by Brea Viragh
Had he been so wrapped up in the miracle of finding his lifemate that he’d literally ignored the obvious?
She struggled to push away and stand on her own. He heaved a sigh at her stubbornness. She was so small, shivering uncontrollably now, and every protective instinct in him leaped to the forefront, feelings he didn’t want to feel.
“What can you do?” she asked, teeth chattering.
The symptoms had come upon her faster than he’d have thought possible. “Everything I can,” Lakota assured her. All of his energy focused on what lay in front of them. He needed to get her out of the house and to a doctor. Better yet, his shifter clan’s healer would know what to do. Lakota remembered vague stories from his childhood of the mystic man’s ability to cure the other lynx in the tribe when they brought back diseases. It didn’t happen often, but from time to time…
Dread rose in a bitter bile, burning his throat.
Farris was going to need whatever care he could offer until they were able to get out of the house and into the heart of the shifter community. Hopefully, they still had time.
He stared out the window, willing the sun to shine, to melt away the snow until he heard rivers of it pouring off the roof.
“Are you sure?” she asked with great trepidation, and for an instant he thought she was reading his thoughts. “Are you sure you won’t catch this from me?”
He smiled down at her and willingly bent to kiss her forehead. Is that what she was worried about? “No, my heart. I won’t catch it, I promise you. I’m mulling over our options,” he replied, trying to stay calm.
“What are they?”
“You aren’t going to like what I have to say.”
“Just get it over with.”
“The way I see it, we have two choices.” He’d focused on the healer because, in his opinion, she’d be even more resistant to the other option. But seeing her declining so rapidly had changed his mind.
“Go on.”
“There’s a healer. Sort of a shaman type deal. I know he’s a bigwig in our community although our paths haven’t really crossed unless we were at a tribunal,” he stated. Managing a smile was difficult. “He might be able to find a way to push the disease from your body, something modern medicine can’t do or handle.”
“Why can’t I just go to the hospital?” she asked.
He decided to go with honesty when he saw how hard this was on her. What she was going through. “Because it might be too late by the time we make it. I don’t know much, but I know a person can be kept alive on life-support, but no one has ever made a recovery from rabies. Once symptoms start, it’s basically too late already and nothing can be done to halt the progression of the disease. There’s no cure.”
Her head dropped. “Oh.”
“Or,” he ventured slowly, “we have another option. Faster. Guaranteed to make you well. And I have a feeling you’re going to hate it.”
“Why would I hate it?”
Lakota let out a huff of breath but he found it wasn’t reluctance he felt. It was pure terror. “Because it involves turning you.”
Her eye narrowed. “Turning me? You mean like roasting me on a spit?”
“I’m glad your sense of humor hasn’t shriveled up and died.” He tugged at a piece of dark hair falling over her cheek. “Turning you into a shifter. You would be like me.”
It was funny how fate worked. They’d been arguing about the very issue moments before and he’d felt he was finally winning her over to his side. In her eyes, he’d seen a begrudging acceptance, or at least a willingness to give being with him on a more permanent basis more than a passing thought. Now her decision might mean life or death. For both of them, he thought, his blood swelling with fury.
Because if she died, there would be nothing left for him. People might tell him to move past the death of a loved one, or mock his pain for only having known her love for a short time. It worked differently for those of his kind. Once the match was made, it was until death, and rarely did one person survive the loss of their mate. There was a ceremony—mostly a formality, he’d thought until this point—which the shaman performed to draw the two souls together. It was more than words of a promised bond. It was a universal tie.
He and Farris were nowhere near that point, however, but Lakota knew without a shadow of a doubt he had to save her. He could not let her go.
“There’s something about the change, Farris. It doesn’t just heal you. It makes you stronger. Like a complete overhaul of your system. Whatever magic happens doesn’t just shift your body. It changes you at a genetic level. Your DNA would be rewritten. It means the disease would disappear. I’ve heard of it happening. Not with rabies, but a woman in Minnesota. She had lupus.”
She gulped again. “I don’t believe it.”
“I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear,” he continued.
“Not. Even. Close.” Her lungs rattled when she breathed and he found his fingers tightening around her hair.
“I can try to make it to town on the snowmobile. Find the shaman and get him back here in time.” Who knew how long it would take, and they didn’t have a nanosecond to waste.
“You’re telling me,” Farris struggled to say, “that you’ve had a snowmobile here and we haven’t used it to get ourselves out?”
“The tank is nearly empty and I’ve been using the gas for the generator. I thought you’d rather have hot water than an escape plan…” Now he cursed himself internally. Why hadn’t he kept enough gas in the tank for a trip into town? Was he stupid? Sadly, he was worse. He was in love. “There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to find him in—”
“Go on. Say it,” she urged, eyelids fluttering.
“I’m not sure where the shaman is. When I get back, it may be too late for you.” The instant the words were out he hung his head. And he hated himself.
“So a slow and painful death…or losing what little life and independence I have. Losing me. Tough choice.”
The fear and anguish twisting her face were too much to bear, and it was difficult to keep his posture relaxed. Getting upset would incite her to further panic. The distress pulled him over the line. “I’ll do whatever you want. This is up to you. But if you die, know I’ll be right behind you,” he offered frantically.
“Don’t say such things.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot how the truth rubs you wrong.”
He could tell from the way she shook, the pallor and sweat aside. She wasn’t ready. Not to give the whole of herself to him. Pain lanced through him. No matter the strides they’d made until this point, the fact remained she didn’t see a future together with him. It had nothing to do with the disease. If anything, it was a reminder to him. Even faced with the prospect of a permanent end, she would risk the time she had left rather than go for a failsafe option.
Fear gripped her in a stranglehold.
He nodded grimly, swallowing, refusing to let her see the same blank terror she felt reflected on his face. “Okay. I’ll siphon the rest of the gas into the snowmobile and head to town. Before I leave, I’ll stock the fireplace so you won’t run out before I get back. Let’s bundle you up and keep you warm.”
There was no fight left in her, and it had everything to do with rabies. Lakota had seen animals with the disease. He’d taken part in tracking some of them down and putting them out of their misery before they could infect others in the community. But he’d never seen it in a human before and the effects were devastating. In the hour or so it took him to gather the supplies he’d need and assure her comfort, she was nothing but a huddled mass of blankets with a moon-pale face peeping out. He let her with water and snacks within arm’s reach. She didn’t bat an eyelash when he helped her into a seated position. He brushed the back of his hand against her forehead and found her skin red-hot.
“Why don’t you just stay with me?” she asked. “We both know I’m not going to make it much longer.”
He swallowed convulsively. “Because I refuse to le
t you…to let you…” He couldn’t say it. “I have to go.”
“Stay,” Farris insisted.
“Hey, don’t worry about me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve made the trip down the mountain in the snow before. I’ll be fine. I don’t want to hear you say another word.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
Suddenly, he didn’t want to go. A gnawing in his gut told him to stay with her, be with her, hold her down and force her to accept him, despite the fact that he’d never changed a human being in his life and was unsure of the protocol. Was it his blood? His saliva? A scratch or a bite?
He was too far out of his league.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said when she didn’t answer. “I hope.”
“You’ll…be careful?”
He spared a moment of thought for the radio, the dead batteries he’d meant to replace. How much easier it would have been to send a message to his father or brothers and tell them to meet him halfway. Tell someone to send the shaman to him.
When was he going to stop half-assing things? He’d never hated the quality in himself before. Now he damned it.
“There’s no doubt.” Lakota bent down and kissed her forehead, nearly singeing his lips from the heat rising off her skin. “Stay warm. It should take me a few hours to get through, find the shaman. I’ll get him back here before dark. Promise.”
The weight of what he didn’t say hung heavy on him when he pushed through the door and into the biting wind. Stay alive.
Chapter 9
The fire went out before Farris was aware. It wasn’t until hours later, when she shivered against the chill, that she woke out of her fever dream and noticed the decided drop in temperature inside the cabin.
“Lakota?”
It was more effort than she wanted to admit to sit up and get her eyes to focus. Her lungs worked overtime trying to draw air into her body when her respiratory system wanted to quit on her.
She didn’t even have the energy to lament her failing body. Or her rotten luck for being bitten by an animal with a fatal disease. Or the fact that she should have gone to the hospital immediately after getting bitten.
Her brain turned in circles and her limbs refused to cooperate. It was the flu times a thousand. She blinked in the lavender-and-peach-colored twilight, trying to remember. Remember when Lakota had said he would be home.
Her mind chased itself in circles which made it impossible to think of anything except her condition. The ache in her joints. The way her skin felt like there were millions of needles pricking at her.
“Lakota…you were supposed to come back.”
Wrapping the blanket closer around her, she made it to her feet, leaning on the couch for support before falling back down. Her insides were ravaged. It was worse than anything she’d ever experienced, and she’d been home with mononucleosis for a straight two weeks in junior high. Her body seemed made of lead. Her thoughts were like grains of sand in an hourglass. She knew one thing for certain: Lakota should have been back by now. He told her he was coming back.
She tried to stand a second time, her legs giving out and her arm sweeping toward the side table in an effort to catch herself. The glass kerosene lamp tipped, teetered, then shattered. She winced at the sound, her throat convulsing when she tried to swallow.
The radio…
If she could make it to the radio, she might be able to call his father back. Get help. See if there was someone out there with the ability to look for Lakota. The sinking in her gut was new. Frightening.
Why would she worry about him? He’d be back because he promised. The sinking feeling beneath her sternum was wholly different from the disease and urged her to act.
She’d been blown away when he called her his mate, pushing her own feelings for him to the side under the weight of this impossible declaration. With the discovery and rapid onslaught of her disease, she’d been too preoccupied with the pain to give it a second thought. Now, with glass underfoot and the sun setting, Farris closed her eyes. She focused on the space around her—as well as she could with her own body waging war with itself—and reached out for him.
Lakota…
There they were. The golden chains binding them together. The ones wrapped around her heart. Substantial. Solid. Durable. They were magnificent in their simplicity and devastating in their meaning.
She loved him.
And he’d gone out to try and save her. To accomplish the impossible.
She already knew she was going to die.
But something was wrong. She felt it, an ache in her gut that had nothing to do with rabies. It was a knowing.
Farris hobbled toward the radio and stared at the instrument for a long time. Too long, her wasted brain argued. Trembling, she reached out and began flicking knobs. Twisting buttons. Before remembering. The battery backup was broken, and Lakota had taken the last of the gasoline to fuel the snowmobile. Or so he’d told her before leaving. She thought he’d told her. Might have been the fever dream.
She slumped against the counter, her finger on the button. Was she able to send out an alert through the emergency alert system?
And say what, she wondered. Say she was trapped in a cabin, snowbound, and dying of a fatal disease? Say her lynx shifter mate was somewhere out in the wilderness in trouble and she knew this because of a terrible unease?
They’d think she was hallucinating. She probably was hallucinating. Who was to say this wasn’t all a dream?
As darkness began to fall and Lakota still wasn’t back, she knew she had to do something. She finally managed to light one of the kerosene lamps, drawing it close to her to stay within the circle of light. Blame it on the attack on her nervous system, but a furious energy filled her, not unlike the insomnia she’d experienced over the last week.
She hardly recognized the urgent push inside of her, concerned only with the need to get outside. To help Lakota. After all, she was as good as dead. Might as well make her last moments count, for his sake.
Funny, Farris thought, struggling to bundle herself up in layer after layer. She’d made peace with the idea somewhere along the line. It wasn’t that she lacked fear. There was plenty of that, bubbling and churning beneath the surface. She’d simply transferred it from herself to Lakota. She couldn’t be scared anymore. She couldn’t let whatever hesitations and uncertainties she felt affect her actions.
She was indispensable. She was able, at least for a little bit, and she was willing.
Farris grabbed a flashlight from the emergency kit Lakota kept in the kitchen. Knowing he’d left a pair of cross-country skis on the outside porch for her, she pushed open the door into the dark.
God, she was stupid. Blame it on the rabies.
The frigid night air bit into her face and the few inches of exposed skin around her eyes. She winced at the difference in temperature. She’d thought the inside of the cabin cold? This was a whole other ball game. Her teeth clattered together as she fumbled to slide her boots onto the skis, struggling through her feelings. Once she was out and standing, there would be no going back until she found Lakota.
The only sane part of her that was left screamed to turn around and go back inside the house. Build a fire. Stay warm. Wait.
She’d spent her whole life waiting. For something to happen, for change to find her, for the life she’d always dreamed of to finally be hers. Well, it wasn’t going to happen, was it? It certainly wasn’t going to fall into her lap. She had limited time left.
The best she could do was push forward and do something for someone else. Someone who mattered to her.
The cold bit down into her bones. Her muscles ached through the shivering and her teeth clenched together hard enough to shatter a few molars.
“Lakota?” she called.
She clicked on the flashlight and began to follow the tracks.
The moon was high overhead, reflecting brightly on the snow. It was a spotlight designed for her. Farris found she hardly needed th
e flashlight. She stuck to the path, the deep grooves dug by the heavy machine, and while the going wasn’t easy, it was certainly doable.
She spoke to herself to keep from focusing on her anguish. Or the scurrying sounds she heard in the dark woods around her.
There was a trip-hammer of fear still playing in her throat, although she knew better than to give in to it. She lifted her chin in response. “This is ridiculous.” Her voice sounded like a croak. “He’s probably on his way back right now. With the shaman in tow, no less. He’ll see that you’re gone and he’ll wonder what the hell you’re doing out here. Trudging out into the woods to meet your maker, that’s what. Meeting death head on in one last act of insanity.” The moisture in her eyes and nose had frozen and she wiped a gloved hand across both to clear out the flakes of ice. “You’re being stupid, Farris. Willfully stupid.”
The same golden cord she might have imagined earlier drew her forward when her muscles screamed to turn around. When whatever logical and analytical sense she still possessed called her every name under the sun.
She stumbled as her left knee gave out, falling hard on her tailbone. The gasp caught in her throat. For all the padding on her behind, it should have hurt less.
An excruciating zap of pain shot up her spine and lodged in her skull.
The voices were loud enough to buzz in her ears. She shook her head against them. “I can’t fight you,” she gasped. “What am I doing?”
She was a long way from the cabin. When she’d started, the moon was below the tree line, and now it drew high in the sky.
“What am I doing?” she cried, letting her head drop.
“Get up, girl. You’re never going to find him sitting on your ass.”
The voice was mild, the demand in it clear. And it scared the ever-loving shit out of her. Farris expanded the last of her energy bolting upright, slipping on her skis and breaking the ties on the left one. The right did its damnedest to impale her when she struggled to surge forward.
There was an old man leaning against a tree, his silver hair kissed by the moonlight and a warm smile on his face. He had his arms crossed over his chest.