“And Japanese Yew are pretty poisonous to begin with.” His breath ghosted past her ear, sending shivers down her spine. “We have to warn our cubs not to chew on any yew pieces, no matter how fun the sticks appear.”
“The birds know not to touch the berries,” Iva added, “so there shouldn’t be any black yews growing out there.”
“Aw, man,” Greer sighed. “No demon babies? We could have raised him like Hellboy! Totally badass.”
Mollie laughed. “I don’t think we have enough candy bars in town to raise Hellboy.”
“The Throne is fine,” Selena said absently. Her power was still active, her face glowing with magical tattoos. “There’s no demonic influence anywhere near us.”
“Then we can all relax and stop staring at my mate like she’s some kind of leper and just be glad she’s home?”
Iva glanced up at her mate and found that he was scowling at the others. She patted his cheek. “Calm down, big guy. Their worry isn’t unfounded. If the Throne falls, the queen falls. If she falls, the dryads fall. And if they fall—”
“The whole forest falls.” Ash nodded at her. “It snowballs from there, until there’s no more Maggie’s Grove, no more home for us. And that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case, we succumb to the demonic influences and spread out from here to other packs, other groves, other Thrones. We could wind up tainting every single supernatural in the world.”
“I think that’s why he tried doing this.” Iva had given this a lot of thought while she struggled against the black blood that threatened her existence. “We’re isolated from the rest of the world so we’re the best place for the Van Helsing’s scientists to conduct their sick experiments. If we become infected, we could infect everyone else. But it won’t happen now. I’ve got it contained.”
“We’ve been doing some work while you’ve been playing Sleeping Beauty.” Greer pulled Mollie off his back, where she’d been comfortably sitting since jumping there earlier. He pointed toward the Throne, the roots of the Great Oak huge and ready for them to take their places. Four thrones, four rulers, and Iva couldn’t wait to sit there. “Let’s get comfortable and chat, shall we?”
Greer was one smart cookie. Settling on her throne would help Iva completely wake up, with the added benefit of reinforcing her connection to the rest of the forest. She needed that reassuring strength.
Greer tugged Mollie after him and settled on his throne, pulling on Mollie’s hips until she was on his lap. He waved at Ash. “Well?”
“Hmph.” Ash stalked after him, settling in his throne. Selena followed after Ash and, without prompting, sat in his lap.
“Damn. Dragos is still sleeping.” Mina shrugged. “He’s my mate, but I don’t need him for everything in my life.” She settled on her throne with a smile. “Iva?”
Iva shivered. She still wasn’t certain how long she’d been out of it, but her throne had been empty long enough that she was oddly reluctant to take her place.
“You are Iva, Yew, the fourth ruler of the dryads,” Noah whispered in her ear. “Show them that you’re still strong and powerful.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and sat.
The power of the forest flowed through her even more strongly once she connected to the Great Oak. She could sense more, farther than she could when she was alone, but with all four ruling dryads on their thrones, their abilities to sense the forest grew exponentially. She reveled in the sensation of life surrounding her, whispering its secrets to her. Noah stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder, reminding her of his presence but not interfering with her reunion with the forest.
“Okay. Here’s what we’ve got.” Greer glanced at Mina before turning to Iva. “Long story short, Dr. T got his hands on some black blood. The people we rescued from the Van Helsings, some Maggie’s Grove citizens and some not, had been shot full of it. He managed to figure out not only an antidote but a vaccine. No one else in town can be infected.”
“Thank the gods,” Iva sighed, relieved beyond belief.
No one should have to go through that, let alone any of her people. The Van Helsings were the boogeymen of the supernatural world. It was a story they’d all been taught, a cautionary tale that they still lived with. Long ago, during the Dark Ages, the Van Helsings first banded together to stop the rampages of the few supernaturals who’d decided that the humans were no longer capable of ruling themselves. To this day they plagued the supernatural world, killing innocent and evil alike.
“I remember some of what they did to me.” She shivered, her whole body twitching in response to her memories. She touched her hair, which had grown out some thanks to her time with her tree, but it was still ragged. “It wasn’t just black blood they injected me with. I’m not sure what they did, but...” She shuddered again, the recollection almost more than she could bear. “Goddess, it was painful.”
Noah’s hand squeezed his shoulder. He growled, the sound low, almost sub-vocal. “You survived. Remember that, and not what happened to you.”
She nodded, blowing out a breath, allowing the hideous memories to fade. “I’ll try.”
After a few moments of silence, Selena stroked Ash’s green hair out of his eyes and spoke. “Melissa Weimer is no longer coven leader. She was killed by the Van Helsings.”
“Damn.” Melissa hadn’t been very effective as coven leader, but she’d been mostly unoffensive. She’d worked with the dryads occasionally.
“Gideon Brantley is now coven leader,” Serena added, startling Iva.
Iva couldn’t believe her ears. “Isn’t he a black witch?”
Selena grimaced. “I’ve been forced to change my stance on them. A lot of black witches were involved in saving you, Iva, and they willingly took the consequences of using their powers to cause harm. I can’t fault them for that.”
Iva nodded slowly. “Then we need to make them welcome here.” After all, they’d brought her home.
Chapter Two
Noah couldn’t stand it a moment longer. “We can go down memory lane later. Right now, I need to speak with my mate. Alone.”
The others stood, leaving Iva the only one on her throne. She stared at him, her expression unsure. “Okay, Noah. We can do that.”
“We’ll leave you be.” Mina smiled and stood, signaling the others to do so as well. “Welcome back, Iva.” There were tears in Mina’s eyes, and her smile wobbled.
“Aw.” Iva stood and hugged Mina again. “Don’t cry, or I’ll cry too.”
Mina laughed, the sound watery. “Prepare for the ugly, then.”
Ash and Selena were already gone, barely whispers on the wind. Greer and Mollie were walking hand in hand out of the Throne, arguing cheerfully about some improvement to their home.
Mina let Iva go and nodded to Noah. “Take care of my sister.”
The Forest Queen’s command was loud and clear. As a creature of the forest, even he had to bow occasionally, despite being the most powerful alpha in the United States. “Of course, Mina. She’s my mate.” And no one understood that connection like a wolf did. Wolves mated for life, and if, for some reason, their mate rejected them, the wolf would die a slow, painful death at best. At worst, they’d become the monsters of legend, a feral wolf capable of destroying anyone in their path, including the mate who’d rejected them. Feral wolves had given rise to legends of werewolves.
Luckily, it seemed Iva would accept him without fuss. Unfortunately, the dryads didn’t realize he would have to delay their mating.
“Good.” Mina’s voice interrupted his dark thoughts. “I’ll see you both later tonight.” And Mina took off, her form a blur even to his enhanced sight.
“Damn, she’s fast.” Noah shook his head in admiration. “Your queen is a hell of a woman.”
“Oh?” Iva’s eyes glowed with that smoky light once more. It was a light shining through a shard of obsidian, the black volcanic glass that he
’d always loved. He had a butterfly sculpted from obsidian on his desk at home. It was one of his treasures, given to him by his brother upon becoming alpha.
Allan had been one of his best friends, his beta, his little brother. When Allan had been killed, Noah had nearly lost it. Only their children, Milo and Sana, had kept him from completely giving into his grief. He had taken in his niece and nephew when Allan and Lily died, doing his best to give them a home.
He still mourned his brother’s loss, but he’d helped avenge him and his wife. It was how he’d been scarred. Nothing would fill the hole the loss of his brother had created, but having Iva out of her tree, ready to live life, helped.
He clutched Iva’s chin, smiling. “I admire her a great deal. She’s got a backbone of steel. But you are my mate, Iva. The only one I can bare my soul to, the only one I’ll be able to truly be myself with. I hope I’ll get the same from you.”
The smoky light died away, leaving him staring into the black eyes of his mate. “You will. I promise.”
“Good.” He took a deep breath. “Now, to the hard part.”
Her brows rose and she tensed under his hand. “Oh?”
“I won’t claim you until I’m positive you’re one hundred percent all right.”
“What?” She sounded hurt beyond belief.
“Shh.” He placed a soft kiss on her lips, lips clamped tightly shut. “I need to be sure that when I bite you—and I will bite you—that none of the blood you carry will harm me. You’ve assimilated it so it doesn’t harm you, but we don’t know how it will affect me yet. I want to talk to the doctors, have them check my blood and yours, just to be on the safe side. Picture a possessed wolf of my power, Iva. I have to be sure.”
She made a face, half frustrated, half grimace. “I get it. It sucks, but I get it,” she muttered. She sighed. “Guess that means we get to know each other before we mate.”
Wolves usually bit first and asked questions later. That Noah couldn’t obey his instincts and claim her was going to drive him mad, but he couldn’t risk that her altered blood might affect him negatively. Not when thousands of wolf lives might be endangered.
She ran her hands through her unevenly cut hair. It had grown since the last time he’d seen her, but it was still short. Because of the way it had been shorn by the Van Helsings, it was longer in some places than others, but that didn’t matter to him. She was beautiful any way he looked at her. “Hang out with each other. Talk about our feelings.”
He’d rather have lemon juice shot into his eye.
She started laughing so hard he had to let her go. “The l-look on your face,” she heaved out. “Oh my Goddess. I didn’t ask you to paint your nails yet.”
He shuddered. “I’m not a poodle, Iva.”
She was still snickering. “So that’s a no pink?”
Noah growled, but he didn’t really mean anything by it. His mate was playing with him, teasing him in ways no one else was allowed to without getting the sharp end of his teeth.
He was loving every minute of it.
Putting his arm around her shoulder, he led her back to the roots of her tree. He sat her down first before taking his place in front of her, knee to knee. He grabbed hold of her hands when they began to wander over the roots of her yew. “Nervous?”
“Yes.” Iva’s gaze never left his face. There was a tightness to her jaw, her hands twitching in his grasp. “There’s more I need to learn about too, things that might put other stuff into perspective.” She frowned, her expression becoming distant. “Some of the stuff I caught? I’m not sure if they were really you or the confused memories in my head.”
“I’ll tell you what happened.” Noah thought back to the beginning, just after Iva disappeared. “There’s a hamadryad in town now, named Amara.”
Hamadryads were extremely rare guardians of the forest. They literally became part tree, strong and capable of manipulating the surrounding flora as weapons.
“That’s so cool,” she whispered. “The last hamadryad born in Maggie’s Grove was three hundred and twenty-five years ago.”
Though Amara wasn’t part of the ruling dryads, she held a special place among their kind. Her words carried the same weight as did Noah’s beta. Or would. That was another thing he needed to take care of, replacing his beta. He’d held off until now out of respect for Allan, but the pack was beginning to suffer for lack of one.
“Amara helped save you, didn’t she?”
Noah smiled fondly. “She did. She’s mated to a vampire named Parker, who has a Renfield named Brian who somehow mated Parker’s best friend, a ghost named Greg.”
Iva blinked, her expression overwhelmed. He had to admit, it was a lot of information to take in. Renfields were human or psychic, paid by the town to feed their assigned vampires, as well as act as their personal assistants. Brian, a physical medium, had been able to talk to and fall in love with Greg. From what Noah understood, their relationship was very...physical, as Brian could touch Greg in ways no one else could.
And now he needed to scrub his brain of those images. He did not to need to think of Brian and his mate...mating.
Eww.
He grinned. “There’s more.”
“I bet.” She seemed shocked. “If I know Amara, she and her mate will be here as soon as it’s dark to welcome you.” Despite their rocky start he now considered Amara one of his closest friends. Amara wasn’t going to take too long to meet the last member of the dryad royalty. Speaking of royalty... “Parker had an evil witch stalking him when he arrived in town, and that witch tried to break up Parker and Amara’s mating. She even managed to invade the Throne and capture Mina. When I got here Mina was pinned to her oak by the thorns of some weed. She wound up having to fight the last remnants of the witch in her own mind, finally killing her.”
“Oh.” Iva shuddered. “I can’t even imagine the pain she must have gone through.”
“Dragos helped. He wouldn’t give up on Mina and gave her the strength to fight, but he had his own problems to deal with as well.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Family problems.” Noah grinned. “Dragon shifters, to be specific.”
Iva laughed. “Dragon shifters don’t exist.”
Noah shook his head. She believed him on the hamadryad but not on the dragons? “Remind me to introduce you to Trajan and Prince Vasile.”
“Okay,” she drawled. “What else has been going on around here?”
“We fought to break you and the rest of those who’d been kidnapped free of the Van Helsings. Gideon and the gray-and-black witches were particularly helpful, for which he has my gratitude. Selena and Ash mated soon after Selena was cured of being possessed. That was a fun day, kicking the demon out of her.”
Iva’s mouth hung open. “I... How? She’s the witch doctor. She should be immune to possession.”
“We thought so too, but we were wrong. She got infected somehow by the black blood, allowing the demon a foothold inside her. We performed an exorcism, but then it grabbed hold of Ash and he was the one that eventually drove it off.”
Iva nodded slowly. “I remember that. I gave him some of my strength.”
“Yes, you did.” It was the first time he’d heard Iva’s voice. “You were in pain, but you reached out and helped Ash fight.”
She nodded, that glow back in her eyes. “Make them pay.” She gazed into his eyes, the glow still there. “We will, Noah. I swore it.”
“I believe you. You’re the mind of the forest, the brain. If anyone can figure out a way to get to the real demon and stop him, it’s you. But for now, I’ll give you a little bit more information. You’ll need it when you go up against PB.”
“Who?” Iva clutched his hands. “Never mind. Go on.”
“Greer discovered that the true head of the Van Helsings, a man whose initials are PB. I can’t say
his name because there’s a chance he could hear it. He’s the human form of the demon that’s been torturing us. Greer tried to fight him but it didn’t work. PB was too strong for him. Greer barely escaped with his life, but he managed to grab a file before he had to book it. It was filled with lists of our kind—species, age, weight, shots given, dates, an invoice number, and quick notes from the doctors doing the testing. Far too many were marked deceased.”
Iva shivered. “Who has the file now?”
“Lore, the sheriff—head of the psychics. He’s working on contacting the families of those listed as dead so they’ll at least have closure.”
“That’s good.” Iva nodded, her expression determined. “I’ll talk to Dr. T, then. He’s still the expert on the black blood, yes? Perhaps something good will come of what happened to me. Maybe a stronger vaccine, or... I don’t know, but something. I didn’t survive this so that I could just live my life. There has to be meaning to it.”
Noah couldn’t help but smile. “A rainbow.”
“What?” Poor Iva. Her expression was so confused. Those beautiful, dark eyes of hers were unfocused as she bit her lower lip. Her pert nose was wrinkled, her dark brows lowered. She was absolutely adorable.
“You look for the rainbow in the storm, don’t you?”
“I suppose.” She tilted her head. “I’ve never really thought about it that way before, but I like it.” Iva bit her lip. “My blood might help Dr. T’s research as well, now that I think about it. If my blood can help, I’ll gladly give some.”
Noah shook his head. “That’s my girl.”
Her expression turned wicked. “Not yet, I’m not.”
“Not until you get a clean bill of health.” He was standing firm on that, despite the pleading of both his mate and his wolf. “You’ve mostly gotten that from Greer and Selena, but I want to make certain there’s nothing that can harm either of us, so you’re going to the doc for tests.” He leaned in close, inhaling her scent. It was sweet, like dark chocolate and raspberries, his favorite treat. He licked his lips, eager for a taste.
Hour of the Wolf Page 2
