by Carol Davis
She wept until darkness started to close in on her again, and clung to Rachel and Sara only to have something to hold on to, not because she wanted them nearby.
Through all of it, she could barely feel the presence of the wolf.
Then, when it seemed like days had gone by, that she’d somehow slipped into some other world that was full of nothing but pain, the door opened again and a voice she thought might be Aaron’s said loudly, “They’ve found him!”
Sixteen
It was a place Jed would never have found on his own: the smallest of crevices behind the rocks that faced the sea, slippery and hard to reach. How the boy—how both these boys—had found it in the first place, he had no idea. Nearly everyone in the pack liked to roam and explore, but none of them were particularly stupid; they wouldn’t have risked venturing out here, where a misplaced step could mean ending up in deep water, being battered against the rocks or stunned by the fall and drowned.
It spoke to how desperate Gregory was, that he’d sought out a place like this and had hidden himself inside it for days.
“Are you sure?” Jed asked Micah.
The young wolf was a few steps away, carefully balanced on the wet rocks and being watched by his ever-present guard.
“Can’t you smell him?” Micah asked.
Jed bent down a little and sniffed carefully at the air. At first he thought he could smell only salt and slime and half-rotted plant life, everything he would expect to find out here. Then something else filtered through: the telltale scent of an adolescent, ripe with hormones and sweat.
They’d spent more than two hours visiting the places Micah had escaped to during the first couple of years after he’d lost his parents. Most of them were no mystery either to Jed or to the mostly silent guard; they were well-known to all the youngsters of the island, though much less popular than the prettier places, the ones where the ground was soft. In one of them, Jed had coupled for the first time—and he could tell by the smell that it was still used very often for that purpose.
The guard had been here too; that was evident in his expression.
Each new spot they visited told Jed more about what Micah had gone through after his parents had died: how he’d found comfort in darkness and silence, how he’d preferred a bed of gravel to sand or cool moss. He’d wanted to punish himself as much as a young boy could bear.
The humans called it “survivor’s guilt,” Jed remembered. And what a horrible thing that was, that a blameless boy had punished himself for so many years, and had been so desperate to be loved that he’d tried to kill another wolf.
It might well be, Jed had thought as he looked at Micah’s downcast expression, that Micah might have been happier if Luca had stabbed him, instead of the other way around.
“Maybe it would be better if you went in,” he said to Micah now. “I’m the last person the boy wants to see.”
The guard made a sound of protest and took a step toward Micah.
“Don’t be foolish,” Jed told him. “How could he possibly escape from here? Do you think there’s a secret portal in there? That he can go inside and end up somewhere else? The moon, I suppose.”
The guard gave him a look that said Daniel would hear about this lack of respect, but Jed paid it no mind.
“Will you go in?” he asked Micah.
The younger wolf looked out over the sea for a minute, his face contorted with grief and regret. Then he nodded slightly and lowered his body toward the ground. That, Jed could see, was a better way to approach the crevice: balancing on four limbs instead of two, keeping his weight low. He stepped out of Micah’s way and watched as Micah moved carefully over the rocks and disappeared inside the crevice.
It occurred to him that Micah might choose to remain in there for a while, whether Gregory was actually in there or not. He wouldn’t blame him if he did. Micah’s life had to be difficult now, under the constant scrutiny of the guards—for that matter, of the entire pack. A few minutes of solitude and silence would feel like a gift.
When a minute or two had gone by and Micah hadn’t yet come back out, Jed found a place to sit and wrapped his arms around his knees.
“Call him back out,” the guard said gruffly.
Jed shook his head. “Give him time.”
The wind, heavy with salty spray, irritated his eyes and face a little. That was fine, though; he’d sit here as long as it took. It was a small price to pay for rescuing Deborah’s son, even if the boy would never think of this as a rescue. He’d certainly see it as being pulled out of his solitude, the time of Separation he’d created for himself a decade before the pack would ask him to take one.
He’d still be angry, no doubt. Irritated and frustrated.
Bit by bit, Jed remembered the time he’d spent with his own father, who’d been well-known even among the senior males for being gruff and short of patience. Most of their conversations had been more like debates, arguments between two strong-minded opposing forces. For most of his youth, Jed had supposed he would never win a discussion with his father, that his father would never surrender to saying, “You were right.”
But it had happened, finally.
Finally.
And finally, Gregory came out of his hiding place with Micah close on his heels. To Jed’s surprise, he didn’t look angry. He looked tired and hungry, and the flesh around his eyes was puffy and flushed, which seemed to say he’d spent a lot of time crying. As Micah had done going in and was doing again now, Gregory was moving on all fours, and when he got closer to Jed, where the footing was dry and less treacherous, he sank down onto the ground on his side and curled an arm to hide his face.
He’d turned his back to Jed.
“Thank you,” Jed said to Micah.
The younger wolf shrugged, but it was evident in his eyes that he appreciated Jed’s quiet tone and the genuine gratitude in his voice.
“We’ll talk?” Jed offered. “If you’d like to talk to someone. About anything you like. We can share a meal. You’ve done something very important for me, and for the healer, and I won’t forget that.”
Micah’s shoulders twitched. Then he dipped his head in a single nod. When he didn’t seem inclined to do anything more, the guard led him away—but the interaction between them was less rough than it had been earlier on.
Yes, Jed thought. They needed to talk.
For now, though, he had another young wolf to deal with, one whose clothes were damp and stank of old fish.
One who’d lost the father he loved in a terrible way.
Rather than say anything, Jed reached over and rested a hand flat, palm down, on the boy’s trembling back. Gregory jerked a little but didn’t move away; he curled up a little more tightly, but his trembling almost stopped. Slowly, Jed moved his hand back and forth, back and forth, feeling the knobs of the boy’s spine sliding past underneath his palm. It made Gregory seem as fragile as an infant.
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like out there?” Jed asked after a while.
Gregory didn’t answer.
“I do,” Jed said. “I’ve seen pictures. They made me wonder what it would be like to stand in all those places. There’s one where the rocks are all orange and red, and at sunset it looks like they’re on fire. And another where there are trees as far as the eye can see.”
The boy’s breathing had slowed, but not enough to say that he’d fallen asleep. He was listening.
“And another,” Jed went on, “where the trees stretch up all the way to the sky. They’re thousands of years old, some of them, with cones nearly as big as your head. I’d like to see something like that.”
He hadn’t stopped rubbing the boy’s back.
“The world is very big,” he said on a long breath. “Bigger than we can ever imagine, I think. We could spend the rest of our lives exploring it, and never see more than a tiny fraction of it. I think that would be wonderful. I think my mind would be so full, it might eventually burst. But you know—I’ve started to be
lieve that it’s more important to fill my heart. That love is more important than seeing giant pine cones and rocks that look like they’re on fire.”
Gregory made a soft grunting noise and stiffened a little.
“I love your mother very much,” Jed said softly. “Sometimes when I see her, when the light strikes her face just right, early in the morning, I think it must be like seeing paradise. She’s the most beautiful thing I can imagine, and I can’t think of anything I could possibly do that would be more important than loving her.”
He paused.
“I’d like for us to be a family,” he said.
Gregory shrank away from his hand. The movement didn’t take him far, just out of direct contact.
“I’d like for us to be friends,” Jed told him. “I’d like to get to know you better. Maybe we could go fishing? And I could definitely use some help building those new rooms for Aaron and the human girl. You might have some good ideas for how to make them better. How are you with a hammer?”
Gregory shook his head.
“A saw, then. We’ll need to make it warm, and tight against the rain. I’m sure they’ll want a window. Females do like their windows. There’s no glass right now, but as soon as we get some, I’ll need some help holding it while I fix it in place. That’s a very delicate job.”
Some time went by. The surf crashed relentlessly against the rocks, but neither of them said anything.
Then Gregory muttered, “I don’t remember his face any more.”
“Who?” Jed asked, although he knew the answer.
“My father.”
“It happens, if time has passed.”
“I don’t remember his face!” the boy howled, jerking himself up into a sit. He’d cried some more while he was lying there, and the tears had made some sand stick to his reddened cheek. “He’s my father. Why don’t I remember him?”
Jed rapped his knuckles against his chest, just above the pocket of his shirt. “You remember him here. That part of you will never forget him. And that part knows exactly what he looked like.”
The boy’s eyes were so full of tears that they looked like polished stones sitting in a bowl of water.
“Here,” Jed said, and touched his chest again. “He’ll always be right here.”
A little while later they walked back to the settlement side by side. Gregory kept a small amount of distance between them, but it wasn’t nearly as much as Jed had expected, and Jed began to wonder what Micah had said to the boy inside that tiny, smelly cave.
He had work to do, he understood: both to heal and build his relationship with Gregory, and to begin to build one with Micah.
Of course, the first part of that depended on whether or not the healer intended to accept him as her mate. That was very much still undecided, and he couldn’t convince himself as he strode along the path toward the settlement that the odds were in his favor, no matter what the gods had implied.
They were some fifty yards away from the closest house when someone spotted them and let out a cry of celebration. It was dark enough that Jed could barely see who it was; in any event, the cry was quickly spread, and more and more of his packmates began to appear.
Within a few seconds he and Gregory were surrounded by their neighbors and friends, being ushered along the road in a sweeping tide aimed toward Granny Sara’s little cottage. By the time they reached the path leading up to Sara’s door, they had been all but swept off their feet.
Then the door burst open and they were thrust inside.
He was alarmed to see how pale Deborah was. There was a sheen of sweat on her face, as if she’d been feverish and the fever had just broken not long ago. She was sitting on the edge of Sara’s bed, wrapped in a quilt that she instantly tossed off so she could stumble to her feet and drag her son into her embrace.
“Oh!” she said. Then again: “Oh! Oh!”
Both Sara and Rachel were there too. They spent a good long while fussing over Gregory, tousling his hair and patting his shoulders and back, then steering him into a chair near the fire so they could give him food and something to drink.
That left Deborah standing by herself. She was fully dressed, but shivering a little, and again he wondered about a fever.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She blinked at him a couple of times, then drew in a long, sniffling breath and nodded. “Did you find him? You found him?”
“With Micah’s help.”
“Micah.” She almost sounded as if she didn’t know who that was.
“Are you all right?” he asked again. “You look—”
Up to this point, she hadn’t quite met his eyes. Now she did, and deep inside them, somewhere past her exhaustion and gratitude and befuddlement, he saw something else.
Something he’d never seen before.
“Oh,” he whispered. “Oh…”
Seventeen
A few days ago, a terrible storm had pounded the island: torrential rain that had lasted almost seven hours, and ferocious wind that had screamed through the trees.
It had seemed to Jed that the noise of it was the worst part, that they had been set upon by banshees sent up from the dark places. He knew that wasn’t true, that it was just a spell of very bad weather—he was perfectly willing to believe in science—but there’d been something about that night that had made him think of worlds beyond this one, ones where a wolf might be overwhelmed beyond all repair.
He felt a little like that now.
Not in a bad way. But, he told himself as he sat down in a chair facing Granny Sara’s fireplace, even good things could sweep away your good sense and leave you stunned and helpless.
He was going to be a father.
No; he already was a father. His child was there in Deborah’s womb, alive and growing.
“Here.”
He looked up. Granny Sara was offering him a cup of tea. But he didn’t feel much like drinking tea. A long swig of the fine scotch Caleb kept tucked at the back of his cupboard would do much more to calm his nerves, but this was no time to indulge in strong drink. Not in front of all these females, at least.
He gulped the tea in a couple of swallows and handed the cup back to Sara, then slumped back in the chair and closed his eyes.
Deborah was asleep on Sara’s bed, with Gregory curled up beside her. They were sleeping so soundly that he was sure even another powerful storm couldn’t wake them. And that was fine; they both needed rest.
So did he, but he doubted that he could calm himself enough to drift off.
Then, somehow, he settled into sleep.
When he opened his eyes, Deborah was standing a few steps away, looking out at the sea with her hair fluttering in the breeze. She looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her, and to his relief she was calm, relaxed, at peace. He began to walk toward her, and she turned to smile at him.
They were in the dream world, he realized, and that would not be possible if they weren’t meant to be together, if they weren’t establishing a mating bond.
It was the middle of the night on the real island, but here the sun was out, and the grassy slope they were standing on was covered with the bright-colored flowers of late spring. Behind him, he could hear birds chittering in the trees, and below him, the surf was splashing musically against the rocks.
Filled with joy, he wrapped his arms around his beloved and held her close. When she laid her head against his chest, he buried his nose in her thick dark hair and took a deep breath.
“We asked the gods,” he reminded her. “And this is their answer.”
She nodded as she circled her arms around his waist. “I know. There are no accidents, are there?”
The question was more serious than he’d anticipated. Could she still have some doubts, after all of this? Now that she was carrying his child, and her son had been returned to her?
“No,” he said. “There are no accidents.”
Over her shoulder, he could see a bit of Aaron and Abby’s
cabin off in the distance. On the real island, it was nowhere near where they were standing; its being here now meant that he should pay attention to it, and what it implied.
A new life together, a deep and abiding love, new beginnings built on top of something old and familiar. Here in the dream world, the added rooms were already there—two of them, one on each side.
Yes, he thought. He’d do that for them, to make sure they’d have plenty of space for the little ones yet to come.
But… was there room in his own house for a family?
Deborah shook her head again. He knew it was common in the dream world for mates to know each other’s thoughts, so he wasn’t surprised that she seemed to know what he’d been pondering.
“I have room,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.”
“But that was Victor’s home,” he reminded her gently.
She tipped her head back and looked up into his eyes. She looked sad for a moment, then she blinked and the sadness went away. At least, it was tucked aside for the time being. “He left it in my care,” she said. “It’s my home and Gregory’s. If our family grows, it should be there. Not in your bachelor’s shack.”
“It’s not a shack,” he growled.
“You forget that I’ve seen it. It’s no place for a child.”
He drew in a breath, remembering the times he’d walked past her house when Victor was there, when a warm fire had been blazing on the hearth and he could smell the mixed aromas of their dinner. He’d been more than a little envious of Victor then, of everything that Victor seemed to have.
It seemed to him now that Victor had given him an enormous gift.
His wolf had been quiet ever since he’d come back from the cave with Gregory. He thought it might be resting after its interaction with the gods, and with the spirits of all those wolves who had walked this path before. But it seemed now that it was basking in the sunlight, as much at peace as Deborah was.
It roused a little, wondering if mating was a possibility.
That, too, Deborah seemed to have heard and understood.
