A pack is a pack is a pack
Remus Lupin wasn’t speaking to anyone right now. Couldn’t, really. His mouth was otherwise occupied.
The full moon was next week, and with it came the awakening of the slightly feral, wired, frenetic energy of the wolf. Thankfully, this pre-moon wasn’t the painful kind, when his joints locked up periodically and his muscles ached and his head felt like it would explode from the pressure of an ever-present migraine. He’d been experiencing that kind of pre-moon less, now that he was spending so much time with his pack. Well, packs.
No, this moon’s symptoms were of a different kind entirely. The hungry kind.
***
He tongued along the throat of the man beneath him, stroking leisurely circles into his pulse point. He tightened his grip on the squirming waist in his hands warningly. “Careful, pup,” he murmured. “Don’t want to bite down, now.”
The man currently clenching around Remus’ shaft wasn’t a pup in any sense of the word, not really. Only slightly younger than Remus. Smaller, sure, but only in stature. And position. Not their current position, but his position in the pack. Most of them were, since Remus was Alpha.
Remus went right back to thrusting in and out from behind the younger man, whispering words of encouragement as he gasped and moaned around the other man’s cock, who was standing above them.
It was over relatively quickly after that. None of the wolves had much patience at this time of the moon’s cycle.
***
All three of them collapsed in a sweaty, slightly sticky heap, less frantic than they had been 20 minutes ago. Remus let his eyes flutter closed against the sunlight streaming in from the window of the cabin, glad that he was able to work out some of his pack mates’ extra energy as their own wolves started scratching at the inside of their skin.
Once their breath was caught, Remus sat up, unashamed in his nakedness, scarred and well developed body on proud display. The gangly limbs and awkward angles of his teen body had given way to solid muscles and the breadth a Muggle Olympic swimmer would be envious of now that he was in his late 20s. His wiry muscles were hard won, earned through hard work and physical labour, rather than the result of a man nearing his 30s overdoing it at the gym, trying to hold onto his youthful vigour. He pushed a callused hand through his slightly damp, sandy curls. They weren’t ringlets yet - much longer and they would be - but shaggy and curly on top nonetheless. Leaning back on his hands, letting the corded muscles of his arms hold up his broad torso, he looked over at his pack mates still sprawled next to him. He smiled. And then tossed their clothes right in their faces.
“Alright, you two, enough lazing about. We need firewood, and Lucia wants to go into the city. She needs someone to go with her. Darius, don’t you have work this afternoon?”
Darius groaned before flipping himself over, getting to his feet, and starting to dress. “Yeah. I’ve got a couple hours though. I’ll go with Lucia.”
The smaller man threw an arm over his eyes. “Remus, surely you don’t expect me to be able to stand, much less swing an axe, right now.”
Remus grinned. “You’re a werewolf a week out from the moon, pup. I expect you’re able to do a great many things right now, including making sure we’re well stocked tonight. It’ll be chilly, I don’t want anyone going without.”
Another groan, but the smaller man started to stand and dress too. “You know, I’m starting to think you didn’t mean it when you said you’d give us a better life when you convinced our pack to cede to you.”
“Christian. Your pack was half dead of starvation when you ceded to me. If you’d prefer that to the life you have now, by all means, I won’t keep you.” He gestured a rather dramatic hand towards the door, the sunlight catching on the silver claw marks - ghosts of transformations past - etched into the arm attached to it.
Christian crooked a grin at him. “Nah. Dick’s too plentiful here.”
Jest as he may, Christian and his pack really did appreciate what Lupin had done for them. They’d been part of the Lupin Packs - Lupacks, some of the more lippy younger crowd enjoyed calling them - for going on three years now. The fourth of the eight packs total Remus had brought together over the last five-ish years. Most of the werewolves in each were wizards and witches before they were turned, but were unable to hold down jobs, access the recently-invented Wolfsbane, or enjoy other creature comforts (like food) after they were afflicted that most wizards took for granted. Their former Alphas were either weak, or greedy, or on some kind of power trip, allowing their packs to fall into squalor, or trying to get them to turn to the Dark side against their wishes. Greyback. Voldemort, ultimately.
Remus didn’t want to romanticise how he’d come to be their Alpha, not even in his own head. To take over as Alpha of any pack, there was really only three ways to do it. The old Alpha dying of natural causes and the new Alpha emerging when the magic naturally transferred itself to whomever it deemed the next most worthy in line. The old Alpha ceding his claim, which almost never happened since Alphas, by their nature, were powerful, territorial, and rather stubborn creatures. Or, the third way. The way Remus had been forced to do it.
Kill the Alpha and take the claim.
Remus hadn’t set out to do that, exactly. When he graduated from Hogwarts, once inducted into the Order properly and trained, he’d been sent to try to infiltrate the Dark Packs, Greyback’s packs, with the intention of watching, listening, passing any information back to the Order, and quietly convincing as many as possible to turn back to the Light, or take up with a pack neutral in the war. As it turned out, sending members of the Dark Packs into conditions basically guaranteed to be worse than they’d find with Greyback was a hard sell. Remus hadn’t even realised that the conditions faced by the neutral packs were so bad until he tried, rather ignorantly, to convince others to join them instead. He’d been outraged, frankly.
So he’d confronted the first Alpha of the biggest neutral pack after spending time on the outskirts of it, getting to know its members between moons, hearing their stories, their living conditions, their concerns. He took out the Alpha with more rage than strategy when he found out the younger women were being horribly mistreated by the disgusting old man. Then he accepted the claim. Around that time, the Order’s fortunes both literally and figuratively increased for reasons entirely unknown and relatively unthought of by him, so Remus’ financial backing increased. That first pack had already laid their claim on an incredible, large plot of land right on the border of a magical forest in Wales, allowing their werewolf magic to strengthen in such close proximity to powerful natural magical reservoirs - part of the reason it was such a large pack in the first place. He’d used his increase in funds to build houses along the perimeter - log cabins, really, built by hand and reinforced with the magic of the packs and the magic of the wizards within the packs - and started teaching. Magic, maths, cooking, reading, hunting, job skills, social skills, whatever they needed to function in society and within their own pack. They started to function as something of a society within themselves, contributing where they could, some getting casual jobs well suited to the temperamental availability of waxing and waning moons, wanting the normality that came with it once they had the option to take Wolfsbane (also funded by the Order), others managing their home, some taking particular care to find the recently turned to ensure they were brought to safety rather than left to the dangers of the outside world.
And so, he had his first pack. They said he brought them back to life. They didn’t know that they’d brought him back to life.
He wasn’t in a good place, back then. Betrayal would do that to you.
Slowly, he’d added more and more packs as those Alphas also fell. Their members were welcome to come here, live and contribute to their commune, to the sanctuary he was building, full time, or they could come and join them on full moons to transform, reinforce their connection to the packs overnight, before going back to their own lives. No pressure and no expectations other than loyalty to the Light. That’s what Remus thought, anyway. Ask the wolves themselves and they’d tell you it was loyalty to Remus. He’d done a lot for them. It’s why they followed him into battle again and again, the majority of them - a war still waged outside, and they were often foot soldiers in it. Willingly, now.
Christian and Darius were dressed, headed to Remus’ front door to go about their tasks, Remus pulling on his own pants and fastening the button, still shirtless, when each of them felt it. A tingle in the wards, followed by a scent in the air. Their sensitive lupine noses twitched. Christian and Darius paused midstep. Remus sniffed the air.
“Go. Now.”
“Remus, that’s a wizard’s scent-“
“Yes, Darius, it is.”
“How the hell do they-“
“They’re friendly. It’s fine. Go.”
Remus, who had darted around them to reach the door first, pulled it open and stepped onto the small patio he’d built around his cabin. Looking into the large clearing, he saw a figure dressed in midnight blue picking its way through the grass toward him.
Christian and Darius came up at his back, ignoring his orders to get going. Protective of their Alpha. Remus internally rolled his eyes, but externally left his gaze on the approaching wizard, who stopped a few feet from the steps leading up to Remus’s front porch, sunlight making his earrings glitter.
“Afternoon, Remus.”
“Kingsley.”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. Come on in. These two were just leaving.”
Christian and Darius, apparently having scented the complete lack of hostility around the intruder, took the hint and jogged down the steps. Remus heard Kingsley mumble something under his breath about someone, at least, wanting to talk to him.
They walked inside, where Kingsley sat at the small kitchen table and declined the offer of refreshments.
“What brings you into the wolf den?”
“You.”
“Aww.”
“Not like that, idiot.”
Remus was doubly glad he’d dismissed the other two from this little meeting. They didn’t take kindly to insults to their Alpha. Even joking ones from an old friend. He grabbed his shirt off the ground and pulled it on.
“Like what, then?”
Kingsley was quiet for a moment. Remus felt his mood change to somber.
“I need you to come in.”
Remus arched a light brown eyebrow from where he leant against the kitchen bench across from Kingsley, the silvery scars going through that brow and down across his broad nose stretching along with it.
“I’m not an Auror, Kingsley. Never was.” Shacklebolt wouldn’t have used that wording if he’d wanted Remus to attend an impromptu Order meeting.
“I’m aware.”
“Why do you need me?”
“He won’t talk to anyone else.”
Remus’ heart rate began to pick up.
“Who?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t desperate.”
“Who, Kingsley.”
A beat. Remus braced himself.
“Sirius Black turned himself into the Ministry six hours ago.”
Remus didn’t brace hard enough.