: an enclosure they could never truly leave. A penned-in space in a world where werewolves couldn’t roam free; where they had to hide, to lie, to repress their true selves every time they ventured out of their home; where they had to follow rules that weren’t their own, had to contend with outside authorities and with the other beings those people had signed agreements with—with the likes of Davits Draven.No.Jyn wasn’t a werewolf. She was a human. And as such, she could—she ought to—have the entire world open to her. She’d just needed to learn how to live in that world, and that hadn’t been something the pack could teach her, no matter how much they’d wished it weren’t so.Jyn had resented them for sending her away, of course, and repaid them by staying away: never giving any news, never coming home over the holidays, going off to study abroad once she’d graduated high school…Saw had thought that that was her teenage rebellion. But as the years had gone by, he’d started to worry that it might be something else; something more. He’d started to fear that Jyn might never come back.But then—Galen.(Part of Saw always wondered if Jyn would have come back, if hadn’t been for what had happened with Galen.) - “The thing is,” Jyn said quietly, her voice almost drowned out by the constant yowling and yapping coming from the woods around the manor, “I really like him.”And she might very well do, but at least she still made sure to be here in Onderon for the full moon, if only to keep Saw company while the rest of the pack went running and howling from one end of the park to the other. Once, Saw would’ve gone with them; he would’ve been running ahead, leading them towards an endless horizon and raising their voices towards the moon. That time was long past, though. These days, he was much happier lying on the hearth, hoarding the warmth and smell of the fire as well as Jyn’s scratches between his ears.Not that there were many scratches to be had this time. Jyn’s hands were busy elsewhere, namely holding a plushie she’d brought with her.It was shaped like a bat. Apparently, Cassian had won it for her at some fair they’d gone to.“But if this goes on…” she went on, voice slowing down until it trailed off.She was staring down at the plushie. Saw was staring down at it too, now. It was the strangest blend of ugly and cute. Jyn made it flap its black felt wings, once, twice, and suddenly Saw realized that he needed that plushie. Or one just like it. The holidays were fast approaching, and he knew exactly who he had to gift it to—who would absolutely hate it.He was drawn out of his attempts to picture the exact look of scorn the plushie would elicit when Jyn spoke again, her voice louder, clearer. “If this goes on, I’ll have to tell him eventually.”Saw couldn’t help but snap his head up at that.“Not now,” she reassured him. “But—maybe—I mean I could—”Whatever she meant to say, Saw never heard, for in that second two enormous wolves burst through the Naboo windows that looked over the backyard, one of them—Euwood, it looked like—landing on top of the other and trying to keep him down. The second wolf—whom Saw recognized as Saurval—refused to submit, bucking and growling and twisting and biting until he managed to slip free and took off running again, Euwood hot on his heels, into the corridor and—Saw surmised—back out through the kitchen door.The windows were left swaying in the damp wind, and the once clean wooden floor marred by new claw marks, smeared with mud, and littered with wet dead leaves.“Or, you know,” Jyn said in the renewed quiet, eyebrow ticking, “not.” - Once everyone was back on two feet and Jyn had gone back to Alderaan, Saw sent the twins to do some reconnaissance at the fair where she and the boyfriend had gone. Benthic and Edrio found the right stand—some sort of shooting game—and came back with the good news that there were still bat plushies to be won.Unfortunately, winning one such plushie required beating the game, and it turned out no one in the pack was able to do so. Not even Weeteef, despite all his bragging about his skills with a rifle.“Those games are rigged, we all know that!” he protested. Weak, as a defense. And one that didn’t help matters at all. Saw didn’t even spare him a contemptuous glance.A brief silence settled.“Maybe we could—” Kullbee started.“No,” Saw cut him off at once. Asking Jyn to ask her boyfriend to try his chance a second time was out of the question, if only because then Saw would have to explain to her why he needed his own plushie and, just, no.That, and he just knew that, even if he’d been ready to withstand Jyn’s judgment, it would all be for naught, because whatever had made her boyfriend’s victory possible—beginner’s luck, the burning need to impress his girlfriend, or the stand manager turning out to be a romantic at heart and rigging the game in his favor—it wouldn’t work a second time, and certainly not to serve Saw’s plans.He would have to come up with something else. But before he could, the week ended, and with it the fair. Within hours all the stands had been packed up and carried away, plushies included.Clearly, Saw could never have nice things. - That Jyn ‘really liked’ her boyfriend didn’t mean the pack stopped monitoring their dates. If possible, it even increased their motivation, because it gave them more opportunities to try and figure out what it was exactly that kept her interested.So far, no one had been able to figure it out. Cassian Jeron Andor remained quiet and nondescript and unassuming. So unassuming, in fact, that when Jyn took him to some sort of gym—an ‘indoor parkour center’, whatever that was—in what the whole pack agreed was an insultingly transparent attempt at hinting that he should try and put on some muscle, he hadn’t even been vexed. There had been no fight, no boyfriend storming out of the gym in a huff and refusing to take Jyn’s calls for a week and maybe even breaking up with her over his damaged pride. Instead, they’d spent the whole afternoon in there, and only left once the sun had set, both looking freshly showered and quite happy with themselves. From there they’d headed straight to a Mon Calamari restaurant where they’d demolished three full spreads of shellfish and squid and become the owner’s favorite customers of the day.That was where Berk had caught up to them, having been unable to follow them inside the gym for fear of being made—so the pack had no idea what had gone down in there. It happened from time to time: that their surveillance was thwarted by Jyn and the boyfriend going to a place where the risk of their tail being noticed became too high and forced whoever was on stalking duty that day to retreat. Aside from the gym, another instance had been that time they’d gone to what Sul’s computer had called an ‘escape game’—a name that had sounded intriguing at first, except that somehow the ‘escape’ did not involve the company driving its customers out of the city and to an isolated place, handing them a survival kit, and telling them for how long they had to evade capture before giving them a five minutes head-start and sending their trackers after them. No, in this case, everything once again took place entirely indoors.Maybe what one had to escape was some sort of prison? Starting off shackled under surveillance in a closed room and having to fight one’s way out? But Saw didn’t think Jyn would like that sort of thing, and Staven swore Jyn had been smiling when she and the boyfriend had emerged from the building less than two hours after entering it—a claim that was confirmed a couple of days later when Sul found a post on the company’s website congratulating Jyn and the boyfriend on beating their hardest scenario in record time and apparently ‘saving the city from complete annihilation by a ruthless Empire’. The announcement was accompanied by a picture of the both of them standing in front of some sort of machine with way too many buttons and levers. Jyn was grinning fiercely, flushed with victory, while the boyfriend hovered at her side, much too close, with the faintest smile curving his lips.Well. At least it looked like she was having fun. - Indoor activities weren’t the only things impeding the pack’s attempts to keep an eye on their collective human child, though. On more than one occasion—like the weekend Jyn and the boyfriend spent at a robot fair, or that time the boyfriend invited her to his home for dinner—they had to beat a hasty retreat after running into a vampire.Saw didn’t blame them. He’d told them not to oppose any resistance. Officially, the whole city was vampire territory, ever since they’d come to their own agreement with Mayor Mothma’s administration—something about covering the worst night shifts in various key job sectors, monitoring non-human communities, and taking care of rogue individuals in exchange for right of stay and regular deliveries of fresh blood for feeding, although Saw had no idea how that worked, and to be honest didn’t want to know. The point was, werewolves could be tolerated inside the city limits, but only as long as they didn’t cause any trouble. And they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. These days Saw’s pack had to behave, had to play nice, since the city was where Jyn lived.Still, it didn’t mean they gave up on their monitoring entirely. On the evening Jyn had been invited to the boyfriend’s place, for instance, Codo had been on duty and he’d—unsurprisingly—found a way to stick around, albeit at a much greater distance, until the evening drew to a close. Thus, he’d been able to confirm that Jyn hadn’t spent the night. Which was good. It meant that the boyfriend was respectful—or at least respectful enough not to try anything when his night-owl of a roommate was right there and awake and (according to Codo) quite vocal about what he thought of ‘strangers’ entering his home. - That Jyn hadn’t stayed the night that one time by no means meant that her relationship with the boyfriend was entirely chaste. Saw was aware of that. He couldn’t help but be aware of that, and not just because Mari had been around the day Jyn and the boyfriend had had what the whole pack suspected was their first time.They’d gone to a museum that day, to see some exhibit about ancient Jedhan weaponry. Afterwards Jyn had brought the boyfriend back to her home to show him her knife collection. The boyfriend probably didn’t know the first thing about knives and had undoubtedly been quite alarmed by the sheer number of blades Jyn surrounded herself with, but he’d apparently been smart enough to only show polite interest at Jyn’s explanations and some appreciation towards her most prized pieces—for which he’d been handsomely rewarded when Jyn had jumped him then and there.“And this is what she wanted?” Saw had felt the need to ask.Mari had raised a judgmental eyebrow at him. “Well, let’s see,” she’d said and raised a hand with all five fingers extended. Then she’d proceeded to fold them down one after the other as she went on. “She brought him into her home, on a pretext that we can all agree was flimsy at best. Then she brought him into her bedroom, in case she hadn’t been quite obvious enough.”“That’s where her most interesting pieces are kept,” Saw had tried to point out.“Then she kissed him,” Mari had added as if he hadn’t spoken, “and then she tackled him onto the bed.”“…And then?” Saw had asked when Mari had stopped there.She’d given him a look of such scorn it had rivalled Magva’s.“Then I made myself scarce before clothes started coming off, because there are things even pack members should never see or hear, you perv.”And she wasn’t wrong, of course. But not seeing and not hearing didn’t matter—not when one had a sense of smell such as theirs. They all knew when Jyn had seen the boyfriend before she made her way to Onderon, and they especially knew when the both of them had, say, indulged before parting. Worse, Jyn knew that they knew. How could she not, when Magva insisted on leering at her and whooping the second she stepped foot into the manor? When Rai’sodan couldn’t look her in the face without blushing purple, and when the twins kept reaching their hands up for congratulatory high-fives? Meanwhile Codo walked around looking like a kicked puppy and Moroff kept stuffing her pockets with prophylactics, when he wasn’t burying her under information pamphlets about contraception and STDs without anyone knowing where he’d even gotten them.“What?” Saw asked when Jyn glared at him, as if he was the one responsible for any of this. “You know the nose can’t help what it knows!”“Just so you know,” Jyn retorted, “you’re never meeting him.” - Of course, as soon as Jyn had declared them all unfit for human society and therefore unworthy of ever ending up in the boyfriend’s presence, life went and forced her hand.When the phone rang around dinner time, Jyn’s number appearing on the display, Saw’s worry spiked at once. It was not her habit to call, after all; she was much more liable to simply show up without warning whenever she felt like hearing from them. That, and Saw knew she’d been with the boyfriend today. According to the twins, who were on duty for once, they’d gone to a ‘laser game’.Saw did not have the will to even try and figure out what that was. He did think that this was starting to make a lot of ‘games’ for adults to be going to, though.Was that the boyfriend’s appeal? That he gave Jyn the chance to live out the normal human childhood she’d never had?But that wasn’t the point. No, right now the point was that, on their way back from the game, Jyn had tugged the boyfriend into an alley—he couldn’t have been the one doing the tugging, as Jyn was not one to let herself be steered—but whatever she’d planned to do to him there was forgotten at once in view of what they’d stumbled upon in between a crate, two trashcans and a pile of snow: a body. Or no, not a body; not yet at least. The boyfriend, who had medical training, had checked it at once and found a faint pulse. Chances were it would finish fading soon, though, given how much of the young man’s blood had been spilled and kept oozing from his many wounds.“I’m pretty sure it was a wolf,” Jyn said, keeping her voice low so as not to be overheard by the boyfriend. It wavered as she went on to describe what made her think so: the lacerations she read as claw marks, the bites that were too large and tearing to have been made by a dog, especially the deepest one at the junction between neck and shoulder. Saw wasn’t surprised: those were all signs she was familiar with—had been familiar with since childhood. “We need to get him away from here in case he turns,” she concluded. “I need someone to come help me move him.”“Of course,” Saw replied at once. Then he paused, hesitant, but—he had to ask. “What about your boyfriend, though?”There was no doubt a good upstanding citizen such as he wouldn’t understand this, and would actually protest when the ambulance Jyn had probably told him she was calling turned out to be a pick-up truck that would not take them to a hospital but out of the city, far away from any help, medical or otherwise. Saw knew it, and Jyn knew it too. He could almost see her, his brave girl who knew what this might cost her but wouldn’t let it prevent her from helping, tilting her chin up as she swallowed and said, “Leave that to me.” - Saw didn’t know what Jyn told the boyfriend, but somehow she found the right words for him to go along with what she was suggesting, even though to him it probably looked like nothing but a bad decision that would end in them all being arrested on the charge of concealing a dead body, if not worse. A surprising turn of events, although Saw found himself wondering if maybe it shouldn’t have been. Jyn and the boy had been dating for several months by now. Maybe that had been enough for him to see what everyone in the pack saw when they looked at Jyn—after all, he did seem to have some brains. Maybe he did trust her that much already. Or maybe he was simply ready to give her the benefit of the doubt.He refused to be left behind, though. When the twins’ truck finally stopped in front of the manor, he was sitting in the back, sticking close to the wounded man lying between him and Edrio. He didn’t seem to care that it had started snowing again, or that his thick blue coat was now marred with drying blood.“He came to briefly,” he said once they’d jumped down from the truck and Moroff, Choyyssyk, and Cycyed moved in to carry the wounded inside. “His name’s Bodhi Rook. He’s—he said he’s a pilot.”He didn’t get in the way after that, though, letting the people who actually knew what they were doing take over.In the middle of the chaos, Edrio sidled up to Saw and told him in an undertone, “Fever’s started.”Saw hummed distractedly. That at least wasn’t a surprise. After all, if this ‘Bodhi’ was going to die from the shock and blood loss, he already would have. He hadn’t, and so he was going to turn. The only questions that remained was whether his battered body would withstand that second, much worse trial—and whether his wounded mind would make it through intact.Both were less than certain. There was nothing they could do, though, aside from making him comfortable, giving him some water, and waiting. In the meantime, Saw was much more interested in the boyfriend, whom he was seeing in person for the first time.He was as scrawny and quiet as Saw had been told, but at the same time he was a lot more…solid than Saw had been led to expect. His reserve wasn’t that of the shy or indecisive, but that of the self-contained: someone who liked to proceed with caution, to observe and learn the parameters before he acted—but who, once he’d decided on a course of action, wouldn’t falter, as proven by the way he’d reacted to tonight’s whole mess.Now that Bodhi had been taken care of, he seemed a bit bereft, then wary, looking around as if he was realizing for the first time that he was in an unfamiliar environment, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by strangers. And in that second of uncertainty his eyes unerringly went to Jyn, who was already walking up to him, as if she’d known he was going to look to her for guidance.“Come on,” she said, tilting her head towards the manor.Without hesitation, Cassian followed her inside. - “You’ve been spying on me.”When the words registered, Saw almost dropped the cup of herbal tea Jyn had just handed him. She’d briefly left her boyfriend to the tender mercies of Magva and Moroff, who had come to sit with him—flank him—on the couch. Saw for his part stuck to the side of the room, preferring to observe for now, and had inadvertently left himself wide open for Jyn to corner him.He secured his grip on the saucer, then looked back up at her. Her expression was as calm as her tone had been, but her eyes were bright with fury.“Who, me?” Saw asked, pointedly glancing down at his walking stick.“Don’t play dumb,” Jyn snapped. “You’re having me followed by the pack.”Saw gasped. “Lies! Deception! Who told you that?”Jyn rolled her eyes. “No one needed to tell me anything when you all hate the city and yet Benthic and Edrio just so happened to be fifteen minutes away from where I was. Please.”Damn. He’d told them to make a detour so as to not be too obvious.Saw racked his brains for a repartee that wouldn’t make the situation worse—he was acutely aware that he was playing with fire here—but as it turned out, he didn’t have to, for Bodhi—bless him—chose that very moment to shift. There was no other explanation for the sudden commotion in the back of the manor and for Rai’sodan calling for Moroff to get his ass in here NOW.“This isn’t over,” Jyn snapped at Saw, but then she too turned away, and rushed towards the noise. - Fortunately for all of them, Bodhi Rook, on top of turning out to be a lot hardier than he looked, seemed not to have been particularly aggressive as a person when he’d been human. Upon finding himself turned into a wolf, his first reflex was not to jump and tear at the throat of the closest living being, but rather to curl up in the corner of the room, half under the cot they’d laid him on.As far as they could tell, his transformation was complete. He could move freely. Both were good signs, at least on the physical end of things. The mind was another matter entirely—and they wouldn’t be able to determine if any of his human self was left until they’d drawn him back out from his hiding spot.The boyfriend asked if he could give it a try, which they allowed: his had been the last face Bodhi Rook had seen before he’d been swallowed by the pain and heat of the shift. They’d even interacted, the boyfriend trying to reassure him, telling him that they were getting help, asking for his name—and Bodhi had registered it enough to give an answer. If any of that had held over and translated into a feeling of familiarity and safety, no matter how faint, when Bodhi looked at the boyfriend through the wolf’s eyes, then it was worth using. Anything was, when it came to bringing a newly turned wolf back to themself.“I gotta say,” Saw told Jyn quietly as they watched the scene unfold from the doorway, “he’s holding up very well.”The boyfriend had even adopted the exact right behavior on what had to be sheer instinct. He’d chosen to sit on the floor so as to avoid coming off as a threat, but had done so at a safe distance, so that the pack members hovering nearby had plenty of time to intervene were Bodhi to go on the attack. He kept his demeanor slow and measured, his voice low, dropping Bodhi’s name at the beginning or at the end of every other sentence, trying to see if the wolf recognized it, if he understood any of what was being said. He even glanced over at the pack members around him regularly, checking their faces to see how they thought things were going and whether he should continue.“He really is,” Jyn murmured in reply. She was frowning slightly, puzzled but also preoccupied. Saw understood why: the boyfriend was holding up very well for now. But his cool bore the hallmarks of a shock-induced survival mode. He’d kept his head as well as his ability to act, and that was commendable, but it wouldn’t last. It would crumble as soon as the situation quieted, or he removed himself from it. And the more time passed before that happened, the worse the eventual outburst or breakdown would be.That was for later, though. For now, Saw was more concerned about Jyn herself. What about you? he wanted to ask. How are you holding up?After all, everything about this had to be reminding her of Galen. It certainly did Saw. How could it not? He too had never quite recovered from the tragedy of it: one of the most brilliant minds he’d ever known, reduced to a rabid, thoughtless beast. Lyra at least had died at once—a blessing, as it had turned out. A better fate than to end up lost the way Galen had. Galen, who’d roamed for years in a frenzied haze; who, by the time he’d been found—by the time Jyn had found him—had been reduced to nothing but a mad, pitiful, mange-ridden creature that could only be given the mercy of being put down.How could she not be thinking of that now, faced with Bodhi, who might very well have just been condemned to endure a similar fate? That, and—Jyn inhaled sharply and Saw felt more than he saw the shiver that ran through everyone around them. He snapped his head towards the room, where Bodhi had hesitantly crawled out from under the cot and was gingerly straightening up, finding his footing on four legs.“Bodhi?” the boyfriend asked. “Are you—do you understand me?”The newly turned wolf looked at him; and then slowly, carefully, he dipped his head down, then back up—a nod. An answer.A sign that he was still here. - Things sorted themselves out quickly after that. With proof that there was enough left of Bodhi to register what he was being told, the pack could take over his care and start explaining to him what had happened, what it implied, what it would mean going forward.Not at once, though. For now, after a few introductions and many words of reassurance, they left him in the company of Moroff and Tivik in wolf form—Moroff who, despite his huge size which made it possible for him to subdue pretty much anyone, had a surprisingly comforting presence; and Tivik whose anxiety as a human might carry over into nervousness as a wolf but also made him come off as entirely harmless. The both of them were the ideal pair to get Bodhi settled and to keep him company until he shifted back to his human form.“I’ve got to take Cassian home,” Jyn said then. “His roommate’s been blowing up his phone ever since he didn’t come home last night.”Saw raised an eyebrow at her, wondering why the boyfriend’s roommate turning out to be a mother-hen should be any of their concern, but Jyn didn’t see it. She’d turned her gaze towards the corridor leading to the room where Bodhi was hopefully asleep by now.“He’ll be fine, right?” she asked. “And you’ll take good care of him.”Her voice wavered slightly half-way through the second sentence.“We will,” Saw replied. And, because sometimes it was good to remind people of the obvious, he added, “You can come visit him any time.”Jyn looked back up at him and nodded, holding his gaze.Saw nodded back. Here and now was neither the place nor the time for conversation he wanted to have with her. So here and now, this would have to be enough: a silent promise, and the shared understanding of all the things that remained unsaid. - It was only once Jyn was gone that it occurred to Saw she might have deliberately pushed back the talk she knew he wanted to have to keep her strength for another, much riskier one: the one she needed to have with the boyfriend.She’d told him the gist of things back in that alley in Alderaan, before the twins had arrived to carry Bodhi away—an abridged version of the speech Saw knew she’d been preparing in stops and starts, cut down to the essentials. There was no doubt she would’ve preferred the reveal to happen under better circumstances, in a place and at a time she would’ve chosen. But fate had decided otherwise. She’d done her best with what she’d been given.Still, there was no telling how the boyfriend would react now that the crisis had passed and he’d have the time to fully realize what had happened, what he’d seen and learned, what it meant.Saw understood why Jyn was apprehensive. He wished he’d realized it earlier, too, so as to offer more support in case the conversation went wrong.But the conversation didn’t go wrong. Not as far as he and the rest of the pack could tell.Jyn didn’t burst through the manor’s door halfway through the week in heartbroken fury. When the following weekend rolled around, she didn’t fail to appear or give any news in a way that would’ve forced Magva to go search for her, worried that she’d find her hiding in her home, licking her heart’s wounds. Sure, Jyn didn’t come that weekend. But she called them in advance to ask how Bodhi was doing (he was back on two feet and, while he seemed to be caught in a haze and kept stumbling and stuttering, he was doing as well as could be expected) and to let them know that she wouldn’t be coming to Onderon that Saturday, because she and the boyfriend were going to Fest.Why they wanted to travel to that frozen hole of a mining town—in winter to boot—Saw couldn’t fathom, until he remembered that this was where the boyfriend hailed from.“He must be trying to meet her honesty with some of his own,” Kullbee hypothesized.Saw pursed his lips, dubious, and resolved to wait to hear about it from Jyn’s lips before he came to any conclusion.He didn’t have to wait for too long. Jyn came the weekend after that, still looking windswept somehow, red-nosed with snowflakes clinging to her hair. When Saw cautiously prodded her for information, she only smiled, sudden and bright and buoyant. “We’re good,” she said. “We’re perfect.”Saw searched her face for any sign of strain, for any clue that her demeanor might be forced, a façade. There was none. All he found was a spark in her eyes, the one she got sometimes that said she knew something you didn’t.After all these years of knowing her, Saw knew better than to ask. And so, he had no choice but accept that things were indeed ‘good’. - Saw should’ve been glad and relieved. And he was. But he was also…dismayed, in a way. How could he not be, when he was being forced to reach the conclusion that he might have misjudged the boyfriend—for clearly the boy was made of tougher stuff than he appeared? Saw wasn’t one to enjoy admitting to such a thing as having been wrong even on good days. And he wouldn’t count these days as good, since recent events meant he had to deal with the mayor’s office, and therefore with the mayor’s associates.First, the pack had to notify them about Bodhi Rook’s change of status, if only so he could get a certificate for extended medical leave. Oh, he was doing well, at least physically. All his wounds had healed as quickly as expected, leaving no trace behind—only the bite at the junction between his neck and shoulder, the one that had turned him, had resulted in a scar. But he’d still be staying with the pack for the next two months: enough time for him to adjust and to go through two full moons with them, just so he could learn how to deal with that.All this implied a medical examination and heaps of paperwork. Fortunately, the mayor’s office knew to be careful about who they sent by now. The doctor who came was human, and the official who brought all the forms Bodhi and Saw would have to fill and sign was a selkie. One they already knew, to boot. And Raddus might stink up whole manor with fish smell for the entire duration of his presence, but at least he was no vampire.Saw did have to contend with those for the other side of the whole matter, though, namely the investigation. A human had been attacked in the middle of the city by a rogue werewolf. That he’d survived—that he’d turned rather than died—was a miracle that did not lessen the seriousness of the situation in any way. It could not happen again. Whoever that wolf was, it had to be found and subdued and stopped. And yes, it meant that Saw’s pack had to work with—shudder—Draven’s people.That wasn’t the worst part, though. No, the worst part was that Saw had his suspicions about who that werewolf was. He wondered if Jyn did too. He still hadn’t had that conversation with her and so he hadn’t had the chance to probe her on that point. But the clues were there, obvious if one knew what to look for: the randomness of the attack; the savageness of it; the way Bodhi had been left to die an excruciating death in a puddle of his own blood or to turn and go on his own rampage; the lack of care about who might find him or who might witness that attack—a lack of care that was almost exhibitionistic, spurred by the perverse desire to let people find out about the non-humans who lived among them.So yes, Saw had his suspicions. And if he was right—if Orson Krennic had indeed returned to Alderaan after all these years evading capture—he would make sure that monster didn’t get away this time.Even if he had to work with Davits Draven to do it. - Saw was still trying to come to terms with the whole situation, and with the fact that this would probably be a long, tiresome cooperation, when the issue abruptly solved itself all on its own.Or, well. Not quite on its own. At first, it even sounded like it might simply have gotten worse—like it might have dived straight into the kind of horror Saw hadn’t dared imagine.It started late on a Friday evening, when he got a call from Leevan, who was the pack member assigned to watch over Jyn that day—not to monitor her and the boyfriend, not after Jyn had made her stance on that clear, but just to stick around close enough to intervene quickly if anything were to happen. And something had happened.Saw only heard the words ‘Jyn’, ‘dinner date’, and ‘attacked’ before he slammed the receiver down and took off. - Time was, Saw would have simply shifted and raced all the way to the city in under an hour—but those times were long past. He couldn’t run anymore. Instead, he had to sit in the passenger seat while Lorc flirted with the speed limit on their way to Alderaan—now was not the time to be pulled over—and stew in his worry.It gave him enough time for some of his dread to abate and for the panicked haze to fade somewhat. Leevan had started the call by stressing that Jyn was alright, Saw now remembered. So either the rogue wolf’s attack had failed, or it had actually assaulted someone else. Either it had fled, or it had been taken down. No matter what, Jyn was alright, though. Leevan had said it. She was alright.Knowing that, Saw breathed out and spent the last third of the trip trying to brace himself for what he might find on the scene and what he would definitely find on the scene—and he was right about the latter, at least: when they finally arrived and he stepped out of the car, the whole place was crawling with vampires. Even Draven was there, giving him a dirty look when he painstakingly climbed the last stairs leading to the roof of the building where everything had gone down. The vampire also looked entirely unsurprised. He’d probably been warned by one of his men as soon as Saw had ignored them and stormed past the barrier they’d set up at the doors.Draven was standing over a body, around which a team of forensics were actively busying themselves. It was lying face down on the ground but Saw recognized it all the same.It was indeed Krennic. And he was indeed dead.Very dead.“Who got him?” Saw asked, staring at the spot of red on the left side of Krennic’s back, right at the level of his heart.Leevan, who’d walked over as soon as Saw had arrived, shifted awkwardly. “Well. It was—it was Cassian.”It took a second for the name to register. Saw’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?”The story came in fits and starts. Everything had happened very fast, it turned out. So fast, actually, that Leevan hadn’t gotten to do or see anything: by the time he’d realized something was wrong and rushed over, it was already over. He’d been trying to reconstruct the sequence of events ever since.As far as he could tell, Jyn and the boyfriend had been walking home after a dinner date when they’d happened upon Krennic, or Krennic had happened upon them—(Later on, Saw would think to wonder what kind of ‘dinner date’ and ‘walk home’ would’ve led anyone to a condemned building in the seediest part of town, far away from where either Jyn or the boyfriend lived.)—and he’d attacked them. At some point, maybe in an attempt to escape him, they’d climbed to the roof of the building. Well, Jyn had climbed: the boyfriend hadn’t made it, having been thrown down the stairwell halfway up. Krennic hadn’t bothered to stop to rip him to shreds, preferring to stay hot on Jyn’s tail. Had she been his specific target? Had he recognized her after all these years? Leevan didn’t know. All he knew was that Krennic had cornered her on the roof. He’d still been in human form, probably so he could taunt her before he shifted and killed her—except that he’d never gotten to that part. Somehow Cassian had crawled his way up after them, drawn a gun out of nowhere and shot Krennic in the back while he was distracted.Krennic had fallen. And he hadn’t risen back up, because the bullet in Cassian’s gun had been made of silver.“Uh,” Saw let out when he heard that. Had Jyn told him about the silver thing?But even if she had, it still wouldn’t explain how Mr. Average Upstanding Citizen had acquired both a gun and silver bullets in such a short time, why he’d brought them on their date, and how he’d managed to get Krennic through the heart from the back, at a distance of more than fifteen meters, at night, in a place where half the streetlamps were out of order, while being very possibly concussed.Clearly, Saw had missed something.He had to get back to street level to find Jyn. She and Cassian had staggered down the stairs by themselves and waited there for the authorities and EMTs to show up. Saw hadn’t seen them on his way in, intent as he’d been on getting to the scene, but in his defense, they were half hidden behind the ambulance. Jyn was standing right beside the stretcher where Cassian lay, except that instead of being checked by an EMT, he was…being fussed over with disturbing familiarity by Breha Organa herself, while Bail Organa hovered over her shoulder.And the worst of it was, Jyn didn’t even look wary or surprised. She just stood there, holding Cassian’s hand and watching his face.Yes, Saw had definitely missed something. - “Wait, he knew? This whole time?” Saw exclaimed when things quieted down and he and Jyn finally got the chance to talk in private.“Yes,” Jyn replied, like this wasn’t a big deal. “He told me after everything that went down with Bodhi.”“How did he know?”“He’s like me. Or maybe like that girl—Leia.” At Saw’s confused frown, she explained, “His whole family was killed when he was six. Vampires. He only survived because he managed to hide.”At that, Saw’s eyebrows darted up. It was near impossible to escape a vampire on the prowl, not when it had heard the beat of your heart and smelled the scent of your blood.“Another vampire found him after the nest had been taken out,” Jyn went on, unaware or uncaring that she was mentioning a feat no six-year-old should’ve been capable of, “and he took him in.”Saw nodded slowly. He understood better the comparison with both Jyn and Leia Organa. Although he had to wonder which vampire had adopted Cassian as a boy. As far as he knew, Leia had no brother. And the only other vampire about whom he’d heard rumors involving a child was—“No.”Jyn blinked. “No?”“He’s Draven’s kid?”There’d been tall tales at one point, he remembered now, about Draven having gotten himself a pet child he meant to groom. They’d disappeared fast. But even before they had, Saw had dismissed them as soon as he’d heard them, because as much as he disliked that old bat, he’d known this wasn’t something he’d do. That, and Mayor Mothma wouldn’t have tolerated that kind of behavior.But as it turned out, even those disgusting, absurd rumors had held a grain of truth, for Jyn replied, “Yes?”Saw had to take a few seconds to digest that. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. How well Cassian had reacted to Bodhi’s attack and their consequences. How he’d known exactly how to behave. How he’d known what weapon to use against a rogue werewolf and how to use it—because of course Draven, paranoid bastard that he was, would’ve made sure his son had the means to protect himself against beings much stronger and more dangerous than he was.“So, the foster parents…?” he asked anyway.“Don’t actually exist.”“And the roommate—”“Also a vampire. Which—I should’ve known. Kay does not pass well.”Somehow, that even she hadn’t seen it coming was no consolation. - Still, between the aftermath of Krennic’s untimely but well-deserved death, Bodhi’s integration into the pack, and another full moon, it took more than a few days for the new information regarding Cassian to fully sink in. The issue wasn’t just that it forced Saw to reevaluate everything he’d thought he knew about the boy; no, it was also the implications.See, if Jyn—his daughter—was dating Cassian, and Cassian was Draven’s son, then that meant—“I know you ‘really like him’,” Saw said, having jumped on the phone as soon as he’d understood what exactly that meant, “but are you really sure? It might be best if you both, well. Stopped here. Now.”“Um,” Jyn said. “What?”“I get that you have shared life experience and—and things—but are you sure he’s the right man for you?”“What,” she repeated, a lot more flatly. Dangerously.“I mean, he lied to you,” Saw tried.“No, he didn’t.”“He did! By omission! He knew all this time and—”“He didn’t hide that he knew,” Jyn retorted. “He was being quite obvious, now that I think about it. Hindsight and all that. I mean, he introduced me to Kay—he really thought that’d do it.”“But it didn’t, and—”“Well, that’s your fault,” Jyn cut him off. “You’re the one who raised me and it’s your education that made it so that things most humans would consider weird don’t even register to me. I mean, I opened the freezer that time I came over and saw the blood bags they keep in there for Kay, and all I thought was, kriff, aren’t they well prepared in case there’s an accident in the kitchen, I really should do the same.”Saw had no words.“Hey, Cassian cooks a lot,” Jyn said, now sounding defensive, “and he uses a very big knife.”Saw still had no words, but he also realized they’d gotten off-track.“Still, you have to realize what this means,” he tried again. “If you and that boy keep dating—if it gets serious—Jyn, he’s Davits Draven’s son.”“Ohhh,” Jyn said. “So this is what all this is about.”“Of course that’s what all this is about! So now you see why you have to stop before it’s too late!”“What’s that mean, ‘before it’s too late’?”“Before—” Saw floundered for a bit. “Before things get too serious. Or rather, before that boy starts thinking things are serious. What if he wants you to move in together? What if he starts thinking about—about marriage?”“Oh, I see,” Jyn said. Her voice sounded strangely light all of a sudden—much too light given the topic of the conversation. “There’s no need for you to worry about that, though. We’re nowhere near that point.”“Really?” Saw asked hopefully.“Really.” A pause. “I mean, I haven’t even found the right ring yet.”Saw froze. “What?”“I get that it’s early, but you’ve taught me it’s always good to be prepared—and I don’t see why he should be the one who gets to ask when the time comes.”“When the time comes?”“And actually, I’m meeting him in half an hour, so I gotta scram.”“Jyn—what—”But Jyn quickly spoke over him. “Have a nice evening—see you on Saturday, bye!”And she hung up, leaving him alone with the dial tone and his thoughts in turmoil.“Um. Everything okay here, boss?”It was Tivik, hovering in the doorway to the room. Blinking at him, Saw realized he’d been sitting in silence, staring at the phone, for a very long while.The words escaped his mouth before he could think. “Jyn plans on marrying her boyfriend.”“Oh,” Tivik said. “That seems…hasty?”“Not now,” Saw stressed, “but—eventually. Maybe.”“Oh,” Tivik repeated. “Um. Good for them?”“I don’t understand. How can she do this to me?”She couldn’t mean to actually run the risk of making Saw and Davits Draven become in-laws. Or—Or.Saw paused. Because—maybe she was. No, actually, she definitely was. And Saw knew—suddenly he knew, with merciless clarity—that this was her way of getting back at him for sending her to Tamsye Prime back when she was sixteen. This was her reminding Saw that, deep down, she was and remained her mother’s daughter—the daughter of Lyra, who for all her fiery temper was a true believer in the adage that revenge was a dish best served cold.And what a revenge that was! Saw really ought to be proud. But at the same time…Why did it have to be this? -
END