One True Mate 8: Night of the Beast

by Lisa Ladew

  “I ah, Jaggar, I wanted to tell you that, um, that Harlan is ok, and that, I ah.”

  She held very still, her words bringing the image of her mate savaging Eventine’s mate to her mind. She’d been in the meadow. How many days ago had it been? She had no idea. Maybe a week, but no more than that. She’d felt good, really good for the first time in her life, maybe. Rhen had said she could stay and she could have anything she wanted. She’d asked for a chair and a blanket and cute clothes and potato chips and nutella to eat out of the jar. She’d sat and eaten her food and just… enjoyed. After a bit, she wanted something to do. So she’d said she wanted to draw and paint and read, and all sorts of books showed up and even an easel and paints and papers. She’d thought she could be happy forever.

  But then the catamount had come to her and said she had to return, even if only for a moment. She had to return to the Ula and stop Jaggar from killing Harlan. Only she could do it. So she’d run for it, terrified she’d be too late. An image had flashed in front of her. The catamount had shown her the picture of what was happening in the Ula, but all she had really seen was the confusion, a big animal, and lots and lots of blood.

  The stark fear of the moment returned to her even though it was over and done with. It flooded her with fresh anxiety about her situation. Her resolve to communicate with Jaggar disappeared, so she spoke quickly, pushing out words that were stuck inside her, getting it over with.

  “I don’t know who I am, but I know I’m scared of just about everything, and, right now, I think what I’m scared of most of all is you.”

  Leilani felt no response in return, and she was glad. She lay back on the path and stared at the sky.

  ***

  Take me to church, Jaggar whispered to himself, repeating the mantra he’d used again and again over the years, when the pain got to be too much, or when he needed to utilize that intense and deep concentration that he was known for. He didn’t know why the words worked, and he’d never been inside a church in his life, but he knew they were the doorway to his inner strength. At that very moment, he had no pain. It seemed that when the beast was in charge of their body, he was the one who carried the pain of their existence, not Jaggar.

  Jaggar might have no pain, but he had a lot to think about, and his mantra was one mind-training trick that helped him focus. He repeated it, worrying his most pressing problem. He had to either convince or force the beast to let him shift back into human form.

  While he was concentrating, an overwhelming urge filled him. Stop. Turn around. Suddenly, he wanted to head home after all. Serenity was the place he needed to be. The beast must have gotten the same urge, because the big body turned and everyone trapped inside it loped the opposite way down the path.

  This time, Jaggar did not fight.

  9 – The Grunter and his Brother

  Leilani pushed to her feet. Another day had passed and she’d barely moved, only changing from sitting to lying down. She hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten or drunk. She didn’t seem to need to in the meadow.

  The catamount hadn’t been back and Leilani could not stand the quiet for one more second. She got up, turned toward the meadow, and headed down the path that would lead her there.

  The forest path to the meadow was not long, but until she stepped off it, the meadow was not visible to her. The place where path met meadow was dark and hazy from this side, even when she was right up on top of it. It took a leap of faith for Leilani to close her eyes and propel her feet forward through the haze. She took the leap and, within a second, was rewarded with the meadow.

  Emerald green, purple, and pink flowers bowed in front of her, stretching as far as she could see. That was the only difference in the meadow that she could tell, the color change. Otherwise it looked the same, like a rather blocky meadow twice the size of a football field with three more paths leading into the surrounding forest, one on each ‘wall’ of forest. The one to her right scared her the most. The trees down that winding path were dead and menacing looking, so she stayed as far away from it as possible.

  In front of her, on a table that didn’t belong, was a gift for someone. A box wrapped in pink paper with a purple bow and a white tag. Leilani skirted around the gift, not getting too close to it, not wanting anyone to think she was looking at something that was none of her business. It couldn’t be for her, so she kept away from it.

  Off to one side of the meadow, was Eventine’s office. A normal looking office except it had floor made of meadow and the walls did not reach all the way to a ceiling. It had a couch, a desk, some chairs, numerous filing cabinets, plus some storage chests inside.

  Leilani walked toward it, wanting to feel close to Eventine. She found an opening and headed for Eventine’s desk. The papers wanted to be in neat piles, but they weren’t. They were scattered and everywhere. Eventine had gotten desperate over the years.

  Leilani picked up a stray piece of paper from the floor and read the first line.

  Khain invaded on December 24th.

  Leilani swallowed hard. This was her business but she didn’t know if she wanted to read the paper or not. Anxiety and dismay warred inside her. But then a sound caught her attention. A meow. There was a cat in the office, sounding like it was behind one of the filing cabinets. Leilani looked for it, calling out to it. “Kitty, kitty.”

  When she got behind the filing cabinet, from her new vantage point she saw no cat, but she did see a closed door that led out of the office, seemingly into the empty meadow, but she could hear voices behind it. Male voices.

  Leilani pressed an ear up to the door, her heart pounding. Were there men in the meadow with her? Wolfen?

  The man was hard to hear through the door. “…done. Nothing… Jaggar…. Trent’s… …either.”

  Leilani gasped. Jaggar. Her stomach swooped. They were talking about Jaggar. She held her breath, trying to hear, but it was no good, she could barely pick up every third word.

  She didn’t let herself think, only grasped the doorknob and pulled the door open slowly. It was only a crack, and she couldn’t see a thing in the room, or hear the two males very well. She squinted, trying to see the room beyond, but it was dark and hazy like how the meadow looked when she was still on the path.

  She would have to go all the way in.

  Leilani pushed the door open only a few inches more and squeezed her way inside, pressing into what felt like a corner. She quietly closed the door behind her, feeling a spark of fear that she’d cut herself off from the meadow. But as soon as the door snicked shut, the haze lifted and she could see. She had entered another room and was standing in a corner behind a filing cabinet that mirrored the one in Evie’s office in the meadow. On this side of the door, she was obviously not still in the meadow. No, the small slice of the room she could see had a low ceiling, desks and shelves everywhere. There wasn’t a tree in sight.

  Leilani kept her hand on the knob, squeezing it relentlessly, debating with herself if she should look at the clock in her mind or not, the one that she spun when she traveled, or the one that spun her, she wasn’t sure. Thinking about it made it appear to her right. Whoa, that was easy, getting easier.

  Silver light flashed in her mind but quickly faded, letting her check the silver clock. It had no second hand, only a little hand and a big hand, two linear indicators that tapered at the tips. The little had was pointing straight up, and the big hand was pointing straight down. 12:30. Kind of.

  She looked away quickly and held very still, keeping her breathing slow and shallow. No one was speaking, but it seemed to her like the room was very big around, although the ceiling was low and she could see no windows.

  A male grunted. “There,” he said, slapping his hands together. Leilani knew from the sound of his voice that he was turned away from her. She chanced a peek around the filing cabinet.

  There were two males, about twenty feet away from her in the massive room. She couldn’t make sense of how big the room was, almost like a warehouse. Half-walls m
ade a kind of office out of the part that they were in. She was hiding in a tiny alcove with only one filing cabinet in it, and the two males were standing in front of a wall of computer monitors, both of their backs to her. Behind them were two desks that faced the computer monitors. They appeared to be messing with the wires that ran from the monitors to the desks.

  The two males were both big and dressed in KSRT uniforms, dark shirt and pants, plus work boots, badges, and guns attached to their belts. The one with dark hair spoke and it was the same voice she’d already heard twice. “Power it up, Wade wants us to have eyes on ASAP.”

  The other male went to the far wall and hit a switch that appeared to power on an entire row of computers, and, within a moment, pictures appeared on the wall of monitors. Leilani recognized the images instantly. They were looking at Trevor’s farm, and the male with the dark hair was the wolfen she had seen putting up cameras out there.

  The forest came into focus on… she counted. Twelve screens showed different views of the forest. There were seven views of the outside of Trevor’s house, showing every possible entrance and even the roof. There was a long shot of the pasture and Leilani could see Zeus eating grass. There were numerous shots of the cabins and a view of the driveway, and then a bird’s-eye view of the land itself that had to come from the tallest tree on the property, plus two inside views of Trevor’s house. She saw her own body lying still in Trent’s bed, people around her.

  “Good,” the male with the dark hair said. “Check dispatch and make sure they’re seeing it, too.”

  The second male sat at the desk on the left, typing at a computer. In a few minutes, he grunted. The noise was a kind of guttural umph.

  “Good,” the first guy said again. “Wade’ll be thrilled.” As he spoke, he walked, and he came right for Leilani!

  Leilani held her breath, heart pounding, and tried to think of what to say. She had no idea how this male would react to seeing her. But he pulled open the filing cabinet, found what he was looking for, and never looked her way once, even though she was right there, right next to the filing cabinet, less than two feet from him.

  Leilani stared after him, unable to believe what had just happened. Was he blind? Blind. Ha ha. Funny how that word kept creeping up on her. Not funny at all.

  Leilani stared at the door she had come through, then back at the wolfen who had not even noticed her, then looked hard at herself, holding up her arms, bringing her hands together and rubbing lightly. She could see herself, but could he not see her? Was she really there? Or was this another version of watching, like when she’d looked over the edge of the meadow?

  Emboldened, she peeked her head out. Both males were sitting at their desks now.

  The one with the dark hair spoke. “You aren’t even going to ask?”

  The other one grunted. He abandoned his computer screen and opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out what looked like a bowl of cereal already full of milk from an otherwise empty desk drawer.

  “Seriously, Canyon, you are never gonna believe the shit I found out over there. What a fuckfest.”

  Leilani stepped all the way out now, looking at the two males from behind them. Had he said Canyon? Was that a name?

  Canyon, if that was his name, grunted again, this time it was a kind of short, staccato mmm, coming from deep in his throat. To Leilani, it sounded pained or frustrated. He leaned back in his own chair, put his own feet up on his desk, and ate his cereal.

  “I don’t believe it myself,” the other one said.

  No grunt this time. Leilani pegged these two as long-time partners who knew each other backwards and forwards. The guy with the dark hair looked a bit older, but not much. Leilani would put them at somewhere around thirty-five years old, give or take five years. She wished they would talk about Jaggar again.

  Canyon ate his cereal, and now his partner put his feet up on his desk and stared off into space. He was quite handsome, Leilani decided, in a dark way, with a neat beard starting to silver through a little, making him look older than the rest of his face did. His face was expressive and dangerous, but he looked fun-loving, too. His laugh lines were deeper than his anger lines. She hadn’t gotten a good look at Canyon yet. His back was mostly to her. His hair was lighter, but his body just as big and his profiled features just as sharp as the other male’s.

  The one with the dark hair spoke. “I mean. I guess I believe it, but fuck, it’s unbelievable. I shouldn’t fucking believe it.”

  His partner snarled and threw a pen at him. It had been a real wild animal snarl, like a lion might make, or a … a really mean wolf. Leilani held her breath. If they were going to fight, she would turn and run.

  The dark-haired one spoke. “Look. Shut the fuck up, ok? I’m working up to it. There’s a lot involved. You hear everything, or you hear nothing, which do you want?”

  Canyon grunted. Leilani didn’t know what it meant, but the other wolfen looked mollified. He leaned back in his chair and spoke like he was telling a campfire tale.

  “Wolves. Bears. Cats. Demons. Rhen. Blah, blah, blah. You know the story. Wolves protect the sheep and all that. Then you were born. Mom died. Burton found us eventually. Raised us, kind of. He scarred us for life, I’m sure. I mean, look at you, you’re a fucking fruit basket.”

  Canyon snorted a laugh around his mouthful of cereal and nodded, pointing his spoon at his partner. Touché. He didn’t speak it, but the meaning was obvious.

  “So the one true mate prophecy comes in, no one quite believes it, but that was all the hope we had, right? So then it’s 25 years later and the one true mates actually start showing up.” He held up his hand. “Trevor met his, then Graeme, who wasn’t even a member of the KSRT, but whatever, then Crew, then Beckett, Mac actually met someone who could stand him long enough to let him get a little action, a freaking miracle in itself, then Bruin, who is a bear, met his one true mate. And she’s got powers like all the rest of them, and she’s the right age, she’s gotta be a one true mate, right? I mean, after Graeme got inducted into the KSRT, here we were back to thinking all the KSRT members were the first ones to be meeting their one true mates, and of course that makes sense, but then this bear meets one. So now what do we think? We don’t know what to think, so we just wait to see what will happen next. I don’t know about you, but every time I leave the house, there’s a bit of a spring in my step, thinking maybe she could be around the next corner.”

  Canyon grunted and lifted his spoon again. He spoke, but his lips didn’t move, which was how the catamount spoke, but his voice did not echo around her like the catamount’s voice did. Instead it was still and clear inside her own mind. You never leave the bunker.

  “Right, we’ve got to get out more. Seriously, that’s part of the moral of this story, if you would just let me talk.”

  Canyon drained his milk, dropped his spoon in his empty bowl. Clink. He stared hard at his partner, then raised his hand palm up and extended it. You have the floor. No words, only that one move that meant those words. Leilani grinned. She like these two, and somehow she knew that they would help her if they found her, not scare her, not try to imprison her. Emboldened more, she slowly stepped out of the alcove she’d been in, taking a few steps toward the two males at their desks. Neither acted liked she existed, although the dark-haired one should be able to see her.

  He kept speaking. She crept closer to his desk, tiptoeing almost, unsure which way to go. It was so strange being treated like she was invisible.

  “So, who is left out of the KSRT? Me, you, Jaggar,”- Leilani’s heart skipped a beat- “Harlan, Sebastian, and then Trent and Troy. I wouldn’t count them, but now that Troy’s shifted, I think we have to believe it could happen for Trent, too, and they’re both official KSRT members now, though neither has a prophecy. So there’s seven males left in the KSRT. We all thought it was going to be Harlan who met his mate next, until that shit happened between Harlan and Jaggar.”

  Leilani stopped walking, stared at the floor,
listening hard.

  The male spoke again, grinning, his voice full of secrets. “I found out why Jaggar took off and why Burton has disappeared and why everybody else went fucking silent all of a sudden, why no one will say a word about anything.”

  Canyon only grunted, but he looked a bit more interested than he had before.

  His partner asked him a question. “So what’s the most unbelievable thing that could have happened in the last two days?”

  Canyon spoke in her head. Aliens.

  The dark-haired male dropped his feet to the floor and half-stood, his hands on his thighs, facing Canyon. “Aliens? What the fuck is wrong with you? There’s no aliens.”

  Canyon dropped his feet to the floor and put his attention on his computer, but his shoulders were shaking like he was laughing.

  After several moments, his partner dropped back into his chair. “No aliens, but Leilani is a time-traveler, just like we thought. And guess what she did.”

  Leilani got moving again, closing in on the guy’s desk, thinking that she should know who these two were. Canyon and blank. They were brothers. Eventine had known who they were and so Leilani almost knew who they were. Canyon and….

  “Timber,” Canyon said out loud.

  “What?” the dark-haired male said.

  Leilani froze again. Timber, that was right. Canyon and Timber. Brothers. Jaggar lived with them. She looked slowly at Canyon from just next to his brother’s desk, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Timber, his eyes wide, his also-handsome face carefully blank.

  What did she do? he said to his partner and Leilani remembered what that kind of speaking was called. Ruhi. It was like a language to them, talking to each other telepathically. Some could speak it, some couldn’t. She, apparently, could at least hear it.

  “That’s the really fucking unbelievable part. You ready? You’re ready. Get this shit. Eventine’s back.”

  Eventine Risson?!

  Timber grinned at the surprise in Canyon’s internal voice. “I fucking saw her with my own eyes. She and Rogue tried to timber me. Me!” He pointed at himself in earnest, then waved it away. “She looks the exact same. I told you it was fucking unbelievable, this is the part where you eat a fucking crow, got it?” He banged on his desk. “Fucking scandal waiting to happen, I’m telling you! I mean, are they going to keep it a secret? There’s plenty of wolven around who remember Eventine.”