A.N.: Another Clay-POV chapter. I love the subtle nuances of Greyston Holt's acting, you always get the sense there's a lot going on behind those sultry tortured eyes of his! I also love the shy, scholarly aspect of Clay's character as much as the brooding, loyal Enforcer, acting out the necessary evils to protect his family, sacrificing Elena's respect and trust in him to give her a better life…

Call of the Wild

04

Any Human Heart

He lingered in the dark hallway, drawn to the six-inch wedge of golden light coaxing him to the door stood ajar. The house was quiet, as if still holding its breath after everything that had occurred this afternoon. Joanna Kendall revealing herself before them all in the study – her werewolf form, her father's name, her infant werewolf brother. The quiet was awkward; something had been disturbed in the atmosphere of the house. All of his brothers converging on Stone Haven from different parts of the world always changed the mood in the house, and the tension had risen more than usual because of the threat of this new Mutt, dropping bodies on their doorstep – or at least, their territory. Though he had been away from home for months, teaching, the noises he was used to had changed overnight; it wasn't just him and Jeremy anymore, entrenched in their routines.

And he thought they were all hyper-conscious of Joanna's presence in the only spare bedroom left. A woman. He didn't think a woman had ever set foot in Stone Haven.

Clay hesitated at the threshold. If Pete had seen him, he'd have laughed – Clay had never grasped the concepts of modesty and privacy as a child; he had successfully broken every lock in Stone Haven, none of which had ever been replaced. But this was different; Joanna was the only person he had ever met who made him nervous. In his anger and hurt, he had forgotten that.

Part of him wanted to push the door wider, confirm he hadn't dreamed it up, that she really was here. Another part of him wanted to storm in and scream a thousand different things, the same things that swirled like a torrent around his mind, rendering him all but mute. Everything he had been struggling with the last five years was literally physically manifested inside that bedroom. Logan had tried to catch his eye a few times, but he had resisted sitting down with his brother for five years, and he wasn't going to lie on a couch now and pour it all out. Besides, he had always been closer with Pete, who knew a little about temptation, and not giving into it. He knew about rage and frustration and despair, desire, obsession, grief so tangible it knocked him to his knees.

Over the staleness of the disturbed air in the unused bedroom, he could scent the honeysuckle floating in from the windows he had thrown open, and Joanna's scent as she padded barefoot on the parquet floor. Intoxicating. He had always been captivated by her scent, years ago before she had been bitten; now, his senses told him what his mind rebuffed out of pure self-preservation. They were the same. Him and Joanna.

The woman he had recognised by something deep and innate and unquestionable as his mate when she was human…was now a werewolf.

She came back, his mind whispered.

She's different, he thought. He had known it the moment he found her on the doorstep, a baby on her hip and the weight of the world on her shoulders. Always joyous, beguiling, vivacious and clever, sexy, unstoppable, eternally cheerful even when she was sad, there was a sombreness to her now that made his nose itch whenever he scented the air and found her exhausted, terrified, angry, desperate scent. She was lost. And he remembered how that felt.

He remembered being alone. Feral and desperate.

She was wounded, emotionally, and his memories of the immaculate woman she had been five years ago propelled him to act, to comfort, to help, to heal. What had happened the last five years – the last five months – to affect such a change in Joanna?

She had become a werewolf.

He couldn't remember being anything else. The others had all been born to it. The psychological damage to a bitten werewolf was well-documented. The suicide rate amongst those who survived the bite was staggering.

His stomach turned at the thought.

He raised a hand to knock on the door – remembering the baby at the last second. He tapped his knuckle softly against the open door and slowly pushed it open, holding his breath. In the dim golden light of a couple table-lamps, the baby slept soundly on a squashy thing that looked like a dog-bed on the floor, as Joanna made up the queen-sized bed. When he'd opened the windows to air the room he hadn't thought to change the sheets. They had been put on clean, but he couldn't remember when that was. A tall wicker laundry-hamper stood overflowing with linens, Joanna digging through them to find the sheets she wanted. Clay cleared his throat gently, sidestepping the baby fast-asleep cuddling a doll and a tiny fluffy chick with a frayed, discoloured blue ribbon around its neck. Joanna's own toy chick from when she was an infant. It used to live on the shelf in Joanna's tiny apartment; her mother had given it to her when she was born.

The lamplight illuminated three mismatched footlockers, a leather suitcase, a vintage tea-chest, equipment cases, framed artwork stacked and propped against the wall and a single cardboard box. His lips twitched, he couldn't help it, when he saw the assortment of potted herbs and flowering cacti, primroses, succulents and Venus fly-traps perched precariously on the open windowsill. One of the tiny terracotta pots was painted like Bowie, one pot was actually a yellow coffee cup with a gun-wielding blue alien wearing a red jumpsuit on it – a character from her favourite Disney movie – and another plant was growing out of a Troll doll's head. So Joanna. The scent of sun-warmed basil and lavender and other herbs tickled his nose, overlaying the dust disturbed by Joanna stripping the bedding. He paused, biting his lip, at the thought that Joanna had packed up everything, even her potted plants, before coming to Stone Haven. She had packed up her life in Manhattan, sure she would not be returning in the near future, even if she had no idea where she would end up. He had seen the newspaper in the foot-well of her Jeep, residences available for rent or sale in Bear Valley circled; she hadn't planned on being invited to stay at Stone Haven.

But she had accepted Jeremy's invitation.

Things truly had to be worse than she let on for Joanna to capitulate without politely pointing out she had made other plans – that she was not totally reliant on their goodwill and generosity. She had been raised to be independent.

He sidled up to her, taking the other end of the fitted sheet, and silently, without being asked, started to help Joanna make the bed. It threw him back to her tiny apartment, warmly-lit and overflowing with books, the scent of meat cooking in rich gravies, the tang of soft fruits and lemon verbena and freshly laundered cotton, the delicate heat of her soft, fragrant skin against his lips. But she was quiet, so unlike the eloquent Joanna of his memory, and couldn't seem to meet his eye. It was the first time, in his memory, that Joanna had ever struggled to find words.

"Never known you to be so nonverbal," he commented softly, as they shook the duvet inside the cover, and draped it over the bed. Joanna glanced at him, swallowed, and started feeding pillows into the cases.

"I suppose I showed you everything important already," she said quietly. "What is there left to say?"

"Everything," Clay said, staring at her. Joanna barely glanced up, but froze, and stuffed the pillows into the cases more firmly.

"Not tonight," she said, barely moving her lips, shaking her head. He relaxed, letting go of the sudden indignation that had wound him up so tight, and sighed, covering the last pillow. He sighed heavily. For five years, he'd wondered how this would go – Joanna, showing up in his life again, or rather, if he'd tracked her down. Watching her cooking videos online was one thing; he enjoyed them. She looked happy, consumed by what she was doing, enjoying every minute of it, passionate and captivated; and he was glad. She had found the thing that she loved and had made a career out of it, bringing enjoyment to every day. But standing in front of her, barely three feet between them, Joanna in her purplish-navy plaid nightshirt and short robe, her hair loose and tousled since her Change, was incredibly real. She was here, tucking a familiar hand-crocheted blanket over the end of the bed, a baby snuffling in his sleep behind him on the floor, the house creaking as it settled after the heat of the day, tuning out the sound of Pete's headphones as he listened to music in his room the other side of the house, Logan's voice as he took a call from a client in a tailspin, Nick's low chuckles as he sexted a couple girls he had arrangements with, the low murmuring of Antonio and Jeremy's voice in the study as they shared a whisky and tried to figure out what happened next. Joanna was here. She was part of this. Part of his life, now in a very tangible way.

"Jeremy was right – you took a risk coming here," Clay said softly, and Joanna flicked her dark eyes over his face, swallowing, before sidestepping him to bend and carefully gather the sleeping baby in her arms. "But you came back."

"Yes," she said softly. "I came back." He scented her quiet anger, simmering under her skin, rankled by his comment. The risk in her coming here wasn't in being rejected by Jeremy and by extension the Pack; the risk was Clay. Coming into contact with him for the first time in five years, since she had disappeared out of his life without a word, without warning, just the lingering scent of her anger and devastation in her apartment. Leaving him sucker-punched by her loss.

He swallowed at the scent of her anger, turning to hide how quickly he was trying to think, and picked up the squashy baby-bed with the little doll and chick in it. He glanced at Joanna, who indicated the bed with a tilt of her chin, gently rocking the baby. He set the baby-bed down on the far side of the bed where Joanna indicated, closest to the wall, farthest from the door and window – as if she was conscious that anyone coming into the room would have to go through her to get to the baby – and Joanna carefully laid the still-sleeping child down. He didn't even stir.

Joanna straightened up, gazing down at the baby, her expression exhausted and hurt, and he could scent it on the air, sense it from her body-language, from familiarity, that Joanna was barely holding it together. Stress and anger and grief tasted foul against his tongue, Joanna's tension simmering away.

"Did you imagine this?" she half-whispered, sounding wistful and mournful, still gazing at the baby. Clay's stomach clenched. This. Her, a baby, in their home?

"All the time," he admitted hoarsely.

Her shoulders drooped slightly, her eyes hardened despite the shine of tears – of frustration and anger; he could scent it – and her lips trembled as she whispered, "Did you imagine stealing him away in the middle of the night?"

There it was.

His heart stuttered, and he stared at Joanna as she watched the baby sleep, her head ducked down, her shoulders drooped in exhaustion. Defeated.

How could he tell her that he had imagined their family thousands of times, children scurrying around at their knees, their laughter reverberating on the air, their warmth, her love, her smile, the children they had made together. The family he never had. How could he tell her that in his mind, they had daughters? Only, ever daughters. There was never any question that Clay could devastate her life, steal her children – that he could ever leave her side. Every instinct he had screamed that she was the one, his everything, his mate. In his mind, they would have strong, smiling daughters who wriggled into bed with them in the mornings for cuddles, always grinning; active, happy little dark-eyed girls with her hard-working extroverted charisma and his loyalty and brains. To imagine a son was to invite devastation; how could he ever envision hurting her?

"No," he answered hoarsely. Before meeting Joanna he had never questioned the Pack ruling on fathers raising their sons alone – an absolute rule; but since falling in love with her, the idea of taking her child from her, never seeing her again…

The only thing he had ever felt stronger than his need to protect his Alpha and his Pack was the desire to be with Joanna.

Jeremy would not tolerate an Enforcer who could not commit wholly to his role within the Pack. He could not ignore Clay's pain but he had not tolerated any behaviour that might have endangered the family. And Clay was the Pack's best protector. Everyone knew it, Pack werewolves and Mutts alike.

And he had only become more vicious, more volatile, since Joanna left him.

His stomach churning, staring at Joanna, her downturned face, her tousled hair curling at her neck, the defeated droop to her shoulders, he glanced down at the baby sleeping soundly on the bed.

This was why she had left. She knew – and she had discovered he was part of the same world her father helped hide from the world. Just how much had he told her?

He stared, and reached out a hand to loosely clasp her wrist, but she started, shaking him off, looking like she was barely holding it together. She was the opposite to him; she had a long, very slow-burning fuse. It took a lot to reach the point of ignition, but the littlest thing could trigger the big meltdown once she had reached that point. She took a lot of things on the chin, but after a while they built up, and stress didn't help; he'd seen her reach her limit a couple of times, had caused one meltdown himself, so he recognised the symptoms, the danger. He recognised the razor's edge Joanna was teetering on.

"Joanna…"

"Don't – just because I'm upset doesn't mean I need you to comfort me!" she sniffed, and he watched her physically buckle under the pressures that had built onto her over the last few months.

He swallowed, gazing into her eyes. There was no humour in them, only sadness, exhaustion. She was tired, and miserable. But, pushed to her limit, she had come here. To him. She had sought him out.

Standing there awkwardly, wishing she would let him comfort her, denying his instincts to protect her, even from herself, he waited calmly. "Can I at least…stand here…comfort you that way?"

Buckling under the physical pressure of the stress she was under, her hand shook as she pressed it over her mouth. She had come to him. He would never forget that. Despite – perhaps in spite of what had happened in the past – Joanna had come to him. She had asked for his help. No-one else's – she had sought him out. Whether she was ready to admit it or not, she had come to him for a reason.

She gave in, allowing him to gently coax her to him, wrapping his arms tight around her. And because she was exhausted, and because she needed it, she let him, his lips parting as he tried to find the words. They weren't necessary, not yet; the physical closeness was enough. He was holding her together, physically supporting her. Slowly, she threaded her arms around his waist, relaxing her body into his, her head nestling against his shoulder, her fingertips digging into his back as she clung to him.

"You did all this alone?" he murmured into her shoulder, as she hugged him back tightly. He stroked her hair, holding her tight in his arms, pouring everything he felt she needed into her, strength, security, comfort, the knowledge that she was safe to fall apart in his arms when she needed to, that he would hold her for as long as it took to pull herself back together again.

"I had to," Joanna sniffled miserably, and a smile twitched the corners of Clay's mouth. Of course she had done it alone – there was nothing Joanna Kendall couldn't do when she set her mind to it. Handling the transition into a werewolf was one thing – he had no experience with children, so he could only imagine how difficult it had been for Joanna to raise a baby as well as handle her own trauma. And how had her father died?

"If you don't want to tell me about your father," Clay said softly, "you don't have to. Just…know that when you're ready, you can. I remember how much you adore him." Joanna trembled in his arms, burying her face hard against his shoulder.

"He's dead," she choked. "He's dead – I killed him. I – I killed m-my dad!" Her wail of complete despair was cut short as she buried her face in his shoulder. Clay's insides evaporated. She had killed her father?

"What?" he murmured.

"He's dead. I killed him," Joanna choked tremulously into his t-shirt. She shook in his arms; he could feel the tension and grief radiating from her. It had always been when things finally calmed down that Joanna took a breath and broke. The relief of being accepted at Stone Haven had ushered in that calm; after that relief, she had the luxury of having a meltdown. "I'm a monster."

"You're a werewolf, darlin'," he sighed.

"He bit me," she choked, shaking in Clay's arms.

"Your father bit you?" A frisson of white-hot terror shot through him. He had to have heard wrong. She didn't answer, just clung to him. And he let her, holding her tight. Nothing could pull him away from her in that moment. The man she had adored, hero-worshipped, trusted above everyone, had bitten her?

"How could he do that?" Clay breathed, shocked. John Fletcher, a hereditary werewolf raised by the Pack, knew that the bite was a death-sentence to any woman. How could he bite his own daughter? He hugged Joanna tighter. If she had been raised with the knowledge of her father's world, she knew that women did not survive being bitten; she had to know her father had endangered her life when he bit her. She knew that her existence was the first instance of a female surviving the bite in the recorded history of their entire species; she knew she should have died.

How could he do that?

And what had happened to provoke him to it? How had Joanna killed him? What had happened to Fletcher's biological mother?

"What happened, darlin'?"

She cried silently into his shoulder, shaking, while he stroked her hair, his mind racing. Purged of the emotional turmoil she had been pushing down for months, she relaxed with a sigh in his arms, slowly disentangling herself from him, looking exhausted, her eyelashes spiky where tears had knitted them together, her shoulders were drooped and she looked unhappier than Clay had ever seen her, but oddly relieved. Clay sighed heavily, reaching up to cradle her face in his hands, gently forcing her to look him in the eye.

"I've done things I never imagined I was capable of doing," she mumbled, her lip trembling, her eyes sparkling, but she sniffed, and he wiped her tears away with his thumbs as she exhaled shakily.

"You're not in it alone anymore, darlin'," he promised, resting his forehead against hers.

"I hate that I've had to come here," she admitted on a hoarse whisper. "I know there's a lot we have to work out… Just…know that if it weren't for you, I'd never have come here. Because you're the…" She exhaled shakily, her eyes brimming with tears. She shook her head, wiping more tears away, and she sniffed, pulling herself together. She glanced at the baby, as he sighed in his sleep, his tiny fingers opening and closing like starfish, and Clay glanced from him to Joanna.

"No-one is going to take him away," he promised. "Ever."

She didn't answer, her dark eyes searching his face, not hopeless but tired. "Was it real?"

His heart stuttered, fracturing, as he stared at her, filled with shock and hurt. "Always."

Her eyes glinted, but she drew away, lifting the covers on the bed, and he stared at her in the dim golden lamplight. She didn't know if what they had had together was real?

Shocked, Clay drifted out of the bedroom, into the darkened hallway, and slipped downstairs in a daze. Only the soft voices of Jeremy and Antonio disturbed the quiet of the house, the fire crackling in the grate despite the lingering late-summer heat, sharing some whisky over an intense discussion. Frustration simmering in his veins, Clay diverted to the study rather than storm straight out into the woods. Jeremy's pale eyes were illuminated by the firelight and found his face immediately, lowering his tumbler.

"John Fletcher," he said tersely. "I know every Mutt in North America, why don't I know his name?"

Jeremy sighed softly. "John Fletcher was a Mutt, briefly, a very long time ago. When I became Alpha, we came to an arrangement."

Clay glowered. "An arrangement?"

"John would not refuse my calls; I would not call," Jeremy said quietly. He sighed softly.

"Who gets that kind of a free pass?" Clay growled softly. Jeremy's eyes lanced to his face, a warning.

"John's history with the Pack is a not a story anyone but his daughter has a right to hear," Jeremy said softly, and Clay narrowed his eyes, filled with misgiving. "Suffice it to say, nearly thirty years ago John came to irreparable odds with Dominic's way of running the Pack. But John never turned his back on his brothers; I'll dig his files out tomorrow, you should have a read through. With John dead, you may need to pick up the slack."

"The slack?"

"When I couldn't send you, John was already there," Jeremy said simply, and Clay stared at his adopted-father.

"Did you know about her?"

"Joanna? I'd no idea what John's daughter was called; we never met. John made it clear we were not welcome where his family was concerned."

"Kendall will be her mother's maiden-name," Antonio said softly, gazing into the distance as he idly swilled his whisky around the tumbler.

"So John Fletcher was another Enforcer," Clay guessed. There were some tasks, he knew, that Jeremy preferred not to entrust to Clay, simply because his preferred method of dealing with Mutts was like swinging a sledge-hammer. Some things required finesse, delicacy – patience. Clay was excellent at setting an example and extracting information, but sometimes that wasn't enough. Some things required…elegance.

"He was a collector," Jeremy said softly, shrugging a shoulder offhandedly, as if it didn't really matter. "He collated information."

"And he knew me."

"Clay, there's not a werewolf in this hemisphere who doesn't know and dread your name," Jeremy said, eyeing him carefully. "John knew what you do for the Pack."

"And he told Joanna."

Jeremy gave him a shrewd look. "Well, you'll have to ask Joanna that. She found out what you are, that is enough to be starting with."

"She knows werewolves take their newborn sons from their mothers," he said through gritted teeth, glaring at Jeremy, who gazed back, his features mild, almost bland, expressionless. "I'm going for a run." He had stripped off by the time he reached the front-door, leaving nothing but his boots and socks on the step.

If he came across a hunter tonight, they were fair game, consequences to the Pack be damned. And if he came across that Mutt…

He needed to run. Joanna, a werewolf, and her father, a secret Collector for the Pack? Dealing in information? To never have come into contact with Clay, never have Clay even catch wind of his name… It was rare that Clay didn't know anything about a werewolf in North America. All he knew of John Fletcher was what he knew from him being Joanna's father – the werewolf John Fletcher was another man entirely.

The Clayton Danvers that Joanna had met six years ago, had fallen in love with, had fled, was a very different man from the Clayton Danvers who was Enforcer for the North American Alpha.

John Fletcher would have known that. Had he told his daughter just the kind of man she was engaged to marry? Contemplating having children with?

And what secret was Jeremy hiding about John Fletcher's past that he had never breathed a word of it to his Enforcer, never even mentioned the werewolf's name?

Jeremy trusted Clay with the protection of the family, the Pack as a whole – how could he have expected Clay to do his job when Clay had no knowledge of this ghost wolf?

What information had he been collating?

What had he told Joanna about Clay's reputation?

"Will you tell her?" Antonio asked Jeremy, long after the sound of Clay's large paws thudding on the sun-baked earth had faded into the wind.

"Knowing about werewolves and being one are two different things," Jeremy said quietly. "John would expect nothing less than our very best efforts to ensure Joanna's survival, and his son's. As their Pack brothers, we owe it to them… And after what happened…we owe it to him. These ones will survive."

A.N.: Oooh, secrets! On a tangent, is anyone else interested in a Grimm fanfiction, by the way? I'm working on an Avengers one, but I recently got back into Grimm and wonder about a gender-bent story, where Nick is Nicolette and she ends up with Meisner, who I adore. Talk about a scene-stealer!