I wasn’t sure if I could trust my oldest brother anymore.
“Cash said you were at Broken Tusk last night.” I looked out the window at the falling snow. “He said you had blood on your hands and were paging through your book. You gonna tell me what happened?”
“I was at the mine last night, trying to figure out where the loup garou was hiding since it marked Rhen’s trailer.”
I had no reason to doubt Cash. I had more of a reason to doubt my brother. Since River died, things didn’t match up but I was too tired to push him right now.
My phone buzzed. I was immediately nauseous.
“Get it.” My brother barked as he focused on the road.
“It’s Snow again.” My stomach did somersaults at the words.
“Bear?”
I made Kenai pull the truck over. I handed him the phone as I hopped out of the truck, trying not to puke or hyperventilate.
Kenai didn’t say anything when he handed the phone back to me.
Seal dead yet? Xo Xo -Snow W.
I glanced over as he started the truck. He ground his teeth as he pulled back on the road. He didn’t even bother to light up a clove cigarette.
I could barely find my voice. “Any chance this could be Dez?”
He ignored me.
“Kenai, no lies this time.” I asked softly as I watched the snow covered trees pass.
“What, Bear?”
“Is River one of the tally marks on your arm?”
His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”
“When I asked you the other day who you added-” He cut me off before I could finish my question.
“It doesn't matter much now since-” he cut himself off as he waved to Rhen asleep in the back seat in a frustrated motion.
“Who?” I wasn’t backing down this time.
“Rory.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rhen
I put my bare feet in the wet sand for the first time in months. It felt so much better than cold snow. My wounds had healed, but I all hadn't tried to shift, I didn't trust my body yet. I didn't know what that creatures magic had done to me. I craved the salt spray on my face, but had no desire to swim.
Not yet.
I wasn't sure I missed it being a seal if I was being honest with myself.
It felt like that first night I was back in Cordova. Everything was overwhelming, I expected the bottom to fall out at any moment. But it didn't. Things were calm, a ripple of energy had ripped through me as I remembered my past; goosebumps rippling along my skin. It was heart stopping to see this place again. But I had to trust, just like when you crest the hill in the dark and don't see the road because of oncoming lights. And those lights tonight were the full moon.
I sat at the edge of the water, letting it lap at my feet.
The cold ocean water lapped at my feet and my hips as I sat on my ass in the sand. Eyes closed, I could hear the water crash against the shore and nothing else in the still of the night. I had my Kodabear back. I was back home. The only place that really ever felt like home to me. This calmed my soul like I had no worries in the world.
I fought not to break into my own badly sung version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. I'd sang it to Willow when we were kids and she couldn't sleep.
The thought of my sister weighed heavy on me. There was a pain deep in my soul that hurt me more than when I thought I'd lost Koda in that ice. The feeling of betrayal ran so deep for what she had done - sending Rory to blackmail me, lying to me about Dez all these years - I didn't know what she could say to me that would make me want to forgive her.
And in not forgiving her, I would be losing my twin sister. I was losing my blood, my partner. But I had Rook to think about, too. What was my sister telling him? The last thing that boy needed was to be as corrupted as my sister was.
I absently rubbed my forearms as I hugged my knees to my chest. The wounds that wolf had inflicted on me had healed, but they still ached.
“I figured I’d find you one way or another.” I opened my eyes reluctantly. Mr. Romans stood in the surf in front of me, twin moons in the clear night sky behind him.
God help me, I was dreaming.
“What could a ghost I am dreaming about possibly tell me?” I stretched out in the surf, staring up at the stars. I found the North Star and breathed deep. Part of me was waiting for a blue eyed Kodiak Sesi to appear and shove that knife of hers in my chest still. She’d never not been in one of my dreams about Alaska, why start now?
“You’re past that now, Sonny. She won’t stab you, even in your dreams.”
“How did you-”
“This may be a dream, but you are not that same tortured soul I met the other night ready to jump over the rail.”
“Fine,” I snapped, “You have my undivided attention. What do you have to tell me? How much worse can things actually get for me?”
“You of all people should know never to tempt fate.”
I shook my head. Even in my dreams I couldn't control people. So much for ever learning how to lucid dream.
“Have you ever thought about just letting go, Rhen?”
I scoffed. “Like that has ever been an option.”
“Only you make it not an option.”
“What?”
He laughed at me. It was a full out belly laugh that made me hope he'd fall into the water.
“You are too high strung. The chaos is your friend.”
“Chaos is not my friend.”I roared at him, my words echoing off the docks. It was a dream, what did it matter? “Chaos is my sister blackmailing me and screwing up my life. Chaos is the equipment breaking down at the mine and I have to do a mad scramble. Chaos is something going drastically wrong on a dive. Chaos is not my friend.”
“But chaos is cleansing fire, a raging flood, a roiling storm. Chaos is part of us. Why do you fight it?”
“Why? You're asking me why I fight something I can't control? You're a dream. You're dead.”
“Am I?”
I felt the scar on my cheek pull as my jaw twitched. My palms itched as I tried not to clench my fists. Part of me just wanted to give into the anger and go after him, but the crack of thunder in the distance
Because it's the only way I do have some control over it. Some way to keep those safe around me.”
“To keep them safe from chaos? I've got news for you, Sonny, the sooner you embrace it, the happier you will be. Chaos is the natural order of things. Nature wants to be at the state of least energy. To us it looks like chaos, but to nature, it is perfectly reasonable.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Really? I’m not the one that turned his back on what he is.”
“You’re a dream.”
Mr. Romans just laughed at me. “I may be dead, but I’m not a dream. This is just the easiest place for me to talk to you.”
I didn’t want to do this. I tried to wake up. The moon in the distance tried to meld together, but failed and fractured back into two.
“Well that’s a neat trick, but I’m not letting you wake up just yet.”
“You’re doing this to me?” I was on my feet in an instant, it wouldn’t take much to grab him.
“Maybe if you’d learned to use your power instead of hiding from it, this would be easier. “ He made a wide sweeping motion to the ocean and the moon. At the edge of the horizon the skies boiled a steely purple grey.
“How are you controlling my dream? “
“How are you not?” He spit the words back, his eyes narrow. “Lack of years possessing the power is no excuse, you are a creature of the vast ocean, one of the few created to bridge both worlds. You don't get to just brush that aside like it is something trivial.”
I was quiet. It hadn’t been till I left Alaska the first time that I realized I had the ability to call the storms. It had just been old fishing stories about selkies calling storms until I was out on my dredge without some
one to watch out for me topside one day. Someone came by and cut my anchor line while I was diving. Yes, I know, I am seal, but I do not have the best luck when diving as a human even though I kept trying. I realized what happened and why I was drifting. The storm raged topside, taking out the only boat nearby and the two humans with it. When I realized it was me that had called the storm because of my emotions, I did everything I could to not have it happen again. When the winds whipped up and the rain started, those lost two souls haunted me, and why I worried.
“They deserved it, Sonny.”
“No one deserves that.” I snapped as I turned away from him to walk down the beach. “No one deserves to die because of my anger. I am not a killer. Not like them.”
“Oh, so there is the crux of the situation.”
Mr. Romans smiled at me as he balanced on a slippery rock at the edge of the tide.
“What of it?”
He quirked a smile and the moons glittered off his eyes. “You don't own what you are.”
“I know exactly who I am.”
“No, you don't, sealboy. You've hidden yourself too long behind a mask. And the process is hindered even more with your sister’s betrayal. You don't know how to be without her. Especially now that you know she is behind one of the biggest mistakes of your life.”
I wanted to yell and scream at him. Anything I said back would be a lie. It had always been Willow and I going through things together.
“Do you know about your family's past?”
I cocked my head. “Aside from my parents?”
“Aye.”
“Very little. “
“I think I’ll save that for another time.”
No one wanted to speak of it. The little my father had told Willow and I growing up was sketchy at best. Tales of mermaids mostly, things to keep Willow entertained, telling her we came from a line of long lost royals. I never believed him, there were no mentions of selkie rulers in any books I was able to find. I always suspected that Father told Willow that to play into her wishing to be a princess. Looking back, I wish he hadn’t, may have saved me from her backstabbing and feeling of entitlement.
How my sister could do what she did, I still could not comprehend, even in my own dream. To be so backstabbing to me, but then be so kind and caring to her son astounded me. I wanted Rook to be safe, and I wasn’t sure that was the case with his mother. I’d need to talk to my parents when they came back from Ireland, they would know better how she treated the boy.
“No matter.” He waved me off as he hopped into the water. “It still doesn’t change the fact you are hiding.”
“And you’d have me give into the chaos?”
“That’s the fastest way to learn. Isn’t that how you learned to swim? Got tossed into the storm?”
I glared at him. First he was a ghost, now he was in my dream. Why did I torture myself this way?
“Shhh, do you hear them? Close your eyes.”
When I didn’t obey, he reached over to me and slapped me on the back of my head. “I said, close your eyes, fool.”
I did.
“Focus.”
I stilled my breathing, unsure of what he intended for me to focus on. By the time I counted to thirty, I heard it. Buried beneath the roll of the thunder was chanting. Chanting of seals. Selkies. My ancestors.
I didn't understand the words at first. They were in the old language, words I'd only heard a few times between my parents and grandparents. I caught a few words and cleared my mind, trying to let my knowledge from the past come back me.
They were telling stories of old. Tales of pirates and mermaids, of sailors and maidens. Tales of how we selkies weren't just cuddly creatures trying to seduce human women. The tales they told were of selkies ruling the seas in the North Atlantic waters, running off merfolk and those who would hunt us. They told of selkies weathering the storms they called to wreak havoc on the humans who would harm us, but saving those that helped us. With every tale they told, the memory crashed over me like a breaking wave. My heart twisted as I watched heartbreak after heartbreak; lovers drowned, murdered or just given up on. Heartache and loss apparently came with the territory of being a selkie. I opened my eyes as I felt hot tears behind them.
“I've had enough, ghost of Christmas past.” Mr. Romans spun toward me from where he had been skipping on the edge of the water. “I'm not giving into the magic that easily. You want me to just give up and let it take me. No. I'm not succumbing to the chaos and losing her to the storm like all the others have in the past.”
His smile rivaled the silver of moon in the sky. “Time's up, my friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rhen
“Wakey, wakey, Raven.”
I hated those words. The groan I made was involuntary and I heard Kenai snort. Everything was tight. Every muscle, every joint. I had light blue eyes in my face, and a wet tongue on my skin. By the time I managed to push Zom off me and manage to sit up, Kenai was laughing while watching me in the mirror.
“How long have I been out?”
“A week.”
“Excuse me? A week?” Well that explained why none of my wounds felt like they were ripping open. “This is the first I’ve been up?”
“Yep, the clinic nurse gave you drugs to keep you knocked out as much as possible. Said give you a week and you'd almost be good as new. Very nice girl by the way. Her and Bear got along swimmingly.”
“You took me to a clinic?”
“Nah, before you passed out you gave Bear the number to a clinic and told her to ask for Allie. Then we got snowed in.”
I groaned. Allie was the clinic nurse who had sewn me back up after my incident with the orca. We’d gotten quite - personal - in the week she helped me recover. And I can only imagine what she and Koda talked about in the last week.
“She’s got a nice ass, I’ll give you that. Smells like honey too.”
“Did you and her-” I couldn’t wrap my head around any of this, not after the dream.
“Hook up? Had to do something while waiting out the snow.”
I just raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously? You're a human.”
“So is she.“ He finally cracked a grin. “No, but the look on your face was priceless, Raven. She and Bear did talk a while though. I caught them swapping stories about you and your umm, performances.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I think I strained something. Women were awful sometimes. “Please tell me that’s a joke too.”
“I wish I could say yes. Those two together, they didn’t even notice I was there. You know how to pick them though. I’ll give you that.”
“Not sure I should be thankful for that.”
“Just don’t break my sister’s heart again.”
“I shouldn’t have the first time.”
“Good. Because I don’t think I’d let you get out of Alaska if it happened again.”
“Yeah.” I managed to push the dog away. I’d almost rather be dreaming.
“Your eyes are back to normal, think you can walk?”
It was a small favor that my body had settled on a form, now it would focus on healing. I stretched and everything was tight but functional. The stitches he had put in my thigh itched. I’d have to remove the stitches in a few hours or have to deal with digging them out. I may not quite heal like a typical shifter, but it’s definitely a step up from human.
“Please tell me that in a week you figured out who or what Cy is.” I groaned from the backseat.
“I wish I could tell you I had. We were kinda of snowed in, remember?”
“Um, drug induced coma back here.”
He should have laughed. He was silent, even refusing to look back in the mirror.
“What the hell did you find, Kenai?”
He drew a deep breath, rubbing the heel of his palm into his eyes as if he could wipe away whatever was haunting him. “Before the storm blew through and I lost signal and power on the phones I looked up a few of the things he said
to Koda and I that first time we saw him.”
“And?”
“We were worried about a god, just the wrong one.” He mumbled. “It all matches up though, his coloring, the scars. I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Care to fill in the injured back here?”
“He called himself ‘King of the Living.’ Its another name for Osiris, god of the dead.”
“Great, so you’re officially being stalked by death.”
“Not exactly, but close enough.”
“Where's Koda?” I sat bolt upright as I finally realized she and her monster dog were not in the front seat. My head swam as my wounds complained as the stitches pulled. I was thankful they held.
“Take it easy, Tulugaq,” His voice was dry, making it obvious he didn’t like that we had stopped. “Bear will be right back. She went to get food before we go back to her place.”
Zom yipped at me. I wasn’t used to a dog that actually liked me. I ruffled his fur while I took a few breaths. We were safe. I tried to remind myself of that.
I tried to calm the anxiety that threatened to pull me under. The past was not the past I knew and had held onto so hard. One moment at a time. That’s all I could do. I’d sort it out later. We all had some shit to work through.
“For what it's worth, Kenai, I’m sorry about River,” I said as I watched Caleb walk out of Broken Tusk. Koda was carrying takeout containers. My skin crawled as I watched how close he walked to her. Slimy fish.
Ken’s narrowed eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “I’m assuming Bear told you.”
“I had no idea that the two of you were together.”
“Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.”
“Shakespeare?”
He nodded at me. “Wasn’t anything worth anything, that’s for sure.”
“And that's why you're quoting me Shakespeare.” I scoffed. “I know better than that.”
Steal the Sun: (Book 1) Page 18