by Kat Bostick
She was in a daze this morning and it wasn’t due to lack of coffee. Mari dreamt one of her magic dreams last night. It was filled with a haunting song, piercing notes that her heart knew and her voice carried with ease.
In the dream she stood among knotted trees. They were twisted like a fierce wind disturbed their growth. She was singing the words of her ancestral song—words in a language she couldn’t speak or understand—and felt the trees dance in time as her power penetrated their bark.
Once her song was complete she heard the cry of a wolf, mournful and lovely and perfectly matching the high notes of her voice. The sound penetrated her skin just as her song had the trees. Somehow it was heavy with sorrow and ethereal all at once. Mari rotated to look for the animal and found herself face to face with a man instead.
He was breathtakingly beautiful, with fair skin and hair like vermillion fire. Even more stunning than his complexion and his burning locks were his summery eyes. They shimmered the way brightly colored moss did when it was burdened with water droplets after a storm. Mari was so mesmerized by those pools of green that for a moment she forgot they belonged on the face of a man. She stared into them like she was gazing up at the canopy of a sun kissed forest.
Whoever he was, he captivated Mari. The song in her throat returned, louder, as the sight of him filled her chest with joy. His strange, wolfish cry answered her song and the magic in their voices wove together into an enchanting melody.
“It’s you.” Said her heart and her soul and all that she was. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Then she noticed he was weeping and the joy evaporated.
The man was mourning. He mourned for himself, for his family—lost. He mourned for the words that he could not speak—broken. His grief was so heavy that it weighed on her like snow on pine branches. Mari moved closer, arms extended to surround him with herself. If only she could hold him. She would devour his grief, swallow it whole and take it from him.
But when her fingers closed around his wrist, she felt her own skin as her hand fisted. His body was wispy and intangible. Her inability to touch him made her weep along with him. She needed to. He needed her to.
“See me.” His silvery voice pleaded.
“I see you.” She answered with a strange knowing deep in her gut.
I will always see you. The voice of the witch within her spoke clearly.
“See me!” He demanded, unmoved by her words.
“I see you!” Mari reached for him again but he suddenly became incandescent, disappearing into blinding whiteness. “Please don’t go!”
Mari hadn’t dreamt one of those mystical visions in a long time. After Jacob, her dreams were mostly nightmares. Thick tree roots twisted around her, leaving her helplessly trapped. Or worse, a thousand pairs of hands groped at her naked flesh, eagerly pinching and rending until she was picked clean to the bone.
Maybe that was why the dream mesmerized her. Or maybe it was just him. It wasn’t only that he was striking—though he was to the point that Mari had butterflies in her stomach remembering him—but it was also the way his eyes drew her in. She knew those eyes. She knew the tug of his power. Once she became of aware of him, it was like he had been there the whole time, in her head, in her heart, in all of her.
Which didn’t make any sense because Mari had never seen that man before in her life.
That was the struggle with magic dreams. Sometimes they were brief and simple and sometimes they were too vague or complex to understand. Mostly they left her baffled with too many questions unanswered to even begin deciphering. Gran taught her a little about reading dreams but she barely knew more than Mari.
Thus, she understood little more about her dreams than that they were meaningful. Last night’s dream was particularly magical and particularly meaningful. Mari simply wasn’t sure why yet. There was something that her heart understood that her head didn’t; a deep awareness that she couldn’t puzzle out. When she woke, she was pining for home so much that her heart ached. Only she was home, lying on her own couch in her own house. So why did she feel so homesick?
Stubbing her toe distracted her long enough to take a second look at Jasper. His red coat was shedding madly from the heat and it was matted with mud and, in a patch of fur around his neck, her blood. As Mari studied him, he returned the favor. An eerie glow shone through those brilliant eyes.
Those moss green eyes.
“Nope. No way.” She turned her attention to her toe to feel for any obvious break. “You are officially losing it, Mari.” She’d already explored the possibility of werewolves and concluded that their existence was highly unlikely, especially since Jasper obviously couldn’t turn into a man.
He’s just a big freaking wolf. As if that made his presence in her kitchen totally normal and sane.
Normally Mari set the coffee maker the night before so she could simply press a button and hover like a zombie in the kitchen as the bitter nectar of life trickled into the pitcher. She’d been a little too distracted last night. Making eye contact with a zillion pound wolf, who was likely to be quite hungry, was more than enough to kick start her morning. Maybe she didn’t even need a cup of coffee.
Jasper came up behind her—inconsiderately close if he was a person—and snorted loudly. On second thought, she needed that cup STAT. “Careful, Red. Hell hath no fury like an under-caffeinated witch.”
He snorted again.
“How did you sleep last night? Comfortable with your new digs? I know it’s not what you’re used to but we’ll get you cleaned up and settled in today.” She poured coffee grinds into a filter, set the coffee maker, then turned to him with her most confident face. No grumpy wolf was going to scare her in her own kitchen.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got something special for you. I didn’t know what you’d like best so I got a little of everything.” She turned to open the fridge. “I was thinking we could start with stew—”
The sentence cut off abruptly when Jasper came up beside her, sniffed the first package of stew meat on the shelf, and snatched it. Goosebumps migrated down her arms as she watched Jasper rip open the plastic and gnaw on hunks of raw meat. She wasn’t sure if it was from the open fridge at her back or the sudden awareness of his predatory nature.
Not a harmless puppy dog.
By the time Mari closed the fridge and skirted around the wolf, he was finished with the meat and eyeing her hungrily. “More? Seriously?”
Mari fed Jasper two lamb chops, which he ate as if he hadn’t had a meal in days. That was followed by two steaks and more stew meat. Feeding a wolf was going to be even more expensive than she’d thought.
“Okay, I gave you what you want. Now it’s time for you to give me what I want.” She sipped her coffee with a quirk of her lips. “You’re going to take a bath.”
✽✽✽
Jasper
Jasper wanted to be proud of his little witch for being brave but it was hard to find pride when he was this frustrated. She might be fierce but she was foolish too. No way was this woman half his size going to get him in the tub. Why was she so determined to trap him in small spaces? First the car, now the bathroom. It was rude to confine a wolf. And dangerous. He didn’t want to hurt her again but he would if she didn’t open the door and let him out of this cramped room.
“Stop being stubborn, Jasper.” Mari planted fists on her round hips and scowled at him with dark brows. “If you’re going to stay in my house then you are going to take a bath.”
Then I won’t stay in your house.
He gave her an impressive show of his teeth. She did the same, though hers were not at all threatening. If he was a man, he would have laughed his frustration away. She was going for ferocious but fell closer to cute on the scary scale. Jasper was very fond of his little witch, so much so that he was almost willing to forgive her for trapping him.
“Get your wolf ass in this tub or I’ll get it there for you.” She commanded.
No. He growled back. What
was she going to do, carry him?
Yes, apparently she was. Mari wrapped her arms under his ribs and heaved him toward the glass box that housed the bathtub, completely untroubled by his snapping fangs that just last night had ripped into her flesh. He twisted in her hold and managed to graze her forearm with his teeth.
To his dismay, she ignored the blood rising to the surface of her skin and kept dragging him until his hind legs were up and over the slippery porcelain edge. They wrestled behind the glass shower door but Mari was quick to block the exit with her body. Now, unless he chose to exercise his supposed savagery, he truly was trapped. This witch was proving to be a formidable opponent.
Blood dripped onto the white bottom of the tub and trickled between his feet on its way to the drain. A gash opened up on the skin of her forearm like the mouth of a river. He shouldn’t have done that. Guilt sprang up in his chest and he let his hackles relax.
Then that bleeding arm reached around him to turn on the faucet, splashing his hindquarters with cold water, and guilt was quickly replaced by fresh rage. Who was she to make him—a lethal hunter—take a bath? A growl rumbled in his throat, deep and dangerous. It was more threat than warning this time.
“You’re being dramatic. If you’d just let me do this it would take like ten seconds. You stink!” She slid the glass door closed behind her and took a step toward him. He lunged forward and snapped his mouth shut on the same hand he bit last night, careful not to apply enough pressure to break the skin. “Oh stop that! If you were going to maul me you would have done it already. Quit with the posturing and sit down.”
Damn, he hadn’t expected her to call him on that.
With a grudging sigh, Jasper released Mari’s hand and sat. Not because he was required to follow her command, of course. Only because it was a reasonable request and there was no use wounding her further. She was obviously not going to give up—she could name him stubborn only because she was intimately acquainted with her own stubbornness—and there was no need to risk getting out of control.
What harm could a bath do? Other than humiliate him. His front paws kept slipping out from under him and he skidded around the tub.
That might not have been so bad if Mari wasn’t giggling. He continued growling at her but for some reason that made her laugh harder. Not many people would dare come near a snarling wolf much less lean over them to expose their vulnerable throat and soft stomach.
If he ignored the sliding, the bath wasn’t as excruciating as he expected. He did need a good cleaning. Long after Mari wet his coat, the water ran dark brown. Eventually the witch rescued him from sliding by sitting in the tub and resting his front legs in her lap, soaking her shorts in the process.
And then, Jasper decided baths weren’t so bad after all. Mari ran warm water over his coat with the shower head, following it with purposeful fingers that kneaded and combed through mud. The soap she scrubbed him with wasn’t a smell he would have chosen to wear but the herbal scent was mild enough that it didn’t make him sneeze. She took extra care rinsing tree sap and blood from the fur around his snout and ears.
As she finished rinsing the last of the dust from his fur he looked up at her to see rivulets of salt water on her cheeks. She sniffled and gave him a pitiful smile. Did he do that to her?
“Sorry.” She wiped her nose on the inside of her elbow. “I just do that sometimes.”
This was a deep sorrow, buried in her heart where it would not easily be dislodged. It was a wound he couldn’t heal with his kiss. But he could kiss the tears away so he did. Despite her sadness, Mari laughed when he lapped at the moisture on her cheeks. She had a deep laugh that vibrated low in her chest. It wasn’t delicate or sweet like some parts of her were. Jasper regretted that he couldn’t share in her laughter.
“I like you, Red.” She kissed his nose with velvet lips. “I wish I could keep you.”
You can keep me. He told her. I’m going to keep you.
Chapter 10
Jasper
For a smart girl, Mari could be clueless. Jasper knew that she knew what he was but she wouldn’t trust her instincts.
See me. He demanded in a grunt. That earned no response but a smile.
On the bright side, she thought his grunts were cute. Not a title a ferocious wolf would normally desire but he was willing to accept it from her because she was brave enough to look at him with admiration after he nearly took her fingers off.
He wondered if she would still give him that adoring look after spending the full moon with him. It was coming. That telltale itch was tingling in his legs and he had a growing appetite that was not for flesh but for the hunt. Sooner rather than later he would feel that need to run gnaw at his muscles and make him irritable.
Mari seemed to share in his agitation.
She spent the afternoon rushing about the house, picking up discarded laundry and tossing old food. Occasionally she would pause to pace the living room, mumbling to herself about witches and familiars and other nonsense.
Finally she stepped into the kitchen, wrapping an apron about her waist and fetching ingredients from cabinets. As soon as he scented brown sugar and vanilla Jasper recognized what she was baking. One of his very favorite foods, he remembered.
“It’s impossible to be sad when your house smells like cookies.” She told him as she scooped balls of dough onto a tray. Jasper wholeheartedly agreed.
When Mari turned her back to put the first batch in the oven, his self-control snapped. Chocolate chips and gooey dough stuck between his teeth and tumbled from the sides of his mouth as he stood on his hind legs and stuffed his snout into the mixing bowl.
“Get down from there!” Mari shrieked, shoving him with her hip and yanking the bowl away. “Chocolate is bad for dogs.”
I am not a dog. He growled in response.
“Don’t you dare growl at me after you drooled in my cookie dough. Gross, at least the germs will bake out.” Mari ignored the snarl and swatted at him until he was a safe distance from her dough.
Jasper was greeted by a dark, empty kitchen when he woke from a nap hours later. He was tempted to prop up on the counter and reach for the cooling cookies on the windowsill above the sink but he didn’t want to upset Mari again so he wandered toward the bedroom instead.
He followed the sound of running water to a door in the corner, where another bleach and lemon room hid. Mari stood behind a plastic curtain, singing merrily and seeming to enjoy her bath much more than Jasper had. How could she enjoy it that much without someone else to rub the mud and sweat from her? Jasper shoved his nose behind the curtain, just to be certain she was alone.
Heavy with water, her sleek hair stretched down to the curve of her lower back. In the light he noticed that it wasn’t black, rather a very dark brown, like burnt wood. Jasper admired the way it shimmered and flowed over her naked skin. He wondered if it would look the same flowing around her as she took a moonlit dip in his favorite swimming hole.
Yes, he remembered that too. Gently rushing water, still frigid from snowmelt at the end of spring but soothing on his feverish skin after a change. There were hands splashing him and shoving him into the deepest part of the pool. And there was laughter, feminine and light. Pack sisters, both elegant and wild, as she-wolves were.
They weren’t like Mari, though. Jasper scarcely remembered them but he knew that he never pondered the texture of their hair or the slickness of their naked skin as beads of water made it sparkle like gold.
Mari yelped, startling him from his reverie and sending him skittering across the tile. She leaned around the curtain to scowl at him, breasts covered with one arm. Jasper realized that he was overstepping. Even if nudity was nothing to fret over to man who is also wolf, he could hardly say that his intentions were innocent. If Jasper had any chance of walking on two legs again, he would like to do much more than simply stare at Mari.
That was also wrong and the shame of it had him retreating into the bedroom. Just because he found her all
uring didn’t mean Mari would feel the same. It was wrong to assume he had permission to do anything to her.
He climbed onto the bed and settled his head on a pillow with sigh. The floral sweetness of honeysuckle puffed up from the fabric and he inhaled it greedily. What was it about this little witch that was so enthralling? Mari was a siren but with no malice behind her beautiful song. Rather than luring him in to crash against rocks and drown, she was calling him ashore when he thought he’d been lost at sea. Man was helplessly floundering in the vast ocean of his own mind and the little witch appeared like the first sight of land on the horizon.
With eyes closed he mentally murmured a prayer, giving his thanks to the Father Above, the Earth Mother below, and of course, to Mother Moon. No doubt she had a hand in all of this. Mari was marked by her, after all. She was marked with the wolf too. Would he ever find out what that meant?
“Dog bed not good enough for you, huh?” Mari stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body.
He appreciated the thought but, no, it wasn’t good enough for him. The thing was too small and reeked of embalming chemicals. Besides, he wouldn’t be happy sleeping alone. When he walked on two legs he had his own bed but as the wolf, he craved the closeness of pack.
Mari must have felt the same because once she was clothed she wiggled up next to him and rested her head on his belly. “I wouldn’t want to sleep on that thing either. You can stay as long as you promise not to hog the covers.”
Jasper wrapped his tail over Mari’s legs and laid his head across her shoulders. He was hardly tired after spending the day snoozing but he was content to burrow his nose into her damp hair and listen to the sound of her breathing.
Jasper thought Mari was asleep—she could drift off in the blink of an eye regardless of her surroundings—when she suddenly whispered into the darkness. “I really am going to miss you, Red.”