The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “I didn’t go through it alone,” she said out loud for Red’s sake. “Red helped me, and so did the maidens, when I couldn’t stand to be near a man. Those ones are rarer, but they happen.” She let her head rest against Fern’s arm, holding her bandaged arm against her side; the painkillers were still working, thankfully. “You were shielding from me, and so I shielded myself from you. It wasn’t like now, now we’re merged and you feel everything. I never would have wanted you to feel that, whether you were shielding from me or not.” She hadn’t wanted him to feel the panic attacks, or the flashbacks or the other numerous kinds of freakout she’d had over the past month, but she’d still yearned for his comfort and the wordless understanding of the bond. In some ways, though, she’d adapted faster because of not having him to rely on — she’d had to be practical, to explain to Red and the maidens what was going on and what she needed, because they couldn’t read her mind.

  “I still can’t believe what a dick I was,” Fern said. Emma laughed. Red gave a snort of agreement and Emma tilted her head back against Fern’s arm to look up at Red, his face all crags and shadows in the moonlight. But the flash of his teeth as he smiled at her was bright. She grinned back, for a moment feeling nothing but peace — and a little awe at how lucky she was in spite of everything to have two of the people she cared about most safe and sound beside her, close enough to laugh with, close enough to touch.

  Fern’s mind stirred against hers. It’s all right, you know, he sent. What you found out when you touched Fatima. About Red.

  Emma froze. You felt that?

  He hesitated, and Emma’s heart almost plummeted to her boots, but what he said next made her pulse return to normal. Only that. He was puzzled. Just a flash of insight, and then, like, fog. She was using magic though, so I guess that makes sense. I wouldn’t have been listening except you’d just run out and I didn’t know if you were okay and — yeah. He looked down at her, eyes in deep shadow, the pale architecture of his face stark in the night. It really is okay. To feel the way you —

  Emma turned away. No it isn’t.

  His arm flexed beneath her temple where she leaned against him. Yes, it is —

  You can’t tell him, Emma sent with too much force.

  His forgiveness — and acquiescence — was wordless and instant, which only made her guilt worse. But guilt was better than the fear she’d felt for a moment there when she thought he’d been in her mind and overheard what Fatima’s magic had told her.

  The fear that he’d overheard all that Fatima’s magic had told her.

  Beside her, Red stirred a moment before Fern did, and Emma had a bad couple of seconds where she thought they’d both somehow been right inside her head in spite of her light mental shielding. But that wasn’t it.

  Red broke away from them and crouched down, putting his arm out in time for Katenka to barrel into him in wolf form. “What the hell, princess — damn!” White light flashed and Red turned his face away, wincing, and then Katenka stood naked and wild-eyed in his embrace. Her nostrils flared and her gaze strayed to him, and then she remembered what she’d come running for and backed up a step.

  “They’re going to kill him and it’s all my fault,” she said.

  “Who?” Red said.

  “Ivan!” She looked from Red to Emma and back again. “If I weren’t here, father would give him another chance, but he says he cannot risk my safety.” She scrubbed tears from her face with both hands. “It’s because of me!”

  Emma went to Red and put a hand on his shoulder. “Where are they?” she asked Katenka.

  The princess pointed over the balcony. “There!”

  They all turned to look; the three figures were small dark smudges against the snow-laden treeline.

  “Red, take us please. Not you,” she said as Katenka started forward. “You need clothes.” Red didn’t need to ask who “us” meant. The world tilted and then they were standing on wet, icy grass, the smell of pine and power riding the air.

  Fern put a hand on Emma’s lower back, the touch anchoring her. She straightened. Red had the wisdom to rematerialize them all several yards away from the party moving into the woods.

  “Yevgeny!” Emma called out as two of the figures turned. The third — hair white in the moonlight — was ahead of them, and his head didn’t come up at the sound of Emma’s voice. She started towards them at a jog, cradling her right arm, which had started to ache.

  “My lady Emma, you must leave,” Yevgeny called back. His voice was deep and dark as sin, and it made all the hairs on Emma’s arms and neck stand up in a way the biting cold hadn’t managed. Knowing it was a bad idea, she started to run.

  Fern was a step behind her, and the power of his beast unfurled in the air between them, shadowed and cool and smoky, responding to the threat in Yevgeny’s stance. The wolf king’s gaze stopped Emma in spite of herself. His eyes were fully wolf and his face was wrong, beautiful but wrong, shining and alien and terrible.

  “My control is good, Emma, but not that good.” He shook himself, pale light bleeding off him into the night. “Leave us to our customs while I am still capable of letting you.”

  “Sorry, not gonna happen. Your daughter is having a meltdown because she thinks you’re about to kill a man to keep her safe, and I am bound to Katenka, so I couldn’t leave this alone even if I wanted to.” Emma planted her feet. “And I don’t want to.”

  Yevgeny’s supernatural glow faded a little. He came forward, his movement slow and controlled, and when he got within arm’s length the weight of his aura made Emma’s teeth chatter. “I am not doing this for her,” he said, voice pitched low. “Ivan wants to die. His actions this night have proved that, yet my power as the leader of his pack keeps him here, and it is neither fair nor honorable.” Yevgeniy regarded Emma with unblinking wolf eyes. “He is sick, Emma. He has lived with the berserker shadow on his spirit too long, and now his heart is poisoned with the longing for death. Being held to the pack has not helped. Now I end his suffering, and I do it under the pretense that I am protecting my pack so that he may die with dignity and respect. I will explain it to Yekaterina later.” He turned to go, and Emma put a hand on his arm.

  His flesh was hot beneath the white silk shirt, and he vibrated with power, a live current that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Yevgeny looked down at her as though shocked that she’d touched him. “Let me try to help,” she asked.

  Fern’s mental reaction was like a blast of cold air in her mind. Em, this is dangerous.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. I know.

  “You cannot help,” Yevgeny said, and Emma turned back to face him. “Yekaterina is already bound to you by the pledge, and Ivan is bound to her through the pack. If your power could fix this, it would have done so already.”

  “Just let me talk to him.”

  Yevgeny opened his mouth to speak and then closed it as the other wolf, a few yards away and still in human shape, uttered a short bark. Yevgeniy’s response was a similar vocalization that ended in a bitten-off whine of frustration. To Emma he said, “You have very little time. And we must stay within range. I hope you know you will not talk him out of it,” he added, his voice gentler than before. “You have many strengths, Caller of the Blood, but some things cannot be salvaged.”

  Emma nodded. “Thanks, Yevgeny.” He motioned for her to go ahead, indicating with a tilt of his chin for Fern to follow her, and she managed to contain her epic eye-roll until the wolf king could no longer see her face. Red, she sent via their connection. I think you’re the only ancient shapechanger I’ve ever met who isn’t ridiculously melodramatic.

  His laugh in her head was like melted chocolate: warm, sweet, delicious and addictive. Fern ain’t too bad, he replied, amusement turning his mental voice to velvet and almost hiding the note of watchfulness in his telepathic touch.

  Emma clenched her fists and tried to focus. Fern isn’t ancient, she sent. Then she reached out to both Red and Fern at the same time. Cover me
?

  They didn’t need to reply with words, mental or otherwise. Fern fanned out to her right, his mouth still curving in a small smile from overhearing the exchange between her and Red, and Red brought up the left. Emma could hear Yevgeny and the other wolf following as well.

  Leaves and frost crunched underfoot as Emma approached Ivan. He stood where he’d been left, head still down. It was quiet under the trees; somewhere, a lone cricket trilled, but everything else in the wood had fallen silent and watchful. Emma pulled Red’s massive leather jacket closer around her waist and cleared her throat.

  “Little girl,” Ivan sighed. “What do you want?”

  Emma considered that. “Well, if I thought you had more than five minutes left to live, I’d want you to stop calling me little girl.”

  He lifted his head as though it weighed more than it should. His eyes were silver in the moonlight and he chuckled, once, a dry and hollow sound. “Brash American girl, think you can talk me around, do you? With your attitude.” He snarled. “Maybe if you offer to fuck me I’ll change my mind.”

  That suggestion prompted a chorus of snarls from everyone but Fern. “Pretty sure you don’t want me to fuck you,” Emma said. “Didn’t work out so well for the last guy who tried it.”

  Stunned silence from the other men, Fern included; a look flashed in Ivan’s eyes, murderous and protective, before he looked away. “You posture almost as well as a wolf,” he said, the rancor gone from his voice. “Better than me. But you cannot help me. Let the king do his work.”

  “Come with us,” Emma said. Ivan turned to her, gaze flat, swaying as though he’d walked for a year and a day and all he wanted to do was rest. The silence from the other men turned heavy, and Emma itched with the urge to shake Ivan, but she dared not risk touching him and scaring him off. Not yet. “I know Yevgeny’s going to try to send one of his wolves with us, to protect me. You seem like you’d be good in a fight.” She shrugged. “Isn’t there even one thing you’ve left unfinished in this world?”

  He closed his eyes in despair. “I am dangerous, devotchka. ” His throat worked, stifling a sob. “ I can go nowhere of my own free will except to my death, do you understand?” He opened his eyes and took a step toward Emma, bared his teeth, shoved his hands through his hair. “I have seen it all. There is no such thing as finished, as done, as a life well-lived. It is all pain and shit and death and I am not interested in any of it, anymore.”

  “Not even interested in seeing what the world’s like with the Caller of the Blood in it?”

  “Oh, yes!” He uttered a high, wild laugh that was more terrifying than anything he could have said to threaten her. “Excellent! There has never been anyone like you in the world, let’s see how I feel about life after I’ve killed you and eaten your face! Exterminating the one hope for the survival of our kind — that is sure to fix me!”

  “Actually, there was someone like me once. That’s where we’re going, to try and find anyone who might have known her.” Emma took a deep breath and summoned the power in her marked hand, just in case one of the others tried to intervene, and then spoke. “Pledge to me, and come with us.”

  She heard Red hiss at one of the others, probably Yevgeny. Fern’s mind and heart were wedged against hers, his presence in the merge filling her with quiet faith.

  Ivan stared. “You are mad.”

  Yevgeny agreed with Ivan. “If the pledge could save him, then it would have done so through Katenka,” he called, voice heavy with his beast.

  “Not necessarily,” Emma said, gaze still locked to Ivan’s. “The magic that runs through your people, that connects them, is what allows the magic of the pledge to heal the wasting disease. But your disease is different,” she said to Ivan. “Your disease isn’t about the strength of the race. It’s about you. Pledge to me, and if it doesn’t work, you’re no worse off than you are now.”

  “I could kill you,” Ivan said. “If I made the pledge and killed you, that would be worse.” He shook his head like a dog snapping at a fly, taking a step back. “It does not matter, I wish to die. Yevgeny!”

  “You won’t kill me, Ivan. I know I look like just a girl to you, but you have no idea what I’m capable of. If we were bound, your lifeforce connected to mine, I’d have the power to render you unconscious in seconds.” Emma spread her hands. The black mark in her right palm glowed a banked cherry red, cheerful and lethal and ready. “ Pledge to me.”

  Real fear widened Ivan’s eyes, and though he was too much a wolf to back any farther down, every line of his body seemed to sing with the urge to run. “I cannot be collared again,” he said, voice shaking. “And I have the right to choose my death. Who are you to take that from me?”

  “It’s not a choice you’re making, and you know it.” Emma put her fists on her hips. “You’re doing this because you think you’ve run out of options, but you’re wrong. You’re not terminally ill. Nobody has demanded your execution, not yet.” She took a step toward him, waving her right hand in Red’s direction when he rumbled an almost subsonic warning. “The pledge isn’t slavery. The bond goes both ways. I won’t lie, we both sacrifice something, and we won’t know what it is until it’s done. But we both gain something too. And if it doesn’t work, Yevgeny will still be here to put you down, if that’s what you want.”

  Ivan looked past her, gaze roving over the others, pain carving deep lines in his face and making him look a thousand years old. Finally he met her eyes. “You do not know me. Why would you do this?”

  Gotcha.

  She held her left hand out. She couldn’t answer him with the truth; it would sound arrogant and maybe she’d lose him.

  So she told him the second-most honest part. “This is what I’m meant for.”

  It wasn’t a lie. She was meant for this, she knew it now. But that wasn’t why she was doing it. She was doing it because he needed her. Somehow, in her bones and in her blood, in the spaces between her heartbeats and in the rise and fall of her chest, she knew what he needed. And she didn’t think he deserved to die just because she didn’t know him, didn’t love him, didn’t need him back.

  Ivan swallowed, throat working, and took her hand. His grip was cold and dry. “I do not know what to do,” he said.

  Emma squeezed his hand. “You will.”

  23

  The only way to know if the pledge had cured Ivan was for Yevgeny to release him from the pack, which was a process Emma still didn’t understand and that Yevgeny wasn’t willing to try on the estate’s grounds and without backup. He called for more of his wolves, and they set off at a lope through the woods, to the borders of the estate where more guards would let them out and into the true forest that lay beyond Yevgeny’s walls. Ivan still looked haggard and worn thin as he glanced over his shoulder at Emma as they left, but there was also a newness in his face, an uncertainty that hadn’t been there before. Uncertainty was okay. It was better than apathy.

  The pledge had shaken him, and for her part, all Emma wanted to do once it was finished was spend about a thousand years brushing her teeth. Two pledge rituals in less than twenty four hours and no spare toothbrush at the jackal palace, oh boy. When Ivan, Yevgeny and the other guards disappeared into the trees, Emma started for the mansion on wobbly but determined legs.

  Red fell into step beside her, his hand jammed into a jeans pocket. “I could just jump you back to the house y’know.”

  “I f-f-feel like walking.” Emma grimaced at the taste of blood still coating her teeth. “Still all wired from the pledge.”

  “Yeah, you look it.”

  She glared up at him. “What’s that supposed to m-m-mean?”

  He put a little more space between them. Emma felt Fern send Red a warning look. “Nothin’ sweetheart,” Red said. “You just got that glint in your eye, that’s all. Kickin’ asses and takin’ names.”

  Emma snorted and focused on the path ahead. “My eyes are black, aren’t they.”

  Fern sent her waves of reassurance that war
med her and chased off some of the shakes. Red made a noncommittal sound and returned to her side, long legs eating up the distance. They walked in silence for a while. The closer they got to the mansion, cheerful yellow light spilling from its windows, the more normal Emma felt. Physically anyhow.

  “So, uh, Em…”

  She looked up at Red. “Yeah?”

  His gaze was on his feet, expression thoughtful. “When I made the pledge,” he began, taking a deep breath as though searching for the words. “Afterward, I mean. You said that the magic of the pledge likes sex.”

  Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit. Emma started walking faster. “It’s kinda weird to talk about.”

  Red kept pace with her. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” He was silent long enough for Emma to start to relax, then he said with relish, “But when Ivan made the pledge it didn’t seem at all like the magic was demanding that you — where are you going? I’m just curious!”

  “Very funny, Red,” Emma muttered as she accelerated up the steps that led to the sitting room’s French doors.

  Maybe she’d have been able to stay and face him if she really had been lying when she’d told him that. But she’d believed it. It wasn’t a great choice of words; the magic seemed to be not so much about sex as desire and attraction, and those two things weren’t always sexual. When Katenka had made the pledge, the attraction Emma felt for the girl was platonic, a longing to ensure the light of her spirit wasn’t lost to the world. But Katenka had very much enchanted Emma, made her feel protective, made her want to see the princess smile — and that had all intensified when they began the ritual.

  That was the kicker: the pledge intensified feelings that were already there, and not just the sexual feelings. It didn’t create them. But Emma hadn’t known that until now.