by Kari Gregg
“Okay, Uncle Jamie,” the girl said with a cheeky grin.
Clenching his jaw, Jamie ignored his niece’s sass and climbed.
The other kids gathered at the ladder too, necks craning at the spot Jamie scrambled onto the roof. He nudged the bag of tools he’d tossed atop his den earlier that morning and checked the cedar shingles he and Ian had cut and planed together to prepare for the repair. The pups played, bickered, and postured for status among each other in the grass below. “I heard Lila and Danny are ripening,” he said, naming one of the kid’s oldest sister. He squared his shoulders, bracing for today’s awful lesson. “Is that right?”
“Momma says they’re too young, but Dad thinks they’ll mate this full moon or next,” Lila’s sister called up to the roof. “How’d you know?”
Because he had a brain. And a nose. “The pair of them came to me to learn shifter craft years ago, same as you.” He examined the roof, stare searching for cracked and loose shingles. “Not much I don’t notice about my kids, even when they aren’t kids anymore.” He was no seer, but if anyone had asked, Jamie would have mentioned the couple’s future mating prospects when the two had sniffed and danced around each other when they were too immature to know what quickening meant. “Does anyone know what ripening is?”
He pried up a few suspect shingles while the pups shouted answers from below, some startlingly accurate, others not so much. “No, Aria. Quickening always precedes ripening. The terms aren’t synonymous,” he said around roofing nails he’d stuck in his mouth as he worked. “Quickening helps us identify the mate the Goddess has set for us, but we only ripen when our bodies are physically mature enough and we are mentally and emotionally ready to mate. Shifters may quicken several seasons before they ripen.”
“Uncle Ian did. Isn’t that right, Uncle Jamie?”
His stomach flipped. He clenched the hammer in his grasp and, stabilizing the shingle, he swung to fix the shingle in place. “Ian knew before I did, but yes, we both quickened while we were small. We didn’t ripen until later. We were still young, though.” He smiled around the roofing nails. “Younger than Lila and Danny. Mating happens like that sometimes.”
“Lila and Danny won’t have to move to the Between, will they?” one of the kids called from below.
Jamie froze, hammer halting mid-swing. The smile wiped off his face, replaced by a grimace. “No.”
“Even if they mate against their momma’s wishes?” Aria bellowed from the ground.
“Even then.” Jamie set the hammer aside and spit the roofing nails into his palm. He shoved those into his tool bag. He wriggled to the edge of the roof to stare down. “You guys aren’t seriously worried about that.” As he looked down at their anxious stares and the worry lines creasing the kids’ foreheads, he realized they were scared. “Packs reserve shunning and exile for only the gravest offenses. It doesn’t happen often.” Only once in Jamie’s lifetime. “Ian and I weren’t shunned because we mated too young.”
“Then why, Uncle Jamie?” Ian’s nephew said, digging his toes into the grass. “Nobody will talk about what happened. Why do you live Between instead of with the rest of us?”
Because prophecy pointed to trouble, to pain. To death. Because Ian and Jamie had refused to bow to that prophecy and had loved each other anyway. How could he explain it in a way the children could understand when he didn’t understand it himself, though? “The seer didn’t prophesy Ian as my mate. When we ran away together, the pack rejected us.”
“You are his beloved and he is yours.”
Jamie nodded. “Yup.”
“The prophecy must be wrong then.” Ian’s nephew scowled. “The seer was mistaken.”
Aria glared. “We’re never wrong.”
“Jamie!”
On the roof, Jamie stiffened at the shrill scream of his sister resounding from the woods in the direction of Burnt Fork. His brows beetled when she yelled his name again. Close. Very close. Almost to the clearing he and Ian had chosen for their den, which was curious because no adults from the pack came here. They met with Bitter Creek pack farther north to discuss pack politics and for trade. Both packs avoided the area of Ian and Jamie’s den as though it were cursed, though, probably because to them this particular spot was. Yet, his sister’s sturdy figure burst from the greenery of the woods, blonde hair flying behind her as she ran. “Where’s my brother?” she asked the kids, chest heaving on harsh pants after she’d hurdled the small creek that separated this spit of land from Burnt Fork.
“I’m here, Lisa.” Alarm skittered up his spine, but Jamie jerked his chin to the ladder. Michael sprang toward it, grabbing the ladder to steady it while Jamie climbed down from the roof. Stomach churning, he streaked to the ground as fast as safety allowed and nearly jumped out of his skin when his sister grabbed his biceps, fingers like a vise. She hadn’t touched him in a decade, maybe longer. None of the pack had since he and Ian had been sent Between. “Calm down,” he told her. “You’re scaring the kids.” Scaring him too.
Face wan, features pinched with gut-wrenching fear, Lisa stared at him. “It’s time.”
Roaring filled Jamie’s ears. His vision grayed. He stiffened his muscles, praying to the Goddess he wouldn’t pass out. “Ian?”
Of course. It could only be Jamie’s mate. Nothing else would compel one of the pack to approach him.
“He’s still breathing.” Lisa squeezed his arm and gulped. “You have to hurry.”
Chapter Three
THE SCREAMS RESOUNDING through his mind drew Kenneth from the moment he crossed into Kentucky. He’d sprinted across three states, doubling back only when the sharp stab of pain tormenting his senses eased. Gran had been a seer. Kenneth’s gift had never been strong enough for him to take that role in a pack himself. Kenneth had been born an alpha. His mate’s agony was as good as a homing beacon, though. He’d raced across the Appalachians to meet it.
Still, he hadn’t physically heard the raw grief he’d been tracking until now. Yet distant through a thick screen of oak, hickory and tangled underbrush, the hoarse, wordless sobs vibrated through Kenneth, throbbing like a sore tooth. His stomach clenched, the muscles of his body taut as he walked with this pack’s alpha closer to the shrieking’s source. In all his many seasons searching, he’d never been as desperate to reach his mate.
“We’re approaching downwind, following the same path the whelps take to the den,” the alpha wolf who had introduced himself as Frank said. “Jamie hasn’t tolerated me since he was a teenager, but your scent...” He smiled grimly. “Maybe he’ll drink. Eat something.”
“How long…?”
“A mountain cat gutted Ian four days ago.” Frank pushed through the trees outlining a small clearing in the woods and halted. “This is as far as I can go.” He waved across a sliver of creek at a rough cabin, where a bonfire in the front yard lit up the evening. “The pack’s whelps have kept him alive, but they’re just kids. He won’t last much longer. He needs you.”
Kenneth’s gaze swept the field on the other side of the trickling water. The wild sobs came from a pile of children huddled together near the fire, but the sounds were none any child would ever make. “If he won’t allow any pack adult near him, what makes you think he’ll stand me?”
“He may not, but you’re the best chance he has.” The alpha’s shoulders sagged. “You’re the one our seer prophesied.” He tapped the bridge of his nose. “Scent doesn’t lie.”
No, it didn’t. Even with a scrawny patch of grass and the creek between them, his mate’s smell beckoned to Kenneth, an odd mix of freshly brewed coffee and the mineral scent of a hard spring rain. The scent taunted him. He stumbled toward it. “So much pain.” The screams broke, voice ragged and scratchy. Had the overwhelming agony wavered since the screamer learned of his mate’s death? Kenneth doubted it. As tantalizing as finding the one who would be his was, as bewitching, Kenneth didn’t know the man, though. He had no idea how to reach the grief-stricken shifter, what to do.
<
br /> As soon as he crossed the creek, his senses whirled.
Snapped into sharp focus.
A rapid thud, thud, thud crept into his mind—his mate’s racing heartbeat.
He stumbled to a halt. He bent under the wave of misery and heart-wrenching sorrow. “Let him go,” he shouted, sucking in great pants of air. He braced his fists on his knees. When his stare found his mate buried under a pile of teens and tweens, he swore under his breath. “Stop holding him down.”
“He’ll fight the rest of us, but he loves those kids. He won’t hurt them.”
Kenneth glared over his shoulder at the pack’s alpha. “They’re hurting him.”
Frank frowned. “If they release him, he’ll run to the rocks.”
“Did you catch the cat that killed his mate?”
“You’re his mate.”
Gritting his teeth, Kenneth straightened his spine. “Did you hunt the damn cat or not?”
“Of course, we took down the cat.” Frank’s brows beetled with his fierce scowl. “Can’t allow a vicious predator and a confirmed killer to run loose with our young close by.”
“Then he’s in no danger.” Kenneth waved ahead of him. “His grief is ripping him apart. He needs to vent the pain and mourn his loss. He can’t do that here.”
The alpha stabbed a finger at the pile of kids smothering Kenneth’s mate. “The whelps buried Ian in the Between so Jamie would have his grave at their den. We buried his mother, my own mate, at my cabin when she passed and having her nearby has been a comfort to me in the year since. It’s what we do when one of us survives a mate’s death.”
“Did you ask Jamie what he wanted? Because this isn’t what he needs. Forcing your tradition on him is killing him.” Giving up on the stubborn alpha, Kenneth pivoted and focusing on the kids instead, he shouted, “Get off him.” The yell came out as a menacing growl Kenneth might have regretted if the threat and power in it hadn’t yielded immediate results. The kids untangled, scrambling off the sobbing and shrieking wreck Kenneth had crossed the country to find.
Kenneth didn’t dare approach, couldn’t risk hurting his mate even more than the mass of agony Kenneth already felt through the tenuous link between them. Instead, he crouched to make his body as small and nonthreatening as he could. As the kids pulled away, Kenneth’s assessing gaze hungrily took in sparse black hair dotting tan skin, the bunched muscle of trim calves and a flailing arm. No clothing hid his mate from him as the teenagers crept free, but Kenneth hadn’t expected any. His mate would’ve instinctively shifted into his wolf form often in the past days as a reprieve while he fought to glue together the shattered human pieces of him. With the kids’ retreat, Kenneth took in a flat stomach, and the broad chest of the man his seer had promised him. His breath caught when his mate finally turned his head, dark eyes glazed and unseeing in his heartbreak.
At least that much of the seer’s prophecy had been accurate. His mate was strikingly handsome. He had a dimpled chin, strong nose, and high cheekbones, his stunning eyes dark pools fringed with a heavy blanket of sooty lashes. Tears streamed down his cheeks in wet tracks, his lush pink lips parted on harsh pants between sobs scratchy from endless screaming. Kenneth’s heartbeat fought to synchronize with his mate’s. He trembled. He curled his fingers to form tight fists even though claws pricked the tips and dug into his palm. Seeing him was worth the small pain his loss of control wrought.
His mate was the most handsome man Kenneth had ever seen.
And Kenneth could not touch him.
“It’s all right.” He pitched his voice low, soothing. “They won’t hurt you anymore.” Never again. Kenneth vowed to keep his mate safe from harm from that moment and every moment onward. “You can go to him. No one will stop you now.”
With a jagged cry, his grief-stricken mate rolled to his stomach and pushed up, onto his hands and knees. Toes digging into the earth, he sprang toward the woods to the north, away from the pack’s alpha. Away from everyone. He sprinted toward the stony mountains that crowded the horizon. Before he hit the tree line, the shifter who was to be Kenneth’s had transitioned from smooth, tan skin to mottled gray fur. Kenneth barely won a glimpse before his mate streaked into the greenery, but he’d seen enough. His mate’s beast was every bit as beautiful as his human form.
Beautiful, but broken.
“Fill canteens with water,” Kenneth said to the kids who gaped at him long minutes after their pack trainer had fled. “Put meat into sealed containers too, as much protein as you can. He’ll need it. Bedding from his den should still carry his mate’s scent. He’ll accept those as well. Temperatures drop in the high places at night and we don’t want him to freeze. Take the supplies to the mountain pass leading to Bitter Creek.” He wagged his finger at the pack’s children. “Go in groups, not alone, but only you kids. No parents. He’s operating on base instinct and if he catches the scent of anyone he doesn’t trust, he won’t touch what you bring for him.”
“A big cat killed Uncle Ian and Uncle Jamie wants to die alongside him.” Eyes rimmed red and bloodshot, the youngest of the kids stared at him. “But you let him go.”
Heart heavy, Kenneth pushed to his feet and walked to the pack’s kids and young adults. He settled a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m sorry for your loss and for the loss to your pack. Right now, though, Jamie needs to be where he feels his lost mate most keenly and that isn’t at the den they shared.”
A girl pointed at a patch of freshly turned earth. “We buried him there so Uncle Jamie wouldn’t ever be without Uncle Ian again.” She gulped. “He wouldn’t have to run to the mountains to talk to and be with Uncle Ian. Uncle Jamie would be safe.”
“Safe? He lost his mate. He’ll never feel safe again.” Exhaustion weighing down his shoulders, Kenneth stared at the bedraggled group. “We’ll get him through his grief, though. You will. Go on. Fetch supplies for him. I’ll meet you in Burnt Fork to pick the first bunch to track him in a few minutes.”
The kids raced into the woods, passing their alpha who finally crossed the burbling creek now that Jamie, his estranged son, had fled. Kenneth ignored him, staring instead at the fresh grave that had ended all Kenneth’s happy fantasies about the mate he would love and would love him in return. “I thought funeral pyres was the tradition here on the East Coast,” he said once the pack alpha had joined him.
“Only when a mated pair die together. When half of a couple passes away, the body is buried at their den. The surviving mate can visit the grave and gain enough strength to go on. Like I said, we buried his mother at my cabin. Memory of her has been the only thing that kept me going while we waited for you.” A sigh slipped from Frank’s lips. “Your accent…Northwest?”
Kenneth nodded.
“You’re a long way from home.”
Kenneth thinned his lips. “I thought I’d finally found my home, actually.”
“Glad to hear it. Jamie is a good man. He and Ian both were the best of us. None of what happened was their fault. The mistake was mine. When they mated, I failed to realize their worth fast enough.”
“You were worried for your son.”
“Doesn’t excuse what I did to try to separate he and Ian, but maybe explains why I fought hard to keep them apart.” The alpha harrumphed. “I won’t say mating him will be easy…”
A bubble of sharp laughter worked up Kenneth’s throat, from the gaping maw of pain where his heart should be. “If your nose didn’t tell you I ripened and he didn’t, you aren’t fit to lead your pack.”
“He’s in shock. Mourning.” The other alpha grimaced. “Any alpha worthy of leading this pack would recognize Jamie needs time to steady after losing Ian.”
“Does anyone ever truly recover from the death of a mate?” Staring into the woods into which Jamie had disappeared, Kenneth wondered at the other alpha’s optimism. “Did you?”
“He’s a better man than I will ever be.” The pack’s alpha shrugged. “Ian was too. He spoke to me ofte
n about his fears for Jamie, encouraged all of us to let Jamie mourn him once he was gone. Give Jamie space to come to terms with the cruelty fate had delivered to him before pushing Jamie into what must come next.”
“Time.” Kenneth wrinkled the same nose that had scented cancer in the pack’s current alpha when they’d met. “Your illness. It’s mortal.”
“Stage IV.” The alpha nodded. “Our healer networked with human physicians at the nearest treatment center and she assured me that, as long as I follow the recommended protocols, I could last for years.”
Kenneth hoped so. He tipped his chin toward the rocky high places into which Kenneth’s mate had run. “Does he know?”
“Jamie avoids the pack, especially me. Won’t have anything to do with us.” He shook his head. “Ian knew, though. He hunted with us and tithed some of their trade goods to the pack for better bartering power with the humans. He smelled the sickness in me months ago and recognized what it meant.”
Kenneth scowled. “What it meant?”
“This pack is dysfunctional. I’m beloved by my people. Goddess knows I’ve tried my best, but I’ve been a poor leader.” Worry lines creased the corners of his eyes. “I’m not the alpha my father was or my grandfather before him. I’ve made terrible mistakes. My pack kept me their alpha anyway, despite my weaknesses and failures.”
“Family bloodlines are still important in leadership in some packs on the East Coast, but all packs don’t operate that way. Even here in the East, most packs have accepted the best leaders are determined by the talents and gifts the Goddess grants us rather than by an accident of birth.”
“In Burnt Fork, the bloodline is still vital.” The alpha shuffled his feet in the dirt. “The pack has slowly come around to the idea that one of my blood would not lead after I’m gone because our seer prophesied Jamie would mate with the next alpha, but it’s taken half my lifetime to bring them this far. They reckon you aren’t of my blood, but at least my son would be your mate. Few will accept you unless you’ve mated Jamie. Ian knew that. My successor had to come before I died to prevent rule by force, which is anathema to the Goddess. When I got sick, that doomed boy knew his time must be short.” His mouth curved into a sad smile. “He could only think of Jamie, though. Ian’s impending death didn’t faze him, only his worry for his mate. Jamie built a wall of anger and bitterness even Ian couldn’t breach.” His mouth quirked. “Maybe you can.”
