Seth looked from me to the glassy surface of the lake, and then back to me. "I'll give it a try. But I'm not nuts about water, so if it doesn't work after one session, I can't promise I'll do it again."
I nodded. "Fair enough."
Emily clapped Seth on the back. "Go to it, Sethie. I think Kyla could really be onto something."
"Okay, guys. But don't stand around watching me the whole time. I'll meet you back at the cabins."
And with that, Seth waded into the water and soon dove underneath the surface. Emily and I watched him until he got maybe thirty feet out, and then we began heading back to the cabin.
She glanced at me. "He really, really dislikes being in water. Let's hope he can stay in long enough for this to work."
Several hours after we made it back to the cabins, Aaron, Samuel, and Calvin arrived home, reporting that Victor had been left in an eastern corner of the immortality bounds, hard at work on his rudimentary shelter.
Samuel snorted. "Although I told him he could go ahead and not build it and sleep in a ditch in wolf form every night for all we care. So long as he follows all the rules Aaron told him."
Aaron took a sugar cookie from a plate full of them that Emily, Jasmine, Sarah, and I had made a little while earlier. "I think he will. He's no fool."
Shortly after, the entire family sat around the fire pit eating cookies and drinking lemonade, several tall elms shading us from the sun's strong late afternoon rays. With Aaron's strong arms around me and birds singing in the trees and Calvin playing a few songs on his guitar, I almost forgot about the whole Victor thing. But not for long. Seth eventually returned from the lake, his hair still wet.
He came over to the fire pit, said hi to everyone, and grabbed a cookie. "Think I'm gonna go take a nap. Tired."
Jasmine asked him why his hair was all wet, and he shrugged.
"Went for a swim in the lake."
"You? A swim?"
He shrugged again, took a big, big bite of his cookie, and began heading to the cabins. But not before giving me and Emily, who was sitting right beside me, a little look and an almost imperceptible shake of his head. My heart sank.
Aaron spoke in a low voice. "What was that all about?"
"Maybe it'll be better if I tell you later. It's just complicated."
That evening after I'd eaten dinner, Aaron and I lay in bed on our backs, and I told him what Seth's trip to the lake had been about.
"I just really thought it would work. I just really thought he'd be able to pick up on more of Victor's thoughts. And decided I wanted to try it not because I didn't believe you when you told me last night that everything will work out okay with the Victor situation, but just because I have such a weird, nagging feeling about the whole thing. Emily, Seth, and I all do, actually. We just think Victor's hiding something. And I just thought we'd all feel better if Seth could maybe just hear Victor's thoughts a little clearer. If he could just pick up on more than one or two random, meaningless words at a time. Not that he's even been able to pick up on a single word since Victor arrived. And not that that's his fault at all, but it's just frustrating."
Aaron turned his head to look at me. "I know you're frustrated, and that's very understandable. But I don't want you to worry yourself about this. Victor is now settled into his eastern corner, and you'll never have to see him again. He's been warned to run, not walk, in the other direction if he ever happens to see you in the woods. Or else he risks immortality and his life. And I truly don't believe that's a risk he's willing to take."
I turned my face away from Aaron and stared at the ceiling. "I know you don't believe that, but...Aaron, my intuition is just screaming at me. Something's not right, here."
He put two long, strong fingers on my chin and gently turned my face toward him. "Do you remember when I said after the battle two months ago that I wish you'd start trusting me more? And that we needed to work on our trust issues? I think we still do. I want you to believe in your heart that I'll always protect you, and I'll never let anything bad happen to you, because it's true. I won't."
"But you can't control Victor, though. You can't control what he does or the unpredictable ways he may act. So I just...I just can't trust fully. I just can't, because of whatever he might have up his sleeve. We may think we've got him pegged, but there's always a chance we may not."
"That's true. And it's also true that we can never fully trust him. But let's say he does break the rules, let's say he does do something unpredictable or criminal. Don't you trust me to protect you? Don't you trust me to keep my angel safe?"
I sighed. "I do trust you to keep me safe. I really do."
"Then, never mind what Victor does or what he may be up to. It will never affect you because he will never harm you. And that's because I'll always prevent it. Does that make sense? You can't trust him, but you can trust me to shield you from him. Always. And that means you never have to worry about a thing."
Somewhat reassured, I rolled on my side and wrapped an arm around Aaron's hard chest. "I know. And thank you. I do trust you, and I do feel a little bit better now."
He smiled, rolled onto his side, too, and kissed me. "Good. When you feel better, I feel better."
I smiled back and kissed him, running a hand along the muscular ridges of his back. He began caressing the fullness of my bottom, a low growl rumbling in his chest, and I hooked a leg over his slim hips, the feel of the thick hardness straining against the fabric of his boxer briefs making me moan. Soon all of our clothes sat in a heap on the floor. At least, all except my bra, which had somehow wound up hanging from a top corner of a framed picture hanging at the opposite end of the cabin.
I straddled Aaron's hips, my back toward his face, in reverse-cowgirl position. Unable to resist, I stroked the slick, throbbing bud at the center of my womanhood along the length of his rock-hard shaft. He groaned, grabbing my hips. I wrapped a hand around the base of his manhood and lowered myself onto it, the slide-in eliciting animal-like cries from us both. Once I'd gotten used to the size of him, I began rocking my hips, working him in and out of my slickness, panting.
When I neared completion, I dropped onto all fours and rode him hard, breasts bouncing, not even self-conscious in the least that the view afforded him a very close-up look at my most intimate parts illuminated by lamplight. He'd told me many, many times recently, and in no uncertain terms, how much he thoroughly appreciated this view.
He and I soon cried out in ecstasy more or less simultaneously, and I rolled off him, snuggled into his arms, and fell asleep almost instantly. It was only when I awoke around two in the morning that I realized maybe I should have added something to our previous conversation. I felt like I wanted to add that although I knew he wanted me to trust him, and I did, I wish he'd trust in my intuition a little more. I wanted to add that trust goes both ways. I wanted him to take my bad gut feelings about the whole Victor situation seriously, even if those feelings didn't seem to make sense.
But when we both awoke an hour or so after dawn to another beautiful sunny summer day, and after Aaron suggested that we pack some food and have a breakfast picnic in a nearby meadow, it just didn't seem like the right time to bring up the things I wanted to add to the previous night's conversation. I had no interest in spoiling what was sure to be a gorgeous, memory-filled day with the man I loved. The man I loved a million times more than I'd ever loved any other man in my life. So I didn't bring up the topic of wanting Aaron to trust in my intuition more, and I also didn't mention Victor at all.
And then the next day, Aaron and I and the entire family went into Houghton to sell the family's woodworking items and furniture and some of Emily's pottery at an outdoor music festival. We'd all intended to spend the whole day at our booth in the middle of several other vendors, selling, but by one in the afternoon, we'd literally sold out of everything. Every hand-carved dining room chair, every blonde oak jewelry box, every single one of the three dozen vases that Emily had brought to sell. Aaron and I spen
t the rest of the day listening to local bands, sampling different carnival-type foods, and walking through a nearby park filled with dozens of elaborately planted flower displays, our clasped hands rarely parting.
It didn't seem like the right day to bring up the fact that I wish Aaron trusted my intuition about Victor more and took it more seriously. And then, I just kind of let it go, figuring the moment had passed. Figuring that Victor was all the way in the eastern corner of the immortality bounds of the wilds, everyone was keeping an eye on him, and everything would be fine. My feelings of unease began steadily receding.
Several days passed. It seemed Aaron had been right. Victor was remaining in his little corner of the woods, close to his newly-built shack, completely behaving himself. On maybe the fifth or sixth day, Aaron and his brothers even let up on their daily surveillance of him. Although, Aaron still wasn't letting me venture very far into the woods by myself. Which was just fine with me, not because I was really still that anxious about Victor anymore. I just liked spending all the time I could with Aaron, enjoying every moment of our first beautiful summer together. The first of many, many, many more to come, he told me several times.
Emily also seemed to have gotten over her intuition about Victor for the most part, too. But Seth was a different story. Nearly every evening, he'd arrive home to the cabins, his hair damp. I knew he must be continuing with water meditation at the lake in an attempt to hear Victor's thoughts.
One night, hair damp again, he came home for a family dinner in the meeting cabin, his expression unusually brooding.
While setting the table, I kind of pulled him aside and spoke in a low voice. "You don't have to keep doing this."
He jammed his hands in his jeans pockets, his gaze on the floor. "Yeah. I do."
"But I think Aaron was right, though. I'm starting to think Victor won't ever be causing any problems. After all, he has immortality again now; why would he want to die? This whole thing was some sort of elaborate setup to get Aaron to help him commit suicide or something? Suicide by breaking rules and provoking angry shifter bear? It really doesn't make any sense. It makes more sense to think that, yes, Victor comes across as somewhat sneaky and treacherous, he was probably telling us the truth all along. He just wanted immortality again. He knows he's weakened and way outnumbered. I don't think he'll be breaking any rules."
Seth lifted his gaze from the floor to my face. "Kyla? No offense, but I'm over a hundred-and-fifty years older than you are. And if my many years on his earth have taught me one thing, it's this. When a person gets a strong negative intuition about something, when they really feel in their heart that something is not right, no matter how hard they try to talk themselves out of that feeling, that intuition is almost always right. I trust mine. I'm not going to stop trying to hear Victor's thoughts."
And with that, Seth left the meeting cabin. Jasmine and Sarah ended up bringing a plate of food to his own cabin. When they picked up the plate over an hour later, he'd hardly even touched anything, even though sirloin steak with a buttered baked potato was his favorite human-form meal.
Over the next four days, he ate little and only left his cabin exactly four times, each time to go to the lake in early evening. Everyone grew increasingly worried about him, especially Aaron. And finally, around ten at night on the fourth day, while the entire family played cards in the meeting cabin, Aaron said that he was going to talk to Seth when he returned from the lake.
Calvin nodded, shuffling a deck of cards. "I think that's a good idea. It's starting to get pretty painful seeing him bang his head against a wall every day. And all for nothing. Boy, he sure takes an idea and goes with it, doesn't he?"
I sighed, cringing inwardly. "I'm starting to feel pretty terrible that I ever gave him the idea of meditating at the lake in the first place. But it was when some of us were still kind of worked up about Victor, and really wished Seth could still hear his thoughts, and...." I sighed again. "I guess it just seemed like a good idea at the time."
Emily squeezed my shoulder. "Hey. I did, too, remember? We can't blame ourselves for getting a little worked up for a while. We're only human." She suddenly cracked a smile. "Well, you are, anyway. I happen to be some weird, half-human, half-bear hybrid not found in any book about the animal kingdom."
She and I laughed, but Samuel, sitting across from us, scowled. But his gray eyes were twinkling.
"Um, excuse me? ‘Weird?’ I prefer 'unique.'"
Aaron, sitting beside me, smiled a little, scanning the hand of cards Calvin had dealt him. "How about 'magnificent?'"
Everyone laughed and chimed in with their own descriptors. But soon, the laughter died down and we all started on a new game of cards.
Just then, the cabin door swung open. Seth leaned against the doorway, breathless, and also shoeless and shirtless. He wore only jeans, and his sandy blond hair hung in damp clumps over his forehead. His feet were caked with mud.
Aaron began rising from his chair, his dark brows furrowed. "Seth, what-"
"It's Victor. He lied. He deceived us all. He's raising an army. And he intends to kill each and every one of us within a day."
CHAPTER SIX
A short while later, Seth sat at the table with us all, several people asking him questions at the same time. But soon, Aaron called for quiet.
"Please, everyone, let him talk. Seth, tell us exactly what you heard."
He took a deep breath. "I heard his thoughts for maybe less than a minute. He was thinking about what other supernatural creatures he could get to come down from Canada to help him take the wilds from us by killing us. He's already contacted many of these creatures over the past week...other wolf and bear shifters created by a father different from our own, lynx shifters, fox shifters, and some coyotes that aren't even shifters at all, but simply some kind of animal with supernatural gifts, able to think human thoughts. Many of these creatures plan to arrive here by tomorrow night. Somehow, Victor is able to communicate with them all telepathically, though I'm not sure how. He's promised these creatures that in exchange for them helping him wipe us out, he'll allow them to remain within these wilds, sharing immortality with him, though I have no idea how he plans to grant that gift; I wasn't aware that our immortality was transferable, except by creating shifter wives. But he thinks somehow he can do it, and he's told these creatures that he will, so long as they help him wipe us out, and so long as they accept him as 'king' of this forest, which it seems they've all agreed to. And that's basically all I heard before the 'signal' kind of cut out."
Aaron stared at the flame of a dark blue candle in the center of the table. "We'll have to locate and kill Victor immediately. Once the other shifters he has coming aren't able to communicate telepathically with him anymore, they'll most likely assume we've caught on to his plan and have killed him. And once they realize this, and realize that he'll no longer be able to grant them immortality, however he planned to do that, I'm certain they'll turn tail and head home. So, first order of business. We'll divide into groups and hunt down Victor. Whoever finds him first, kills him."
Aaron's deep green eyes glinted in the candlelight.
"And I hope to God it's me."
Suddenly, for the second time that night, the cabin door swung open.
Victor stood on the porch, dark eyes wide, grinning, his head cocked to one side. "Oh, hullo! I thought I heard my name. I thought I heard you folks wanted to find me. Well, no need. Because here...I...am!" Smiling, he moved his feet in a quick little tap dance, arms windmilling. "Ta-da!" He paused, his arms posed straight out on either side of him, his smile quickly turning into a frown. "What, no applause? How incredibly rude. I worked hard to learn that little dance."
I turned to look at Aaron, who sat beside me, wondering just what in the hell was taking him so long to get up and kill Victor. And that's when I noticed. Everyone sitting around the table, Aaron and his entire family, everyone but me, seemed to be frozen. They all looked toward Victor at the door, their expressi
ons completely unmoving masks of something between surprise and anger.
A wave of dizziness washed over me. My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
"Aaron? Aaron, why are you so still? You've gotta move. You've gotta kill Victor."
He remained completely motionless, his eyes glinting with anger, but his brows raised slightly, as in surprise.
"Aaron? Aaron, oh my God. What's happened to you?" I looked around the table at everyone. "What's happened to all of you?"
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