by Abby Weeks
“Really?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to practice. You’re not ready yet. I’ll carry you today.”
Aisha let him lift her up. She loved feeling protected, like a child, when she was in his strong arms. She clung on to him, and he began jogging through the trees.
“Wouldn’t this be easier if you shifted?” she said.
Packer laughed. “It would be a lot easier,” he said, “and usually I’d travel these sort of distances as a wolf, but we figured you’d be more comfortable with us in our human form, since it’s your first time being with all four of us.”
“That’s considerate,” Aisha said.
Packer nodded. “And we hate to lose our clothes by shifting into wolves when we’re out as humans.”
“And you wanted to wear clothes to make me more comfortable?” she said.
“Exactly,” Packer said.
*
Chapter 21
THE TWENTY-MILE JOURNEY BROUGHT them higher and higher into the mountains that enclosed the valley. Aisha realized that she wasn’t once frightened of wolves. She wasn’t even frightened of the men who were circling the area in their helicopters above. There was no real risk of being spotted while they were in the trees. The choppers were only good for spotting wolves in the open, along mountain crests or riverbeds. The vast bulk of the territory was completely hidden from aerial surveillance.
As they climbed into the mountains, the air grew cooler but Aisha found that she didn’t mind. She suspected part of that was due to her shifter abilities growing stronger and stronger, and part of it was due to the body heat coming from Packer.
For most of the journey it was just her and Packer, the two younger brothers scouting ahead while Logan guarded the rear. Aisha felt like precious cargo being transported through hostile territory.
At times along the journey they all met up, but it wasn’t necessary most of the time, as the brothers could communicate telepathically.
“What’s your home like?” Aisha said as Packer carried her along a creek bed that wound its way ever higher into the mountains.
“I think you’ll like it,” Packer said. “It’s not fancy, but it’s safe and warm, and the views down over the valley are breathtaking.”
“And it’s just the four of you up there?”
“That’s how it has been. Although we’ve started thinking about ways we might be able to contact other shifters, if there are any others out there.”
“Do you think there are?”
“There must be. So many were driven out of here, some of them must still be alive.”
“But they won’t have their shifter abilities?”
“We’re not sure. That’s part of the reason I was down in Juneau getting that book you saw me with. We’re trying to find out as much about ourselves as possible. Because we were forced to grow up without parents, there’s a lot we don’t know.”
“Ma Hetty will have some of the answers you seek.”
“She does,” Packer said. “She’s taught us pretty much everything we know. She used to come up here and talk to us regularly.”
“But she doesn’t anymore?”
“Not since we reached maturity. She said we were too much of a temptation.”
“For mating?” Aisha said. She let out a laugh before managing to stop herself.
“Yes,” Packer said, laughing. “The attraction between her and us is strong, despite the fact that she’s so old. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s beyond the age of fertility, I don’t think we’d have been able to resist mating with her. Which would have been terrible, because she’s practically our adoptive mother.”
“And I thought seers are supposed to be celibate,” Aisha said.
“They are,” Packer said, “but that wouldn’t have stopped us. Nothing would have, if she’d been young enough to bear pups.”
“I see,” Aisha said.
“You’re beginning to get worried, aren’t you?” Packer said.
“Why do you say that?”
“A lone female, being brought up here with four ravenous wolfmen. If I was you, I’d be worried.”
“Well,” Aisha said. “This is all so new to me, and the men back in the village, they really were cruel to me.”
“I know,” Packer said. Aisha could sense genuine sympathy in his voice.
“And Heath, my previous partner, he really tried to knock down my confidence too.”
Packer growled when he heard that. “Who the hell does he think he is?”
“I know,” Aisha said. “I never should have stayed with him for so long, but where I used to live, I was so alone. I felt like I needed him so badly that I was willing to put up with anything.”
Packer nodded. “Females do that sometimes,” he said. “I’ve seen the human women down in the village put up with so much from those men. I don’t know how they can stand it.”
“They don’t think they have a choice,” Aisha said.
“Well,” Packer said, “that’s one thing I can promise you. Where we’re taking you, you will always have a choice. No shifter will ever make a handmaiden do something against her will.”
“Are you sure about that?” Aisha said. “Because your brothers, and you for that matter, you seem pretty intent on mating with me.”
Packer laughed. “I’m not going to lie to you, Aisha. We’re craving you. All four of us. But none of us will force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“All four of you?” Aisha said. That was really what worried her. How was she ever going to be able to make four brothers happy? No matter how nice she was to them, she’d only ever be able to choose one of them, and that would break the hearts of the other three, especially given the fact that there weren’t any other females apart from her. How would it work?
“The links between the male and female of our species are very strong,” Packer said. “When a male and female choose each other to mate, that creates a lifelong bond that can never be broken. It’s called the handmaiden’s bond. The handmaiden is the one who decides to accept it or reject it, and once it’s formed, only she can ever unform it.”
Aisha thought about that. She liked the idea. It made her feel safe. She would choose a lifelong bond with a mate, and her mate would never be able to get out of it.
“What if the male wants to break the bond?”
“Believe me,” Packer said. “No male would ever want to break a handmaiden’s bond. Why would he? He gets to mate with that handmaiden. It’s the greatest gift a shifter male can ever hope for.”
“That’s a smart way of looking at things,” Aisha said.
“It’s pretty obvious to us,” Packer said.
“What if the female turns out to be awful?”
Packer laughed. “Look, no matter how bad a female is, once the bond is formed, the male will be more than happy to mate her. He might not spend much time other than that with her. That depends on the level of affection between the pair, but he’ll always be willing and ready for the mating ritual.”
“And why would a female break the bond?” Aisha said.
Packer laughed. “You tell me,” he said. “Females are just fussy that way,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t feel a connection with a male, and then they’ll break the bond.”
Aisha was getting closer to the question she really wanted to ask. She was afraid of offending Packer though. She wanted to ask if she could form the handmaiden’s bond with him and his three brothers. She was worried about breaking the hearts of the other three if she didn’t, but she didn’t know if that would make her sound undesirable to him. What if it angered him? And besides, she wasn’t even sure she’d be willing to give herself to all four of them just to make them happy.
She might be learning that she was a handmaiden, but this was still her life after all, and she still deserved to find happiness.
“You’re wondering if we’re monogamous, aren’t you?” Packer said.
“Well,” Aisha said. “
Isn’t it a natural question, given the fact that I’m the only handmaiden left, possibly in the entire world?” She knew she sounded defensive, which she didn’t mean to be, but she couldn’t help it. She was more embarrassed than defensive, but that’s how she sounded.
“Relax,” Packer said. “No one’s going to judge you. We’re not like humans. For humans, there are millions of them. It makes sense for them to be monogamous, because that’s what gives them and their families the most security.”
“But not among shifters?” she said.
“That depends too,” Packer told her. “When there were more of us, monogamy was definitely the norm. But as there became fewer, and as the humans persecuted more and more fiercely, we had to adapt. The way things stood during Ma Hetty’s time, according to her, was that handmaidens could form the bond with as many males as they wanted. They were to be the judges of what was wise and what wasn’t. That’s why it’s so important that only the handmaidens can make or break the bond. They became the guardians of our species, essentially.”
“So I could form the bond with as many of you as I wanted?”
Packer laughed. Aisha’s cheeks reddened. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that out loud.
“Yes,” he said.
“And can a male form a bond with more than one female?”
“If there was more than one female, then yes, he could. But remember, it’s the females that control the making of the bonds, and females are very good at regulating such things between each other. I don’t think any handmaiden would ever try to form a bond with a male who was already bonded, without first speaking to the female who’d already bonded him.”
“And what if a female bonded a male who was already bonded, without clearing it with the first female?”
“That would be up to her,” Packer said. “If she didn’t want that male anymore, she could unbond him. And it might also create quite a stir between the females. Obviously, we’re lucky. We’re not going to have that difficulty, because you’re the only female here.”
“I know,” Aisha said, “but there’s something that worries me about all this.”
“Yes?” Packer said.
“What if I was a female in a community of shifters, a real community, with many males and many females?”
“Yes?”
“And what if I formed a bond with a male and I was in love with him.”
“Yes?” Packer said, and she could hear in his voice a hint of shyness at the mention of love. They hadn’t said anything of love in the entire conversation yet.
“And then another female bonded him, against my will, and I was heartbroken. You’re saying there’s nothing the male could do about it, if he loved me too, to remain faithful to me?”
Packer looked down at her.
Aisha was afraid he was going to tell her no. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be part of a species that didn’t believe in love. After everything she’d been through, after all the pain she’d experienced during her relationship with Heath, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to take that. Without love, life was meaningless, and she would rather go back south and forget about shifters than try and live like that.
But Packer said, “Of course there’s something he could do. And in fact, it would be expected of him, by the handmaidens, and by the entire pack.”
“What is it?” Aisha said, desperate to hear the answer.
“He could kill himself.”
*
Chapter 22
AISHA WASN’T SURE IF SHE was pleased with the answer Packer had given her. She realized just how careful the females of her species had to be before forming a bond with a male, given the fact that the only option the male had if he didn’t want the bond was to kill himself. It seemed a bit extreme. But then, what didn’t seem extreme about everything she’d experienced during the past few weeks?
She held on tight to Packer as he hugged her against his chest and carried her the last couple of miles to the shifter brothers’ home. They travelled mostly in silence, both with more than enough to think about.
For Aisha, the big question was what her new life was going to be like. She wondered if the shifters lived more like animals or humans. She wondered what they ate, where they slept, what they did to pass the time when they weren’t hunting for food or killing wolves to protect the humans.
She wondered too if there would be peace for them up here in the mountains. Would the humans come and try to get her back? Would there be war between shifter and human as there had been in the past? She had none of the answers to these questions, but her mind was racing with them.
And then, of course, there was the biggest question of all. Would she form handmaiden’s bonds with any of the brothers? Or with more than one of them? And would she bear their pups?
It was too much to think about. After everything that had happened back in the village, the men of the village crowding her and abusing her, threatening to kill her, and then nearly locking her up in the brothel to be a whore, she was overcome with exhaustion. Before they reached the brothers’ home, Aisha fell asleep against Packer’s strong chest, and she didn’t dream about anything at all.
*
Chapter 23
WHEN AISHA WOKE UP, IT was dawn. The sun was low in the valley to the south and spilling the first golden light of the day onto everything she could see. They were high in the mountains now, and it was noticeably colder than it had been down in the village.
“This is stunning,” she said to Packer, looking down at the valley.
“I’ve heard tell,” Packer said, “that everywhere on God’s earth, there’s beauty to be found.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Aisha said.
“If everywhere’s as beautiful as this, that’s a whole lot of beauty.”
Aisha smiled. Packer could hear a helicopter when it was still twenty miles away, and he got down off the ridge and back into the trees for the last mile of the journey. When they reached their destination, Aisha was amazed at what she saw.
Still in the trees, invisible to helicopters but very close to the ridge of the mountains, she saw the most beautiful log house she ever could have dreamed of. It was built against the solid rock of some cliffs, and a small spring in front of it formed the beginning of one of the many streams that ran down the mountain.
The house was long and swayed in and out with the contours of the cliff. It had been built with remarkable skill and craftsmanship. Along the entire front of the house was a raised porch that looked down on the clear area in front. Aisha saw wooden rocking chairs on the porch and pictured the four brothers sitting there in the evenings, watching the sun set over the valley. Warm, yellow light spilled from each of the windows. Chimneys on the roof sent out thin lines of smoke. The smoke was caught by an overhang that brought it up into the rock before dispersing it invisibly. Everything had been very carefully designed.
“This house is beautiful,” Aisha said. “It looks like something out of a ski brochure.”
Packer laughed. “We’re not savages,” he said, “despite what the men in the village would have you believe.”
Aisha thought back to the village, which suddenly seemed to be a million miles away, and shuddered. If there were any savages in this valley, they all lived down in that village.
Packer put her down onto the ground. Her legs were numb from being carried so far, and he offered her support till she got her balance.
“I love it here,” Aisha said. She felt strange. It was a feeling she’d never known before.
Hardy and Tucker came out onto the porch. Hardy was smoking a pipe like the one Ma Hetty had smoked back in the village. Logan caught up from behind and smacked Packer on the back.
“I bet you enjoyed that,” he said to Packer.
Packer hit him back playfully.
“Welcome to our humble abode,” Logan said.
Aisha didn’t know what to say. She’d never felt like this in her life. It was a completely new sensation.<
br />
“What are you thinking?” Packer said.
“I don’t know,” Aisha said.
“Will you be happy here?”
Aisha looked at each brother, one by one. Tucker, the youngest, was leaning on a post on the porch, staring at her as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life. He was the one closest to Aisha’s age. She smiled at him, and he winked.
Then she looked at Hardy. He was leaning back on a pine chair, rocking slightly on the back legs. His pipe sent wisps of smoke into the clear, still air. Aisha could tell he knew he was good looking. He was like one of those jocks in high school who never would have given her the time of day. Except there he was, looking at her, watching to see what she’d say. She knew he was praying she’d like the house. That was what they were all praying.
She looked at Logan. He was breathing deeply after the exertion of catching up the last few miles. He was calm and confident. He looked into her eyes, and Aisha felt like she was being sucked into them. She had to force herself to look away. He was so intense.
Packer smiled at her expectantly. Like the others, he was eager to see what she thought. The truth was, Aisha had never seen a place in her entire life that she liked as much as she liked this remote cabin in the far north of the Alaskan wilderness. It felt like something she’d never experienced. It felt like home.
*
Chapter 24
FOR AS LONG AS SHE could remember, Aisha had always craved a real home of her own. She’d never had that growing up—not in the care of the city, not with the various foster parents that took her in, and certainly not while she lived with Heath. She’d moved in with Heath in the hopes of creating a real family for herself, but she had to admit she’d chosen the wrong man.
“This house is beautiful,” she said to Packer when she got inside.
She was amazed at how comfortable it all looked. She’d grown used to the filthy mess that Heath had forced her to live in. This house was nothing like that. She could tell that the four brothers took pride in themselves and in their home. The decor was sparse, in keeping with the fact that four men lived in the house, but it was clean and tasteful. The furniture was of pine, beautifully crafted and carved with details that surprised her.
