by Lisa Ladew
“Whoa, bullshit alert,” Timber said. Canyon agreed. Eventine was lying about something.
“Are you in charge now?” a Citlali asked.
“No,” Eventine said.
“Yes,” Wade said.
Timber tsked his tongue and shook his head. “Mixed answers like this are what shake my confidence in the current administration.”
Another male raised his hand like he was a reporter, shouting his question. “Is it true one of the mates is a time traveler? Why hasn’t she gone back in time and fixed anything yet? What good is bringing back only one female? We want all the females back.”
Eventine and Harlan exchanged looks. Harlan shook his head. Wade shook his head, too, as the mood in the room changed, sharpening even more, and questions were fired at Eventine again, the males pressing forward.
Trevor grabbed Ella around the shoulders and got her out of there, pulling her up the steps to watch from a safe distance.
Harlan raised his hands. “That’s enough questions for today. Everyone out. Beckett, get the door, Troy, anyone who’s not out it in twenty seconds is officially trespassing, Citlali or not. You have Burton’s express permission to give them the “You-don’t-have-to-go-home-but-you-have-to-get-the-fuck-out-of-here special.
The uproar got louder, but then Graeme was in the crowd and helping and Mac and Rogue had come around a corner and were pushing males to the exit.
“Don’t like it, email the complaint line,” Rogue yelled over the mess. “The address is rogue at get-the-hell-out-dot-com.” Mac snickered and gave her a behind-the-back-five.
When all the Citlali but Wade were gone, Eventine looked up at the ceiling, addressing everyone who was left. “We need to move this into the bedroom so that Leilani can hear us.”
“She just lies there,” Beckett said. “She won’t say anything.”
“That doesn’t mean she can’t hear us.” Eventine said.
Timber messed with his computer. “Lucky for us they wanted a camera back there,” he said. He flipped a switch.
***
A few minutes later, they’d all found their way into Trent’s room. Canyon had a perfect view of everyone in the room from the camera near the door. Leilani was on the bed, looking like she was asleep. Remington sat on the bed, applying ointment to Leilani’s eyes. Conri appeared to be sleeping, slumped in a chair in the back.
Eventine checked the window, then closed it, then turned to face everyone. Ella held Track in puppy form, and Trevor had Treena, in human form. She looked sleepy. Track, on the other hand, was biting his mother. She held his mouth closed absently, her attention on Eventine.
“I want the dragen to give Leilani his blood and see if it helps her. So far, Harlan and I are the only ones who are behind this approach. Graeme and Wade say the only fair way to decide is to vote, so that’s what we’re going to do.” Eventine announced.
She nodded to Remington. He stood and shook out the wrinkles in his slacks.
“He’s pretty swanky for a doctor,” Timber said.
All those cats are, Canyon told him.
“Except Jaggar.”
Jaggar’s not a cat.
“He’s half cat.”
Canyon grunted. Fuck that, he barely believed it. Jaggar might be the beast when he shifted, but he was a regular hardass wolf when not. He didn’t have a felen bone in his body.
On the screen, Remington didn’t look at Eventine or Harlan. He looked at Graeme instead. Graeme nodded at him. Remington spoke. “I advise against it. She’s not responding to anything I do. She’s too unstable. She’s had shock treatments and we don’t know what’s going on inside her brain.”
Harlan growled at him, then said. “That’s why we’re doing it, not why we’re not doing it.”
Remington stuck out his chest. “That’s my professional opinion. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Of course you don’t,” Harlan said. “You’ll just let her die. Somebody get this meow out of the room before I throw him out the window.”
“Cool it, Harlan,” Wade said. “You’re out of line.”
Harlan turned his angry gaze on Wade, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Uh oh,” Timber said. “I don’t think Harlan’s had his medication today. You would think all that sex would release some of his tension.”
In the room, Graeme spoke, his slight accent and deep voice calling everyone’s attention. “Remington is bringing up valid points. Leilani is incredibly powerful. There’s no way to know how she will react to my blood, especially with her being half human.”
Rogue spoke up. “Good thing she’s actually half angel. Get to biting.”
Eventine raised her hand. “Who wants Graeme to try to help Leilani?”
Ella, Dahlia, Cerise, and Rogue raised their hands. So did Harlan and Mac. Eventine counted, then said, “Heather has voted for it. So has Willow. Bruin and Trent have voted against. Is anyone else against?”
All the males in the room except Harlan and Mac raised their hands, including Remington on the bed and Conri in the back. Eventine shook her head as she counted the two non-KSRT members. “Nine for, nine against,” she said.
“I guess we don’t count, Bro,” Timber said, but then he cocked his head as Wade’s voice filled their heads.
How do you vote?
Hell yeah, we vote yes, Timber said back, because we’re awesome like that. He winked at Canyon. “I just want to see her drink his blood.”
Canyon sent his own message. I vote no. Timber flipped him off.
Wade reported their votes, and Sebastian’s: against.
“Ten for, eleven against,” Eventine said carefully.
Timber shook his head. “She’s getting her way and she knows it. It doesn’t matter what the vote is.”
Again, Canyon had to agree. The importance to Eventine was obvious, but she did not admit defeat in any way. She stood her full height and faced down each one of the no-voters in turn as she said, “You’ll never understand what she did for you all. She stopped a future from happening that was too horrible to imagine.” She stared hard at Wade last, holding his gaze while she said. “Imagine little Track forcibly separated from his animal, then marked by Khain.”
Ella gasped and pulled Track close. He yelped and she loosened her grip. Canyon felt a ridiculous urge to do the same to Timber but he squashed it. That was some serious shit. You didn’t even contemplate what it would be like to live without the animal inside.
Eventine nodded at the gaping males. “That’s what you were all living, those of you who were still living. That’s what we have to stop from happening this time, no matter what it takes. Leilani’s already done her job, and now it’s up to us. This isn’t a merry-go-round, and we won’t be asking her to time travel again, no matter what, so we’re getting it right this time. I’ve been watching you all for years, I have plans. I know the warning signs, I know when he planned his attack, I know how it happened, I know how we failed. We won’t fail again, but Leilani should not be asked to pay with her sight for the first time we failed.”
She turned around slowly, looking every person in the eyes in turn. “All the bearen fought for Khain. They didn’t have a choice once they were marked, and since we’ve stopped that from happening, we already have changed the future. We owe that all to Leilani,” she said, motioning toward the bed.
Remington held up his hands. “I change my answer. I advise for it, that’s my professional opinion.”
Eventine nodded sharply. “Who else has changed their answer?” All the males in the room, except Graeme and Wade, Harlan and Mac, raised their hands. Two holdouts, and two already-on-boards. No matter, Eventine had majority rule, which was all she cared about. She nodded at Graeme. He had agreed to go with majority, no matter how he felt about it. He’d been wrong before, Eventine had pointed out to him.
Graeme transformed into a dragen the size of a pony, but the color of a phoenix. He kept his wings furled in close to hi
s body. He bit open his foreleg, and stuck it in Leilani’s face, dripping a drop of red blood on her chin.
“Uh-oh,” Timber said, then his voice filled Canyon’s head, but Timber was not only talking to him. The beast is on the property, north end, moving in fast.
Eventine looked out the window, so did Wade and others. “Not now, then, let’s deal with the beast first.”
But Leilani grabbed Graeme’s foreleg and pulled it to her mouth, sucking greedily.
“Ok, this is happening now,” Eventine said, shifting gears smoothly. “Harlan, go meet the beast. Try to keep him away from here for as long as possible. Let us clear the house before he barrels in, all teeth and nasty attitude.”
“Ok,” Harlan said, already heading toward the door. “You know he’s going to try to kill me, though.”
“You won’t let him,” Eventine said.
“You’re so smart. That’s why I love you.”
“I love you, too. Go.”
The room flooded with silver light.
13 – Winding Up
Eyes squeezed shut, Leilani used every bit of strength she had to grab at the dragen and put his foreleg in her mouth. Blood, thick and metallic, flowed over her tongue. She thought she should hate it, but she didn’t care one way or the other. It wasn’t pleasing, it wasn’t repulsive. It was blood, and it could help her. She swallowed it down as quickly as she could. Please work, please work.
Nothing happened. Her mouth went numb, her tongue, too, but that was it. Then her throat was numb. She couldn’t feel anything except a need to gasp for breath and try to move in the bed. Was she drooling, was she choking on the blood?
Energy surged through her, as her body felt good, filled with natural human energy and the call to move for the first time in too long. But inside her head-oh!
Leilani sat straight up in bed, her ears humming so she couldn’t hear what was going on around her. Hands on her. There were hands on her shoulders and she hated them. The humming in her ears built and crescendoed as something forced its way into her mind. Pressure built inside her head, pressure and humming, humming and pressure, and then, pop!
The metaphorical clock in Leilani’s mind, the one she imagined she imagined, it became real, silver pouring from it, blinding her instantly, permanently. The silver light pulled her internal gaze, directing it to the clock, and it was all she could see that was not a poisonous silver.
The clock was bright. It was beautiful, actually. The hands were at 12:00. Both the little hand and the big hand pointing straight up. It called to her, sang to her, enticed her, and promised her that travel would be so very easy from now on and she would never have to pay for it with anything.
Because she’d already lost her sight.
Leilani gasped and blinked, tearing her eyes open, wanting to see, needing to see…
She saw nothing but strange silver light that obscured everything. She was completely blind.
She pushed her way out of the bed. People tried to contain her. She froze, but only for a minute. She couldn’t afford to freeze again. She would never be tied down again.
“Look at her eyes,” said a man’s voice she didn’t recognize.
“Oh, Leilani, oh no,” a woman said. Eventine.
Leilani could think the word Eventine, but inside her head, she couldn’t understand it. All that mattered was the light, the silver light. She closed her eyes tight and focused on the silver light. On the clock in her mind. A hand landed on her elbow. She shrieked and the hands spun madly, stopping when she cut off her own voice.
The little hand was straight up, and the big hand had stopped at a tic mark just a sliver to the right of straight up. 12:01. There was no longer carpet under her feet, but now blankets. She had been moved, and she was now standing on the bed.
“Where did she go?” one of the males in the room cried. “She can’t just freaking disappear!”
Could he really not see her? She backed up, almost tripping over the pillows on the bed, but catching herself and slamming into the back wall. The big hand on the clock in her mind jogged once and landed back on straight up.
“Oh shit,” a strange male voice said, sounding awed. “There she is.”
Someone touched her hand, tried to pull her down from the bed. Someone else did, too, on the other side. Leilani pushed at the hands that were touching her, rejecting the noise and the confusion. Her circumstances seemed unimportant and far away, and even her lack of sight seemed inconsequential. She had a mission. No, not a mission. She had a purpose.
Change something. Something big. What was bigger than making it all have never happened in the first place?
Fixing everything. Could she do it? Did she dare try to go back in time and make it so none of it had ever happened? IS that what the catamount had said to do? Is that what she was supposed to do with this clock? With the power it promised?
She could warn the shiften, keep talking until one of them understood, and then she could step through the time hole she created and destroy this world. She put her hands to her head, the rules of time travel someone had once explained to her spinning through her head like scrolls of wet paper.
Time spurs were dangerous.
Time spurs weaken the thread of time.
Only two types of time travel.
Time travel comes at a price.
Leilani squeezed her hands against her temples and tried to get herself under control.
She’d done it before.
She had done it before, and suddenly it seemed good and smart that she do it again. Which would mean this was her last trip through time, because once she fixed this, the females would not die, which would mean there would be no need for one true mates, and she would never exist. Something about paradoxes and impossibilities played through her mind in a male’s voice. Graeme’s voice. He’d said those words to her in another time, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. So if that’s what it took to fix this, she was ready to do it, ready to never have been born.
On one level in Leilani’s humming mind, never having been born seemed like a good thing, but on another level of consciousness, a deep level she rarely acknowledged, she knew she would be cutting herself out of the life of someone she desperately wanted to get to know.
Her mate.
Jaggar.
14 – The Beast Meets Leilani
Jaggar, locked in the body of the beast, prowled through the forest at VF, ready for anything, expecting nothing good. Serenity had never felt like home to him, but it was the only home he knew, the only place he’d ever lived when he hadn’t been in the military. He’d done tour after tour, leaving when Eventine, his best friend, had found her mate. He hadn’t wanted to leave, but there had been no other option for him. He’d loved Eventine with desperate abandon, even though he’d known she wasn’t his mate and he wasn’t hers, but she was kind, and she didn’t care about the way he looked. She was strong and fierce and why wouldn’t he love her? She was the only female he’d ever been around who didn’t agitate the beast in some way.
Eventine had soothed the pain inside Jaggar, and always put the beast right to sleep, which was a relief for Jaggar. When he was with Eventine he didn’t have to be on guard against comments about his mom, his nature, or his animal. He didn’t have to hold tight to his fight for discipline and control of his own body that was made up of too many parts.
Life was easy and smooth, but only if she was around. When she left, it was the same dirty grind it had been before.
Or so he told himself on those endless nights when his mind spun out of control, playing that day over and over again. Eventine saying she was Harlan’s, only Harlan’s. Harlan kissing her.
Unable to stop it, Jaggar could only be swept along as the memory of Harlan kissing Leilani swept over him. The beast growled, adrenaline shooting through him. Jaggar’s fingers vibrated as the beast’s claws extended.
Thinking about that had been a very bad idea. He had to get some cont
rol over the beast. He growled in his own head, hated calling his own animal ‘the beast’, hating that name that someone else had given him.
So why was he still calling the beast, ‘the beast’ or… ‘it’?
To his left, scent of wolfen came to him. Nowl. Others behind him.
Jaggar dug in, desperately clawing at… his animal. We aren’t killing him. We aren’t even fighting him.
His animal proved him wrong, stalking to meet Nowl with bad intent.
Nowl was already moving. Ruhi from Nowl and Harlan came to Jaggar, as if from a great distance, so much pain in the words.
Jaggar, I’m sorry.
Jaggar clenched his teeth and let his eyes drift closed, ceasing any resistance. For the first time since he’d left, he let himself wonder if, while he and the beast had been gone, Harlan had been with…
No. He cut the thought off at the knees. He would rather die than imagine his mate with his friend. His mate.
He needed her so badly he shook with it. She was close, he could feel it. He would let the beast take care of Harlan and then… then what?
A whisper on the wind came to him through the beast’s ears.
Jaggar.
Leilani had been the whisperer.
His mate was calling him.
Jaggar wrenched the beast’s body around and pointed him toward the whisper, but the beast was already moving that way, Harlan/Nowl forgotten.
For now.
The beast stalked through the forest at a loping, rolling run, past the cabin mostly hidden there, and the powerful beings inside. One was his mate’s sister. The other was something else entirely. Not human. Not dragen. Not angel.
Engel, the being told him. Now get your ass out of my forest.
The voice was strong and clear and Jaggar heard it clearly through the haze of the beast’s fractured mind. He got the idea that the beast did also, and that something passed between the beast and the engel. Respect flowed both ways. Whoa. Jaggar needed to talk to Graeme-No, you’re out of the KSRT, remember? Graeme is not on your side anymore. You are an abomination. You are a beast. You are uncontrollable. You can’t be trusted and you shouldn’t be here.