by N. D. Jones
March 27, 2241
Irongarde Realm
Iron Spire
“You can’t hide in here forever. Trust me, I know.”
Marrok recognized Bader’s voice but didn’t lift his head or acknowledge the other werewolf’s presence in the library beyond a nod.
“Kalinda won’t leave Oriana’s side, and you’re afraid to stay there. As I said, I know that kind of fear.” The couch cushion beside him dipped. “You’re a father now, Marrok. There’s no greater responsibility … or greater fear known to a werewolf than being a father to a witch. Daughters can gut us unlike anything else in nature. Here I am, back in Iron Spire, a place I swore never to step foot in again. But I couldn’t stay away, couldn’t miss the occasion of my daughter giving birth to her daughter.”
Shoulders hunched, T-shirt clinging, and mouth dry, Marrok stood on unsteady legs. For a second he swayed, a memory of a fiercely focused Oriana bearing down, pushing their daughter into the beautiful yet harsh world, seized him. Stumbling forward like a drunkard turned away from a bar after last call, Marrok grasped the corner of a desk.
“Slow, deep breaths, Marrok. Slow, deep breaths. The last thing Oriana needs is her consort passing out, hitting his head on his way to the floor, and ruining a priceless rug with his blood.”
Marrok had never known the Aku of Irongarde to laugh or make a joke. He had seen him smile but only in Oriana’s presence.
“Was that meant to be a joke?”
“If you found it funny, then yes. If not, then no. Oriana is the humorous one in the family, not me and certainly not Kalinda. If I hadn’t been there at Oriana’s conception and birth, I would swear Kalinda and I played no role in making her.”
Still holding on to the desk’s edge, Marrok turned to face his father-in-law. As always, Bader dressed to impress—shined shoes, creased dress pants, and a crisp white shirt with diamond cufflinks. All that was missing were the suit jacket and tie he’d arrived in. He’d removed them nine hours ago before drinking the first of several cups of steaming coffee. The aku didn’t appear as if he’d spent those hours pacing, awaiting the delivery of his first grandchild.
“Oriana looks like you.”
“She resembles her mother more. Even the shade of their blue eyes are the same. Oriana is the only bright spot left between Kalinda and me.” Leaning against the cushions, legs crossed, arm stretched out along the back of the couch, Bader appeared like a werewolf of leisure, not a male baring his heart. His scent, if not his eyes, gave away his pain.
“I guess Oriana does look more like her mother, but she doesn’t have Kalinda’s rough edges.”
“When Kalinda and I first married, neither did she. Ruling a planet has a way of turning leveled glass into jagged shards.”
“Is that a warning?”
“No. And I wasn’t only speaking about my mate. I’m not the same werewolf she took as a consort. I’ve disappointed her, as much as she’s disillusioned me.”
Bader bit his lower lip the same way Oriana did when she was deep in thought or nervous.
Marrok wanted to ask him a personal question. With the sentimental mood Bader seemed to be in, now might be his only chance.
“Have you ever been tempted?”
The way Bader’s dark eyes hardened like twin pieces of marble, he thought the werewolf would tell him to go screw himself. But he didn’t. Instead, Bader lowered his arm and leg, eyes softening with the movements.
“To hurt my mate or daughter, you mean?”
Marrok nodded, shifting to rest one hip on the edge of the desk, tension radiating from shoulders to toes.
“Not tempted to hurt, that’s not the correct word to describe the feeling.” Bader’s hand rose to his stomach. “It’s more like an extreme sensation of starvation, of a hunger so deep and consuming I could feel it at the cellular level. My stomach rumbled, growled from the pain of needing to be fed.”
The hand on Bader’s stomach clutched at his shirt, as if he could feel his hunger pains from the mere telling of his truth. His jaw set and brows pinched.
The memory haunts him. I wonder when he last felt that way.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“My son is gone, and with him my heart and marriage. I can’t have either back. Witches are even less willing to forgive than werewolves. But I’ll tell you what I would’ve told him. Love with all your heart. Hold nothing back. Treasure the small things—your daughter’s laughter, your mate’s hand in yours, how your heart skips a beat when you see them, knowing they love you as much as you adore them. When you feel yourself starving for the taste of their magic, step back, breathe, but never, ever walk away from them. We all think that’s the answer, the only way to survive each other, but we’re wrong.”
Marrok planted both feet on the floor, leaning against the desk instead of sitting on it. “Wrong?”
“One hundred percent wrong.” Bader slid to the edge of the couch, the palms of his hands on his knees. “You’re old enough to feel the hunger, even if you haven’t yet had the gnawing pangs of starvation.”
Yeah, he’d felt the hunger for magic, especially since sharing a bed with Oriana. Their short breaks helped. When he returned, he felt better, more in control.
“It’s always there. Once we reach puberty, the hunger stays with us, even when we aren’t in the presence of a witch. I can’t remember what it feels like to be full, to have my body satisfied on a bone-deep, primal level. The contentment of being full, of not wanting anything else because you’re stuffed, isn’t an experience known to any mature werewolf.”
Io had shared a similar perspective with Marrok, but the conversation had ended with, “And that’s why we’ll always lose our witches, why they’ll never completely trust us not to hurt them.” But Bader disagreed?
“I don’t understand.”
“Witches grow up thinking they can’t rely on their fathers, while werewolves are raised believing their mothers will grow to fear them.”
“Isn’t that what happens? After puberty, witches can’t depend on their fathers because they’re no longer in the home. The same is true for werewolves. Their mothers leave, afraid of what will happen if they stay.”
Bader’s headshake had the hair jewelry dangling from his dreadlocks rubbing against each other, producing a soft wind chime sound.
“Self-fulfilling prophecy. We believe it, so we make it true. I left my family because my father left his, as my grandfather did, and his father, and every other male in my family who had a daughter. I was told that’s what real werewolves did, if they loved their mate and daughter. ‘You never want to hurt them,’ my father told me. ‘A werewolf must protect his witches, even from himself.’ ”
“How can we do both? Protect them and stay with them?”
Twelve years. That’s all the time he and Oriana had to figure out what they could do differently to save their marriage and their family. Marrok didn’t doubt Oriana would reject the rite of endometal fusion when the time came. She wouldn’t permit anyone, including Kalinda, to bully her into subjecting their daughter to what she viewed as a barbaric practice. But the personal cost would be high, greater than he thought Oriana could fully grasp. In essence, she would be shunned.
Unless Kalinda and Bader wanted to suffer the same fate, Oriana would lose them too. Worse, how would Oriana feel if her parents chose her over everything else in their lives, leaving the realms without a legitimate line of matrilineal matriarch and a long-standing aku? What would happen to Earth Rift without the traditional succession plan? Would war erupt, as witches and werewolves fought themselves and each other to claim what the Blood of the Sun family left? None of the possibilities would bode well for Earth Rift.
Oriana couldn’t abdicate the matriarchy. Not for him. Not even for their children. Where did that leave them?
With a ticking time bomb.
“I’ve been reading Matriarch Helen’s private journals.”
Sliding back against the cu
shions, Bader re-crossed his legs and arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
Marrok didn’t know how much Oriana had confided in her father beyond her plans for restoring Bronze Ward. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, wishing he could fake cool calm as well as the aku.
“Haven’t you ever wondered how Helen and Tuncay did it for so long?”
“They took breaks from one another. It’s not a mystery, Marrok. We’ve all tried that strategy. A week or two at first. Then a month. Then three. Before you know it, a year has passed, and you begin to feel like a guest in your own home. So you leave again, staying away even longer because you think it’s better that way, that you’re a burden and your family is happier without you. Distance has a way of adding to our delusions. We tell ourselves we’re doing it for their safety when, in truth, we stay away because it’s easier than staying and fighting the perpetual hunger. Naturally, the bond that brought the witch and werewolf together strains, frays, and eventually breaks.”
Once again, despite his relaxed posture and matter-of-fact way of sharing the pitfalls of his marriage to Kalinda, Bader’s scent betrayed his regret and loneliness. Combined, they smelled like lemongrass to Marrok. His whole life he’d been familiar with the smell, beginning with his father. Most mature werewolves reeked of it. He’d learned to ignore the smell, to interpret it as a natural and immutable part of life.
As a new father and a consort with only a year of marriage behind him, Marrok dreaded the day he too would stink of lemongrass. That innocuous smell would represent all he had lost and everything he had failed to protect.
His mate.
His daughter.
His heart.
“Helen and Tuncay’s love story was tragic. Kalinda never talks about her parents. If I were you, I wouldn’t mention that Oriana gave you access to Helen’s records.”
Bader glanced at the wall clock above the library door. Marrok realized he’d been gone too long. It didn’t take two hours to wash a newborn, move Oriana from the birthing room to her bedroom, and for Oriana to nurse their daughter. He needed to get his butt back to his family.
“Oriana is the only person who has managed to get around Kalinda’s rough edges, as you called them. Bronze Ward is a perfect example of what I mean. For a while, Helen and Tuncay did something right, something other than taking breaks from each other. I don’t know what new idea they’d devised, probably another experiment like Bronze Ward.”
Marrok thought he knew what the deceased couple had done, and it had been a risky experiment. A risky, failed experiment, because everyone knew how Helen and Tuncay’s love story had ended. Happily-ever-afters did not exist for witches and werewolves.
Marrok pushed to his feet, sure-footed and ready to see his girls. Running away resolved nothing. He agreed with Bader on that point.
“Feel better?”
How could he? Between Lita’s and Bader’s advice, he had no clear path to guarantee he wouldn’t lose his family in the end. He felt like he was wading in waist-deep quicksand, nowhere to go but down.
“I’m going to go see my mate and daughter. Coming?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself. Do you want me to tell Kalinda where to find you?”
He doubted Bader’s right eyebrow could reach any further northward.
“Okay, I guess you don’t.” Marrok strolled to the closed library door, opened it, but didn’t exit. “Is it true that Matriarch Helen died performing an advanced-level spell that resulted in malfunctioning weapons she couldn’t control? And that the weapons, somehow, severed her arms and legs?”
Bader’s sigh was heavy. “I don’t know. I don’t think Kalinda does either. What I do know is that Helen locked herself in her bedroom with her trusted Crimson Hunter. Helen’s magic was unmatched, wilder than anything I’ve ever seen. Only Kalinda could bypass her mother’s barrier spell to get us inside her room. But it was too late. Flames were everywhere, but that didn’t stop Tuncay from charging in there. Kalinda would’ve followed him, but …”
Marrok turned back to Bader. The werewolf hadn’t moved, but his tone and face were no longer cool and calm. For once, the emotions on his face matched his scent—horror and sadness.
“I stopped my mate from going in. It took all my werewolf strength to do it, too. We fought, right there in front of her parent’s burning suite. We fought, and I was never more afraid in my life.”
“That Kalinda would hurt you?”
“No, that I wouldn’t be strong enough to stop her from killing herself. When Tuncay ran in there, in his human form, he had to have known he wouldn’t survive the wild sun magic in that room. But he went in anyway, choosing to die with his witch rather than living without her.”
Marrok stared at Bader, mouth clamped tight. What the hell could he say? The tragic tale explained so much about his mother-in-law. Her rough edges were born in witch fire.
“I lost Kalinda that day. Long before our son was born and died, I lost my mate. Oriana’s rite of endometal fusion ceremony was a convenient excuse for us to put a halt to the pretense. I traded my daughter for the relief I felt at no longer living with a woman who hated me for loving her.”
“She would’ve died with her parents, if not for you.”
“A part of Kalinda did die with Helen and Tuncay. What remained was a witch whose final memories of her parents were their cries as they burned. She wouldn’t have been able to save them, whether I’d stood in her way or not.” Bader’s hand lifted to his chest, right above his Aku of Irongarde symbol—Kalinda’s mate mark. “Since then, she’s never been able to separate the worst day of her life from the werewolf who forced her to live in a world without her parents. After that … we eventually were able to do our duty for the realm, giving them their next Matriarch of Earth Rift.”
In an atypically ungraceful move, Bader flopped onto the couch, his hair jewelry producing a discordant bell sound fabled to ward-off evil spirits.
Marrok didn’t believe in evil spirits but something terrible had laid claim to Earth Rift.
“Whatever you and Oriana are doing with Helen’s journals, you need to stop. She and Tuncay plotted and planned and got in way over their heads. Their schemes killed them and Helen’s Crimson Hunter, Farkas. It took four witches to extinguish Helen’s flames, that’s how potent her magic was without the steel buffers in her arms and legs.”
For all that Kalinda had followed Matriarch Alba’s decree and had Oriana injected with liquid steel, she’d limited it to her arms. From that precedent—and perhaps small act of defiance—other mothers followed her lead. The more he learned, the more he realized how little the people of Earth Rift understood their matriarchs—current and past.
“I see so much of Kalinda in Oriana. But my daughter is more like her grandmother than I realized. You’ve studied Helen. Do you disagree?”
Marrok shook his head, wishing he hadn’t seen the same drive in Oriana that he had read in Helen’s journals. Their passion to end the divide between witches and werewolves were undeniable, admirable, but also too terrifying for Marrok to stand by and let Oriana go it alone.
“With or without me, Oriana won’t stop until she has her answers. I’ll keep her safe, make sure she doesn’t go too far.”
“I’m sure Tuncay thought he could do the same for his mate. In the end, Helen trusted Farkas more than she did Tuncay. Why do you think that was?”
Again, Marrok stared at Bader. The day of his daughter’s birth shouldn’t be accompanied by this kind of brutal conversation. Yet, like Lita on his wedding day, Bader had decided to add a gray cloud of truth to his sunny day.
“From what I’ve learned of Tuncay from Helen’s journals, he loved her, which means he would’ve tried to stop her. Tuncay wouldn’t have wanted Helen to risk her life on an experiment that could kill her. Like you with Kalinda, he would rather be hated than watch her die, knowing he could’ve saved her. As Crimson Hunter, it was Farkas’s duty to do the will of her matriarch, even if she d
isagreed.”
“I can’t lose my daughter, Marrok. Do you understand?”
“I won’t fail Oriana.”
“That’s just it, Tuncay didn’t fail Helen. Yet she still died. Do you know why Oriana is so bad at magical jumps?”
“Because she doesn’t practice and knows Solange will bail her butt out of any situation?”
Bader laughed and, yeah, so did Marrok because it was the truth, and they needed the emotional release.
“Well, yes, but that’s only partially true. When I said Oriana was like Helen, I wasn’t only talking about their passion and purpose but also their powerset. Extraction magic, as difficult a spell as it is, is the only spell Oriana doesn’t practice because that’s her small way of reminding herself to take care with her high magic level and position as matriarch. When you’re born to rule and everyone on a planet of billions, except for your mother, is expected to bend to your will, that depth of power can be both intoxicating and corrupting. Like Helen, Oriana’s magic literally runs hot, even with the liquid steel in her arms.”
His healed burns were proof of how hot Oriana ran when in the throes of passion, her mind not focused on controlling her wild sun magic but on giving and receiving pleasure.
“She needs you, more than you realize. And Kalinda needed me more than I realized.”
“What about the hunger?”
“You won’t die from it. Some days you’ll wish you could, though. Other days you will think you’ll do anything to make the pain go away. But you won’t. You must trust, no matter how bad it gets, how starved you feel, that you’ll never hurt your mate and daughter. I didn’t have enough faith in myself. But Tuncay did. If one werewolf could survive the hunger, we all can.”
Bader rose and, to Marrok’s surprise, the older werewolf hugged him. Not one of those one-armed “manly” hugs either, but the both-arms-around-his-neck kind of hug a father bestowed on his son.
He returned Bader’s hug. Marrok was raised in a house of males, and Io was an affectionate father, as quick to display his love for his sons as he was to get in their faces when they did something wrong.
