Wilder The Chosen Ones

by Christina Dodd

  “Good point.” Irving perked up. “I’ll look into that.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Mr. Shea, so I can thank you for leaving me the mansion. It has made the transition of power between this generation of Chosen Ones and the new generation of Chosen Ones so much easier.” McKenna thought of the improvements he’d made to accommodate the seven, and he glowed with pride.

  “So they’ll stay here under your supervision?” Irving leaned back with a satisfied sigh. “I had hoped that would work out.”

  “I feel I cannot offer supervision, per se, but certainly guidance.”

  “You’re too modest, McKenna. Those young men and women are not the only ones who have gained wisdom over this difficult time.”

  McKenna chuckled. “I suppose you’re right, Mr. Irving. One simply doesn’t think of gaining wisdom at my age.”

  “Pfft!” Irving waved that away. “You’re fifty-six. A mere child!”

  McKenna supposed Irving would think that.

  Rising, he went to the pot on the stove and stirred it, tasted it, sprinkled a little fresh thyme into the sauce. “I’ve made the new Chosen Ones my Scottish lamb stew. Now that Martha is gone, I might as well get them ready to eat my cooking.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll have some help. Look.” Irving nodded at the high window that looked out on the street.

  There was Taurean, her face pressed against the glass, staring fixedly into the kitchen.

  “Good heavens. That girl!” McKenna hurried to the door and opened it, and, with great patience, called, “Taurean, I told you. You can come in anytime.”

  As usual, she crawled around the corner, then scooted down the stairs on her bottom. In the kitchen, she stood and dusted her rear. “I got the invitation.”

  McKenna noted she was wearing a flowered chintz apron. “What invitation is that?”

  “To cook for the new Chosen Ones, of course.”

  McKenna glanced at Irving.

  Irving shrugged.

  Taurean continued. “I’m a good cook. I’ll help out around the house, too.” She looked around. “I like this place. I’m safe here. Is this the pantry?” She headed inside.

  “Yes, it is,” McKenna said.

  She came out carrying the bread machine and his container of flour. “Later tonight I’ll start some sourdough, but for today’s meal I’ll make butter rolls to go with the stew.” As she brushed by Irving, she said, “Hello, Irving Shea; you’re looking good for a man who’s been dead more than a month.”

  “Thank you, Taurean,” Irving said. “It’s good to see you feeling better.”

  “I am,” she said. “Do you know that, even though I was afraid, I helped rescue all those people before the building collapsed?”

  “She did, sir. She was very brave.” McKenna couldn’t have been prouder if she were his own daughter. Indeed, he felt rather fatherly toward Taurean, which was perhaps odd, since she was at least ten years older than he was.

  “Brava, Taurean!” Irving softly clapped his hands. But the sound was distant and far away.

  Taurean used her apron to curtsy, then went to work assembling the ingredients for the rolls.

  Funny girl, but perhaps she would work out.

  Irving looked up suddenly. Then he stood. “McKenna, I have to leave now. Dina’s calling me.”

  McKenna looked around, but saw no other apparitions. “What about Martha?”

  Irving stopped and looked right at McKenna. “She’s not with us. She cannot be with us.”

  “As I suspected.” McKenna shook his head mournfully.

  “She was a sad case,” Irving said. “Martha wanted to be one of the Chosen Ones, not be a servant, and she wanted to be on the winning side. Eventually she came to believe she deserved what she did not have.”

  “If only she had held out, she would have won with us all. A sad case, indeed.” McKenna stepped forward. “Mr. Shea, will I see you again?”

  Irving smiled. “Not in this life.”

  “I had hoped for advice,” McKenna said.

  “The Chosen Ones who just walked out that door”—Irving pointed—“were mine to mentor. The new Chosen are yours, and after these, I see many more Chosen Ones waiting to take their turn. They are all yours, and, McKenna, I have every confidence in you.”

  The front doorbell rang.

  “And there they are,” Irving said. “What a good time you have ahead of you, McKenna. Enjoy every moment.”

  “Yes, sir.” McKenna slipped on his jacket. “I will, sir.”

  Irving turned again. “I’m coming!” he called. He walked through the kitchen door and vanished.

  Taurean waved. “Bye, Irving!” she called, and headed back into the pantry. She seemed to consider the appearance and disappearance of a ghost to be a normal, everyday occurrence.

  Perhaps for her, it was.

  But this particular ghost . . . McKenna swallowed his sentiment. It wouldn’t do to have the new Chosen Ones seeing him with tearstained cheeks. That would give them entirely the wrong impression.

  Straightening his shoulders, and at his usual majestic pace, he walked up the stairs to the entry.

  The doorbell rang again.

  Such impatience, he thought. You will learn.

  He adjusted his collar and cuffs; then, with the proper dignity of a well-trained butler—that was, after all, his first calling—he opened the door wide.

  Seven new Chosen Ones stared at him, some resentful, some joyous, some awestruck, and all filled with trepidation, hidden or not.

  “Welcome.” He stepped and gestured them into the foyer. “Please come in and make yourselves at home.”

  Chapter 58

  Four Years Later

  Aleksandr walked into the huge living room of his grandparents’ guesthouse, holding his three-month-old daughter in a sling against his chest. “Where’s Charisma? Emma’s hungry.”

  Samuel looked up from his supervision of the nursery set up in the connected dining room. “How should I know where Charisma is?”

  Taken aback by Samuel’s savage tone, Aleksandr said, “Well . . . I thought you might have seen her.”

  “Are you kidding? Those women dumped these kids on me and disappeared, and they haven’t come back.”

  Aleksandr surveyed the four three-year-olds. Two were playing school under Shea’s supervision.

  One sat in a little chair in the corner, kicking, screaming, and crying.

  “They’re not so bad,” Aleksandr said.

  “Not so bad?” Grabbing Aleksandr’s collar, Samuel glared into his eyes. “I thought little girls were cute. They’re awful.”

  “They have their moments.” Aleksandr leaned down and gave Shea a kiss. “Having fun?”

  “Yeah!” She turned her big green eyes on him, and smiled, then went back to her schoolroom.

  “That girl is particularly irksome.” Samuel pointed at the screamer.

  Aleksandr looked the kids over carefully. The former Chosen Ones and their children had arrived yesterday evening, and what followed had been a hodgepodge of hugs, greetings, exclamations, and planning, as well as their small, deeply felt annual memorial service for Irving. But Aleksandr was pretty sure . . . “Isn’t that girl yours?”

  “Yes. Can you believe Isabelle produced a daughter with that temperament?”

  Aleksandr stared at Samuel.

  “All right! Fine! Z’ana takes after me! But don’t you think she’d have a little of Isabelle in her?”

  “Not if there’s any justice.” Aleksandr adjusted the baby on his chest. “What did she do?”

  “She punched somebody.” Samuel’s forbidding tone made Aleksandr’s heart sink.

  “Oh, no.” Aleksandr started toward Shea. “Are the other kids okay?”

  “She didn’t punch one of the other kids,” Samuel said.

  “Oh.” Aleksandr pinched his mouth to keep from laughing. “Looks like you might have a shiner.”

  Samuel glared. “I caught her trying to sneak
out to find Grandpa Konstantine.”

  Aleksandr got serious in a hurry. “We’ve always been terrified one of the little ones would disappear up here. Do you want me to talk to her?”

  Samuel waved a consenting hand.

  Aleksandr walked over and knelt beside Z’ana.

  Z’ana stopped crying and looked at him, lip stuck out.

  “Honey, your daddy is right.” Samuel and Isabelle’s daughter was a cutie, with dark eyes that sparkled with life and, right now, tears. “You can’t go outside by yourself. There are woods out there, and wild animals, and acres of ground, and you could get lost.”

  “Grandpa Konstantine said he would teach me sur-viv-al.” Her speech was precise, her tone fully as irked as her father’s.

  “He will. Grandpa Konstantine likes to teach little girls how to survive in the woods. When he’s ready, he will come and get you.” Sternly, Aleksandr asked, “And when did he say he would be ready?”

  “After lunch.”

  “And . . . ?”

  The lip went out farther. “After my nap.”

  “Yes. If you’re lost and he has to come and find you, he will be very unhappy. We don’t like to make Grandpa Konstantine unhappy. He yells.” Aleksandr stood. “He can’t teach you right now, because he’s in the barn with Uncle John, watching him lift a tractor.”

  She sighed hugely. “That’s boring. So I’ll wait.” She was obviously making a huge concession.

  “Thank you.” Aleksandr kissed her on the top of the head.

  She jumped up and ran to Samuel. “Daddy, I love you!”

  Samuel gathered her into his arms, kissed and hugged her. “I love you, too, pumpkin. Do you want to play school?”

  “Yay!”

  Samuel put his daughter down and watched her join the girls. “Isn’t she the biggest drama queen?”

  Aleksandr looked at him again.

  “I am not a drama queen,” Samuel said.

  “No, you’re a hotshot trial lawyer in Seattle. I suppose that’s not quite the same.”

  “I may put it on occasionally to impress a jury,” Samuel allowed. “Why is John lifting a tractor?”

  Emma fussed.

  Aleksandr patted her bottom. “Grandpa keeps challenging John with bigger and bigger objects. He loves to see John project his power.”

  “So it’s like Yoda and Luke?”

  “Yes, except if John had to lift his X-wing out of a swamp on Dagobah, he wouldn’t first whine that he couldn’t.”

  “‘Do or do not. There is no try,’” Samuel quoted Star Wars.

  “Right.” Aleksandr looked around. “Where’s Caleb?”

  “He’s at the main house with his mom and grandma and the aunts. They’re showing Grandma how to make that polenta-and-sauce thing for dinner, and she’s teaching them to make paste chicken or something for the Fourth of July celebration.”

  “Patychky?”

  “That’s it.” Samuel smiled. “Looking forward to dinner tonight and the food tomorrow is the only thing that got me through this last hour. That and Shea, who rules with an iron hand.”

  Aleksandr observed his daughter, who now pointed a ruler at the other girls and expounded on the letter G, which stood for girl, and was way more important than B, which stood for boy. “We named her right. She goes for the win.”

  “And she doesn’t take any shit.” Samuel lowered his voice on the last word.

  But Shea heard, because she pointed her ruler at him.

  “I’m surrounded by officious females.” Samuel groaned.

  “You love it.”

  Samuel chuckled. “I do.”

  Aleksandr walked to the window and looked out. “The women are coming back.”

  “Thank God. I hope they enjoyed their walk through the vines,” Samuel said sarcastically. But he joined Aleksandr and watched with a faint air of anxiety.

  Isabelle was hugely pregnant.

  So was Genny.

  So was Rosamund.

  Jacqueline was the most hugely pregnant of all.

  “Have you heard? How is Jacqueline?” Samuel asked.

  “I asked Caleb last night. He said she’s back one hundred percent.”

  “Thank God.”

  The shape-shifter who had taken Jacqueline’s form in that final battle had also tried to take her life. Caleb had found her stabbed, broken, and unconscious in a stairwell in the Osgood building. He carried her out, and they were the last two out before the building collapsed.

  The weeks that followed had been terrible as the Chosen Ones waited to see first whether she would live, then whether she would survive the surgeries, then whether rehab and hard work could help her speak again.

  Now for the first time she was pregnant, and to catch up she was having twins. Girls, of course.

  Emma fussed a little louder.

  Aleksandr patted her and swayed back and forth, back and forth.

  For a thousand years, Aleksandr’s family had fathered only sons. Now he and Charisma had had two girls. He figured it was something Smith Bernhard had done to him, so apparently one good thing had come from the torture Aleksandr had suffered.

  The other good thing was . . . if he’d stayed the whole seven years with the Chosen Ones, if he hadn’t been captured, broken, and transformed, he and Charisma would never have found each other, loved each other. His character had needed to be hardened and shaped by adversity before he was worthy to be her match, and her mate.

  He touched the steel plate that still formed part of his skull. The doctors had been able to remove the homing device Bernhard had placed in his brain, but they couldn’t replace the bone he’d lost. The plate was there to stay, an annoyance when he went through airport security, and a reminder of what was important—his children, his family, and his friends.

  Chapter 59

  Outside, Charisma came running in from the vineyard. Catching up with the women, she said something that made them all laugh.

  Then they came inside, flushed from the summer sun and smiling.

  The children ran to greet their mommies and get hugs and kisses, then ran back to Shea’s classroom to play some more.

  Charisma stared at Isabelle, then Genny, then gave Aleksandr a significant look, which he supposed he should have been able to interpret, but couldn’t. He didn’t know most of the time what she meant and what she thought, but the good thing about Charisma was she didn’t expect him to guess. Sooner or later she would tell him what was on her mind.

  Isabelle used her hands on the arms of one of the wooden dining room chairs to lower herself into the seat. “Looks like the kids were good.”

  Aleksandr got a significant look from Samuel, too. At least he knew what that one meant.

  “They were angels.” Samuel pushed an ottoman under Isabelle’s feet. “How are you doing?”

  “Good.” But she winced and put her hand to her back.

  He sat next to her and started rubbing her spine.

  She smiled and relaxed into his touch.

  “I always knew you women cycled together,” he said. “But this getting pregnant at the same time is ridiculous.”

  “I’m not pregnant.” Charisma took Emma from Aleksandr, gave her a kiss and him a more lingering kiss, and sat down.

  Aleksandr seated himself on the arm of her easy chair and held the blanket while Charisma got ready to nurse the baby.

  As Emma settled down to her meal, Jacqueline laughed. “Does she always grunt like that?”

  “Like a little piggy.” Charisma brushed the bald baby head and cooed, “Don’t you, sweetheart?”

  Aaron wandered in from the kitchen, got kisses and hugs from his daughter, Juliet, and said to Charisma, “The only reason Charisma’s not pregnant is because you two got the jump on us with Shea. We’ve all been working to catch up ever since.”

  “Have you been in the kitchen the whole time?” Samuel demanded.

  “No, no, no.” Aleksandr thought Aaron’s denial was a little too enthusiastic—an
d fishy, since he picked up the conversation so quickly. “I was up at the main house helping Adrik break into the family safe. Apparently one of the Wilder great-grandchildren somehow managed to reset the electronics on the lock. That kid has a future as a professional thief.”

  Caleb came in from the kitchen, received kisses and hugs from his daughter, Kara, and said, “I agree with Samuel. Your due dates are all within a week. Considering you don’t live in the same house anymore, that’s kind of spooky.”

  “Honey, we’ve got an e-mail loop.” Jacqueline let him slide a stool under her feet. “We’re in contact every day, and we talk all the time.”

  He leaned down and kissed her, and looked into her eyes. “Having twins to catch up is even spookier.”

  “I’ll grant you that,” she allowed. “It’s not like I could have planned it, though!”

  “Caleb, have you been here the whole time?” Samuel asked.

  Caleb looked surprised. “No, I came in the back so I could put the polenta in the refrigerator. We made a ton, and, oh, Samuel—wait until you taste the sauce.”

  Samuel was up and headed for the kitchen. “I’m starving.”

  “Easily distracted,” Caleb muttered.

  The children all came to their feet. “We’re starving, too!”

  Aleksandr definitely knew what that Samuel-look meant.

  Samuel and the kids disappeared into the kitchen.

  Charisma turned to Isabelle. “He’s like the Pied Piper!”

  “I know. He and Z’ana are always butting heads, but they adore each other.” Isabelle winced again.

  Rosamund pushed her glasses up on her nose, observed Isabelle, and said, “You show all the signs of the first stage of labor.”

  Aleksandr, Caleb, and Aaron straightened in alarm.

  “Maybe,” Isabelle allowed. “But don’t tell Samuel. He didn’t want us to visit this close to my due date, and I insisted.”

  Charisma chuckled.

  “Honey, if you’re in labor, he’s going to figure it out pretty fast.” Genny displayed her logical turn of mind.

  John came in from the kitchen, looking chagrined. “He caught me,” he said to Aaron and Caleb. “I had to admit I sneaked into the house from the barn and hung out in there to avoid, um . . .” He saw that no one paid him any heed. “What’s up?”