by A L Fogerty
He gave her a quizzical look. Quinn’s loyalty to his goddess was unwavering. Kayla shouldn’t suggest anything less, or he would become suspicious. She smiled and leaned over to kiss his lips, hoping he would forget her words.
“There’s something else,” he said, “something I could feel while the healing magic was running through you. It is hard to pinpoint exactly. But it feels as if… as if you’ve changed. It’s like there is something new inside you.”
She gulped but smiled brightly, batting her eyes several times. “What do you mean?”
“Let me see. I am going to attempt a scan to determine the change. There may still be toxins in your body, and I need to find them.”
The last thing she wanted was for him to take away the new confidence and cool clearheadedness of her transformed ego. If she felt herself slipping away, she would use her alpha magic to send him reeling across the cave. He would crack his head against the rock, then she would tell the others it was an accident. But as he sat there, muttering with his eyes closed, she didn’t feel his magic touch her consciousness.
She shared a mated bond with him, but sending him the same kinds of impressions she sent to Riddick seemed to satisfy any type of emotional requirement.
He opened his eyes suddenly with a gasp then smiled. “Kayla. You’re with child.”
Chapter Ten
“Pregnant?” Kayla cupped her stomach. She looked up at him, her face unreadable.
Quinn would have expected her to be full of excitement at the prospect of bringing a child into the world. But instead, he saw something else, something he wasn’t altogether prepared to see.
“You can’t tell anyone.” She grabbed his arm.
“Why not?” The others would want to know. It was cause for celebration.
“I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up in case something goes wrong.” Kayla smiled charmingly and batted her eyelashes, leaning in to kiss him again. “It’s really the best news. I’m so happy. But you know how these things are. Anything can happen in the first few months.”
“Of course.”
“I do hope it’s your child.” The thought of whose baby it might be hadn’t even entered his mind.
She stood, and he watched her with a mixture of shock and wonder. There was something about the girl he loved that wasn’t quite right. She had been through a lot over the past few weeks, and he could smell that she had mated with Riddick. Maybe that was what it was. The journey, the injury, the baby, taking on a new mate. All of those things would have an effect. He decided to put it out of his mind. There was no sense in reading anything into her behavior. She might just be tired.
“Will you come visit me tonight?” She stood in the mouth of the cave, her body outlined by the fading sunlight behind her.
He wanted to reach out to her, cup her face, and kiss her gently. He wanted to find some reassurance that the girl he loved wasn’t gone. But no matter how much he tried to rationalize his fears, he couldn’t put them to rest. “Of course,” he said.
“Remember what you promised me.” She turned away and disappeared from his cave.
He felt his heart sink and something inside him shatter. He didn’t know what it was. Everything was good. They’d found the spirit box, and everyone had returned. The mission had been a success. He didn’t know why he felt as if he’d lost her. He couldn’t understand it, so he decided the best thing to do would be to just forget about it, ignore his fears, and put it behind him.
Nothing good ever came from dwelling on those types of things. And besides, he’d just received magnificent news. His beloved Kayla was expecting a child, and he would love the baby no matter who had sired it.
He did like the idea that his son or daughter would follow in his footsteps as a shaman, like his mother and grandfather before him. He let out a long and contented sigh and decided to focus on that instead of his unfounded fears. Kayla had been gone for weeks, was tired from her journey, and had recently mated with his brother. That was all it was. Nothing more.
He threw another log on the fire and closed his eyes, sinking into meditation. He called out to Wolf Mother, asking for her support and guidance. “I pray you bless Kayla as she carries her child and brings in the next generation of our pack.”
“All is not well with the alpha queen,” Wolf Mother whispered. “You must watch her. Be wary.”
“What is wrong?” Quinn asked.
“She has many trials to overcome, my son, as do you. The hands of fate and destiny are not always kind. But they will always bring you to good if you follow them faithfully.”
“Are there still toxins in her body? Does she need more healing?”
“This you cannot heal. But all will be well in the end. No matter how long it takes to arrive there. Stay vigilant, my son. I can say no more.”
“As you wish, Wolf Mother.”
Quinn opened his eyes. The flames flickered before him, and he contemplated Wolf Mother’s words. She was notoriously tightlipped in giving him the answers he wanted, but he had learned that her tactics were always for the greater good and had come to accept them. There was no way of knowing the minds of the gods, and he had stopped trying.
As long as Wolf Mother did not abandon him again, he could accept the vagaries of her counsel. She’d said that in the end, all would be well. And it would be. But Quinn knew for sure that something was wrong with Kayla.
Chapter Eleven
Kayla went upstairs to the room she shared with Jagger and inspected the accommodations. It wasn’t nearly fine enough for someone of her status. She shouldn’t be sharing a room. The others should come and go at her will.
Perhaps after she announced her pregnancy, she could make it seem like the most logical solution. She smiled, lying down on the bed. She put her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling, feeling a subtle sense of contentment flow through her skin. It was good to be home.
Quinn had done a fantastic job healing her arm. It felt completely new. But he was going to be a problem. He could tell she had changed. His goddess could prove to be detrimental to the life she wanted to live. There was no way she was going to lose her new sense of confidence and power.
Going back to the girl she once was would feel like a death sentence. No, that wasn’t going to happen. She would have to watch Quinn like a hawk. Of all the brothers, she and Quinn had had the deepest emotional connection, so of course he had been the first to notice the change.
She closed her eyes and began to devise a plan of subtle and persistent manipulation. It was her house, her village, her world. He had some prophecy about her bringing together all the shifters and saving the world from evil. She didn’t much care about the second part anymore, but the first part definitely could prove advantageous.
Shifters would reclaim their rightful place in the world, and she was going to be the one to make it happen. She drifted off to sleep, happily contemplating pitting a united shifter army against the witches and vampires.
While she slept, she dreamed of her child, a girl with her eyes. She was beautiful, charismatic, and powerful. A true leader. The door opening woke her, and she was disappointed to leave the dream. It was an omen of things to come. She could groom a child like that to do her bidding. She stared at the intruder. Jagger looked at her with brooding, hooded eyes. She smiled at him softly, remembering to take on the characteristics of the girl the men all knew.
“We are going to release the spirit box. I thought you would want to be there.”
“Open it in the middle of town.” She stood. “In a centralized location.”
“That was the conclusion that we settled on.”
She should have been at the meeting but could barely keep her eyes open after receiving the healing treatment. She would never let anything like that happen again. All final pack decisions should be made by her and no one else.
They went downstairs and joined the others at the dining room table. She found all the usual suspects gathered. Quinn gave he
r a quizzical look, and she returned a soft smile, giving her best impression of the reserved and humble Kayla Redclaw. “Where is it?” she asked.
“I have it,” Mackenzie said.
Kayla tried to hold back a sneer. The others trusted the two witches, and she had to continue with the appearance that she did too. But as soon as she had the chance, she intended to get rid of them. Exactly how she would accomplish that, she didn’t quite know yet.
“We are going to open it in the pack lodge,” Kayla said, her voice somewhere between a question and a command.
“That’s right.” Riddick had seen how it worked back in the City of Ghosts. “All you have to do is open the box, and the spirits get sucked in.”
“We were concerned about how many spirits are currently inside the box,” Mackenzie said.
“You said that wouldn’t make any difference.” Kayla narrowed her eyes at the witch.
“In theory, it shouldn’t. But I’ve never actually used one of these boxes before. I could send a raven to Malik and ask him for greater clarification.”
“We don’t have time for that. We’ll open the box now.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Jagger asked.
“I didn’t just travel for two weeks straight to sit around and wait for more directions. We’re doing this today. Mackenzie said there should be no limit to the number of ghosts the box holds. And I’m not going to change our plans now.”
“All right, then,” Jagger said in a low, slow voice.
She nodded once at him then turned to rise. She could tell he didn’t like being told what to do. He was going to have to get used to it. There was a new sheriff in town, and it was her. She didn’t intend to share power with an alpha less powerful than she was. How stupid she had been to do it before. But that Kayla was gone, and she would claim the rule she was always meant to have.
Kayla grabbed the spirit box. Mackenzie gave her a startled look, her mouth dropping as if in protest. But she said nothing.
“It’s best if I do it,” Kayla said, slipping out the door. “For pack morale.”
“Of course,” Mackenzie muttered, her expression still surprised.
Kayla decided to let it go for the time being. In the future, if the witch dared to defy her, there would be repercussions. Since the shield had been recast, they had no need for the women to live among them. They could leave at any time. The purity of the shifter race and their village were more important than harboring witch fugitives among them.
Once the shifters were united, she would form a formidable army, showing the witches and vampires her strength. If they ceased to sell shifter slaves and agreed to accept her as their ultimate ruler, then she would let them live. They could settle into a comfortable trade relationship, and war would be averted.
But if they didn’t, she was not afraid of declaring war on the lot of them. In fact, she looked forward to it. She almost hoped that they did refuse just so she would have the chance to march on their cities and kill every last one of them.
She remembered the humiliation the shifters had experienced at the hands of both the witches and vampires. That was not something she could easily forgive or forget, not that she cared much about the lives of individual shifters. But as a shifter herself, she believed her race deserved respect. And they would get that respect when they came into unity under her rule.
It was a perfect plan. The shifters would believe she was a patriot. They wouldn’t suspect a thing. But in the end, she would get what she truly wanted: ultimate dominion.
She strode confidently into the pack lodge and placed the spirit box on the long oak table in the middle of the room. She and the brothers sat at the head of the table as the council. Until then, she and Jagger had shared the central chairs, but she planned to change that soon. She knew he needed to be knocked down a peg. But doing it would take some patience and ingenuity.
As soon as everyone was gathered, she flipped the top off the spirit box nonchalantly, resting both her hands on the table as she waited for results. There was a whooshing noise and screeching screams as the spirits of the dead shifters were sucked into the box from every direction. She watched the black hole inside the tiny box for several moments then flipped the lid back on.
“See? Nothing to it. We should be ghost free from now on.”
She tucked the box into her pocket and left the lodge. She had the distinct feeling that those around her were shocked at her behavior. It was to be expected, considering she was so different from the Kayla they knew. She would have to make a better effort of appearing to be herself, as much as she was loath to do so.
Everything about the girl she had been disgusted her, and she wanted nothing more than to completely forget about that other self, that weak, whining, unconfident, submissive self. Kayla had believed she’d come a long way in competence and leadership before the change. But the truth was that she’d barely made a dent.
That disgustingly meek Kayla, the scared little girl who was willing to marry a man she hated to appease her father, had to go, never to return. She strode away from the lodge, leaving the rest behind her.
She grabbed her bow and quiver from the house and whistled to Bane. The wolf might suspect she had changed, but as her familiar, Bane was bound to do as she was told. It was part of the magic of creating such a creature. The horse had not been broken properly, and Kayla intended to do something about that soon.
For the time being, a good long trek through the forest and a few kills would be the best way to relax after the emotional exertion of pretending. She disappeared into the forest, and her wolf trotted after her. She took a deep breath of the crisp autumn air, pulling in the scent of prey. Her mouth watered. A few good kills were exactly what she needed.
Chapter Twelve
“She’s changed,” Quinn said to his brothers as they sat around the kitchen table in the home they shared.
“She’s not that different,” Riddick said.
“That just goes to show that you don’t know her very well,” Quinn said.
Riddick bared his teeth at his brother.
Jagger smashed his fist into the table. “There’s no point in arguing about this. You’re back. You found the spirit box. It’s done.”
But Kayla was keeping her child a secret from everyone. No matter how she justified it, Quinn didn’t agree with her decision.
“I’m sure she’s just tired from the journey,” Sid said, always the diplomat. “The injury she sustained slowed her down. She went through a lot.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine after she’s been home for a while,” Riddick said.
“Whatever you want to believe.” Quinn waved his hand in the air. He wished Wolf Mother had told him more, but it was her way to be cryptic, and he had learned long ago not to question her. The time he had spent without her wisdom and power had been excruciating, and he did not want to repeat that again.
He left the house and walked down the narrow streets of the village, passing Mackenzie and Willa’s house. He was glad to hear the witches laughing within. Kayla had been so rude about the spirit box. He had never seen her behave that way in all the time he’d known her—but he had to admit to himself that it hadn’t actually been all that long.
His mother’s prophecy was clear: they would be mated with the girl who had integrity strong enough to save the entire world. He had always believed it, and he had known it was Kayla the moment they’d met. But she was different all of a sudden. She even smelled different. It wasn’t just the pregnancy or the infection or mating with Riddick. It was something else, something deeper. But try as he might, he couldn’t pinpoint what had happened to her.
No one else had voiced that they thought Kayla had changed, and it made him question himself. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe he had missed her. Maybe his old sense of jealousy was coming back since she had mated with another brother. He hated to think he was falling into the same old weaknesses.
He walked out into the wo
ods and sat under the moon. Closing his eyes, he sent a silent prayer up to Wolf Mother, asking for guidance. “Hear my prayer, Wolf Mother. Guide my hand and my heart. Don’t let me fall into weakness and selfish ego. Let me make the right choices. Let me stand beside my mate and help her to be strong.”
“All that you ask for, it is given,” came the gentle whisper in his ear as the breeze fluttered through the barren branches of the autumn trees.
A chill was in the air, and soon, the last of the harvest would come in. Winter would be upon them before they knew it. They needed to stick together to keep each other warm—it would be a crucial time for the pack, and they had to be able to rely on each other. Undermining his brothers’ confidence in Kayla would be unwise. The survival of the pack depended on his ability to control his fears.
He opened his eyes as the sound of crackling branches startled him from his reverie. He looked up and found a figure silhouetted by the moon, tall and long limbed, beautiful in her grace and strength. Her wolf was by her side.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, coming close enough that he could see the details of her face.
“I was praying to Wolf Mother for guidance.”
“What do you need Wolf Mother for when you have me?” she asked, dropping a bundle of rabbits in his lap.
“Kayla!” he shouted instinctively. The Kayla he knew and loved would never do that.
“Stop whining. Carry the rabbits, and come back to the house with me.” She reached for him.
He took her hand and followed her back to the house, carrying the rabbits over his shoulder. She seemed pleased with his obedience.
When they made it back to the house, the brothers were still at the table, drinking beer. Felix was the first to put down his mug and excuse himself to bed. Sid left soon after, leaving Riddick, Jagger, and Quinn with Kayla. She poured herself a tall mug of beer, a sly smile on her lips.
“Good hunting,” Riddick said, raising his mug to her.