Abandoned: Bitter Harvest, Book Three

by Ann Gimpel

  “I’ll just rinse off.” She ran a washcloth under hot water, wrung the water out of it, and tossed it his way. “Here’s one for you too.”

  “Thanks.” He wiped his hands and face before wrapping the damp cloth around his semi-erect appendage. “While we still have some privacy, can we talk about something?”

  Zoe rinsed her cloth and hung it over a hook. “Sure. Anything.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and made a grab for the clothing he’d discarded. “Did something strike you as odd about Leif’s visit?”

  She drew her brows together until a vertical line formed between them and plucked clothing from a neatly folded stack he hadn’t noticed before. “Now you mention it, some of what he said seemed a wee bit staged. The part bothering me most, though, was the discrepancy between what I saw in his head and his actions. He truly hates Poseidon, yet he told us he was here on behalf of his lieges.”

  Recco fastened his trousers. “Are such reactions so unusual, though? Don’t most commoners dislike royalty?”

  Zoe slid her vest over her top and put her boots on. “Shifters don’t report to royalty. We never elevated any of our own to that position. The gods knew about us, but it was more a relationship where we coexisted, not one where we owed them fealty.”

  “Could it be different for sea Shifters?”

  “I don’t know. Leif seems decent and sincere. I tested him with magic while he was on board.”

  “You’re full of surprises.”

  “Nay, just not verra trusting. Wasn’t only me. Karin checked too. I felt her distinct brand of power.”

  Zoe walked to him and held out her arms. He walked into them and hugged her back. “We won’t solve this one today,” he murmured. “Did you mean it when you agreed to be my wife?”

  She tilted her head back and met his gaze head-on. “Did you mean it when you asked me? Still time to back out.”

  “I don’t want to back out. I want you. More than ever.”

  “Good, because I feel the same way.” She laid her cheek against the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

  He tightened his hold on her as emotion sluiced through him. “You’ve made me a very happy man. We face a phalanx of unknowns, but we’ll get through them better together.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “I hope so. ’Twould be a hell of a cosmic joke to find my one true mate and have him ripped away because one of us died.”

  “Hey.” He tipped her chin up. “I’m not planning on dying.”

  “Neither am I,” she said, sounding fierce.

  “You look like one of those female warriors. Harsh. Beautiful. Foreboding. Sure glad you’re mine.”

  “Aye, that I am.” She leveled her gaze his way, said something in Gaelic, and followed it with. “Never forget the street cuts both ways. Ye’re mine as well.”

  “How could I ever forget? It would be the same as forgetting you. Shall we?” He nodded at the door.

  “Aye.”

  Hand in hand, they walked from his cabin into the corridor beyond. The same, yet not. Recco had never been married. Hell, he’d scarcely had what he considered a girlfriend who lasted more than a few months. Walking by Zoe’s side, he vowed to do whatever it took to be a good husband. To love her, support her, and protect her.

  “Keep those thoughts flowing,” she murmured, chuckling.

  Recco smothered a snort. “I forget you gals and your mind-reading proclivities. You’ll have to teach me how to sneak into your thoughts.”

  She twisted to face him. “What? And have you privy to all my secrets? I think not. If you want to know how to mind read, you’ll have to learn on your own.”

  He nudged her. She nudged back. Laughing, they started up the stairs to the bridge.

  YOU’VE REACHED THE end of Abandoned. Betrayed, next book in the series will be along in a few weeks. If you’re still in a reading mood, a sample from it is just below.

  About the Author:

  Ann Gimpel is a USA Today bestselling author. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in several webzines and anthologies. Her longer books run the gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. Once upon a time, she nurtured clients. Now she nurtures dark, gritty fantasy stories that push hard against reality. When she’s not writing, she’s in the backcountry getting down and dirty with her camera. She’s published over fifty books to date, with several more planned for 2018 and beyond. A husband, grown children, grandchildren, and wolf hybrids round out her family.

  Keep up with her at www.anngimpel.com or http://anngimpel.blogspot.com

  If you enjoyed what you read, get in line for special offers and pre-release special reads. Newsletter Signup!

  Betrayed, Bitter Harvest Book Four

  Chapter One: Oversight in Judgment

  Karin Carson had been relieved the lab on Deck Two was empty. It wasn’t likely to remain that way, so she hurried up, fussing with the controls on the darkfield microscope. Nothing changed on her slide. Not the way she wanted it to, anyway.

  “Yeah, right. Why would it? Sheer wishful thinking on my part,” she mumbled.

  Dragging herself upright, she moved to a prep area, stabbed her finger with a lancet, and made three more slides. Even though she worked automatically, fatigue dragged at her. A weariness so pervasive, it was tough not to curl up in a ball on the floor and close her eyes.

  “What did you find?” her wolf asked.

  “Not sure,” she hedged not bothering with telepathy. Magic of any kind took energy, a commodity she couldn’t spare right now.

  “What do you think you found?” her bondmate pressed. “Must be something, or you wouldn’t be making more of those glass things.”

  Instead of answering, she prepped the new slides with different reagents. She’d suspected something was amiss when she hadn’t bounced back from healing the dolphin Shifters’ alpha. It had been significantly more than just healing, though. The creature died, and she’d held its spirit with her magic, urging it back to this side of the veil. It had drained her resources down to bedrock, so she hadn’t thought much about it when she didn’t have her usual complement of energy afterward.

  Working with Daide, one of two veterinarians aboard Arkady, she’d gone on to cure eight more dolphins, feeling slightly worse after each one. The last dolphin had been two days ago, and she’d expected her depleted energy to stage a recovery. It hadn’t. If she were honest, she felt worse now than she had after they’d finished the dolphin.

  Her bondmate had noticed. How could it not have? She was here in the lab she’d helped set up on Deck Two, assessing what could possibly be wrong with her, because of its urging. She tamped back a wry grin. Nagging, wheedling, and cajoling came closer than urging. Her wolf had a relentless streak, one of many things she loved about it.

  The slides were as ready as they’d ever be. She walked them over to a normal scope, set one on the stage, and bent over the binocular eyepieces. The same dyscrasia she’d seen earlier was even clearer here. It fit with her white count being off the charts high, but what made no sense was how she’d developed what looked like a precancerous anomaly in her blood over a few weeks timeframe.

  Bodies didn’t operate that way.

  Apparently mine did.

  “Are you going to tell me?” the wolf demanded.

  “Something is wrong with my blood.” Karin straightened from her hunched position, not bothering with the other two slides. They’d contain the same information.

  “Can you fix it?” Her wolf punctuated its question with a howl.

  She scrunched her eyes shut to rest them and rubbed her temples to ease the headache that rarely let her be.

  “Well, can you?” the wolf persisted.

  “I don’t know. The dyscrasia—wrongness—has to be a byproduct of magic, but I don’t get it. The dolphins are Shifters too. Their magic should be similar, nothing that would attack me, but it�
�s the only logical explanation.”

  “What is? I’m your bondmate. Why are you making me drag things out of you?”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to. There’s this lethargy, and it drags at me. Makes it hard to think, and then I panic. If I don’t figure this out damned soon, I fear my capacity to reason things through will desert me.”

  Yeah, and then I’ll be totally screwed. She kept that last thought to herself, but the wolf probably culled it from her mind.

  “What’s the only logical explanation? I get the lethargy part, but you never answered me from before.”

  “I absorbed something from when I healed the first dolphin shifter. I was far closer to him than the others since I forced his spirit to remain when it would have departed. I patched him back together with magic and cells from my body. It’s impossible to do that without cross-contamination.”

  “Tell Ketha,” the wolf urged. “And Recco and Daide. Working together, maybe you can—”

  “Not yet,” she cut in. “I appreciate you’re worried, and that you care about me, but we’ll be in Invercargill soon. Goddess only knows what we’ll face there. My problems are trivial by comparison. I’ll dose myself with something and see if I can’t fix this on my own.”

  The wolf’s silence was significant. Clearly it saw through her words as the false assurances they were meant to be.

  After another glance at the slide, she quickly slotted the next two into place and muttered, “Same story, different verse.” Because Ketha, a microbiologist, and the men would recognize what was on the slides, she ditched them in the biohazard waste bin and marched to the cabinet where they stored their limited supply of pharmaceuticals.

  Antibiotics weren’t the answer. Neither was anything else in the cupboard. Maybe one of Invercargill’s hospitals would have a selection of chemotherapy agents or immune modulators. It was possible. Even if the town was in as bad a shape as Ushuaia had been, drugs that disappeared from clinics were items like opioids and benzodiazepines. No one wanted chemicals that made you puke and lose your hair.

  She bit down hard on her lower lip. A precancerous condition that sprang out of nowhere didn’t bode well. Meant it would progress fast and not be particularly amenable to standard treatment approaches. She’d have to engage her immune system to have a prayer of winning this battle, which meant she had to get her magic back online.

  When she assessed the reservoir where her power dwelled, it was just as empty as it had been the day before. Why wasn’t it bouncing back?

  If I could figure that out, I’d be able to fix what’s wrong with me.

  Ketha trotted into the lab, coffee mug in hand, and stopped abruptly. Dark hair shot with red and gold strands fell in braids to her waist, and her golden eyes—byproduct of her wolf bondmate—narrowed. “Jesus. You look like hell. Are you sick?”

  Karin shrugged. “Maybe. I’m sure I’ll be right as rain after another night’s rest.”

  Ketha covered the distance between them and splayed the flat of her hand across Karin’s forehead. Before she could duck from beneath Ketha’s touch, a jolt of power rocked her. The other Shifter’s eyes widened. “Holy crap. You’re running a fever. Your blood pressure is dangerously high, and your respiration rate—”

  “I already know all those things.” Karin dropped back a couple of steps to avoid Ketha’s questing fingers—or magic.

  “If you do, why aren’t you doing something about it?” Ketha set her cup in a holder and crossed her arms beneath her breasts.

  “Maybe because doing the wrong thing would be worse than doing nothing.”

  “What have you tried so far?”

  Karin shook her head. “How about if you let this go for now? I’m sure it’s nothing—”

  “Well I’m not. We’re never sick. Maybe you should shift. Your wolf heals faster than you do.”

  “If it comes to that, I will.”

  Ketha dropped her hands to her sides and angled her head. Her forehead creased into worried lines. “Why haven’t you done it already? It’s our first line of defense.”

  Karin turned away and closed the drug cabinet. When she turned back, she pasted a reassuring smile on her face. “I’ll take care of it as soon as my magic’s done recovering.”

  “But it’s been two days since you and Daide finished with the dolphins,” Ketha protested.

  “Enough.” Karin marshaled what little energy she had into that one word and strode out of the lab. In truth, she didn’t have enough magic to shift—at least she was fairly certain she didn’t. If Ketha kept picking at things, she’d be bound to discover how depleted Karin was. Once that happened, all bets were off and everyone aboard the ship would be focused on her instead of what they should be thinking about, which was Invercargill.

  What would they find there? It was a reasonable bet the natives would pose problems. If any remained. No one had responded to their radio calls. She dragged herself up one flight of stairs and along the corridor to her cabin, wishing she could lock herself inside. So far, Ketha hadn’t followed her, but she would given time. Hopefully, she wouldn’t round up reinforcements.

  Of all the times to come down with a mystery ailment, this wasn’t a very good one. Not that any occasion existed when it wouldn’t be problematic to operate at less than a hundred percent. Karin slumped into the room’s single chair, weariness crashing over her in waves.

  She steepled her fingers, pressing the tips together to force a point of concentration. Maybe she was onto something with her incompatible magic theory. Zoe had been right there with her, but Karin had absorbed the dolphin’s essence, shielding it so Leif’s primary form wouldn’t die.

  Her wolf was quiet, but she felt it prowling within her. “Do you know when our line diverged from the sea Shifters?”

  “What exactly are you asking?”

  “Not whatever we argued about that created the schism. It’s not important. Do you know when they took to their sea forms while we stuck to the human ones? Also, when did we abandon a social structure where alphas ran things.”

  “Long ago, your primary form would have been mine. All Shifters were animals first, humans second, until the Romans made it dangerous for wolves and coyotes. They were captured and tossed in pits to fight. Hawks and eagles were trapped and forced to hunt.”

  Karin frowned. She thought she knew Shifter history, but she’d never heard about this part. “Why wouldn’t they have fought back?”

  “When they summoned magic to win contests in the pit—and save their lives—it revealed what they were, and many of our ancestors were hanged or burned.”

  “So someone decided we’d be safer in our human bodies. Makes sense.”

  The wolf growled. “Like all solutions, some things improved, but others grew worse. We lost a goodly share of our magic during the tradeoff.”

  “Which explains why the sea Shifters are more powerful than us.” Karin mulled it over. “Might also explain why their magic is different. You’d asked what is wrong with me, and I only gave you a partial answer. I’m convinced a disparity between my power and Leif’s created the problem. His magic fought mine, and remnants of it are actively sabotaging my power. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “So get rid of the remnants. Seems simple enough.”

  Karin twisted her mouth into a grimace as she recalled the patchwork quilt she’d created where she wove her power with Leif’s fading energy. He’d been ill for years with parasitic infections and was nearly at the end of his strength, so she’d borrowed liberally from her own magic and used it to shore up his. If she hadn’t, he’d be dead.

  But because she had, her own demise was staring her in the face. If she couldn’t reverse the process eroding her tissue and organ systems—and damned soon—there’d be nothing left to salvage.

  “It’s not simple,” she told her wolf. “This is like an autoimmune disorder where my body is attacking itself. A healthy immune system sorts friend from foe. When I joined with Leif, I con
fused mine, and its turned on me.”

  “Can you fix it?” The wolf asked again.

  “I don’t know. If I grow much weaker, I won’t be able to do anything.”

  “If you’re too depleted to shift, do you want me to break through? I can force a shift.”

  Karin shook her head. “I thought about that, and it’s too dangerous for you. If I’m developing the sea Shifters’ pattern, you could end up stuck. Instead of being able to return to the animals’ world, you’d die here, and I won’t do that to you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh but I do. If those dolphins and whales could have returned to a world like yours when they fell ill, they would have. They were stuck here.” She swallowed around a thick spot in her throat. “I love you too much to have you sacrifice yourself.”

  “How about if I love you too?” the wolf countered. “This is both our choices, not just yours.”

  Karin blinked back tears.

  Her door flew open, and Ketha marched inside, face twisted with pain—and anger. She kicked the door shut. “I dug your slides out of the trash. Why didn’t you talk with me?”

  “We have bigger problems than me right now.” Karin kept her words simple, mostly because it was all she was capable of. “We’re stopping at Invercargill at least long enough for Recco and Daide to make use of the cetacean institute’s pools to work on the five whale Shifters. It will be a miracle if something doesn’t attack us while we’re there. You need to be planning for contingencies, not worried about me.”

  “I will not focus on contingencies while you wither and die on us.” Ketha plopped onto the bunk nearest Karin. “Christ! You’re an MD. I don’t have to interpret what I found on those slides for you. Your white count is astronomical. Your body is destroying itself—”

  “I know what’s wrong. At least I believe I do,” Karin protested. “What I’m less certain of is how to neutralize it.”

  “Maybe we can get hold of some immunosuppressant drugs in Invercargill.”