by Leeda Vada
As she resumed her seat, Duncan rose. “Chandler, I need you and your client to leave the room.”
Once they were gone, Duncan stated their options. “We have two choices: death by the same poison that aborted the fetus and destroyed Calli’s body, or revocation of his Canid citizenship and banishment from all its territories for life. We will use secret ballots,” he said, preparing to distribute the small squares of paper.
“Wait,” said Vesta. “Should we do this without Laura and Odin present?”
“They both declined attendance,” Duncan informed the panel.
“Then no secret ballots,” Jack Chandler, Duncan’s brother-in-law and Saxe’s father, insisted. “Each of us must stand in his or her own truth.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Neo made no comment as Khan escorted him through the gates of Bakari to the Wolf Star that would take him to the shores of Gambia.
He had not protested the Council’s decision. He would live, but the memories of his life as part of the Canid community had been selectively erased and replaced with shadowy memories of a young African warrior who had been raised in a small Gambian fishing village.
The cover story in Bakari would be that because Neo had taken justice into his own hands by executing Donoma without the Council’s sanction, he had been excommunicated from the Canid community.
Apollo issued a decree that his name would be stricken from all Canid records and would never again be spoken within Bakari’s walls.
Twenty-four hours later, Duncan received intelligence reports that Neo had almost drowned in an escape attempt from the pirate ship that was transporting him to one of the slave ports in Somalia. He was rescued but had been knocked unconscious while in the water.
When he came to, he had amnesia. Since then, he had been drifting from village to village on the shores of Eastern Africa seeking his roots.
#
Canaan returned to Aragon with his son’s remains swathed in the blue baby blanket. He fashioned a coffin from stones from one of the behemoths of the ancient Celtic circle. He laid the tiny cylinder in a small cavern in the wall of the cliff overlooking the Lomand that formed one of the borders of Aragon in Scotland.
Only Canaan’s closest team members— his first cousin, Dakota, his sister, Tamby, and his bodyguards, Scar, Hawk, and Largo—followed him to the castle. They set up camp and maintained a vigil outside its gates.
None of them dared approach him. Their lupine DNA sensed the predator so close to the surface, a predator that—if it managed to suppress Canaan’s human side and break free—would destroy everything and everyone in its path.
They knew that none of them would escape with their lives. They also knew that if Canaan reached Berserker status, they would have no choice but to destroy him.
#
This last in a series of obstacles placed in the way of Canaan and Calli’s union over the years was the last straw for Canaan’s nashoba.
The wolf part of him, long dormant, had been willing to accept a secondary role in Canaan’s life. It had allowed Canaan’s human half to dominate their actions. But no more.
After Canaan placed the last stone to seal Jonathan’s small coffin in its resting place, he gave over to the beast fuming inside him. An explosion of rage and pain erupted from his throat, the sound echoing through the surrounding hills and valleys.
Windows shattered in the small village homes, and recently modernized businesses collapsed. One of the remaining windmills tilted on its side. Howls from his natural brothers joined those of the nashoba as it emerged.
Canaan’s nashoba was magnificent. It stood atop the cliff, expending its massive grief at the loss of its mate and cub.
Its sulfur eyes reflected only agony, its stance aggressive. It was prepared to attack any threat to its dominance. Any who dared invade the sacred resting place of his murdered cub.
A fearsome sight, its physique far surpassing that of the largest known Timber wolf, it was seven feet tall and weighing over 800 pounds. Its thick, glistening coat a rough blend of mahogany and ebony strands.
From its stationary stance, it leapt thirty feet to reach the highest tower of the castle. Howling its defiance at the men below, it paused, and then leapt again, forming an arch of fearsome power and wrath as it disappeared into the forests bordering the raging sea.
The others could hear the sounds of their friend’s suffering as he raced through the trees. Tamby fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face. As Dakota, Scar, and Hawk collected their weapons to begin pursuit, Tamby pleaded, “Please, don’t. You cannot kill him. None of this is his fault.” She grabbed Dakota’s arm. “He’s my brother, your cousin. Please!”
“He would expect this of us, Tamby. He knows we have no choice,” Dakota reminded her.
Scar added, “Do you think he would want to exist as a beast, killing and maiming the innocent, his humanity destroyed?”
“Let me talk to him first,” Tamby pleaded. “I can reach him. I know I can.”
“No Berserker has ever been brought back,” Hawk warned.
“We can’t take the chance, Tamby,” Dakota added.
Picking up her weapon, Tamby began walking to the forest. “Then I will do it,” she said. “He’s my brother. After all he’s gone through and given to the Canid community, he has earned death at the hands of someone who loves him.”
The others fell in behind her. Several more steps forward, Tamby screamed in pain as she slammed into an invisible wall crackling with energy. Scar attempted to ram the butt of his weapon through the force field, but he and it were thrown back twenty feet. “What the hell?” he exclaimed.
“Leave here,” a voice thundered.
“We’re not going anywhere!” he shouted.
“Who are you?” Tamby queried.
“That’s our friend out there. We’re not leaving him,” Dakota added.
“Excuse me,” the voice responded, “I must have misunderstood when I overheard your plan to leave him dead.”
“I don’t know who or what you are, but this is not your concern,” Dakota declared. “We will do what we have to do.”
“Canaan is not berserk,” the voice informed them. “Tamby, your brother is in an overwhelming amount of pain. It’s destroying him. His nashoba has surfaced to protect him. It serves as an escape valve, to give him a way to expend the anguish. Once Canaan’s human side is again able to handle the pain, the beast will retreat, and Canaan’s humanity will again dominate.”
“How do you know that?” Tamby demanded.
“Just trust me. I know.”
“We would be fools to entrust Canaan to your care,” Scar asserted.
“You have no choice, my friend.”
In the blink of an eye, Tamby, Dakota, Scar, Largo, and Hawk found themselves on their Wolf Star II headed back to Bakari.
Chapter Forty-Three
Canaan spent the first several weeks after the tragedy lost in the miasma of his grief. He welcomed his nashoba’s dominance, allowing the beast to manage their life.
He spent his days running in the forests until exhaustion demanded he stop. He neither smelled nor tasted the prey the nashoba killed and fed to their body. He was unaware of any other physical concerns. His beast made sure he defecated, stayed hydrated and swam the streams to keep the filth at bay.
Then, he heard the melody. It brought warmth and solace. At first, it was just a whisper. In fact, he more felt it than heard it. It was a light presence—ephemeral almost—permeating him from the inside out.
It calmed his nashoba to the extent that the beast retreated, as if sensing that Canaan’s human half was strong enough to begin its journey back from the abyss of the anger and grief.
Each night after the spirit’s first visit, Canaan’s spirit grew stronger. The melancholy slowly began to loosen its grip. It became less and less difficult to get up in the morning.
Within a week’s time, he was pulling Calli’s refurbishment plans for the family res
idential parts of the castle and began work on the parts still unfinished. It was dirty, physically exhausting work, but its unrelenting demands on Canaan’s body allowed him to sleep without the nightmares that plagued him so relentlessly.
Even as he worked drenched in sweat, his muscles straining in protest at the arduous tasks demanded of them, fingers bloodied, and hands roughened with layer upon layer of callouses, her presence was with him day and night, cocooning him, soothing his soul, and nursing his shattered heart.
Canaan believed that as long as he surrendered himself to her control, allowed her to minister to him, he would survive. She was his Balm of Gilead, keeping the grief at bay, not allowing his spirit to go outside the boundaries she set for him.
Slowly, as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, Canaan began to feel again, as her presence became almost corporeal. He couldn’t remember when he first started thinking of the voice as a ‘she’. Her touch was feminine, he would awaken with her essence surrounding him, even inside him.
Any hint of the darkness returning would invoke a stronger presence from her.
Maybe it was all in his mind. If that were the case, then so be it. Canaan’s heart and soul needed to believe. His body shared that need. His manhood awakened, and she found ways to satisfy that too.
Canaan had heard stories of nocturnal lovers, of course, and as all young boys, he had experienced his share of wet dreams growing up, and on occasion, had initiated his own even as a randy adult.
But there was no lust involved in these encounters with his mystical lover, though she was a passionate lover. She never spoke to him, not even in the throes of their mutual release. Instead, she inserted her love for him telepathically.
“Are you Calli?” Canaan queried her.
Though she did not answer, Canaan felt a change in her aura, hesitancy—maybe even sadness—regret, maybe. But the change was gone so quickly that he wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it.
It had been six months. Canaan still had not received any word on Calli’s condition from the Scythians. Recalling the severity of her injuries, he knew it would have taken an extraordinary effort to restore her brutalized body to health.
But Calli never gave up on those she loved, and she loved him. If she couldn’t reach him physically, she would find another way. And so she had, coming to him in the only form she could.
The spirit had her loyalty, courage, and tenacity. She was letting him know that she was not lost to him forever, that she would be back.
And that would sustain him. Canaan was a patient man. After all, he had waited years to claim Calli as his mate. He would wait again.
EPILOGUE
Canaan’s entire focus during the following months was readying Aragon for his mate’s return. That goal anchored and sustained him, and her spirit continued to heal him. He even talked to her as he went about his work, and once he could have sworn that he heard her laugh at one of his terrible jokes.
The same impregnable wall of energy that had prevented his team from entering the forest before, forestalled any subsequent attempts by anyone to land at Aragon.
That had remained the case until three months later when Shani, upon entering Canaan’s office at Bodark, skidded to a halt, stunned to see her boss sitting calmly at his desk going through the mountain of folders that had accumulated during his absence.
Canaan did not offer any explanation for where he had been or for what happened during his absence. And no one asked.
The End
