by Abby Weeks
She could sense that neither Packer nor Logan had returned yet, but she didn’t intentionally reach out to them. She was afraid to. She didn’t know how they’d feel once they found out she’d mated with the two younger males. Would they be jealous? Would they be upset? She prayed they wouldn’t be too hard on her, she’d only been doing what she was supposed to. She was doing her best to make the four of them as happy and fulfilled as possible. It wasn’t her fault there was only one of her, and four of them.
She opened the front door of the house and stepped out into the cold night air. She was naked, but she felt such a glow from all the lovemaking that the cold didn’t even affect her. She walked down to the icy stream that ran in front of the house and she climbed slowly into the water. It was so cold that it took her breath away, but even still, it felt pleasurable for her to submerge her body in it. She wanted to be clean.
There was a deep pool a little downstream, and she floated to it. She washed thoroughly in the cold, deep water, and when she was finished, she lay on the surface, floating on her back. She looked up at the sky. The moon was blue and bright. She let its light shine on her naked skin. She almost felt as if it magically recharged her in some way.
She closed her eyes, and without thinking, reached out with her mind to find Packer. She was worried about him. He should have returned by now. When she found him, he was high up in the mountains in a place far away, a place she was wholly unfamiliar with. She let him know she was watching him. He stopped and reared his head back at the sky and howled so mournfully that it broke Aisha’s heart to hear it.
She disconnected from him. At least he was safe, she told herself. He was grieving, he’d taken it very hard that she would be mating with his brothers, but she knew that he’d come around. At least, she prayed he would. It was the shifter way, after all.
Next she tried to reach out to Logan. She shut her eyes and thought about him, opened herself to him, tried to feel what he was feeling. She opened her eyes with a start. She couldn’t feel him anywhere. He was gone. It was the first time since making contact with the wolves that she hadn’t been able to reach out to them. It scared her.
She ran back into the house and climbed the steps up to the loft. Hardy and Tucker were still in a deep, satisfied slumber. They hadn’t sensed Logan’s absence yet. She wondered if they would be able to detect him even when she couldn’t. She grabbed her fur garments and dressed without waking them.
A few minutes later she was making her way down the valley in the direction of the human village. She had to speak to Ma Hetty.
Chapter 10
WHEN AISHA REACHED THE EDGE of the village, Ma Hetty was already waiting for her. She was at the same place they’d met before, a small clearing beyond the fence-line with a fallen log in the center of it. Ma Hetty was waiting as always on the log, the moonlight bathing her in silver.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Ma Hetty said, smiling.
Aisha was worried sick about Logan, but already she felt better. The old woman’s presence seemed to inspire her with calmness and perspective.
“Could I come into the village?” Aisha said.
Ma Hetty looked sad. She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “You saw what they did to you before you left. They might do that again.”
Aisha nodded.
“There was a long period of peace in this valley between the brothers and the humans, but things seem to have changed since you arrived.”
“Why is that?” Aisha said.
“Why do you think?”
“Because I’m a female.”
Ma Hetty nodded. “You’re life. You’re the future. Your existence means that there will be more shifters. The humans thought the brothers were the last generation of shifters. They were willing to live peacefully with them. Now that you’ve arrived, they realize that there will be more. There will be pups. There might even be more shifters out there, beyond the valley, unaware even of who they are themselves.”
“Like I was.”
“Exactly.”
Aisha sat down next to Ma Hetty.
“I can’t find Logan,” she said.
Aisha was apprehensive. She wasn’t sure why. She felt somehow responsible, like it was her fault if anything bad had happened to Logan. What would she do if Logan had died because of her?
“Calm yourself,” Ma Hetty said. “You’re so full of turmoil and emotion. You’ve got to be easier on yourself.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Ma Hetty said.
“What if he’s hurt?”
“I doubt that,” Ma Hetty said. “If he was hurt, you’d know about it. The reason you can’t contact Logan isn’t because he’s in danger, it’s because he’s roaming beyond your ability to communicate with him. He’s even beyond my range, and I can sense a shifter for hundreds of miles.”
“So he’s hundreds of miles away?” Aisha said.
Ma Hetty nodded. “I was with him as he was leaving. He was in the mountains, and after a while, he realized he was closer to Fairbanks than he was to Dead Wolf. My guess is he went into the town.”
“Won’t they be aggressive to him there?”
“They won’t know what he is. He’s smart enough to make his way in the city. Don’t worry about him. You have more than enough on your plate here.”
Aisha nodded. She was relieved to hear that Logan probably wasn’t in danger. Still, she would have felt a lot better if she could actually reach out and communicate with him. She was beginning to see the advantages of cellphones again.
“What will he do there, in the city?” she said.
Ma Hetty laughed. “My guess,” she said. “I bet he’s looking for a woman.”
Aisha gasped. The words cut her like a knife.
“A human woman?” she said.
“Whatever he can find.”
“I thought they couldn’t mate with humans.”
“Who said anything about mating?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he’s not looking for a mate. He’s just looking for sex.”
“But isn’t it dangerous?”
“Very,” Ma Hetty said. “The power of a shifter orgasm is not like a human one.”
“I know that,” Aisha said blushing.
“So you do,” Ma Hetty said knowingly.
She looked at Aisha, and Aisha could tell there was a new respect in her gaze. It was like Aisha had passed some sort of test. She was a new woman now, a real shifter female, one who’d offered and withstood the full force of the mating she’d been made for. Ma Hetty was also pleased that the brothers would finally be finding some pleasure. At least Tucker and Hardy were. Packer and Logan were worse off than ever, it seemed to Aisha.
“What will happen if Logan sleeps with a female?” Aisha said.
“It would be awful,” Ma Hetty said. “The female could die. It wouldn’t be pretty.”
“But how could Logan do such a thing? How could he let a woman die just so that he could have sex?”
Ma Hetty nodded. “The truth is, I doubt he’d do any such thing. He resisted the temptation his entire life before you arrived. He’s upset now because he doesn’t know what to do about you, about his emotions. But he’s too good. He’s got too much pride to allow his own passions to harm an innocent human female. My bet is he’ll go to a few bars, maybe watch some strippers, maybe get drunk and get into a few fights.”
“Work through his feelings?”
“Basically. I’d be shocked if he did any more than that. If he harmed a human female, it would be very shocking. I would be disappointed.”
“Plus, he could get in trouble.”
“A lot of trouble,” Ma Hetty said. “It’s behavior like that that basically caused the humans to fear the shifters in the first place.”
“I really hope he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Aisha said.
“So do I,” Ma Hetty said. “But you try not to worry about him. Men are men
. They do what they have to. You can’t spend your life worrying about them. Besides, Packer is still in the valley.”
Aisha didn’t want to think about Packer. She knew Ma Hetty could sense the intensity of the emotions she felt when she thought about him. She knew they were far stronger than even the emotions she’d felt when she’d mated with Hardy and Tucker. Aisha was almost scared to consider what it would be like for her to mate with Packer. She brought the conversation back around to Logan again.
“Could Logan ever …” Aisha was too embarrassed to finish her sentence. She let the words trail off.
“Mate with a wolf?” Ma Hetty said, chuckling to herself.
“Yes?” Aisha said. “I mean, if he can’t mate with a human because it would kill her, might he mate with a female wolf?”
Ma Hetty got up from the log. She was still chuckling. “I guess now you’re getting a little taste of the pain that Logan and Packer are feeling,” she said.
“What?” Aisha said. “You mean he can?”
Ma Hetty didn’t answer. She just walked off into the forest and left Aisha there with the rather unsettling realization that she wasn’t exactly the only female that the brothers could turn to for sexual comfort.
Chapter 11
THE NEXT FEW DAYS SEEMED to pass incredibly slowly for Aisha. She was worried about Logan and Packer the entire time. While Packer was still within the range of her senses, he was often deep in enemy wolf territory, working out his frustrations by fighting rival packs. Often during the night, Aisha would wake up, startled, to the taste of blood. She would cry out in fear before realizing that it was Packer. He was killing. He seemed to be spending every night fighting. He killed so many wolves in the valley and the surrounding mountains that Aisha lost count. Sometimes he was filled with so much anger and pent-up frustration that she couldn’t even connect to him. At other times he’d be alone, high in the mountains, looking down on the valley with so much sadness that it broke her heart.
She asked him constantly to come back, but all he would say was that he would come back when he was ready. She constantly reminded him that she’d bonded with him, that she’d offered herself to him and that she belonged to him now, but he couldn’t listen. He couldn’t come back. He just needed time. And Aisha understood that.
It was a lot easier to accept than the course Logan had taken. At least she knew where Packer was. She knew what he was thinking. Logan could be doing anything. He could be sleeping with human girls in Fairbanks, literally killing them for his own pleasure. Or, and this was somehow an even worse thought to Aisha, he could be mating with female wolves out in the forest, wasting his shifter semen on them, creating god knows what kind of mixed offspring. For some reason, she hated the thought of it.
She hadn’t managed to form the handmaiden’s bond with Logan, but she wanted to. She wanted to give herself to him just as she was with the other brothers, and she didn’t want him settling for animals when he could have her. Those days were supposed to be over for the four brothers. Whatever they’d done before, however they’d pleasured themselves before she arrived, they didn’t have to do that anymore. They had her. Why wouldn’t Logan accept that and take her?
Chapter 12
AISHA WAS ALONE WITH Hardy and Tucker on the third evening after they’d mated. She felt a lot closer to them since they’d mated. That night had been such an intense connection, such an intense pleasure, that it had changed all of them in a permanent way. They knew each other now, in a way that they’d never known anyone before. They were connected. It was deep and intimate and permanent.
“What are you doing?” Hardy said to her.
She was standing on the porch in her furs, looking out at the cold moon in a cloudless sky.
“There’s a fire in here,” he said.
“Thanks, Hardy,” she said.
“What are you thinking about?”
She turned to him. “I’m thinking about your brothers,” she said.
Hardy nodded. “I thought they’d have returned by now,” he said.
“Can you reach Logan?”
He shook his head. “But don’t worry, this isn’t the first time he’s disappeared.”
“The first time I saw Packer, it was on the ship up from Prince Rupert.”
“We’ve all made journeys,” Hardy said. “There have been times when this valley has grown too small for each of us. We go and we roam, but we always come back.”
“How long do you roam?”
“It varies. Sometimes a few days, sometimes a few weeks.”
“Months?” Aisha said, apprehensively.
Hardy nodded. “Sometimes months.”
“Can I ask you something personal?”
Hardy nodded. “Anything,” he said. He had nothing to hide from her, not now that they’d mated. It was like they were fused.
“Have you ever mated with a human?” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ve been tempted,” he said. “But how could I? It could kill the woman. What pleasure could be worth that?”
“Do you think Logan’s ever done it?” she said.
Hardy shrugged. He looked troubled. “Not that I know of,” he said.
“But it’s possible?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “Anything’s possible. Once he’s out of range, he could do anything and the rest of us would never know about it. It’s the only real chance for privacy we have. To go far away. The rest of us are aware of anything he’s ever done in this valley, but when he’s gone like he is now, he could kill a hundred human women and we might never know it.”
“Is that what you think he’s doing now?” Aisha said.
He shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “I know my brother. I know him well. I’ve spent most of my life connected to him. I know who he is. He wouldn’t purposely put a human woman’s life at risk just to satisfy his own cravings.”
Aisha nodded. That was what she wanted to believe. She would die if she found out one of the brothers was a killer of human women. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to accept that. That was the one thing that would cause her to break her bond with any of them.
“What about wolves?” she said.
Hardy snorted.
“What?” she said.
He looked embarrassed.
“Has he ever mated with a wolf?”
Hardy looked away. He looked into the forest, and she could sense him trying to think of a way he could dodge the question.
“Just tell me,” she said. “I need to know what’s going on. I need to know the world I’m in.”
He nodded.
“I’d say he’s known his share of female wolves.”
“I thought you killed the wolves,” she said.
“We do.”
“So how could he mate with them?”
“He figures out a way when he needs to.”
Aisha looked at him. “Have you ever done it?” she said.
Hardy looked away again.
“Hardy,” Aisha said. “Please. I’m not trying to judge you.”
“Before you arrived,” he said, “we thought we’d never have a chance to mate with a handmaiden. We also knew we couldn’t safely mate with a human. So yes, I’ve mated with wolves. We all have.”
“Does it kill them?” Aisha said.
“No. They’re able to take it better than the humans can.”
“Can they get pregnant?”
“No. Not usually. And if they did, that would probably kill them. But I’ve never heard of a female wolf getting pregnant from a shifter. It just doesn’t happen.”
Aisha nodded. “Is it good?”
“Mating with a wolf?”
“Yes? Is it pleasurable?”
“It’s pleasurable,” Hardy said. She could tell he was uncomfortable talking about it. He was ashamed. “It’s good at the time, but afterwards, it’s not so good.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s shame in it. Wolves are lesse
r than us. We shouldn’t be mating with them, we all know it.”
“Then why do it?”
He looked at her. “It was before we knew you existed, Aisha.”
“And it felt good at the time?” she said.
He nodded.
“Do you think Logan’s doing that now?”
Hardy shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.
He went back inside. Aisha wasn’t feeling too social so when she went inside, she went straight up to bed. Hardy and Tucker watched as she climbed the ladder.
Chapter 13
THE NEXT MORNING WHEN AISHA woke up, Hardy and Tucker were already out in the forest, patrolling the area around the human village. She reached out to them and apologized for her behavior the night before. They weren’t the least bit upset with her. They completely understood that she was worried about the other two brothers. They were worried too. It was rare that anyone would disappear without a word the way Logan had. They’d all had times in the past when they’d needed to be alone, but they would usually let the others know they were leaving.
Aisha told them she needed some time to connect with Packer, and they completely understood. She let them know she loved them, and they did the same. It was so easy to communicate feelings in this way. With words, there were so many things that were difficult to say, so many ways to get confused and create misunderstandings. With shifter communication, the feelings and the emotions were pure. There was very little scope for misunderstanding.
She told them she would be going into the mountains to track down their brother, and they accepted it. They told her if she got in any trouble, they’d be right there to help her.
