“No,” I stopped him before he could introduce himself, “don’t tell me your name.”
Confused, he sank back on the couch. He told me he was from a very small pack to the south, just on the current edge of IronMoon’s influence. Gabel had annexed them two years ago. One of his first conquests-by-phone. He had not given them a second thought since, save that he intended to expand his borders further, and that pack might make a good staging area. Gabel paid little attention to them. That meant they’d be perfect to traffic a message from the SableFur.
I sat down across from him, careful to keep my eagerness in check. “No one can hear us. No one is listening. Why have you come to me?”
He fidgeted, glanced beyond my shoulder, then back at me. His eyes rested on my Marked arm, and he didn’t hide the shudder at seeing the raw scars. He licked his dry lips, the scent of fear rising off him. “If I ask a question it’s a secret, right? From everyone?”
“It is your question and your answer. You can tell anyone you wish, but I am bound by silence.”
“To everyone,” he whispered.
“To everyone,” I affirmed, keeping my hope on a very, very tight chain as my heart swelled. At the other end of the Bond, Gabel rumbled like a storm in a deep chasm.
He moved his lips as if practicing his question before he spoke it. “Should the line in the forest be crossed?”
My hope intensified. Such a common question! It was a practical joke among Oracles. Cross a road or a river, jump into a lake, take a plunge. Always translating as Do The Big Thing Or Not. This wolf couldn’t have come all the way to IronMoon and risked Gabel just to ask me that. I suppressed my relieved laughter. Anita or Kiery had sent him.
I waited for him to offer something else, but he didn’t. Fine. If I needed to through the farce of the Tides for such a question, so be it. “Your question, your answer. I will go to the Tides this evening.”
That evening I chose my runes with care and decided to include balance again. The point on which light and dark spun. My fingers trembled with eagerness, and it took a long time to quell my hope and to block out Gabel’s increasing fury—he knew I was up to mischief.
The Tides waited for me.
* * *
~*~ The Vision In The Bowl ~*~
* * *
The forest. Alone. Wet leaves. Drizzle. Wolf form, leaves under my paws, the scent of everything in my nose.
The scent of blood.
Where the RedWater wolves had died.
Two piles of bodies waited. On the left the bodies were piled high, jaws snapped and canines removed. On the right were just two bodies, jaws also opened, teeth also removed, but their ruffs bloody from my life-ending bite.
Between the bodies sat a stone table with legs made of burned bones and a flat, granite top. Carved into the stone’s face were four runes: balance, courage, love, and one I didn’t recognize. The first three had been carved by a skilled hand. The forth had been created by something that had slammed the rock with such force, it had charred the stone itself and now glittered like it had been crusted with glass.
The Tides trembled under my feet. This wasn’t the question. This wasn’t the answer.
I backed away and the Tides trembled again, shaking all the eager mischief and glee and hope out of me like dust shaken off a carpet.
Behind me the Tides stretched out to the horizon. Before me was the forest, resting beyond the rocks and bodies.
The two RedWater wolves stirred, stumbled, got to their paws. The one with the gutted belly still had loops of intestines hanging free in the leaves, the other had his shattered hind leg and gashed face. Both greeted me with wagging tails and broken jaws, the lower mandible hanging slack, and their missing canines obvious.
“This...” I whispered, “this is not his question...”
I picked my way up the hillside, crouched low, and crawled over the ridgeline.
I tumbled down into a new, different forest. This one smelled like ocean and sand and seaweed, and there was sand and scrub mixed in with the forest underbrush. I shook the sand out of my fur and skulked deeper into the woods. Eventually I found two wolves in human form talking in low tones, separated by a line in the leaves. The wind carried their scent, and I had a good look at their faces. The only remarkable thing about either was the one to my left had a raw, red, dripping-blood piece of meat in his palm, and he offered this to the wolf on my right.
The MeatMan was tall, brown-haired, amber eyed, straight-shouldered. The air bent around him. The other wolf deferred to him. I squinted as my fur tingled. I’d never met or seen Alpha Magnes of SableFur. Was this him? Perhaps not, as he seemed a bit too young, but I might not be seeing him true-to-flesh. I crouched lower and squirmed closer. The other wolf didn’t seem like a small coward; he had some authority, too. Another Alpha, likely, but a smaller Alpha.
Blood dripped between MeatMan’s fingers, and my mouth watered at the scent rising off that fresh meat. I fought the urge to charge and snatch it from his hand.
The MeatMan urged the other man to take it.
The man shifted into wolf form and allowed the MeatMan to drop the meat into his waiting mouth. The line of the leaves pushed backward. Now the MeatTaker was on the MeatMan’s side.
The MeatMan smiled, turned, and walked back east. The wolf gulped down his prize, then bounded back over the line and headed west.
Jealousy, Loyalty, Deception
SableFur was not coming for me.
Even if that had been Alpha Magnes in the dream, the Petitioner’s question was, more or less, real. The Moon had just put a few words in edgewise.
I sniffled and rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes.
“You shouldn’t have gotten yourself hopeful, Gianna,” I whispered to myself. I slid my bowl back into its velvet bag and put the runes in their pouches.
Nobody was coming for me. Not Shadowless, not my father, not SableFur, not my Oracle sisters.
The Petitioner was here for something else, and any first-year Seer would have recognized what the MeatMan part of that vision had been about. Betrayal brewing. Someone bribing someone else. And all this was some lousy trap. The Petitioner was a plant.
The Bond squirmed a little, and Gabel’s rancid impatience waited at the other end like a fetid pool.
Stupid me. This was why Oracles rarely mated. I’d never thought about it. Now I did: my vows demanded my silence. I couldn’t tell Gabel what I’d seen. There were no exceptions.
None.
No what-if-this or how-about-that or he-might-destroy-the-world-and-kill-everyone or someone’s-pup-will-die. No exceptions.
This was how we were other. It wasn’t our gifts or prestige bequeathed by a force beyond the Alpha. No, it was worse:
We couldn’t be trusted. We put the privacy of a single wolf above the safety of an entire pack.
I sobbed quietly. My sisters weren’t coming to get me. I had to keep a potential betrayal a secret. I’d betray my pack, my... mate. The betrayal could result in his death or harm to another pack. How would the Moon weigh me if one of those came to pass? I was the one who could tell Gabel look for an Alpha trading in flesh and blood.
I still had balance in my palm. “So which is it? The cardinal sin of betraying my mate and Alpha, or the cardinal sin of opening my mouth?”
I slept in my own room that night. Gabel didn’t drag me to bed, but he came in at dawn. By that time I’d been pacing for an hour trying to figure out what to do.
“Buttercup, you seem... distressed.”
Unprepared for his arrival, I couldn’t respond.
His eyes narrowed. He slunk over to me. “Did that wolf bother you?”
I backed up a step. Gabel matched my stride. My fingers grazed the wall behind me. Gabel studied me up and down, looking for clues that I was not as he had left me. A deep sort of violence slid between us. “No.” I gulped. “No, his question was just difficult.”
All I wanted to do was weep. I should have been able to
turn to my mate for comfort even if I couldn’t tell him why. But I was completely alone with this wretched choice. I had to choose between loyalty to my de-facto mate or my integrity as an Oracle.
“Difficult?” Gabel prodded.
His scent made me dizzy. I saw the piles of dead wolves again, and my tongue tasted of blood. I couldn’t breathe with him so close. “His question. His vision.”
Gabel’s hands seized my forearms. “But it upset you. Did he upset you? You seemed... very enthused... to meet him.”
His voice held a low growl and a possessive snarl curling just under it.
I laughed, weak and bitter. “And you think that’s why I slept alone? So I wouldn’t bring his scent to our bed? A little wolf like that?”
“Why would you even waste the glance?” Gabel growled.
Such a foolish, pathetic question. Beneath him. “You know that wolf is no threat to you.”
“You know Gardenia is no threat to you.”
“I never gave a damn about Gardenia.”
“Lies are beneath you.”
“I have to go downstairs.”
His grip didn’t ease.
“He is waiting,” I prodded softly.
“And I am here! Your Alpha, your—” He stumbled on the word. Fury gnashed his teeth together.
“The sooner I take him his answer, the sooner he will be gone.”
Gabel scowled but released me. He did want that wolf gone. “I do not like this. Something isn’t right about this.”
“Are you going to act like this every time someone petitions me?” I pushed around him. “You chose to Mark an Oracle. This is how it works.”
“You are miserable. You were so pleased yesterday, like he had brought you some forbidden delicacy. Now you are wracked by tears,” he stated roughly.
“I told you, his vision was difficult.”
And it was half mine, apparently.
Gabel followed me, practically stepping on my heels as we entered the hallway to the drawing room.
“Gabel, please! I can’t think straight with you like this.”
“I can’t think straight when you’re... upset.”
“It was an upsetting vision.” My voice cracked.
“I will wait here for you.”
“In the middle of the hall?”
“Yes. Right here.” He folded his arms and glared at me.
Confused, I continued down the hall to the double doors. Every few steps I glanced behind me, and Gabel would gesture for me to keep walking.
“Will you go away?” I hissed.
“No.”
His presence cluttered up my mind. I stood at the doors of the drawing room, waiting for the instinct that would tell me which way to go, and nothing.
Screwing him had been such a mistake.
The Moon had made me Hers before I had ever been anything else. My fingernails dug into the wood, and I squeezed my eyes shut against tears. Gabel was a hot coal within me, a smoldering, sullen heartbeat that echoed my own.
The wolf inside the drawing room stood to greet me. The sharp gleam in his eyes struck me in an uncomfortable way.
A trap. This had all been a trap. For me? For Gabel? IronMoon? Some small local politics that didn’t matter?
“Do you have my answer?” he pressed before I had even sat down.
I nodded, my emotions sliding under the familiar mask of an Oracle. “Two wolves in human form in a forest. There was a line in the forest. The wolf on the far side of the line offered the wolf on the nearside a piece of fresh, raw meat. The other wolf took the meat. The line shifted so that that both wolves stood on the same side.”
“And?”
“And nothing. That was the vision.” My heart thundered under my ribs. That was all the vision for him. And I’d told him. Told him and not warned Gabel.
“But that wasn’t the question.”
I shook my head. “That was the answer given.”
He glared at me. “That wasn’t the question.”
I stared at him a moment. Was I supposed to say something? Was he waiting—no, he was just plain angry. I stood. “Goodbye, wolf. I have nothing else for you.”
“Wait! We aren’t done.”
I went to the drawing room doors and yanked them open. The air was no better out here. Here it smelled of Gabel. I coughed.
“We aren’t done. Get back here!” The wolf snarled behind me.
Gabel’s form sliced between him and I.
“Did I just hear you growl at her?” Gabel inquired.
“I—I—” the wolf gabbled, “I, no, I—”
The Mark throbbed and pounded.
Whatever he had been about to say withered and died under Gabel’s anger.
“Leave,” Gabel growled.
The wolf yipped some pathetic noise and bolted down the hallway.
I buried my face in my hands and shuddered. What had I done? Why did the Moon do this to me? Had Gabel taken me out of Her light, dragged me into his personal Hell-Kennel on earth?
Gabel’s smoldering emotions slid over me and through me like tentacles. He lowered his head to my neck and inhaled my scent. A male assuring himself his mate was healthy and safe. An act meant to comfort and bring solace, that he cared, that it mattered to him.
I could not call what was within me just then as caring. Maybe in Gabel’s own strange, twisted way it was a kind of caring.
Gabel clicked his teeth together. I jumped at the snap.
“Did he... disrespect... you, buttercup?”
“No.” Instinct told me to confess everything I knew. An instinct almost as powerful as the Bond to obey my Alpha and to place the safety of the pack before anything else.
Gabel frowned. He sniffed my neck again, brushed his lips across my skin to taste me. What did this tell him? He coiled within me. I could not name a single emotion, just a dark tangle like some nightmare parasite embedded into every tissue and membrane. “You are lying, buttercup. He upset you.”
“Not him. His question.” Not even his question. The not-answer. The answer that told me no one was coming to save me. That I was truly, completely, totally alone with Gabel. “I cannot tell you, Gabel. His question, his vision, his answer.”
Gabel’s fingers slid under my chin and pulled my gaze up to his. His eyes were such beautiful blue-green, but his gaze hard and dark. All his doubts and anger were clear to me through the Bond, but there wasn’t a rebuttal because they were justified.
They weren’t coming. No one was coming. Not even the Moon. I was alone with him.
He tasted my anguish. An anguish he could not solve. Instinct gnawed on him to remedy it, but at the same time, pain and fear were things he conquered. He was not the master of this anguish, but he had to live with it.
“I do not like wolves coming here, taking your time, and upsetting you, buttercup,” he told me in a rough tone. “Especially not no-regard wolves from territories so small I do not even remember conquering them. You and I will have to discuss this later. When you are not upset.”
“There is nothing to discuss. You knew what I was when you Marked me.”
“And I know what you are now,” he snapped.
The Bond all but purred with the unspoken words.
Mate. Luna. Queen.
Gabel yanked his hands off me and stepped back, shoulders tight and jaw clenched. His eyes burned blue.
I bit my lip so hard I tasted a drop of blood. He was glorious, and I wanted him, even if I shouldn’t, even if I knew—
He spun on his heel and stalked away before his hands could betray him.
The air did not clear when he was gone. I covered my face with my hands and sobbed once, twice.
Platinum melted out of the room downwind of the drawing room.
I snarled. “Eavesdropping?”
She slid along the far side of the hallway in the direction Gabel had gone. Her eyes dared me to challenge her.
“Hurry along,” I told her through gritted teeth, tears welling in
my eyes. If only she’d do me the favor and get Gabel away from me!
But she couldn’t. She’d been my only real hope, and now it was gone.
“Finally shedding a tear?” she asked suspiciously. I snapped at her, and she slithered down into the shadows after Gabel.
Did she suspect? So what if she did? What would Gardenia stand to gain if she knew Gabel and I had consummated the Bond? If anything, she’d want to make sure nobody found out.
... right?
Smoldering
I did not want there to be an us.
I tried to work my frustration out with Hix and Flint, but after three days of wringing myself out, Flint demanded I take a day off. That meant I couldn’t avoid Gabel during the day.
So here I was, back in his office again, so he didn’t get the satisfaction of accusing me of avoiding him. And he didn’t want to admit to avoiding me by coming to bed late.
Gabel stared at his map in utter silence, as he so often did.
It was marked in various colors and labeled with pack names, Alpha names and other markers showing encampments, outposts, and other information relevant to Gabel’s quest to become King-Alpha. It was flanked with more pieces of paper containing various notes and diagrams. Gabel, already looking the part in dark pants and a button-down with the sleeves rolled over his muscled forearms, contemplated his domain.
He was too damn easy on the eyes.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I approached the map.
This would be easier if he wore grungy sweatpants and a stained wifebeater.
Gabel’s blue gaze smoldered, and his attention churned as his gaze slid toward me.
Something about the map had always repulsed me. Gabel’s ambitions were no secret to me, but just seeing the big swathes of his domain and being able to figure out his next target was too much to absorb. Now, for whatever reason, my curiosity was piqued. Probably because being curious about his ambition was safer than sitting on the couch and admiring his physique, trying not to think about what his hands felt like on my skin.
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