But to see the expression on Ralof’s face as he crossed to this woman and took her into his arms, she may as well have been the most beautiful creature of all. Despite her stern expression, she embraced the Alpha with obvious affection, parting after a deep squeeze, and a gentle gesture in which Ralof laid his forehead briefly across hers. I couldn’t help smiling at the display.
Despite her earlier complaint, Elisa pulled away from Ralof and crossed the room to face me. “So, who is this you have brought with you?” Her voice was rich and warm despite her mildly cross tone. I imagined right away that the crossness was just part of her personality, and not indicative of any actual anger or upset. She spoke with an accent I could imagine having roots similar to Ralof’s, but I wasn’t expert enough to pick it out. If I had to guess, I’d still place it as something Scandinavian, but I really wasn’t sure. Her accent was much thicker than his at any rate.
“Elisa, this is Dakota Shepherd. The new wolf I told you about this morning.” Ralof turned to look at me, sliding an arm around Elisa with an expression of pride that resonated from within. “Dakota, this is my mate, Elisa.”
I reached for Elisa’s hand with a smile. “Nice to meet ya.” I noticed the rich colors swirling about her and wondered again at the meaning of them. She was swathed in rich browns that melted into a steely color toward the center with a hint of the same glimmering gold Ralof had.
Elisa shook my hand with a firm grip and nodded to me. “Welcome to our home, Dakota.” She said my name oddly, almost pronouncing the first syllable separately, like “da. kota.” I decided immediately that I liked it.
“Thanks. It’s nice to meet you. So you’re the one who keeps Ralof straight?” I gave myself a mental badum tish!
Elisa hmph’d at me and glanced up at the tall man beside her and as she did, I noticed that one of her eyes didn’t track. “Someone has to.” Ralof grinned at her and Elisa scoffed at him, and shoved him away. “Come. Come into the kitchen and help with dinner.” She turned and started away.
Ralof frowned and called after her, “Elisa, she is new. She doesn’t have to help us cook.”
Elisa turned back in the kitchen’s doorway and scoffed again. “If new wolf is worth feeding, she will not mind helping.” And with that, Elisa had spoken. She returned to the kitchen and I shrugged at Ralof helplessly as he did the same to me. I passed him and walked into the kitchen with a smile.
The kitchen was a glorious mix of rustic wood architecture and contemporary appliances. The floor was made of broad natural rock which climbed halfway up the wall, creating a backsplash to the counters and the stove. The ceiling was finished wood with polished logs serving as cross beams. The cabinets were made of wood with a rustic, almost rough-looking finish, but the countertop was polished and sealed wood in a darker color than the rest. The counter wrapped around the room, then turned a corner and stuck out into the middle of the room, forming a solid bar with a stacked log front and long, smooth log benches.
Otherwise, there was a ceramic cooktop, a sleek, black oven and microwave, a dishwasher and a double-sided sink, and the largest refrigerator I’d ever seen. A door to one side of the fridge was standing open to reveal a large pantry with a chest freezer at the back. A window over the sink overlooked the back yard, as did the glass door and bay windows to the side of the bar.
The kitchen was neat and clean, but welcomingly cluttered. There were spices and cooking utensils setting out from where a meal was being prepared, a cutting board with a knife still resting on the wreckage of whatever vegetables it had been savaging some time earlier, and myriad other interesting decor, such as a few bunches of herbs hanging near the pantry, and a rabbit— yup, that was a whole freaking rabbit, just hanging over the sink by its feet.
Elisa hadn’t been alone in the kitchen. Another, younger woman was still busy, stirring the contents of a five-gallon stock pot when I came in. She looked up as Elisa and I walked in and gave me a friendly smile. She had a strong resemblance to Elisa, though she lacked the battering of scars. I smiled back as Elisa crossed to the counter and plucked a large mixing bowl from where she’d obviously left it, and slung it into my arms. “Here. Mix that.” She handed me a wooden spoon, before turning back to the oven to check whatever she’d been cooking before Ralof’s homecoming had interrupted her. “Raelya, this is Dakota. She is new wolf.”
Raelya turned to me and smiled, offering a hand. I returned the smile and dropped the spoon into the bowl to accept her hand. “Nice to meet you, Raelya.” I hoped I’d repeated her name correctly. I tried to copy the way Elisa had said it like “rail-ya”.
Raelya tossed her head, throwing her braid over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you too, Dakota. So. I hear you are new?” Her accent was like Elisa’s, but softer and a little less pronounced. She said “Dakota” a little more smoothly, though it still sounded cooler coming from her lips than from mine. The way she queried the obvious denoted a hint of the sparkling humor I saw waiting at the ready in her eyes.
“You could say that. I just found out this morning.” I started stirring the contents of the bowl in my hands as we spoke.
“Mm. That is odd. You are a bit older than most for it.” She glanced into her pot and decided to place the lid on it, turning to lean against the counter as she faced me. “Welcome to the Pack.”
I smiled and silently blessed her for not assuming me a child. “Thanks. It’s nice to meet you guys.” I stirred at my bowl and took Raelya’s appearance in. She was taller than average, but not quite as tall as Elisa. I’d have placed her at five-nine at a guess. She had the same fair skin and pale blond hair as Elisa had, and the same cool blue eyes that Elisa and Ralof also shared. She was fit-looking with delicate curves and an ample chest, an altogether attractive woman with the exotic quality of the Scandinavian women I’d seen on the Olympics, and a confidence that rode in her bones. Her colors were a vivid mixture of hues swirling amid the same earthy colors both Ralof and Elise had. I was increasingly certain that the colors held some particular meaning. “So, are you Elisa and Ralof’s daughter?”
She hmph’d at that, seeming somewhat amused. “More or less. Elisa is my aunt, but Ralof… he has adopted me.” Her expression said that I hadn’t stumbled into a sore topic. I was grateful for that.
“Ahh. I just figured you were related…” I glanced up in surprise as Elisa suddenly took the bowl from me, turning her back to both of us and humming lightly to herself as she went about pouring the batter into a baking pan with many round wells.
“It is the hair that gives it away, yes?” Raelya stepped away from the stove and took a seat at the bar, gesturing for me to do the same. “So you are new here. What do you want to know?”
I settled in next to her and smiled. “A lot, actually. It’s kinda hard to sort through it all. I don’t even know if I know enough to ask the right questions.”
“Probably not. There are many things you should know about if you have just Awakened.”
Elisa turned to us and dropped a bag of potatoes on the bar alongside a couple of peelers and a paring knife. Raelya picked up a potato and a peeler without pause and began working as we spoke, so I took the other peeler and followed suit. “Like what?”
“Depends on what you know so far.”
I dug at an eye on the potato that didn’t come free when I swiped the peeler across it. “I know there’s vampires and werewolves. I know people are funny colors if they’re Awakened… or something like that. I think that’s about it.”
Raelya took the potato from me and dug the eye out with the end of her peeler and finished peeling it before setting it into a bowl that had materialized since I’d looked up last. “Very much to know, then. The people with funny colors as you say. They are Awakened, yes. Though, some are Awakened humans, and others will be other things.”
“Other things?” I started on another potato, trying to be less of an embarrassment this time around.
“Yes. Things like Vampires, Fae… Things like u
s.”
“So Awakened humans, Vampires, Werewolves… Fairies?”
Raelya nodded. “And some other things. Those that are not humans or Unawakened. You will see these colors with them. It is their essensen. Aura, you would call it.”
“Aura?” I frowned. “Like…”
“Like one’s spirit. Like… the thing that makes you what you are.” She tossed another potato in the bowl.
“So it’s their soul?” I furrowed my brow.
“Yes… and no. I think it would be better to say that the soul is what makes the aura, but the aura is what shows the soul.” She tilted her head, peering at me. “Does that make sense?”
“I think so. But why don’t Unawakened people have it then? They still have a soul, right?” I dug the peeler into my finger a bit by mistake and let out a little hiss.
Raelya smirked at me as she deftly finished another potato. “Yes. But…” She frowned then, pausing her breakneck potato-prepping to consider a way to convey her thoughts to me. I took advantage of her pause, and tried to catch up to her. This resulted in another hiss. After a moment, she continued. “It is, perhaps, like a leg that is not used. You are not walking around, so the muscle becomes less strong.”
“It atrophies.” I supplied.
Raelya nodded. “That. And the souls of people are similar.”
“You’re saying that ordinary people aren’t using their souls?” I started the question incredulously, but I couldn’t finish it as strongly as I’d begun. I lowered my gaze to the potato in my hand.
“Not that they are not using them. Not entirely. Just that they are not… building them up. The life they are living, it does not draw the depths of their being from its dormancy. They are living in a state of rest. Hiding from the truth. It is easy, but it has made them all dimmer. Less brilliant. Less… just… less.” She looked a little sad as she said it.
I considered that as I finished my potato and placed it in the bowl. “But there’s some really awesome people out there. What about like… Elon Musk, or Nikola Tesla? Or Hayao Miyazaki? Or, I dunno… Gandhi?” Raelya smiled at me softly as I realized the answer to my own question. “They were all Awakened?”
Raelya nodded. “I do not know all of these people that you name, but it is likely so. There are some people who are Unawakened who will do incredible things… but it is less common than if these things are done by those who are Awakened.”
“Wow. This is a lot to take in.” At least now I knew what to call the colors besides “swirly colored lights.” I went to reach for another potato but the bag was empty. I looked up and saw that Elisa was standing on the other side of the bar, peeling along with us, silently. The potatoes were finished as soon as Elisa and Raelya placed their last ones in the bowl. I was assigned peel-disposal duty while Elisa took the finished product to a pot on the stove, and Raelya washed up the knives and peelers. I was grateful for the pause in the conversation. It gave me a moment to think about things. I sat back down a moment later when Elisa seemed to have no further use for me.
Raelya joined me a moment later, setting two glasses of juice on the bar in front of us. I smiled my thanks and took a drink. “Mmm… This tastes really fresh.”
Raelya gestured toward Elisa. “Elisa does not like the store bought kind. It is too sugary. I am inclined to agree with her. So we make our own twice a month. We keep it in a huge jug in the fridge with a little spout. It is different depending on what fruit is in season.”
I smiled “I figured you guys were pretty good with cooking. I mean, I have no idea what half the things you’ve been doing are for… but I noticed your herb garden on the way in.”
Elisa harrumphed from the stove. “I do not understand how you young ones are without skills so basic as preparing food. How do you survive?”
I shrugged. “Fast food and microwaves?” Elisa gave me a scornful look and I grinned and lifted my shoulders more exaggeratedly. She rolled her eyes, or eye, I suppose; the one that didn’t track didn’t seem to move at all and I’d come to the conclusion that it was a glass eye. She shook her head and muttered something disparaging in what I presumed to be her native tongue and went back to whatever she was doing with the stove. I glanced back to Raelya. “So what about werewolves? We have these auras obviously, but we don’t have them before we Awaken? So we still have to Awaken like humans?”
Raelya nodded. “We are still human. We are just also wolf.” That made sense. At least, kinda.
“So no one can tell you’re a werewolf before you Awaken then?”
Raelya shook her head. “No, it is possible to scent you. Especially the Alpha could detect it before you are Awake. And we watch families we know to have wolves among them to be aware if their children are wolves.”
“Wait… So you mean, you’re… born with it?” My brow knitted together.
Raelya nodded and smirked at me. “It is not like in movies. You do not get turned into a werewolf by tooth or by claw. Such things are legend, the tales of many ages ago.” She made a playful clawing motion at me. I laughed. “It is passed down through blood.”
I frowned at that. “Then… it runs in my family?”
Raelya shrugged, “Well, you have the blood from someone in your family.”
I stared down at the juice in my glass. Someone in my family was a werewolf? I thought about that. My parents? No way. They were so… normal. And well, the more I thought about potential wolves in my family, the more certain I was that this was a fluke. Then again, I would never have looked myself in the mirror and thought that I was one either. That gave me an idea. “Is it possible that it never came out? I mean, I can’t shift for some reason, so maybe—”
“You can not shift? What do you mean?” Raelya looked concerned. Elisa had looked up from her cooking at that as well.
I glanced up with surprise. “Ralof didn’t… oh, I guess not.” I shrugged. “I can’t shift. Ralof said it was odd and he didn’t know why.”
Elisa frowned. “That is odd. You are definitely wolf. I can smell it. Sense it.” Raelya looked thoughtful.
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to say. I tried. I felt something stirring inside, but nothing happened.”
Elisa stirred a pot absently, obviously more focused on my dilemma at the moment. “I wonder what is wrong with you.”
“What’s wrong with who?” A tall, muscular man, though I would have called him neither if Ralof were the point of reference, with medium-length dark hair and a sun-kissed complexion joined the room. He wore a gray tank top and camo cargo pants, and a boat load of ink. He was covered in tattoos, all over his arms and shoulders, what I could see of his back, and his neck. They were lines and intricate patterns, angular knots and arcane-looking symbols all intertwined and highlighted in accents of intense red to offset the predominant black. In other words, he looked totally awesome!
Raelya smiled. “Dakota, this is Ralof’s second. Andr—”
“Andrei Ward.” Andrei stuck out his hand with a smile. “Pleasure to meet you.” I set the juice down on the bar and shook Andrei’s hand, erstwhile taking in the dark cluster of reds and charcoal patches that crowded close to his body, though brighter colors dominated the bulk of his aura.
“Nice to meet you too.” I glanced at the bar as Elisa laid a bowl of rolls on it, hot from the oven, and covered them with a towel before turning back to the stove. Andrei glanced at Elisa’s back, then flashed me a grin, and slipped a roll from under the towel and shoved it in his mouth, dropped it back into his hand, danced it momentarily from palm to palm while blowing at it, and then stuffed it in his mouth again.
“Andrei, take this to the table.” Elisa turned back around with a heavy-looking pot and scowled at him, eying the roll in his mouth. Andrei tried to hide the roll by stuffing it fully into his mouth and grinning with puffy cheeks. Elisa rolled her eyes and gestured the pot at him, dropping it in his hands as soon as he reached for it. Andrei flashed me a roll-full smile and headed for the door. “New-w
olf. Take the bread. Do not eat bread. Raelya, here.” I stood and collected the bowl full of rolls as instructed and followed after Andrei. I had a feeling I was going to like him.
We carried the food into the dining room which adjoined the kitchen and living room. The dining room was a modestly furnished room, with a long, rustic wood table that could easily seat a dozen people, surrounded by matching chairs. The room was otherwise mostly plain with the same wood plank walls, and plank-and-log ceiling. The floor was polished hardwood. The room’s walls held a China hutch, a couple of tasteful paintings, and one huge tapestry depicting a large wolf with a circle of wolves surrounding him. The edges of the tapestry were patterned with knotwork like that I’d seen on the door, a more angular knotwork than the typical Celtic kind I was familiar with. Raelya paused as she entered the room, glancing up at the tapestry as she slid over next to me. “It is an old thing. Something Elisa and I made for Ralof. It was a gift one year at Yule.”
I smiled over at her with honest appreciation. “Is there anything you two can’t do?”
Raelya flashed me a grin. “Perhaps we will think of something eventually.” She turned and placed a heavy-laden dish upon the table. From the appetizing, meaty smell, I imagined it was the main course. “You like the tapestry?”
I nodded in earnest as I settled the bowl of bread on the table next to Raelya’s covered dish. “It’s incredible. My Nan used to do stuff like that. I never had the knack for textile arts.”
“Oh? It is simple to learn. Just takes practice to master the skills.”
“Nan tried to teach me to crochet when I was little. She gave up when I’d spent a whole afternoon on this one big piece I was going to sew into a little pillow case that just unraveled as soon as she tugged at the weave. I’d done something backward and weirded it all up and it was just a disaster.” I offered a cheesy grin and an exaggerated shrug.
Awakened (Auralight Codex: Dakota Shepherd Book 1) Page 7
