The Alpha's Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  He snarled back, barking and chasing her away. Their casual fun had conceived pups, and the Seer was not his mate, and he did not want her, or the pups she carried. They were young wolves. He was a male of prestige that had had his fun and now wanted nothing to do with the consequences, especially not a litter of ill-conceived lupines. He couldn’t afford it and was in a position to make sure she didn’t make him pay.

  When she growled and tried to pass him as if to return to the pack and force him to do the right thing, he raked his teeth across her belly and his claws across her Seer rune.

  She fled into the forest, and the grey turned back toward home, the secret forgotten and buried.

  The bowl-pool’s silver surface quivered, then the silver shifted into a half-crescent shape, spinning around the perimeter of the bowl. It waxed and waned from new to full as if it were the moon itself, and the balance rune vibrated in rage.

  The obsidian bowl-pond’s surface shimmered a final time, the silver film pulling back like a membrane across an eye, and the water pushed into the center and formed into stairs leading down to the bottom.

  There couldn’t be much more of an invitation than that: stairs that would lead me back to my world, back to my life, to the IronMoon, to Gabel.

  Dreams of Silver and Sable

  The watery step shifted a little under my weight. I took the next and the next, and kept going down into the bowl that seemed to have no bottom. When I looked up the sky was gone, and there was only darkness.

  Oh shit.

  The silence hurt. The emptiness hurt. It hurt the way the basement hurt.

  A hundred thoughts crowded into my mind to keep me company, but I shoved them all away. I had to focus on what was real, and my goal: which was to keep moving down these watery steps.

  A pin prick of light ahead of me grew with each step, and I could finally make out the mouth of a cave that opened onto a forest.

  I burst through it.

  There was no cave behind me.

  I was back in the forest, the same one I had seen before, and at the other side of the little clearing was a ramshackle old shed, gutted and decaying under weather and years.

  Anita’s vision. My vision.

  No scents on the trees, no markings, no paths, and nothing to indicate anyone had ever been here, or if this was a place within the physical world at all. I approached the ruins with caution, looking for any clues of civilization: a garden bed, garbage, anything.

  There was nothing.

  The door fell open when I touched it, exposing the ruined interior I had seen before. The box was where it had been before and contained the same ring.

  A ruined house, and a ramshackle, blasted ring.

  In the back of the shack was a door.

  The smells came to me first, the vivid, subtle shape of the world that told me I was in wolf form.

  I rolled onto my chest and instantly regretted it. My chest ached. My whole body ached, worse than Flint beating me up, falling down the stairs, and then being run over by a herd of angry rhinos. My brain sloshed in my skull, my eyes wandered in various directions, and my head wobbled back and forth.

  I fell over onto my other side and whimpered.

  A form blotted out the daylight, and a snout pushed into my ruff.

  Gabel stood over me, also in wolf form, and there was nothing comforting about his leathery-hided, oily-furred body nuzzling me.

  I struggled to right myself, but my limbs weren’t obeying me just yet.

  “You are awake,” he observed, peering down at me.

  I moved my eyes in my skull. My workroom. I was in my workroom, laying on my rug, and I was in wolf form. So was Gabel.

  What the hell had happened?

  The question caused a flood to crash from the back of my mind to the front. I closed my eyes and went limp on the rug, everything spinning until the memories and visions retreated from the shores of my mind.

  Gabel’s claws had shredded the carpet, and little bits clung between the pads.

  When the sea-sick feeling in my head abated, I rolled back to my chest. I wanted to be in human form. It was easier to talk that way, maybe it’d be easier to think without all these smells crowding my nose and noises in my ears.

  Gabel steadied me as I wobbled on two legs, not four, and pulled me back to my knees. “Slowly, buttercup.”

  “Why are you here?” I pawed at him, my fingers caught his strong shoulder. I wasn’t even sure where I was. It was all such a mess in my head.

  I knew I was back in my world, but—

  “Buttercup.” Gabel pushed me back down. “Hold still. It can wait. It’s been waiting for days.”

  I sank back down onto the rug. Gabel’s fingertips touched the bruises on my arms, touching each one in turn, his face far away. I felt far away, maybe I was even drooling. I don’t know. Then Gabel got up, went to retrieve a robe he had brought up to the room, and placed it over my shoulders. When I didn’t move, he pulled each of my arms through the sleeves and drew it around my waist. I watched him put on a pair of sweatpants. The holes on his thigh were still ugly and bruised. The slashes on his shoulder were still a little crusty and—

  “What...” My voice was hoarse and thin, and it hurt badly to talk. I looked at my arms. Battered and bruised.

  “Where did you go, buttercup?” Gabel placed his hand under mine, lifted it in his palm, and traced the outline of each bruise.

  “I—I don’t know.” I looked at my other arm, which was also bruised, and I pulled apart my robe. I was mottled all over, and I had a raw red welt under my left breast where balance had been in my vision. “Was I... gone? Not here?”

  “Your body was here, but you were not here,” Gabel said. “You were somewhere else. Where did you go?”

  “I... I don’t know.” My brain wobbled in my head.

  “I felt you slip away the morning after you returned from getting Ana. It is the afternoon of the second day. I was beginning to get worried.”

  “Beginning?” I wheezed a laugh. “Beginning?”

  Gabel game me an arrogant, little smile.

  It was so hard to think. I was so tired, and woozy.

  “Come, buttercup.” Gabel gathered me up in his arms. “I was afraid to move you from here, but now that you are back, you should sleep in a proper bed.”

  “I can walk.” I squirmed and swatted at him.

  “I have not had my hands on you in nearly three days. Let a man enjoy himself.”

  “Sick, Gabel, sick,” I mumbled.

  He chuckled.

  “Well, you are regular fucked up,” Ana said the next morning. Gabel had summoned her, and I woke up at dawn to her pulling back the blankets.

  “What are—” I pushed at her hands, still in a partial stupor.

  “So I guess this Oracle business isn’t total bullshit.” She lifted one of my arms and looked it up and down. “Wowee. Looks like you got dragged behind a truck over a dirt road. Except your skin is still attached. Okay, so you got dragged through a ball pit at high speeds. You know the ones at those kiddy play zoo places? Damn scary things.”

  “What are you talking about?” I whined.

  “I am totally a morning person. And you didn’t tell me I’d have an all-I-can-eat man-meat buffet around here. I thought there’d be some competition, but you’ve got a major population imbalance. It’s fish in a barrel, and they are packed in tight.”

  “All packs have more males than females,” Gabel said from the far wall.

  “Is that for a biological reason or something else? Like your veg there make more boys than girls?” She gestured at Gabel.

  “Considering I have never heard of a preference, I would guess it is biological.”

  “I am so gonna spin some down and find out.”

  “Spin some what?” I asked her.

  “Little swimmers. The girl ones are heavier than the boy ones, sink to the bottom if you put them in a centrifuge.” She made a twirling motion with her hand.

 
; I groaned.

  “I told you, morning person.”

  Gabel, however, leaned forward slightly, and asked with far too much interest, “Do they survive the spinning?”

  “Sure do.” She grinned at Gabel. “They sure do. Why? Sound like something you two are in the market for?”

  “Oh no,” I said, “Oh no, Gabel. No, no, no.”

  A coughing fit seized my raw, throat and I hacked a few times. All this craziness in my bedroom that morning, and I had only been awake two minutes. It felt like an ambush.

  “It’s not fair to tease you,” Ana said as I wobbled in bed. “Well, I’ll just have a look, not that I’m an especially good human doctor, and I don’t know a thing about Oracles who go off to la-la land with the Moon. But I guess I better pretend to do something for all that sweet, sweet cash you’re paying me with. So you can really see the future?”

  “Sometimes. This time I saw the past.”

  Despite her tone, she was gentle. She seemed more fascinated by my bruising than concerned. She finished by peering at the back of my throat. “There’s nothing serious here, except it’s ugly. Throat’s raw like you inhaled a lot of salt water or something.”

  Maybe I had.

  “So much excitement leading up to a wedding.” She tucked things back into her bag. “Ohhh, drama! Anyway, you’re fine. Sleep it off. Have him give you some massages, soak in salts, the usual.”

  Gabel closed the door after her. I closed my eyes for a minute. I was awake (oh, achingly awake), and the pack needed to see I was alive and in one piece. And also, my enemies needed to know (because. spies) I was alive and well and not easy pickings just now.

  “What are you doing?” Gabel asked as I sat up and moved my legs off the edge of the bed.

  “Getting up. Breakfast.” I wasn’t hungry. Gabel had made me eat some mushed up strawberries in the middle of the night, but a few mushed up berries verses several days of not eating was nothing. The idea of being in the noisy dining room at breakfast, though, did make my wobbly brain feel even more wobbly.

  “No,” Gabel said. “You should stay in bed.”

  I ignored him.

  Seeing I was determined, he grudgingly fetched some clothes out of the closet while I dragged myself into the bathroom.

  “Damn.” I pulled at my cheek. I looked like death warmed over: grey-pale, huge bags under my eyes—one eye was a real black eye—and I had scratches on my cheeks. Whatever had beaten up my body hadn’t spared my face.

  “We can eat breakfast in the sun room,” Gabel said.

  The sun room was a rarely-used room at the far end of the house, not far from Flint’s quarters. Sounded like a fair compromise to me. After looking at my face, maybe it was better the pack didn’t see me until the black eye had faded a bit. I didn’t want people to think Gabel had beaten the hell out of me, and I wasn’t prepared to talk about what had actually happened. It would also be quiet, which I needed just now. There was enough of an ocean rocking back and forth in my own skull.

  We passed Flint on his way to breakfast. “Lady Gianna.”

  Gabel nudged me down the hallway, and said to Flint, “We’ll be in the sun room for breakfast. Tell the pack.”

  It was very quiet. I waited at the little table against the windows, which gave me a look at the front of the property. Everything was still covered in snow. Gabel set my plate in front of me and took the chair opposite. The sun shone off the ocean-blue of his eyes, illuminating their depths like the blue-green hues of the tourmaline.

  I had to look away to the dawn light-tinged snow.

  He poured us both a cup of coffee.

  I didn’t touch mine. “You’re a lupine.”

  Gabel paused, bewildered by the sudden statement. “Yes.”

  It explained so much about Gabel. He had been born a wolf, raised as a wolf.

  I reached for my coffee and tried to figure out the next question that wouldn’t cause an explosion of his temper or the swirling mess in my head to drown me. It was like visions were still trying to crowd into my awareness. When my gifts had first started to awaken and develop it had been like that, things intruding into my mind and slamming into me like endless waves on a shore.

  He mistook my silence for disgust. “Does that bother you?”

  Compared to what had happened since I had arrived? “No.”

  His lips curled. “You are shocked. Don’t lie. Why? Lupines aren’t forbidden.”

  Not forbidden, but a very bad idea. The one lupine I had met before had been a twitchy, rabid wolf in a human body. No one had ever been sure what would set him off and what wouldn’t. Even our oldest texts warned of the difficulties lupines faced, and that the short-term benefits of birth numbers and faster maturity weren’t worth the risks.

  I wasn’t going to insult Gabel by saying “not a good idea,” or “they all end up crazy,” but even if I knew my litter would end up like him... was that a good idea? My instincts said it wasn’t, but it wasn’t an argument I wanted to have. How did you tell your mate that you valued him the way he was but didn’t want his children to be just like him?

  My heart hurt at the thought.

  Gabel expected me to say something.

  I fished around, and settled for, “They’re very rare.”

  “True,” Gabel agreed.

  Was even asking him how old he was rude? Had he been raised in a wolf pack, or a werewolf pack? Just him and his littermates? Wolves first shifted sometime around the very start of puberty, so for most lupines, that meant around a year to a year and a half. That would have made him (as a human) about ten to thirteen. At that point the accelerated aging of a lupine flipped to the human maturity curve.

  By now he could be maybe... fifteen or sixteen, by the human measure. I had never asked him how old he was. He looked mid twenties or so. For all I knew he could have been five hundred years old and an original King-Alpha and I’d have believed him at this point.

  In fact, that would explain everything and I laughed to myself.

  “What, buttercup?” Gabel asked.

  “Oh, just thinking,” I said. “About everything that’s been happening, and now this strange... vision, if that’s what it was. I was thinking you might tell me you are an original King-Alpha from five hundred years ago. Well preserved.”

  Gabel chuckled.

  “Are you?” Werewolves didn’t have supernatural lifespans. But Gabel? I was clearly messed up in some weird divine politics.

  “Not that I am aware of, but I will take that as a compliment.” His eyes were warm, pleased that I thought he had the bearing of a King-Alpha.

  “Well, I’d expect you’d have made a little more progress on being King by now if it were true.”

  “What have I told you about your ambitions? Patience, my Queen. Patience. I will bring you your crown.”

  The Bond prodded me with his teasing. “It’s not like I could convince you to settle for less.”

  “No, you could not,” Gabel agreed.

  “So how old are you?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe you and I have ever asked that of each other. I have been on this earth twenty-six years. Now I have a question.”

  I picked at my toast and decided it needed jelly. I fished through the small selection that had been set out and waited for him to speak.

  Gabel watched, noting every small movement and every bite I ate. When he spoke, there was restrained anger in his voice. “What were you doing scrying? You told me it was too dangerous without your bowls to protect you.”

  “I wasn’t.” His bristling anger poked me from within. “I was meditating. I can have visions while I meditate. I just—”

  “You were on the Tides.”

  “I know! I was just meditating over the tourmaline. I wasn’t trying to enter the Tides. It just... pulled me in and—” Suddenly I tasted salt water and heard nothing but the thunder of water rushing past me, and a force pulling me down. I dropped my toast.

  I bit my lower lip so hard m
y tooth sank past the skin, and blood bubbled up instantly.

  A drop hit my plate. I stared at it, then lifted my napkin to my lip.

  “Wherever you were, you were far away.” Gabel did not relent.

  “It was on the other side of the Tides.” It sounded like madness, because no such place existed.

  “The other side? You mean the next world? The land of the dead? Is that what is on the other side of the Tides?”

  “I... I don’t know.” I set my napkin down and looked at my battered arms. “I didn’t disappear, did I? My body was here?”

  Turbulence from Gabel, his face clouded, and his eyes chilled. “I felt you slip away. Where did you go?”

  “I told you I don’t know!” I gestured to my head. Just when I thought I had made sense of everything, it sloshed around, and I realized there were pieces still missing. “I washed up on this shore, and there was a scrying bowl, a huge pond that was a bowl, and there was a film on the top that moved like... the Moon, and there were two wolves. A high prestige male, and a Seer female, and he bred her, and then chased her away and...”

  I stopped, my mind sloshing, and as it slowed, I focused on Gabel. The expression on his face was indescribable.

  By the Moon.

  He knew this story. He knew it because—

  “It was your mother. I saw your conception.”

  Gabel’s eyes narrowed a tiny fraction. “It sounds like what she told me. She was a tawny wolf and a Seer. She never told me of my father except that he had driven her away.”

  The warning note in Gabel’s voice and the coiling within the Bond warned me off like the rattling of a viper’s tail. I took a bite of my toast instead. “That is how you knew so much about Oracles.”

  Gabel nodded.

  I gulped down some toast. “Have you ever met your father?”

  “No. My mother never spoke about him, or her life before.”

  The memory of what I had seen crowded back into my head, and I fought off another wave of wooziness. I rested my elbows on the table and put my head into my hands.