The Seventh Sons

Chapter 2

Chapter 2“So how did you celebrate your birthday?” Donal asked Andre once they shared some heated kisses—seconds after he walked into the house. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here but I’ll make it up to you, I promise, starting with this.” He took a brightly wrapped package out of his bag, handing it to Andre.

“What is it?”

“Open it and see, silly man.”

Andre did, gasping when he saw what was in the jeweler’s box. “It’s fantastic!” He carefully lifted out the Celtic knot pendant attached to a braided leather and silver band. “It’s too beautiful,” he whispered, stroking it.

“A beautiful pendant for a beautiful man who is now officially a man. If you look on the back…” Donal waited expectantly for Andre to turn it over.

“I will love you forever,” Andre read, his voice husky with emotion. Beneath the words were his and Donal’s names, and the date of his birth.

“Here, let me…” Donal took it, fastening it around Andre’s neck. The moment he’d finished Andre turned to kiss him deeply. “I take it you like it,” Donal said moments later, his gaze both amused and loving.

“Like it? I love it. I love you! I missed you.” Andre hugged him tightly, his voice dropping to a sultry growl. “Come to bed and I’ll show you just how much.”

“It’s the middle of the morning,” Donal protested even as he let Andre pull him toward the stairs.

“And that’s a problem why?”

“No reason I can think of.”

* * * *

Much later Andre was curled in Donal’s arms, his head on his shoulder, his face aglow with the aftermath of their love making.

“So,” Donal said, ruffling Andre’s tawny blond hair, “you never answered my question.”

“Of course I did. Every time you asked, I said, ‘Yes, I love you.’”

Chuckling, Donal nipped Andre’s earlobe. “That is not the question I meant. I asked, earlier, if you did anything to celebrate your birthday, like take yourself out to dinner or a movie?”

“Umm…” Andre tensed, glancing away from Donal’s questioning gaze.

Donal frowned, cupping Andre’s jaw, urging him to turn and look at him. “Umm what?”

“I…well…” Andre looked frightened as he chewed his lip, avoiding Donal’s gaze.

Pulling his arm free, Donal sat up, his frown deepening. “What did you do, Andre? Go to a club and…”

“No!” Andre practically sprang erect, his look horrified. “I’d never…”

“Then what? Whatever you did, tell me. Please?” He grasped Andre’s hands, feeling them tremble in his grip. “Andre,” he said softly, “there’s nothing so bad that we can’t get past it. I promise.”

“You don’t know that,” Andre replied miserably, slumping back against the headboard.

Gently gathering Andre into his arms, although he was more than worried about what was going on with him, Donal said, “Just start at the beginning.”

“The beginning. Well…” Andre took a deep breath, shook his head, then after another breath said, “You know I’m the seventh of seven boys.”

“Uh-huh. And?”

“So was my father.”

“Okay. The question still is, what does that have to do with anything?”

“I know you don’t believe in things like this. I didn’t until—damn, this is hard.”

“Andre—spit it out.” Donal wanted to shake him but knew it would only prolong getting the story out of him.

“There’s a…a myth about the seventh son of a seventh son. It says that when that boy turns twenty-one he…” Andre gulped and went quiet.

“For the love of God, you don’t believe foolishness like that do you, whatever the myth is? Is that why you’re upset? You think something’s going to happen to you? I thought you knew better.”

“Two days ago I’d have agreed with you,” Andre said so quietly Donal could barely hear him.

“What made you change your mind? Did you go to one of those idiotic fortune tellers in Jackson Square as a joke or something?”

“I wish it was that easy.”

Andre tried to pull out of Donal’s hold, finally asking him to let go when he didn’t loosen his arms from around him. Reluctantly, Donal did. Andre slid off the bed, paused, then took off the pendant, handing it to Donal.

“Hold this, please. I’d die if something happened to it.”

“What? Are you going to turn into a flaming torch like in the comic books?” Donal chuckled, taking the pendant.

“Not quite that bad,” Andre replied with a small smile.

Then in one fluid movement he shifted and a handsome tawny wolf stood where Andre had been a moment earlier.

Donal closed his eyes, his heart beating as if it would jump out of his chest, while hoping it was his imagination playing tricks on him. He opened his eyes again and swore vehemently, causing the wolf to growl and back away, its fur bristling. “No way,” Donal finally spat out once he’d run out of profanities. “No way in hell is that possible. Andre, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at or how you did that, but stop. Now!”

Andre shifted again, sinking to his knees, his face buried in his hands. “I knew you’d…You hate me now…but it’s real. I really did that,” he said, his voice filled with grief and despair. “It’s not something…” He swallowed hard, looking up at Donal with tear-filled eyes. “It’s not a trick. With all my heart I wish it was, but it’s not. I swear it!”

“It has to be,” Donal whispered, trying to regain some modicum of his composure. “Stuff like that? It’s only in fairytales and bad movies.”

Andre shook his head, then pushed to his feet. “I’ll…” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ll go, before you…before you kick me out.” He paused long enough to grab his jeans off the chair where they’d landed much earlier when the two of them had shed their clothes as a preliminary to making love. Then he raced from the room.

Donal leapt from the bed, going after him. Andre would have made it out of the house if he hadn’t stopped long enough to put on his jeans. But he did, and Donal caught his arm as he tried to zip them closed, spinning him around. Gripping Andre’s shoulders, he said, almost ordered, “Do it again.”

There was the sound of tearing cloth as Andre shifted, his jeans falling to the floor in shreds. Donal’s hands were left hanging in mid-air when Andre’s shoulders disappeared from under them as the wolf’s broad, fur-covered ones appeared two feet below where Donal’s hands had been. Slowly, very slowly, Donal lowered them to touch the wolf.

“Un-f*****g-believable,” Donal murmured, burying his fingers in the wolf’s thick pelt. “It’s impossible, and yet…”

The wolf whimpered, its tail lowered, its ears flattened as it pressed against Donal’s legs.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Donal murmured. “Terrifying, but it’s really all right, sort of.” He dropped to one knee, wrapping his arms around the wolf’s neck. “We’ll get through this somehow. I suppose we actually have no choice, do we?” He sat back on his heels and smiled a bit. “Could you maybe change back? You can’t really talk in this form, I don’t think.”

Seconds later Andre was there, crouching where the wolf had been. “You don’t despise me?” he hesitantly asked.

“How could I despise someone I love as much as I love you? I am dismayed, to put it mildly.” Donal ruffled Andre’s hair and kissed him gently. “This throws things I believed impossible out the window. Now I’ll be looking at everyone on the street, wondering which one could be a werewolf too.”

“Mario says there are only a few in the world.”

“Mario? And who the hell is Mario?” Donal growled, getting to his feet. He pulled Andre up, gripping his waist tightly as he stared at him.

Andre trembled but didn’t look away. “He’s like me and he was here when it happened. Not in here like inside. He said he was a friend of yours you’d asked to take me out for a drink to celebrate my birthday since you couldn’t.”

“And you believed him? Some stranger knocks on the door and tells you a bunch of bull like that and you just go off with him? Damn, Andre, he could have…” Donal shook his head.

“He…He called and…and told me about your…your request…and asked if he could come by and pick me up. I thought it was so sweet that you’d done that and…it was stupid, I know, but…” Andre chewed his lip. “I wasn’t totally crazy. I wasn’t going to let him come here so I told him I’d meet him at the Lounge.”

“Um-hum. So off you went like…” Donal snorted softly as an image flashed through his head. “Like Little Red Riding Hood to grandma’s house.”

“Sort of I guess,” Andre admitted, going to sit on the sofa. When Donal joined him, he continued. “Only I wasn’t going to walk, of course. I was halfway to the garage when I started to feel like I was being watched.” He shuddered. “I saw a man at the back gate and then…It was like everything went sideways and the next thing I knew I wasn’t me and this wolf was there and then it was a man and he was talking and telling me it was going to be all right but it wasn’t because I was different and I knew it but I didn’t know why except I had four feet and fur and…and…”

“You were scared out of your mind.” Donal pulled Andre tightly to him, envisioning his terror. “I take it this man was Mario. How did he manage to be in the right place at the right time? I mean, it could have happened anytime, anywhere, it seems to me.”

“He told me afterwards his being there sort of forced the issue. ‘Like calling to like,’ was how he put it. He’d been watching me, and the house, and he knew when I actually turned twenty-one, down to the minute, so he was prepared.” Andre almost smiled. “He said he’d have had to come up with some other plan if I’d been born in the afternoon or at two A.M. or what have you.”

“That could have been interesting,” Donal commented wryly. “So there you are, a terrified wolf, and he’s trying to tell you how to shift back again?”

“Pretty much, yeah. And I did. And I’m sitting there in the middle of the backyard, buck ass naked, my clothes in shreds and he’s trying to explain what happened and I’m not buying it except of course I did because I did shift and he made me do it again because I can do it anytime I want to and it’s not like in the movies and we don’t need a full moon or anything and…and…” Andre wound down suddenly, burying his face in Donal’s shoulder.

“I wish…I should have been here for you,” Donal said softly.

“They set it up so you wouldn’t be,” Andre told him, looking up at him.

“Oh yeah? So that’s why the job turned out to be a wild goose chase.” Then Donal realized what Andre had said. “Who is, are they?”

“Mario called them the Seven of Seven. They…what did he say? They make it their mission to find the seventh sons of seventh sons so they can help them, us, when we become werewolves.” Andre smiled ruefully. “I’m a member of a very exclusive club apparently.”

“I suspect so.” Donal kissed Andre’s temple. “So now what happens, if anything? Does this group train you on how to deal with it all?”

“I don’t know. I’m supposed to meet a man called Jacob. Mario said he’d, I guess, walk me through the finer points of being a werewolf.”

“I’m coming with you, and don’t argue. This is not up for debate.”

“I wasn’t going to, honest.” Andre sighed deeply. “Are you…okay with this, with me?”

Cupping Andre’s face in his hands, Donal nodded. “I’m not sure okay is the right word, but we’ll deal with it. I happen to have meant what I said on the pendant, I will love you forever, no matter what.” His lips turned up in a bit of a grin. “I don’t suppose this is like the movies and you can flash us up back up to bed so I can show you exactly how much I love you?”

Andre shook his head, practically bouncing to his feet, pulling Donal up after him. “We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way and walk.”

“I can handle that.” Donal stopped him for a moment to give him a searing kiss. “Never doubt that I love you.”

“I don’t, now.”