Darius, who I’d last seen in fur on a dark night—looking like a “drowned ostrich”—had slowed to a casual walk to meet Rebecca at the fence.
Though much too far away for me to hear what they said, he clearly offered to help. She showed him her empty palms: job done.
Darius responded with fast chatter, moving his hands, making grand gestures.
Rebecca tossed her hair, crossed her arms, and fixed him with a stare.
Totally unabashed, Darius went on.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
Andrew shook his head. “Take a guess, though. All the males he’ll fight off in her name and all the deer he’ll lay at her doorstep.”
“How about some subtlety?” I asked. “Just walk her back home and talk to her?”
“He’s been on that one since they were pups. Time for drastic action. Notice he doesn’t touch her, though?” Andrew chuckled. “He put his head over her back in fur and Rebecca almost tore his ear off. He’ll be scarred for life, I reckon.” Smirking. “I saw it. Jason had to break it up and get her off him. Ironic—Jason breaking up a fight.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Ironic? Didn’t we go through that? One of those things that’s hard to explain?”
“Not ‘ironic,’ smart ass. Putting his head over her back?”
“Oh.” Andrew looked again to the teen couple as they walked along the fence, Darius doing all the talking. “It’s situational. Depends on who and what and all that. It can be just thumbing your nose kind of thing, a bit of a challenge: I’m better than you, higher up. But it can also be a sexual overture—checking her out, seeing if she’ll hold her tail aside. Or, in this case, it can be taping a ‘bloody daft’ sign on your forehead. Everyone already knew that about the twat, though. No reason to rip his ear off.”
“It doesn’t seem to have bothered him.”
“It happened in fur.” Andrew said with a dramatic shrug, lifting his hands. He’d finished his dessert.
“Right. What happens in fur stays in fur. You all really have sex in that form?”
“Most do. Everyone has their own ideas about it. For many it’s kind of an experimental phase. You’re young and you can change and there are all these other members of the opposite sex around who have learned to change and aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves. We move on. Only an occasional thing. But a few like it—and I’d say the majority of wolves are skin virgins for a lot longer than fur virgins—it’s much simpler to mess around in fur and walk away from it in the light of day than to get a female in skin to go to bed with you.”
“Some wolves don’t like the messing around part. Even in fur.” I watched Rebecca up the road.
“No, and I’m one of them—in case you care. I hate that shit. Did it once, never again.”
I looked at him, surprised. “Why’d you do it?”
“Just one of those things. Everyone else takes a hit so you take a hit. Want to be one of the cool wolves, don’t we? Just the fact that Jason was into it should have been a cautionary tale. And of course strangers are. It was bloody painful—plus a lot worse for her than me. Like eating something that will make you sick, all for the few seconds of joy it’s in your mouth. Not bleeding worth it. ‘Just say no,’ all right?”
“I’m not in any danger of having to worry about that side of your lives, but thanks for the warning.”
“You have whipped cream on your nose, darling.”
“No, I don’t.” I rubbed my nose.
Andrew leaned over, rocking onto his knees, and licked my nose. “Got it.”
“There was nothing there.” I reached to push him back, hand on his chest. Instead, I only rested it there while he kissed me.
He moved against me, sliding over the blanket, shifting the candle screen, without breaking the kiss, and brought a hand up to cup my jaw.
Like his eating, he was slow while I felt the intensity of him, a tripwire ready to be sprung, just below the surface. I’d never known a kiss like it. For each motion, he pushed, then waited, meeting my action with another reaction, gradually upping the ante. Lips to pressure to tongue to teeth to more pressure. A dance of a kiss, a composition, a four-course meal.
I felt lost in it. He barely touched me with his hands, and nowhere below the neck. Yet I would have let him anywhere if he had in that moment. Without the knowledge that we were in sight of at least a few homes in the park, I’d have taken matters into my own hands as surely as I lost my breath to him.
But I didn’t. And Andrew didn’t.
He finally slid his hot tongue over my lips and kissed down my jaw, along my neck, until he found the hollow of my throat at the center of my collarbone. He held a kiss here for a count of five or more.
“You have a perfect right to test the hunting grounds, darling.” Voice a purr once more. “Run with whomever you wish. But one night with me and you’ll never want to go back. You’ll never be able to think of any other male the same way again, the poor sods.”
He met my eyes from close range. Mine blue. His amber and golden and flaming, bursting with the same heat I’d just felt from him. His were the most “wolfish” eyes in skin.
Before I could answer, not that I could think of a single thing to say, Andrew was up on his knees, packing away the basket with our dishes.
“You’ll let me know if I can fix you brunch, darling? You can always come over. Any time. Or I’ll bring it to you. Or … another picnic? We do have less spiders and more bedrooms at home, though…” He pursed his lips as he wrapped our glasses in a tea towel.
“Thank you for a stunning…”
He met my eyes again and I swallowed.
“…meal. That was the best picnic I’ve ever had. A banner food day, in fact.”
“A delight, I assure you. Pure pleasure.” He finished tidying up in a flash and offered me his hand.
I felt cut short—called out into public when I’d just been fixing my hair, or expected to swim when I didn’t have my suit. Thinking back, though, it seemed Andrew had a tendency to build something up, then abruptly walk away.
I slipped on my pink sandals and stood with him, expecting another kiss.
He shook out the blanket, folded it, draped it over his arm, grabbed the basket, offered me his free hand, and escorted me home to Atarah’s while pups ran past us in all directions, stopping to sniff around porches and flower pods. Little Helah and Noah shouted greetings to me, not Andrew, as they dashed past, making me smile. Still a few friends among the general ranks of the Sables.
At her door, Andrew bid me a pleasant evening and Moon bless, kissed my hand while I thanked him, then walked away.
Leaving me still off-balance—and thinking about his invitation regarding “one night” far more than I should have been.
Chapter 37
Atarah was indeed in and reading. She set down her book to greet me.
Why had I wanted to talk to her?
I so totally couldn’t remember, I’d actually said good night and that I would start for bed early before I turned around in the hall.
Atarah, sitting sideways on a sofa along an open window with her legs out, hand again on her book, had just cocked her head to listen.
“The last shift of the evening in from Brighton.” She smiled absently. “Isaac will be with them. He’ll be stopping by to check on you.”
Then I heard the engines also, still a long way off, coming up the road.
What a handy opening.
Evening sun sinking to the tops of trees blazed a fiery trail in through the window to illuminate the tapestry of a zodiac wheel on the wall behind us.
“Atarah?” I sank to one of the chairs in the circle, turned to face her. “I don’t mean to bother you. May I ask you something about Isaac? Doing so at his invitation.”
“Of course you may.” She smiled again, while I had trouble looking at her in the blazing halo of backlight.
“He said last year you told him something important would
, or might, happen for him this summer. Something lined up in his planets. We were in company and he didn’t tell me what. He said to ask you.”
“Did he?” Grinning then, ducking her head as if to some inner joke. “This month is a blue Moon. Did you know? We already had our first full Moon for August. There will be another on the thirtieth.”
I nodded.
“For wolves, and for astrologers, this is a special month. For us personally, it is a sacred time. A time to refocus our lives and examine the paths we walk, make sure we’re where we want to be in our families and faith, and correct our sails if we’re off-track.”
The bikes came roaring past the fence, then turned down the alley road beyond Atarah’s home that led to their parking space.
“Before this time started, and during the month of August,” she continued when the noise died, “Isaac had what I would consider a dynamic chart, beginning back to the middle of July. I’ve worked closely with him, far more than anyone else accompanying you aside from Zar—who is a student of mine. So I’m uncertain of details for the others in this specific time off the top of my head. But what I told Isaac that intrigued him was that, at the precipice of the blue Moon, the last days in July, his chart suggested to me that he may find his soul mate.”
I couldn’t think again.
Why did that keep happening to me these days?
After a too long silence, I said, “That can’t be me. I’m human, for one thing.” I spoke to my own hands in my lap. “I don’t belong here. I’m only trying to help before I have to be home. That’s it. I’m afraid … he thinks you were talking about me.”
“But I wasn’t talking about you.”
I looked up.
She still smiled, very gently, rather like his smile. “I was talking about him.”
Which made perfect sense. It was his chart. His soul mate to find at this time. Or not. My personal feelings about Isaac’s star chart were irrelevant.
They could, of course, both be true. She didn’t say Isaac would marry his soul mate or settle down and have pups and live happily ever after. She said he would meet his soul mate. No more. No less.
Again, I just sat there.
Now, though, tears filled my eyes as I watched my hands, fingers twisted together. The lump in my throat hurt like something trapped there, desperate to get out, to scream.
I fought to speak, my voice soft and cracked. “I can’t be with him. Not in the long run. That’s why I’m afraid the best thing I can do for him now is my job here and keep a little distance between us.”
“Isaac will respect that if it’s what you want.” Her voice was also soft, motherly, non-judging. So it made me feel ten times worse—not only how she said it, but what she said. Because she was right.
“May I?” Atarah said after a moment.
I nodded.
“What are you afraid of, Cassia? I cannot pretend to know you well. But I see your essence in your Sun and your Moon, your willingness to offer aid the night you met us, returning here, and the love you have for those you’ve worked alongside. And what I see in all that is heart. A metaphor, naturally, since love happens in the brain. The same place as logic. Is striking a perfect balance between the two what you seek? Is such harmony possible?”
Heart. The vision. The heart of light gifted to me in a scry by magical creatures, Earth spirits, asking for my help.
I looked up as she finished.
“Do not fear, or fight, your own heart.” Atarah still watched me. “I suspect it is your strongest energy and your greatest strength. Not the logic and reasoning of your Sun. To battle your love is to battle yourself.” She glanced again to the window. “I hear his steps. He’ll want to know that you’re all right. Do you wish to see him?”
“I…” I gulped and stood. “Of course I do. I need a minute…”
“I’ll tell him you’ll be right out.”
“Thank you.” I fled for the bathroom.
I had not told her, Diana, and Zar about the heart image I’d seen. Only about the kindred asking for help.
When she talked about love now, did she mean it at face value? My overall energy and guiding forces? Was she thinking of Isaac? Or more?
What did Atarah think of all this? And the rest of the pack? Was this part of the new trepidation? Unease and fear of me? Sleep over with Kage and Jason, go to London with Jed and Zar, picnic with Andrew, and, oh, yes, I might be Isaac’s soul mate. It was enough for anyone to look at me a little askance.
Or was some of it the power of suggestion on my own perceptions? Gabriel had warned me about the pack being less than welcoming, and now I was seeing sharp teeth behind the smiles?
Not Atarah. I knew she’d given me genuine advice. Even if I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I believed in her friendship. As with Diana and Rebecca.
Anyone else? Other than my own pack of six, plus a couple pups? Anyone else who wouldn’t, at least secretly, be glad to see the back of me?
Heart. Logic. Fear. I did not know what to do with any of them.
I rinsed my face and waited for my color to settle before I went out to meet him.
Isaac hadn’t come in. He stood at the window, talking with Atarah through the screen.
“You’ve had a very long work day, and Saturday,” I said, going to open the door.
Isaac smiled to see me, also blindingly lit by the sinking sun, radiant, he looked cast in gold. “Client meetings and other matters I’d had to previously postpone. It’s good to be through some of it. And better to see you, Cassia. How did it go today? Peter says you found Gabriel.”
I told him, and Atarah, not details of the meeting, but an outline of what had happened with Gabriel.
Then I walked with him so we could talk, going at a very slow pace, glad now there was no one out among the alleys. All the voices were gathered along the fence, out in the road, with games of the pups tracking down the last marbles. The only life aside from the two of us, however, were a couple of fleeting shapes trotting past in fur. They were changing watch shifts before sunset. Or simply going to play in the field—where I’d seen them chase each other and bounce around after mice and voles like foxes.
I told Isaac more about the day, how upsetting it had been to talk with Gabriel, how depressed he was.
He asked about progress with the mage. I’d check email the moment I got back.
I was telling him about the vision with the faie, including the heart, when we arrived at the corner of his home beside the Zen sand garden, also bathed in sunlight. I’d not meant to go so far, just see him off a bit.
I wrapped up my talk, regretting that I’d neglected to ask him a single thing about his own day, but I’d have to make it up another time. This was dangerous ground.
“Good night,” I said too abruptly when I noticed where we were. “Will you be around tomorrow? You need a day off.”
“Working at home, but … perhaps a half day.” He turned to face me since I had stopped, not going up to his door. “Have you had dinner?”
“Yes. I better—”
“Care to stay anyway?”
“I … do. But … I can’t. This is not… My being here is not about… And it’s impermanent. I’ll be gone soon, Isaac. The more time we spend together, the worse… I’m sorry.” I felt sick trying to get the words out, while deepening sadness in his eyes drove home my own misery like a knife in my gut.
And what about Kage? I’d decided Kage had been right all along. Not me. So why was I struggling to keep this up? Who was I scared for? What right did I have to let my own fears dictate our relationship?
He stepped back to kiss me. I bunched my hands into fists at my sides, not touching him. Not reaching out. Only a kiss. While I commanded him in my mind, Just pull me inside. Insist. Make a real effort. Kage on the train. That dream. Yes, the dream, Isaac. Force me.
Such an idea had never before been a fantasy of mine. It was the perfect answer. I couldn’t win this fight—too much of a coward. I wouldn’t
make up my mind because the scales kept tipping back and forth. I would never decide, never know. I didn’t have the strength to follow her advice on my own. Not with the knowledge that more and more involvement here could only lead to greater and greater pain when I had to say goodbye.
But take the choice out of my hands…
We kissed. He stepped back, bidding me Moon bless.
I all but ran to Atarah’s, turning my mind to checking email and finding faie.
The former, I did as soon as I got in. She had her own WiFi here, a blessed ease of connection finally.
In fact, new messages popped up so quickly when I opened email, I was momentarily confused, thinking they were old ones I’d overlooked. Then I saw it. A reply from Gavin with the subject line Translator for an Old Script?
Dear Cassia,
Thank you for explaining how you saw me in your scrying. I’ve never heard of such a thing, though I am no great scry myself so you will appreciate this does not mean much. I applaud your skills. Perhaps, as we seem destined to meet over this book of yours anyway, you could tell me a little about your work?
Yes, I do indeed read Vampiric Script. Ristan is not one of the tongues I consider myself fluent in, but I can make a pass at it and hopefully be able to help. I have studied languages, with a special interest in those dying few in the magical communities, for over forty years and now speak that many myself.
I would consider it a rare privilege to study this tome. As you can well imagine, Ristan is a tricky thing even to find in printed form.
I hope very much we can meet soon to our mutual benefit. May I invite you, and your friends with whom you are working, to dinner at the manor any upcoming night that suits you aside from Wednesday?
Let me know at your earliest convenience and I shall make the arrangements. Where are you located?
The family home with my library is in the countryside at the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales. A grand setting, but inconvenient for some. I hope this is not too great a bother but I think it best if you could bring the book here as all my research materials and limited existing Vampiric Script documents being here may assist us.
Moonlight Heart: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 4) Page 24