“You can still change that.”
“I hope that’s true.” I missed Casey. She may have been the younger sister, but I needed her as much as she’d ever needed me. “I care about her so much, but I’m not sure if that’s enough.”
“Of course it’s enough. What more could someone want?”
“I left her. I left her when she needed me.”
“You left because you believed you had to.” Mom stopped. “I understand that now, and my guess is that Casey does too.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean she should forgive me. I’m her big sister. I had a duty to protect her.”
Mom put her hands on my arms and looked right into my eyes. “You were young and upset. We can’t spend our entire lives regretting our decisions. We’d get nowhere.”
I blinked back tears I refused to shed. “I wish there was a way to make it up to her.”
“You saved her life.”
“But she was only in risk because of me. I helped them.”
Mom shook her head. “Did you at any time want to hurt Casey?”
“Of course not!” Anger welled up inside me at the thought. “I’d give my life to protect her.”
“Then there is no reason to blame yourself. Once you discovered what was going on you risked everything to save her. And you never looked back.”
Despite my attempts to stop them, several tears rolled down my cheeks. “I guess I owe you an apology too. For leaving without saying goodbye.”
“And I owe you many apologizes. For taking away your choice to be raised with your birth father, for hiding your true nature.”
“But apologies don’t change anything. They don’t change the past.”
“And they certainly don’t change the future.” Mom pulled me into the hug. “How about we focus on the future?”
“I’d like that.” I held onto her, needing her familiar smell and feel. Despite the time we’d spent apart, she still had to ability to make me feel safe and loved. I guess a mother always had that. After a few moments I stepped back and immediately changed the subject. I needed to stop the tears. “Are those the gardens?” I pointed to tall wooden fences with ivy growing over them.
“Yes, here we are.” She stepped through a small opening in the fence. “Ready for a tour?”
“Sure.” Compared to everything else, touring the gardens didn’t seem too bad.
Mom wound her way through rows of plants, pointing out the different herbs and vegetables and introducing a few people along the way. They each smiled politely, and most shook my hand. I tried to pay attention, but I knew I’d never remember all the names.
Finally she stopped in front of a row toward the back of the gardens. “Don’t forget to grab a tomato for Jared.”
I looked down, and sure enough it was a row of tomato plants.
“Could I try to help?” I needed to get my hands dirty. There was something about working with the earth that came so naturally to me. I was sure it was part of being a bear.
“Of course.” My mom nodded. “Slade?”
A youngish guy, who was either in his late twenties or early thirties looked up from his work. He brushed off some dirt from his pants before standing up. He bowed his head slightly. “Hello, Taliana.”
“There is no reason to be formal. This is my daughter, Vera. Would you mind an extra hand? She’d like to help.”
He grinned. “Sure thing, Vera. I’m Slade.” He held out his hand.
I accepted the handshake. “Nice to meet you.”
He handed me a trowel. “We’re planting tomatoes.”
“I assumed that.” Mom glared at me, so I backtracked. “But thanks for making sure I knew.”
Mom smiled. “I’m going to stop by and see a few people. I’ll come by this way before I head back.”
“Sounds great.” For better or worse, a wave of relief washed over me when she walked away. I knew she was hiding stuff from me, and keeping my mouth shut was harder than I expected. I was used to saying exactly what was on my mind.
“You’ve done this before.” Slade wasn’t asking a question.
“Yes. Growing up.” Mom had always loved her garden. I’d spent many of my childhood weekends helping her. Everything changed when I reached my teens. I felt lost, and I knew something was different about me. Looking back I now knew it was because my body was begging to shift. There’s only so long you can hold off the first change.
“You won’t have to take a job, but we’d love to have you here.” He seemed nervous, like asking was somehow inappropriate.
“Take a job when?”
“Anytime I guess. But like I said, I know you don’t actually have to.”
“I’m not really staying.” Maybe that fell under the giving away too much information category, but it seemed silly to lie.
“You’re not?” He set down his trowel. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“You’d give up your place in the line and abandon Norco even if it left us to complete ruin?” He brushed his brown hair away from his eyes.
“Uh, I didn’t say that.” Now I was really going to get myself in trouble.
“Taking a sabbatical, sure, but may I speak freely?”
“Aren’t you already?” What was with the guys here asking that question?
“You’re already in your twenties, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you ready to pick your mate? You’re not getting younger.”
My trowel flew out of my hand and landed right next to him. “What did you say?”
“Whoa, calm down.” He held out his hands in front of him as if in defense. “I heard about what you did to Eno. No need to do that to me.”
“Why are you calling me old?” I touched my chest. “Do I look old to you?”
His face turned red. “No, you look good. I mean great.”
“I’m not old.” I picked up the trowel and got back to work.
“Not old in years exactly, just old to be un-mated.”
“And how old are you then?” I watched him. His face seemed slightly weathered, but I knew it was likely from hours spent outside.
“Twenty-five.”
“And you’re un-mated?”
“No mate for me yet.” He shrugged. “It’s not by choice.”
“Come on, I’m sure there are some girls here you like.”
“Of course, but that doesn’t mean they choose me.”
“Women choose their mates here?” Now that sounded like a good way to run things.
“Yes. It’s always been that way.”
“I’m sure you will be picked.”
“If I’m not, I’m not. I’ve done my military commitment, and now I’m doing what I love.” He spread out his arms at the garden. “But you’ll have to choose.”
“Why would it matter if I didn’t take a mate?”
“Because there’d be no heir and your line would die.” He went back to planting.
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that at all.
“Maybe consider staying around?” There was a hopefulness in his voice.
“I take it you like Gareth.”
“He takes care of his people. There is no one better for the job.”
“I’ll see what I decide to do.”
“If you’re looking for options, know I’m available.” He winked.
I laughed. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll remind you when I petition for you tonight.”
“Uh, what?”
“You don’t know about the Petere ceremony ?” He asked.
“The what?”
“Any eligible man may petition for you tonight.” He grinned. “It’s sure to be a long evening.”
“Petition for me?” My hand flew to my chest. “You have got to be crazy.”
“Nope. We were supposed to have one for your sister, but well, she was already in love with someone else.”
“Casey? But s
he’s not even—”
“We know. She’d never be able to take over here, but Gareth still claimed her as his daughter so she is a member of the clan.”
“Were you going to petition for her?”
He shook his head. “No. She was too young for me. You on the other hand, you’re older.”
“Yes, I’m an old maid. I get it.”
“Your words not mine.”
I laughed. Maybe Slade had a better sense of humor than I thought.
“Where are we going exactly?” I’d followed Gareth for over a half-hour already, and I was starting to question my decision to follow him blindly. Not that I had much of a choice. If I wanted to find out what the man was really up to—and I definitely needed to do that—then following him was my only option.
We’d turned out of the courtyard and walked back like we were heading to the glade, but at the last second we turned and headed west before we did a zig zag pattern through the forest. It was as though he were choosing our route in order to deliberately confuse anyone watching us. I assumed that was his point.
“You’ll see when we get there.” He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to meet my eye.
“That’s not particularly helpful. Any reason for this mystery?”
“Why waste words when you don’t need them? You’ll see soon enough.” There was something off putting about Gareth’s speech. Sometimes he sounded so stoic and wise, but then there was also something fake about it. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but now it nagged at me.
“I assume you’ve lived here your whole life?” Fishing for information under the cover of polite conversation was usually a safe trick.
“Aside from a short sabbatical in my twenties, yes.”
“And what was that sabbatical for?” I attempted to keep my tone light so he wouldn’t get suspicious. I couldn’t risk setting off warning bells.
“Just a standard trip away. All of our men and women do it.”
“And women?” That got me thinking. “Taliana did too?”
“Yes.” He picked up his pace.
“At the same time as yours?”
“No. She was a few years younger.”
“Did she go alone?”
“No. She went with a friend.”
“Chris?” I took a chance even though the name could set Gareth off.
“Is there a reason you’re asking me so many questions?”
“It’s how I get when I’m nervous.” That sounded plausible even though it was completely untrue. I never got nervous.
“She did do her sabbatical with Chris. They were as close as siblings growing up.”
If I’d been doing an interrogation, I’d have pushed him. I’d have asked him how that made him feel, but this wasn’t an interrogation. I wasn’t the one running things, and if I wasn’t careful I was going to lose any good grace I had with my host. “Oh. I bet this is a pretty great place to grow up.”
He bought my insincere words—at least he seemed to. “It’s the best.” He looked at me. “Not that New Orleans wouldn’t be exciting.”
“How’d you know I was from there originally?”
“The king wouldn’t choose an outsider to run his security, now would he?”
“Not by choice.” Who knew what he was going to do now? I’d left a few guys in charge, but none of them were ready to take over completely. Still, Levi was smart and resourceful, and he had the best advisor around.
“You don’t need to be so suspicious. The ‘mystery’, as you called it, isn’t for any nefarious plan.”
“I wouldn’t think it would be.” In other words, I knew he wasn’t going to admit to it.
“Yet you admit to being nervous.”
“Nervous about the whole situation.”
“I see.” He continued walking up the steep terrain.
After another twenty minutes he switched back toward the east, and we entered another wooded area.
“We’re almost there,” he called over his shoulder. I’d let him walk ahead.
“Great.” I wondered what kind of place he could be taking me that was worth all the theatrics and the distance.
We walked deeper into the woods, until the canopy of trees was so thick it completely blocked out the sun. There was something almost magical about this forest, a hazy feeling in the air that immediately put me off. Where the hell were we?
“We’re not as far away from the main compound as you think.”
“Yes, we did quite a few switch backs.”
“And the walk home will be much shorter. We’ll cut through the barracks.”
“The barracks?” There was only one kind of barracks I knew of and it involved military.
“Yes. Where we house our soldiers.”
“I wasn’t aware you had a formal military here.”
“How else would we defend ourselves?”
“I knew you had soldiers, but not the formality.” Paranormals generally didn’t bother with it.
“The Society would be wise to make things more formal.”
“You are aware of our set up?”
“Yes. I understand you have the intelligence and strength, but do you really believe that will be enough in an all-out war?”
“Are you anticipating such a war? There hasn’t been a true paranormal war in centuries.”
“Whatever has happened once will happen again.”
A chill ran through me, and I was never cold. There was something nearly prophetic about his words. My only question was whether he planned to start that war himself. “A war like that would destroy us all, including the humans.”
“Some victors would survive and repopulate. As I said, it’s happened before.”
“I’d like to believe we’ve come farther in the last few hundred years and no one would be stupid enough to risk the fate of so many.”
“You make the mistake of equating stupidity with rash decisions. They are two different things.”
“Yes, but they overlap.”
He laughed lightly. “They do, don’t they?”
We continued through the darkness until we came to what appeared to be a large cave. The opening was narrow, and it was blocked by a large boulder. He started to push the boulder away. I wasn’t going in there.
He must have noticed me tense. “Are you all right?”
“I’d prefer to wait out here.”
“This isn’t the kind of cave you’re picturing.”
“Is it a tight place?”
“No. Quite the opposite.”
“But it’s a cave.”
“Not all caves are small and narrow.” He pushed the boulder enough for us to slip through. “You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“Why should I?”
“Have I given you any reason not to trust me?”
“Not explicitly, but on the flip side you haven’t given me many reasons to trust you.”
“What if I told you that this cave holds the one thing that is going to determine who wins the war?”
“First, we still don’t even know if there is going to be a war.” I’d grown tired of him dancing around his point. What reason did he have to believe a war was brewing?
“There is.” He crossed his arms.
“Even if I believed you, why would you show me? Why trust me when you’ve already told me you have an entire army?”
“An army is important, but its leaders are cruicial.”
“And I fit in how?”
“I already told you I had a job offer.”
“Yes, to help you unify the bears.”
“That unification is only the first step in protecting us from the war.” He crossed his arms.
“Who’s the opponent then? If it’s not only the bears, then who is it? You know I’m not turning my back on The Society.”
“Neither would I.”
“Then who is the opponent?” I was losing patience. If Gareth was playing a game, I wanted no part in it.
“The witches.”
“Tiffany.” She had to be involved.
“She’s part of it.”
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“I know that you’re not going to keep her in that prison of yours for long.”
“She’s not breaking out.” No one escapes the in-house Society prison. Many had attempted it, but none had ever breached the walls.
“Not herself.”
“My dad’s in there, so he can’t help this time,” I mumbled.
“And your brother?” He watched me closely.
“You know about my brother?”
“Bryant. Yes. Not my favorite Pteron.”
“Not mine either.” I wasn’t going to pretend to like him.
“They’re working with some terrifying forces that go back to the original wars.”
“Why don’t you tell the king? He needs to prepare.”
“Why would the king believe me? And even if he did, why should I put the security of my people in the hands of a man who’s young enough to be my son? And a man without a real army.”
“Then why talk to me? I assume you realize I’m the same age as the king.” Twenty-three had never felt so young.
“Let me show you what we have on our side.”
“The ‘stuff’ that’s in the cave?” I adopted Vera’s habit of using air quotes.
“You’ll be fine in there. Your wings will work.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you?”
He sighed. “Are we back to that again? What other choice do you have? Leaving your post was one thing, but turning your back on something that might save your beloved Society from ruin?”
“You go in first.” Normally I’d have refused, but something in his words rang true. Besides, I had told Vera I had nothing left to lose. Except her. And protecting Levi. The problem with caring about people is they make decision making that much harder.
“My daughter would kill me if I let something happen to you.”
“The daughter you just met.”
Gareth turned to me, letting the large boulder fall back into place. “My family has been in charge for centuries. We need a legitimate heir to hold power.”
“And Vera’s the only one you have.”
“I’m sure you understand the importance.”
“Yes, I’m well aware.” All Levi had heard his whole life was how important having an heir was. His father had nearly cost the family the crown, and Levi couldn’t take any more chances.
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