by Bonnie Vanak
His decision was no longer a matter of simple duty in teaching a new wizard to guide and judge dragons. It was teaching a wizard who could help save thousands of lives.
If Nikita chose to remain mortal, he would have less time to spend with her on Earth.
Danu looked grave as she closed her palm. “Dark times are coming for OtherWorlders, indeed, and all must be prepared. It is so, and the dragons shall need a good, just guardian to unite them as one force to defeat evil.”
“Their magick is most powerful,” Caderyn murmured, and Tristan knew then that the Shadow Wizard’s vote had been cast only because of this reason.
With a little nod of her head, the goddess dismissed Gideon, Caderyn and Xavier. But she beckoned for Tristan to stay. He remained at the table, watching her with a guarded look.
One never knew what the goddess wanted…
“Tristan, of all my wizards, your heart needs mending the most. This is why I granted your request when you ascended to being the Silver Wizard. But beware, Tristan.” Danu folded her hands on the table. “Do not interfere with Nikita’s fate, for you will suffer the consequences.”
“My lady.” Tristan bowed his head and the goddess vanished.
He went outside into the bright sunshine, a great weight settling on his heart. He missed Nikita dreadfully and it was not even hours that they had been apart.
How was he to endure life without her?
Chapter 19
One day to make up her mind. Love or family?
Freedom and adventure, or a life with Tristan and the family she’d been denied in her last life.
Time had proven elusive and fleeting in Tir Na-nog, and here on Earth, she knew it would pass all too soon
Niki closed her eyes, longing to hold onto the last image of Tristan. She felt a gentle breeze touch her cheeks, ruffle her hair.
When she opened her eyes, she realized she was back before the pond that had been a portal to the afterworld. It seemed so very long ago when Tristan had brought her here.
Weeping, she sank to the grass and buried her face into her hands. A shiver raced down her spine. Niki raised her head.
She was nude. Tristan had warned she must arrive back on Earth as naked as the day she’d entered it.
And then her sharpened Lupine senses detected the scent of a familiar, dear wolf. Hastily she wiped her eyes and turned her head.
A mirror image of herself raced toward her. Niki stood as her twin collided with her and then wrapped her arms around her waist. She closed her eyes again and relief filled her.
“Niki, oh, thank the goddess you’re alive, and well.” Nia hugged her tightly and then released her, scanning her face with obvious anxiety. “He didn’t turn you into a pumpkin or make you do weird things?”
Flushing at the thought of the things they had done together—things that one could not share with a beloved sister—she shook her head.
Aiden, her twin’s mate, approached with a blanket. Aware of her nudity, she covered her breasts with her hands. But he averted his gaze and only draped the blanket over her shoulders.
“I was told you’d need this.” He gently kissed her cheek. “Are you ok, Niki?”
She nodded and clutched the blanket close. “Who told you? Tristan?”
“No. We got a message from Gideon, the Crimson Wizard, that we’d find you here.” Aiden rubbed a hand over his smooth chin. “He told us to bring you warm clothing, and then let you rest after you had a big meal. No shifting for twenty-four hours.”
“Scary guy,” Nia murmured. Then her twin gave her a long, thorough look. “You okay, Niki? You look like you’ve been through hell.”
“I have. The real thing. Well, almost.” Not wishing to fret her sister, she hugged her again. “But I’ll be fine now.”
Just a-okay, even though my heart is broken because I have to decide between freedom as a mortal and having you in my life, or returning forever to Tristan as an immortal and being imprisoned in Tir Na-nog, as sweet as that afterworld is. I know what a prison is like. It can be a basement apartment with all the luxuries you gave me, or a heavenly afterworld where all my dreams can come true. But I’m forbidden to leave, so it’s still a prison.
Here, I’m finally free from that coffin of a basement and I no longer have to hide as a shadow.
But I love Tristan and if I remain here, he’ll become the shadow in my life, and that of our child’s. How can I choose?
She looked around. “It feels as if I’ve been gone forever. Longer than a week.”
Nia wrinkled her nose. “A week? Try two months.”
Two months! But Tristan mentioned time was different in the afterworld.
Aiden gave her an even more critical look. “You’ve changed, Niki.”
Then he exchanged a glance with his mate. “I’ll get the golf cart.”
“I’m not crippled. I can walk,” she protested.
But as she started to accompany her twin along the pathway leading from the pond, her legs shook badly. Niki leaned on her sister.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she admitted. “I feel wobbly, like a newborn colt.”
Aiden drove up in the golf cart. He took another look at Niki, climbed out and then swung her into his arms. Very gently, he placed her in the back seat and tucked the blanket around her. “Just rest,” he murmured. “We’ll have you home in no time.”
Home. It sounded heavenly, yet she no longer knew where she truly belonged. She’d felt most at home with Tristan, back at his cottage in another dimension, another world.
But how could she leave her twin forever? Leave the life behind as a wolf?
Aiden turned. “You need an airlift, too?” He swung Nia into his arms and strode with her to the shotgun seat. Giggling, her twin hooked her arms around the alpha’s neck, her gaze growing soft as she regarded her mate.
Theirs was a good match, Niki thought. She was glad of it, glad her twin found such joy with Aiden, though her own heart remained empty and broken.
Perhaps when she settled in with the pack, this grief would ease. She put a hand over her belly, instinct telling her a tiny life grew there.
They headed up the pathway to the drive. Aiden’s big pickup truck sat there. As she started to get out, Aiden quickly intervened.
He scooped her up again and Nia hurried to the truck, opening the back door of the cab. Aiden set her inside and looked at her with worry in his dark eyes.
“Your scent has changed. I know what that means.” He turned to Nia, who gasped.
“OMG, Niki, you’re pregnant.”
Niki bit her lip, tensing at her sister’s worried look and Aiden’s dawning anger. “Yes.”
“Tristan is the father.” This from Nia.
“Yes.”
“Son of a bitch!” Aiden slammed a hand against the truck’s exterior. “That silver bastard forced you, I’ll…”
“It was of my own free will,” she interjected. “He didn’t force me.”
Nia clasped her hand. “Honey, you can tell us the truth.”
Niki laughed. For their entire lives, they’d feared the wizard and his power, and knew the prophecy said Tristan would destroy her. Nia probably thought nothing good could come of the wizard abducting her and that Niki had lied out of shame, or for another reason.
“He was my mate in another life.”
“I know. He told us that when you were dying and he saved you.” Nia still looked worried. “But that was another life, honey. He had no right to take you away from us.”
“He had every right.” She sighed, remembering the promise she’d coaxed from him all those centuries ago. “I’ll tell you everything, but first, let’s go home.”
Wherever home would be in the future, she had yet to know…
Tristan dematerialized, appearing in a dark forest in Tir Na-nog. Drust sat before a roaring fire, staring into the flames.
Clad in the same cobalt blue and silver tunic and trousers he’d worn when they had been mor
tals, the dragon looked healthier and more relaxed. His feet were clad in tawny doeskin boots. Glancing up and seeing him, Drust gestured to the rock beside him and Tristan sat.
“You have met with the goddess and she told you what she desires.” It was a statement from Tristan, not a question.
Doubt clouded Drust’s piercing blue eyes. He gazed around. “Danu wants to make me into a wizard of enormous power. You hold the deciding vote.”
“Yes,” he said, watching him. “It is a rather big decision. I have not yet cast my ballot.”
Drust looked down at the ground. “Do you think me capable? For all these years, you thought I betrayed you and you didn’t believe me.”
“I am sorry, Drust.” Tristan opened his palms as he once did hundreds of years ago, to show he held no weapon. “I was mad with rage and grief at losing Nikita and our child, and the thought of revenge burned hard.”
He took a deep breath and released it. “The price you pay for love is very steep at times.”
“Indeed,” Drust agreed. He poked at the ashes with his stick. “I do not deserve such an honor to be a wizard like you.”
“It is not as much of an honor as you believe. It is a rather large responsibility. You will have powers equivalent to mine.”
His old friend looked at him in the face, his gaze stricken. “If I am given this power, I want to use it for good, to aid my people. They are lost, Tristan. Lost and constantly squabbling. And I wish to aid you as well, when you need me.”
His voice trembled and Drust struck a fist upon his knee. “I was not there for you in the past as I should have been. It is my biggest regret. I wanted to save your Nikita and instead, she died under my watch. That is inexcusable.”
Tristan felt a stab of pity for the dragon shifter. “If I do this, Drust, if I agree to allow you to become the Coldfire Wizard, what would be your greatest desire?”
Power was a tricky thing. But power used for the right reasons…
Those broad shoulders sagged and Drust rubbed a hand over his short, black beard. “I know not if I will be a good guardian for my people. I want them to have the best guardian possible. But if this means I can save more of them from destruction, and stop the fighting that has broken out among the clans, I will do it. If…you will teach me. I want to learn from the best.”
Tristan nodded. “Just as you taught me in the past to fight while we flew together.”
“Except your aim with a spear was always a little off, wolf.” Drust grinned and then looked intent. “If this is to be, Tristan, I beg you one boon.”
He waited.
“I want to help you in your greatest hour of need. Anything you need from me, whatever I can do, call upon me.”
For a moment he felt a prickle down his spine as if the dragon’s words were prophetic. But he dismissed it. He was the Silver Wizard and Drust would be a new wizard, barely able to harness such tremendous power.
“I will.” Tristan smiled. “I would be most pleased to teach you, my old friend. And thus, you have sealed my decision.”
He reflected. “The dragons have grown dangerously out of control, and with their tempers, they can be dangerous. They must learn to work together.”
“We dragons can be ill-tempered.” Drust sighed. “Like my great-grandson, Alexander.”
Tristan braced his hands on his knees. “I have other duties to attend to, but I will return to your family and restore your lost honor, Drust. I will tell them that you did not betray me, nor did you cause the death of my Nikita.”
“But I did, in a way.” Guilt flickered over Drust’s face. “And the memory of it caused me to remain in the Shadow Lands. Only by helping you and Nikita to the Dark Gate did this guilt ease a little.”
“It is in the past. I promise, I will help you overcome that memory. You have a long road ahead of you, Drust. Coldfire carries a tremendous power,” he warned. “It can shock the dying back to life, and kill evil with a single blast of that ugly dragon’s mouth of yours.”
Drust grinned. “Dragon breath?”
Then he sombered. “Tristan, how can I be responsible for such tremendous power? I know nothing of this.”
He clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I will teach you, my friend.”
Reaching into the flames, Drust picked up a burning ember. “How will I become this wizard? I’m not corporeal now. How will she make me corporeal? Will it hurt?”
Like a bitch. “It is a secret rite of passage all wizards must endure,” Tristan said diplomatically, but he rubbed his chest, remembering his own ritual when he became the Silver Wizard.
They stood and Tristan shook his hand. “Welcome to immortality. Be courageous.”
Drust grinned. “If you can do it, so can I. I am stronger than you.”
“Dragon breath.”
“Wolf bait.”
Tristan stood, and closing his eyes and using his magick, called upon Danu. The goddess appeared and he and Drust bowed before her. Tristan rose.
“My lady, I have made my decision. I cast the final deciding vote, and I agree that Drust should become the fifth wizard.” He took a deep breath. “The Coldfire Wizard.”
Danu gave a little nod. “I am most pleased, Tristan.”
She turned to Drust. “Coldfire is a tremendous power. It can indeed bring the dying back to life. I will teach you how to use it, Drust. Tristan cannot show you how to harness this as a dragon. He will be your mentor in using your other skills.”
Secrets danced in her eyes and he wondered what her ultimate goal was, for the goddess always had a purpose.
“My guards will arrive shortly to escort you to the sacred cavern where the ritual to make you into the wizard shall take place,” she told Drust.
Then with another little nod, the goddess vanished.
Tristan looked at the dragon shifter. “Good luck.”
With a friendly punch to his shoulder, Tristan left. He dematerialized to Earth, resisting the urge to check on Nikita.
By now she was safely ensconced with her twin and Aiden, secure in their pack.
But he did have a score to settle concerning her fate, and her safety, and it was time at last to confront Gideon on his murdering sister…
Chapter 20
Two hours after her return to the ranch, Niki was having trouble adjusting to life back on Earth, let alone life in a pack.
On Aiden’s ranch, everything ran like clockwork. She’d been given a room in the lodge near her sister and Aiden, but despite the fact that Nia was just down the hall, Niki had never felt so alone.
Even on a ranch surrounded by Lupines, her own people. Aiden and Nia had combined the Blakemore and Mitchell packs and made them into one strong family.
But she still felt like a stranger.
To keep herself busy, and keep the nausea in her belly under control, she embarked on a project to take all the family photos of her family and scan them into the computer, and then put them into an album. She also studied the history books Gideon had sent to given Aiden to give to her, books crammed with stories and etchings from the days when she and Tristan had lived, and loved, as mates.
After a light lunch of crackers and ginger ale, she turned the pages of parchment and studied the etchings.
One in particular caught her eye. It was of a tall, slender Lupine. She was stately and handsome, but had an ethereal quality about her that was not Lupine. Niki read the caption under the image.
Camilla, mate to Drust.
Her friend, who had laughed with her, had shared confidences with.
They had grown close, as Tristan and Drust had. Camilla had been a good friend who kept the loneliness at bay.
Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she had eaten little today. Closing the book, she stood. Niki headed for the kitchen in search of something more substantial than crackers.
Pregnancy as a Lupine was a bitch, she thought humorlessly, hunting through the refrigerator for raw meat. As Lupine she craved meat, but her hormones had affe
cted her body. It didn’t help that she was still adjusting to the high levels of gravity, and that food here tasted heavier and different than in Tristan’s home world.
Niki found a package of raw chopped meat. She removed it and put it on the counter, deciding to fry a rare hamburger. Unfortunately, her stomach clenched. Bolting for the sink, she threw up. The retching continued for a good ten minutes. Miserable, she wiped her mouth and then drank a glass of water.
“You know I have the perfect solution to morning and afternoon sickness.”
She looked up to see her twin standing in the doorway.
“I thought you were out riding with Aiden, fixing the fence posts.”
“Cowboy’s job. I came here to check on you. I’m worried, honey. You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so well, either,” she admitted. “This pregnancy business is hell on my body.”
“I have just the thing. An old wives recipe. From an old wife.” Nia rummaged through the refrigerator and withdrew a shiny red apple.
Niki looked dubiously at the fruit. “An apple a day keeps the OB-GYN away?”
“Lupines don’t require much fruit, but this is loaded with vitamins and it will quell your nausea.”
Taking the apple, Niki examined it. It was shiny and pretty, but her sharpened wolf senses, even more honed since her visit to Tir Na-nog, warned her that something was odd about this fruit.
“Oh, go on, eat it! It won’t kill you. And then I’ll cook you a hamburger. You need the meat.”
Nia seemed very put out at her hesitation, so Niki bit into the apple. She sat at the table, chewing, as Nia removed a frying pan from the cabinet and set it on the eight-burner stove.
But the taste of the apple seemed tinged with something nasty. Niki set it down on the table.
“What’s wrong?” Nia demanded. “I’m trying to help you, Niki.”