by Kari Gregg
Jamie gulped. “Doesn’t it scare you?”
“Two empty years. Nothing was as terrifying to me as wondering if you’d ever be whole again. Come here. Lie down with me, tie with me. After, you’ll be soft and warm, your heart as naked as we are, and you’ll tell me little things that don’t matter but mean so much.”
Kenneth was right.
After, while Kenneth held him, his knot tightly lodged in Jamie’s body, Kenneth’s skin flushed and sweaty but like warm silk against him, then Jamie spoke. Not about Ian or the pack, their difficulties or his fears. “I wish...”
“What?”
“My eyes were green.”
Kenneth turned Jamie’s head with a finger at his jaw and smiled at him.
“You like green,” Jamie said.
“Yours are pretty enough.” He squeezed Jamie’s hands in his. “What of mine?”
Jamie chuckled. “Fishing for compliments?”
“I’m as vulnerable to vanity as any man.” He bent down and brushed a sly kiss over Jamie’s lips, sensitive still from Kenneth’s attention while they’d made love.
Jamie laughed into Kenneth’s grinning mouth. “You know you’re sexy and don’t need me puffing up your head about it.” Jamie lifted up and seizing the initiative, kissed him. “Tell me about humans.”
Kenneth arched an eyebrow. “Sex really does crack you open, doesn’t it? You physically can’t shut up. I earnestly believe that.”
Jamie snickered. “I’m serious. What are they like?”
Kenneth’s mouth curved to an indulgent bow. “Zero attention span, too. Ian must have been the bravest of men.” Jamie elbowed him and Kenneth grunted. “All right, all right. Don’t maim me. What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Jamie answered, quiet happiness bubbling up inside him. “You must have traveled far to reach Burnt Fork.”
“Oh, I must have?”
“Your accent.”
“I don’t have an accent. You and your people do.”
“Stop,” Jamie said, lifting his hand to stroke Kenneth’s cheek. “Don’t tease me.”
Kenneth nipped playfully at his fingers. “Fine. Yes, I traveled from the mountains in the Northwest.”
“What was it like? Your home.”
“Green.” Kenneth stared, gaze distant and vague. “Not like here. Rain falls more and feeds the trees, plants and mosses. The green is so vivid it’s almost violent. I still miss it and suspect I always will.” Kenneth smiled at Jamie. “I thought you wanted to hear about the humans.”
“I do,” Jamie protested, but Kenneth rarely talked about his life before Burnt Fork. He couldn’t resist. “Do you have brothers and sisters? Parents? Why did you leave them?”
“I left,” Kenneth said and angled his hips back and his softening dick finally slid from Jamie’s body, “for the same reason you mated with Ian before either one of you were mature enough to understand what that meant.”
Jamie’s stomach knotted and as though sensing his distress, Kenneth snaked an arm around Jamie’s side to rub his belly. “I was young and foolish when I left my home pack, Jamie. My parents tried to talk me out of it. Several aunts and uncles too and yes, a brother and three sisters. Our seer had seen that my mate was in a distant land, though. I had to go. I had to find you.”
Jamie glanced away, shamed that Kenneth had given up so much. And for what? “A wreck of a mate.”
“Hey, don’t do that.” Kenneth rolled onto his back. He pulled at Jamie, drawing him against Kenneth’s chest. His shoulder became Jamie’s pillow. “Don’t get quiet and pull inside yourself again, not yet. I haven’t told you about the humans.”
Jamie sighed, gamely trying. “You would’ve crossed through their territories a lot.”
“Our seer only said you were special. He didn’t know how—”
“He?” Jamie’s mouth pinched. “Oh, that’s right. You told me your seer was a man before. It’s just...a shock.”
Kenneth’s hand stroking Jamie’s back paused, then resumed. “On this side of the country, that gift is only encouraged in females, but where I was raised, both men and women make excellent seers.”
Jamie frowned. “Still feels strange. Odd.”
“Only because it’s something you’ve never experienced. The mountains here are isolating, much more than mine at home. Male seers are common.” Kenneth grunted. “Anyway, our seer knew that you would be special. At one point, I even believed my mate might be human.”
“Me? Human?” Shocked, Jamie rose up on his elbow and gaped at Kenneth. “Shifters don’t mate with humans.”
Kenneth chuckled at Jamie’s scandalized astonishment, stroked his bicep. “Not often. But it happens.”
“True mates?” Jamie asked to confirm. “Destined mates?”
“As bonded as we will become, yes, that’s possible with a human. They aren’t as in touch with their instincts as we are, but I assure you, humans possess them too. They even have their own seers.”
“They do not.” Jamie slapped him and settled back to his chest. “Now I know you’re teasing me.”
Kenneth’s chest rumbled with his low laughter. “Most humans believe seers are charlatans, I admit, but not all. I was fortunate to meet a genuine human seer once. She sent me to these mountains and to you.”
Jamie tried to absorb all Kenneth had revealed, the wonders of male seers, of human ones and humans who could be mated. His head spun dizzily with too much to take in. He had to know more, though. Jamie wasn’t the only one sex cracked open. He tipped his head up to smile at Kenneth. “Tell me more?”
Kenneth hugged him closer. “You’ll already know humans live in cities and work in factories to manufacture the goods we trade for.”
“No trees,” Jamie murmured.
“There are some. Humans maintain areas called parks inside their cities, where there’s grass and flowers.” He smiled at Jamie. “Sometimes, the parks include trees, but usually, nature is bisected with paths, play areas, fountains and bridges.”
Jamie scowled. “But what are they like? Humans.”
“Not as greedy and vicious as some like to claim.”
“Da said—”
“Oh, a lot of them are and even the less avarice among them tend to look unfavorably on shifters. That’s why their laws restrict us when we aren’t on the lands marked for our use. In their territories, we are only travelers. Although there are exceptions, they generally don’t trust or understand us and they don’t want to. They’ll trade with us. Humans accept that they are not the wisest stewards of natural resources and have scant interest in that, anyway. Why not foist those unpleasant tasks on shifters herded into the scant unspoiled areas left? We aren’t welcome among humans or by them, though. The few who have mated with us have universally fled their cities to join us, their adaptation at varying degrees of success.”
Glum, Jamie picked at the springy hair on Kenneth’s chest. As though sensing his dark thoughts, Kenneth patted his shoulder, comforting him. “They aren’t monsters, though. Just different.”
“When Ian ripened...,” Jamie started. Stopped. Started again. “And I responded to that...” Jamie stared with fake fascination at the finger he traced over Kenneth’s pec. “Some in the pack claimed it was proof I had human blood in my line. Somewhere. That I must. Only humans had more than one mate. They tried to say my bond with Ian couldn’t be strong, couldn’t possibly be as vigorous as a true mating, because humans readily leave their mates.”
“Did you love for Ian ever feel pallid or weak?”
“No!”
Kenneth grunted. “I thought not.” He cupper Jamie’s jaw in his palm. “Mating with me, after losing Ian, doesn’t make you any less of a shifter no matter your blood lines.”
“Am I like them, though? Humans. If anyone could see it, you would. You must have mixed with them a lot.”
“Jamie, stop it.”
“If I’m like they are, that’s all right. You’ll love me, anyway. Ian did. I ha
ve to know why, though, what’s wrong with me, where did it come fr—”
“I said stop. There is nothing wrong with you. The pack, how they reacted to your first mating, all of it made you feel like you were less, but that isn’t true. What you are is a miracle. Do you know how many shifters we lose every year, season after season, because one of a mated pair dies? How many whelps are orphaned by the loss of both parents? The few that survive their mate’s death are ghosts of their former selves. If we could find the secret the humans have locked inside them, shifter populations wouldn’t always be at risk. Our species wouldn’t be endangered. We’d thrive. Instead of humans shunting us to whatever lands they don’t want and packs learning to make do with whatever resources can be scraped from those lands, there might be enough of us to stand up to them. Or at least stand side by side with humans. You aren’t less than I am, Jamie, because you’ve been blessed with more than a single mate. You are more. Better. Our only hope that shifters might one day scrabble to a greater position than unwelcome visitors in our own country. I pray for others like you every day. Goddess willing, the wonder that you are is imprinted in your blood and the sister who shares your DNA will multiply your miracle into generations.”
Chapter Fifteen
REGARDLESS OF HIS grief and encroaching panic, despite the strengthening of his bond with Kenneth, Jamie was pack trainer above and beyond everything else. He didn’t shirk that duty by failing to tutor the kids on the death rites of alphas before the Gathering, but he finished reviewing their traditions with the teens and tweens short hours before the leadership of Bitter Creek, Shady Vale, Black River, and New Townson Way packs began streaming into Burnt Fork. Jamie had worked industriously until this full moon after Da’s passing, into the darkest hours of night by lamplight, to prepare for the influx of visitors, but he’d still needed to task Jason, who had seemed most adept at bone-carving, with producing the amulets that would be presented as tokens to the attending alphas of nearby packs. Jamie concentrated on the foundation piece.
With cool assessing eyes, he stared at the ceremonial knife he’d finally completed, just in time. The bone in which he’d fashioned the grip was the remains of a black bear. Not one he’d scavenged either. Bone stolen from carcasses after driving off coyotes sufficed for trade goods shipped into the city. Humans didn’t care about the source of the materials nor grasp the vital importance of each piece in which such a tool was composed for ritual purposes. Shifters knew, though. Da had hunted the bear, he along with the pack’s elders, four summers ago. Before his cancer. Before Ian had died.
Much to his sister’s continuing lament, Jamie wasn’t particularly religious. If the Goddess existed, she was a cruel feckless bitch in Jamie’s experience and he wanted nothing to do with Her. He was spiritual in his own fashion, though. The surrounding untamed woodlands whispered to him. The rocks cried out. Even the bubbling of the creek next to his old den had spoken to him and would speak to anyone with an ear to listen. Jamie believed an echo of what was could embed in a tool, a block of wood, a space. That impression of yesterday, properly focused, could influence the circumstances of today and tomorrow. Devon shared Jamie’s wistful confidence in the spirit or he would have never moved his young family to the den Jamie had shared with Devon’s brother. For Jamie, the den had emptied of Ian’s presence to instead greet him in the rocky pass in which they’d loved each other, but for Ian’s brother, Ian still lingered in their cabin in the meadow. Living in Ian’s old den and using his things, through Devon, Ian’s memory lived on, his hope and optimism, his boundless energy. His compassion.
The spirit of the bear lingered in the bone Jamie had whittled and carved too. Ferocious. Brave. Noble. Jamie had felt that and more as he’d feverishly worked on the knife grip, sensed the innate strength of the bear that had fought to the last. He wanted to focus that spirit in the knife, tirelessly carving a likeness of the predator into the bone, as well as its large swiping paw tipped with sharp claws. He’d soaked the bone in a tannic solution of crushed acorns, letting it steep until the bone had darkened, then let the piece set in lemon juice mixed with pulverized steel wool overnight. Jamie traced the gleaming surface with one finger, satisfaction filling him at the primitive beauty he’d created.
He’d affixed the blade to the grip with strips of sinew from another kill, a cat to lend cunning alongside the bear’s strength. In deference to Kenneth’s claim to a small share of a seer’s gifts, Jamie had attached hawk feathers for intuition. The beads were an assortment, many the fruits from Da hunting Burnt Fork territory, but the decorative touches included beads from Grandpop’s kills before Jamie had even been born and a few from Kenneth. The variety represented continuity, the cycle of leadership united under the last three alphas.
Jamie slid the razor-sharp blade into the sheath, his fingertips caressing the grooves of the intricate designs he’d etched and stamped into the leather. He’d imbibed the knife’s holder with the moon in all its phases, of course, and wolf paw prints threaded a trail among the stages of the lunar cycle that were important to shifters. Not the path of a single wolf. Jamie had designed the pattern to show at least two wolves walking side by side, but only a strict literalist would insist only the mated pair had been represented. The pack was not a leader. The pack was not the alpha mates either. The pack was everyone—alpha, mates, families, and children.
Sitting back on his heels in the lush grasses by the creek, Jamie smiled. His obsessive work had truly yielded a ritual knife worthy of an alpha and especially appropriate for his mate.
“They’re waiting,” Jason said, returning from the den Jamie shared with the next pack alpha.
“The others presented their tributes?”
The boy nodded. “Bitter Creek and New Towson gave books, Black River fresh trout, and Shady Vale presented baskets filled with spun wool as well as a blanket with the image of the river that runs through our territories knit into it.”
When a new alpha ascended to leadership, the surrounding packs the alpha would renew treaties with presented gifts, the caliber of each offering a diplomatic cue to how interaction between the packs could be anticipated to proceed from that point. Unsurprisingly, Bitter Creek’s present was generous. Nearer to the city, that pack could procure precious books more readily and cheaply, but New Towson Way also offering books signaled that pack’s ambition to forge a tighter alliance with Kenneth. Black River’s trout—barely acceptable given the perishable nature of the gift—indicated a frosting of relations with Burnt Fork, though. Also not a shocker. Black River’s alpha had made no secret of his desire that pack leadership remain in Da’s bloodline and that Kenneth had mated Da’s son wasn’t enough, not for Black River. Resolving to concentrate on the sticky dilemma of reassuring the other pack later, Jamie squared his shoulders. “And our people?”
“When I left to fetch you to the ceremony, Lisa had started by presenting Kenneth with a set of plates.” Jason came to a halt in front of Kenneth and bent to study the knife. “Ready?”
Jamie arched an eyebrow. Was he? He’d moved into Kenneth’s den and sex as well as exchanged bites had sealed their bond. Mating had been the hard part of what had been prophesied. Kenneth rising to become alpha shouldn’t have plucked at his nerves, but the events of today strung his anxiety tighter and tighter. He nodded anyway. “As I’ll ever be,” he said, voice low and pensive.
Snatching up the knife, Jamie followed Jason on the path to his new den, the rumble of the crowd stuffed into the sparse clearing of Kenneth’s front yard reaching his ears before the trees thinned. When they emerged from the forest, Jamie smiled in greeting to the alpha pairs as well as the seers and trainers from the area’s other packs, his grin less warm on the group from Black River. Torch in hand, Kenneth stood at the firepit, kindling waiting to be lit around a neat, waist-high piles of fresh oak. In older times, the bonfire would’ve been the funeral pyre of the dead alpha, but passing generations since had eschewed that rite to give other packs until the nex
t full moon following an alpha’s passing to gather to memorialize the dead leader and honor the next alpha. Jamie and Lisa had respected more contemporary mores by selecting mementos of their mother and father to lay at the heart of the fire before their visitors arrived. Da’s walking stick, the last sketch Momma had drawn of a wren in flight, a wooden bowl Jamie had carved as a boy that his parents had cherished, a bunch of daisies Lisa had picked from Momma’s grave. Others in the pack had added items too, before elders had organized heavy sections of wood atop the lot, chanting prayers for the dead and beseeching the blessing of the Goddess for the leader who would follow. Strictly speaking, as the son of the alpha and the pack’s trainer, Jamie should have sung alongside them, he and Lisa both, but they’d been given a dispensation freeing them of that obligation to rush preparations for the ceremony.
The offerings of pack families to their new alpha piled in the dirt in front of Kenneth, these gifts less ostentatious than those brought by the other packs, but more heartfelt despite that lack. Mason jars filled with honeycomb, bunches of wild garlic and chickweed, a bowl of shelled walnuts, a chocolate cake decorated lavishly with marigolds native to Burnt Fork. These gifts were traditionally what accompanied the prey run down during the collective hunt preceding every ascension feast. Only Lisa and Jamie, as children of the last alpha, were permitted to give more lavishly. Regardless of Jamie’s nerves, he quirked his eyebrow at the plates at Kenneth’s feet that Jason had mentioned—a beautiful dinnerware set composed of dishes, mugs, saucers, and bowls that matched the large serving bowl Lisa had presented to them as their mating gift. She’d proven her respect for the new alpha with the work of her hands, an offering that would’ve demanded several lunar cycles to finish. She’d worked as feverishly before and after Da’s death as Jamie had.