Circle of Wolves

by Jacqueline Roth

  His heart sank. If her mother felt this way, what would that bode for the future? “Kira, do you want me to just go? To leave here? It would make things easier for you if I was not in this picture.”

  Panic filled her face and he saw it clearly before she turned her back on him. Her voice trembled as she answered him. “You will stay or go as you wish. If you want to go, I won’t try to hold you. Let this be your excuse if you need one. But if you decide to go, do so quickly. Do it now.”

  He reached for her and pulled her back into his chest. “Kira, you know I don’t want to go, you know I want to be with you.” He pressed his lips to her neck and held her tightly.

  “You need to be sure, Evan, when you are what we are, you cannot change your mind. I’m certain what I want. I want you. I want to be with you wherever that may take us.” Her voice faded slightly with the last words.

  Evan turned her in his arms and kissed her. He wanted to be where she was and he wanted her where he was.

  * * * * *

  Hours later he was watching her with amazement. They were again in her library. She was showing him how they had kept watch on him and how they kept watch on all of his kind. The rows and rows of books were transcripts, records of lives lived by blood Wolves and curse wolves as far back as they had been able to record. She showed him the stack of letters, emails and telegrams from across Europe. Other blood Wolves acted as Watchers as well and would report new cases or strange happenings to her. In some cases the werewolves themselves sent her updates on births, marriages, deaths.

  “We have several contacts in your country at present,” she had told him as she sifted through the correspondence and seemed to sort it. “One of those is a very old blood Wolf who watched you for us. I believe he even made contact once or twice with your parents under the guise of being a curse wolf. Through him we tried to guide your parents as much as we could. We weren’t sure how mage parents would react to a child such as you became.” She looked at him with a stern expression. “We were ready to go and take you out of there if they reacted badly. Alexi planned to raise you himself.” A smile had crept across her lips. “Imagine Alexi as your father.”

  Evan had shaken his head and chuckled, “Terrifying.” He grew serious and reassured her, “My parents were amazing. They never for a minute stopped loving me or changed how they acted toward me. The transformations were as hard on them as they were on me. My mother was a latecomer to the mage world. She had not been found early in her life like most gifted. The whole thing was beyond terrifying to her. I have faint memories of her sitting outside the door to my room whispering comfort to me as it happened. I also remember sounds of her crying along with me.” Evan thought of the sandy-haired woman, who went prematurely gray from the worry over her darling little boy. A woman who had died long before her time and no matter his father’s assurances, Evan knew it was at least in part because of him. No, neither she nor his father had ever given him a moment’s pause in their regard and affection.

  Now she was explaining how they watched and followed those werewolves not in areas with Wolves present. She had taken out a large bowl and he thought he recognized it at once.

  Her hands were shaking. She knew it was stupid to be nervous about this. This final revelation would most likely please him even as it shamed her to admit to it. She filled it with water from a pitcher and leaned over it. “Where shall we look today, Evan? The Far East? The Americas? Africa? Where would you like me to look?”

  She was scrying. She was using a form of magic. She hated magic, it terrified her but here she stood offering to scry for him. “Kira?”

  She looked up at him with a sad smile. “I can see other than just our kind, Evan. Would you like a look at your friends? Would you like me to check on the baby for you? Tell me again, what was the mother’s name?”

  His mouth went dry and he stared in confusion. How could she hate mages so much and still be willing and able to perform magic? He took in a deep breath and realized she was waiting for his answer. “Ari. Arianna Lasater.”

  “Come here and look into the bowl with me, Evan.” He approached her slowly, more curious than anything. He’d seen Seth, his circle’s water mage do this. He leaned down over the bowl, their heads touched and her hands reached out and covered his. “Picture her in your mind. What does she look like?”

  Evan drew in another breath and pulled up a mental image of Ari. Her blonde hair, her blue eyes, her easy smile. The memory of that smile pulled one to his own lips. He described her to Kira.

  The water seemed to cloud and then clear. Faintly at first, then with more clarity, he saw a familiar face reflect off the surface of the water. Ari. She was sitting in rocker holding a small bundle to her chest and she seemed to be singing to it. He’d never seen a scrying bowl give so clear an image. He watched his friend cuddle and rock her newborn son gently, the peace on her face, the happiness and fulfillment tugged at him deep inside. Since Ari and Seth’s marriage a great many of the moments spent in their company were tinged with envy of Seth and a sad emptiness.

  He lifted his head and pulled away. He battled the jealousy and what he saw as childish whining at the injustice of things. For a moment again, he was angry at these people. For a moment, again, he considered what Kira had told him. He shook his head. No. It would never be a serious option, the thought had only been the byproduct of his mood.

  Kira watched him stand and turn away from her. She left him to his struggle for it seemed to her he needed to fight it alone. She had a fleeting idea that he had been repulsed by the display. Not even Alexi could stand to be in the same room when she did this. But no, something about this image had not been the happy picture she had expected it to be. She had only offered to share this with him because she thought it might make him happy to see his friends, to see the new child whose arrival had brought him such joy. She had been wrong.

  When Evan turned back to her she was carefully pouring the water back into the pitcher. Some of the bitterness he was feeling spilled over a bit and came out in his words to her. He instantly wished to take them back. “How convenient you disapprove of my use of magic but you have no qualms about using it. The gifted are the evil enemy but you don’t eschew magic when it suits you.”

  He watched her jaw tighten. “Evan what I did was part of a ‘gift’ or rather a burden I have. Katerina has shown signs of it, much to Alexi and Sonya’s dismay. We will know for certain tomorrow night if it has developed. There has been a member of our family who could do this for the last five hundred years. It has been our family’s secret. Our shame. All the other lines of Wolves have bred out any magic that came with us from the other world. But we are still cursed with it.”

  He was astounded by the words. “Shame? Curse?” Something clicked in his brain. “Your grandfather was gifted, Kira.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out,” she snapped.

  “Who was the first person with this gift?”

  She sighed. “My aunt Sasha was the first in almost a thousand years to manifest any form of magic. You will meet her tomorrow night if not sooner. She is my father’s older sister.”

  “The daughter of a mage.”

  “Evan…” The voice gave a clear warning.

  “You’re gifted, Kira.”

  Her face paled and she looked as if he had struck her. Her voice came back to him in a humiliated sob, “Yes.”

  Evan reached for her. His heart leapt. This was incredible. If she was gifted then everything would be fine. She’d come back with him. He’d teach her everything he knew. What he didn’t know he’d get Ari or Seth or even Master Ryder himself to teach her. She’d integrate into his world and they could be so very happy.

  It was then he noticed the tear slide down her face, then that he realized she was deeply ashamed of what she was. “You’re gifted, Kira. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no shame in it. Not where I come from.”

  “But there is where I come from.” Her face was pale and even
more than a bit angry. “Where I come from it makes you an abomination, a disgrace. You have to understand, Evan. For generations the Wolf has sought to strip the magic from our lines. The magic caused the greatest of horrors in our history and I’m not talking about curse wolves. I’m talking about the great wars.”

  Evan shook his head. “What wars?”

  Kira sniffed slightly, she had to pull herself together. Now was not the time to fall apart over something no one could change. She shifted away from his embrace and scooted up onto the edge of the table. “History lesson, part two,” she said wryly. “The great wars. Wolves are highly territorial. We weren’t prepared for the degree to which our people would merge with the hierarchical wolf nature. Before we were Weres, we had no such political structure. We had no lines on maps that divided us. That’s why the first of our people left the other realm. There was so much war and fighting over land and resources. So we came here. And to our horror we discovered that the choices we made to stay, merging our souls with the indigenous species, brought just those traits into us. To remain in Semira, we had to embrace the evils of Gehenna.”

  Evan blinked. “Semira? Gehenna? Kira what are those? You’ve used one of those terms before.”

  “Semira is our word for this world, this realm.”

  “I thought you called your world Atlantis?”

  “No,” she smiled. “I can see you are going to love getting your hands on these books, my love. All our history is laid bare in them. Atlantis was the name humans gave to the community the first shifters created here. They called this realm Semira. We are semiraht, children of Semira. The name of the old world is Gehenna. The dark creatures the mages fear are gehennat, children of Gehenna. These words have crept into the human languages as well. They literally mean heaven and hell.”

  Evan moved closer, standing between her thighs, he wrapped his arms around her again. “The Weres came here to find heaven, a utopia but because of this war…”

  Her eyes were sad and haunted. “We nearly destroyed ourselves, Evan and we took a lot of the other Weres with us. They chose sides, most of them. Not the Cougars or the Dolphins. They just shook their heads and ignored us, until we had nearly forced ourselves into extinction. Then the Cougars stopped us.” She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. “And believe me, we never thanked them for it. There’s been enmity between the two groups ever since. But after the war a near religion arose from the smoke. We swore to leave behind the magic, the tool we had used to nearly annihilate ourselves. Some of our people take it very seriously, Evan. They will kill a Wolf who shows any signs of the magic. We, our line of the Wolf, had eradicated it completely until my grandfather. Now it is back and we must keep it quiet.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him. For the first time he saw true fear in the eyes of this powerful woman. “There are those among my own family who would sooner see me dead. And now Katerina…”

  Standing there holding her he realized for the first time he didn’t know what to do or say. How could he comfort her in her ideas of shame at what she was when he had never been able to comfort himself in his? She felt as strongly, if not more strongly, that what she was, the magic inside her, was part of a curse. That is, was some horrible secret to be kept.

  Before he could formulate words the door to the room burst open and he found himself looking into Nico’s face. The expression changed from joy to disbelief, to horror, to hatred in less than a second. Kira slipped off the table and faced him but didn’t step away from Evan’s arms. Her hands grasped his to hold them in place across her stomach. “Nico, what brings you down here? You hate this place, so this must be big.” She was smiling at him.

  The boy’s eyes didn’t leave Evan and the angry glare was starting to wear on his nerves. “I didn’t know he would be here.”

  “Well he is. Now tell me what brought you racing down here?”

  The boy’s face showed his immaturity as it partially pouted. “Not that you’d care but they’re here. Elena and the rest. They’re here.”

  He turned and walked back through the door. “Wait here a minute,” she bade Evan and went after him.

  She caught him in the hall at the base of the stairs. “Nico, wait.” He stopped more out of practiced obedience than from desire to hear what his sister could possibly have to say. She reached for his hand and he turned to face her.

  “Nico, can’t you just be happy for me?” Her blue eyes searched his. “I know you don’t like this but can’t you just be happy for me?”

  “Happy?” His voice was incredulous. “Happy that you’d throw away your life on that pup-eater?”

  “Stop it. You’re just parroting what you’ve heard Mother say. What real objection could you have to Evan? What has he done to you?” She tried to reason with him.

  “He comes here, shows us disrespect by becoming too familiar for one of his kind and you ask what he’s done?” His face wore a look of bitter petulance. “He disrupts everything and you and Alexi welcome him with open arms. Don’t you see he’s a threat to everything we are? Don’t you see he could destroy everything?”

  She sighed, “Nico, please. Evan won’t destroy anything…”

  “He’s bringing his fight to our door. What happens now? Father told me he’s agreed to help them, so what happens now? They come after us, that’s what happens. Now we’ve all climbed into bed with them.” He spit the final words at her hatefully.

  “No Nico, only I’ve climbed in bed with them, you’re still unsullied trust me.” She couldn’t actually believe he was being this stupid, this hurtful.

  “Did you do it in front of him? That…that…thing that you do? Does he know about what you are?”

  “Yes. He knows I… He saw me use the watching bowl.” Her voice dropped and she couldn’t stop the flush of shame from sweeping up her face.

  Nico looked as if he’d be sick. “You’d flaunt your weakness, your deformity in front of the pup-eater? Who are you, Kira? Who has he turned you into?”

  “I am the same person I’ve been for more time than you’ve been alive, little brother.” She tried to keep her voice calm. She was growing more and more fearful of the man her younger brother seemed to be becoming. “You are the one changing. You are the one growing old enough we no longer hide unpleasantries from you. Nico, please…” Her voice plaintive as she begged him to understand. “I need you to be strong in this. You’re my salvation, my release, Nico. Without you I’m bound here, I’m trapped. You’re the only chance I have to be happy.”

  He stared at her hard. “If what you say is true, then I wish I’d never been born.” He turned and fled up the stairs. She returned to the room to find Evan leaning back on the edge of the table waiting for her.

  Evan was sorry that this was so hard for her. He wasn’t used to this reaction. Most people liked him, found him pleasant and agreeable. Of course they didn’t know he was a werewolf, only that didn’t seem to be the problem here. Nico and now her mother, did not seem to want him anywhere near her.

  She walked over to him and stood before him. Her face was pink and he didn’t think that was a sign things had gone well in the hall. “I’m sorry I’m causing so much grief.”

  She smiled at him. “It’s not you. You cause me only happiness, Evan. It is others who are causing whatever else may be felt.”

  He placed his hand on the side of her face and gave her a quick kiss. “Should I try to talk to them? Your mother? Nico?”

  She shook her head and laughed softly. “No. That would provoke my mother into doing something that would require my father’s intervention. Nico just needs time to grow up. He will grow up. I can’t believe he could really feel the things he says.” She slipped her arms around his waist and curled into him. “Besides, Father has asked that you be presented to him at tomorrow’s hunt. That will put a stop to Mother’s outright displays of temper and silence Nico.”

  She looked up at him. “The presentation will be in both human and wolf form Evan. I d
on’t know how much you retain but please try to remember to be submissive.” She was smiling playfully at him.

  He copied her grin and pretended to think long and hard about her words. “Ah…submissive… Hmmm. That’s something like this, isn’t it?”

  He bent low placing his head lower than hers and whimpered softly at her. She laughed. He tentatively nudged her chin with the top of his head and whimpered again. Her hands came up to his shoulders and he lifted his head, rubbing his cheek against her neck. His hands moved to span her waist and he placed soft kisses along her jaw, brushing her neck with his mouth and nose, as he would have with his muzzle. Softly he whined deep in his throat, a pitiful sound of supplication. He raised his eyes to look at hers and smiled mischievously.

  “That’s the general idea, yes.” Her eyes lit with unreleased laughter. “I don’t, however, suggest you try that approach with Father.”

  “But on you it’s okay?” He moved to cover her mouth with his and found her pushing back from him. Her face was serious.

  “No, Evan, never with me, never submissive with me. Not you. There is no lady, no princess. I am simply Kira.” A shy smile moved into place and she whispered, “Evan’s Kira.”

  He watched her eyes and was overcome with the wave of emotion those words caused to rise in him. Evan’s Kira. His Kira. Someone who belonged to him. Here was someone he could claim as his own to love and adore. Someone who knew him for what he was and still wanted to belong to him. The very thought made so much so clear to him. He belonged to her. If she was Evan’s Kira, then he was Kira’s Evan.

  Now he did kiss her. His hand moved over her rib cage and rested on the soft curves. She kissed him back with an intensity that made his body ache. He wished them upstairs in the comfort and privacy of her room, his room, any room whose door he could lock. He wanted to hear her soft moans, to know he was responsible. The feeling that it was he who pleased her, that it was him, made him feel powerful in an alien but wonderful way. He laughed at himself when he thought of it. He was more a man in her arms than he had ever felt. It made him want to…well, howl.