Engraven

by Lila Felix

I huffed out a heavily irked breath, flouncing down onto my belly for a bit of rest, while still keeping my ears open and my senses ready.

  She wasn’t in the woods or near the swamp.

  I would’ve been able to smell her in an instant.

  I stretched out, scratching at the tree trunk in front of me, sharpening my claws. That’s what my life felt like of late—prepping for something unseen and unknown. Sharpening my claws for an enemy unknown.

  I rolled over onto my back and stared at the moon. This was to be my life, I was afraid—always waiting for something to happen.

  Taking notice of the moon’s position, I knew I had time for just one more loop around the pack’s lands before Rev came to relieve me.

  The night was a bust—no cinnamon in sight. I’d taken to calling her cinnamon since mentally calling her my almost mate was exhausting, not to mention infuriating.

  I wanted her—now.

  “How many rounds did you make?” Rev asked between yawns. He was carrying three of those little all-night energy drinks and downs them one by one.

  “Those things are gonna kill you.” I remarked. He needed to discover coffee and quick.

  “They would kill me, but if I drink them and shift fast enough, I’m golden.”

  He tore off his shorts and before I could turn away, he was down on all fours, his ears had already elongated and rounded into black bear ears.

  “Have fun. See you tomorrow for work.”

  And then Rev did the most out of character thing I’d ever seen.

  He saluted me—with his paw.

  All smartassy-like.

  Maybe there was hope for him after all.

  Dahlia

  I hated it when my sisters looked at me like that.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. We are bears after all.”

  “Shh!” Acacia put her finger over my lips. It was soft, unlike mine. This was only the second time I’d been home in a week. That’s what Thanksgiving break was for, for me—staying in the woods.

  Also, most nights and the days when I skipped school.

  “What? You think someone’s waiting outside to hunt us down on the off chance I will verbally commit that I’m a bear. I’m a bear!” I shouted.

  “We can all tell. You’re the one who comes in with pine straw in their hair.”

  “Just get it out. I have to go back to school tomorrow.”

  Acacia picked at the straw pieces like they were lice and threw each one into the trashcan separately. “You need a shower—or three.”

  I rolled my eyes at her in the mirror. I had six sisters and all of them were anti-woods and anti-swamp. They only shifted when their bears just wouldn’t be kept caged anymore and even then they didn’t swim or eat rabbits. They shifted. They ran a mile or so. They shifted back.

  Nine times out of ten, I would prefer to be in my bear form—or at least around other shifters.

  We didn’t live in a pack like other bears. My father had left his pack a long time ago and now we were trained since birth to be anti-conformist shifters.

  We kept to ourselves and we didn’t socialize with other shifters unless we had to. The clerk at the grocery store was some kind of cat shifter. Felines could be smelled instantly. Mostly, they smelled like urine.

  I wasn’t judging, just stating the facts.

  Acacia finishes grooming me and sends me off to the shower with a shove. I supposed she had some stake in how I smelled since we’ve shared a room since we were babies.

  I was only in the shower a few seconds when a bottle gets shoved through the curtain. It was her again, making sure I wash myself with whatever new fruity shit she’s picked up on one of her smell sprees. That was what I called them. She finds some super sale and buys the place out.

  “What’s the flavor of the month?” I asked. She was still I the bathroom. The girl had no sense of privacy. None of us really did. When you live in a house with eight other people, bathroom privacy entitlement doesn’t exist.

  “Honeysuckle. I figured you’d appreciate something found out—there.”

  She said out there like it was hell.

  “Thanks!”

  “Dad’s been wanting to talk to you. Something about your grades.”

  “Why is he worried about my grades? They are fine. I have finals next week.”

  “I don’t know. I think he’s worried about you spending all that time in the woods. While you’re gone, he spends the whole time looking out the window. I don’t know, Lia, he’s been kinda cooky lately—not sure what’s going on.”

  With my hair full of suds, I stuck my head out of the shower to see her face. “He’s just afraid I’ll come home with a male.”

  She put her hairbrush down and met my eyes in the steaming mirror. She adhered to the one hundred brush strokes recipe for gorgeous hair. She was Marsha and I was Jan. My hair was lucky if I put a hairbrush through it once a day.

  “How are we supposed to be mated when Dad encourages us to keep to ourselves? We’ll all be single and old by the time we find a mate.”

  She did air quotes when saying ‘encourages’. Dad met Mom in a stroke of luck, while out on a run. She didn’t belong to a pack either, having been burned just like him.

  It was the mating bond that enflamed their courtship, but it was their rebellious nature that kept them together.

  “You could get some cats and brush your hair until you die.” I said, laughing. I pulled my head back into the shower just in time to dart an incoming hairband, flicked at me in false anger.

  “You’re the oldest. Maybe you could talk to him.”

  “You know what he’ll say. He’ll come around someday.”

  “We are our own pack. We make the rules.” Acacia mocked my father while shutting the door to the bathroom, finally leaving me alone.

  I finished up in the bathroom to find that Acacia had gone to a friend’s house to study. I knew better than that, but my parents didn’t. She went to her friends’ house to look at pictures of boys. It was ridiculous.

  I didn’t do that when I was eighteen. I was too busy in the swamps, enjoying being me.

  Even at twenty, I wasn’t worried about finding my mate. I knew where he was. I was just not ready to be tied down to anything yet.

  I was still too wild for a mate—too free—too uninhibited.

  I’d heard how these males are. They wanted you to stick to a certain set of pack rules.

  I abhorred authority—not even my parents were successful in telling me what to do.

  I was constantly in trouble for something—everything.

  After getting dressed, I pulled a wide-toothed comb through my long reddish-brown hair and went to face my father. He was an artist, so he was available anytime if I needed him. My mother was a freelance photographer, so they were both available to us at all times.

  “Hey Dad,” I said, poking my head into his studio which was connected to the house. At one time it had been the garage.

  “Dahlia, you’re finally home.” The disapproval in his tone was unabridged, leaving me no room to misunderstand what this conversation was going to be about.

  “It wasn’t that long, Dad.” To butter him up a little, I grabbed some brushes that were soaking and cleaned them, setting them up by size like he preferred. He painted mostly landscapes for law firms and banks, which he hated.

  But it paid the bills. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him paint many of those lately. He must’ve been selling more of his original work.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to run wild. It’s good for you. I’m just concerned about how close you get to that clan’s lands. It’s too close. What if they decide you’re a threat and attack you?”

  “I doubt they’ll do that, Dad.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  He stopped painting with that question. I thought maybe he already knew the answer by the way he scowled.

  “I can smell him there, Dad. I know it’s him.”

  T
he paintbrush fell from his hand and I watched the residual pain splatter onto his flip-flop clad feet. He wore flip-flops even in the winter—the hippie.

  “You haven’t approached him?”

  “No. I’m not ready.”

  “Why? I was already mated by the time I was your age. What are you afraid of?”

  “Afraid of? Oh, I don’t know. Everything you’ve ever taught us about clans and Alphas and shifters in general. They make senseless rules and expect everyone to conform to their ways. They’re hateful and judgmental. The Alphas are barbarians and the women are subservient females who have to obey.”

  It was one of his spiels, verbatim.

  I watched on as the color in his face slowly drained away. It tore me up to be the one to throw his teachings back in his face but he’d also taught me not to back down when I knew when something was right—and to question everything.

  So there I was—questioning him.

  “How long do you plan to wait? I want grandchildren while I can still play with them.”

  I shrugged and finished up cleaning the brushes. I didn’t have an answer to give him.

  “Maybe he’s different.”

  “And maybe he’s the same. I wish there was a way to get to know him before looking him in the eye.”

  The man, who looked years older now, stroked his ever-growing beard and looked to the window. He’d been doing that a lot—at least when I’d been home—staring out that window. Our house was more of a cottage than the typical suburban home. We lived on the outskirts of the Lafourche Clan lands—between that clan and the Bobcat Clan. My dad always claimed the scent of the Bobcats stopped the Lafourche clan from staking claim over the lands. Our house was perched on unnamed territory.

  My dad had once been a part of a black bear clan in Arkansas. It was during the time of Matthias, the Alpha over all the black bears. There were rumors that things were changing now that Hawke, his son, had taken over, but just to be safe, we continued to stay away.

  Besides, it was a lot more than an Alpha that made me weary of clans.

  “My darling girl, that’s the way you get to know him. Only through forging your connection will you truly get to know the man beneath the fur.”

  “Since when are you encouraging a mating?”

  “Since time is fleeting—it goes on without our permission.”

  Wow.

  I crumbled, sitting down on the floor with a flop, my maxi skirt flowing out around me and my twenty or so bangles clanging up a small symphony.

  “Dad, all you’ve ever taught us is to be wary of clans and now you’re telling me to hunt down my mate—in a clan? I can’t deal with this. Anyway, Acacia told me that you wanted to talk about school. Mating is not school. I’d rather talk about school.”

  “Your grades are good. Mama showed me some of your stuff. Are you ready for finals?”

  Maybe I should’ve suggested going back to the mating topic.

  “I have some minor cramming to do.”

  “Oh, so you weren’t studying in the trees?”

  I was studying, but not books. I’d spent all that time there and could get close enough to know his name. It was such a small detail in the scheme of things, but I craved that knowledge.

  “Hardly.”

  I raised my arms above my head and crossed them, using them as a pillow while I watched him work for a few hours. His patterns weren’t the same. He swished when he used to glide. The paint splattered instead of landing gracefully. But what did I know? That could’ve been his process and I’d missed it all this time.

  We used to do this when I was little, he would paint and I would stare, daydreaming about boys and dresses and all the things little girls pre-plan in their hopeful heads.

  We were homeschooled most of our lives. I got my G.E.D. at sixteen and now at twenty, I was one semester away from graduating with a degree in social services.

  Ultimately, I wanted to be a social worker for shifters.

  Shifters go through shit too.

  “What’s all this? Are we having a painting sit-in today?” My mother’s voice lulled through the room like the wind. I could see the reflection of her brightly-colored jumpsuit in the window.

  “Yes. We are.”

  “Dahlia, you want to help me with dinner?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I may be wild on the surface, but I retained my manners. My flowing skirt followed hers into the kitchen. My other sisters were scattered throughout the house making noise and playing music as loud as they could without getting into trouble.

  “What are we having?”

  “Gumbo. It’s a gumbo kind of day, don’t you think?”

  The colder nights always prompted my mom to make a big soup and tonight was gumbo. Of course, she’d gathered the shrimp herself. And the venison in the sausage was another one of her prized kills.

  “Don’t make me devein the shrimp, Mom.”

  “Fine. You chop the sausage and the vegetables. I’ll do the dirty work even though this meal is courtesy of my fine hunting and gathering skills.”

  “She bought them at the guy that sells them from an ice chest on the corner, D.”

  “Mom!”

  “Shut your mouth, Acacia. I did not. That man is shady.” The banter between Acacia and my mom was always amusing. Acacia was the perfect mix of amiable and cheerful. And, much to our parents’ chagrin, she was practically a professional shopper just like Acacia.

  The woman from whom I’d gotten most of my features grumbled something about seafood from the side of the road being questionable. While she flitted through the kitchen, I watched her every movement. She was everything I wanted to be one day. She had the grace of a dancer, the tongue of a saint, and hair as black and straight as a Raven’s feathers.

  Nothing like mine, though each of us professed envy at the other one’s hair. My hair was the only brown hair in the family. In the sun, red highlights glittered in between the curls and tangles. Acacia could make it look nice and not so unruly, but that would require letting her fix my hair at six in the morning and that wasn’t happening.

  My mom firmly suggested I go and study while the gumbo simmered. I agreed, but hated the thought of looking outside from my window instead of seeing the world from the top of a tree.

  My desk faced the window and as I opened my child psychology book and groaned, I couldn’t help but stare out into the swamps that surrounded our house. I loved to open the windows at night and listen to the sounds of the swamp, the gentle wallop of bubbling catfish, the ticking of the woodpecker drilling himself a hole in which to feast in, and the winds. Those winds had been my friends of late. They carried the smells that I called home.

  They carried the scent of the male I knew was mine.

  Tarrow

  If the Alpha was tired now, I couldn’t imagine how he would cope when the baby came. Echo was now almost nine months along and could barely carry herself around. Of course, that didn’t stop her. She’d insisted on finishing out the semester, pregnancy and all, but the responsibility of being the Coeur, plus the baby coming was putting too much stress on her.

  “It should be quick. I just have to give these papers to the admissions office so she can take an incomplete. That way, it won’t look like she failed.”

  “I’ve never been to the college. Maybe I’ll pick up some information while I’m there.”

  Hawke chuckled and if he weren’t the Alpha, I would’ve been pissed off.

  “Is it funny?”

  “No, it’s just about time. I didn’t know if you wanted to go or not. I know your mom has said something about you going to school when she comes over to visit Echo.”

  “Oh. I can’t leave her yet.”

  That warranted another chuckle. He thought I couldn’t leave her because I was some kind of mama’s boy. Whatever he wanted to think was fine. I wasn’t going to get any respect one way or the other.

  “What’s the matter with you? I can sense your aggravation all the way over here.
”

  He said all the way over here like it was a mile away. Of course he could feel my anger. We were in the cab of his truck.

  “Nothing.”

  We were on the interstate in no time, on our way to the small college. There were four year degrees available, but Echo had chosen a two-year degree in business management. That’s basically what she did, manage our unruly asses.

  And she did it well.

  We got to the college and parked on the street. The rest of the parking was reserved for student and faculty—at least what we saw.

  I walked into the admissions office behind the Alpha, my rightful place. While he talked to whoever was behind the desk, I picked at pamphlets and course catalogs, pretending that one day I would actually be able to attend.

  “Tarrow, I forgot one page. It’s the note from the midwife. Can you hold these and wait here? This lady is helping me.”

  I looked up to greet the person who was helping the Alpha.

  The papers all fell from my hands and the ceiling spun while the lazy ceiling fan blades seemed to still with the air.

  Amber irises locked with mine as my heartbeat arrested, having me clawing at my chest in desperation for the blood pumping sensation to return. No breaths were to be had as my first thought drifted into the air, thanking the Creator for chance encounters that weren’t so chance at all.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and I reached out to quell them over the counter that separated us, but she backed away, our heartbeats suddenly beginning again—in time—mine perfectly matching the rhythm of hers.

  Scared—shocked—embarrassed—nervous—joyous. I collected her feelings like lightning bugs in a jar, one by one.

  The surge of emotions from her strangled me, arresting my own feelings in place. Hers were ten-fold more important than mine and so, my bear pushed them aside and clawed at my insides, demanding that I touch her and console her the way only a mate could.

  My eyes ticked to the side as I heard a gasp from one of the people in the room. I didn’t know if they knew what was happening or they thought I was merely having some kind of cardiac arrest.

  We needed privacy.

  This shouldn’t be happening, here. I should’ve gone after her like Rev said.

  “May I speak to you privately?” I asked her. Her. I didn’t even know the name of my mate.