by Kat Bostick
“I’m sorry, Mari.” Jasper groaned and lifted her off his lap. Her body was too pliable in his hold, muscles limp and head bowed. “Mari? I’m sorry I got carried away.”
Her shoulders hunched in an attempt to make herself as small as possible. “I’m ruining this, aren’t I?”
Before he could remind himself that Mari couldn’t always differentiate between aggressive and chiding noises, he growled a reprimand. Much to his disappointment, Jasper startled her for a second time that morning. He finally got her to sleep in the same bed as him only to scare her off again.
“What do you think you’re ruining?” Jasper asked softly.
“This.” Mari tapped his shoulder then her chest. “I’m hesitating too much.”
He cupped her face in both of his hands. It took her a long time to muster up the courage to meet his gaze. “You cannot ruin this connection by hesitating. It’s me who has overstepped.”
“All you did was kiss me. That shouldn’t be a violation.” She muttered.
“If you had allowed me to continue I would have done much more than kiss you.”
Mari averted her eyes. “It’s not that I wouldn’t…it’s just the timing…and I don’t…”
“You owe me no explanations.” He put his lips to her ear. “And trust me, I’m aware that you want to. Did you know I can scent arousal?”
Her tan complexion afforded her some relief from embarrassment because it muted the flush of red that warmed her cheeks but that distinct ruddy color showed just how self-conscious his admission made her feel. Mari was cute when she was embarrassed.
“Please don’t mistake my eagerness for impatience.” He filled the silence with more reassurance.
“You’re very intimidating, Jasper.” She said in a small voice. Disappointment stabbed into his gut like shards of ice. Mari must have sensed it because she quickly corrected herself. “Oh no, I don’t mean that I’m scared of you. I mean that—wow, how do I say this? You’re a total package and I feel really out of my league.”
“A…package?” He frowned.
“You’re well-spoken, kind, loyal, mind-boggling gorgeous, a great kisser…” She trailed off as the red heat returned to her cheeks. “Jeez, I am making this so awkward.”
Jasper gathered Mari in his arms and lowered her back onto the bed, carefully arranging himself so that he was beneath her and she could easily escape if she wanted. He understood precisely what she was saying. It was the same sentiment she expressed last night: “you deserve better than me.”
“I’m your package.”
She snorted an unladylike laugh. “Okay, maybe some things don’t sound romantic coming out of your mouth.”
“I mean it, Mari. I am yours and I am blessed by Mother Moon to call you mine.”
Mari kissed him. Jasper still hadn’t recovered from the slight delirium that overcame him every time that happened. Her kiss tasted of sleep and sunshine and Mari. She was quickly becoming his favorite flavor.
She settled her head in the curve of his shoulder and whispered “Jas?”
“Yes, Mari?”
“Remember how you said I could ask you anything and you’d answer?”
“I do.” He nodded.
“Will you tell me about Nikolai? Will you tell me why you didn’t change or speak after you left his pack?” There was a nervous quaver in her voice once more. “And will you tell me what happened when you were bitten?”
Jasper inhaled a very long, slow breath. Mari was his mate and he wanted her to know all of his secrets. Jasper simply wished he didn’t have to say them out loud. Even Charlie didn’t know everything that happened in Nikolai’s pack. And no one, Jasper included, knew the full story of the bite that changed him forever. The truth was that gaps existed in his memory long before he was cursed. Something had to be wrong with him because there were chunks of time that vanished from his mind.
He could give Mari what remained and trust that his pain would be safe, maybe even soothed, in her delicate hands.
It was easier to recall life in his old pack without breaking so he started there. Nikolai was the reason Charlie left the Twelve Lakes pack more than half a century earlier. Nikolai’s leadership style was that of tyranny and not family. The Twelve Lakes alpha demanded absolute loyalty and submission from all of his wolves. This, among many other qualities, chafed Jasper raw as a young wolf. He was a nomad, a wild beast, born running with a hunger for freedom in his belly. He wasn’t built to submit and bow at the feet of others.
Jasper couldn’t explain why Nikolai didn’t simply killed him. It certainly would have been the easier option for the alpha. He suspected that Nikolai preferred punishment because it satisfied his need to dominate and showed the rest of his pack what he was capable of. The violence Jasper could live with. During those brutal attacks he learned to fight both as wolf and man. Nikolai would come at him with teeth bared and arms swinging. Jasper would throw every drop of fury in his blood at the alpha that meant to break him.
Nikolai almost succeeded when he started using the cage. By the time he turned seventeen Jasper had gained control of his change and discovered that his came swifter and easier than most wolves. He took advantage of that, changing as soon as he knew Nikolai was coming for him and stubbornly living as the wolf for as many days as he could manage. The alpha’s response was to confine him to a cage fit for a dog. It was reinforced steel and no amount of biting, thrashing, or throwing his weight against it set him free. Bones broke before the bars did.
He was contemplating escape and living as a lone wolf when Nikolai brought him to his first pack gathering. The alpha put him on display, likely to humiliate Jasper for daring to defy him. Years later Charlie admitted that Nikolai came with a story of Jasper’s unquenchable thirst for blood, leaving no choice but for the elders to put him down. Charlie, being the honorable man that he was, fought for Jasper and arranged for him to join the Humble Springs pack.
There wasn’t much left of the playful, light-hearted young man by then. Jasper learned that he was safest when he wore the wolf, that the beast would protect him from the worst of the pain, so he walked on four legs until Charlie forced him onto two. Even after a decade in Humble Springs, he never truly felt himself as a man.
“You changed that.” Jasper told her. She’d begun to cry softly and she let out a pained noise at his confession. “When I found you, I found myself again too. You gave me a reason to wear this skin.”
Silence, heavy with emotion, yawned between them. There was another question unanswered, one he wasn’t sure how to approach. Instead of explaining, Jasper climbed out from under Mari and walked to the small bookshelf in the corner of the room. He retrieved a long untouched sketchbook and flipped to a page containing a portrait of a young woman.
Jasper wished he could say she looked exactly as he remembered her but the heartbreaking reality was that until he viewed the sketch, he could scarce remember her at all. Somewhere buried in the depths of his mind was her laughter, the playful sparkle of her blue eyes, and the comforting scent of rainstorms and chamomile that followed her everywhere, but it was so hard for him to reach. She was a ghost, even in his mind.
Mari joined him on the edge of the bed. With one finger she carefully traced the lines of the heart-shaped face on the paper. Then she took the same finger and traced his jaw.
“You have her chin.” She glanced back down at the sketch. “And her brow.”
“She had a dimple when she smiled.” Jasper suddenly remembered, pinpointing the spot on her cheek.
“So do you.” Mari brushed his left cheek where a dimple appeared as he quirked his lips. She lowered her gaze before asking “She died the day you were bitten? Your mom?”
“Yes. We have more in common than you know.” Mari’s mother died the day she was born, Jasper’s died the day he was born a wolf.
Though many memories of life with his mother were fuzzy, this one was branded into his mind. The panicked pounding of her heart and her shri
ll voice as she begged him to run left indelible marks on his soul. Jasper would never forget the day he failed to protect his family. He didn’t know where the wolf came from but he recalled being shocked into inaction by it’s size. For a heart stopping moment he was rooted to the ground as he watched the colossal beast tear through the trees, heading towards them with a monstrous maw.
Something inside of him awakened then and he found himself standing frozen not out of fear but in defiance. He would not run from this great beast. He would not cower like prey. He would kill anyone, monster or man, that wished his family harm. As the wolf launched itself at him, however, it was intercepted. His mother, who was half his size at twice his age, threw herself at the animal with the fiercest war cry he would ever hear.
And then his mother with soft skin and gentle hands, his mother who made jokes that only she laughed at, his mother who picked weed flowers and loved butterscotch and cried at the sight of roadkill, was dead. Just like that, the sparkle of joy was gone from her crystalline blue eyes, replaced by the emptiness of death. Jasper knew that her hair was blonde but when he recalled images of her, all he saw was the vibrant red color it turned as it soaked up her free flowing blood.
Instinct took the reins after that. A dark, animalistic voice in his head made itself known with singular focus and one chilling word: kill. That was precisely what he intended to do. Jasper didn’t care that he was facing off with a wolf of unimaginable size. He charged the monster, fists flying. His knuckles cracked loudly when they connected with the side of the wolf’s jaw but he ignored the pain. He swung again and again, hitting the animal with all that he had.
The wolf merely gnashed his teeth like a fly buzzed about his head. With the grace and fluidity of water, the monster slipped out of reach and circled behind. Jasper didn’t even realize what was happening until jaws closed around his ribs with a horrifying crunch. He tried to cry out but the air was being drained from his lungs by penetrating fangs.
Worse than the pain from the bite was the agonizing fire it sparked inside of him. Between one second and the next, Jasper’s body was warping and contorting. The change occurred too fast for him to comprehend what was happening. The wolf lost his grip as Jasper’s ribs stretched and his spine elongated into a tail. His first change was his fastest and it was also his most excruciating.
“Wait, you changed the moment you were bitten? Can that happen? Clem said the change comes on the first full moon after the bite. Was it a full moon?” Charlie and Clem expressed the same doubts upon hearing his story and were flummoxed when he adamantly told them the change occurred in daylight with no moon in sight.
Jasper had no recollection of the fight with the wolf that bit him or much of what followed. His form shifted and with it, his focus and instincts. He came to hours later and found himself huddled in the dark. Blood hung heavy in his coat, he ached everywhere, and he had four legs instead of two. Somehow that hadn’t shocked him nearly as much as it should have. The part that was man accepted the wolf.
What he hadn’t been able to accept was his mother’s death. The moment he was conscious of his actions once more, he took off at a run, sure that he would come home to find her waiting for him. He was deep in the forest that surrounded their trailer but it was easy for him to navigate back. The wolf knew the way, guided by the scent of home, family, and blood. He stopped short when he saw red lights and heard unfamiliar voices.
The last clear memory from that time was the startled shouts of men in response to a lone wolf, howling in grief.
Jasper wasn’t sure how long he walked as the wolf. The beast slipped silently into the trees and the young man inside submitted. He learned to hunt on four legs and how to avoid being discovered. Mari suggested that that was the reason he was able to live as the wolf for over a year without losing his mind and he suspected that she was right. Unlike many other werewolves, Jasper was equally himself in both forms. Actually, he was more at ease when he was wolf.
By the time he wandered onto Twelve Lakes pack territory, Jasper had no idea who he was or where he’d come from. He didn’t even have a name. The healer in Nikolai’s pack suggested that the trauma from the bite altered his memory, as trauma often did. Charlie hadn’t seemed so convinced. The alpha never pushed Jasper to delve into those painful memories of the past but he believed they would reveal that Jasper was much more than a bitten wolf.
It didn’t really matter to Jasper. He was man who is also wolf. Whether he was born that way or made that way was irrelevant to him.
“But what if you have family? Wouldn’t you want to know about them? What if they were looking for you?” It made sense that Mari would be curious. After all, she spent most of her life longing to know her family origins and feel that connection.
“I don’t. I remember only her and me. I think it was always that way.” He cleared the gathering emotion from his throat. “Besides, Charlie would have found them when he searched for my identity.”
It took the Humble Springs alpha a long time to figure out who Jasper was. Even then, the search brought up more questions than there were answers. Fifteen year old Trevor O’Connell was missing, presumed dead, following an animal attack that killed his mother, Stella O’Connell.
Upon further investigation Charlie discovered that there was also a Sheryl and Trey O’Connell, Sandra and Thomas O’Connell, and Sarah and Timothy O’Connell, all of whom perfectly matched the description of Jasper and his mother. The DMV photos from his mother’s driver license proved that those names belonged to the same woman and her son as they journeyed from the west coast to Minnesota over Jasper’s lifetime.
Jasper couldn’t explain the aliases any more than he could explain the rather significant trust fund left by a Sage O’Connell from Portland, Oregon for her son Tavin O’Connell. His few scattered memories of childhood did not indicate he was wealthy by any means so it surprised him to find out at eighteen years old that he was a millionaire. Not that he’d ever touched the money, aside from contributing to the pack and making a handful of investments.
“I bet you’re the secret love child of a werewolf billionaire in Seattle. We read a book about that, didn’t we?” Mari smiled cautiously at him, hoping to lighten the mood. He was relieved that, beyond her silent tears, she didn’t offer sympathy. No amount of sympathy would change the outcome of his life and it only made him uncomfortable.
“And my mother and I were fleeing the pack because his jealous future mate sent assassins after us?”
“Obviously.” Mari took the sketchbook from him and looked down at the portrait of his mother again. “I know you don’t remember much but, is it possible she was a witch?”
“A witch? Why would you think that?” Jasper frowned.
“When Charlie and the others talk about the divine they use the word ‘God’ but when you do it, you speak of the goddesses, Earth Mother and Mother Moon, and the Father Above. Unless Charlie’s pack is an exception and werewolves share the same beliefs as witches, those are witch deities. You sound too familiar with them to have picked them up from me.” She explained.
He considered that as she continued. “And you’re different than the others. You feel different. Wolves have magic about them, just like witches, but yours is strong, stronger than even Charlie. I thought maybe it was because you and I are, you know…”
It bothered him that she wouldn’t say it. “Mates.”
“Uh-huh, yeah.” Mari’s gaze focused on anything but him. “But now I have to wonder if maybe it’s because you come from a family of witches. It’s not unheard of, just look at my family history!”
As was her style, Mari quickly found a change of subject. Apparently they’d come too close to a conversation about their relationship. Jasper had to stifle a growl of frustration when she flipped through the sketchbook to an image of a wolf and loudly exclaimed “Hold on a sec, these are yours? So that means those are yours?” She pointed to the paintings on the wall across from the bed and jumped up to study t
hem.
One painting featured the pack as wolves, running in the snow. Gentle flakes dotted the air around them and little puffs of white swirled at their feet. Standing out from the pale snow was the dark shades of evergreens, the blacks, browns, and reds of fur, and the glittering intensity of predatory eyes. Charlie’s sharp blue were the most notable as he tilted his head slightly toward the viewer, silently aware of his audience as the alpha always was. Peeking from behind thick grey clouds was a full winter moon, the wolf moon.
He watched Mari take in the painting with renewed astonishment. She’d admired the artwork the first time she saw it and regularly studied it with interest. It pleased him to see the pride and enjoyment his creations gave her. Though others were often fond of his work, Jasper had never painted for anyone but himself. When he came to Humble Springs, Clementine offered him a sketchpad and pencils to help him work through the memories he couldn’t put into words. It proved to be constructive but it also became a hobby that relieved tension when he couldn’t walk as the wolf.
“Jas, this is incredible.” Mari breathed. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were a painter?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“This matters. You’re amazing.” She blushed a little when she realized how breathless she was. “I mean your paintings are. Did you paint the ones downstairs, in the study?”
“Yes. And in the library and the parlor. I ran out of space in here so Clem started hanging them around the house.”
“Wow.” She studied the other painting with a slight frown. “This isn’t you. Your coat is darker, more cinnamon-y. Who is this?”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that his witch could so easily see that, but Mari was the first to recognize the painting wasn’t a self portrait. A satisfied smile curved his lips. She knew him better than anyone. His mate could see him like no one else would.
