by Noah Harris
Samuel nodded at that, “Yes, we are making sure to alert the other packs to keep their shamans close. The few packs that also lost a shaman were those further west than our own. The rest are to the east and south of us. There are quite a few hostile territories between them and Damian now, so they are considerably safer there.”
“Why not just send Dean to one of them?” Mikael asked, earning a curious glance from Dean. It was one thing for them to send him back to the farm, that was still part of the pack’s territory. If he was sent away to another pack, it was unlikely that the heir of the pack would be able to accompany him right now. He and Mikael hadn’t been away from one another since they had gotten together, and Dean didn’t like the idea of being away for too long.
Samuel winced, “The other packs are…hesitant to take on Dean for the moment. To them, taking on Dean would be akin to putting a target on them. There are a few packs that would be willing, given time, but not yet. Allow Dean time to heal from his wounds, and perhaps by then, we will have managed to arrange something with another pack. For now, it is best that he recovers on his own property, away from the demands of the pack.”
Dean couldn’t argue with them, and he really didn’t want to. As much as he would have loved to feel like he should stay, and help in any way that he could, he was proving to be almost useless, at least in a time of war. He had certainly provided them with stocks of food, and could help with a few human world based matters, but that was about it. Hell, the one time he had tried to help with something human related, he had gone and gotten himself kidnapped instead. They thought him best out of the way, and he was inclined to agree, even if it was with a twinge of regret on his part.
Matalina smiled down at him, “Go Dean, go back to your home. Spend time with your mate, with your pets. Sit among your plants and rest up. See what you can learn from Talon’s journal, and whatever progress you make with your powers and the text will be enough in our eyes. We need you alive and safe, more than we need the answers you might find.”
“A fall?”
The disbelief in Mrs. Williams voice was thick enough that Dean would have sworn he could actually see the emotion manifest. She and Mr. Williams stood in the front entryway, preparing to leave after Mikael and Dean had arrived. Dean had kept his heavy winter gear on when greeting them, doing his best to keep both the wounds and the weariness he felt from them. It had worked right up until Jax, excited by the movement at the door, had knocked Dean over. By the time that Mikael had helped him back up, his hat and scarf and come loose and the few, now visible, marks were obvious to anyone.
She had manhandled his coat open, insisting to see the rest of the marks and had paled at what she’d seen. Mr. Williams looked no less happy about it, but was doing a considerably better job of concealing it. Dean knew what he looked like, but he at least had had time to be resigned to the fact. The Williams’ however, were just short of horrified.
“Yeah, a fall,” he grumbled, wishing she would just take the lie and move on. It wasn’t as if he could tell them the truth.
“What sort of fall?” She demanded, and Dean felt himself warm as he noticed her eyes flick to Mikael before returning to his wounds.
“The kind involving going down a steep hill. I wasn’t watching what I was doing on it. I stepped wrong and down I went.”
“And where was anyone else?”
By ‘anyone else’ he could hear ‘Mikael,’ “I thought that I didn’t need a babysitter when it came to walking through the woods, since I’m normally not clumsy. I’m okay Mrs. Williams, I swear, just banged up.”
“That certainly looks like more than a little ‘banged up’ Dean.”
There was no way he could shoot an SOS look to Mr. Williams with her directly in front of him. Yet the older man seemed to read his thoughts, reaching forward to hook his hand around his wife’s elbow and pull her gently back toward the door.
“If the man says he’s alright, then he’s alright.”
Mrs. Williams scoffed, though didn’t pull out of his grip, “Like I don’t know what ‘fine’ means when it comes to men. You get those wounds checked out, or I’ll get a doctor out here myself?”
Dean glanced at Mikael, who was quietly, and nervously, standing off to the side, “They do house calls out here still?”
Mikael only nodded, grimacing at the sound of Mrs. Williams fussing under her breath. Dean wasn’t sure exactly what she had done to put the fear of God into him, but he was also excessively stiff and polite with her. They’d both known that she wouldn’t be happy if she saw the state of Dean, and now that the cat was out of the bag, Mikael was retreating. Dean could only fix him with a sour look as he watched Mikael take another half-step away from them.
“It’s already been looked at,” which was mostly true, “They just need time to heal is all. It was one hell of a tumble, so I’m going to be lazing around a lot.”
She didn’t look happy, but at least she didn’t look like she was ready to do battle over it anymore, “Fine. But if you need anything at all, you call. We’ll be over here in no time.”
Dean nodded his head in Mikael’s general direction, “That’s what he’s for, my little candy striper.”
It was Mrs. Williams turn to give a sour look as Mikael made a choking noise behind him that he would swear was a suppressed laugh. Mr. Williams however, only looked more insistent on getting his wife out of the house, pulling her again toward the door. Considering the way she kept shooting glances that were almost accusatory toward Mikael, Dean was thankful. The last thing he needed was for her to voice her thoughts about who was responsible for this. She had come a little way when it came to Mikael, but the sight of Dean so badly injured seemed to have thrown all that progress into the fire.
“Thank you,” he called to their retreating backs as they stepped out of the house, “I really do appreciate you looking after the place so much while I’m gone.”
Mr. Williams nudged his wife ahead of him as they crossed the porch, “Don’t worry about it. Nice to have someone else’s house to putter about in. Can’t really do as much with my own place any season as much as I used to, helps me feel useful.”
“Come make yourself useful and help me into this monster of a truck of yours,” Mrs. Williams called from the driveway, fixing them both with a frown. Dean’s chuckle was mirrored by Mr. Williams, the two of them waving to one another as the older farmer descended the stairs. Dean could still hear Mrs. Williams fussing away as he closed the door, shaking his head.
“Can’t say she doesn’t care about you.”
Dean snorted as he hobbled into the living room, making a path for the couch, “I know she does, I just wish she didn’t have to be so…aggressive about it.”
Mikael put a steadying hand on Dean to help lower him to the couch, “This coming from the man who charges into a situation because he’s already made up his mind.”
He grimaced as he situated himself on cushions, “I think my charging days are on hold for a little bit. Can’t even walk without limping right now. Breaking my leg was less frustrating than this.”
“You broke your leg?”
“I was 10, my own fault. My mom told me a dozen times, if not more, to stay out of that old tree on the property. Thing was half dead, but it was so big, I couldn’t help but climb it. Never had a problem, but one day I guess I either went too high or just found the right branch. Down I went and there went my leg. My Grandfather chopped it down after that, can’t say I blame him after she laid into him about it.”
“So, not only have you always been the sort to get yourself into trouble because you’re stubborn, but you’re also used to tough, vocal women?”
Dean smiled at that, “Why do you think I like your sister so much?”
Mikael sighed, sitting down on the couch cushion that Dean took the least amount of room on, “As her older brother, I should be worried about her, out in the middle of who knows where, fighting, but I’m not. She’s always been the fighter,
the pure warrior. I’ll fight if I have to, and even like it, Lucille…well, she never was much of a fighter. Always a thinker, our little bookworm.”
Dean reached down the couch to try to grab hold of Mikael’s fingers, “She’s gonna be alright Mikael. She’ll wake up, and hopefully when she does, she’ll have something to tell us that might help.”
“With Damian?”
“Or something, it just…it seems odd to me is all. First we have all that stuff with Nox happen, then I have that weird thing happen in the basement a couple of weeks ago. Then she’s found with something that feels exactly like that? Just feels connected. And I have a really bad feeling that Damian is going to be a big part of it, just don’t know how. Trying to figure out what that asshole is up to is like trying to make mud clear.”
“Or quicksand.”
“I’m thinking you’re mixing metaphors there.”
Mikael accepted Dean’s hand, smiling down at him, “On purpose.”
“I think there’s such thing as quickmud though, at least I think.”
“Just let me have this one clever thing?”
Dean gave a soft noise, shrugging lightly as he did so. He was willing to let Mikael have this one thing without any real fight from him. Just being back in his home, surrounded by his things, with Jax sprawled on the rug before the fireplace, and Mikael’s fingers locked around his, was soothing. The tension he had been feeling ever since being rescued and taken back to The Grove was still there, but it was hovering in the background of his mind, further from his thoughts and easier to ignore.
“You okay?”
Dean blinked, realizing he had drifted into his own thoughts once more and had zoned out, “Oh, yeah. Just thinking about how nice it is to be back home. I hate that I’m so useless to them that I have to be sent back here, but they’re right, I am more at peace here. I wonder if druids are territorial or something.”
“That’s probably just you babe,” Mikael chuckled as he leaned forward and kissed the tip of Dean’s nose, “And you’re not useless. If they hadn’t insisted on you coming back here, I would have. You’re mine, and I want to see you better.”
Again, Dean was struck by how strange it was that that simple statement brought a calmness to his nerves. Had any other lover he’d had called him theirs, he would have had a fit. Might have been a quite fit too, or a more aggressive one depending on the person, but a fit all the same. Yet the moment Mikael was even remotely possessive with him he found himself wrapping up in it like a warm blanket. There was no demand in what Mikael said, as Dean knew all too well that Mikael wanted Dean to be Dean. It was a safe possession, comforting and protective.
“Are you ready to…”
Dean shook his head, closing his eyes, “No, I don’t want to talk about it now. Probably not ever. I just want to move on from it and stick it to the bastard. I won’t feel better until Damian isn’t a problem anymore.”
Mikael looked troubled, like he wanted to push to get Dean to talk about it but seemed to settle on letting it drop. Instead he got up and went to retrieve the bag of Talon’s that Dean had brought with them. Talon’s fern also sat on a nearby table near Dean’s Serbian Phoenix Flower. Dean had been unable to leave it behind. He didn’t know if the plant had been important to Talon, but it was important enough to Dean that he refused to leave it behind while he took everything else.
Dean took the bag, placing it gently beside him, “Thank you.”
“Not going to start digging into it?”
“I’ve been told to rest up and get my strength back. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to lay here and rest with my mate, and let my body do what it needs to do. I don’t need to be doing something all the time you know.”
“Uh huh, I give you a full 24 hours before you’re digging into either that weird text, or Talon’s journal…again.”
Dean sighed, knowing that Mikael was right but not wanting to acknowledge it either. Dean and boredom didn’t go well together, and he had already started looking through the journal on the ride back. It distracted him from the hardest bumps that caused another jerk of pain, and it kept his mind from wandering into areas best left untraveled. It was too difficult to focus on what was written down to really digest it, but Dean could see that it was more notes on various aspects of shamanism rather than a personal journal. If it had been a personal record of Talon’s life, Dean wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to read it, no matter how informative it would be.
Carefully, Mikael pulled Dean’s legs into his lap, stroking them gently with one hand, “We’ll find him. And we’ll find Damian. You’ll get better, and then you’ll learn how to be a kick ass druid. We’ll end this war, and come out better for it. Then you and I get to spend our lives together, eventually being alphas, and maybe even having a family of our own.”
Dean eyed Mikael, “Aren’t we optimistic today?”
“I’ve got you, how can I not be?”
From the Author
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