Haken: A Capacity for Violence Part 11

This story features forge master Haken and takes place between the events of 'Werewolves: Haven Rising' and 'Werewolves 3: Evolution's End.' 

[If you haven't read part 10, click on the Collections tab and select 'Werewolves' to find the previous chapter of this story.]

Previously: Alice took Haken with her to a training quad for sparring. They traded blows as the human guards watched from above until Alice managed to land a lucky kick to Haken's throat. He briefly went feral, leaping at her and pinning her to the ground before regaining his senses.

Part 11:

"Peace," Alice exclaimed. "It was only a spar!"

"You still think I'm nothing but a brute?" Haken asked as she wriggled.

"Who says I don't like a brute once in a while?"

Haken leaned back and pulled his hands away, suddenly acutely aware of his positioning. "I…I didn't mean…"

Alice laughed. "You think you frightened me? How do you know I didn't let you do this on purpose?"

"I can tell when someone throws a fight. You didn't."

"Oh?" She grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast. "Is that so?"

He recoiled as if a serpent had bit him, stumbling backward before awkwardly getting to his feet. This was all moving so fast–he'd been through too many changes in too short a time and he felt like he was suffering from a form of mental whiplash. Alice was staring at him with steely eyes partially obscured by sweat-slick red hair. What was she thinking? Had she really brought him here to spar or did she have another intention entirely? He swore under his breath. None of this was going the way he envisioned it happening. Life was messy and he'd never been the best at controlling his emotions.

"What's wrong?" she asked. He wasn't sure if he had imagined it, but he could swear he saw a look of sincere disappointment on her face before she wiped it away, replacing it with her standard cocky grin. "I know you're a bit of a traditionalist, but it doesn't always have to be the guy who makes the first move, does it?"

Haken hadn't actually thought of it that way. Was he letting old views of relations between the sexes cloud his judgment? He didn't think so; this was something else. He barely knew this woman but he'd already been shown pictures of her naked, felt her breast and the warmth of her breath on his face. She was actually quite pretty and he didn't mind the idea of getting to know her better, but he couldn't quite wrap his mind around it. All the attention he was getting felt unnatural after the years he spent living alone in Haven.

He sat down beside her, cross-legged. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to react that way. You caught me off guard."

Alice rolled onto her side and dug her elbow into the grass, holding her head up as she watched him. "I fucked it up, didn't I?" she asked. "We don't really know anything about each other."

Haken ground his teeth as he tried to sort out his feelings. "I'm no good at this stuff," he said. "I'm a builder. A fighter. Most of my life I've been the guy people come to when they want something fixed or to put the fear of the gods into someone. I spent almost two decades doing both those things as the forgemaster in Haven. You do that kind of work for long enough and that's all anyone ever sees you as–the brute with a short fuse, good for getting things done but not much else."

"So, you didn't have a mate."

"Ah, right," Haken said with a sigh. "You told me you've read my file. I should have known you already knew all of this."

"Some of it," she replied softly. "But nothing from your perspective. Reports from humans watching over video surveillance don't tell much other than the bare bones of the pack's lives: What you did for work, where you lived, where the pack gathered for meals and who went home with who. But the reports don't tell a thing about what's in your heart or who you really are. That's what I wanted to find out–what kind of man you are beneath the mask."

He closed his eyes and tried to drown out the longing he'd felt for so long. He remembered bringing Razor flowers after spending hours gathering a bouquet from Haven's desolate streets, searching out the rare plant life hardy enough to survive and bloom through the cracks in cement sidewalks and furrows in asphalt. She was the only woman who had ever seemed to care for him, but as nice as she'd been about it, a rejection was still a rejection. If a respected colleague like her didn't want him, what good was he to any woman? Why would Alice show any interest in him at all? It had to be the breeding program. He'd been so stupid! "Did Dr. Lim put you up to this?" he asked. "Acting like you're interested in who I really am?"

Anger flashed over Alice's face. "You think everything is about the doctor and her damn program?" she snapped. "Is it so hard for you to believe that I could be lonely, too? What kind of attention do you think I get in here, Haken?" She gestured up at the guards. "That guy's name isn't Hal, for god's sake. I made it up! They barely even talk to me unless their bosses tell them to, so I had to make up names for them to keep them straight in my head!"

"But there are other werewolves here…" Haken said. "Dr. Lim showed me a whole list."

"And they're lovely," Alice said. "But it's not…what I mean is…we're all women. Yeah, a few of them paired off, but I'm not wired that way." She looked down at the ground with what Haken could only assume was embarrassment or shame. "Weren't you just telling me how easy it is to feel alone even when you're surrounded by other people? Didn't you ever just want to be held?"

He took a moment to think. "We have to show that we're strong. Strength is the only thing the humans respect."

"Who cares what they respect?" Alice said indignantly. "Why would you, of all wolves, care about that?"

He opened his mouth to reply before realizing that he had no answer for her. 

Alice nodded in response to his silence. "Exactly. I'm not flirting with you because a human told me to. I'm doing it because I want to. Dr. Lim can go to hell for all I care, but that doesn't mean she's not right about a few things. Our species is dying. I don't care if her motivation is scientific curiosity or a weird fetish or whatever–if her program gives me the chance at happiness that I never thought I'd get, then I'll do what she asks. But I'll never, ever care about having her respect. Ever. And neither should you." She looked into his eyes, searching for something, like she needed to know that he understood what she was saying.

Haken tilted his head back and looked up toward the open sky for several long seconds. "You meant all that, didn't you?" he finally asked. 

"Yeah," she replied. "I did." 

When he looked back down again, she'd worked her way closer, nuzzling up beside him in the long grass. Her skin felt slightly cool to the touch and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders almost instinctively. He didn't know what to say. He looked up to where the men had been watching and was surprised to see that they were no longer at their posts. "The guards are gone," he said.

"What?"

"They're not watching us, anymore."

"Huh," Alice muttered. "You're right. Don't get too weirded out, but it's probably something Dr. Lim told them to do if they ever saw us getting close."

"Why would she–oh… she thought that if they were watching…"

"That we'd be less likely to do something like this." She leaned upward and kissed him, uncertainly at first, with the trepidation of someone unaccustomed to physical closeness, and then with a rapidly increasing hunger. When she finally pulled away, she was positively beaming. 

Haken could barely catch his breath–his heart was going a mile a minute in his chest. "I can't believe this is real," he said once he could finally speak. "Was that real?"

"Hmm," Alice said. "Sure felt like it, but we should find out for sure." She leaped onto him, driving him to the ground beneath her. "Help me get you out of these pants."