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monstersandmaw · 1 year

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So I've just read the entirety of Gabe and Odessa's story for the first time today.

Ghosti. It's so good wtf. I don't have the words to tell you how much I adore those two idiots in love and all the sweetness and fluff that surrounds them.

I am astonished. Positively befuddled. Absolutely and undoubtedly stunned by how beautifully written everything is.

Thank you so much for sharing all that hard work with us.

Thank you???? SO MUCH???? FOR THIS??????? :D :D

Here's a WIP of Gabe's POV from the 'between seasons interlude' thing I worked on, as a thank you, and hopefully a treat?

Contents: shifting, pining, mention of mating/true mates, estranged family, and fluff Wordcount: 2957

The shift was already prickling along his skin the moment her little red VW was out of sight through the trees.

Thunder sensed it first, going tense before herding Axel gently away from the metal fence and chuffing at Mia to follow. For once, they both obeyed without question, and Gabe’s awareness of them faded.

A series of tiny tremors skittered through his muscles and he snarled as a frisson of pain shot up his spine. He needed to get out of sight of the main road and into the woods, but each step he took away from the direction she’d gone felt like he was being torn apart. His wolf was screaming at him to chase after her, throwing itself against the walls of his mind in desperation to make right whatever he’d done wrong, and no amount of human reasoning that she had just been there on holiday would placate it. Wolves didn’t understand time the way humans did and he found no way to convince his wolf that this wasn’t goodbye forever; that he’d see her again in no time.

Her.

Odessa.

His mate.

That did make him pause, with one foot through the front door, the other still out on the veranda.

He’d mated her.

After leaving the city at just shy of nineteen, he’d spent the intervening fourteen years never expecting to mate anyone, and in less time than a single cycle of the moon after meeting her, he’d mated her.

“Fuck.”

Gabe’s eyes rolled closed and he clutched the doorframe as real, genuine pain lanced through his chest at the growing physical distance between them, and he let out a muted grunt through clenched teeth. He was bound to her for life, and he’d chickened out of telling her what he’d done. “You moon-damned idiot,” he snarled at himself, kicking his legs back into action and slamming the front door shut behind him so hard it made the OS map on the wall to his right vibrate. “You bloody well should have told her.”

He’d told himself that he was holding off telling her because he hadn’t wanted her to feel obliged to stay with him in any way, and while that was the case, he knew he had also just been a coward about it. He might have been certain of his feelings for her, but he had a wolf’s instinct to rely on. She was human, and she deserved the time to make up her own mind about him.

Silently, as he levered off his boots and crossed the living room that still smelled of pancakes and strawberries and of Odessa, he vowed to tell her the next time he saw her face to face. Mating wasn’t like a human marriage ceremony, where it was fundamentally just words, no matter how earnestly they were spoken. This was something that went down to his bones, that bound him to her forever, and he’d chosen it after only two weeks of knowing her. She was his One though. He’d known it the moment he’d looked at her in the Centre and her wide, dark eyes had skated down his body in a way he’d almost been able to feel like a physical touch. There would never be another for him now, no matter what.

The wolf paced and snarled about in his head and in his heart, and he knew there was no way to silence it now. With the moon this close and his mate drawing further and further away, he was facing a shift whether he wanted to or not.

He just about managed to get his clothes off before the cramping began in his shoulders and back, and he pitched forwards onto his hands and knees to let the shift sweep over him in the middle of his living room. God, the last time he’d done this, abandoned himself to the shift, he’d mated her. Just the memory of sinking his knot into her wet heat was enough to make him howl and forget the pain of the transformation.

When it was over, he was out the back door and halfway through the wolf-dog enclosure before he had even realised it. Thunder kept the others back, physically penning them into the den, and Gabe lifted his lip to warn him to stay put. Thunder dropped his head and licked his lips in submissive understanding, and let him go without asking to come along.

Mud beneath his paws, claws digging into the soft, cold earth. Damp air filling his nose. Pine needles. Deer scent.

South.

Run.

Find her.

He drew up short at the edge of an open meadow and stood stock still apart from his heaving chest.

A fly buzzed past his ear and he twitched it in irritation.

This was too close to being feral. Spooked by that realisation, he shook himself and forced himself to take a step back, to think.

I am not an animal. I am a wolf, but I am a man.

Mate.

Find her.

Again, he shook his head, snapping and snarling.

Think.

His mind was like the mud of the forest behind him — cloying and slow.

He skirted the forest at a steady lope, still on all fours since it was easier to run like that despite his slightly longer hind legs, and as he turned instinctively south west, he realised where he was going. The road cut through a rocky pass that was blanketed in thick trees, and if he was careful about it, he might be able to get there before Odessa’s little red car did. He could watch her.

He knew it was stupid and reckless and dangerous, but the wolf leapt at the thought of catching up to their mate, as though it had become a game of long-distance tag.

They did make it to the promontory before her, and when that red VW trundled into view, he lifted his nose to the sky and howled in triumph. The car didn’t stop though. It didn’t slow, and the sound died in his throat. She didn’t know he was there. She couldn’t sense him the way he could feel her, like a tug on his soul.

The wolf lay down on the rock with his muzzle on his paws and watched the car vanish for a second time. The day drifted by, and he didn’t stir for hours. He felt the moon rising though — another tug in his chest like the pull of his mate, only even more primal — and he threw back his head again and sang his heartache out to her like a child crying to his mother. The moon had always been there for him, in a way his own mother never had been. Ruth Kirkbride was a hard woman, all sharp angles and cutting words, even when her boys had been young children, but the moon was soft curves and gentle guidance, and he lost himself to the wolf that night for the first time in years.

When he woke up, it was to the sound of a car engine and running water, and he panicked. Looking around, he found a small, human building made from cut trees. A cabin.

Shit, he thought, realising exactly what he’d done. His wolf had brought him to the place where his mate’s scent was strongest and he’d lain like an oversized hound outside the door, waiting for her to come back.

And now someone was here to tend to the cabin and ready it for the next visitors. He growled. They were going to destroy her scent with chemicals that burned his nose, and —

Hide!

The wolf took him into the trees in a swirl of dark fur and he lay low in the bracken, just as he had that first night when he’d glimpsed Odessa through the pines in the dark. Except the person who drove up to the cabin and got out of the 4x4 was not Odessa. It was Tala. He backed away and skirted many miles around to avoid her, following the soft calling of Thunder’s warm baritone, checking in. He lifted his muzzle while he paused to lap at another fast-flowing stream and, with his chops still running with icy water, he told them he was coming back.

Slinking back into his house like a thief, Gabe felt ashamed of himself. He forced the shift to ripple through him the moment he was indoors and he hobbled upstairs to run himself a bath. Odessa’s scent filled the bedroom and he considered climbing into bed and losing himself in it for a while, but he knew he should wash the mud off his hands and feet and make himself feel human again. The wolf was angry and brooding, unsettled by the absence of his mate from the den, and confused about why they weren’t going after her.

Gabe phoned in sick after his bath and curled up under the sheets, burying his nose in Odessa’s pillow before exhaustion claimed him and he slept the rest of the day away. It was only the yipping rebukes of Mia that brought him to consciousness again, and after nuzzling once more at Odessa’s pillow and filling his lungs with the scent of her, he got up, dressed, and went to take proper care of his dogs.

Life resumed its pattern after that, though it was hard to keep his focus. It got better when he acquired a smartphone and had an engineer come out to install internet at his cabin. Odessa’s answering selfie had taken him off guard, and when he hit video-call it had gone a long way to quieting his pacing wolf once more. She looked happy and safe. Jake had not resurfaced. She’d been out with her friends, who were apparently dying to meet him and had teased her endlessly about falling in love like it was a Hallmark movie.

She was also looking at job options, but she seemed a little cagey about the details, so he left that subject alone for the time being and made a note to ask Carys if she knew of anything that might appeal to Odessa in the area. The park service must need some kind of legal team, though he was embarrassed to admit to himself that he had no idea what that might involve. He knew the woods and how they worked, but much beyond that was a foggy mystery to him. Until Odessa, he’d never had any reason to think much about it.

A week after Odessa had returned to the city, he opened his piece of shit laptop and began an email to his brother. It took eleven drafts and three complete re-writes to get something he was confident about, and before he lost his nerve completely, he hit send at 2:03am.

Raph,

It’s been a while, I know. Somehow it’s almost Christmas and the last email you had from me was back in the spring. I hope you’re doing ok. I think about you a lot.

Something’s happened in my life lately that’s made me rethink a lot of stuff, and I know I’ve not been the brother I maybe used to be, and certainly not the brother you deserved, and I truly am sorry for that. We were out of touch for so long, and when we started to email again all those years later, it was all so distant and cold. I’ve been alone for a long time, and I never expected to find someone out here that I wanted to share my life with, but it’s happened all the same. I met someone while she was visiting, and she’s my One, Raph. I know it. We’re mated. She lives in the city though, and for the time being, we have to do distance. It’s been rough, but I’m handling it better than I thought I would. We talk every day, which helps.

I know I don’t have any right to ask you for favours, but I have one to ask of you anyway. I’d like to visit my mate for a weekend, but you know as well as I do that I’ll have to speak to mother first. Would you advocate for me if it becomes necessary? I don’t want to interfere with the pack — I don’t intend to see anyone or involve myself with pack business while I’m visiting at all, though if you wanted to meet somewhere neutral, I’d love that.

Let me know your answer when you can.

Gabe

Less than a day later, Raph had replied.

Gabe,

I could hardly believe my eyes when I read your last email. It’s always good to hear from you again, though I was surprised to hear that you’re mated! She must be one hell of a woman. Can’t promise she’ll let you stay, but if you need someone in your corner, Gabe, you have me. When are you planning to come? Let me know and I’ll set something formal up for you with mother. She won’t like it, but she’ll at least have to give you an audience.

Raph

Relief flooded through him so violently that his vision swam and he sat back against the soft sofa cushions, dizzy. The fans on his brick of a laptop whirred and for a moment he wondered if the sound was in his own skull it was so loud. His heart thudded and the early morning light felt far too bright against his eyes. Outside, snow had piled up on the gravel and on the roof of his house, insulating it like a proper den in the winter, and the wolf-dogs were loving the snowfall. He could hear Mia already haring around the enclosure, snapping at snowflakes and careering to a sliding halt, face first, ass in the air as she troughed through the snow like a pig in mud. Even Axel was enjoying himself.

Did Odessa like the snow? The realisation that he had no idea suddenly pained him, and he shook himself. That discovery could wait. Hitting her contact info in his recent calls list, he was three rings in when he realised it was six o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, but it was too late now. She answered blearily, the phone camera struggling in the dark room, and his heart clenched at the sight of her looking so sweetly dishevelled and sleepy.

“Morning,” he grinned apologetically.

“What?” she frowned, squinting in the light of her phone as she fumbled for the light beside her. “What is it?”

“I’ve been emailing my brother,” he said. That got her attention, and he smiled as she came more sharply awake.

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Raph said he’ll advocate for me. I’d… I’d like to come and see you…” he said, trying to ignore the fact that his sudden burst of courage and elation was sputtering out like a guttering candle flame. “If that’s still alright?” If she was having second thoughts about having him there, it would crush him, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it off his face.

“Alright?” she practically shrieked at him, grinning so that her cheeks bunched up in a way that made him want to hold them in his hands.

She scrabbled around like an upturned spider, flailing with one hand get the duvet out of the way, and revealed her adorable cupcake pyjamas in the process. The neckline sank down to reveal her bare collarbones and Gabe ached all over to run his teeth over them and suck bruises into her delicate skin and cover her with the scent of him so that she would know he was hers. Instead, she caught him looking and he smiled bashfully.

“Of course it’s alright! Yes! When? I was going to suggest making a trip to see you soon, but that works too, if you’re sure about it?”

“I’m sure,” he said, trying not to sound too intense. “How does next weekend sound?”

A look of wide-eyed joy spread across her face. “Yes! Oh my god, perfect!” she actually made some kind of inhuman screeching noise that got a bit garbled over her phone’s microphone, but he didn’t overly mind. He was fairly certain Thunder and the others would have been able to hear it. “Why are you awake now anyway?” she asked. “You do know what a weekend is, right?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “I’m sorry. I’ve just picked up Raph’s message. He’s an early morning person too, so…”

“Oh my god, you’ve only just this second heard back from him?” she asked. He wondered fleetingly how she could have been a good lawyer when she wore all her emotions so plainly on her face, but perhaps she was different when she was at work. The thought of seeing her dressing down some scumbag in a courtroom made him unexpectedly hot under the collar, and he nearly missed her next question, which followed on the heels of the first without waiting for an answer. “…long will you be staying?”

He scrubbed at his beard and thought idly that he needed to trim it, and shrugged. “I’d set off early from here on Saturday morning to be with you by about nine or ten, and then, if she lets me stay, I’d go back on Sunday night or Monday morning. Does that work?”

“Of course,” she said, and he could practically feel the excitement rolling off her. God, he wished he could smell it too — practically taste the way her body was reacting — but he would have to make do with just being able to see her. His mate. God, she looked so happy. That was miracle enough for him, he supposed.

Hopefully one day there'll be Season Two of Gabe and Odessa - I've written bits and bobs and snippets of it, and I know the rough outline. It just takes a lot of time and effort...

If you enjoyed this, which I hope you did, please consider reblogging it, as well as the original Season One story.

Take care of yourselves, and I hope you have a lovely day/night wherever you are, and whenever you read this.

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#gabe & odessa #werewolf #werewolf x human #exophilia #werewolf boyfriend #male werewolf x female character #shifter romance

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