“If I told you that he were with me in the Great Forest, and that he’d asked me to tell you to live, would you do it?”
“I...” she hesitated. “I would.” Beth was wary now – this conversation wasn’t going the way she thought, which was a ridiculous thought in itself. She never imagined she’d be conversing with the Great Mother at all. “I wouldn’t want to, but I would.”
“Very well,” she smiled suddenly, and it illuminated her face. “I do not understand the mortal concept of love. I know only the spirit, and yours is true.”
Beth caught her breath as the Great Mother cupped her bloody cheek, and left a feeling of well-being and peace in its wake. “You must understand that I created two halves of the same spirit, and put them into different vessels, so that they might find each other and be completed. Sometimes, the vessel is damaged before they do, and they must wait for a second chance. Your spirits are different,” she sighed.
“I created your spirit halves long ago, when the world was very new. I put them into their vessels and sent them to earth, time and time again. And time and time again I have watched your vessels be destroyed before completion.”
“I don’t understand...” Beth took a breath. “Are you saying we aren’t supposed to complete each other?”
“Oh, no,” the Mother smiled sadly, her skin turning transparent where the sun shone, making her seem more ghost than flesh. “I created other spirits,” she admitted. “I call them the lonely spirits. Before I had thought to split a spirit into two halves, I sent entire spirits to earth in their own vessels, and each time, they became maddened, evil and wretched things.” Her hand waved away the memory. “So I gathered up as many of them as I could and destroyed them. All but a few, who had escaped me, fleeing to other less-savory Creators, to be used against me.
I have been chasing them ever since. One was residing in the vessel you knew as Bradley, biding his time until he could once again destroy your completion. In the end it destroyed him, also.”
“You’re telling me that these evil spirits deliberately try to stop others from finding their spirit halves?”
“Jealousy is a very powerful motivator,” she nodded, replying. “Time is short,” she suddenly rose up, clearing Beth’s view of Gareth’s body. “You must repair the vessel,” she told her quietly. “I cannot heal that which does not house my Creation. But I can fill it again once it’s healed.”
~~~~
Beth’s mind had whirled as she ran through the village, not caring a bit that she was stark naked whilst doing so. All she cared about was getting the Healer back to Gareth’s body. She found him by the stream, washing and preparing Bradley’s body for burial. “Shale!” she’d cried. “You have to come with me.”
It had taken forever to convince Shale of what she needed done, and she was sure he thought she had flipped and was just humoring her, but he followed her to Gareth’s body nonetheless. “I need you to heal him.”
“Beth,” exasperated, he blew out a sigh. “I can’t heal a dead body. I can sew him up for burial, but I can’t fix death.”
“You don’t need to fix death, just his body!” Grabbing his arm she went to her knees before him. “Please, Shale, please. Just trust me.”
He nodded slowly, probably thinking she was still out of her mind, but she didn’t mind that. She watched him with a sharp eye as he slipped Gareth’s intestine from the wound, stitching it closed, before replacing it and doing the same for the gash. “He’s about as healed as can be,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what more you want me to do.”
“Nothing,” she replied, never taking her eyes from her love. “Just wait with me.”
It seemed like hours that they both sat side by side upon the fallen log. Beth used the time to tell Shale about her encounter with the Great Mother, but she could tell from the doubtful look on his face that he didn’t really believe her. Until Gareth’s body heaved in a massive breath of air. Both of them rushed forward as Gareth opened his eyes. He seemed disoriented and Beth quickly lowered herself beside him.
Every drop of blood drained from the Healer’s face, and he shook his head. “He’s dying,” he told her. “He’s not healed. The trauma to his body is too much.”
“He will NOT die,” Beth denied forcefully, spittle flying from her mouth. “Gareth, look at me. Look at me!”
His eyes burned into hers as he gasped for breath. “You need to shimmer, baby. Now.” He shook his head, a lock of his hair falling onto his forehead. She swept it away tenderly. “Come on,” she demanded gently. “If you don’t do this, you will die...again...and I will die after you, I swear it.”
What should have taken seconds ended up taking near ten pain-filled and brutal minutes. Panic hit him hard half way through and he got stuck, ending up looking like one of those awful Hollywood versions of a werewolf, all long snout and Neanderthal brow, with hair sprouting all over his mostly human body. Beth had to talk him out of a frenzy and shimmer into her own wolf-form, to tempt him into finishing the transformation.
Shale had left at her suggestion, both to give them privacy and so Gareth didn’t feel threatened by another male wolf in the vicinity as he desperately tried to shimmer. She was fast running out of ideas when she felt the sweat bubble on her brow, and a sickly feeling rose up in her stomach. Oh, shit, she thought. Not now, please not now. This is the last damn thing I need right now.
She’d been ignoring her body for hours, of course, so wrapped up, firstly in her escape, and then Gareth’s death that she really didn’t notice the heat had begun. But now she was reaching critical mass, and pretty soon she was going to be sick everywhere. It was like a compulsion – if she didn’t mate, she got very sick and wished she had.
Gareth, his mind more animal than human at the minute, sniffed the air, picking up on her heat, and a threatening growl issued from his throat as his hands changed into paws. It’s forcing the shimmer on him, she realized. Letting go of all of her restraint, she let the heat take her body and mind, until with the release of all her mental barriers, the heat over took her, hitting her like a freight train and leaving her a writhing mass on the ground.
Gareth whined, desperately trying to complete his transformation from half-man to wolf. She let her primal instincts take full charge, as she lowered her front quarters to present herself to her mate. He went wild, body bucking, teeth snapping and throat vibrating with a tortured sound, that was half shout and half growl. She watched as his limbs grew shorter, his knee joints reversing themselves with an audible pop. Even more course hair sprang up and his muzzle shortened, while his entire body shrank into that of a beautiful dark wolf.
He lay there panting in recovery for a minute, his eyes glued to hers. I’m here, Little Wolf, he told her in his mind voice. I’m here.
Thank the Mother. She whined as another cramp shot through her belly, indicating that she was out of luck and out of time. She had to mate now, or suffer through the hours of pain the denial would bring her, which she was already intimately accustomed to.
Fully healed, but barely recovered, her mate stood on shaky legs and stalked toward her where she had curled up, wracked with pain. He ran his tongue across her muzzle, once, twice, the sand-paper-like roughness lifting her curled lip. I’ll be alright, she assured him in between waves. I’ve done this before.
You weren’t mated before, he told her, his mind voice strong and sure.
She looked into his beautiful chocolate eyes before making her decision. Lifting her hind quarters she again presented herself to him, and he wasted no time in mounting her, entering her in one swift thrust.
Now, he told her.
Both shimmering at the same time, hers coming effortlessly, his coming through more pain and effort, they ended up in human-form, her on all fours with Gareth behind her, still hard and thick inside her. He began to move slowly, with shallow strokes, calming the heat inside her. But it wasn’t enough. “I need more,” she told him, softly. “Lay down and let me.”
Gareth s
tretched out on his back while Beth climbed on top of him, spearing herself on his shaft. They both groaned when he reached the end of her, and she began to grind, slowly at first, and then building in intensity until she was bucking up and down, riding him hard and fast. Gareth lifted a hand to her hip and gripped hard, stalling her up and down motion, and guiding her into a rocking motion instead.
“Oh, God,” she groaned, as her swollen bud came into contact with his pubic bone with each movement.
“Mmm,” he agreed lustily, raising his other hand to cup her breast, pinching her nipple and rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. Her inner walls spasmed around him and he growled softly, sounding more wolf than man. “Come for me.”
“Gareth,” she cried out, feeling herself edge ever closer to the cliffs of orgasm.
“I want to feel you,” he told her roughly. “I want that feel you tighten around me while I’m hard inside you.”
He always knew just what to say to tip her over the edge. She came, screaming her pleasure and Gareth followed not long after, whispering her name in a kind of reverence she’d never heard before.
Afterward, they lay unmoving, blinking at the mid-morning sky. Beth draped her leg across his lap as she curled under his arm, her head lying in the shallow depression between his shoulder, and his collar bone. “I love you,” she told him again.
“I love you, too.” He put a finger under her chin to raise her face, and smiled when she blinked at him. “And I love those shining eyes of yours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The entire pack was in an uproar when she and Gareth emerged from the clearing at the edge of the village. It appeared that when Donovan returned to the Great House after leaving Margo at her cottage, he’d disappeared inside the Great House, where screams and shouts could be heard all across the village. Some time later Felicity, bloodied and beaten, ran from the house and disappeared into the woods.
When she went to speak with him, Donovan told her he’d confronted Felicity about his mother’s death, and though at first she’d vehemently denied it, they could both smell the stench of her lies. Realizing that she was only prolonging the inevitable, and mad with grief over her mate’s death, she launched herself at him, scratching and biting. Donovan easily over powered her, but she’d had a trick up her sleeve, literally. A bracelet she was wearing had a hidden compartment, which when opened revealed a powdered substance. Poison.
Leaving Donovan a writhing ball of flesh on the floor, she’d fled, escaping into the woods beyond, and could be anywhere by now. It was Margo who figured out what the poison was – wolfs-bane mixed with ground silver, which when blown into the face, was inhaled and attacked the nervous system – and they’d had a steady stream of blood donors since. It would take days for him to heal, and months before the poison leeched out of his bloodstream entirely, so he would need regular transfusions, but he would heal. And he vowed to track Felicity to the ends of the earth for the death of his mother.
Worried that he was becoming obsessed like his father before him, Beth tried to talk him out of it, but he would have none of it. “I will find her,” he stated. “And I will make her pay.”
“And what of your pack?” she asked, perhaps a bit too angrily. “Are you just going to abandon them?” She was still bitter and hurt that he’d stood by and let his father terrorize her so much, firstly taking her to mate, and secondly locking her up to torture, rape and kill. It didn’t matter that none of that had happened – it would have if she hadn’t escaped. And while she knew she wouldn’t have escaped in the first place without the water he’d left for her, she couldn’t believe that he’d left her there, rather than confront his father and free her.
“Beth,” he replied, his handsome face weary. “I never abandoned you. I–”
“You went for Gareth, I know,” she interrupted, guilty for snapping at him. “But the pack needs you. You know how broken it is, and you need to help fix it.”
“That’s a job for the new Alpha.” He threw some clothes into a carryall and strode from the room, calling over his shoulder. “That’s you and Gareth, you know.” He paused, considering her puzzled expression, and smiled. “He challenged the Alpha and won – the pack is his.”
“But I interfered–”
“No,” he whispered quickly. “That never happened.”
~~~~
“So!” Margo exclaimed.
“So?” Beth questioned.
They were sitting by the dying embers of the fire in the weaver’s cottage, Margo with a shift-dress she was altering, and Beth mending a torn blouse. Over the last couple of months, she’d found solace in the cottage, when she could not find it anywhere else. Gareth had been gone a lot, hosting peace talks with the Loam Floor pack, and though Beth knew in her heart that nothing bad would happen, old habits died hard, and she still worried about the blood feud.
“So, how long are you going to avoid the others?”
“I’m not...avoiding them, exactly.”
“Yes you are,” Marybell pitched in, taking her cup of tea from the table where she was examining a piece of lace.
“I’m not,” she denied again, annoyance flaring. She threw down the blouse in a huff and sipped from her own cup. “I just feel like they’re all afraid of me.” Ever since the pack found out about Gareth dying and her visitation with the Great Mother, they’d sort of viewed her as a holy object, afraid to touch her, or speak out of turn. That shit got old, fast.
“Nonsense! They adore you.” Margo finished with the dress and held her hand out for the blouse Beth had been working on, though she rather thought she’d done more damage than not to it.
“Well if they could adore me a little less fanatically, that would be great.”
“Now you’re sulking.”
“Nonsense,” Beth mimicked. “Alphas do not sulk.”
All three women burst into giggles, and Marybell burned herself with her tea. “Sorry,” Beth apologized with a grin.
Serious again, Beth eyed Margo. “You never told me why Donovan came to you instead of Shale that night...”
“No,” she replied with a grin. “I don’t suppose I did.”
“Aw come on! I’ve told you everything.” And she had. She’d told that old woman more about herself than anyone had a right to know. Aside from Gareth and Donovan, the only ones right now who knew Lissa had been her mother were the two old biddies in the cottage with her.
“Alright,” she relented. “You know I was the pack Healer in my younger years,” she winked. “I was more spry then, you see.” Beth nodded with a small smile. “Donovan came to me because he figured I knew more about the healing arts than Shale, silly boy. But,” she stalled Beth with a wagging finger. “He also came to me because he trusted me not to let the finer details of that dominance fight emerge. I know you were the one who took Bradley’s life in the end,” she whispered, while Marybell excused herself to use the bathroom. “And I know that it’s against pack law. There would be absolute bedlam.”
“Okay, but what I don’t get is why he trusted you, and only you.”
“It’s simple, my dear. I’m his grandmother. Bradley was my son.”
When Beth simply stared at her, mouth agog, she offered her a sad smile in return. “He wasn’t the best son, true. But he was my son.”
“But you gave me the tea, you helped me plan an escape, and you covered up what was basically his murder?” Shock rippled wave after wave through her. She couldn’t reconcile the gentile old lady and the violent brute as being related in any way.
“The good of the pack must come before the wants of the wolf.” She shrugged. “Bradley was a sweet boy in his youth. And a dutiful son. He might even have made a good mate, for the right woman. But his greed for power undone him, and destroyed the entire pack in the process.”
Finding no words, Beth sat with her eyes downcast, processing everything. “I know that I owe Donovan – I owe you all – for saving me and Gareth, but...” she trailed off, her f
ace remote.
“Be mad at him,” Margo replied carefully. “Even hate him for a little while, but imagine what it was like to have such a father as Bradley. Dear boy lived in constant fear since he was born. His father damn near controlled him for most of his life, and some habits are hard to break.” She shifted, picking up a new spool of thread. “He came through for you when it counted. He defied the one man capable of destroying him body and soul.”
Marybell settled into her seat again – Beth had literally demanded armchairs be brought in if she was to sit with them regularly – and offered Beth a top up on her tea. “I really shouldn’t.”
“No,” Margo replied, deliberately lightening the mood with a grin. “One is quite enough, for you. When are you going to tell him?”
She thought about fobbing her off with a lie, but knew it was pointless. “Soon.”
That night, when Gareth pulled her on top of him with heated kisses and teasing touches, she resisted. “Are you okay?” he asked her, the desire in his eyes quickly being replaced by worry.
“I’m fine,” she told him, quietly. “In fact, I’m more than fine.”
“Are you?” She could smell the curiosity coming from him, and she started to laugh softly, planting a smoldering kiss on his lips. When she’d thoroughly kissed him, and bitten his bottom lip for good measure, she told him to take a deep breath.
“I have something to tell you.”
He looked up at her, so trusting and his face so full of love that she thought she might die of happiness. “I’m pregnant.”
“When?” he asked quickly, wrapping his arms around her and holding on tight.
“That morning.”
The morning of their mating, the morning the Great Mother had given him back to her, and blessed them with a second chance at life and love.
When they’d both stopped grinning, Beth felt that frisson of attraction bubble up again, making her squirm on top of him. “Smells good,” he told her with a wicked grin, hardening beneath her.
“Mmm,” she moaned, as his hand found her slick and wet. “I’m done fooling myself.”
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