Highland Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Unknown

  The sound of the baby crying was louder here. It was a lusty, wailing cry. The poor thing sounded hungry. Sibyl crept down the dark hall, heart thudding hard in her chest, hoping she wouldn’t run into any wolves. She didn’t exactly relish coming face-to-face with an animal in the darkness, even if Raife had assured her that none of them meant her any harm.

  “Laina?” Sibyl called the woman’s name outside the next door. The baby’s cry was definitely coming from there and, as far as she knew, this was the room she had woken up in. This was where the white she-wolf had birthed her baby. She knocked, waiting for an answer. “Laina? Are you in there?”

  She told herself she should just go back to her room, close the door, and ignore it. This wasn’t her place, it wasn’t her child. She told herself, while she was at it, she should probably just go back to her room, grab her satchel, and slip out of this place in the middle of the night. But she did neither. Instead, she put her hand on the latch and pushed. The door swung open.

  “Laina?” Sibyl saw the woman on the mattress near the fire, her back bare, the sheet pulled up. The baby was beside her on the mattress, waving his fists in the air, his face red from crying. Hungry, she thought. She had been an only child but she had spent enough time in the small village near York, playing with the seamstress’s babies, and she knew that cry.

  The midwife and her assistant were gone. She wondered where Darrow was, but mayhaps, like many animals, male wolves were a danger to their own young? She couldn’t remember enough about wolves and their behavior, cursing the fact they’d been outhunted in England by mid-century. Was Laina so exhausted from the birth she slept right through the babe’s cries?

  “Are you all right?” Sibyl crept closer, suddenly imagining this woman turning back into the great, white wolf she had been, imagined the wolf seeing a human approaching her baby, seeing her as a threat and tearing Sibyl’s throat out.

  In spite of that image, in spite of her fear, Sibyl crept forward. She touched the woman’s shoulder and Laina moaned softly, but didn’t wake, even when Sibyl shook her.

  “Laina?” Sibyl reached down, scooping the baby up in her arms in hopes of comforting and quieting it, at least for the moment, turning the woman toward her with her other hand.

  That’s when she saw the blood on the sheet and all over the mattress. Laina was bleeding, and badly. Sibyl felt the oppressive cold of the mountain overtake her. She’d watched women bleed to death in childbirth. Every woman she’d ever known who had become heavy with child was terrified of dying during the process.

  “Laina! Wake up!”

  Sibyl shook the woman, hard. If she could keep her awake, it would help mitigate the blood loss. How much could one person lose before they died? Sibyl wondered. She’d watched her father’s men bleed from injuries before and had helped the healer on more than one occasion. One man had lost a leg to the tusk of a boar and she had watched the healer tie it off with his belt and save the man. But how could you ebb this flow of blood? She couldn’t cinch the poor woman in the middle! She tried to remember the births she’d attended with the healer, looking to jog her memory.

  “Shh, shhhhh,” Sibyl hefted the baby up on her shoulder, pulling the sheet back, seeing blood pooling between the woman’s bare legs. “It’s all right, little one. Let’s take care of your mama so you can eat, hungry baby.”

  She talked to herself, pressing the woman’s abdomen, watching more blood seep out between her thighs. This was bad. Very bad.

  “What are you doing?” Raife’s voice startled her and Sibyl gasped, whirling to see him standing in the doorway. “I saw you leave your room.”

  Saw her. Where had he been, she wondered, that he saw her leave? She hadn’t seen him in the darkness. Of course, she couldn’t see in the dark and had simply followed the sound of the baby crying. Could wulvers see in the dark? She wondered, meeting those bright blue eyes.

  “I heard the baby,” she explained. “It wouldn’t stop crying. I thought… I wondered… I think… I think she needs help. She’s bleeding and I can’t wake her.”

  “Laina?” Raife frowned, stepping into the room, unmindful of the woman’s nude body or any modicum of modesty. “Where is Darrow?”

  “I do not—”

  “Laina, I brought the—” Darrow stopped in the doorway, seeing his brother standing over his wife’s bleeding form, Sibyl holding his child. The tall man snarled at her and Sibyl shrank back. “Get out of here!”

  “She is hurt, brother.” Raife took a step between Sibyl and Darrow, one hand on his brother’s chest keeping the man away from Sibyl’s trembling form.

  “I brought Kirstin.” Darrow frowned, looking down in concern at Laina’s inert form. “I woke and she was bleeding. I—”

  “I need more to stop this!” Kirstin was already on her knees, using the bloody sheet between the woman’s legs. “Darrow! More cloth, or she will die!”

  “It’s so much blood.” Raife’s eyes were wide with fear and Sibyl didn’t blame him. Birthing was bloody, dangerous business.

  “It happens, sometimes,” Sybil said softly, hoping Darrow didn’t hear her.

  “I’ve never seen a wolf bleed like this after a birth!” Kirstin protested, grabbing the cloth Darrow brought, trying to stem the blood flow, but it was useless.

  “Women do,” Sybil countered. “Women die in childbirth all the time.”

  “But wulvers do not!” Kirstin snapped. She was afraid too—terrified. Sybil was surprised by their reaction. In her world, everyone knew this could happen. “I have never seen this. Get Beitris, Darrow! Quickly!”

  Darrow ran. The old midwife might know what to do, but Sibyl wasn’t sure she would, if it was true that wulvers did not bleed out this way after birth. There wasn’t time for consulting texts. Sibyl knew what to do for this kind of bleed, had learned on the knee of her father’s healer, and remembered as much as she was going to.

  “Do you have dried goldenrod?” Sibyl asked Kirstin. The girl was up to her elbows in blood over Laina’s inert form. “Shepherd’s purse?”

  “No.” Kirstin shook her head helplessly, meeting Sybil’s eyes. She saw tears in them. Laina would certainly die without intervention and the girl knew it.

  “I saw some on the way in,” Sibyl murmured. She had, although how she remembered it, given the circumstances, she couldn’t quite explain, except that, like her father had taught her, she had an awareness of her surroundings most people did not. “But it is the middle of the night. I would not be able to find it. And she does not have until morning.”

  Raife touched Sybil’s arm, alarm in his eyes. There was no time for panic.

  “Do you have cayenne?” Sybil asked Kirstin. “To add heat, for cooking?”

  “We do have some!” Kirstin brightened. “In the kitchen!”

  “Good!” Sybil nodded, “Get it. Stir a teaspoon into boiling water. Make her to drink it scalding hot. She will not want to. Force her.”

  Darrow showed up with Beitris, the old midwife, whose eyes grew even wider than Kirstin’s at the amount of blood on the bed.

  “Take the babe,” Sybil instructed the old midwife as Kirstin ran out, hands still covered in blood, to look for the cayenne. “And put him at her breast. Make him suckle.”

  The baby was still mewling with hunger, his face turning back and forth, rooting.

  “Should’na be a problem, he’s starving.” Beitris knelt with the child, tucking it in against Laina’s pale body. “But won’t it cause her to lose more fluid?”

  Beside them, Darrow howled. It was an inhuman sound that rose the hackles on the back of Sibyl’s neck. There was so much pain in the sound, it would have brought Sybil to her own knees if Raife hadn’t been beside her, holding tight to her elbow.

  “No, it will help,” Sybil assured the old woman. The baby had latched on already, suckling, greedy. She looked up, meeting Raife’s concerned gaze. “I hope it will help enough before we can get back.”

  “We?” He stared at her, a
ghast.

  “Take me back into the woods.” Sibyl looked up at him, remembering the breakneck speed the wolves had run on the way in. “We will find what we need.”

  Raife met his brother’s eyes, a low communication passing between them.

  “We will be right back, brother. She will live. Sybil knows what to do.” Raife looked down at Sybil, taking her small hand in his giant one as he led her into the dark hallway, and she hoped against hope that the words he spoke were true. She stopped for a moment in her room to empty her packed satchel out onto the bed.

  “Hang on tight,” he instructed, his eyes grim in the tunnel’s torchlight.

  “I will.”

  She couldn’t watch. Instead, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck and she felt him shift. Firm, hard, hairless flesh transformed into softness and fur, the muscle and bone changing underneath. She didn’t understand this magic, but she didn’t have time to think about it, because Raife was running, and she was riding.

  They passed the sentry without stopping and he did not stop them, likely recognizing Raife needed no challenge or permission. Raife had been right—there was no moon and it was so dark she could see nothing. She would have to rely on Raife’s sense of smell and sight.

  “You’ll know the goldenrod,” Sybil told him. “It smells like old, wet socks.”

  He found it right away. The wolf shook his big head and sneezed as she gathered it in by the armfuls, shoving it into the satchel she’d emptied for this purpose.

  “Shepherd’s purse smells like…” Sibyl frowned, trying to think how to describe it. But the wolf howled. He’d found it a ways down the path and came back to lead her to it in the darkness. She tripped over rocks and had to steady herself against his thickly muscled hide.

  “Pungent, isn’t it?” Sibyl made a face, yanking the shepherd’s purse up by the roots. “But it will do the job. I hope. Hurry, Raife. Get us back.”

  He howled, a sound that shook her to her bones as she grabbed onto his neck and he ran like the wind. The entrance to the cave, hidden even during the day time, was a black hole. Sibyl clung to him, hoping what was in her satchel might save a woman’s life tonight.

  “Boil this!” Sibyl slid off Raife as he skidded just past the doorway where she knew Laina lay near death. She didn’t wait for him before bursting into the room, already pulling the pungent herbs from the satchel and handing them over to a stunned, worried-looking Kirstin. “You’re going to make a tea for her to drink.”

  “Laina?” Sibyl sat beside the woman. She was more lucid, the baby at her breast being held there by Darrow. “Can you hear me?”

  The blonde woman shook her head, moaning, but it was a good sign.

  “Her belly is still distended.” Sibyl pressed down hard on it and Laina howled. Good. More blood seeped from between her legs into the absorbent cloth. The sac where the baby had been housed in Laina’s belly needed to firm up, contract, and grow smaller. The same contractions that had pushed the baby out would make that happen.

  “What are ye doin’?” Beitris frowned. “Ye are making her bleed more!”

  “Leave her be,” Raife snapped. He was human again—Sibyl didn’t need to look around to know that, she heard it in his voice. “She knows what to do.”

  He had more confidence in her than Sibyl actually possessed but she was grateful for the vote of confidence. Kirstin already had the goldenrod and shepherd’s purse in a pot of boiling water over the fire.

  “Massage her like this.” Sibyl showed the old woman, who frowned but did as she was told. Raife stood over them, watching, as Kirstin poured the hot herb water into a tin cup.

  “Something is firming in her,” Beitris observed, glancing between Laina’s legs. “I think the blood is ebbing.”

  “Yes,” Sibyl blew on the surface of the cup, smelling the goldenrod and shepherd’s purse. It was enough to make her want to gag. “Kirstin, help sit her up a little.”

  Darrow did it instead, taking the baby off its mother’s breast to do so. Kirstin took the baby, who wailed at being taken away from his mother, but Sibyl had to get the concoction down the woman’s throat. Laina moaned but swallowed, her eyes half-opening, focused for a moment on Sybil, then on her husband. There was a recognition in those eyes that gave Sybil hope. Laina knew where she was, who she was, who this man was to her. She was still here on this side of the veil then.

  “Thank you.” Darrow choked out the words as they put Laina back down on the mattress. It was ruined, soaked in blood, and Sybil wondered how someone could lose so much and still be breathing. It was a miracle. “’Tis the second time you have saved her life.”

  “I’m glad I could help.” Sybil looked up at Kirstin who was holding the crying child in her arms. “Keep that baby nursing as much as possible.”

  “He seems to have a great appetite,” Raife observed as Kirstin knelt to put him back at Laina’s breast. “He is your son, without a doubt, brother.”

  Raife’s hand fell to Darrow’s shoulder and Sibyl saw tears brimming in the younger brother’s eyes as his own hand covered Raife’s larger one.

  “And keep her drinking this,” Sibyl instructed, pointing to the pot of boiling herbs. “All night long.”

  “I will stay awake with her,” Darrow assured her as Sibyl stood. “Thank you again.”

  “I’m right next door if you need me.” Sibyl didn’t want to go, but the immediate danger had passed, and Raife insisted. He barked orders, telling the old midwife and Kirstin to clean Laina up, Darrow to get men to dispose of the old mattress and retrieve a new one.

  Then Raife walked her to the room next door where he turned her to him, his big hands on her shoulders. He made her feel so small in stature in his presence, but she never felt small within. That was likely what made him a leader, she realized—man, wolf or wulver.

  “I have never seen anything like that before,” Raife said softly, glancing down the hall where men carried out the bloody mattress. “I’m so glad ye were here. We would’na’ve known what to do.”

  Sybil just nodded. She didn’t know what to say to that.

  “This is why wulvers change when they birth.” Raife’s eyes hardened. “Females cannot change back while pupping. Wulvers do not experience the same dangers as humans during birth. It is their blessing and curse.”

  “I don’t understand.” Sybil frowned, opening the door to her room as two men moved in behind them, carrying a clean mattress for Laina, making more room for them in the tunnel hallway.

  “Lilith’s curse.” Raife stood in the doorway, filling it with his big frame, not coming in, although she moved into the room to sit on the edge of the bed. She thought she had been exhausted before. Now she was dead-tired. “The first wulver was the daughter of Lilith.”

  “Adam’s first wife?” She cocked her head at him. “From the Bible?”

  “The same,” he agreed. “Humans descended from Eve. Wulvers descended from Lilith.”

  Sybil considered this new information, trying to absorb it.

  “Lilith was cursed by God to give birth to demons,” Raife said softly, reminding Sybil of the old Biblical story. She was far more familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, of course—that was the story of her own ancestors, of an evil, wicked, wanton woman who tempted her mate into wickedness—but occasionally Lilith was mentioned in church as God’s first, failed attempt at creating woman. It seemed her gender was difficult to get just right.

  “We are those demon descendants,” Raife told her. “Half-human, half-wolf. We live in the borderland between worlds. Sybil? Are you all a’right?”

  She felt faint again at his words, although she told herself she was not, under any circumstances, going to faint. Not again. But her eyes closed and the world spun anyway.

  “Sibyl?” Raife was close to her now, squatting next to the bed, holding her up.

  “It’s been a long day.” She opened her eyes and half-smiled at him. “It’s a lot to take in all at once. Wulvers�
� half-human, half-wolf. The… descendants of Lilith, you say?”

  “Aye.” He brushed hair away from her face, smiling softly. “Ye should sleep, lass. Ye worked hard this day.”

  “So did you.” She cocked her head at him. “And Laina. Poor thing. She worked hardest of all.”

  “Wulver females aren’t like human women.” Raife spoke the obvious, but his face was pale, his eyes betraying him, showing fear he clearly had never experienced in the same away before. “They are cursed, but differently.”

  “Eve and her descendants were cursed with the pain of childbirth,” Sybil sighed. “Always afraid of pain and death.”

  “Aye.” Raife’s eyes clouded. “But Lilith was a’cursed as the bearer of demon seed. “

  “Demons… are you demons then?” she murmured, frowning at the thought. She’d seen drawn depictions of demons with horns and red skin. These wulvers, whatever they were, did not appear evil, or even unnatural. Although, in their human form, the way Raife appeared in front of her now, they seemed extra-human, as if they’d been taken directly from the pages of some ancient text.

  “We are what we are.” Raife sighed. “Some of us accept that better’n others.”

  “Darrow…?” She met his eyes, questioning. There was something in Raife’s tone that made her think of his brother and Raife nodded sadly.

  “Darrow and Laina too.” He glanced toward the door, as if his brother might be standing there, listening to what he had to say. “They believe they can change the way we are. But we’ve always been this way and always will be.”

  “Change…?” Sybil frowned. “How?”

  “It is a silly legend.” Raife waved the idea away. “Chasing rainbows. There’s supposed to be a plant that can keep wulvers from changing into wolves. The huluppu tree.”