by Sammie Joyce
The herd had paused again and I shook off my ever-present thoughts to look at what had captured their attention.
We stood at the lip of a dripping forest, the ice becoming drops of crystalline water as it fell harmlessly to the snow, melting everything in its path. Grass poked through hopefully and I realized I was hungry. Still, something else was pressing more steadily on my mind—the female caribou I’d seen before.
Perhaps she’d always been there but my thoughts had stopped me from fully feeling her nearness until that moment. As I gazed about, I found myself disappointed to realize she wasn’t among the females we had just found. I didn’t remember seeing her earlier and given the impact of our stare, I was sure I would have recalled her.
With a mental sigh, I lowered my head to graze on the freshly cleared spot, my nose nuzzling against the cold of the ground to take in the grass that would never see the light of summer sun.
Through my peripheral vision, an indigo haze appeared, haloed by violet and confused, I jerked my head up as I had at the stream. I didn’t understand the colors, like the Northern Lights had floated down to sit before me but as I looked up, I realized I was reading the aura of a woman. For a long moment, I didn’t know what to make of her with her long flowing dark hair and wise eyes. I knew this was the same female from earlier, this time in her mortal form. In my hasty view of her before, I hadn’t even paused to consider that she was a shifter, even though there were several in my midst.
Dizziness overcame me and I took two unsteady steps backward, almost tripping over my hind legs as she advanced slowly, hand extended to touch my majestic breast. The feel of current shot through me and I didn’t protest as she carefully ran her hands over my fur as if she was searching for something, the strength in her fingers only enhancing the heady feeling growing inside me. I felt giddy, uncertain and completely out of character.
What is she doing?
“I’m Larissa Pine,” she murmured. “I’m a healer and shaman in these parts. You don’t need to be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”
I blinked at the words—or maybe I blinked to try and clear my head. The mere sound of her name made me inexplicably happy. I couldn’t quite understand what was happening, particularly not after she did a thorough search of my body, returning to cup my jaw with both hands. She met my eyes and I was becoming slightly squeamish in the light-headedness, like I’d had too much to drink. Of course that was ridiculous. I hadn’t even seen alcohol since I’d left Yellowknife, weeks earlier. There were no pubs in the wild, nowhere to stop and and have a draft, even if I’d wanted one.
The smell of her lavender-scented skin filled my nostrils, only enhancing the already dream-like feeling enshrouding me.
Is that a soap or does she naturally smell like nature?
I felt like I already knew the answer to that. There was nothing synthetic or store-bought about this woman. Everything about her belonged to the earth, to the universe. I could clearly read the question in her eyes, the desire to see me shift into my human form, but I could do nothing but return her gaze, this time, unblinking.
Am I reading her mind? Is she reading mine?
I was growing dizzy and confused again and I shook my head. Her expression registered disappointment and much to my chagrin, she let her hands fall away as she stepped back. I realized that she took my head shake as an answer to her unspoken request.
“You don’t seem injured,” she sighed, almost as if the news was bad. I wondered what she would have done if I was injured. I was almost upset that I hadn’t been hurt in the crossing. I desperately wanted to know where she would have taken me. I wondered what it would be like to be alone with her, somewhere away from the other caribou.
You are not here to mate. You are here to do the exact opposite of mate, I snapped at myself, realizing that I was contemplating shifting just so she could see me the way I saw her. I stopped myself from doing it, determined to remain focussed on my mission.
With another sigh, Larissa stepped back and moved away from me, but I didn’t miss the look she gave me out of the corner of her eye. Even as she began to attend to the other caribou, I could feel her gaze upon me—and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t watching her too, even as I pretended to graze.
I tried to think about the task at hand, about my mission to Alaska and what I was doing there. I knew I had to find the leader of the shifters in that area and have a heart-to-heart with him about this global-scale issue that was quickly snowballing. I tried to imagine who he was and what approach I might have to take to get him to listen. Some leaders needed to be cajoled, some threatened. I would find out when I met him face to face.
But even as I tried desperately to formulate a plan of attack, I just couldn’t concentrate on anything but the nearness of the shifter woman.
What’s the harm? I asked myself. One quick shift, a conversation and then you can carry on with the others or—
I felt a nuzzle at my neck and my heart leapt with excitement.
She came back!
Yet even before I turned my head, I knew it wasn’t her and I whipped my head up to glower at the cow who had ambled amorously toward me. She wasn’t a shifter and I butted back at her with my head, casting her back. She was more insistent than I expected but the third time, she finally took the hint and ambled off, seeming slightly miffed by the rejection. It wasn’t the first time the cows had come calling for mating nor was it the first time I’d shoved one off.
It was, however, the first time I’d been embarrassed by a cow's advance. I wondered if Larissa had seen me and when I looked around again, a mild panic set in as I realized she wasn’t there anymore.
Did she see the cow and think that we were an item?
My head whipped from side to side and I began to run through the thick of trees, hoping for any glimpse of her. The sensation of dread and loss inside me was foreign and mysterious. I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart and yet I didn’t know this woman at all. How could she have such a hold on me already?
I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care, that Larissa Pine had no bearing on me, but the more time that she was out of view, the more my anxiety mounted. From one end of the herd to the other I bolted, bucking with some discontent. The healer was gone. She had slipped away while I’d been fending off the amorous cow. Would she be back? Would I see her again?
I willed myself to be still, to stop behaving so irrationally. Nothing about these actions resembled anything true to my nature. I was calm, collected, rational. I was behaving like a rabid animal.
Whatever is wrong with you, you better get over it, I growled to myself. Before you ruin everything.
I considered what she’d said to me, that she was a healer and protector. Where I came from, shamans often knew magic. Had Larissa cast some kind of spell upon me?
I looked around again at the other bulls but no one was behaving out of the ordinary. They grazed and mingled, resting and frolicking with one another. It was only me who was running amok, looking for Larissa.
Why would she put a spell on you and no one else? I asked myself logically, humiliated at the egomaniacal thought. I wasn’t even the biggest bull there, even if I might have been the most attractive. What you need is rest. You’ve overdone it. This was your first migration and you’re worn out.
Yes. I needed to rest and forget about Larissa Pine.
But even as I forced myself to calm down, settling my muscular form into the pine needles at my feet, I knew that it was much easier thought than done. Whatever magic Larissa had used on me, it was showing no signs of fading away.
3
Larissa
What the heck is he doing now?
My sooty eyes narrowed behind the lenses of the binoculars and I readjusted my position at the windowsill to watch the bull more closely as he ran back and forth, unlike anything anyone else in the herd was doing. For a minute, I wondered if he’d hurt himself and considered running out to tend to him, but I forced myself to sit sti
ll and observe, no matter how badly the urge struck me.
I’d returned home from the herd almost twenty minutes earlier, moments after I’d watched one of the cows approach the bull who seemed magnetized to me. I didn’t want to watch if they two were about to mate, the idea filling me with a bizarre jealousy I knew I had no business feeling.
To my relief, he had moved away from the cow; however, he was acting made little sense to me in that moment. I wondered why I was obsessing over him.
You haven’t even seen him in his human form yet, I reminded myself, shaking my head in amazement. If you’re going this weird over a caribou, will you be like when you see him as a man?
What did I mean, “yet”? What did I mean “when”? I wasn’t going to see him again, was I? He would be moving along with the other caribou soon and I might not seem him again until the late fall—if ever. I had never seen him before, after all. Maybe he was just hitching onto the herd to return where he came from. I knew he’d seen the desire in my eyes. Somehow, staring into his dark irises, I felt like I could read his mind, like I’d known him before.
The idea made me sit up tensely.
Do I know him? Is that why he didn’t shift?
I dismissed the idea, almost waving my hand even though I was alone in the cottage. The smell of him was burned into my memory, the musky, animalistic sensation etched inside me, familiar but not. I had never seen that beast before, at least not in this life.
Which gave me another idea. I could speak to the spirits and ask them about the bull. They might give me direction…
I stifled a sigh, knowing that I was being childish. I couldn’t conjure the spirits to ask about a bull I had a crush on. I would never be taken seriously again.
Or I could just follow after the herd in a few days. They always headed along the same path. Maybe after things settled, the bull would be more willing to let me see him in his mortal flesh.
I didn’t want to trouble the spirits with something I could do myself, after all. I would see the herds through and then I could follow up with this magical bull who had grabbed my attention so intensely for reasons I had yet to understand.
The spirits are a last resort, I decided and left it at that as I picked up the binoculars again and scanned the forest for the target of my surveillance. It was only when I heard a low growl at my door did I realized it was wide open. I turned my head and dropped the lenses guiltily, more embarrassed by being caught spying than I was intimidated by the eight-foot grizzly ambling across my threshold, despite my instinct to shift and run.
I knew this grizzly and he would die before he harmed so much as a hair on my head. In fact, he had saved me once before.
“Have you ever tried knocking?” I asked lightly as Flint Locklear shifted back into his mortal form, striding toward me. He gave me a half grin and dropped himself uninvited onto my sofa, sticking out his bare feet toward the fire which had dwindled to a low flame.
“And ruin the element of surprise?” he replied. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I had to admit, he was happier these days, not nearly as serious and stoic as I’d come to know him. Once upon a time, Flint had had a hair trigger temper, his irritability knowing no bounds. Overnight, however, he had become a much more relaxed version of himself and I genuinely liked this side of him.
And I think I know who we can thank for that. Margot-Celine certainly brought out the patience in that man; patience I hadn’t even known he had before.
I was sure Davis was grateful for his father’s about face too. No one had quite taken his father’s temper like Davis Locklear.
“What are you doing by the window?” Flint asked and I remembered he’d caught me spying on the caribou herd.
“Nothing!” I replied too quickly and with a shamed squeak to my tone. His eyebrows rose. Lying was not on my repertoire of talents, unfortunately, and Flint’s eyebrows raised almost to his hairline.
“Really?” he drawled. “Looks like you’re doing something.”
I waved my hand and decided to give him a half-true answer.
“I’m keeping an eye out on the herds.”
“Ah. Yes. It’s migration season again,” he commented, as if I’d forgotten.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, slipping on my business face. “Is something wrong? Is Davis all right?”
Flint lost his bemused expression, a dark look shadowing his face.
“I don’t know if any of us are going to be all right,” he replied and I moved toward the small kitchen to fill the cast iron kettle to warm water for tea. It was one of those unspoken things in our parts—if you come to my house, you’re going to have tea. There was no need to offer and no one ever really refused. I made good tea, after all.
As I threw another two logs on the fire and set the pot inside, I joined Flint in the living room, waiting for him to spill whatever it was that was on his mind. I could see something was troubling him more deeply than usual.
“Is someone hurt?” I pressed when he didn’t add much after his initial declaration. “Do you need a salve? A concoction? A spell?”
I wished he’d get on with it so I could get back to watching the bull from my window.
“No one is hurt,” he assured me, only furthering my confusion. “But there’s danger coming to all of us.”
I smothered a sigh and sank back against the back of the wing-chair in which I sat.
This sounds more like the Flint I’ve always known, I thought with a grimace. Paranoid and angry.
Of course I didn’t speak my mind and I checked my tone before asking him the inevitable question.
“What’s happened, Flint?”
He grimaced.
“Do you know a girl by the name of Kealani Mahelona?”
I frowned, matching Flint’s expression now, a fission of alarm shooting through me as the name flared a spot of familiarity in me. I had heard about the girl and her endless quest to learn about the shifters. She wouldn’t have been the first to come around our parts looking for answers, but she had been more insistent than most and she’d certainly been along longer than anyone I could remember in the past.
“She’s tied to that polar bear shifter, isn’t she? Emmett?”
“Emmett Sable, correct.”
“What about her?”
Flint grunted loudly and dropped an ankle over his knee. I hadn’t even noticed he’d dressed but when I looked, I saw he’d brought a bag with him. Not that his nudity would have bothered me. Ours was not a modest culture. We didn’t adhere to the same rules as regular people. Being naked was natural and we believed in siding with nature. However, in that particular pose, his crotch spread, foot on knee, I probably would have looked away had he not found a pair of jeans somewhere.
He probably carries clothes everywhere these days because of Margot-Celine, I mused, thinking about how much had changed over the past year. A lot had happened, it seemed, and while none of it directly affected me, I had to absorb some of the alterations too.
“Kealani’s been nosing around a lot,” Flint explained. “Too much for my liking.”
“Yes,” I replied slowly. “I’d heard that.”
“It’s a disaster and she’s going to ruin everything for us!” Flint yelled, his face turning slightly red.
Another shiver shot down my spine.
“Then tell her to stop,” I offered flatly. “You can be very persuasive.”
I didn’t need to explain what that meant. Flint was not opposed to using intimidation and it generally worked. I didn’t know why he didn’t apply the same methods here. Not that I condoned threats or violence...very often.
Flint exhaled.
“It’s not that simple,” he told me and I knew why. No one knew where Emmett had come from and alienating Kea would mean alienating answers about one of our own. Flint wanted Emmett, but he didn’t want the girlfriend. The problem was Kea wasn’t one of us, and the more she pushed, the less likely she ever would be.
&n
bsp; “She’s been asking questions for months,” I reminded him. “What’s the sudden issue now?”
Flint raised his head and met my eyes so squarely, I was filled with immediate dread.
“She wants to become a shifter.”
I scoffed and snorted at the same time, dubiety flooding me at the silliness of the idea.
“How positively…ridiculous,” I snapped, not even remotely amused. I’d heard some insane things in my life but this was up there.
“She’s been hounding me about where we came from and if there are more artifacts. I don’t know how much she knows. I mean, Margot-Celine knows our history but I don’t think she’d…”
Flint continued but suddenly, I wasn’t listening anymore. Through my window, I saw the first of the cows beginning to saunter by my cottage and I was on high alert. But it wasn’t the females I was interested in. I was looking for a very specific male.
The bulls won’t be along for another day or two, I reminded myself but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the windows, hoping to catch another glimpse of you-know-who.
“…asking about your cottage.”
That brought me back to reality and I wrenched my eyes back toward him.
“What?” I said. “What did you just say?”
Flint’s eyes narrowed and he scowled at me.
“I said…” he grumbled. “She’s been actively looking for your cottage. She’s been asking around to anyone she can find.”
“WHAT?!” I choked. “She’s asking about me?”
“She knows about you, yes. She wants to talk to you. She’s gotten it in her head that you can turn her into a shifter.”
“What the hell did you tell her?” My voice was much louder than I had intended it to be but this was alarming information indeed. I didn’t want any humans in my cottage. It had been bad enough that Davis had brought Lowell there once and I’d only just started breathing easier about her not returning. I hadn’t been convinced that the girl wouldn’t bring her friends. She was just a high school kid, after all.
“I didn’t tell her where to find you, obviously,” Flint growled, shaking his head like I was the idiot. “I’m just giving you the heads up that she’s looking for you.”
