Ashridge Pack - mlm (eventually) werewolf story - Chapter Three (sfw) (Patreon)

Edit: this was posted accidentally a day early. It was supposed to go up on Monday. Patreon's scheduling system obviously went wrong somewhere, so... enjoy it early, and there won't be the usual one tomorrow. I'm sorry!!

Anyone even remember this one?! You can catch up on the previous parts below, though I might still tweak the first one a little bit. This is sort of a first-draft, WIP thing, but I'm sharing it here in its entirety anyway. 

 Info post (general)Character 'bio' for Sol and Luke (artwork)Chapters: One, Two

Previously: Luke went for a late night jog and encountered the pack's only True Alpha, Sol, before returning to the apartment he shares with his best friend, a low-ranking werewolf named Harry. Harry invites Luke to the Lunar Gathering, and Luke reluctantly agrees to go. Pack leader Max and his mate Laura also express their happiness at his attending, and after going shopping to get something to wear for Luke, the four of them meet up with Sol at Onita's cafe. Sol is a rare True Alpha, and should be the pack's leader by familial rights, but he abdicated in favour of his best friend and 'ordinary' alpha, Max. 

This time: Luke attends the party and gets some attention from the visiting werewolf packs, some tolerable, some... distinctly unwelcome. It seems he's not the only recipient of such unwanted attention though, as Sol has an encounter of his own. We also meet Sol's younger sister, and the only other surviving member of his family, Rose, who's down from Cambridge for the event. We also get a peek at the famed Everleigh Manor and a tiny bit of backstory for Sol and his family. 

Wordcount: 4,404 (!)Warnings: brief (implied sexual) harassment and some background social anxiety

Bloody typical. 

On the night of the Lunar Gathering, Luke found himself held up on campus by some undergrads who apparently couldn’t figure out which library resources to use without his help, and because he was clearly a fucking chump, he stayed behind to help them. As a result, he barely made it back to his and Harry’s apartment in time to get dressed before heading out with Harry to the party. 

In the end, they decided to go on foot rather than get a cab, despite the fact that they were running late enough for it to be considered impolite by that point. They lived pretty close to the Everleigh Estate though and neither of them had all that much cash to spare for a taxi anyway. Besides, Luke insisted that he’d probably need at least a couple of drinks to get through the evening, and Harry just smiled gratefully at him. 

“You know it’s true,” Luke snorted as they made their way past the corner shop and turned left at the traffic lights. “I mean, it’s not as bad as it has been in the past, but this is a whole fucking werewolf party… with… multiple packs of werewolves… and I’ll probably be the only human?”

Harry shrugged. “Probably not the only one…” he hedged. 

“But it’s unlikely for there to be a non woofer there, right?”

Shooting him a dry look, Harry said, “I’d advise you not to talk about us like that tonight…”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Luke snorted. “You’re the only one I call that.”

Harry's nerves cracked and he offered him a smile. “Had me worried for a moment there, sweetheart…” he said, shoving Luke in the shoulder. It really wasn’t a surprise that people thought they were dating.

They fell into an easy silence after that, and to keep himself from going stir crazy, Luke ran the information he’d gathered from Max, Harry, Laura and Sol in subsequent meetings about the party. Even forearmed with that knowledge, Luke still felt like he was going to be a fish out of water at the event. Actually, other metaphors about sheep amongst wolves came to mind. 

Apparently, the whole Ashridge pack, about twenty or so strong, would be there to welcome their neighbouring packs beneath the new moon. “Why is that, by the way? The new moon thing, I mean,” he asked as Harry and he headed up the slope out of town towards the Everleigh Estate. “I mean, I thought wolves had a thing with the full moon, not the new moon…?”

It was a still night, chilly and fresh, and Luke tugged the collar of his jacket up as they went. 

Harry shrugged. “You know how cranky we can get on the full moon.”

Luke hummed knowingly but didn’t offer any comment. Every wolf was different, but they all grew tetchier as the moon waxed. 

“With four different packs in attendance tonight, that would be an issue for sure. Factor in all that posturing and ‘who’s the more powerful pack’ bullshit as well, no thanks…” Harry gestured with his hands as he spoke and scuffed his heels with each step. He didn’t seem entirely keen on going all of a sudden. 

“I see,” Luke ventured. 

Harry shot him a sideways look and asked, “Do you still find all this weird? I mean… you’ve known about us for years but… you don’t really ask about, you know, ‘wolf stuff’ very often. You’ve just kind of soaked up what you’ve needed to know over the years…”

This was the first ‘pack’ event that Luke had ever been invited to. True he’d hung out with a select few of them over the years, but that had all been centred around Harry. “What, you mean: do I find it weird that I’m always finding out something new about your ‘alternative lifestyle’?” Luke grinned. “Yeah. I guess it is weird as heck. But whatever… you’re family, so…”

In answer to that, Harry instinctively tucked his arm around Luke’s shoulders and hugged him close for a moment as they walked, even planting a chaste but heartfelt kiss on his cheek. To anyone else, it might have seemed odd, but Harry was a werewolf, and they were notoriously and openly affectionate with the people they care for, so Luke just went with it. Besides, it was Harry. “Saying something like that means a lot to a wolf, you know?” the low-ranking werewolf smiled. 

“In the same way that making someone a meal is also a big deal?” Luke asked, knowing the answer already.

“Yeah.”

With a playful glint in his hazel yes, Luke added, “You know, I make you dinner almost every night…”

“I know,” Harry snorted. “And you still wonder why people still think we’re a mated pair?”

Luke rolled his eyes. “I only cook for us because I won’t let you near anything with a heated element,” he said, and Harry just laughed. “Besides, if you keep kissing me like that, it’s no wonder they think you’re my boyfriend! My students are convinced we’re dating…”

Harry only snorted and shoved him into a tall laurel bush before sprinting off ahead for a few paces. 

“I hate you so much!” Luke yelled, picking leaves and bits out of his hair without bothering to break into a jog to catch up. 

In what felt like no time, the medieval, stone boundary walls of the Everleigh estate loomed out of the darkness as they reached the edge of town, and the pair moved through the pillars of the imposing, stone entrance gate in silence. 

Luke glanced up and saw the weather-worn figures of two wolves guarding the pedestals at the tops of the pillars, each with one paw raised, mouth open, teeth visible in a perpetual, silent snarl. It’ll be fine, he told himself in response to the spike of adrenaline. He’d never been around quite so many werewolves in one place in his life. The air was cold and clear, but it wasn’t as if the wolves would feel the chill. Luke could, however, but the shiver down his spine probably wasn't from the temperature this time. 

Distant breaths of music floated down through the screen of trees, rising and falling on the soft breezes as they made their way up the winding driveway to the house, and Harry started to get noticeably jumpy, looking around and over his shoulder as if he expected someone to ambush them out of the dark ash trees that stood sentinel on either side of the road. 

“What’s wrong?” Luke finally asked. 

Harry inhaled deeply and then shivered. “There are a lot of wolves up there… Lots of… uh… scents and stuff… I’m just… kind of nervous. Last year I completely misread a high ranking female’s advances and nearly caused an inter-pack incident. Laura had my back though, but still…” 

“You’ve got this,” Luke said, knowing that most of Harry’s anxiety stemmed from his low rank. He didn’t mind it with the Ashridge pack, but he could be easily overwhelmed and even influenced by other wolves, apparently. Perhaps that had been another reason why Harry had wanted his best friend there - mutual support at the bottom of the social ladder and all that. 

With a single nod, Harry fell silent and they climbed the last stretch of the driveway.  

Luke had only been up to Everleigh Manor once, when Max had thrown Harry a graduation party after he was done with his bachelors degree, and Sol had told him to use the house then; after all, this is where the reigning alpha of the Ashridge pack should have lived, and Sol should have been that reigning alpha. Max himself lived with Laura in an old town house just around the corner from Harry and Luke’s apartment. 

“Apparently this place goes back to, like, the Doomsday Book or something,” Harry blurted, his nerves starting to show more as his mouth began to run away with him, words falling off his lips in a rapid, half-garbled stream. “I mean, not the actual house itself, obviously, that’s been rebuilt, but the estate and the family. I wonder if they’ve always been werewolves… you know? Like, can you imagine when they did the Doomsday survey thing and the tax guys being all like ‘four cows, one goat, a pig, belonging to a family of werewolves…”

“The surname Everleigh is actually derived from Old English,” Luke supplied quietly. 

“Really?”

“Mmm. It’s a combination of ‘eofor’ meaning ‘boar’ and ‘leah’ meaning ‘clearing’. Maybe these woods used to be some kind of royal hunting ground… Ash was a highly prized wood for spears; there are a bunch of references… I could look into it…  And the etymology of ‘werewolf’ is Anglo-Saxon too, with ‘wer’ meaning ‘man…”

“You’ve got one masters to work on already,” Harry laughed, knowing how deep that particular rabbit hole went, but then he suddenly twitched like he’d been poked in the ribs. 

“What is it?”

Jerking his head to one side, Harry steered them both off the road, and about twenty seconds later, Luke heard the growl of a car engine. Not just any car engine either; an Aston Martin DB11 raced past them and skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel beside the house. 

“Fancy,” Luke murmured, and a second later his eyes widened as the looming figure of Sol stepped out, the alpha looking like someone had spat in his coffee, and he slammed the car door before striding off to a side entrance of the house without looking around. “Grumpy too,” Luke muttered, waggling his eyebrows. “He still scares me…”

Harry smiled but it didn’t quite reach his wide, green eyes. “He’s alright. He’s just…” he shrugged. “Sol.”

“I know. But those eyes…” and that murder-face…

The expression on his best friend’s face turned sad. “He’s been through a lot. After his parents were killed, he went feral for almost a whole year.”

“I remember that,” Luke murmured, still paused where they’d stepped aside onto the damp grass. His eyes lingered on the back door of the house, where the room beyond remained impenetrably dark and still, as if it had just swallowed Sol up whole. “We were still in school… Wasn’t his sister…?” he didn’t finish the question, but Harry knew what he was going to ask anyway. 

“Yeah,” he said, catching his meaning. “She was still away in physical rehab when he went completely off the wall, but in the end it was because of her that he came back to the pack. He’s… very protective of her, even now.”

All Luke really knew about the hunters’ attack was that Sol’s parents -  the reigning alphas at the time - had been brutally killed, that an entire wing of the house had been burned down and never rebuilt, and that Sol’s sister had ended up with a silver bullet in her lower spine. After he’d recovered enough from his own trauma, Sol had had the sixteenth century stone mansion completely adapted for her wheelchair, and had apparently spared no expense in doing so. Luke had no idea quite how wealthy the family was, but if rumours were true, their coffers were… unfathomably deep. He supposed it paid to be a family of reigning alphas that went back to the time of the Norman Conquest, and probably the Romans. Who knew, maybe they were even older than that…

“I don’t think I’ve actually met her,” Luke said to distract himself as they made their way round to the back of the manor towards the formal English gardens, following the sounds of laughter, chatter, and soft music. Strings of fairy lights glimmered on the terrace at the back of the house and even Luke caught the heady scent of alcohol, food, and perfume on the air. It must have been overpowering to Harry - no wonder he’d balked halfway up the drive. 

“Who, Rose?” Harry twitched anxiously but Luke assumed it was supposed to be a nervous shrug. “You’ll probably see her tonight,” Harry said, catching sight of Laura standing up ahead and relaxing visibly. “Max said she was coming back from Cambridge specially for this.”

They didn't get very much further along the smooth stone path before Laura caught sight of them and turned from her conversation with Max and another wolf Luke didn’t recognise. She opened her arms to them with a giggle and a grin, and demanded that both her ‘handsome boys’ come and give her a hug. For someone in her early thirties, she acted like an old auntie, hell-bent on embarrassing her favourite nephews. 

Bashfully, they obliged, but Luke could tell how grateful Harry was, not only for the physical reassurance, but the public demonstration that he was loved and protected by the pack leaders. Wolves were great ones for physical displays after all. 

“I’m so glad you’re here, Luke,” she said as she released him in turn. “And I’m even more glad that you let me pick your clothes for you. You look amazing.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, pale cheeks flushing. He saw that Harry and Laura had both picked up on his quickening heartbeat, and he grumbled something indistinct. 

Eyes followed him everywhere as he wove his way through the party at Harry’s side, moving between the highest and the lowest ranked members of the Ashridge pack to start with, moving from Laura’s parents down to Rachel who was only a few rungs above Harry in the social standing. Luke had no idea how they all told each other’s status apart, but he did spot that it was usually Harry who tilted his head to one side, exposing his neck slightly in a deferential greeting. Luke bared his neck to no one, but he was polite enough. The Ashridge lot all knew who he was anyway, even the few whom he’d not met in person, so their greetings were more informal.

After circulating among most of the members of their own pack first, Harry making one or two introductions where necessary, while Luke largely tried to ignore any looks that members of the other wolf packs shot him. Some humans were in the know about wolves, but the largest percentage of those humans also happened to be hunters. He supposed it was natural that the wolves should be wary of him. That, or they assumed that Luke was some kind of pet to the Ashridge pack. He wasn’t honestly comfortable with either assumption but there was little he could do about it.

After perhaps an hour of mingling and chatting, he spotted Onita and slipped away from Harry for a moment to say hello to her, and to get away from a very intense older couple of werewolves from the Salmon’s Leap pack who seemed determined to get Luke to marry their daughter for some reason. Harry ducked out a few minutes later and led the three of them - to Luke’s immense relief - into the spacious, modern kitchen that had been opened up onto the terrace by bi-fold doors.

People came and went around them, flowing through the downstairs of the house in a constant stream, drinks in hand. At one point though, a noticeably larger group of wolves headed indoors and as they passed, Harry leaned over and confirmed Luke’s suspicions by hissing, “Alphas… They’ll probably be at it for a while,” he said. “There’s always some kind of secret alpha-only, pack-business to discuss at these things.” He sipped his third glass of champagne and added, “Sometimes it’s where they discuss matches…”

“As in… mates?” Luke asked, spluttering on his own wine. “That’s so medieval,” he added when Harry nodded. 

Harry groaned. “It’s not like it’s arranged and they have no say in it! But it’s considered polite to bring up intended unions. I wonder if Marcus will finally tie the knot…” At that last word, both Harry and Onita snickered like teenagers while Luke flushed and tried not to meet their eyes. Werewolf anatomy was definitely not something he’d fantasised about, alone in his room… 

The twins Chris and Jack joined them a while later, Jack a little worse for drink but still cheery and mostly coherent. In their late twenties, both twins were staggeringly bright, and worked at the hospital, one as a paramedic and the other as a doctor, and Luke had always liked them. They were affable and open, and probably ranked somewhere in the middle of the pack, as far as he could guess. 

After maybe another hour, Luke excused himself to use the bathroom, and as he followed Harry’s directions through the ground floor of the house, he caught snatches of conversation around him and wondered what it must be like for someone with supernatural hearing to be surrounded by so many sights and scents and sounds. Overwhelming, probably. 

To his surprise, a wolf he didn’t know stepped into his path and looked him up and down in a manner that called to mind cattle at a market. Luke tried not to bristle, knowing that it’d either amuse or insult the wolf, and he had no interest in doing either. He was taller than Luke, but not by much, and his sandy brown hair was so perfectly ruffled that it couldn’t have been by accident. He had bright blue eyes and would have been attractive if the set of his mouth and the glint in his eyes hadn’t been giving Luke the creeps. 

He smirked when he clearly heard Luke’s heart flutter with nerves, and he inhaled conspicuously. “Well,” he said. “Aren’t you delicious,” he leered. 

Luke had nothing to say to that, but raised his eyebrows in disgusted disbelief. 

The wolf laughed, “Tell me - I’m dying to know, and I’m sure the rest of the party are too - what’s a human doing hanging around the Ashridge pack like a stray pup?” and his overtly-sinking gaze said that he was imagining some… interesting answers to that. 

“One of them is my best friend,” he said, and a second later almost yelped in shock as the werewolf leaned in close to the side of his neck and inhaled deeply, the tip of his nose skimming over his carotid. His skin was hot as he brushed Luke’s pounding pulse, and Luke fought the urge to shove the guy in the chest. He lurched away, horrified by the intrusion. Had he been a human, Luke might have stood a chance against him, but here, he might as well have been kicking a hornet’s nest for all the good it’d do him. 

“Oh, interesting… You’re not scented or marked,” the werewolf purred. “You ought to be careful… Someone might think you’re… available.”

“Well I’m not,” Luke snapped. “Excuse me.” He shouldered roughly past the man and made his way out of the kitchen to the sound of unpleasant snickering from one or two wolves behind him. His face burned with humiliation and he began to regret coming along at all. “This is why I don’t like werewolf parties,” he muttered to himself. It was all instinct to them; primal scents and sounds, wants and desires held back only because they willed it. 

As he rounded the thick, stone doorway into the hall, Luke paused when he saw that his encounter wasn’t the only one of its type going on that evening. 

A stunningly attractive woman stood with a champagne flute held coyly between her fingers, looking up at a glowering, sour-faced werewolf that Luke recognised instantly. Sol seemed no more impressed at her advances than Luke had been by the other wolf’s a second or two earlier, except that Sol barely seemed to be holding himself back from snarling at her. His eyes blazed a dark amber tinged with scarlet, broadcasting his displeasure, which the woman brazenly ignored.

“I mean,” the woman continued to drawl and even Luke was surprised by her persistence. Anyone else would have given up or skedaddled off with their tail between their legs by now, wolf or no. Sol just continued to glare at her with his flat, red-gold stare. “I mean…” she said and even raised an elegant hand to trail soft fingers down the lapel of his jacket. “Think what you could be as the Ashridge alpha, no? A True Alpha… It is your birthright after all…”

“I didn’t want it,” he growled softly, and Luke bit his lip, eyes going wide as he watched. God almighty, Sol was intimidating. “And I don’t want you either.” This was not a conversation for an outsider to be eavesdropping on. 

“Then you should have left,” she said dangerously. “What would your parents think of you? And now you’ve got two strong alphas in one town, in one pack? That can’t end well for anyone, eventually… Think about it.”

A figure approached them down the corridor and as his eyes were drawn to the new arrival, Luke realised it could only be Rose, Sol’s sister. She had his black hair, though hers was long and wavy where Sol’s was short and straighter, and they shared the same dark eyes, warm brown skin and full mouth. She had an air of unyielding confidence about her as she propelled herself forward in her lightweight, sporty looking wheelchair with toned, tanned arms which were very much on show in her sleeveless dress. The fabric was a rich burgundy and her lipstick matched it perfectly. She sat in her chair like it was a throne and stared down the other wolf with a calm composure that made Luke’s skin crawl.

Apart from a simple gold pendant that Luke couldn’t really make out at that distance, she was unadorned, and the sight of her made his mouth go dry. Where Sol’s looks were intimidatingly handsome, with rugged features promising raw power, the grace and strength of her beauty just took his breath away. Rose was perhaps only a year or so younger than Luke, but he felt like a small boy again in comparison when he watched her dark eyes rove slowly, critically, up and down the figure of the other female. 

“Three,” she said quietly. 

“I’m sorry?” the woman answered, clearly flustered and trying to hide it.

“There are tree alphas in this pack,” Rose smiled politely, though her eyes flared a dark red. Only an alpha’s eyes went that dark, and even Sol hadn’t allowed his to darken to that menacing, blood-red, even in the face of the woman’s callous comments. Rose was clearly a no holds barred kind of wolf.  

“Right,” the woman hissed. “Well, I’m just voicing what others have said, you know? Enjoy the evening. Excuse me.”

And she turned and strode straight past Luke who was still standing there in the doorway, dumb as a shop mannequin. 

Sol glanced down at Rose and smirked. And then his expression went back to its habitual scowl and eyes snapped up to Luke’s face. Luke’s heartbeat trebled in speed. “Hi… Sol,” he said. “I didn’t mean to lurk. I was looking for the bathroom. Didn’t… uh… want to interrupt, you know?”

The alpha jabbed his thumb wordlessly over his shoulder to indicate the direction of the bathroom but Luke could hardly focus on the gesture because, wearing what was essentially black tie, Sol really did look like a fucking supermodel. Faced with both Rose and Sol in the same room, it was hard to think at all. 

“Care to introduce me?” Rose smiled up at her brother with a saccharine sweetness in her voice that told even Luke that she was enjoying making him squirm for some reason.

Was that a growl? Luke couldn’t be sure but he was fairly certain that his ears had buzzed softly. 

Though gritted teeth, Sol said, “Rose, this is Luke. He’s a friend of Harry’s. Luke, my sister, Rose.” Even his voice was attractive; deep, gruff, and his consonants softly articulated. Not that the two of them had ever actually had a conversation, per se. Luke had been in his presence a few times when he’d deigned to offer the odd grunt of agreement in Max’ general direction.  

Luke smiled and assumed it was alright to move forwards, extending his hand to Rose and shaking it. Her grip was prodigious and he tried not to yip in surprise as he felt the bones of his hand creak. She was a werewolf, and an alpha at that, so he should have guessed she wouldn’t have a willowy little handshake, but still, it made his eyes water a bit.

“Harry’s friend,” she said pensively, looking him straight in the eye without releasing her grip. “Oh, so you’re the human that Max said he was inviting,” she went on, shooting her brother a sidelong look and finally letting go. “Well, it’s nice to meet you at last, Luke.”

Surreptitiously, Luke tried to circle his wrist and flex his fingers behind his back. “You too,” he said pathetically as he glanced around him at the building and over his shoulder, back towards the party. “It’s… It’s uh…”

She smiled, her lips curling with friendly amusement. “There are a lot of werewolves here tonight, huh?” she said, adjusting her position a bit and sitting back a little more casually in her chair, and he nodded. 

“Yeah.”

“Not feeling too out of place? If you need a bolt hole, I can highly recommend the old rose garden. Just follow the path from the terrace til you come to an old archway in the wall.”

“Gothic or Romanesque?” he blurted and immediately regretted it. God, he could be such a dork when he disengaged his brain. 

Her smile broadened and he was almost dazzled by how gorgeous she was. The familial resemblance between her and Sol wasn’t lost on him either. “The archway? It’s Romanesque,” she chuckled. “And it’s got wolf’s-head capitals. You can’t miss it.”

“Appropriate,” he chirped, wiping his hands nervously on his trousers and regretting it because it made him look like a schoolboy. “Uh… excuse me, I’ve kept you from your party long enough, and besides, I really have to pee.”

Rose’s laugh echoed around the hallway and he nodded once at her and bolted, red-faced, for the bathroom that Sol had indicated. Rounding the corner, he just heard her snicker at her brother, “Oh Solomon, stop growling. He’s cute.”

___

...to be continued during the Monday 'longer stories' releases, along with A Door to the Past (vampire) and Winter Solstice (Fae). All links can be found in my Patreon Masterlist. 

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