Pack Witch, page 14
part #5 of The Splintered Bond Series
I shook my head and held out a hand instead. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. The earth…”
“You need to keep touching it?”
I grinned ruefully. “It feels like it’s the other way around. Like it doesn’t want to let me go.”
He shook his head. “I never thought I’d be jealous of dirt.” We returned to the cabin hand in hand to find the boys had put together a table outside, long boards laid over a sawhorse and a flat-topped boulder, with a charming picnic lunch laid out on top, set for two.
Leroy pulled out a half-cut pine log for Sergeant, while Bo gestured to one of my own chairs from the cabin. “M’lady.”
There was a platter with a stack of pan-fried trout in the center of the table—only slightly burned at the edges—and bowls heaped with freshly cooked greens, onions, and even some of the early peas. It smelled delicious, and I told them so.
“Leroy did most of the cookin’, ma’am.” Bo ducked his head when I pressed a kiss to his cheek and sat. Leroy was there in an instant, heaping food on my plate. Bo started to do the same for Julian, but he stopped him.
“Where are your places, boys?”
Bo and Leroy blinked at each other. “Me and Bo was, uh, just gonna eat down at the creek. Give you two some alone time.” Leroy wiggled his eyebrows at Julian, then tilted his head at me, a silent, completely transparent hint.
Julian rolled his eyes. “Go get some more seats and plates, and sit down. You’re family. We’ll eat as a family.”
Neither one of the boys moved, until Leroy whispered, “Family?”
Bo swallowed hard and rasped, “On the mountain. You… you called me son.”
“I did,” Julian said, his eyes shining with… remorse? I wasn’t sure. “I was looking for you last night, you know. To apologize for the way I’d treated you.” Bo flinched. “I was too harsh with you, and not just yesterday. My only excuse is the pain I was in. I was afraid I would die before I’d taught you everything you needed to know about being Alpha.”
Bo let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know enough. I don’t know how I’m gonna go back to the pack and do what you did. They won’t want to follow me.”
“You’re feeling the pull to go back?” Bo nodded. “That’s good. That’s the pack calling you. That means they do want you; they’re wanting to pledge to the new Alpha.”
“I told you, Bo,” Leroy murmured. “You’re gonna be a great Alpha. You’ll see. They all will.”
“I… I don’t want to go,” Bo whispered brokenly. “I don’t want to leave y’all.”
Leroy wrapped his arms around Bo and whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was, it had Bo hugging him back and nodding fiercely. When he let go, Leroy moved around the table, a sweet, secret smile on his face as he pulled two more logs close for seats, then went back into the cabin for plates and food.
Bo and Sergeant stepped away, into the shade of a nearby pine. I could make out some of Julian’s words, a story about the Moonblessed Warriors. Bo was listening intently.
Leroy’s eyes met mine as he came back out, and I smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay, Miss Zinnia. Thank you for fixing up Sergeant, too,” he murmured, but his voice caught.
“I couldn’t fix everything. His wolf is with mine.” I knew he would understand. “It might be hard…”
“Don’t fret, Miss Zinnia. Bo knows he’s got to go back to our pack. He told me last night I’m his—well, what used to be called Head Enforcer, right? But we need a new name for second wolf.”
“Beta?” I offered.
He wrinkled his nose. “Maybe? I dunno. Pickin’ a name is weird.”
I nodded, and he sat down beside me, helping himself to some food when Bo called out, “Y’all start. We’ll be there in a sec.”
“Hey, Sergeant. What name would you pick if you had to decide on a new one?” Leroy asked as Julian and Bo returned to the table.
“That’s just what Bo and I were talking about,” Julian said softly. “I’m not Alpha anymore. But—”
Bo broke in. “He’s not Alpha, but that ain’t all he was, even before. Leroy, you remember what we talked about at the river? About how we don’t got family anymore, besides my sister Delia, and how neither of us ever had a dad worth a can of spit? So I told Sergeant what we wanted.”
“What we wished for,” Leroy whispered. His head snapped to Julian. “We can—I mean, you’ll let us—”
“I’d be honored if you’d call me Dad,” Julian told him. “I can’t think of any other title I’d like more.”
Leroy tackled both of the others in a group hug, the two boys crying and smiling and shouting, even howling, before they both looked at each other and pulled away.
Then they dropped to their knees beside my stool. Leroy handed me a napkin, and I wiped my own tears away. “What are you doing?”
“We’re family, right?” Leroy’s eyes sparkled with flecks of gold in his deep green irises. “If Sergeant’s our dad now, that means me and Bo really are brothers. But… my mama died when I was little bitty, and Bo’s passed two years back. We could sure use a mom, if you could think of us that way. I know we’re not little, but—”
Something inside me broke at his stammered request. I’d learned to stop hoping for a mate and children of my own long ago, telling myself I was content with the life I’d carved out here in solitude. I’d packed that dream away, the same way I’d buried my sadness at losing the ability to shift. To have it now… I felt my heart crack open, but there was no pain.
It was opening to let them in. Somehow, I managed to answer, tears coursing down my cheeks. “If I could choose any sons in the world, I would choose you, both of you. If the moon Herself gave me one wish…” I was crying so hard by then, I had to stop.
I couldn’t see, but I felt the steady strength of the earth underfoot, and the arms of these two dear boys wrapping around me, and then his as well, my mate, after all these years of loneliness. It was as if every whispered prayer at night, every piece of dandelion fluff I’d blown into the wind, every birthday wish I’d ever made, had all come true, all at once, a flowering of joy in the middle of pain.
“This would be my wish. To have you as my family.”
Chapter 22
Julian
After all the tears had dried, and the food had been eaten, all I wanted was to rest, preferably on the bed in Zinnia’s cabin. Our cabin, she insisted on calling it, though I knew I would need to build on an extra room or two if the boys’ plans to visit every year were to happen.
We’d decided to take a trip each year to the Meridion packlands in the fall, with the boys traveling to Mountain in the spring—if Bo could manage it, though he swore he could. “The girls have been runnin’ things this whole time,” he’d argued. “They ain’t burned down the Pack House while we’ve been here—least we ain’t had a call about it. I reckon they’ll make it through an Alpha vacation every spring.”
I’d agreed, though Zinnia’s willingness to travel away from her secluded home had surprised me. “I’ve got you and the boys now,” she’d explained, like that was all I needed to know. “It’s different.”
I supposed it was. Finding out I had living family four years ago had pulled me away from my own seclusion and back into the world.
At least now, shifter society was less dangerous. And even with no claws and blunt teeth, I knew I could still protect Zinnia if it came down to it. I was a skilled fighter, and I felt stronger than ever.
“You think we could stay for another week or two?” Bo asked at the end of the meal. “I still need to learn Alpha stuff, and you’re the only one I’d trust to teach me, Dad.”
“I’d be honored,” I replied, before Zinnia broke in.
“But what about your mate? She’s at Western, or at least she was.”
Leroy and Bo exchanged a look that held an entire conversation. “We know. We’re gonna send her a letter for now.”
I blinked in surprise. “A letter?”
Zinnia let out a small growl. “You’re not going to her?”
“Mom, look at us.” Leroy waved at his dirt-stained legs and arms, and his scrubby beard. I ignored the sniffle from Zinnia at the word Mom. “If we showed up right now, before we’re ready—”
“Before I even got my pack sorted out,” Bo interrupted. “I ain’t even a proper Alpha yet.”
“And I’m still learnin’ how to be the best true mate I can be,” Leroy said with a shrug. “I know how to cook and grow vegetables now, thanks to you, Mom. But I still need to figure out laundry, and how to give a really good back rub. I heard girls can’t resist a male who knows how to do a shihtzu.”
“That ain’t it, Leroy. Shihtzu’s a little purse dog, remember? It’s shi-at-su that feels good.”
“See?” Leroy sighed heavily. “I ain’t ready. I don’t know my shits from my zoos.”
Bo nodded. “Yeah, and what happens if we go fetch our mate and take her back home, and half of them gals still only think of us as the little chickenshits we were back in the day? And they tell her what kinda stuff we used to get up to, and she decides we ain’t worth the risk? We need to go back and resuscitate our reputations. Or at least convince some of ‘em to tell the good stories.”
Leroy added, “Bo’s gonna have to fight a bunch of Alpha challenges too, I bet. You think those fellas are just gonna roll over and show throat? He’s half the age of some of them old farts, and now that females are startin’ to be Alpha—a few of ‘em anyways—who even knows? Bo might have to fight his way through the whole pack before they make their vows.”
Bo’s cheeks had turned an odd, pale shade as Leroy rattled on. Now he leaned over the table toward me. “Uh, Dad, do you think you’d be able to come back with me, maybe vouch for me?”
I closed my eyes, the missing part of my soul suddenly aching again. To face my old pack again, but without my wolf? I wasn’t sure I was that strong yet. “I’m not sure I can, Bo. I’m not Alpha anymore.”
Leroy grunted. “Our pack never loved you because you were the Alpha. We all loved you because you’re Sergeant.”
“Being Alpha ain’ what matters.” Bo shrugged. “It’s bein’ pack. And you’ll always be our pack. With or without fur.”
“Someday,” Zinnia answered for me, reaching out to squeeze my hand gently. “Someday, when Julian and I have… found our balance. Then we’ll come and support you both. I promise.” She closed her eyes just as a swallow flew over, swooping down over her head. “We have company coming. It’s Ida.”
The boys and I were equally shocked at her words; there was no scent on the air of wolf. Though I supposed I wouldn’t have the best sense of smell now. My nose wasn’t human-dull, but close.
“How did you know?”
She smiled. “A little bird told me?”
I wondered how true that was. Could she speak the language of nature now? I made a note to ask later. “I expected Brand, or one of the others.” My pack—Bo’s pack now—would have felt the Alpha power move from me to him. For all they knew, I’d died. They would’ve called Mountain for answers. “Maybe Grigor.”
“The shifter boogeyman,” Zinnia murmured. “I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard stories. Bloody ones. I suppose he could be coming and cloaking his magic. They say he’s incredibly powerful.”
Leroy made a strangled sound, which Bo echoed. “Ah, we was thinkin’ it’d be a good time to do some perimeter runs. Maybe a few miles downriver, just to make sure—”
Leroy finished for him, “—that we ain’t anywhere near Mr. Grigor. He told me he’d magic off my tail the next time I wagged it wrong.” He clutched at his human-shaped backside. “I don’t think my mate’d want a male without a tail, Sergeant Dad. May I be excused to run away?”
“Ask Bo. I’m not your Alpha,” I said gruffly, though I was trying not to laugh. Bo was halfway to the trees already.
“Bo?” Leroy shouted. “Bo, don’t leave me behind!”
“Catch up then!”
The two of them were out of earshot before Zinnia and I could stop laughing long enough to assure them their lives weren’t in danger. “It’s just Ida,” Zinnia told me with a chuckle.
Ida arrived an hour later, her arms filled with baskets full of food. When she saw Zinnia and me standing together, the frown she’d been wearing dropped away. She dropped the baskets under the birches. “Thank the moon,” she choked out.
“Thank the earth, too,” I replied, grabbing the food and carrying it to the table outside the cabin. The two women vanished inside, Ida peppering Zinnia with questions. I could almost make out their entire conversation, though my hearing was far less keen than it had been. Than my wolf’s had been.
Hearing Ida come out of the cabin, I met her troubled gaze as she approached the table. She laid a soft hand on my arm, taking in the altered markings there. “It worked.”
“It did.”
Her voice caught as she murmured, “If I’d known she was yours, if she’d told me who she’d been following, I could have helped you find each other.”
I smiled. “You did. Just in time.”
Her hug was equal parts softness and strength, but when she pulled back, her eyes were watering. “Your wolf. I’m so sorry for your…” The word loss hung in the air, but I shook my head, trying to find a way to explain how I felt.
There was grief, of course. But so much more.
While I fought for words, Zinnia emerged from the cabin and ducked under my arm. A slow, molasses-like current of energy slid into me from all the places our skin touched, strengthening me and chasing away the sadness.
I kissed the top of her head where a few flowers were still twining among the strands from that morning. Smiling at my old friend, I spoke the simple truth. “I have no regrets. I had a choice to sacrifice an old life for the chance to step into a new one with my mate. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
We ate and talked until fireflies began to dot the evening air around us, and the moon rose above the mountains beyond the pines. Bo and Leroy kept us all laughing, Ida had them professing their undying devotion when she pulled out a second cherry-almond pie, and Zinnia smiled more than she had since we met.
Of course, that may have had something to do with the homemade gin she’d brought out from the cabin.
Ida finished another glass of her own and winked at me, then scowled at my mate. “So, are you going to make an honest male of our Sergeant, then?”
Zinnia blinked, and the fireflies around her all copied her movement. “What do you mean?”
Ida made a disgruntled noise, leaning forward to pour some more gin. “You know very well.”
Zinnia’s voice shook as she began, “Ida, you know our wolves are…”
“Together with the moon. But you’re both still here with us. There’s a mating ceremony for every occasion, and if you want one, I know my boy Brand would love to officiate.” Zinnia and I stared at each other as Ida went on. “I’d love to introduce you to the rest of the pack when you’re ready, and that seems like a good way to do it. With a celebration, maybe on the full moon? I’m sure I can throw together a decent party by then.”
A party. A celebration. Not a mating, as we weren’t exactly shifters anymore. We couldn’t bond with bites like wolves.
“You mean, like a… human wedding?” I asked. “Would you like that, Zinnia Star? Would you marry me?”
Zinnia was biting her lip, the fireflies around her head flickering faster by the second. All around her feet, night-blooming flowers sprang up and started to bloom.
She didn’t need to speak to answer my question, but she did. “I will, Julian Rain.”
Chapter 23
Zinnia
TWO WEEKS LATER
For years, I’d thought I wanted quiet. I’d convinced myself I loved it.
It had felt safer to hold still and keep apart from the rest of the world, if I wanted to stay alive. But the morning of my wedding was noisy and raucous, and even if I had to draw on the steady power of the earth for peace in the middle of it all, I felt more alive than I ever had.
The ceremony Alpha Brand came up with wasn’t exactly a wedding, though I wore a beautiful golden gown Ida had somehow whipped together in time for the ceremony. All the waiting guests had taken on human form and formal clothing, and the Alpha’s Den was draped with flowers. There were no rings, and the vows were odd.
Alpha Brand had insisted on officiating, using a ritual his grandmother Verona had found in the pack library that she assured us was even older than the words shifters used in current rituals. “Of course, I did find this one in a fairy tale book, Legends of the Moonblessed,” she murmured as she helped me button the back of my dress. “Which seems appropriate, with the… all of that.”
She gestured to the small, golden butterflies that had landed in a crescent over my forehead, a living tiara. They’d come in a cloud, slipping through an open doorway and making all the pack’s pups howl with delight.
“The original story was about a pair who were adopted into a wolf pack and developed magic, and some of the traits of shifters as well. Unusual story.” She escorted me to the doorway of the Alpha’s Den, where Bo and Leroy waited outside, dressed in dark gray suits with matching silk bow ties, looking very human.
“Wow!” Bo whispered when the door opened and he saw me, holding out his arm for me to take. “You’re like a movie star.”
“Mom,” Leroy gasped, his eyes welling up. “You look so beautiful.” I took his outstretched hand in mine, and Bo’s arm, and smiled up at them both. A few butterflies moved away from me to hover over their white rosebud boutonnieres.
“I hope our mate’s half as pretty as you,” Bo said with a grin.
“Or handsome,” Leroy muttered.
Bo swallowed hard, his grin wobbling. “Right. Or handsome.”
