by Lisa Ladew
Trevor backed up, his mind spinning. “No, Wade, no, I deserved it. You were right to do it.” He hated Wade offering him supplication. It wasn’t right. Wade was a great and strong male who had taken Trevor in when he got here, been the one wolfen who believed fully in Trevor. Even if that belief was wrong or misplaced, Trevor still held Wade in the same esteem he held his own father.
Wade stepped after Trevor and grabbed him by the back of the throat, pulling him in for a hug. “You’re too hard on yourself,” he whispered. “If I find out Grey was behind any of that, the wolf will pay. I promise you.”
Trevor hugged Wade back, hard. After a few moments, Wade let him go. Trevor turned to the only thing in the room that could take his mind away from all of the stuff he didn’t want to think about. Work.
He snatched up the remote for the DVD and turned it back on. “You want to watch this with me? I’m afraid I might know what Khain wanted today.”
Wade pulled up a chair and the two males sat down. Trevor pressed the button. His father reappeared and began speaking, his eyes still closed. The words came out slowly, but clearly, as if he were being fed them by an unseen source.
In twenty-five years, half-angel, half-human mates will be discovered living among you.
This is how you will rebuild .
Warriors, all, with names like flora.
Save them from themselves, for they will not know their foreordination.
They will not be bound by shiften law, but their destinies entwine so strongly with their fated mates, that any not mated by their 30th year will be moonstruck. Those who are lost may be dangerous.
A pledged female will have free will that shiften know not. Never forget this or it will cause grave trouble.
Her body may respond to any, until she is mated in a ceremony of her choosing, then she will acknowledge only one male, as he becomes her one true mate, and she, his one true mate. He shall be sworn to her in her life’s purpose, to rebuild the shiften race, so that they may fight the evil Matchitehew and protect the humans from him, until the day he draws his last breath.
Trevor stopped the DVD and faced Wade. “The word pledged bothers me. Today, Khain said something about the promised. I knew we never referred to the one true mates as the promised, but pledged is almost the same thing.” Trevor leaned close to Wade, his expression scared and deadly at the same time. “You don’t think Khain is trying to kill our one true mates now, do you?”
Wade took a deep breath and stared at the image of Trevor’s father on the screen. “Maybe he’s trying to do something worse.”
“What could be worse than killing them?”
“Mating with them.”
Trevor pulled back and hissed between his teeth, holding his animal back with considerable force of will. “That is worse.” He stood, pacing again. “Do you think that’s possible?”
Wade sighed heavily. “There are rumors of Khain mating with our females a few times, by force or by trickery.”
Trevor stopped still, his entire body on pause. “I’ve never heard such a rumor.”
“Until today, such a word has not been breathed outside of the great hall. I only tell you because that prophecy was spoken twenty-five years ago today.”
Trevor’s eyes shot to the date on the DVD case. Wade was right. How had he missed that? Did it mean anything? Were the one true mates now available to be found? He clutched at Wade’s arm, excitement filling him. “How are we going to find them? To know them?”
Wade cocked his head. “Calm down, son. No one knows.”
“You talk to Rhen! Ask her.”
“Rhen had nothing to do with the one true mates. After Khain’s slaughter of our females, Rhen knew she had to do something or we would die, but her physical body has never recovered from the Act of Creation.”
Wade ran a hand through his hair and looked around the room, then back at Trevor. “How much of this story do you know, son?”
Trevor clenched a fist to his chest. “Tell me all of it. Like I know nothing. I can’t know what’s rumor and fact out of what I have heard.”
Wade nodded. “All right. I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t think it’s going to appease you.”
Trevor paced again, unable to sit or stand still. Finally, for the first time, this information he’d begged for, longed for, dreamed of, would be shared with him, a non-citlali.
He nodded at Wade. “Tell me.”
Chapter 10
Ella passed the lovely sandstone house on her way to her own, walking quickly, watching the house out of the corner of her eye. The moving truck was gone and no lights shone out of the bare windows.
She moved on, her eyes on her own house. A splash of white paint against the blue backdrop next to the front kitchen window caught her eye and sent a shiver of shame through her, triggering a memory from two weeks ago.
She’d been standing at her aunt’s funeral, expecting no one to show up but her and the priest, when men had started to trickle in. All older police officers, all in uniform, several in dress uniform. The sight of all those uniforms had stirred something in Ella, something she didn’t understand, and had no one to ask. She had wanted to know why they were there! Her aunt had always seemed to have no friends, no lovers, no acquaintances, and had been house-bound during her later years. No one had visited her in the hospital, but Ella counted thirty-four police officers attending her funeral.
As the priest had closed his statements and addressed her, they all slipped away, her chance to ask one of them how he knew her aunt gone. Not that she would have been able to work up the courage, anyway. She’d always been shy, but the way her mind had been slipping had made her more shy than ever. She was forever afraid of having an episode when she talked to a stranger. Especially a police officer stranger. She’d probably end up in a mental hospital.
Ella had walked home, feeling curiously empty, and wondering exactly how she should be feeling. Free, maybe. She’d been taking care of her mom or her aunt almost full-time for ten years, but now that they were both gone she had no one to take care of but herself. Problem was, she didn’t know how to do that. Her former life had made her unable to think about herself.
She’d walked in the door, turned on a P90X video, and followed the video for the full hour three times, till she was dripping with sweat and dropping with exhaustion. She’d showered, eaten something, watched a little TV, and fell into bed.
Ella remembered a lovely dream of following the moon, picking her way carefully through a forest while the moon’s light shone on the path in front of her. Animals had surrounded her. Large animals, who were dangerous to everyone but her. Her, they’d not seen as prey, but as someone to be protected. Her feet had been bare, the dirt silky against her soles, the night air sweet with the scent of heavy flowers, and filled with the sound of crickets and other animals. But the moon, the moon had held all of her attention. Calling her, urging her on, speaking to her in a way she could almost understand…
A sharp pain in her foot brought her out of the dream and she woke up in the yard in front of the house with a can of white paint in one hand and a dripping paintbrush in the other. The moon shone directly overhead, large and heavy, and she guessed the time to be between midnight and three in the morning. In front of her, an arc of white paint had been applied to the blue of the house.
Ella had looked at the paint and brush in her hand and known immediately what she had been trying to paint on the front of her dead aunt’s house.
The moon.
***
Wade sat and invited Trevor to do the same. He looked around the room as if trying to decide where to start. Finally, he settled on Trevor. “You’ve heard the prophecy. It came from your own father. You know what Khain did to our females. But what you may not know is that Rhen is much weaker than anyone has ever let on. She may never recover. We don’t know if she can die, just as we don’t know if Khain can die, but she may never be able to return to her physical body.”
Trevor rubbed the hair growing in on his chin. How long had it been since he’d shaved? Or slept? This revelation would be giving him nightmares for sure. The creator of all shiften too weak to ever recover? Was Khain stronger than her? What would happen to them if Rhen did die? Could the shiften continue to hold Khain at bay or would he wipe them out with a stroke of his hand?
Wade leveled him with a stare. “You know that no one has heard from The Light in millennia. Not even Rhen. Not even the angels.”
“Is The Light dead?”
Wade sighed. “We believe that if The Light were to die, all of us would stop existing, so no, we don’t think so. We think he’s still up there, in The Haven, resting maybe. What seems like a long time to us may only be like a day to him. One of your own prophecies says that when you come into your power and fell the demon, the Light will return again.”
Trevor winced. “If. It says if, not when.”
Wade stared at him for a long time. “Son, I believe in you. There is no if in my mind.”
Trevor shook his head and stared at the floor. “Prophecies only spell out one possible future, you’ve told me that yourself.”
Wade didn’t speak for several moments, sizing Trevor up. Finally, he pushed on, choosing to ignore Trevor’s statement. “History gets fuzzy as to exactly when The Light disappeared and what might have happened to cause it, but you can be sure it had something to do with Khain. You know the Light has always existed. You know the Light used pieces of himself to create companions and gave them the earth as a home. Something happened, of which even Rhen is not sure, some sort of a war among the Light’s companions, until all of them were gone but Rhen and Khain and a few angels, who never have had a permanent physical body or been able to come to earth for long. Khain disappeared. Rhen stayed with The Light but he was restless and created more companions, this time giving them only the smallest piece of himself, so they had no powers, no ability to rise up against him if one of them chose to do so. They were soft and weak, these humans, but he loved them. He gave them the entire earth as their domain, filling it with other creatures also, though none quite captured his heart in the way the humans did, possibly because of their good conversation and ability to create offspring that are pleasing to the eye. If there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s making and taking care of more humans.”
Wade stopped for a moment and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then took a few deep breaths before continuing, as if he were getting tired. Trevor hated to see the signs of his age. “But the humans started getting hurt, and sick, and disappearing. When his favorite human didn’t come to him for forty days, The Light sent Rhen to earth to see what was going on. Rhen found Khain, traveling from village to village, destroying them all with fire and explosions, or sickness and madness. Rhen didn’t understand it. She loved the humans as much as The Light did and she questioned Khain as to why he would destroy them. He said they were unhappy, miserable creatures who could barely take care of themselves, and all he had ever met wanted to die, wanted to not exist on earth anymore.”
Trevor snorted. He’d never heard this version of Khain’s motives before. “A regular humanitarian.”
Wade nodded. “That’s how he played it off, like he was doing them a favor. Rhen said Khain had gathered a band of humans to travel with him and do his bidding. Wash him, feed him, kill other humans for fun. Rhen said Khain made her watch one such escapade and it turned her stomach. Khain’s human was large and strong and Khain sent him after a much smaller man. Rhen stepped in, not allowing the first human to finish his hunt. She and Khain battled fiercely, and she managed to drive Khain off. She said she was lucky, because she and Khain seemed to be exactly matched, and for every power she has, he has an equal and opposing power. They fought for months, burning the earth in their wake. The Light sent the angels down to help Rhen, but some of them went to Khain’s side, whether by trickery or will, no one knows. The Light called these renegade angels back to him, merging them with him, but each time he did, he seemed to weaken. Rhen said she called out to The Light many times, but he would never take direct action against Khain. To do so would upset the balance, was all he would say on the matter.”
“Just when Rhen thought the battle could never end, the moon became heavy in the sky and their fighting crossed through the territory of a pack of timber wolves who were out hunting. Rhen called out to the wolves for help and they responded, surrounding and attacking Khain. The distraction was what she needed to gain the advantage and she struck Khain a finishing blow. He retreated, wounded, disappearing into the Pravus for centuries.”
Wade stopped, eyeing Trevor, seeing if he was keeping up. Trevor nodded at him. He’d heard much of this in songs and nursery rhymes and bed-time stories, but never with this kind of surety and detail.
Wade half-smiled. “Rhen was wounded herself, tired and aching from battle, but she did not retreat. She went to the alpha of the clan and thanked him and his wolves deeply for their courage and fierceness, then offered him the only thing she had to give. A piece of herself which would provide strength and power to his descendants forever after. You know the rest of this part of the story, I’m sure.”
Trevor smiled. “Of course.” He felt pride pulse through him at the actions of his brave ancestors, a thick swath of tingles and emotion marching from his breastbone to the top of his head. He touched his left shoulder with his right hand, running his fingers over the renqua there, causing it to prickle. Wade ran his fingers over his own renqua, a source of pride and honor for all shiften, and a reminder of their purpose and connection to the deae Rhen.
Wade bobbed his head, looking more tired. “Every piece of herself that Rhen gave out that night weakened her even more, until she finally had to retreat also. The felen have watched over her body for centuries, just as we have guarded the humans, our constant battle with Khain evolving every century. When he emerged from the Pravus to find us millions strong and completely organized, he knew he couldn’t beat us, and that is why he came up with the plan to kill our females. The half-breeds we make with humans just aren’t strong enough to defeat him, nor do they have the protection drive that we do. Killing our females devastated us, and for three years, most of the first three years of your life, we thought we were ruined. Those were dark times, son, and your generation paid the price for them. We Citlali appealed to Rhen, but she did not know what she could do for us. She could not fight. Her body was not substantial enough to create more shiften, and The Light had retreated to some corner of the Haven that no one could follow him to. There was no help to be found.”
Wade looked off at the wall covered with shelves stuffed full of prophecies, the light from the TV playing over his face. “That’s what we thought, anyway, until your father spoke his final prophecy.” Wade motioned to the TV where the image of Trevor’s father sat still, paused. “He told us of the One True Mates and we immediately sat session, the only all-shiften session in history.” He turned a bold eye to Trevor. “Except the foxen. They have no Citlali, so of course we did not include them.”
“Smart,” Trevor said. “Who knows what they would have done with the information.”
Wade nodded sharply. “Never trust a shiften with a weak renqua, Trevor.” He watched Trevor’s face carefully, then went back to his story. “It took too many hours for all the Citlali to calm themselves enough to cross over. By the time we all were there, it was a full day later. Rhen had been told what we were after by the first to cross, so she had done her own crossing, into the Haven. We had to wait another day for her to return. When she did, she had astounding news. The few remaining angels had always refused to get involved in human matters, but one had taken pity on Rhen. Her constant mourning had touched his heart. From the way she speaks of him, I might surmise he is in love with her, and if so, all the better for us. He came to earth over the course of forty nights and mated with thousands of human women all around the world, with an intention of creating females strong enough to be our mate
s, to make offspring that would have a chance at fighting Khain. He hadn’t told her because he was waiting to see how the babies developed, what sort of identifying characteristics they would have, what kind of powers and abilities.”
Trevor leaned forward eagerly. This is what he had been wanting, needing to hear!
Wade held up a hand. “Don’t get too excited. Rhen got that information second-hand from another angel. Her angel, Azerbaizan, had disappeared.”
Trevor stood, pacing again. “Disappeared? How? Can angels die?”
Wade shook his head. “No one knows. He hasn’t been heard from in twenty-five years. We think the prophecy your father received was sent to him by the angel. Your father said it came through disjointed and hard to read, and definitely not from Rhen, but from a powerful being.”
Trevor curled a hand into a fist and looked for something to hit. There was nothing, unless he wanted to pound on a chair or the floor like a child. “Khain killed him. Or took him.”
Wade nodded. “He may have. Which is why I accepted our transfer from Scotland without a second thought. We can’t afford to be ignorant about the Pravus any longer.”
Trevor sighed. “So all that, and we still have no way of knowing who the One True Mates are.”
Wade stood also. “We must carry on like always, son. They may be looking for us. We may be revealed to each other over the next few days or weeks or months. We have three clues, four really.” He held up his hand and ticked off the clues on his fingers. “One, they are warriors, whatever that means.” Trevor grimaced and Wade laughed lightly as if he knew Trevor was wondering if he was going to be mated to a female who looked like Mac, or maybe Blake for the rest of his life. He popped up a second finger, “Two, they don’t have fathers, and three, they are named like flora.”
He paused and Trevor finished for him. “Four, they are twenty-five years old.” He shook his head. “That’s not much to go on.”