Shifter Bound

by Leisl Leighton

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Iain!’ Adam growled. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘The cat’s kind of out of the bag, Adam.’ He grasped her hand.

  She pulled away. ‘Cain’s here?’ Her gaze skated around the room, to beyond the windows. A moment ago the light had been golden and now everything looked so dark. Oh, Goddess. That’s why he could get to her so easily in her dreams. Her gaze arrowed back on Iain. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault, Eloise.’ Bron’s tone was soft, pleading. ‘Jason ordered him not to. And once the Alpha gives an Alpha order, none of the pack can disobey. Even the witches are bound by it, although we can break the order if we need. But now that you know, if you want to see him, we can take you to him.’

  ‘No we bloody can’t.’ Adam moved to stand between them. ‘We can’t take her anywhere near him.’

  The skin on Eloise’s face prickled. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest. ‘Adam’s right. You can’t take me to see him.’

  ‘You’re agreeing with him? Don’t you want to see your brother?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t want to see him. He tried to kill her,’ River said.

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ Iain’s voice was a soft, slow rumble beside her. She turned to face him, finding a strange understanding in his eyes. ‘What haven’t you told us, Eloise?’

  Oh God! She didn’t want to answer that question. She didn’t want them to know she’d been keeping things from them after everything they’d done for her. The light seemed to darken as she stared down at her hands. ‘Cain’s been trying to speak to me in my dreams.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hell.’

  ‘Oh, Eloise, no.’

  ‘Fuck! I told you she couldn’t be trusted.’ The voices tumbled one over the top of another until they were almost a shriek in Eloise’s head.

  ‘No! Hang on!’ Iain’s voice cut across all of them. ‘You said, “trying”, Eloise.’

  She nodded. ‘I didn’t want to talk to him, even in my dreams. He was filled with so much hatred the last time I saw him. I was afraid if I let him in like I used to, his hatred would spill over into me.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Besides, I thought maybe I was imagining it. His presence was different somehow and I kind of thought,’ she glanced up at them, ‘that you might have killed him that night and what I was sensing was his loss, like a person still feels a severed limb.’

  ‘Oh, Eloise.’ Bron’s hand slipped over hers. ‘Why didn’t you ask us?’

  ‘I didn’t want to know if he was dead or alive. It seemed like, if I didn’t know, he could be neither, and that seemed almost more comforting than knowing for certain he was dead and gone forever, or alive and still hating me, wishing me dead.’

  Shelley hunkered down in front of Eloise. ‘Can you tell us what he’s been saying to you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I never heard words until the day I almost blew up and he was just egging me on, making me angrier.’ She pressed her fingers against her lips, trying to stop them from wobbling. It still hurt to think her twin wanted her dead. ‘Before that, it was just his presence pushing at me.’

  ‘How did you know it was him?’

  ‘He used to do it when we were little. Not so much in recent years. The closer he got to Morrigan, the further away from me he seemed. Also, proximity helps. When he’s close, he can speak in my mind with much greater clarity. When I came to live with Bron last year as Bluebelle, being so distant from him, it made it harder for him to reach me. Only Morrigan spoke to me.’

  ‘Has she spoken to you since you woke?’

  ‘No. I’ve only heard Cain.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ Adam scoffed. ‘Your precious brother was moved away from here when you woke. If proximity helps, then how can you hear him now?’

  Eyes widening, she looked around at the caring, eager faces around her. ‘I don’t know. You said he was here.’

  ‘No. We said we held him captive. As we do the others. But he’s nowhere near.’

  Eloise’s breath shuddered in and out in hard, sharp gasps.

  Iain’s hand tightened around hers. ‘Stop it, Adam. You’re frightening her.’

  ‘Maybe she needs to be frightened.’

  ‘Adam!’ Bron snapped. ‘That’s enough. Eloise saved River and Iain and Gareth. She saved all of us with her actions. She even tried to save us when she thought she was a bomb from Morrigan. For those actions alone she deserves our help and respect. Then there’s the fact her power syphoned into Iain. We all know what that means. She deserves our allegiance. You know that’s true.’

  Adam’s jaw squared, then he dipped his head, stared at the floor. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He looked up, his gaze boring into her. ‘But something about her screams danger to my wolf and I can’t help but respond to it.’

  ‘Then perhaps you need to leave.’

  Adam bristled, but Shelley stepped in front of him. ‘Adam. I need to go back to Melbourne. I want to get back to my research. There might be something in the diaries about this Nexus thing the Goddess spoke about. I need you to come with me.’ Shelley touched his shoulder, stroked down his arm, the gesture tentative, uncertain. Adam stilled at the touch, and it was as if the air itself held its breath, waiting for him to respond. Then finally, he looked down at her. She jerked, as if struck, but then continued on in the same calm voice. ‘Jason will want a direct report and then you can help me.’ She moved her hand away.

  He captured it. ‘You need me. Ah Kitten, I never thought I’d hear you say those words.’ His tone was playful, teasing, and while the tension was still there, the violence, it was tempered with something else. Something softer, giving.

  ‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ Shelley said on a snort, pulling her hand from his. ‘You’re just good at reading between the lines.’

  Adam stared at her for a moment longer and then with a gusty sigh, nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’

  Shelley turned back to the others. ‘Let us know how it goes.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She walked out of the room. Adam followed close in her wake.

  Silence fell.

  ‘Where is Cain?’ Eloise asked into the silence.

  Iain’s arm curled around her. ‘Far from here. He’s in a coma, like you were. We’ve been unable to wake him, but he is being cared for.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Despite what he’d done, she didn’t want Cain to be in pain. She also didn’t want to see him, but knew she would have to at some stage. She knew it like she knew she was a Nexus, even though she didn’t understand either of those things. But she didn’t want to think of that now. ‘And my coven mates?’

  ‘Maybe it’s best if you come and see them. I can tell you about them on the way.’

  Eloise’s heart leapt into her throat at Bron’s words. ‘Why, what’s wrong with them? Are they in comas too?’

  ‘Not precisely.’

  Chapter 11

  Eloise stared at Bron. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Things have been difficult for them. They were all injured on that night.’

  ‘Don’t sugar-coat it, Bronwyn,’ River said, his mouth twisting. ‘I hurt them.’

  ‘No, not you.’ Bron captured his hand, held it against her chest over her heart. ‘The Beast driven by the Darkness was responsible.’ She touched his face, then turned back to Eloise. ‘When we arrived, Morrigan and most of the coven were gone. All that were left were those who couldn’t walk, and Iain and Gareth, who were both unconscious in that room with the moon circle.’

  Eloise shifted, uncomfortable with remembering how Iain and his friend had been tortured that night and how little she’d done to help them. ‘Are they okay now?’

  ‘Their injuries have healed, but being left behind by Morrigan did something to them. It’s as if her abandonment sucked all the spirit out of them. They walk, dress and toilet themselves, eat if we make them, but apart from that, they’re listless. They haven’t responded to treatm
ent and I don’t know what else to do.’ She nodded at Eloise. ‘Your presence might help them in a way we’ve been unable to.’

  Eloise snorted. ‘I doubt that. I’m hardly a healer and as far as they’re concerned, I’m a traitor.’ Iain’s arm tightened around her and she drew from the strength that was innately him, the steadiness at his core. ‘But I’m happy to try.’ She might be a traitor, but she wasn’t a coward. ‘Can we go now?’ She might not be a coward, but if she waited, she was afraid she’d lose her courage to look her old coven mates in the face.

  ‘Okay.’

  Bron stood. River’s phone rang just as they walked out onto the patio. ‘Just a sec,’ he said, answering it. He listened and then said, ‘Okay, I’ll be right there.’ Hanging up, he turned to Bron. ‘Stu needs my help with Elsie. The calf’s a breech and he needs me to calm her while he turns it and gets it out or he might lose both of them.’

  ‘Go. Meet us later if you can.’

  He gave her a quick, hard kiss, and then loped off the other side of the patio and disappeared around the corner of the house.

  ‘Elsie?’ Eloise asked as they walked across the patio and down the stairs onto the sloping grass.

  ‘She’s Stuart’s prize cow.’

  ‘You have cows?’

  ‘Not on this property, but on another close by,’ Iain said. ‘Our interests are wide and varied and all of our people have multiple talents. River happens to be particularly good with animals.’

  Eloise wasn’t surprised. He’d been the first one of them she’d felt comfortable with when she’d been masquerading as Bluebelle.

  Despite her tension about seeing her coven mates, Eloise felt better as they walked towards the huge hedge that bounded the secret garden—she knew now her love of the outdoors was because she was a shifter. There was a certain freedom in that knowledge. It made her feel like she could be close to understanding herself someday soon.

  Bron led them through the beautiful carved wooden door—nymphs and fairies peeked out between twining vines on its surface—and into the secret garden. Iain had brought her here a few days earlier to run through the meandering paths and secret nooks in first her cat form, then as her wolf. She’d had such a lovely day that day, exploring. There had been beauty in sights and scents and sounds to discover in every step.

  There was no exploring today, however. They headed somewhere else, somewhere hidden. Her delight in the masterpiece of landscaping faded.

  They walked along a path that bounded the edges of the garden and out through another door in the hedge that angled off to the right. Beyond the hedge was another orchard. The tree branches drooped with late summer fruit, their leaves turned a golden-green under the constant heat of the sun.

  Despite the beauty of the walk, she began to tremble. She wished Iain was walking in front of her. She’d much prefer to ogle at his muscled back then concentrate on this ever-growing sense of dread inside her.

  ‘We’re almost there.’ Bron’s smile was soft, almost as if she understood the anxiety gnawing at Eloise. Iain’s hand captured hers. She took a quick gasp of breath at the exquisite warmth, the steady strength of his touch. She glanced at him, wanting to say thank you, but couldn’t find the words. He smiled, seeming to understand anyway.

  They exited the orchard and headed down a narrow path cut into the side of a steep hill masquerading as a cliff. Eloise peered over the edge and realised that if someone was pushed over, their body would certainly never be found in the brush and scrub on the valley floor.

  ‘I won’t let you fall,’ Iain said.

  Eloise swallowed hard, and gripped his hand as if it was the only thing between her and a plummet to certain death.

  With Bron in front of her and Iain just behind, they descended into the green heart of a wilderness that spread from the base of the cliff to the steady rise of rolling hills a kilometre or more away.

  They finished their descent and began to walk down a dirt path that meandered through a forest of gum trees. The fallen bark from the ghostly gums created a soft, slightly crunchy carpet under foot. ‘Is this still pack land?’

  ‘Yes.’ Iain’s deep voice soothed the rawness in her belly. ‘The pack lands are extensive. We are made up of many families, many of whom live here.’ He slanted a smile at her. ‘You didn’t imagine we would all fit in the main house, did you?’

  ‘I suppose I didn’t really think about it.’

  They walked out of the dim shadows cast by the arcing branches of the gums around them and into a large clearing at the centre of the valley. Eloise gasped as she caught sight of the house at the centre of the clearing. It looked like something from a fairy tale; a house that grew from its surrounds and was part of them. It was made out of a mixture of the same slate and red-tinged rock as the cliff at her back and the silken, sunset–tinged wood of the ghost gums that surrounded it. In places angular, in other places rounded to follow the arcing lines of the hills that rose behind it, it was at once modern and timeless.

  And more beautiful than any house had the right to be.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Iain asked, his eyes feasting on it in the same way hers were.

  ‘Like it?’ Eloise breathed. ‘It’s remarkable.’

  ‘Iain designed it,’ Bron said.

  Eloise almost choked on her surprise. ‘You did?’

  He nodded, pride in the movement. ‘I dabble in architecture too.’

  She stared at him then gestured at the house. ‘You do so much. You’re so talented. Why are you here, Shadowing me?’

  ‘Because I was called. And because I need to.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, none of us are bound to one role.’

  ‘I noticed that about the Pack Witches when I was watching you all last year. We’d always been told they were bonded in servitude, having no choice but to be a Pack Witch and give up half their power to the animals that are the Were. But if that was true, Skye wouldn’t have her childcare centre and Shelley wouldn’t still be nursing. And you wouldn’t have your business,’ she said, nodding at Bron. ‘It was so confusing. I couldn’t understand why it was allowed. I mean, we were allowed to work outside the coven, but only if it benefited the coven. I thought at first that must be the case with all of you, but your earnings never went to the Were that I could see and none of the Were came to your work for healing except for River. No pack members had children at Skye’s childcare centre except for Jason and Adam’s nephew, Tom, and that seemed mostly because Skye thought he should be there, and the Were could never go to the hospital Shelley worked at. I realised then that you did those things for yourselves.’ She looked at Iain. ‘I didn’t think that would extend to every pack member, but it does, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Pack comes first, but within that, we are all encouraged to be who we are. We would weaken if we didn’t. Strong individuals make a stronger whole.’

  ‘It makes so much sense. We never had anything like that in the coven.’

  ‘That’s because Morrigan was keeping you tethered to her, never allowing any of you to become truly powerful so that you might challenge her. She kept you subservient through fear and lies.’ He nodded to the house. ‘That’s what it smells like over there. Fear and lies.’

  Bron tapped her finger against her lips and frowned as she stared at the building in front of them.

  ‘What is it?’ Iain asked.

  ‘That might explain why Eloise’s coven mates are dying, despite everything we’ve done to prove we mean them no harm. They truly believe the Were will use them and their powers and kill them when they’re of no more use.’ She turned to Eloise. ‘That’s what you were taught, wasn’t it?’

  Eloise nodded, so ashamed of what she had once believed to be true.

  Bron touched her shoulder. ‘You didn’t know any better. How could you?’

  ‘I should have seen. We all should have seen.’

  Bron’s expression filled with an age of sadness. ‘We all fill our lives with lies we think are necessary to survive. At one t
ime, what Morrigan gave your family and those other families that made up your coven, was absolutely necessary to their survival. What we’ve learned from the older diaries is not every witch or Wiccan coven was included in Bridgette’s pact, and many were left to fend for themselves. It was the major flaw in her plan, one I’m certain she meant to remedy but that never eventuated for some reason.’ Her expression cleared as she looked at Eloise. ‘What’s remarkable is that you opened your eyes and saw outside the boundaries of the lies you were brought up to believe.’

  ‘It’s not remarkable. I simply did the right thing.’

  ‘And that’s what makes it, makes you, so remarkable,’ Iain said, his grip tightening on her hand as if he would never let her go. She didn’t want him to.

  Bron gestured towards the building that rose before them. ‘Shall we?’

  Chapter 12

  Eloise had to unlock her knees and force herself to move. The dread began to chew on her insides again at the thought of what awaited her inside. The hatred of her coven mates. Her guilt.

  Iain’s hand tightened around hers.

  Courage. She could do this. She had to do this. She had to prove to herself that she could face up to her past and walk away with the strength she’d learned here.

  Iain pressed his thumb against a security panel next to the front door. A woman’s face appeared on the screen next to the pad, her smile widening as she saw who stood there.

  ‘Iain, love. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?’

  ‘Hey Gabs. Nice to see you, too.’

  ‘I heard I missed you last night. Pity. I’ve been lonely and could have done with some stimulating company.’

  ‘I don’t know that I qualify now.’

  Gabbie chuckled. ‘After Portofino, you would always qualify.’

  Bron waved cheerily at the woman on the other end of the communications panel. ‘Hi Gabbie. Sorry to interrupt, but we’re not here to socialise.’

  Gabbie sighed. ‘Nobody ever is these days. It’s always work, work, work.’ She leaned sideways and Eloise heard a loud click. ‘Come on in. I’ll meet you at the door.’