Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

squelching, but I didn’t want to go barefoot into a wolf lair, any more than I wanted to walk through one naked, so I kept them on.
When the water stopped, I brushed damp strands of hair out of my face, and looked over at the wolf. He grinned, and then shook. Water sprayed off him, and I bounded back another two steps and into a wall.
“You motherfucking bastard!” was out before I could catch it, and the wolf snapped his gaze in my direction, all traces of amusement gone from his face.
“How would you know?” he asked, his voice rippling with gutturals and traced in fur. I didn’t know how to take it, when he added, “You’re not a parent.”
There was a low whistle in my head, and Tens said, “You’re in some deep shit, now,” which I really didn’t need to hear.
I stared at the wolf, again, and only just remembered to lower my head and not look him directly in the eye. I had a tunnel full of honey on the other side of an airlock door, and no desire to get to know it any better than I already did. I stood there, staring at a point just below the wolf’s jaw-line, as he glared at me, and I waited.
After a minute, I lifted my head enough to see his face, and caught the wrinkle of his nose. From the look of it, he was scenting something foul, and I hope it wasn’t me. Why I should care, I don’t know, but I did.
“Why are you here?” he asked, and I forgot about not looking him in the eye.
I hadn’t registered it before, but I did now. The damned thing was speaking Galbas, as in, how folk spoke in the present, rather than some ancient wolf dialect that died back when the Wolf Wars were fought. I raised my head and stared.
This time, the wolf ignored the direct look, laughing as he punched the exit code and signaled for me to follow.
Since when did isolated descendants of an ancient war know modern Standard Inter-Gal?
“You want to know why we’re here?” he asked, and I nodded. “Well, you go first.”
Tension ran through my head, as Mack, Tens, and Case waited for me to answer. I’ll give them this, though. Not a single one of them tried to tell me what to say.

17— A History of Wolves
When I didn’t answer, the wolf took a few steps more out of the airlock, and I followed, watching as the door closed. When it had sealed shut, again, some of the tension ran out of me. Of course, it could have just been the water, which was now forming a puddle on the floor around my feet, but the wolf didn’t think so.
“Enclosed spaces?” he asked, guessing wrong. “Your captain must not be very bright to send you down here.”
“I work quite well in tunnels,” I said, and stopped, in case I was revealing more than I should.
“What were you doing here?” it repeated.
This time, I answered. “Captain contracted me out to Barangail to retrieve a bracelet.”
The wolf cocked its head. “Go on.”
“Bracelet turned out to be a slave bracelet, and I offered to help remove it, in return for the rebels letting me live.”
The wolf curled his lip.
“Not bad,” he said, and his body shuddered with the unsettling ripple that most shifters went through when changing form.
I took a step away from him, but didn’t take my eyes off him.
Lupar, right? They had a hybrid form, a human form, and some could even look like a real wolf—you know, the kind with four feet and a fluffy tail. This one went from hybrid to human in a fast-flowing movement that had me cussing when I saw the final result.
“Sonuvabitch! Varian! You scared the living crap out of me.”
The rebel leader arched an eyebrow. His lips curved into a small smile, and he cocked his head. A chill ran through me, as the smile faded from his face.
“I should still scare the living crap out of you,” he said. “I am lupar, and you are prey.”
That stopped me. I was nothing’s prey. I lifted my head and straightened my spine.
“Fuck,” Tens muttered, in the implant where Varian couldn’t hear.
“Cutter...” Mack’s voice had a warning ring to it.
I ignored them both.
Varian snarled, but it didn’t sound right coming out of a human throat, and I had to bite back the urge to laugh. I might be all kinds of stupid, but that particular variety, I wasn’t. I did the safest thing I could think of; I changed the subject.
“Your turn. What are you doing down here.” I gestured at the smooth, ship-like corridors around me. “And in this?”
To my surprise, he answered.
“We were here guarding a lupar research team. The team paid Barangail for access to the tunnels and the gorge, providing him with one of the finest concubines we’ve yet trained, and he let us have access to this part of the caverns.”
“You found the wreck,” I said, and Varian gave me a look that mixed curiosity with satisfaction.
“We found the wreck,” he confirmed.
I continued, filling in the gaps as I went.
“And Celia is the concubine you sold Barangail. Did you re-call her?”
“Celia has a mind of her own, as Barangail was warned. He assured us he knew how to handle his women, and promptly mishandled her enough that she devised her own escape. By that stage, we’d discovered the wreck and the rebellion. We refurbished the first, and infiltrated the second. This planet could do with a change of management.”
From the way he said it, I didn’t think the wolf was referring to the overthrow of a few lords and the establishment of the kind of government the rebels had in mind. I tried to keep the realization off my face, but Varian’s lips quirked upwards, and I knew I’d failed. I backed up a second step, and glanced down the corridor.
I couldn’t go back the way I’d come, but I