I ... wrote more werewolves. *hides* I guess it's a series now?

Title: Wolf Heart
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 5800
Pairing: Canon pairings mentioned (Peter/Elizabeth, Diana/Christie)
Summary: This is a sequel to Wolf Moon, which is White Collar except with ... werewolves. Yeah.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/932924


The first full moon after their unpleasant adventure in the woods, Neal watched Peter closely all day. A few times Peter noticed and scowled at him. Peter didn't say anything, though, which made Neal think that Peter knew not only that Neal was watching him, but also why.

Neal had been out for about a week with his leg injury, but he was slowly getting back up to speed, and things didn't seem to have changed all that much between himself and Peter. At least he didn't think so. Neal was, after all, very good at playing a role, and right now he was playing the role of "everything is fine and dandy, and Peter is perfectly normal and did not just turn into a giant predator last week."

Peter was, apparently, good at playing this role too. Neal occasionally noticed Peter looking at him a little too long, but Peter didn't slip up and Neal didn't either.

Everything was perfectly fine.

But Neal, not being a fool, had gone online and memorized the moon phases, and on the day the Internet told him would be a full moon, Peter started quietly packing up files around four in the afternoon. It was very neatly done, efficient and unobtrusive. Neal suspected that he wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't been watching for it.

"Leaving early, huh?" Jones said as Peter shrugged into his jacket.

"Date night," Peter said, smiling.

Jones grinned back. "Have fun."

A couple of his co-workers tossed casual goodnights in his direction, Peter smiled back, and then he was gone before Neal had a chance to say a word. Diana, the only other person who might have been sharp and Peter-aware enough to have noticed anything, was already gone; she'd left earlier for some kind of family thing.

As a master of subterfuge and misdirection himself, Neal had to give Peter an approving nod.

And looking back on it, he could remember quite a few times when Peter had left early for dates with his wife or "a quick trip upstate to see the folks" or other normal, everyday reasons. Full moons? Neal certainly hadn't made the connection at the time -- why would he? -- but he had a feeling that if he charted it, there would be a definite month-to-month correlation.

It made him feel a bit unsettled to realize that he'd failed to notice something so fundamental as Peter always taking time off at the same time every month.

On the other hand, it wasn't a failure of his observational skills so much as a testament to Peter's sneakiness. Neal had never realized Peter was such a good liar, and he was an expert in the field of lies.

Or ... no ... it wasn't lying exactly, because Peter hadn't actually lied, had he? Based on what he'd said last month, he probably did intend to spend the night having couple-time with El. He'd just left out a few key bits of information and let other people draw their conclusions.

Peter wasn't that great at lying directly to someone's face, but he was very good at going undercover, and Neal suspected that Peter conceptualized the whole werewolf thing as one big undercover job. Personally he'd call it a con, but he doubted Peter would agree. If he had been paying attention, he guessed he'd probably have found that Peter never came right out and lied directly; it was all about delicate manipulation of the truth.

Well, from now on, he was paying more attention.


***


Four weeks later, Peter double-finger-pointed Neal into his office and said, "You want to come over tonight?"

"Tonight?" Neal looked at Peter, then glanced at Peter's desk calendar. He'd thought tonight was -- but maybe that's what he got for taking advice on astronomy from the Internet --

"Yes, tonight," Peter said with some impatience, and underlying that, perhaps a trace of anxiety. Or more than a trace. Peter was nervous, and it was that, plus curiosity, that made Neal nod and agree.

Nothing more was said of it until he and Peter left in the afternoon. It was a little early, but no one ever really thought twice about the two of them walking out together. Things were quiet; Diana had gone home already because she was coming down with a cold and hoped to sleep it off, and Jones was placidly filling in incident reports. Peter had a file tucked under his arm. It was perfectly obvious he and Neal were going home to work on the case at the Burkes'.

In the elevator, Neal noticed that Peter was shifting a bit. Restless.

"Are you, uh ..." Neal wasn't quite sure how to lead into it. "Are you positive I'm -- welcome?"

"You are," Peter said. "If you're comfortable coming over."

"Sure," Neal said, with an easiness he didn't feel.

Peter gave him a close look, but remained silent. It was, Neal thought, an indication of the sheer depth of Peter's paranoia about this particular subject that he wasn't willing to talk about it directly, even in the most vague terms, in the FBI building.

They talked of light subjects -- the case, the soccer game June's granddaughter was playing this weekend -- until they were in Peter's car. Then Peter veered abruptly off the safer conversational topics with the same lack of warning that he employed when changing lanes in Manhattan.

"See, it's like this," Peter said, looking at Neal while demonstrating the point by skidding across three lanes of traffic. "El and I were talking about it earlier this week, and we thought ... since you already know, and it seems like it's not -- Anyway, we thought it might be good to have a backup."

"A backup what?" Neal asked, trying to unclench his hand from the car door.

"A backup Elizabeth," Peter said, then obviously rewound the conversation in his head and winced. "Er. What I mean is, like we explained to you back at the start of all this, my sanity at the full moon relies on El."

Neal nodded.

"And that's kind of a burden for her. She says she doesn't mind, but it means she can never be out of town, or sick. She's always got to be on call. I can go upstate -- I do go upstate, sometimes -- but it's not like I can do it at a moment's notice."

"So you need someone in town who can be a sort of ..." Neal couldn't think of a good analogy. "An emergency werewolf buddy."

Peter had gone pink. "More or less."

"I don't want to bring up a sore subject," Neal said cautiously, "but what are the odds that, uh, what happened two months ago was a sort of fluke. What if it doesn't work again?"

"You won't be in any danger," Peter said quickly. "Not with El around."

"It's not that I'm worried," Neal said, which wasn't true, but he didn't want to make this conversation even more embarrassing than it already was for both of them. "I just don't want you to waste your time. Or, you know, have any unpleasant scenes."

"There won't be any scenes." Peter glanced across at him. "But I don't want to force you into this. If you'd rather not, just say so, and I can take you home."

"I want to do it," Neal said. He didn't even have to think about it. Peter didn't directly ask for favors very often, and this -- well, it was a very strange favor, but it was something that he could do for Peter that no one else could. And that made a strange warm feeling spark and grow, somewhere behind his ribs.


***


El greeted Neal at the door with a hug. "I was just making the salad. You want to go chop some peppers?"

"Sure," Neal said. Behind him, he heard a murmured conversation between the Burkes. He couldn't make out any words and decided he didn't want to.

Dinner was a low-key affair. They kept the conversation light. Neal couldn't help noticing that El had made steaks, and that Peter's was very, very rare. Peter's restlessness increased as the evening wore on; he got up several times during dinner to run small errands -- fetching himself a glass of water, retrieving a pepper shaker he didn't use.

After dinner, Peter started to pick up the plates. Elizabeth took them out of his hands. "Hon, you go put on something a little more casual, and Neal and I can clear up. We'll talk a bit while we do it."

Peter glanced at Neal, then said, "Okay," and gave El a quick peck on the lips before vanishing into the living room.

Neal made himself busy gathering up napkins.

"It's very hard for him to talk about this," Elizabeth said. "It's not something he's ashamed of, exactly, but I think he views it as a sort of ... embarrassing medical condition, I guess. He has enough trouble opening up to me. We both figured it would be easiest for me to give you a run-down on our monthly routine."

"Okay," Neal agreed, trying to look perfectly calm and normal. Because that's what this was. Normal. Everything was fine. His handler and friend wasn't about to do something physically impossible and quite possibly very dangerous to everyone around him ...

"Neal. Stop worrying." Elizabeth squeezed his arm. "Peter and I do this every month. It's strange, I know, but there's nothing to be concerned about."

"I know," Neal said, and gave her his best smile. She looked unconvinced, but handed him a sponge.

"Wipe down the countertops and then I'll run you through the routine."

The "routine" turned out to be as quick and simple as she'd implied. "Doors locked and deadbolted," El said. She locked the kitchen door, then rapped with her knuckles. "All the exterior doors in the house are reinforced. The ground-floor windows are bulletproof glass."

Neal had noticed the extra-heavy doors -- he'd always chalked it up to Peter's FBI overzealousness -- but now he gave Peter a mental hat tip for sheer paranoia. Even Mozzie might not be able to compete.

"We keep tranquilizers on hand -- veterinary ketamine and sodium thiopental." Elizabeth opened a kitchen drawer, removed a small basket of the usual junk-drawer contents, and showed him, behind it, neatly labeled bottles of powder alongside packaged syringes. "We don't normally keep it mixed up because its shelf life is much longer in powder form, but for tonight, I'll have you prepare a dose so you can see how it's done. There's sterile, injectable water in the fridge."

"Have you ever needed to use this?" Neal asked, trying not to hover as she reached behind a row of yogurt cups in the refrigerator and retrieved a small vial of water.

"Never," Elizabeth said firmly. "Never at all. It's another of Peter's precautions, and you can be sure this is strictly Peter being Peter. It's for him more than me. Having said that, if you ever have to stay here by yourself, you can have some on hand just in case it makes you feel better about it. The ketamine is safer, with fewer side effects, but the sodium thiopental is faster-acting ..."

She walked him through the process of mixing up a dose and drawing it into the syringe. "Once again, I expect you'll never have to do this," she said as she demonstrated on a reluctant Satchmo, without inserting the needle, how to give a shot. "It's strictly precautionary."

"But necessary," Peter said, striding into the kitchen. He was wearing a bathrobe, and bare-legged beneath. "A tranquilizer gun would be better --"

"We've had this discussion," El said firmly. "No tranquilizer guns. I'm just showing Neal how to use the syringe."

Peter checked the locks on the kitchen door -- an automatic habit, Neal could tell.

"It's all right." Elizabeth laid down the medical supplies and crossed the room to lace her fingers through Peter's. "It's going to be fine, hon."

"I know that," Peter retorted sharply, then ran his free hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. Neal, one thing you should know is that I get a little short-tempered around full-moon times."

"More than usual?" Neal cocked his head to one side and summoned a grin. "Now that's scary."

"No PMS jokes," Peter said with a flare of half-hearted humor.

"I wasn't even thinking that," Neal said, and he hadn't been. Mostly he'd been noticing how Peter and Elizabeth fit together, how she moved one step ahead of him even as Peter's agitation and restlessness wound tighter. She knew how to head him off when he started in the wrong direction, how to soothe him, how to anticipate him.

I can't do this.

But then he was following them into the living room, and Elizabeth was picking out a movie. "What do you want?" she asked Peter.

He made a noise that was not quite a laugh, tight and self-deprecating. "It's not like it matters; I won't see more than the first half-hour anyway."

"Well, then," and Elizabeth twinkled playfully at Neal as she pulled out the first season of Leverage.

"Oh no," Peter and Neal said at exactly the same time, then glanced at each other.

"What?" Elizabeth asked. "I know his problem with it; what's yours?"

"It's --" Neal had been about to say that it was wildly inaccurate and he could pick a hundred holes in all the cons; this was his usual problem watching any kind of heist movie. Then he noticed Peter's frown and realized that any show in which the criminals always won would probably annoy Peter a great deal more than it could possibly bother him. "Never mind. Excellent choice."

They all settled on the couch, but Peter couldn't seem to get comfortable. He was up and down and up again, checking the locks on the front door. Finally he rose hastily, with a murmured "Excuse me," and went quickly upstairs.

Elizabeth gazed after him, and for the first time Neal saw the anxiety on her face that he'd been expecting all along. Her husband turns into a predatory killing machine; that must be a burden for anyone, he thought. Then she noticed him watching her and smiled, the fretful worry vanishing.

"He hates anyone to see him change, even me," she explained. "He usually does it in the bathroom."

He views it as a sort of embarrassing medical condition, she'd said earlier, and from her tone, it might be nothing more than that: a husband making a sudden, quick trip to the bathroom, while his spouse made gently embarrassed excuses to the guests left behind.

There was a thump from upstairs. Elizabeth winced. "Oh, I hope I remembered to put everything in the bathroom away. I normally do it earlier in the day, but with you coming over, I was a little distracted. It's not that he means to break things, but sometimes he knocks small items off the sink."

How can you be so CALM? Neal wanted to say, but he didn't want to risk shattering the fragile air of normalcy that hung over them. Still, Elizabeth left the DVD player paused. They both watched the stairs.

Something moved at the top of the steps. Eyes glittered gold in the shadows. Then Peter came padding softly down.

Neal had forgotten how enormous he was. Wolf-Peter massed about the same as human Peter, which made him an absolutely enormous wolf, at least twice the size of the biggest dog Neal had ever seen. And he looked even bigger inside than he had in the woods.

Neal realized that his heart was racing.

Elizabeth held out a hand. Peter paced over to her -- slow, measured. He sniffed her hand and arm. Then he sniffed noses with Satchmo, who looked wary but not afraid; the dog's tail gave a few hesitant thumps. And now -- oh God, Peter was coming over here. Neal sat very still and tried not to look terrified.

Which he wasn't, really. Just ... nervous. Very nervous. Peter snuffled damply at Neal's hand and lap. Neal tried very hard not to think about it. It's not Peter. Well, it's sort of Peter. But not really Peter-Peter.

In the woods, he'd wanted to have a chance to examine Peter more closely. Now he could, and his general impression was confirmed: wolf-Peter was a beautiful creature, with a thick, richly variegated coat, and an unmistakable essence of Peter in the brown eyes, in the hints of gray around his muzzle. There was nothing doglike at all about him, beyond a few general coincidences of shape. Instead he seemed very contained, very dignified -- or perhaps "controlled" would be a better word. Even before Neal had known the truth about Peter, he'd sometimes sensed the dangerous, powerful quality hidden under Peter's unassuming exterior. Here, it was merely closer to the surface, that was all.

Wolf-Peter turned away from Neal and padded silently into the kitchen. Neal started to rise, but Elizabeth shook her head. "He'll want to walk all around the house before he's comfortable settling down. It's something he does every night after he changes."

She turned the show back on. Neal had a hard time concentrating; he was too conscious of Peter's toenails clicking on the floor, of the soft and stealthy glide as Peter passed through the living room and climbed the stairs.

At one point Elizabeth rose and went upstairs to make sure all the doors were open.

Peter's careful, quiet rounds must have gone on for about half an hour before he finally seemed confident enough to return to the living room and stay there. El moved over on the couch to make room for him. He didn't jump up like a dog, but stepped up one paw at a time, then settled his great bulk across the couch, half in and half out of her lap.

Elizabeth idly stroked his ears. Neal tried very hard not to stare. He focused his attention on the TV but couldn't help sneaking side glances.

Peter's eyes were half-closed, but his furry ears swiveled. The sound of voices outside as someone passed the Burke house made him raise his head, tense and alert. Elizabeth murmured to him and buried her fingers in his thick ruff. He lowered his head to her lap again.

Neal had by now lost the thread of the plot entirely.

Before the next episode began, he got up to fetch himself a drink from the kitchen. Peter, who he'd thought was asleep, rose immediately and jumped down to the floor. Neal froze.

"It's okay," El said. "He'll probably want to keep an eye on you. He usually does that with me."

So Neal walked into the darkened kitchen with Peter's huge shaggy bulk ghosting behind him. He left the lights off, out of some vague sense that Peter might prefer it that way. He knew where everything was, and there was enough light coming from the living room and through the windows that he could see dimly. By the diffuse city-glow, he poured himself a glass of wine while Peter's luminous eyes watched him from the dark.

"Are you thirsty?" he asked. Peter didn't answer, just pricked his ears forward. Neal reached for a mug, then on second thought a large bowl, which he filled with water and set on the floor.

Peter seemed to think about it for a moment, then stepped forward and began to lap. He drank more like a cat than a dog, precise and careful. He emptied the bowl and spilled not a drop.

Neal began wondering immediately if he shouldn't have done that. Maybe he should've asked Elizabeth first. Maybe wolf-Peter wasn't allowed to have any water just in case it made him need to use the bathroom, which he obviously couldn't do as a wolf. At least not in any socially acceptable fashion.

There were so many little things he hadn't thought to ask about.

"I guess that's why we're doing this," he said aloud, and Peter's ears swiveled forward again. "Get all the details figured out just in case an emergency comes up, right?"

There was no answer, but Peter followed him back to the living room and jumped up with Elizabeth again, looking over at Neal before laying his big head in Elizabeth's lap. Keeping track of the pack, Neal thought.


***


Neal slept in the guest bedroom. Whether Elizabeth and Peter went to bed, he wasn't sure; the light downstairs stayed on all night, which he knew because more than once he woke to the awareness of another presence in his bedroom. The first time it happened he snapped awake, heart pounding, an atavistic fear crawling in his gut: the instinctive panic of a small woodland creature caught in a predator's stare. Raising his head, he squinted at the open door of the bedroom where eyes gleamed at him from a large dark shape blocking the light.

"For crying out loud, Peter, it's two in the morning," he groaned and let his head drop back to the pillow. When he peeked again, Peter was gone.

The next time it happened, he didn't quite wake all the way, just rolled over, wrapped the blanket more tightly around himself, and went back to sleep.

He wasn't sure at what point it stopped making him nervous and started making him feel safe.


***


In the morning the house was silent when Neal rose and went downstairs. Elizabeth and Peter's bedroom door was shut, and the TV was off. Neal was in the process of making coffee when a bathrobe-clad Peter came into the kitchen, fully human-shaped and squinting irritably at the sunlight streaming through the window.

For a moment neither of them could find anything to say.

"Nice morning," Neal said inanely.

"Looks like." Peter poured himself a cup of coffee. He was still blinking and looked only half awake. He couldn't have gotten much sleep last night, Neal thought.

"It must be a lot more convenient when this happens on weekends," Neal said without thinking.

Peter snorted a laugh and just like that, the tension level in the kitchen dropped back to normal; Neal could almost feel them sliding back into their usual rapport. "Yeah, it is. Sometimes El calls in sick for me, on weekdays when I don't change back in time."

"We could call in sick today," Neal said hopefully.

"No," Peter said. "We have the Berman case to work on."

"In that case, I guess I'll catch a cab back to June's so I can put on something clean."

"Damn." Peter pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "Guess I coulda given you a chance to pack an overnight bag. I don't always think clearly when I'm ... you know."

Neal quietly filed away this piece of information in his ever more voluminous mental file labeled Peter, care and feeding of. "Guess I'll see you at work, then," he said, and grabbed a piece of toast before making his getaway.

"Neal," Peter called.

Neal looked over his shoulder. This morning, in the sunlit kitchen, last night seemed like a strange dream. Peter was so ... Peter, with one hand wrapped around a #1 FBI Agent coffee mug and his knees knobby under the frayed hem of his bathrobe. It was hard to reconcile Peter the man with the beautiful, powerful creature that had prowled the house the night before.

And yet they were one and the same.

"I know this must be strange for you," Peter said. He cleared his throat. "I don't know if last night was ... I mean, if you don't want to do that again, I understand. We don't ever have to speak of it again."

Never speak of this again was a powerful lure -- and the appeal lasted for approximately 0.2 seconds before Neal slammed that door shut, never to open it again.

Because, however accidental the discovery, Peter trusted him with this -- a secret that could result in Peter's imprisonment or death. And not only that, but Peter trusted Neal to see him when he was at his weakest and most vulnerable. Neal knew Peter well enough to know how hard it must be for him to deal with the fact that he turned into a four-legged animal once a month. He was comfortable being around Neal when he was shaped like a dog, and that was a level of trust that Neal didn't quite know what to do with.

One thing he did know was that taking the "out" Peter had offered him felt like a betrayal.

"I had fun," Neal said, and as he said it, he realized that, strangely enough, it was true, even though Peter was now staring at him. "I know it sounds weird to put it that way, but you guys made me feel --" Accepted, was the word that hovered on the tip of his tongue, but it wasn't quite right. Nothing seemed to fit. Safe. Warm. Included.

Loved.

"... I'm saying it was nice, I guess," he finished weakly. "I wouldn't mind coming back next month, if you and Elizabeth are okay with it. Or, you know, if you want that time to yourselves, that's okay. But I'd like to come back sometime."

Peter smiled a little, that shy pleased smile he got when Neal said or did something he wasn't expecting that turned out to be exactly what he wanted. "I'll talk to El," he said. "You want breakfast before you go?"

"Nah, I better get going. Diana and Jones are going to beat us into the office and we'll never live it down." Then Neal paused. Because Peter wasn't the only person who'd left early yesterday. He hadn't even thought about it, because she'd had a plausible reason, but Diana had gone home in the middle of the day. And a month ago ... Neal strained to think back. Hadn't she already been gone when Peter had left that time, too?

"Peter," Neal said, eyes close on Peter's face. "Is Diana a werewolf too?"

A strange, sharp mix of emotions flickered across Peter's features. For a moment, just a moment, Neal saw the wolf in him. Then Peter said, "If you want to know anything about Diana, you'll need to talk to her yourself. I'd think carefully about having that conversation, though."


***


As it turned out, the person who initiated the conversation was Diana. She walked up to Neal while he was buying coffee a few days later and said in his ear, "Peter says I can trust you."

Neal very nearly spilled an entire latte down his shirt. When he scowled at her, Diana grinned very faintly, and pointed at a table in the corner where she'd draped her jacket over a chair. "Make mine a two-shot cappuccino," she said.

Neal made his way through the tables a few minutes later with the coffees. "Thank you," Diana said, accepting the cup. "Sit."

Neal sat. "You mean," he said, dropping his voice, "about, uh."

"Yes." She met his gaze evenly. Her voice was low; the white noise of the coffee shop rolled over her words, and Neal leaned forward to hear her as she continued speaking. "Peter told me what happened in the woods between the two of you. He told me it was my choice whether I wanted to talk to you, but he said you were figuring things out anyway."

"I'm sorry," Neal said. It wasn't what he expected to say, but it just came out. "I didn't mean to ... steal your secret."

"It's all right." She dropped her eyes at last from his, looking down to the untouched cup of coffee wrapped in her hands. "The odd thing is that I actually think someone like you would be more likely to -- Well, you understand about having secrets, anyway."


***


Diana's story didn't come out all at once. Neal collected it in bits and pieces over the following months, as he'd once collected other precious things.

Diana's life as a werewolf had been very different from the impression Neal had gotten of Peter's. Peter had been raised by loving and accepting werewolf parents, but Diana had grown up in a wealthy family where the werewolf trait was shameful and hidden. She was the only person in the family who had expressed the trait in generations. She skirted around actually speaking of it, but Neal gathered that they had locked her up at the full moon. It wasn't until she met Peter -- werewolves, she said, could recognize each other by smell -- that she'd learned it was possible to accept and control her werewolf nature.

"This wasn't entirely Peter's doing, but once I learned that I didn't have to be ... like that, I started looking around," she said during one late-night stakeout when they were the only people in the van. "I found some places on the Internet where people like me hang out."

"There are werewolf message boards?"

"Are you surprised?" she countered. "It's probably useless to tell you not to go looking now that I've told you this much, but it's very underground. You need to know people to get in. Luckily I'm good at digging up information. And I've since gotten to know a group of people who hook up at the full moon and help each other through the change."

"I thought it would be Christie."

"No," Diana said.

"Does Christie know?" When she hesitated, Neal said quickly, "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"I'll stop if I get uncomfortable. Christie does know, in theory at least. It's just ..." She looked away from him, focusing on the surveillance screens where the street lay bare and still outside their suspect's apartment. "I haven't done the wolf thing with her yet," she said, and Neal sensed a lifetime of bitter experience behind that simple statement.

"You do it with the werewolves you met on the Internet," Neal said, and she nodded. "Does it ... work?" Stupid question, he supposed. It must work, because he hadn't seen any news stories about wolves killing pets on the Lower East Side.

"It works," Diana said. "They're mostly like me -- young, urban werewolves with no close family nearby. We help each other."

"How does it work?" Neal asked, curious. Peter had seemed very surprised the first time he'd kept his head around Neal.

Diana smiled absently. "You've been getting most of your information from Peter, I'm guessing." Neal nodded. Diana stared for a while longer at the screen, then said abruptly, "I read an interesting thing about wolves once. Do you want to hear it?"

"Sure," Neal said. Diana didn't do non sequiturs; this was related to the conversation at hand.

"Wolf packs have been studied extensively. There's been a lot published on it. It's even seeped into pop culture -- the alpha wolf-omega wolf thing, for example. Everyone knows that wolf packs are hierarchical and bottom wolves fight the leaders for dominance."

Neal nodded.

"But it isn't true. The thing about all the classic studies of wolf packs is that they were studying wolves in zoos, where unrelated wolves had been thrown together in close quarters and forced to get along with each other. It's inherently an unnatural situation. More recent studies, from the '90s and farther on, have found that wild wolf packs are just family groups, led by parents with a generation or two of younger offspring. They almost never fight for dominance, no more than human parents with their kids, I guess. What earlier researchers mistook for the famous wolf-pack dominance struggle was actually zoo wolves trying to replicate a wild wolf pack structure based on family hierarchy."

Neal hesitated to make sure he got what she was saying. "So ... you guys are zoo wolves, and Peter's a wild wolf? That seems not quite ..." Not quite fair, he wanted to say, but she was nodding.

"It's not a perfect analogy. With us, it's more of a generation gap, really. Peter grew up in what I guess you'd call traditional werewolf culture. They believe that a proper, functional pack consists of blood family -- your spouse and kids and your extended family, cousins and such. That's what ties the pack together; it's a family thing." She shrugged. "At least that's what Peter told me," she added in an offhand kind of way, as if it didn't hurt. She almost managed to sell it.

"But it's not that way with you," Neal said.

"It's not that way with a lot of us. The world is more mobile and spread out than it used to be, for us just as for anyone. In the modern world, young adult werewolves go to new cities for the same reason humans do -- because of their career, because they fell in love, because they want to try something new. The old pack structures are getting shuffled around. People are making new families. Chosen families, shaped differently from the old ones." She glanced at him and smiled briefly. "It's not so different, in some sense, from the way queer subculture works."

Neal thought of Peter's initial difficulty believing that the wolf in him saw Neal as "pack". "And Peter doesn't quite get it."

"Peter's a great guy and he does his best to accept a changing world. He's not going to refuse to acknowledge the validity of my pack just because it challenges his ideas. But it's very different from what he grew up with. You have to keep in mind that what he tells you about wolf packs is his culture, not necessarily mine."

She fell silent again. It had been a lot of talking for Diana, probably the most she'd ever said to him at one time.

"I just want you to know," Neal said, "that it really means a lot that you're, you know --" As in his conversations with Peter, he found that fumbling toward sincerity was the hardest con of all. "I won't tell anyone," he finished quickly.

"I know you won't," Diana said. She smiled toothily. "You're not that stupid."

"Not because of that."

"I know," she said more softly.

"Neal Caffrey, friend to werewolves," he said, and grinned.

"Don't let it go to your head."

"I bet you're loyal."

"Oh my God, was that a dog joke?"

"I have more where that came from," Neal said, and she actually growled at him, baring her human teeth.

Every time Neal thought his life couldn't get stranger, the world had to go and prove him wrong. And yet the weirder it got -- from FBI agents and their wives inviting him into their house and their lives, to being adopted by actual living werewolves, to Christ only knew what next -- it got, against all odds, better. He could only guess what sort of curve ball it was going to throw him next.

"Hey Diana."

"I'm not speaking to you, Caffrey."

"Have you ever met a vampire?"

~