by T. S. Joyce
I made and exasperated noise in my throat and offered my palms. How did I explain something I’d done so long ago? “Because I was a stupid kid. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to something I didn’t understand. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for how I left you.”
She’d stopped breathing. I could tell because I couldn’t hear anything save a heartbeat from her. “Is that why you came here? To put your mind at ease? Do you know I rode to our spot every day for months? I cried and cried and one day, your brother was there to tell me you’d gone. I’d given you everything and you spat on it. I forgive you Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech. Not for you, but for me. You brought bitterness into my life. Now, I’m letting it go. You want to know why we aren’t on the reservation? Because your government has already broken their word. We lost the mineral rights within five years and the gold rush has brought more white men to invade the land they gave us. And still the government presses our chiefs for more. We’re here because we follow Kicking Bull. He’s kept us safe—kept up our way of life. My children will be brought up wild and uncaged the way it’s always been for our people.”
“Peeh!” a little boy said as he bolted through the clearing. He ran straight for Oupita and latched onto her legs.
She scooted in front of him but not before I’d seen his face. My heart stopped. The boy had lighter skin, and though his hair was the raven black of his people, his eyes were light gray.
“Who’s he?” the boy asked in his language.
“No one,” Oupita answered. “Go play.”
He walked away slowly, never taking his eyes from me. He looked to be about six and I forced my gaze to his mother. “Is he mine?”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “My son has a father. One who wouldn’t ever run away. Do you have a woman, Mahtuhgurch Sahdteech?”
Her use of my formal name stung. Things between us hadn’t just been broken. They had been blasted apart by dynamite. “I have a woman.”
“Good. Go home to her. Never come here again. I forgive you, now I want to forget you.”
“Oupita, for the boy, for your unborn child, you must get to the reservation. There’re soldiers here who will force you to go, or worse.”
“None of which is your concern.” Her eyes were rimmed with tears. “Go. Go!”
I glanced at the place between two tipis the boy had disappeared. My guts were being ripped open as I backed away. Nothing else could account for this amount of pain inside of me.
I left her to her life.
We’d both gained closure, but Luke had been wrong. It didn’t do me any good.
Tree branches whipped past me as I rode for a destination I didn’t even think about. It wasn’t home because of the place I’d left behind and the memories that filled it. It was home because Lucianna was there, and nothing else could sooth the fire in my soul.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucianna
I stretched and reached for him. Him. Gable. I still trilled with excitement when I thought about him being mine. He’d been so quiet yesterday when he came in from the fields he and his brothers had been working to prepare. His eyes had looked someplace far away for most of the night and he barely touched his dinner, and just when I’d worried myself into heart palpitations, he took me to our bed and touched my body and soul in that completing way of his. And there in the dark with the twinkling stars shining through the window, he’d wrapped me up tightly and told me he loved me.
I’d felt it for a long time, but hearing the words was different. He wasn’t hiding anymore. I’d gone to sleep on those words and today, I’d repay the favor. I’d tell him how I felt and give him the same security in our bond that he’d given me. He didn’t need it, I knew. He was a quiet man—a strong man. He didn’t need a token of my affection, but I’d give it to him none-the-less.
My hand found nothing but cold blankets. Leaning up on my elbows, I searched the loft but he wasn’t here. His clothes and boots were gone from the chair but the light filtering in through the window above me was still dark gray and new. Where had the man gone off to at such an early hour?”
I dressed and washed my face. With the top half of my long hair pinned in the back, I left the rest to brush my hips. He liked when I wore it long and unbound. I could tell because he couldn’t seem to stop touching it when it flowed out of its pins. I slipped into my new yellow dress but frowned into the mirror. I’d have to hem it and take in the waist. Maybe Kristina would let me borrow her sewing basket later, after the morning chores were finished. With a sigh I slipped on the dress Gable had given me. I wanted to wear something new for my confession, but he liked this one just fine. He’d told me on several occasions and his eyes always inspected my chest hungrily when I wore the fitted fabric.
Kristina stood out by the water pump and filled buckets of fresh water. I helped her haul them to the barn for the animals and after several trips, we fed them as well. I opened the door to the iron clad chicken coop, built to keep hungry werewolves at bay, and fed the hens and the ornery rooster grain from the folds of my gathered apron. Wiping my hands, I bid them ado to enjoy the rest of their day clucking and pecking around the yard. In a wire bucket, I gently set the eggs they’d lain in the night and while Kristina milked the first cow, I hauled my poultry wares to the big house. It was some distance away and I scanned the woods for Gable. I wasn’t rewarded.
Lorelei’s house had been whitewashed and the porch held one painted white rocking chair, and one charred and marred one that had likely seen the fire. I hoped my house would look like hers and Kristina’s someday. I didn’t need anything grand, but I was anxious for a place of our own that didn’t house livestock.
The smell of ham sizzling away in a greased iron skillet hit me as Jeremiah opened the door. He’d been in the midst of securing a holster with a couple of pistols and bullets shoved into small loops down the length of the leather belt around his waist.
“Mornin’,” he said in a sleepy voice as I swished past him.
“Good day. Have you by any chance seen Gable?”
“Not since last night. Maybe he needed to change. He stayed human all day yesterday.”
“How often do you and Luke change?”
“Every few days. We can go longer but it gets uncomfortable. It hurts to stay one or the other for too long.”
He’d managed to stay human for the entirety of the carriage ride to Colorado Springs. That was a six day journey thanks to the Higgins’ insistence we stop at every bump in the road. He shouldn’t be having a problem staying human for just one day. Maybe it was me.
“Go tell Luke and Kristina breakfast is on,” Lorelei said through a cloud of pork scented smoke. She used her apron to pull a pan of biscuits from the wood burning stove.
While Jeremiah called Luke’s name out in a completely reasonable voice, one that the man could likely hear over a train whistle, I cracked eggs into a bowl and dug out the shell fractures. I wasn’t as good as Lorelei at breaking them cleanly. When she’d pulled the ham out of the skillet, I poured the eggs over the thin layer of flavor at the bottom and stirred until they were scrambled.
At least I didn’t burn them to crispy flakes like I had yesterday, and Lorelei complimented them. I brimmed with pride. I’d never touched a cooking utensil in all my life, and now I’d just successfully scrambled eggs. I scraped them into a bowl and set it on the table just as Kristina and Luke filed in the door. They held hands and talked quietly and I smiled to myself. Such affection was not encouraged in society between ladies and gentlemen, but the more I was around it, the more physical detachment between husband and wife seemed sort of sad. I couldn’t imagine being with Gable in society and never being able to touch him for propriety’s sake. It would be torture.
“Where’s Gable?” Kristina asked as we sat at the table.
“I haven’t a guess,” I said.
Luke had the smallest wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows, but Jeremiah was right. He was probably running wild in the woods so
mewhere.
It wasn’t until late-afternoon when I really started to worry. Jeremiah and Luke spent the morning in the fields and were now sitting on Kristina’s front porch, devouring a late lunch. Kristina and I were taking up space in two rocking chairs with the sewing basket in between us. She was letting the waist out of one of Lorelei’s dresses for when she started to show, and I was taking up the hem of my yellow dress with tiny, practiced stitches.
I gasped as Gable came tearing into the clearing on an unsaddled horse. His eyes blazed so light they were almost colorless and a fearsome snarl was on his face.
“Did you know?” he yelled at Luke as he slid from the horse before it even stopped moving. “Did you know! Is that why you sent me to her on that fool’s errand?”
Her? My gaze shuffled from Gable to Luke. Who in bloody hell was her?
Luke set his plate down and stood slowly. Down the steps he went with a calming gesture. “Jeremiah and I both knew. We couldn’t just let you go on forever without knowing about him.”
“And you couldn’t just tell me? You made me relive all of that for what?”
He lunged at Luke.
“Okay,” Kristina said quietly. She snatched my hand and dragged me bodily in through the front door. My dress had fallen from my lap but a thimble still sat perched upon my finger. “Trust me when I say you don’t want to be around a Dawson fight.”
I fought for air as the door closed behind us. “Do they fight often?”
“Jeremiah and Luke do. They are forever showin’ up with bloodied faces and black eyes but they’re always in a good mood after. It’s ingrained in men to fight. It’s worse for werewolves.”
The yelling was muffled through the door and still, I stood here with my thimble clad finger pointed to the ceiling, trying to decipher the words of their argument. “What if they hurt each other?”
Kristina grunted. “Dawsons are bred hard-headed. They’ll be fine, but let’s go back to the back room so we don’t have to hear it.”
“Who was he talking about? Who’d Gable go see?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.
Instead, she pulled me onto the bed beside her and wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulders. The blue in her eyes pooled earnestly. “I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did but I can guarantee Luke started whatever it was. If he thinks he can tug the tail of your man, he’s wrong. Gable’s more wolf than anything.”
“Are you angry with Gable about coming at Luke like he did?”
“No.” Her serious eyes stayed locked on the door. “I was madder than a hornet the first time he and Jeremiah fought in front of me, but it’s the way they work out their differences. We talk things out with our lips. Men talk with fists.”
What a barbaric world I’d come to. The same rules that allowed me to touch my husband allowed violence too. We could get away with anything out here where nobody lived close enough to frown upon heathen ways.
She squeezed my shoulder. “I think they’re done. I don’t hear them no more.”
Outside, Luke sat on the ground with his arms crossed over bent knees. His face was cut and bloodied and when he spat, it was red.
“Barn,” he clipped out when his brilliantly-colored eyes rested on me.
I didn’t rush. If remnants of Gable’s anger remained, I wasn’t in a hurry to invite them upon myself. In the overcast and dusty light of early evening, Gable held on to one of the stall doors with a white knuckled grip and leaned against it with one locked leg, one bent. The slow pit-pat of blood from his chin kissed the hay beneath, and his eyes stayed firmly focused on the wood under his grip. That look on his face was what tipped me off.
My heart sank to my toes and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Who is she?”
His icy eyes, made even brighter against the blood red of his nose and chin, found me and he straightened up. “Shit,” he said softly, then sat on an old stool in the corner. “Her name’s Oupita.”
If I’d hoped I guessed wrong before, her name sealed the truth into my heart. I wasn’t the only one he’d loved and for as much as I’d encouraged him to face the ghosts of his past, I hadn’t expected one of them to hurt me this much. Dust filled the air as I brushed off an old milking stool and sat across from him. I left space in between us because he’d earned it.
“She was your woman before you left?”
He looked absolutely miserable, slumped in the corner with his hands draped between his knees. “I’d never been with a girl before her. My brothers and I were young and green when we bought this place and we were scared to pieces the first time the Ute came to call on us. I thought they’d scalp us for sure. Oupita is the chief’s daughter. They looked the other way when I started showing up to spend time with her because of what I was. They figured out we were werewolves from the second they saw us. Don’t ask me how.”
“Is she pretty?”
He nodded slowly.
Of course she was. I could only imagine a fresh-faced, strong, strapping Gable Dawson. A woman would have to be beautiful to turn his head. I suddenly flushed with insecurity. I’d guessed he’d been with other women before. A man who looks like him would catch the interest of any female around, but never had I thought his trysts with women would be more than that. He’d loved her. That much was written all over his face. Blast it all, maybe he still did. She’d been beautiful and held his heart for a long time and here I was, the replacement lover with scars and a limp. My hands were cold and clammy as I clenched them together.
“And you loved her?”
“I did. Don’t anymore.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me you were going to see her?”
“I didn’t want it to look bad, or make it seem more than it was.”
“Gable, can’t you see?” Even I could hear the baffled desperation in my voice. “You not telling me makes it look even worse. How long were you together?”
“Three years.”
Oy, I was going to be sick. He’d had a reunion with the love of his life and here I sat, pining over him like a fool. “Why? Why would you go back and revisit her if you don’t have any feelings left, Gable?”
He stood and leaned forward which only angered me more. “Because Luke had me convinced it would help me to get some kind of closure. That it would help me be better for you if I apologized for leaving her like I did all those years ago.”
“You didn’t even leave for a reason? You were still together? So you just left your love hanging there between you all these years until I came along to fill some sort of void her absence left? Why couldn’t you tell me you hated each other by the end, or that she kicked you out of her life because you drank too much, or I don’t know, anything! Maybe you’re still together, Gable.” Okay I sounded hysterical but I didn’t care. My hurt needed a voice or I’d explode into a hundred tiny pieces.
“She’s got a man, Lucianna, and a baby on the way. She’s happier without me, and I’m sure as hell not harboring any feelings for her.”
“Then why did you need closure?”
“I…” His nostrils flared as he gave an explosive sigh. “Well, it sounds stupid now that you put it like that. It made more sense yesterday when I was thinking about it.”
“Ohh.” My laugh couldn’t have held less humor if I tried. “That’s why you were so quiet yesterday. You were thinking of her. Were you playing all of your favorite memories over and over, Gable, while I sat there worrying if you were okay?” I stomped over to him and glared up with my fists clenched at my sides. “Is that why you told me you loved me last night?”
“Lucianna, you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” I screamed. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. Why did this hurt so badly? I wanted to double over from the pain but I’d give him no such satisfaction. He’d bedded me with her on his mind. My skin crawled as if it were dirty. “I trusted you. I traveled all the way from Britain while you rode beside me as a wolf and lied to me. And then I come here to find out I run off with
a werewolf who visits his true love within the first three days of being here?”
“True love? Lucianna—”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
He hesitated and then quiet as a whisper, he said, “Yes.”
Oh, what that word did to my insides. Such fear filled me in the breath before he spoke.
“Oupita had a child, and I think the boy is mine.”
I slapped him across the face so hard my palm stung. And then I was furious with him for hurting my hand with his face. The clomp, clomp of my raging footsteps echoed through the clearing as I left the barn and headed straight for the water pump to splash water over my burning cheeks. Oh, I could just strangle the man! He’d loved another. He’d created a family with another! With a woman who wasn’t me! I sobbed and slid to the ground near the water trough. The splintered wood scraped my cheek and I’d probably look like a porcupine when I lifted away from it but none of that mattered.
All that mattered was that I didn’t matter as much as I thought.
“Luc,” he said from behind. His hands tried to lift me but I shrugged him off.
“Go away.”
He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice sounded like he hadn’t slept in weeks. “I’ll be gone for a couple of days.”
“Good. Go ahead and run.”
“I’m not runnin’ from you, woman. I love you.”
“Don’t you say that to me right now.” I kept my eyes steadily on the tree line behind my trough pillow.
“Jeremiah’s asked me to help drive a shipment of cattle back here.”
I stood and brushed my soaked cheeks with my hand. “Great. I’ll see you when you get back. Don’t father any children while you’re away.” The agony in his blue eyes was almost enough to break me, but my stubborn fury won out. I plucked my dress from the floor of Kristina’s porch and slammed the door behind me.
Chapter Eighteen
Gable
Thank the good Lord above it was Jeremiah I was riding with and not Luke. Luke was good for some things, but man he wouldn’t ever shut up about the fifty ways I’d messed up. In contrast, Jeremiah was quiet the first couple of hours we rode. He let me wrap my head around things before he piped up with his opinions.
