by Jade White
“Bitch,” Indigo said from behind him.
“I really was hoping that would work,” Richard said, his eyes down cast.
“It’s okay, boss, she loved us all, she won’t be forgotten.”
“Is Reign okay?”
“Go see.”
He lunged up stairs and through the door, just in time to hear the baby’s first cry. Reign looked up to him, practically glowing with energy, the baby in her arms was screaming.
“She’s beautiful,” she said to him.
“Reign, we need to get you out of here.”
Skye shook her head. “Moving her now is a bad idea, she’s not in danger, but the possibility of bleeding is a real issue.”
Richard glanced behind him down the stairs, Indigo shook his head. He could call down TJ and Abbey, but not with those damn flamethrowers.
“Richard!” Heidi’s voice echoed from outside. “You have one minute, send her out, or you all die.”
Reign glanced down to the blood soaked axes in his hands. “I take it we’re not doing well?”
“They have flamethrowers, we go out there, we die.”
*
Maybe it was the post birth high, or maybe she was really pissed, but Reign was fuming.
“Richard, they can’t have her, we have to do something!”
He looked so heartbroken, what happened out there?
“Reign, anyone I send out there dies, and if we stay in here we die. I just don’t know what to do, if it comes down to it, we can all charge at once, but that’s not a great option either. I can’t force the change on everyone again.”
Reign could hear the painful sounds of the wolves changing back into people. It consumed an enormous amount of calories to change, and they usually couldn’t do it more than once a day.
She could hear the madwoman outside counting down. The baby in her arms yawned and started crying. Skye was there next to her, soothing the baby.
“Even if we could move you, we don’t have anywhere to go.”
“Boss, I have an idea, I could shoot my way out. I’m far and away the best shot, I could open a hole,” Indigo said.
Skye looked broken, like he just said he was dying.
“No,” she said before she could stop herself.
“I agree with Skye, Indigo,” Richard said. “You would never get past those weapons, you might get one, but they would get you.”
“I know, Rich, I’m willing.
“Well I’m fucking not,” he roared.
Reign closed her eyes, trying to pretend, just for a second, that none of this was real. Her back itched, the lash marks burned with pain as her anxiety rose.
“Time's up,” the woman yelled. The sound of fire roared as the flamethrowers poured fire into the sides of the house. There was screaming from downstairs. Skye looked like she was going to panic, Richard tried to calm them down but Reign could see the fear in his face.
They were trapped there, because of her, because she couldn’t be moved, they were all going to die.
The pack flooded up the stairs, trying to get away from the growing flames downstairs.
“I’m going,” Indigo said. “I’m our best chance, one life for twenty, it’s a square deal.”
Richard put his arm on his friend, “I won’t forget you.”
Skye rushed over and engulfed him in a hug, kissing him hard on the lips.
Reign's back burned now, her fingers itched, there was something that she was forgetting... something she knew but couldn’t quite remember.
“Skye,” she heard Richard's voice, “what’s wrong with her?”
His voice was distant, like it was underwater, so was Skye’s reply, “Uh, boss?”
Reign looked down to her hands, electricity arced down her body to her fingers. She lifted her hand to examine it, and little bolts leaped between her fingers. She remembers, in her dream she could use magic, she had believed with all her heart that she could use magic... just like Richard had to believe he was a wolf.
“Richard,” she said, “I got this.” With a sense she didn’t know she had, she reached out to Richard’s mind. She could see his link to the pack, she intercepted it, and the emotions that everyone felt washed over her, including the sorrow at Cara’s death. Anger flared through her at those that would hurt her, hurt her baby, that killed Cara.
She put that away in a little box for later. She was in no condition to exact vengeance, but she would be.
Oh Cara, I wish I could have said goodbye.
It was fitting though, that Cara gave her the answer. They couldn’t escape the burning building, not with her, and they couldn’t stay. Reign focused hard, and through the link she felt every wolf, including Abbey and TJ in the mine, she focused on all of them, and then thought of the place she last felt truly safe.
“Richard, whats happ...”
“...ening,” Indigo said.
The lodge was gone. All nineteen wolves, one baby, and one human, were in the loft in Seattle, the one Cara and Reign had lived in before.
Richard was stunned, he rushed to Reign's side, but she was out cold. “Skye!”
She was there, trying to shake off whatever happened, checking Reign’s pulse. “She’s fine, just out cold, uh, what was that?”
“If I had to guess, magic,” Richard said quietly.
“You mean like Houdini?” Indigo asked.
“No, like the kind of magic that turns men into wolves, the kind of magic that hasn’t existed in this world for a long time.”
“Damn boss, you know how to pick ‘em.”
“Well, for now, we're safe, and she’s okay.” Richard reached down and gently picked his daughter up; she was beautiful, her eyes barely open, then she yawned. The yawn turned into a smile and she fell asleep.
“I don’t understand, she should have changed,” Richard whispered to Skye.
“As far as I can tell, she’s healthy as can be.”
“Oh, Reign, what have you done?” Richard sighed.
Magic always comes with a price.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Reign stood on the balcony of their Seattle loft, watching the sunrise over the Cascades. Baby Cara slept peacefully in the bassinet behind the closed sliding glass doors. Richard was in the bed of their room, still asleep. Everything had changed since the last time the girl visited Seattle. The skyline was still the same, the space needle still stood out from the blue of Puget Sound, the morning traffic still clogged the roads, but something was different. Reign couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was if everything was black and white, and she was the only thing in color.
She turned to look at her baby, the pretty little girl who seemed to light up everyone but Reign. She had Reign’s hair and skin, and her father’s eyes and features-she just was not a wolf. She did not turn, not when she was born, not on the new moon when all wolves turned, not once in three months. There was little doubt that whatever Reign did to break the spell, also purged the wolf from her.
I failed.
She failed Richard, the pack, their species. It’s what she could see when she looked at them, and she knew it was all they could see when they looked at little Cara. Richard was a loving father and Skye positively doted on the girl, as much since she couldn't have a child of her own, as the baby was just that cute. Reign though, all she could see was her failure.
Loptr told her, magic had a price, was this it? Would this be it? Would there be more, was Cara’s death, her own sudden powers, the loss of the lodge, and all nineteen of them, well nineteen and a half, living in the lodge forced to hide out in a loft, was that not price enough? What she really needed to do was speak to Loptr, but she had no idea how. She didn’t want to ask Richard to take her, she could barely look at him, let alone ask for anything.
The sun was fully above the Cascades now, warming everything it touched, but somehow it failed to warm Reign. She thought of the little shop far away in South Dakota, what it smelled like, what the air felt like, she could almost
see it.
Good, like that, keep going.
The intrusion in her mind shocked her eyes open, she hadn't even been aware she closed them.
Loptr?
It was surely his voice, it had a sort of menacing quality to it that was hard to forget.
Come find me, you were almost there.
She closed her eyes again; thought of the shop, the parking lot, what it felt like to be there… that triggered something.
She was there, as if she never left. Loptr was seated in a small lounge chair, a cup of coffee in hand. He gestured to the pot.
“By all means, help yourself.”
She looked down at her hands, was she really there? Slowly her hands went from ghostly outlines to solid flesh and blood.
“How?”
“It’s quite remarkable really, it takes most people a lifetime to figure out what you just did. Bravo, dearie.”
She was there, it wasn’t a dream, or an illusion, but she was physically in his shop. She poured herself a cup of his coffee, added cream and sugar, and after a moment of rifling through his things, found the mint oil she liked so much.
He made a face at her. “You people from Seattle, such snobs.”
“It's not our fault you like to drink coffee without making it an art.”
She cupped the mug with both hands, breathed in its delicious scent before sipping the dark swirling liquid. Of all the things she missed while pregnant, nothing compared to coffee.
“Now, tell me what you did to me, and how can I fix it?”
“Direct and to the point, you know you should try that in your head, you’re terribly self-punishing when you don’t have someone else to blame.”
Reign moved around from behind the bar and found the seat opposite of him. At first, she thought maybe it was a dream, like the one where he first came to her, that had felt real enough, but no, when she sat in the chair it was just too real to be fake.
“Oh, it’s real enough, dearie, you traveled here.”
“You mean teleported?”
“Such an ungainly word for an elegant experience. We call it Fade Walking, when you move through the Fade to get from A to B. You don’t really teleport, distance is traveled, you just don't realize it,” Loptr said as he sipped his coffee, polite and all smiles in his dark gray blazer and scarf.
“Each time I do that, I go through the Fade? Isn’t that dangerous?”
His eyebrow quirked up. “My girl, you’re bright. If you were around a thousand years ago, I could have unleashed you on Charlemagne. Yes, that’s correct, if someone knew exactly when you were going to go in, and where you were traveling, they could pull you out, or stop you, or do umpteen hundred nasty things to you.”
“So tell me,” she said, sipping her own coffee, “can I make Cara a wolf?”
“Why on Earth would you want to do that? You’re the one who made it so you can’t ever have children that are wolves, yes, you and Richard could have a thousand babies,” his eyes drifted to her body for a second, losing a little focus, “right, and you would never have a wolf. Sorry dearie, you’re going to have to save him some other way.”
Anger flared up in her; he could have warned her, she could have tried it her way, with them turning her after the baby was born.
“Yes, but where would be the fun in that?”
Loptr reading her thoughts was getting old. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Stay out,” she said, a hint of menace in her own voice she didn’t recognize.
“Well, well, you do have fangs, well done, I’m out, I doubt anyone could get in. You’re like a virgin with a chastity belt, so touchy.
“You are very bright, Reign, you’ll figure something out, but you better get used to what you can do. There aren’t many of us, and those who can do it, tend to know each other. Wolves aren’t the only thing that go bump in the night.”
She had a million questions for him when she arrived, and she only had a million more now, but his raised hand told her they were done.
“Now go, come back another day, if you yet live.”
She glared at him, to which he smiled behind his coffee. Seeing no alternative, she focused on her home, how it made her feel, the warmth of her bed, the smell of coffee in the morning. The world began to fade. Loptr lowered his cup. “One thing before you go, the night is not your friend, watch your back, Reign.”
Reign used her emotional anchor to the loft to Fade Walk back to it. As Loptr’s shop disappeared, and the loft appeared, her mind settled, and things became clear. She hadn’t failed them. At least, not then, she had failed them now. She was wallowing, and she had to stop.
Depression was not something to be shaken off, or snapped out of, but she felt hers was coming to an end, and she had some making up to do.
Seattle was the same; the sun was only as much higher in the sky as it should have been. It seemed the time warping properties of the Fade did not extend to Fade Walking.
Richard was still asleep, clad in his cotton pajama pants and no top. He cut quite the figure in bed, his well-defined muscles easily visible in the dawn light.
Reign decided she owed him. Not in the way one could collect, but in the way she could pay back. She marched from the balcony, shedding her clothes with each step. She loved him, loved him with all her heart, and he had proved time and time again he was willing to sacrifice for her; it was time she did the same.
By the time she reached the bed, her naked body was silhouetted in the rising sun. As a young woman, it had not been hard to reach her pre-baby weight, though she wasn’t quite there. The baby had some effect on her body. Her hips were a little wider, her bosom a little fuller. The tradeoff was that her stomach wasn’t quite as flat, but she could handle not being as thin as before.
She couldn’t, of course, sneak up on a werewolf. His eyes drifted open when she put pressure on the bed. They snapped open when he saw her state of dress.
“Reign, everything okay?”
She realized he asked because tears dropped onto the sheets as she crawled up the bed, her legs under her.
“Yes, Richard, oh yes, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I---”
His hand caressed her face as she came to a stop with her face over his taut abs.
“Honey, you have nothing to be sorry for, you did the best you could, and that is all anyone could ask.”
Her heart warmed with his love, the tears came fast as she smiled. She wanted to reply, but her mouth opened and she could not. There was nothing that could be said. She loved him. He loved her. They didn’t need words.
She pulled the band of his pajamas down and kissed his belly button, she breathed his scent in deep for a moment. His response was immediate and obvious. She pulled his pajamas down a little more, wiggling them under his hips and his growing hard-on. His warmth radiated to her, filling her with desire and setting her skin on fire with radiance. She cradled his penis in one hand and gently kissed the top, her warm, moist lips, encircling his erection.
His moan was deep and full of passion. She couldn’t stop crying as she took him into her mouth. Her tears mixed with saliva as she slowly worked her lips up and down, taking more and more of him into her.
“I love you,” he uttered, his eyes on her, his hand gently grasping her hair.
She looked up to him, her eyes on his, her mouth around his erection. With one hand she held herself up, with the other she rubbed his leg, his stomach and his chest.
“I love you too,” she replied. His other hand slid down her skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps as he made his way to her dangling breast. He gently squeezed her nipple, playfully pulling on it, and then twisting it slightly as she bobbed her head on his hardness.
Reign was determined to show him how much she loved him. She could say it until she was blue in the face, but she wanted him to feel it. He hit the back of her throat and she held him there, gently compressing her mouth up and down, moving her head in small circles. She increased the tempo, his body began to tighten, his back
came off the bed ever so slightly.
“Reign, I,” she ignored him as her sole focus was his member. She was determined to make him cum for her, to give him pleasure in an act that was as selfless as one could give for another. She briefly took her mouth off him to run her lips down the shaft, to let the cool air contrast the warmth of her mouth.
She smiled at him as she did so, she couldn’t contain her love for him, her heart was not big enough so it leaked out of her eyes. She paused just long enough to make eye contact with him, then she swirled her tongue around his head and engulfed him with her mouth again.
