Fear slid in to replace my fury. The Bond squirmed and whined, thrashing back and forth, punishing both of us.
“No.” The courage came from somewhere. “We can’t do this! Don’t give in to the song.”
My soul constricted in protest, and I arched in pain, and he cringed over me, a rictus moving over his arms. He kissed me anyway. His tongue dipped between my lips, and I seized his face, but instead of pushing, I pulled him close. The constriction in my chest eased.
His caress so exquisite, so perfect, his chapped hand running over my breast, down my side, over my thigh, and that dizzying, deep, hungry kiss! The warmth and beauty of the place where our souls joined—
What am I doing?
I shoved him away again, and swam above the spell he’d wove, like fighting the Tides. “No! No! Gabel, stop! It’s the Bond’s song.”
This time his eyes focused on me and he heard what I was saying.
“Oh, Moon,” I breathed. “It’s instinct, Gabel. Stop!”
Wordlessly, he slid back to his side of the bed.
The Bond had gotten ahead of him—of both of us. I flipped over as well and slid down under the covers. This was not good. This was not good at all. I had heard about the Bond wanting feeding, that it wanted to be consummated and be complete, and it’d drive pairs to do just that. The Bond whined under my anxiety, and the flushed hunger between my thighs pestered me.
Neither of us slept much that night.
In my scrying room, I turned my attention to his question: Anders.
I selected my runes with care: protection, inquiry, pack. I hesitated over the one I had chosen the first time: traitor. Gabel hadn’t asked if Anders was loyal, just if he was moving against him. Having met Anders, traitor might have been too cut and dry.
Wisdom held Oracles should choose runes that offered the most narrow focus. They were guides and anchors on the Tides.
But if Anders truly believed he was working for the good of his pack, or IronMoon, or the wolves as a species, then he might not have been a traitor. He likely was doing things Gabel wouldn’t have approved of, but hadn’t committed treason... not in his own mind, at least.
Oracles avoided truth for the same reason. Truth and facts weren’t always the same thing.
I sighed and pawed through my runes. I preferred my other set, but this one was the bigger of the two. I’d told the stone-carver who had made this set that I wanted every rune possible, and I’d ended up with some spectacularly useless runes like waterfall and leather. I discarded duty and justice and loyalty as not right, but balance caught my eye. One of those archaic runes nobody had ever found a consistent use for.
Balance could mean literal balance, figurative balance, service, or justice. Everything in its place. The point on which light and dark turned.
And that was the reason nobody ever used it: its meaning was clear as mud.
But for my purposes it seemed like a good nexus point between duty, justice, vow, loyalty, alpha, and traitor.
I cast the rune into the bowl.
The ripples of water pulled me toward them, into them, passing through watery curtains into the Tides.
* * *
~*~ The Vision In The Bowl ~*~
* * *
I saw myself.
I immediately startled. The Tides sloshed around me. I caught my reaction and forced my mind to settle and still. Drift with the Currents until things became more clear.
But I still saw myself.
The watery curtains evaporated, and the rest of the vision came into focus. I stood on a large, old, stone platform overlooking mountainous jungles. The rocks were smooth and softened with age. Moss had taken over the grooves between stones, and tendrils of vines crept up from the edges.
The sky hung dark and grey, the air humid, and the wind constant. I couldn’t see anything below except the tops of trees. The sides of the platform angled outward, with a set of stone stairs carved into each face of the rectangular-shaped structure.
Some kind of pyramid, then. With the pointed top shorn off to this flat expanse.
The other me stood off on the eastern-pointing side, wrapped in sheer white fabric that fluttered in the breeze. Around her—my?—neck were loop after loop of a necklace. I crept closer. The necklace was made entirely of fangs, one after the other, tied at the widest part by a loop in a single long, thin piece of twine. The tail of the twine ran down her back and off the edge of the structure to the forest below.
At her feet were three of my runes: balance, courage and love. Several runes translated to some type of love. This one was love of pack and family, the love of the living whole. Not romantic love or parental love.
A snuffling sound got my attention. In the center of the platform were two wolves, sniffing the stones. They were oddly unaware of each other. One was Gabel, one was a smoky grey stranger.
Beyond them, on the western edge of the platform, were two men. I couldn’t quite see but knew one was Alpha Anders, still wearing his collars, and the other dressed in a long, hooded cloak of a nondescript shade of grey.
To my right was a small raised platform, well-worn and abused. On it sat Hix. His wolf form was large and dark, black as ink, and his fur ruffled in the breeze. His amber eyes were riveted to Gabel and the wolf beside him.
I followed his gaze and looked at what Gabel and the unknown wolf were sniffing.
Flint’s dead body.
The Tide churned as I swallowed down a scream.
Flint. His body a bright, tawny-gold spot on the cold stones.
Gabel looked up. His skin had blackened and shrunk against his skull like a corpse baked by sunlight. He had no eyes. Just traces of ears and his lips long gone, so his fangs gleamed in the dull light.
I almost screamed again, then realized his gaze went beyond me to the other me. The me that was... not me? But it was me. I looked back at myself. No, at her.
I yanked my attention back to Flint’s body. The tattoo marked with the sacred rune to the Moon’s service shone upwards to the dead sky. He had been dead for a long, long time, but his body had not decomposed.
“Flint.” I whispered his name, tears on my eyes.
No obvious injuries, simply dead.
I couldn’t get distracted. I needed to hear what Anders and the other man were saying.
Was that a human Anders was talking to? I couldn’t be sure. But if Anders had betrayed us to a human, that should have shown up the first time I had asked this question.
The man in the cloak slipped away down the side of the structure before I got halfway there. Anders shifted into a wolf and headed along the long side of the structure. He slunk along the edge, head twisted toward Gabel and the grey wolf.
Gabel moved his death’s head from watching the other me, and both wolves froze. Gabel snarled. The sound rasped and rattled in his throat.
Flint jumped up.
He shook himself from nose to tail, threw his head back, and howled the song of greeting to the Moon. His fur seemed to shine. My heart lifted within the vision. Then he sang another song I had never heard, but thanks to the vision, I knew: the ancient call crying a female leader to battle.
Flint snapped at the unknown grey wolf, then Gabel. Gabel whirled and growled, snapping at Flint’s muzzle to silence him. Flint spun out of the way and bounded off across the stone plateau. Gabel sprang after him, howling a Hunt on Flint.
Hix jumped up on all fours, his amber eyes on Flint and his canine face hopeful. Gabel howled, but Hix didn’t move. Flint came up to Anders, snapped and swiped at the Alpha, then sang the female’s battle cry once more. He leapt in the air, head back, tail arched, more like a joyful spring, and sprinted downed the stairs. His song filled the sky.
Pebbles bounced down the long stairway into the jungle, but Flint was gone. Only his song remained. It bounced off the treetops like a bell tolling the hours.
Gabel’s snarls spun me around again. Now he and the strange wolf fought over the same spot where Flint had
lain, and Anders urged them on with a puppy’s excited barks.
Then I realized I was no longer there at all.
The Nightmare of His Touch
The Tides held me for two days. My nameless goons kept everyone from barging in. This had included enlisting Flint to impress upon Gabel that if he disturbed me during a vision, I might die.
Die might have been an exaggeration... sorta.
I half-crawled out of my room, head searing with pain, and my body bent from being still so long.
Flint stood guard with my goons. I stared up at him, brain replaying his song and the vision of him leaping in a joyful golden arc down the side of the structure.
“Lady Gianna,” he stated as I collapsed into an undignified pile. My goons made some helpless noises. “I see you are back.”
I stared up at him, mumbling and drooling.
Big hands slid between me and the floor. Flint scooped me up as though I were nothing. “Alpha Gabel will be relieved.”
“Does he still have his balls?” I mumbled as Flint carried me down the hallway. My brain swam and sloshed.
“I have no reason to think they have been removed.”
The other wolf. Who had been the other wolf? I moaned and tried to escape Flint’s arms. Where the hell was I going to go? I just had to...
Flint carried me to the second floor, to the room where I had spent my first night. I realized right away this was not the usual bed. Anxiety rattled my mind.
The connection of our souls twisted and gnawed. I should not be separate from him. I should not be here.
I whimpered as Flint set me down.
A punishingly jealous thought burned up from the depths: Platinum. Was she in in my bed with my BondMate? The slut! The bastard!
I whimpered again. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to feel it. The voice that I loathed. It wasn’t fair or just or balanced. Faithless mongrel, let him have that whore and any others...
I fell asleep to Flint’s song.
Most think riding the Tides is trivial. I have even heard some claim that Oracles feign their swooning dramatics to play to an audience.
If only.
Gabel waited impatiently for his answer.
When I finally woke up on the third morning my thoughts turned to what I’d tell him.
It had been his question, but the answer was complicated and not intended only for him. Me appearing in my own vision? Oracles couldn’t scry for themselves, so they never saw themselves.
This had been no small vision. Three days was at the outer limits. The body started to wither after that. I already had large, deep bruises from kneeling. The top of my feet had turned to sores from the pressure. My muscles still ached.
I took the last piece of bacon from my breakfast tray and went downstairs.
Wolves in collars, wolves in the basement, wolves in my head.
I rubbed my arm. It ached and throbbed.
Gabel had to know I was awake now. Nothing happened in this house without him knowing.
I indulged myself in some bitter discontent.
“Buttercup.”
My skin went hot, then cold. I turned, half afraid to look. I expected to see a deaths-head wolf attached to the voice.
But it was just Gabel, handsome and normal. He was alone, dripping sweat, and barely dressed, freshly come in from training in the summer heat.
“You are back.” He held the ends of a towel looped behind his neck. A dirty kilt hung low and haphazard across his hips.
My brain stumbled under the memory of that body pressed against mine.
“Enjoying the view?”
His body was marked with bruises and scratches that wept blood. He enjoyed pain, he relished every scratch and mark. I understood more than I had ever wanted to about pain.
I ignored his comment. He knew the answer. He hadn’t even asked how his Oracle had fared. I doubted Gabel could even feel those gentler emotions. Perhaps he could, and he didn’t know how to act.
Perhaps the absence of malevolence was as cuddly as he got.
“Come, talk to me while I shower.”
I followed him back upstairs, admiring the muscles of the small of his back as he walked ahead of me. I hated myself for doing it.
I prepared myself for Platinum’s scent to assault my nose upon entering our room.
“Oh, I slept very much alone while you were indisposed.” He tossed the towel casually over the bed’s footboard.
“I wasn’t thinking of her,” I said.
“Of course you were. I can sense when she passes your mind.” A pause, then he added, “Now that I’m listening.”
“Listening?” I echoed without thought.
He pulled off his kilt and tossed it aside.
“I know you’re territorial. Don’t hide it. You can’t.”
I ignored the barb and sank down on my side of the bed. My mind still swam on the Tides.
“It isn’t like I’d want a Queen without her pride.”
He needed to shut up and stop poking me. “So you test it just to make sure I have enough spine to suit you?”
“Perhaps.”
“Stop stroking your ego, Gabel.” I was not in the mood for this. “I have enough Queenly pride to expect my King to have the manners to ask how his Oracle is feeling.”
“Obviously you’re fine.” Gabel gestured to me. “You don’t like anyone fussing over you. So I’m not fussing. Flint told me to stay away. So I stayed away.”
I rolled my eyes and muttered something about having a headache. More like a brainache. My brain needed to stop swinging in the hammock it’d set up in my skull.
“What did you see on the Tides?” he asked with an easy charm that I might have found beguiling under different circumstances.
“Anders is still wearing his collars.” I skipped to the part of the vision that I was sure I could reveal to him. “This time he was in human form, and I saw him speaking to a cloaked man. The man didn’t hold a leash or touch him. I didn’t see his face, and I didn’t hear the conversation.”
“No hands on the collars? No movement? Nothing?”
I shook my head. “Nothing useful. I only know it was a man.”
“Were they arguing or agreeing?”
“I couldn’t tell. They seemed to be just talking.”
“But he is working with someone.” Gabel felt along his jaw. He hadn’t shaven yet.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that’s what made it his vision and not mine. How much more should I tell him? “It’s your vision. It didn’t seem to be a passing conversation. However—”
“However?”
“Sometimes in visions a cloaked person can be the person’s internal self, and it represents being conflicted.”
“Good enough.”
Should I tell him the rest? I had never withheld a vision before. I had never even considered doing so until now.
“Problem?” Gabel asked.
“Just pondering.”
“So you have no opinion.”
“It was your vision.” I felt helpless.
Gabel went to shower, and I sagged onto the bed.
Dealing with Gabel was exhausting.
Jealousy pricked me again. I didn’t really believe he had been alone. He had toyed me with me too many other times. I slowly brought the pillow to my face and inhaled.
Nothing but Gabel’s scent. Not a trace of Platinum or anyone else.
I inhaled again, just to be sure, but nothing. Not even a whiff.
I sobbed once. I was tired and weary. My Mark ached, and my head hurt. It was worse that Gabel hadn’t had a whore in our bed, because now I couldn’t even be angry at him.
Instinct wanted me to love him, to trust him, to accept him, surrender to him. He was part of my soul, now. The instant I surrendered he’d crush my heart in his paw to prove that he could, and the Bond would never defeat him.
Profound sadness washed over me.
“Buttercup.”
&nbs
p; I wiped my face and turned. Gabel stood with towel in hand, dripping water all over the floor, naked and glorious.
My eyes went south. Yes, his balls were still attached.
“Naughty, naughty, buttercup,” he scolded me, but his tone rubbed me all over, painful but exquisite. “Here I thought you were upset, but all you wanted to do was lure me out here to oggle me.”
“I did not!” Anger filled my energy reserves. How dare he mock my sadness. And how dare I be so easily distracted. I fumed at the cursed Bond.
“You can look, buttercup.” He strode closer. “I don’t mind. And to think how you squealed at first.”
“I never said you weren’t worth looking at.”
“True, true.” His smugness eroded as I pawed at a stray tear. I turned so he wouldn’t see my tears and told him, “Finish your shower.”
I ignored the vague sense of confusion from him. He didn’t even know why he was there. He felt my sadness, and his soul whispered to him to be near me and fix the problem. He didn’t understand sadness except that it was something he inflicted upon others.
Gabel lingered, brewing in his own confusion.
If he softened would I fall in love with him? Did I dare trust him?
“Are you still... sick, buttercup?” His tone sounded like the words all had a foreign taste to them.
“No. I’m just tired.”
“Are you sure?”
My mind hurt. Something floated to the surface. “Gabel.”
“Yes?”
“What happened to the wolves? The ones who ran. And the ones who didn’t.”
“They are not worth you caring about.”
I half-agreed, but I still wanted to know their fate. “I like what knowing what’s in my basement.”
“Your basement?” He moved closer. “Well then, my Lady, the one with the broken leg succumbed two days ago. His companion will join him soon. The other four are below, as I was awaiting your return to question them.”
By that he meant how much they would suffer before they died.
“There is no rush to punishment.” He moved closer.
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