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“I won’t be friends with anyone who treats another man the way they’re treating Avenel and Gennadi,” Peter insisted.
“How are they treating them?” I asked, both because I wanted Peter to think about the interactions he’d witnessed at the meeting and because I thought it might give me a better idea of what exactly was eating at him.
“They—” Peter began, but didn’t continue for a moment. “They were not allowing Avenel or Gennadi to…to make their own decisions.”
I was convinced Peter had been about to say that Sebald and Jace hadn’t allowed Gennadi or Avenel to speak, but they actually had. Like I suspected it would, forcing Peter to speak what he thought was wrong aloud was ruining his argument.
“But it was Gennadi’s decision to ask to be Jace’s pup,” I pointed out. “And it was Avenel who asked Sebald if he could be his pup too. They both chose the position they’re in.”
“They shouldn’t have,” Peter said with another burst of upset. “They…they must not know what they are agreeing to.”
“And what are they agreeing to, my love?” Magnus asked, shifting a bit so more of his body made contact with Peter’s.
I knew what he was doing. Peter always reacted well to touch. I snuggled closer against his back, brushing my hand over his hip and thigh as Magnus touched his arm and shoulder. Between the two of us, we could disarm our husband with caresses.
“They are agreeing to be nothing,” Peter said with a shuddering breath—which was probably a combination of anger and grief contradicting with arousal and comfort. “They are agreeing to forfeit their places as future leaders of the frontier. They will be treated like children, forced to stay silent and unseen. People will laugh at them and ignore whatever they say. And how long until Jace and Sebald put collars around their neck and parade them around like possessions?”
I drew in a breath as the pieces started to fall into place. Once glance at Magnus, and I could tell he understood where Peter’s frustration had its origins too.
“Peter, my love,” Magnus said in his softest voice yet, raising his hand to Peter’s face again. “You know that no one is asking you to be a pup. No one is taking away your position as a Justice, or your role in the Central Justice Committee.”
“But they will,” Peter blurted. “They will take everything away when they see that the very people who are supposed to be fighting for justice and freedom are guilty of enslaving other men. They’ll see us all as hypocrites and push us down again when we’ve worked so hard to climb up.”
“Actually,” I said slowly, working to choose my words with extreme care, because I knew one false step and Peter would fly off the handle again, “because of the way things have always been with the wolves, because of the way those men think and what they value, I think that Sebald and Jace claiming pups of their own will actually improve their status and make people take them more seriously.”
“But it shouldn’t,” Peter snapped, though he couldn’t sustain the energy of his outburst. “It’s wrong. Jace and Sebald are destroying our cause, because people will take them more seriously than…than those of us who don’t claim pups. They’ll make other men believe that they can be taken seriously too if they go out and find themselves a slave.”
I winced slightly, because Peter actually had a point there. Maybe Jace and Sebald were reinforcing a system that would lead to misery for others, even if Gennadi and Avenel were content with their positions.
I met Magnus’s eyes, and could tell he followed my thoughts, even though I didn’t speak them aloud. “That could happen,” he said calmly, touching my arm as he continued to stroke Peter. “The traditions of pupdom and what it means for the masters as well as the pups has a long and deep history. It’s been around for over a hundred years, and just like the prejudice against men who love other men in the cities, the culture of taking a pup as a sign of manhood among the wolves isn’t going to change overnight.”
I sucked in a breath. Magnus had obviously given this more thought than I’d realized. The way he connected pupdom and the attitude people had about wolves in the cities struck me deeply. I’d been working on the assumption that everything in our world had changed dramatically in the last year, but actually, only external things had changed. The culture and the problems inherent in the way things had always been were still there.
“How do we change things?” I asked hesitantly. I wanted to talk about the daunting tasks we all had ahead of us where changing the way people thought, the way they felt, was concerned, but I was highly aware that Peter was still in his crisis.
“Slowly,” Magnus said. He inched forward and kissed Peter’s forehead, which was the part of Peter’s face closest to him, and rested his hand on Peter’s face for a moment. “We can only change the way people see their world slowly.” He paused for a moment, then continued in a different tone of voice with, “That is, of course, the problem with the Old Realm as well. They still believe all of us on the western side of the mountains to be their subjects, and inferior ones at that. They must be forced to see us as kingdoms in our own right.”
“How do we—” I gave up the question before I’d really started asking it. That was the essence of what the meetings were all about now. Forget Sai’s plans to iron out trade deals and alliances between the Kostya Kingdom and the others, these meetings were now about the other three kingdoms trying to figure out how we could band together to change the way both the cities and the Old Realm saw the rest of the frontier.
I shook my head and pressed a kiss into the back of Peter’s neck. “I don’t think Jace and Sebald see their relationships with Gennadi and Avenel as something bad. I think they believe, all four of them believe, that they’re giving each other what they want and need, and that the official status of pupdom will actually protect Gennadi and Avenel from things that scare them.”
“They may very well be right,” Magnus said, adjusting to my change of subject swiftly.
“It’s wrong,” Peter said, though without the same fire as he’d had before. “And I cannot believe that Gennadi especially would just go along with it. After everything he’s been through?” He lifted his head to glance over at me and then to Magnus. “How can he do that? He knows how dangerous it can be to surrender like that.”
“But I think he knows how safe it can feel too,” I said quietly. “You’ve seen the way he and Jace are together.”
“Jace and Gennadi have a very special relationship,” Magnus said. “As do the three of us. Neither sort of union is usual, but both provide the men involved with everything they want and need and then some.” He kissed Peter again—his lips now, since he’d loosened up a bit and tilted his head to Magnus—and went on with, “How would you respond to anyone who demanded we break up our marriage because it makes no sense to them?”
“It’s not the same,” Peter growled.
“Isn’t it?” Magnus pressed him.
“It’s not the same,” Peter repeated with more force. “The three of us are equals. We’re married. You don’t prevent me and Neil from holding important positions in Gravlock and in the kingdom. People don’t look at us and see us as lesser.”
“I’m not certain people would necessarily see Gennadi as lesser either,” I said, worried about contradicting Peter, but feeling as though it needed to be said. “He’s known to be Magnus’s chief clerk, and everyone knows now that he killed Yuri himself.”
“But they’ll change their minds,” Peter insisted. “When they find out that he’s enslaved to Jace, they’ll change their minds. And you’ll probably dismiss him as your clerk,” Peter told Magnus.
