She glared at him. Fun to him, cruel to her. Not that he knew the full reason why. Not that he or anyone else could ever know the full reason why.
They’d tell her she must be wrong. They’d make sure she never let her wolf reach out to Paul and make the mating connection. They had plans for him. Plans that didn’t include him mating with some maternal female. Years ago, she’d heard Iris and David—their Alpha—laying out their plans one night around the fire after they thought everyone else had gone to bed. But now it was no longer a secret. Everyone knew. They needed new witch blood to restart their coven. Iris and David had organised for Paul to meet various witches from other packs they were aligned with. There was talk that one of the Pack McClune witches was proving to be in the running for the binding. Powerful and talented, she was just the right choice to strengthen their pack and re-invigorate their strangely dwindling coven.
Her wolf growled at the thought of Paul loving someone else.
There’s nothing we can do, she whispered to her wolf inside her mind. It’s for the good of the pack.
She rubbed at her chest again, the ache throbbing anew even as her wolf subsided, knowing she was right.
She’d have to leave when Paul handfasted with the McClune witch. She couldn’t stay around and watch the man who was meant to be her mate bond with someone else. Which he could do. A mating didn’t work for the magical and humans in the same way it did for the Were. They got to meet and date and fall in love and choose each other. He was not bound to her unless she pulled on those strings. But she had no right to pull on those strings.
For the good of the pack, she had to leave him alone.
Stellan, tossing his floppy fringe off his brow in that affected way that usually made her want to snort-laugh, was now complaining about what lie to tell everyone about the slap mark on his cheek. Rather than giving in to her maternal wolf’s need to make him feel better, she let her pain have free rein and snapped, ‘I don’t know, Stellan. Maybe you should tell them Mary-Louisa didn’t like the way you fondled her breasts. She hates the way you pinch her nipples, you know.’
And on the sound of a gasp and a burst of laughter from Luke and Jackson, she took off. She knew she’d be even faster if she pulled her change around her and gave in to her wolf’s need to run free, but if Paul needed her to pull him out of a vision, he wouldn’t be happy about it if she had no clothes on. Having lived with the pack all his life, she would have thought he’d be used to the casual nudity of the Were when they changed from wolf to their human form. But he always ran the other way when she made the change when he was around.
Her wolf scratched at her mind, understanding why she couldn’t let it out to make the run, but offering a bit more of itself so she could run faster. She let her wolf slip its energy into her muscles a little more and picked up speed. One of the fastest runners in their pack, the only one who could catch her would be Luke, but he was still too busy laughing his arse off at her brother’s shock and embarrassment.
Served him right.
Served them all right if they got in trouble for letting Paul go off like that.
Well, if they weren’t going to look for him, she would. She might not be able to bond to him, but she could take care of him in the way her maternal side demanded. She would find him and make sure he was okay, even if she had to do so from afar.
She could still feel the ache of him inside her, pulling at her, showing her the way. Except, the ache had changed, had become desperate.
She ran faster. She had to get to him before the desperation pulled him even further into his dark funk. She wasn’t sure what she could do for him, but she could make it so he didn’t feel so alone. At least she could do that.
Chapter 2
Aunt Iris would be truly angry he’d used his power to transport himself like that. ‘Such a use of power was only to be used in extremis.’ Her words said to him on his eighteenth birthday as she’d taught him the spell that could save his life if anyone ever came after him.
Why they’d come after him, he had no idea. He was Pack McVale’s last Pack Warlock and his aunt the last Pack Witch now his mother was dead, but when he married a witch from another coven as she and their Alpha planned, and had all the babies they’d plotted for, that fact wouldn’t matter. Not that it mattered now. Nobody knew about the Were and their covens, and no other Were would come after him. The Were revered the witches and warlocks, even from rival packs.
They were all being ridiculously cautious. And if anyone would know, it was him. In all the years he’d been having visions, he’d seen no sign that anything was coming for him. Only the nightmare images of the future that made his life hell because he was somehow responsible for trying to figure out a way to avoid them.
Goddess, his head ached. Perhaps he shouldn’t have transported straight after a vision. It was too late to worry about it now. He was here and glad of it. At least here nobody would be nagging at him to tell them about what he’d seen and make him go back in to try to figure it all out so they could change it.
He took a deep breath and let his gaze wander across the view. There was a reason this was his favourite spot to come to when he was stressed and uncertain. It was one of the best views to be had at Pack McVale’s Red Hill base. Plus, nobody else ever came here.
This hill—his hill—rose above the undulating land of the grass and tree-covered hills, giving him a glimpse of the beach in the distance and the shining glimmer of blue water that spread out from the Peninsula to Tasmania. This part of packlands was given over to grazing cows and sheep, the vineyards and orchards on the inland side, and as a result was quieter and he could pretend he was on an island by himself, far from the hustle and bustle of pack life and the expectations placed on him.
But today, as he glanced around, as he breathed in the faint scent of salt and sun-warmed grass, the calm he needed seemed too far away.
He dropped his head into his hands and fought the need to cry. He couldn’t go back yet. He couldn’t go back into that vision like his aunt would require him to. He never wanted to see it again let alone furrow around in its dark depths trying to figure it out.
Hell. He wasn’t strong enough to carry everything the pack needed him to. He had no idea how he’d gotten away with them not noticing this serious flaw in their lone warlock. But they had to start seeing the cracks sometime soon. It was inevitable. And when they did, disaster would follow. Because how could he expect any witch from another pack, even a kind and thoughtful one like Mariella from the McClune Coven, to handfast with him and help rebuild their coven and the strength of their pack?
He would end up being as much of a disappointment as his mother.
He swallowed hard and looked up, staring at the water in the bay. Usually its sparkle and endless undulation made him feel better. Today, it did nothing but make him thirsty.
He wished he’d thought to bring a bottle of water. He could conjure one, but he really had used up too much of his powers already and he’d get even more of a tongue-lashing if he completely drained himself of power.
He could always tap into the pack bond to top up. But then Aunt Iris would know and come looking for him and he wasn’t up for one of her lectures. Especially given she would be even more angry that he’d tried to take power from the pack bond without asking permission to do so. ‘There are consequences for everything we do. Taking power is an exchange, an agreement with the Goddess and the universe to allow us to change things from what is expected to what is not. There is punishment for taking that which we have not sought permission to use.’
He’d heard that over and over again in his twenty-two years. What he wanted to ask her was if permission was so important, then why had nobody ever sought his permission to thrust these visions in his head? It was one big cosmic suck for him. Or he was one big cosmic sucker.
Maybe he should run away like his mother had. She’d taken off when she was eighteen and he was four years older than that now. A year shy of his
‘wolf majority’ when he would be pulled into the pack hierarchy and included in all important discussions about his life.
He’d been holding onto reaching that all important age for years, but right now, it seemed an eternity away. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of this.
He scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hand and sighing loudly, flopped back onto the soft grass behind him. It would all be far more bearable if he had happy visions as well as the dark ones. Or at least more visions he could do something about. Maybe then, he would be able to deal. Maybe he would be able to breathe. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so weak. So useless. So hopeless.
A breeze tickled through the fronds of grass above him, making them bend and brush over his face like a caress. A sound like the sweetest humming, wound around him.
He knew that touch, that sound.
‘Goddess?’ The grass caressed him again. He sat up, a thrill in his chest. She was here. Arianrhod. She’d not visited him for a while. Perhaps he could ask her. Surely she would know.
He crossed his legs and placed his hands on his knees, palms up to the sun, then closing his eyes, he sank into his mind, into the place where his magic was seated, where his gift connected to the aether and allowed him to cross into that place that most could not visit.
There was a hiss and a click, a sense of swirling and falling and then a small pop. The scent of salt and seaweed greeted him, along with the rumble of waves crashing on the beach. He opened his eyes.
Sand stretched, golden and sparkling, on either side of him as far as he could see. Behind him dunes rose to caress the base of cliffs so high they sailed up to touch the sky. At the top of those cliffs was a forest, ancient and green filled with trees and flowers coloured across the spectrum with scents gentle and sweet, to spicy and bold. She’d taken him up there a few times to watch over the turquoise, green and purple sea that shifted and rose in frothy waves as it stretched out to the horizon. He’d asked if he could stay here forever. She’d simply smiled and told him it wasn’t his time. ‘But you can visit to settle yourself when things get too bad.’
‘Why will they get bad?’
‘This too you will see.’
He had known she wasn’t talking about getting older. She had meant that he would ‘see’. The knowledge of that made him want to shout and rage at the universe for doing this to him.
He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to be strange. To be other. To never fit in. He wanted to truly belong and not just because his position as last Pack Warlock of Pack McVale made him wanted, needed. Their desperate hope in him was a crushing weight that was killing him.
‘Sulking again, Seer-boy?’
One of the waves had risen up in front of him, parted, and out of the green and purple water stepped his Goddess, Arianrhod.
He gasped as he always did upon seeing her. She was doing that shifting thing she did—a Goddess to so many races, she had the face of many. As she walked towards him, her skin shifted from palest white to olive to amber to darkest black and back again. Her eyes did the same, shifting across all the colours of the spectrum and filled with what looked like a galaxy of stars swirling at their centre rather than pupils. Her hair changed colours too—palest silver to golden blonde to red then darkening to auburn, brown and finally black. Always long and curling and twisting in the breeze that wove eternally around her, it writhed around shoulders bared by the halter-neck of the dress she wore—a dress that flowed down a form that made his gut twist uncomfortably and his skin prickle with awareness of just how fucking beautiful and desirable she was. She was the Goddess of Fecundity in one of her guises so had this effect on all, but she usually toned her sexuality down when she appeared to him.
She’d first come to him when he was a young boy, had held him to her bosom and stroked his hair, holding him like he wished his mother had held him and his aunt rarely did.
His aunt said it was to make him strong. He snorted. She’d failed there.
As the Goddess sauntered towards him, over the wet sand, water frothing at her feet, her cherry red lips twisted at the corner in a knowing smile, a deep dimple flashed in the groove of her cheek before it flashed to another visage and another then another.
His stomach flipped and swirled at the disconcertingly alien effect. ‘Can you stop doing that?’ he asked, waving at her ever-changing faces. He swallowed hard, hoping that he could stop himself from vomiting all over her beautifully manicured feet. Crazy visions, screaming in front of his friends uncontrollably before running away only to vomit all over the Goddess’s feet. He was having a great day.
‘Sorry,’ she said, her expression showing her chagrin. ‘I forget sometimes that it does that. Is this better?’ Her features settled into the one that he’d become most familiar with—the Celtic Goddess of palest skin and fire-red hair, a bow strung over her back, her dress now the animal skins of an ancient huntress. Her eyes still shifted through a spectrum of colours, but he’d learned to deal with that oddity.
He nodded. ‘Thanks.’ The huntress was the easiest of her faces for him to be around—sensual with a frightening kind of fierceness that somehow made him feel protected. He relaxed a little. ‘Thank you for answering me today.’
‘I felt your need was great.’ She nodded and took a seat beside him. She had never let him follow the formalities in this place—her anger a great and terrible thing if he tried to stand or hang his head in her presence. This place was for them both to relax and be themselves. At least that’s what she’d told him when she’d first brought him here. He was not even allowed to call her Goddess here.
Here, she was Arianrhod and he was Paul and they were friends.
A strange kind of friendship, unequal in every respect from an outsider’s point of view, but equal enough for them.
‘Tell me what is troubling you, my young friend.’
He moved to hug his knees, staring out at the horizon, the crash of the waves a reflection of the troubles in his mind. He did not answer right away—he’d learned long ago trite answers were not appreciated. She told him this place was to help him sort through the worries in his mind and soul, but it would not work if he did not respect the process. After a long moment of staring, he rubbed his hand over his tired eyes. ‘I am so sick of being alone.’
‘You are never alone, my friend. There are many who are always around you.’
‘I know. I’m always surrounded. Never left alone.’
‘So, what is it you want? To be alone or not alone?’
He turned to look at her, her fine profile reflecting thoughts that were as equally troubled as his. ‘I want to be wanted for me. Not because I have power. Not because my gift gives my pack an advantage. Not because of a status I was born into and didn’t earn. I wish not to feel so weak all the time.’
She turned her gaze on him. His skin prickled in the face of the power that radiated off her at all times, but it was more intense when she looked at him with those all-seeing eyes. ‘You are unhappy with your life.’
‘Yes. How did you guess?’
Thankfully she didn’t take offence at his sarcasm, just stared at him for an unnervingly long time, then asked, ‘Why?’
He faced her, holding her gaze even as the extent of her powers punched into him. ‘Because I didn’t choose this. It happened to me. And there’s nothing I can do about it.’ He pointed to the waves. ‘I might as well be a bit of flotsam on those waves, tossed and turned about, never having any say over where I’m going or even if I should sink or float. How can I live a lifetime of this?’ He dug his fingers into the sand at his side, thumping his chin—a little painfully—onto his upraised knees. ‘My mother was weak too, but at least she got to run away from it all.’
‘You are not like your mother, Paul. And you cannot run away like she did.’
‘And why is that exactly? Why could she live without the link and I cannot? There’s something about that that just doesn’t add up.’
She sighed. ‘
You know perfectly well, why.’
‘I know what I’ve been told.’
‘What you’ve been told is true. Your mother could live apart because she was never strong enough to connect to the pack. Her powers were never in danger of hurting her or others or exposing you all and therefore she did not need the pack bond to channel her powers into and survive. You, on the other hand, my seer-friend, are a different kettle of sea-dwellers.’
‘Fish.’
‘What?’
‘‘Different kettle of fish’ is the saying.’ It was kind of satisfying how she got things like that wrong every now and then.
‘Different kettle of fish. Yes.’ She smiled and patted her knee. ‘Different kettle of fish.’ She faced him again with an abruptness that was startling, her smile fading. ‘Your power can never do without the bond. You need it to survive. Your power would build and build until you lost control if you were unable to channel the excess power to the Were. Your power is even greater than your aunt’s—greater than any witch or warlock seen in any pack for many hundreds of years.’
He snorted. ‘I find that hard to believe. I am not strong. I am weak.’
‘Weak in soul at the moment perhaps, but not weak in power. If you were to leave Pack McVale, you would die and you would take others with you. Not to mention that without you, your pack would be destroyed by the Curse.’ She sighed and stared out at the ocean, a small frown creasing between her brows. ‘Even if you did not care for your own life, you cannot endanger the life of others. It is not in your character to do so. And, despite the fact you feel so other from them most of the time, you would never be able to bring yourself to destroy your pack.’
‘My pack wouldn’t be destroyed if I was to die. My aunt is still alive. She could still bare children if she so wished. But she doesn’t. She wants to lay all the burden of our future on me.’
The Goddess stared at him for a long moment until he looked away, unable to hold her gaze.
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