Storm Lyson woke suddenly, startled out of slumber, and lost himself for a moment before remembering where he was.

The Sanctuary. A small church in an Icelandic town, somewhere south of the location of Fallengunder. He was in a room behind the main hall, which had been mostly renovated in the years since it had acted as a true church. The room behind the pulpit was small, set up like a flat, and currently housing Storm, Spencer, and Remua as they awaited permission to move the pack headquarters back to the castle.

They'd been waiting several days since they'd left Hogsmeade, where Remus has requested the permission be granted, just waiting for an answer from this Dumbledore bloke.

Storm was getting anxious.

Coming to the town the Sanctuary was in always made him anxious.

Anxious enough to give him a nightmare.

In his dream, Storm had stood before a closet door, a small room below cellar stairs, his body prone and practiced for exactly this situation. He head to protect the cupboard no matter what... her life depended upon him.

He had this nightmare regularly - sometimes, he managed to do it, and there would be a celebration and he would wake feeling safe and happy, satisfied, even. But other nights...

Other nights, he watched wolves tear her apart with no way to stop it.

And sometimes, though very rarely, he was the wolf tearing her apart.

His heart raced.

He stared up at the ceiling that loomed overhead, slowly counting as he inhaled (one... two... three... four... five... six...) and exhaled (six... five... four... three... two... one...). Slowly the images left his mind, fading away like voices going down a long hallway.

He held the blanket tight to his chest in his balled up fist.

Fire light flickered against the ceiling and the wood cracked and shifted in the hearth. He sat up, finding Remus Lupin sitting in the chair nearest the fire, legs crossed, a book lying open on his knee, but his eyes stared unseeing into the fire instead. Remus's fingers moved slowly along the too edges of the pages, ruffling them with just the tips of his fingers in an absent motion.

Remus must have sensed Storm's eyes upon him, for he turned and they locked eyes a moment before Remus looked away. "You're awake," Remus said, looking once more into the fire.

"So are you," Storm pointed out.

Remus murmured, "I had hoped to have heard from someone this evening... but I don't suppose I will now. It's rather late. He lay a bookmark down across his page and put the book on a short table beside him. "I'll have to wait and read about what happened at the Triwizard Tounament in tomorrow's paper." He smiled sadly. "I suppose we would have heard something if --" he stopped and didn't finish the sentence.

Storm slid out of bed and walked over to where Remus sat, lowering himself onto the carpet near to his chair. Remus stayed staring at the fire. Storm stared, too, and rested his elbows upon his knees, his chin leaning against his arm, and watched the fire move, embers dancing down to ash below the logs.

"You were having a nightmare," Remus said after a few moments. It wasn't a question. He'd heard the shifts and sighs too many times before - mostly from Sirius - to not recognize a nightmare-riddled sleeper. The bloodshot and darkened eyes that Storm wore were giveaways, too. "Do you need to talk?"

Storm shook his head. He didn't want to appear weak to the Alpha. He hated that Remus had noticed at all, as though nightmares made him smaller. He had worked all his life to be bigger, to be stronger, to be better than he had been the day before. That's what it took to survive in his world, what it took to overcome pressures, expectations...

Remus was silent, watching Storm now rather than the fire, his head slightly cocked to one side, an eye brow raised. Waiting.

"Do you remember the night - the night my father called you to stand for Fallengunder?" Storm asked, voice deep. Then, when it happened, he'd been young, his voice had been high and small, and he'd been there beside Harry Underhill, staring up at Remus Lupin on the top landing of the stairs, the sky lit with a hundred stars glittering above. The alley had smelled of curry spice and car exhaust, and Remus had looked worn and tired and had been leaning against the bannister, watching, as Carl Lyson went over and knelt down, pleading.

Storm had never seen his father kneel to anyone before.

"Who is he?" Storm had asked quietly, looking up at his father when they followed the mysterious man whose smell was so different than the werewolf scent Storm was used to.

"Our new Alpha," Carl answered quietly.

"Like Fenrir Greyback?" Storm asked, fear and anger shivering through him.

"No," Carl replied, "He is nothing like Greyback."

And it was true, Remus was nothing like Greyback.

He still wasn't.

He could never be.

"I do remember that night," Remus admitted. "Everything in my life shifted and changed that night.

Storm said, "Mine, too."

Remus nodded. He paused. "You know, I never asked how old you were when --"

Storm said, "My father was twenty when Greyback bit him. He met her at the pack house in the Great North Woods. She had been bitten as a teenager, around sixteen, and been living at the pack house since... As I am sure you know, the pack house is... not a good place for women to be." Storm's eyes darkened. He frowned. "My father originally married her to protect her and they grew to love one another after...

"When they found out they were to have me, he tried to find a way out from the Pack House. He didn't want me to be a part of that place. He fled from the Great North Woods with my mother and they tried to make it on their own. But it's hard, as you know too well, and keeping a job, keeping a home, finding a nanny for the full moon -- all near impossible. He bit me so they could keep me with them during the full moon nights. I don't remember being -- not one."

The words fell heavy and Remus stared at his knees. Storm was likely his own age or smaller when he'd been turned, then, but at least he'd been turned kindly and spent his transformations with others who understood and loved him. He'd never had to stay alone in back yard bomb shelters and listen to his parents voices hush in fear when they spoke of his condition.

"But even keeping me with them was very difficult..." Storm said, "So when there was an opportunity to join a new pack, a kinder pack... my father took it. I don't remember Ned Veigler, but I am told he was very kind, very generous, and took care of the werewolves at Fallengunder very well."

Remus's jaw was tight, "I am sure that he did," he murmured.

Storm continued, "I only vaguely remember the castle. I remember the window in the library, and looking out at the cliffs... I remember watching the falcons nesting in the rock face."

Remus nodded, "The Gyrfalcons. I remember them, too. You know, those birds are part of the Icelandic coat of arms? They're on the Icelandic Cross - the highest honor bestowed by the country. I always loved watching them, too. I sat in the windows in the library there many, many hours when I stayed with Ned in Fallengunder. There was a kneazle who lived there then, too, and he would lay on my lap in the sun and pur while I read books."

"A kneazle?" Storm asked.

"A sort if a cat, I suppose, but magical," Remus explained. He thought of the last time he'd seen Roger - whose name had been changed to Crookshanks - and he wondered how the feline was doing. Wandering the halls of Hogwarts, most likely, and probably laying on either Hermione and Harry's lap in the Gryffindor common room that very moment. Assuming all had gone well at the First Task that day. Remus's stomach lurched.

Silence fell between Storm and Remus.

Storm looked at Remus, brows knit in concern. "Do you ever have dreams, nightmares really, of - of biting people? People you love?"

Remus nodded. "I had that fear all of my life."

"How did you get by it? To trust yourself with friends and family? To be close to - to your - husband?" Storm asked.

Remus said, "Through no power of my own. It was my husband, really, who made me feel like I wasn't the monster I always believed myself to be." He paused. "Storm? Is there someone you're thinking of in particular?"

Storm shook his head a little too hard to be telling the truth. Remus raised his eyebrow. "Well," Storm said, "There was a girl once, but I - I told her we couldn't be together after a particularly close call, and I haven't seen her in years." He shook his head, "I couldn't live with myself if she was ever bitten - by me or by any other wolf. And gods help us if she were ever harmed."

Remus took a deep breath, considering his words. "I have been apart from my husband many years, Storm, and I am apart from him now. I regret every hour apart from him." He looked at Storm closely. "I've had loads of nightmares, and too many close calls... But relationships... they're - they're important. You can't keep yourself from the people who are important to you because of your Furry Little Problem." He paused. "Does your girl know about the lycanthropy?" he asked.

Storm nodded. "She's always known from the moment we met."

Remus didn't press questions.

"She doesn't care about the condition, she says, but of course she must - mustn't she? I mean, of course she must."

Remus shrugged, "Not everyone sees it as the detriment that you'd think. Not everyone sees us as monsters the way we see ourselves."

Storm murmured, "I mean, they make movies about werewolves for a reason."

"Ignorance," Remus replied. "The people who make those films are under the impression they are writing fiction. They don't know they're perpetuating propaganda." He shrugged. "People on the outside don't understand the way that those who are on the inside do."

"She's a witch," Storm offered.

"Ah, well. Then that's very impressive she isn't biased by the Ministry's propaganda about our kind, then," Remus said.

Storm replied, "Yes, well, her father's quite the advocate for the community."

Remus raised a brow. "Do I know this girl?"

Storm reddened.

Remus's lips curved in the ghost of a smile. "You know, when I first met Sirius and --" he stopped before a name could pass his lips, and restarted, "When I first met Sirius, I thought I was a monster and that there was no one who could ever see beyond that to even so much as be my friend. But my friends saw past my Furry Little Problem. They fought for me when I wasn't willing to fight for myself because I was passing judgements too hard on myself. They saw the real me that I'd always discounted and hidden away and caged - out of fear that letting myself be free, I would free the beast that growled within me each time the full moon rose."

Storm said, "Yes but you're the Alpha. You're so much stronger than --"

"No, I'm not," Remus laughed. "I'm not stronger." He reached out and tucked a finger under Storm's chin, making him look up at Remus. It was an odd gesture between two men, perhaps, but there was a familiar, fatherly relationship between them because of the Alpha magic and it did not feel awkward to either of them. "You are a person, Storm, a human; and as such you are entitled to relationships. You need them. You cannot be alone. It is extremely unhealthy." Remus paused, "Trust me. I've been alone for... too long... secluding myself. It was unhealthy, and I was in danger, depressed, and weak. There is no strength in going it alone. You need other people, Storm, and more, you deserve the love they offer you."

Storm stared up at Remus. "It's too late. It's been years."

Remus asked, "Did she say that?"

"No."

"Have you tried?"

Storm shook his head.

"Then you don't know that it's too late."

Storm said, "But what if it is?"

"What if it isn't?" Remus countered, and he dropped his fingers away from Storm's chin, sitting upright and looking into the fire.

Storm turned to the fire as well, and he felt his heart thumping wildly. Silence fell over them once more and Storm shifted, bringing his knees to his chest, wrapping his muscled arms around them and watched the flames move and dance.

"Give it a go, Storm," Remus murmured after a time, pushing himself up from the chair with a wince and a crack of shifting bones. "You have nothing to lose and everything to gain if you do."