Tears stream from my eyes, trickling from the corners to run down my temples and wet my hair. The sensation is annoying, something I hate, but right now, it’s not enough to override the terror I feel or the changes that are happening inside me.
My skin feels swollen and stretched tight. I’m so hot that I blink as steam rises from my rapidly drying clothes. I feel my breasts swell too, my nipples going tight and achingly hard, and I pant when the feeling goes lower, settling in my belly where it meets my mound.
There, I feel so hot and needy that I actually feel my pulse throb through my clit, the hammering beat as my heart rate rises, scraping the tender bud against the fabric of my panties and jeans.
“Mika? Mika! Oh God, Dad! Dad, something’s wrong. I can hear her, Dad. Dad! Mika, where are you? Miiiika?”
I want to answer. I need to answer, as my body goes tight and curls up, throwing me into a ball as I writhe weakly, my eyes unblinking because right now I am terrified to blink in case they never open again.
Licking my lips to wet the parched curves, I croak out a reedy whisper, my face contorting with silent sobs that I can’t get out because I can’t breathe.
Help me!
The words don’t pass my lips though. Nothing does, as my vision goes dim at the corners, signaling my near loss of consciousness.
Julia! Help me.
“Mika! Oh God honey, please, please talk to me. Daddy!”
The wail reaches me, but in this strange way, as if it’s travelling through a tunnel from a long distance away.
Have to breathe, Meek. Breathe, bitch!
Can’t. So tired, I whisper, my body shivering now in what I recognize as shock.
The darkness is here, not creeping anymore, but upon me in a way that makes me wail in terror because somehow, I just know that it’s over. Whatever the doctors missed, whatever is wrong with me, it’s the end, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
The pain is fierce, crippling, even as my eyes close—no, they aren’t closed, I just can’t see anymore—I realize. Images bombard me, and my head breaks wide open in a burst of white-hot agony. It’s so strong I gag and feel vomit surge up my throat and out of my mouth.
There is screaming. I still hear screaming and what sounds like an animal growling, but it’s faint now, almost inaudible as my chest goes still and stops altogether.
Air…please…God. Please not like this. I don’t wanna die. So much to do still. Love. Babies.
My womb contracts strongly, making me choke and vomit again, the lancing burn inside me like spikes of molten metal burning through my inside. And still the arousal and need burn, blazing so high. I groan silently.
“Mika…lenia…breathe!”
The low, fierce growl is faint and almost nothing, but I hear pieces of it, little pieces that make a calm cool wash over me. The pain stops instantly. Not all of it since my sex is a furnace still, but as far away as I am from my body now, I feel something shift.
I’m floating though, not really here anymore, so I guess I can’t really feel my body?
“Mika!”
The voice comes again, this time more frantic, desperate even, and in some distant place in my mind, I know that I recognize that voice from somewhere.
I know it. I just can’t…
“Mika. Tuve Mai lenia! Amoradina luna.”
I know. I know, Bear, I think, startled when I say the name, almost as if something inside me is speaking now, speaking for me because I am fading. The voice. Not mine, I think vaguely, embracing the coldness settling inside what I can only guess is my spirit.
Dead. I must be de—
No! Amorada luna! Feel the call, the voice screams, making my chest gasp in a tight spasm, as it expands and air rushes into my lungs. I am not conscious, I know this, but I feel my lungs fill, pumping oxygen hard and fast, my body taking up the call of…something.
I’m alive, Bear.
That’s the last thought I hear before I lose consciousness, leaving the pain and fear behind me.
# # #
Bear
I drive like I have never driven before, breaking every speed limit in Montana as fear and guilt hit me hard, tearing a hole through my chest and making me break out in a cold sweat.
Oh Jesus, what have I done?
Twisting hard on the wheel, I feel the back tires lift, as I take a left off the main highway and onto the little dirt road, Jules’s sobbing and Mom’s constant prayers filling the cabin of my truck.
“It’s going to be okay, son,” Dad says heavily, the pale cast of his complexion belying the comfort he tries to offer.
I am terrified right now and so filled with shame and guilt that breathing is difficult. But no matter how scared I am or how badly I want to think the worst, I can’t let myself.
A tearing sensation in my chest has me gasping and praying silently, as I race towards the cabin where Bess Monahan assured me Mika is staying.
Oh God, the way her breath rattled over the phone…please help me, I beg, blinking away sweat as it drips from my hairline into my eyes. I can hardly see through the rain pelting the windshield, only my enhanced wolf vision making it possible to stay on the little road as the tires slip and slide in the mud, threatening to send the truck off the road and into the trees surrounding us.
“She is fine. You made the call in time,” Dad says again, as if he’s trying to convince himself, too.
“I killed her,” I say hoarsely, choking on the anguish that rocks me at the thought of that poor, innocent woman dying because of me.
If only I hadn’t touched her. I should have kept my Goddamn hands to myself and left her alone, but no, not me, I just had to lose my temper.
I couldn’t help myself, not when she giggled and the sound tore through me like a cool summer breeze, grating on my already-frayed nerves. I had to go and touch her, hear why she was laughing, I think, hating myself so much my skin crawls.
“You didn’t! She’s alive, Bear. She has to be,” Jules whispers hoarsely, the catch in her voice giving way to muffled sobs that break my heart.
The rain is coming down here, much worse than on the highway, and I see Dad frown from the corner of my eye, his mouth tightening as he peers up through the windshield and eyes the storm.
“Something is wrong with this weather. Did you notice how fast it intensified when we left the road?”
I nod, clenching my teeth, as I push my foot down on the gas, the truck hopping as we bump and slide up the road. I’m snarling by the time I see the little cabin through the sheet of rain. I almost howl with relief when I see the lightning zig zag across the sky, illuminating the front window.
The truck is still rocking when I throw myself out and sprint forward, the rain pelting me before I make it to the porch and leap up. I shoulder my way through the door without bothering to wrestle with the doorknob.
The little cabin is in complete darkness, the only light the lightning splitting across the sky, but I can see just fine and what meets my eyes has my heart stopping before it drums a hard thump into my ribcage.
Mika Blithe is lying crumpled on the floor in front of the hearth, her little body curled into a ball as if wracked with pain, and yet she is so still it’s frightening.
“Oh God.”
The cabin is lit with bright light when Mom and Jules run in, hitting the switch while Dad slams the door shut as best he can with the damage I did.
“Oh, oh Bear, is she…?”
I swallow, walking forward on feet filled with lead, my lungs going still, as I hold my breath and kneel, reaching out a shaking hand to touch the stark white face of the woman who is my Fated.
She’s burning to the touch, her skin so hot it’s a dry burn against my palm. Her mouth is slack above a pool of vomit. I hardly notice it when I run my hand from her cheek to her neck, my fingers trembling violently as I feel for a pulse.
It’s weak, but there. I let out a shout of relief before sweeping her up and cradling her in my arms. Mika
shudders, lightly, as if her body is too weak to do much more, but it’s something, and God help me I am almost weak with relief as I get to my feet and turn to my father.
“She’s alive.”
“Just barely! Come on, son. We need to get her home to Althea. She’ll know what to do. Mika isn’t in the grips of heat anymore; she’s in the Hinterland,” he says gravely. His eyes, grey-silver like mine are somber and filled with sympathy when he looks down at Mika.
The Hinterland, I think, stumbling on weak legs through the cabin and out into the driving rain. That is our version of the afterlife, a realm where all shifters believe we find peace after death.
While it’s not exactly heaven, something we do believe in since we believe in God, it is what we believe to be our place. I don’t know why we believe in it and rule out the thought of God mixing us in with the humans, but whatever, I believe right now I know what Dad is saying. Mika is on the verge of death.
Because of me. Me. I did this to a woman who did nothing more than serve me a cup of coffee and get turned on by my scent, something that would not have happened if I’d had the power to control my reaction when I saw her.
I couldn’t help it though, I think, as I run through the rain behind my family and hand Mika into the back where Mom and Jules have a blanket and soft comfort waiting for her.
The moment I looked up and saw her bouncing our way, a smile on her face it was…I cannot describe what I felt but to say that it pissed me off because I didn’t, don’t, want to feel anything for any other female but Hannah.
Hannah is my match, my equal, the female who arouses me but keeps herself out of my business and never makes emotional demands. I love her. She is—
But whatever I feel now, or felt then, it still does not excuse the anger I felt and directed towards Mika, or the fact that I came back to that shop hours later and scrubbed her in an attempt to make her forget me and erase her from my life.
I should have thought about the risks and considered what could happen if I did it with her strong reaction to my scent playing through her fragile human body.
I didn’t though. I went home and reconciled with Hannah, who was waiting on my front porch. I felt so guilty about the erection I had for Mika that I blamed the woman. For my reactions.
I took it out on her, an innocent, because I rationalized it and told myself, Yeah, she’d been flirting despite my sour mood and she was nothing. Meant nothing.
God help me.
“Hurry, Bear, please! She’s not doing well!” Mom yells, as I try to navigate the road slowly so as not to toss Mika around too much.
I don’t want her more uncomfortable than she already is, but I have no choice but to floor it when I hear a soft gasp, a barely perceptible breath of sound filled with pain and what I can only think is the last breaths of this woman.
Please. Please let her be okay, I beg, grinding my teeth when the scent of her sex overcomes the smell of vomit that still lingers around her. It’s a sweet, musky scent that has my cock going hard and painfully stiff in my pants, just as it did at the coffee shop, and I snarl silently while willing my body to ignore it.
God, it smells good. Too good. My wolf stirs, my control of him precarious. I’ve been wrestling him into submission since Jules screamed and started crying, shrieking that Mika was dying and we had to do something.
He heard the name, remembered the scent of Mika and who she is to us, and started trying to take over. If not for Dad and the sharp hit he gave me, I’d have shifted and lost control entirely.
“You smell her, son?” Dad asks, keeping his voice lowered so that mom and Jules can’t hear.
I grunt, keeping my focus on the road in an attempt to outrun the storm and get us home in one piece, but the storm follows, making Dad glance out and frown again.
“This is no natural storm.”
“No,” I agree, looking out at the dark clouds with a frown.
This is no natural storm, and not just because of its violence, but because it seems to be moving with us, almost as if it’s coming from Mika herself. That could be complicated, but right now I don’t give it much serious thought because as screwed up as the storm is all I really have time for now is Mika.
Hitting the gas harder, I drive faster and focus everything inside me on avoiding an accident while praying that she’ll be okay.
I haven’t ever used the call before, but the moment I walked into my parents’ house and heard Jules screaming, it was an instinctive howl within me that I couldn’t control. I ripped the phone out of Jules’s hand and the words just tumbled out of me.
Thank God. Because the animal within me knows that if I hadn’t said those words, the woman in the backseat, barely breathing, would be long gone.
I can smell her heat, her fever, and worse…that sickly sweet stench of death.
Please God.
It’s all I have, as I make what should be a forty-minute drive home in just over ten and hope that Althea can heal her.
Chapter Five
Meek
I smell herbs, or at least that’s what I think that smell is, as I come back to consciousness slowly. I can’t open my eyes, and my body feels like ten pounds of shit encased in bone-crushing concrete, but I can hear some of what’s happening around me.
It’s odd and disorientating, but the small amount of whispered words reaches me, and as I battle to understand some strange language with smatterings of English mixed in, I become aware of the fact that I am at least alive.
I think.
I mean, I hurt like mama June never lost weight and tried to use me as a trampoline. I will discuss my disappointment about her weight loss and surgery in depth at some time, I am sure, but for now I’ll focus on the present.
And in this present—which is not so much a gift like present—I hurt like a mother fucking bastard. My throat is drier than an old ladies’ quim, my skin is boiling and so tight I’m afraid to even breathe in case I burst out of it like a balloon, and while that damn arousal is waning, I now feel as if a sadist took a cheese grater to my insides, via my vaginal opening, and went to town.
I mean, hurt people! It’s pain.
And even worse, though God knows nothing should be worse than that, I can smell everything! Everything. To a degree that is not natural, and boy do I stink.
Holy Mary, mother of all that is good in this world, don’t let me die smelling like puke and dried pussy, I beg, quickly apologizing for that word when it hits me… no one’s answering if I use bad language. See why I don’t go to church, I’d probably burst into flames if I walked in—
Quit it! What is this, Days of Delirium? Stop messing around and think. Are we dead? I don’t wanna be dead. No way are we going to heaven without at least twenty years of charitable work.
I smirk at my inner voice, kinda enjoying the fact that we’re both crazy together. It serves her right for always insulting me.
We are not dead. Calm the heck down, I soothe, putting everything I have into assessing myself and the situation. I can still hear words, though only some of it seems to be English, and with the smell of the herbs dulling some of my funk, I can concentrate enough to feel soft hands on me, coasting over my skin in a soothing caress.
The more I am touched by this…woman. Yeah, definitely a woman, I think, when I feel her lean over me and smell flowers, the more the arousal dissipates, leaving behind more pain but at least taking away the feeling that if I don’t have sex now, right now, I might die.
Talk about a screwed-up thought, I think, rolling my eyes at my inner musings, as I stay trapped in my body and try to piece everything together.
Okay, so I am obviously not at the cabin anymore.
Some strange foreigner is probably doing voodoo on me and I can’t move.
That’s scary, terrifying really, but for now I am just glad I didn’t go to that unknown realm where chances are I’d have been rubbing elbows, on fire, with the devil himself.
Not great, but better than wh
at I was thinking just before I passed out.
What I also know, now, belatedly is that I met a guy named Bear—oh, name is hot—and that for some reason, he’s mine. I can’t explain why or how I know; just that something inside me knows that he’s mine, and that without him, my body will die.
Awesome.
Just what I always wanted, I think sarcastically. Crazy is so winning this fight.
“She is weak, but I think with blood she will recover and wake.”
I hear the woman and wish my body could shudder at the thought of blood.
Ew, and gross.
I hate blood, and I would never let anyone give me a transfusion because ew, that is just gross.
I hear a growl and a man’s voice mutters a curse, and everything inside me stops and perks up at once, my soul lighting up when a musky, woodsy smell invades my senses.
“You know I cannot give her blood, Althea. That would start the mating, and I couldn’t walk away from her.”
His words have me stilling, ceasing my frantic inner struggle to wake up and somehow get my skin against his, and while the rational part of me agrees that no blood should ever be exchanged, something deeper, wilder cries out in pain and shrinks back as if physically injured.
That familiar despair creeps up, and I can do nothing to stop the feeling as my eyes burn and warm trails leak from my eyes.
“Look! She’s crying. Oh Bear, I think you hurt her!” another woman cries before I smell vanilla and feel a soft hand glide over my cheeks.
The touch is maternal, loving and so tender. I try to lean into it to get closer, the part of me that hurts needing the comfort she offers. I can’t move though, and no amount of trying twitches so much as a toe.
Dammit, that chick from Kill Bill made it looks so easy.
“She’s unconscious, Mom. She can’t be hurting,” Bear growls, obviously not at all happy about being scolded by his mother.
I know…him. I know that I know him, but for some reason no matter how hard I try to think, nothing comes. At least the headache is gone and I’m not writhing in pain, wishing for decapitation, but it’s frustrating, knowing that I should recognize him and not being able to.
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