by Nikki Winter
Cree looked up at Maddox’s abrupt pause.
His eyes were narrowly focused on something outside of the garden. She tried to follow his line of sight but found herself shoved to the ground. “What—?”
“Stay down!” he barked before Cree heard a whizzing sound and then a pop.
When Maddox stumbled slightly, her heart sank.
He turned in her direction and a scream worked its way up her throat but was smothered under the agonized groan already pouring from a place in her that she hadn’t knew existed. Crimson disturbed the plaid pattern of his shirt over his heart as blood slid from the corner of his mouth and trickled along the side of his jaw. The jaw she’d nipped and licked hours ago. The one she’d threatened to break several times over the year. The one that she’d run her fingertips along, learning the curve of his features as he learned the curve of her mouth.
Maddox blinked, paling slightly. Before he dropped to the ground, he wheezed a bit and whispered, “Well that really fucking hurts.”
Cree could hear nothing beyond that point. Nothing beyond the echoing sound of his heart slowing until the beat was almost imperceptible. As howls rang out in the distance, announcing an oncoming attack, she stood slowly, feeling the heaviness of Nasnaana’s gaze. She allowed her knees to hit the grass a foot away from where Maddox lay dying. Her trembling hand reached forward, every bit of distance closed between her fingers and his face, causing the limb to vibrate harder.
“I don’t,”—she inhaled—“I don’t understand.” Cree looked from his ever quieting frame and towards Nasnaana. “I don’t understand,” she repeated.
“You will.”
She shook her head and hysteria grasped her. “They shot him?” Cree chest racked with silent sobs. “They shot him?” The greatest injustice one of their kind could ever experience was being gunned down as though they were nothing more than fair game on the Serengeti. It was a dishonorable death, worse than being killed from behind. And those responsible knew it.
“That feeling in your soul,” a voice hissed from the out edges of the yard as figures began to move in. “The one of complete suffering?” Enli came out of hiding, her mate right behind her with a hunting rifle in hand. “It’s shocking isn’t it?”
Wolf after wolf faded into the fire’s light, all watching Cree, all waiting for the loss of sanity that they’d been hoping to witness, eager to see her become exactly what they’d anticipated. Something roiled in her gut. A burning that left her gasping for breath.
“We wanted this to be the last thing you saw before we sent you on to be with the bitch who birthed you,” Enli continued, getting closer. “I wanted to watch you break.”
Cree looked up, her mouth open. She couldn’t close it. She couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe. She felt it the moment Maddox slipped away from her, the exact second his last exhale shuddered through him.
“You killed him,” Cree uttered in complete disbelief. The burning grew. It felt as though a fallen star rested in her belly.
“You should leave now,” Nasnaana said, finally speaking, disturbing the tense silence that stretched tighter by the minute.
Cree’s head wobbled on her shoulders. “I’m not leaving him.”
“I wasn’t speaking to you, girl,” the old woman replied.
That drew the attention of Cree and those surrounding her.
Nasnaana looked to Enli. “Run.”
Enli cast her gaze about and then burst out laughing. “You’re out of your goddamn mind. Why would I run? What do I have to run from?” She lifted her arms carelessly. “My land, my pack. The very thing you rest on belongs to me so what do I have to fear? What do we have to—?”
The words stopped. The laughing stopped. The victorious air surrounding the pack mates that had followed Enli, stopped. Because the she-wolf’s head now lay on the ground, eyes wide, mouth open the same way Cree’s had been moments before. Her body seemed to simply be frozen in the throes of a shock so deep that it stayed precisely where it was, headless. And then finally, whatever traces of life that it had clutched onto for those strained seconds of horror released it and it collapsed.
The thump of her flesh when it dropped was the only thing heard aside from Cree’s pants as something completely and totally disturbing ripped up her spine and spilled from her in a violent surge. She pulled her scarlet stained hand back. Her claws retracted and she looked up.
“No!” Kuzih roared, snapping out of his awe and charging her.
Cree stepped sideways while his movements seemed to slow in her eyes to a pace that was almost film like in its stagnant tempo. That stained hand then yanked the gun from him in passing with a speed that he couldn’t follow and she pulled it back, firing it once to spill the contents of his skull onto those standing behind him. Every single wolf watched her with a startled widening to their eyes. It couldn’t be hidden or brushed aside; shifted and non-shifted alike appeared to be at a loss of what to do now.
But Cree knew what their next course of action should be. Dying. And when a cry composed of rage and years of repressed grief released itself, she decided that none of them, not a single one, would leave here alive.
***
She’d warned them of this. Anytime the child’s name was mentioned, anytime she was thought of, Nasnaana had attempted to be the voice of reason amongst unjustified hate. She’d attempted to stem the flow of a repetitive cycle that would come to hurt rather than facilitate growth. But they’d never listened. Because she was a matriarch, because she’d seen the spoils of war and had helped to bury the bodies of loved ones and had obviously lost the ability to experience the steady thump of excitement, they’d never listened. Had never taken her word for what it was meant to be—guidance. And in light of that, they were going to die.
Nasnaana looked to the body of Enli and felt nothing. The girl had been a hateful, egregious spawn of malice and twisted principles. She’d harbored disgust for a child that could’ve brought her so much joy, could’ve sustained the memories of her brother that she did have. Now she was dead.
Cree’s fury cracked against the air like a whip and Nasnaana felt it as it swathed the girl and turned her inside out. She watched as her feet left the ground and what had been so ardently fighting dormancy, finally freed itself. Light surrounded her like a brazen cloak and caused each pack mate to shield their faces away from the burn of its power. Nasnaana stared on, excitement bubbling and spilling over within. It was happening; Cree’s awakening was happening.
No longer would she run from what she was or fear it. No longer would she shun her reflection or flinch away from the comforting touch of another. She would embrace this part of her. This thing that had no true definition and yet, shaped the very foundation of everything her people had put their hope into.
The girl returned to earth, chest quaking with every inhalation. She raised her arms and pulled them back as if she would bow at the feet of her enemies but as she came forward, her frame blurred unnaturally, her skin curling and splitting, her bones snapping. Cree’s lips parted and she laughed. It wasn’t amused or remotely pleasant. It was an ugly, desperate sound that made the ground rumble and convulse.
The tribe members that had so foolishly followed Enli moved nervously, now quite obviously doubting their decision to do so. Nasnaana knew that only a portion had willingly followed the alpha pair to their deaths. The percentage with pups and lives that they weren’t willing to part with, had stayed behind, obviously waiting to see who would be the victor.
Cree’s laughter grew louder as Nasnaana stood rooted to the spot fascinated by what was occurring. And then, the unthinkable. Every being Cree housed within herself came out, spilling over as though there was no more room to remain where they’d been. These weren’t simple figments of the imagination. Opaque, large and enraged, each issued some form of a primal wail that caused the earth to crack and lurch. The child could shadow call. Nasnaana had only ever heard legends of those with the ability to do so. Even in all her
time, she’d never witnessed it for herself until now, until this very minute when the one whom she’d always known would bring home a reckoning, unleashed a maelstrom of wrath.
Cree’s sweat dampened hair lay plastered to her face, her breaths deep and even now when she addressed the wolves before her. “I asked you to stay out of my way,” she said softly. “I asked to be able to leave here as quietly as I came because all I wanted, all I’ve ever fucking wanted, was to understand what this thing inside me was. All I’ve ever wanted was to be accepted here, to be seen as something other than a taint on this tribe’s name. And what I received in return was a betrayal that I will never forgive.” She seemed to be attempting to compose herself as her fists balled at her sides. She closed her eyes as though she couldn’t bare the sight of any of them for longer. “Leave none alive,” Cree whispered.
It carried over into a command that her beasts were all too hungry to obey. The screams that rang out as they chased down wolf after wolf and disemboweled them were like nothing else Nasnaana had ever heard. Power. The girl had true, unadulterated power. And it had come in the wake of a love so strong that not even death would tear it asunder.
Cree was once again at Maddox’s side, brushing his hair back as she rocked his lifeless body while it rested halfway in her lap. Her bloodied hands petted him and a mournful groan, full of so much sorrow that it knocked the wind briefly from Nasnaana with its strength, broke loose.
“I’m so sorry,” the girl murmured over and over again amidst the howls and panicked shrieks.
She cried her love, chanting it without the slightest thought to her own safety or what was happening around her.
A tap on Nasnaana’s shoulder made her look to her left.
“Would you please place me back where I belong, madam? Incorporeality is always fun and games until someone loses an eye.”
Chuckling at the grumbling grizzly apparition, Nasnaana said, “It has to be her to do it, cub.”
Translucent brows drew downwards. “And how the fuck is that supposed to happen when she can’t see me?”
“Oh, she sees you, Maddox. She’s always seen you.” Nasnaana dipped her head in the girl’s direction and the grizzly’s stare shifted towards his lover.
Cree suddenly stopped and stiffened. Devastated topaz irises lifted and locked onto the bear’s spirit. She looked unable to process what she was seeing momentarily before she breathed brokenly, “Maddox?”
The grizzly expelled a sigh as his soul was yanked from the other side, tumbling back into flesh and bone where it belonged. Cree’s ability to recognize the essence of his spirit had done its job. A gasp sounded off as his chest jerked, his inhales sputtering into steady breaths.
Nasnaana looked on as Cree crushed herself to him, bawling with a sense of happiness so unmistakable that even the death surrounding them couldn’t disfigure the beauty of the child’s rebirth.
When his desperate embrace tightened around the girl, smashing her to him fiercely with a promise in his hold to never let go, Nasnaana then had the confirmation that no, up until this moment, she’d never truly lived.
Epilogue
“Oh sweet Jesus.”
Maddox cast his stare out of the windshield where Cree’s eyes were focused and barely contained the loud, extremely rude laugh building in his throat.
“Whose idea was this bullshit?!”
He would bet his left ball that it had been Fallon’s and that was saying a lot since he happened to deeply love his anatomy. Their truck slowed to a stop in front of the main offices of Wilder Lodge and they stared. They stared at the multitude of pack members that had been used to hold enormous signs that said, “Welcome home, oh omnipotent one!”
When they began to call her the same moniker taken by her favorite HBO character that was a prominent part in a show about schemes to take a throne with the help of her giant terrifying beasts, Cree simply placed her head on the steering wheel before growling, “You say nothing.”
Considering that Maddox had only just gotten her to begin talking to him again the day before, he had no intention of opening his mouth. Or at least he hadn’t. But then Fallon came around to the driver’s side window and knocked on it. “Great Cree-leesi, breaker of bones, the un-bent, Mother of beasts, she who has taken what is hers through fear and blood—”
“I’m going to shoot you,” Cree warned. “I’m going to shoot all of you.”
“—your Cree-lasars welcome you,” Fallon continued, ignoring the threat. Cheers went up behind her and Maddox thought he would suffocate from holding his breath, trying so desperately, so desperately, to say nothing.
Obviously fed up, Cree swung her door open, purposely knocking it into her best friend as Maddox climbed out from his side, careful not to jostle his bandages. His wound still itched like a mofo but the last time Cree caught him diddling with it, she hit him repeatedly and asked if the stinging from her smacking little hands was enough of a distraction from said itching. Maddox had reason to believe her motives had been ulterior after their recent bout of trauma at the hands of hate driven zealots. Her screeching when she found out that he knew he was going to be shot due to Nasnaana’s lovely premonition, would definitely be going on the top ten reasons of the “Why Cree beats me” list.
To say she hadn’t been happy was an understatement considering Maddox had woken up to find her hovering over him in the middle of the night a few times…glaring. The moment his eyes opened she’d cock her head and then roll over as if none of it had ever happened. It was disturbing to say the least and most assuredly that was the reason she’d been doing it up until he gave her an incentive not to; one that almost pulled his stitches and got his ear bitten off.
“Cree-leesi! Cree-leesi! Cree-leesi!” her pack mates chanted.
Maddox saw the way she stopped, drew in a deep breath, faced them all and then…
The ground shook beneath his feet at the rebounding of her roar.
The crowd grew quiet and then one by one, they began to run. The signs were dropped, the chants abandoned, leaving only Makya, Anoki, Ransom, Cade and of course, Fallon.
While Anoki hid behind his brother, Fallon ambled—well more like limped after the hit she took from that car door—towards her friend. The two stopped and stared and as if they were magnetic opposites, they slammed together. There was squeezing—my God the squeezing!—and grinning and rocking.
Maddox looked up as Ransom came forward. They stared and…his brother smacked him. Had it been done with the small, weak, ineffective hand of a human that smack would’ve been more so like a tap from a child. However, this was a large, bovine hand and it really fucking hurt!
“Ow!”
“Glad you aren’t dead, gibbon fuck.”
“Is no one going to greet me as though they actually care about my well-being?!” Maddox cried.
They all stared.
He folded his arms across his chest. “Assholes, the lot of you.”
Ransom’s brows flicked upwards. “This coming from the man who called ahead to inform us that he wants to be referred to as OG Triple Mad-dawg from now on?”
“I’ve been shot,” Maddox said slowly. “It’s an automatic induction into the hall of gangsters.”
“And we’re done here,” Cree murmured a few feet away. “I need a shower and to see scenery that doesn’t make me twitchy.” She bumped shoulders with Fallon. “Will talk to you later.”
With that she wandered off towards her cabin.
Several sets of eyes turned to Maddox.
“What?”
“Why is she not marked yet?” Fallon demanded.
He frowned. “Whaaa…?”
Ransom smacked him again.
“Goddammit!”
“What’d you do?” his brother prodded. “What’d you do to fuck it up?”
“I was shot,” Maddox replied. “In the chest! And I died! For like ten minutes while my intended went on an extremely frightening crusade of death and dismemberment!”
> “Excuses,” Anoki bellowed. “We want results, bear and we want them now.”
“How about numerous injuries as a result of you inciting my boar rage?”
Fallon came closer and reached out to grasp the front of his shirt. She jerked him down until they were eye-level. “Get to work on tying down Cree-leesi or I’m going to make that gunshot wound look like a paper cut.”
He pouted. “Why does no one care for me?”
She shook him. “Because we care about Cree more.”
“That’s just hurtful.”
Stopping, Fallon finally smiled. “You took a bullet so she could accept something that has haunted her for the entirety of her life. That pretty much solidifies that you care about her more than yourself. Right or wrong?”
Sighing, he murmured, “Right.”
Through the lovely miracle technology, the pack had been regaled with the tale of Cree’s awakening via video call. Fallon had demanded it be that way so she could see her friend face to face when what happened in Montana was explained with full details. Fallon had been more than a bit gleeful in her pride to say the least; upset that Cree hadn’t called sooner but proud. Days had passed with Maddox healing with the help of Nasnaana’s restorative abilities and soon they were ready to return to the place that they called home despite her grandmother’s invitation to remain. Cree had happily informed the old woman that the next time she returned there would be a lot less death and a lot more reconnecting but Athabaskan land just wasn’t where she was meant to be anymore. Cree also left Nasnaana as the standing alpha in her wake until the shaman chose someone else that she thought worthy of the position. Maddox had no doubt that she would do so wisely.
No matter his skin-walker’s attempts to express violently her displeasure at him risking his life, he knew she finally had the peace she needed to continue on her journey. This was why if he had the choice, Maddox would do it all over again, with no hesitation and no fear; even if it meant not returning to her. Her contentment brought him more happiness than anything he’d ever experienced and before he gave that up, he’d be shot again. Just not below the waist. He had to draw some lines. Nasnaana had sent them on with her blessing and a hug so fierce for Cree that Maddox’s eyes had a very sudden and very suspicious reaction to dust molecules nearby. That was the story. That would always be the story. Any arguments with that story would be responded to with slaps and roaring. No one wanted that.
