by Lisa Ladew
Rogue poked him. “Don’t you think you owe Mac an apology?”
“Sorry, Mac.” Rote.
Ella came to him and pulled him over to the table by the elbow. “Would you like to hold Track or Treena?” All those faces peering up at him. They were worried about him. Pitying him. He was so sick of pity. But then Treena was coming toward him and he had to curl his arms to catch her. She jumped from Burton’s arms to his. Licking his face. Pup breath. Adorable. Best smell in the world. Like all the pups ate was chocolate. He smiled. A small one, but it was there. Treena was wriggly and soft and fuzzy and so happy to see him. He tried not to hug her too tight.
A few soft murmurs. “Hi Harlan.” “Hey wolf, how you doing?” “I was worried about you, Harlan.” No one asked him if he tripped over the line he drew in the sand or how it felt when he hit the ground. No one accused him of being a few wolves short of a pack. Concern, genuine concern came at him, even from the males. It felt good. He blocked it out.
Wade raised his hands, quieting everyone, “Listen up. You all know why we’re here. Harlan’s mate could be returned to him. It’s improbable, but we have to believe it’s possible, and that means we have to make a decision about whether to move forward with it as a group. This decision must be made together.”
Harlan swallowed hard, glad Mac had warned him this was what they were there for, otherwise, he might have keeled over again at that little speech. His gaze shot to Burton. How was the male taking this news about his daughter? He seemed not to have heard, was playing with Track, counting his pudgy baby fingers one at a time, holding them up for Track to babble over.
One. Two. Three.
Uh ooh ee.
Graeme appeared outside the dining room window as a dragon, startling Harlan. Just as swiftly, he transformed into a tall, neat male, holding Kendra, dressed in dark clothing he was somehow keeping from melting. The air shimmered around father and daughter, showing the heat radius around them was three-ish feet. Good to know.
Harlan handed Treena back to Ella. Burton motioned for her greedily. Harlan headed outside. The farmhouse was 56 years old, all wood, no way Kendra coming inside was a good idea. In his mind, he replayed his walk through Trevor’s house a few days ago. After Jaggar had taken off. The surreality of it. The, this-can’t-be-happening-ness. Again, he felt it. This can’t be happening. This can’t. Be happening. I am not walking outside to discuss time travel with Graeme like it’s a perfectly normal thing to be thinking about. No one has ever suggested to me that I go back in time and retrieve my dead mate’s body so that …. So, what? Why are we even thinking about this again?
They knotted around Graeme in a group. A loose, surreal knot. No, not a knot. A throng, walking with Graeme and Kendra in the yard, around the range, around the house, past the cornfields, past Precious Goat’s empty pasture.
Wade was the first to speak as they walked, laying out the situation so that everyone present knew exactly what they were talking about. Harlan was abreast with Graeme on one side, four feet away, Wade was on the other, also a safe distance from Kendra’s heat, and the rest of the pack trailed behind, except for Ella and Burton and the twins, who had stayed inside.
“Here’s the situation as we know it,” Wade said. “Leilani is at Trevor’s house, incapacitated. She can speak, or she has spoken, but most of the time she seems like her mental function is depressed. She is most likely Jaggar’s mate.” Harlan stared at the ground. Fisted his hands and shoved them in his pockets. Jaggar. Wade kept talking. “Somehow, she may also be able to communicate the consciousness of Eventine Mundelein, Harlan’s mate, a former Serenity P.D. Sergeant.” That had been Burton’s only official act after Evie had died. To sign her Serenity P.D hiring papers posthumously, then promote her to Sergeant. “Eventine died when our females died, but according to Crew, she has not retired to The Haven, and has instead been in Rhen’s Meadow for the last 29 years. This is the hard part. Crew says that she says that she already lived a year into our future and-” His voice faltered. “It isn’t pretty. She hasn’t shared many details, but she says Khain won. He came into the Ula with an army, wiped out the KSRT first, then all of the wolven, then the bearen, and he was hunting down felen when she discovered a One True Mate in The Roosevelt who had not been found by us. Leilani. She went to Leilani with the purpose of getting her to—” his voice cracked again and he did not bother trying to hide it. “To the KSRT who were left, but she discovered Leilani’s power was time travel. She planned to go back in time to the incident in Chicago where Soren the foxen was marked by Khain, and stop that from happening, but Graeme told her it was too far back in time, so she revised her plan and instead showed up at Bruin’s house last week and stopped him from—” Wade looked up at Mac who had the iPad with Bruin and Willow on facetime clutched in his hands. “From dying.” Mac’s jaw twitched. “So the question now, the one we are faced with today, is what direction would we lean in if we were given the opportunity to go back in time and retrieve Eventine Mundelein’s body, and bring it back here to the present, and try to save it, try to save her.”
Rogue shook her head. “What if she dies again and Harlan has to watch it again?”
Harlan’s heart seized. He hadn’t even considered that. He forced himself to walk. Walk. Walk, keep putting one foot in front of the other. He knew time travel had sounded like a bad idea.
“Could she even do it?” Dahlia asked from behind them. “Could she go back in time and bring a body back here?”
Graeme, Kendra curled in one arm, bright eyes watching everything, said, “She could. She would need someone to go with her who could carry the body.”
Harlan only wanted to know one thing. “Can we ever go back in time and not have been there the first time…. It … time… happened?”
Graeme stared at him with hard eyes, assessing him. Graeme knew exactly what he was thinking. Harlan held his breath. Graeme finally nodded. “That is a question only the Troya can answer.”
“Troya?”
“A natural born Time Traveler.”
Of course.
Graeme nodded. “In all the centuries I’ve been alive, she’s only the second Troya I’ve seen. The first was killed by our tribe because of his plans. Time travel really is that dangerous, can be that unstable. One misstep, and they create an infinite loop that will effectively destroy the world, and not even they seem to know the exact process by which they do what they do.”
No one spoke for several minutes, so Harlan said what needed to be said. Asked the question that no one else would. He didn’t bother to lace his words with sarcasm, because the question was so preposterous it had to make everyone see that what they were discussing was just that preposterous also. “Why don’t we just ask her to go back in time and fix everything? Not just save Evie, but all the females.”
37 - Harlan, Making the Hard Decisions
Evie stared at the scene in the Ula, transfixed. As soon as she’d heard Harlan and the bear talking in the hallway about finding her a body, she hadn’t had a choice, she’d had to turn around and run for Rhen’s meadow, leaving Leilani’s body in the care of the KSRT. The first thing she had done was check for Leilani, and as soon as she heard her talking to… someone, Evie turned away. Leilani was in the meadow, and that’s what mattered.
“Show me.” The colors rippled. Pink so pink it blinded her and then she could see. A day had already passed. They were heading to Mrs. White’s shop. It played out in front of her too fast, like a show stuck on fast-forward. Harlan tore things off the wall and smashed them. Thinking he had cheated on her. Oh, her stupid, stupid male. Why couldn’t he understand that she wished he had dozens of girlfriends, or a second mate, dozens of pups, anything that would make him happy.
She was dead.
And she was going to stay that way.
She looked away when he fainted, and when Nowl had to carry him to the car, she dropped to the dirt with him and wept in a way she never had before. When would it stop hurting? Why di
d it feel like neither of them could move on from the other? Even after she died? It had been 29 years.
Leilani came up behind her, put a hand on her shoulder, gave her the strength to watch again. It was the next day. Graeme was at the farm. They were talking about— No. No. Crew. She thought at Crew. No, tell them no, Crew. It will cost Leilani her sight or her sanity. We can’t do it. You can’t ask her to.
Crew told them. Evie searched Harlan’s face. Was she dooming him to hell a second time by refusing to try it? But no, he agreed. He was nodding. Arguing. Evie’s dead, his mouth said, I won’t survive a failure, his expression said.
Someone had one of the notes the foxen witch had left. Evie squinted to read it.
What about her own body? You have a time traveler, do you not? All you need is her body at the moment of death, an antidote to the poison, and the halfling can do the rest.
Halfling? Was that her? She didn’t know who she was, but she suspected, oh yes she did, suspected more with every passing year in Rhen’s Meadow that Rhen was her mother. And who was her father? Burton, of course. From the first second she’d set foot in the meadow and discovered it was a real and actual place, she’d known, and she still didn’t know which one of them she was angrier at about it for keeping it from her. If Burton even knew, but how could he not…?
Leilani squeezed her hand, making Evie focus. They were arguing about the antidote now. Harlan’s eyes were shining. Harlan put his hand out. No. Thank you, but no. This isn’t up for vote. The only one who gets a say in this is me, and I say no way is anyone ever asking Leilani to do something so incredibly dangerous. Evie is dead, I’ll rejoin her in the Haven. Leilani is very much alive, and we will take care of her until Jaggar comes back and that is the final word.
***
Harlan stood in the yard of the farmhouse, still staring at the notes from Mrs. White’s shop. Mac’d had them fingerprinted, then sealed in evidence wrap, and brought to the farm for him. He owed Mac an apology. The male was doing a great job and Harlan had been a dick to him again and again.
Crew was there, Dahlia, too. Harlan had been standing there for a long time, unable to speak since he’d given his little speech. Wade had nodded and said ok, that’s that. Harlan had been staring at the ground ever since. Graeme had gone back to VF with Kendra. The others had waited around for him a bit, had even tried to talk to him, but he hadn’t been able to respond.
Because there was one thing that none of them had even considered.
Dahlia put a hand on his shoulder. “Harlan, Ella’s calling from the house, I think she wants you to hold one of the pups.”
But Harlan had someone he had to speak to. “Thanks, I ah…” he wandered away, hoping Dahlia and Crew would not follow him.
He stalked around the house, eyeing the kitchen window. Burton was no longer there. Just Ella and Trevor, each with a pup, all up in each other’s space, talking in that way that couples have, staring into each other’s eyes, leaning into each other, while Track and Treena babbled at each other, hands locked together as they talked to each other in that way that twins have.
Harlan kept walking. Around the corner of the house. Living room windows, no Burton, front door. No Burton. Record room windows, no Burton. Back of the house, past the goat field, to the range.
There was Burton, in his favorite lane, sighting nothing downrange at a fairy drop.
“Do we do it?” Harlan asked, sick to his stomach at what he thought the answer might be. “Did we do it?”
Burton looked around, not surprised at all that Harlan was there. He didn’t answer.
“I never saw her body, Burton. You said you’d had it cremated and with the mess and the confusion, the mass funerals and the 20 hour days, falling asleep in my chair whenever I stopped moving for more than 30 seconds, knowing my Evie was dead, too, that none of the females had survived, and that when I made it back here, the house would be empty except for you and me, in all of that time, I never once thought it was strange that I never saw her body. Maybe because I didn’t think at all for a few years. Nothing but noise anyway, none of us did. So tell me, Burton, who is it that goes back with Leilani to carry Evie’s body? Is it me? Because I’m not going to do it this time. Nothing can make me do it, so accept it ok? I don’t know if changing the now changes the past that wasn’t supposed to happen and I don’t even know if that makes sense, but I am not going back to get Evie’s body, do you hear me?”
Instead of responding in any way, Burton walked into the woods on the far side of the range. It wasn’t much, barely even qualified as woods, more of a big grove of trees, but they all called it the woods. Harlan followed. Burton took the first path, then asked a question of his own, staring down at the cool dirt path under his feet, not bothering to aim his words behind him at Harlan. “Did I ever tell you about the day that I found Eventine in the woods?”
Harlan could only stare and walk, stare and walk, his mind a complete, almost blessed blank. No. Never.
Burton stopped on the path and turned to look him right in the eye. “I was here at the farm, in the record room, alone, and I felt the call to Rhen’s meadow, but before I could sit at my desk to start the fairy drop, a message came in loud and clear.”
He spoke, standing stock still on the path, staring at a point over Harlan’s head, his words quickly soaked up by the forest, like they had never been spoken.
“She’s in the forest. If you let her die, the future is yet unknown. She can be saved, but on the day she mates, a horrible fate will befall the shiften.”
Burton shook himself, then looked Harlan in the eye. “I’ve never received a message exactly like that before or since. I still can’t decide if the words were said aloud in the room, or if they were only in my own head, or what the voice sounded like, if there was one. I have puzzled over that message for years.”
“You never recorded it,” Harlan said, almost petulantly.
Burton shook his head and turned around, continuing on the path, sounding so sane it made Harlan wince. “Would you have recorded choosing one life over all? Dooming your own brothers and sisters like that?”
Harlan considered the question as seriously as he could. It kept his mind off of the decision he had made. Finally, he decided, just as Burton stepped off the path, into the bare woods. “Yes,” he said. “I would have. Because you did the right thing. Who would even ask you to make such a fucked-up choice? That’s where the fault lies here.”
Burton stopped short and Harlan weaved to the right, standing next to him. Burton stared heavily at the ground, directly at the foot of an emerald green beech tree. “Right there,” he said, pointing. “That’s where she was, a tiny thing, her fur a warm cinnamon red, one floppy pup ear folded over and frozen that way, tiny little fangs, she was no bigger than a squirrel. I thought she was a wild wolf at first, a rather lean wolf pup, but so obviously dead it didn’t even matter. I picked her up, thinking that whoever had said she could be saved obviously knew nothing about anything. I was going to bury her, but the moment my fingers touched her fur…” Burton broke off, dropping his head. His shoulders shook. Harlan gave comfort the only way he knew how, by grabbing on to the big male like he was a life raft and trying not to float away.
After a moment, Burton could go on. “The moment my fingers touched her fur, nothing could have stopped me from saving her. The voice said she could be saved, so that’s what I did.”
38 - A Season of Change
“Show me Harlan,” Evie told the meadow. What she had been viewing had been cut off, which had never happened before. The colors rippled then showed her Harlan as a child, playing in the woods with his cousin Cash, both of them shifted and running through the words. “Now, show me Harlan now. He’s at the farm with Burton. He just said no to asking Leilani to get my body. I want to see what is happening now.”
The colors strained. Pink all the way to a blood red, then black, then back again. Evie frowned. She’d never seen this. “Show me,” she whispered. “
I have to see.”
The meadow shifted and the colors eddied and swirled, but then they focused and drew her down, down…
To Trevor’s farmhouse. But she’d lost time, how much she wasn’t sure. At least a day. Harlan had new clothes, he was in Trent’s room by Leilani’s body, but no, Evie wasn’t headed that way, the meadow was showing her something else in the house. Troy, agitated, pacing back and forth outside of a room on the far end of the house, where Remington had Track. This was the room where Remington had all his medical equipment stored, along with a tiny exam table. He was looking in Track’s ears, his eyes, palpating his chest, all the way down his body, to his tiny baby belly and under his arms.
“There are no structural abnormalities,” Remington was saying, but it was wavy, because Evie was irritated.
“Go to Harlan,” she said. “I want to see Harlan.”
The image wavered, but did not move. Remington still. “There are no structural abnormalities, but because of his genetics, I advise you to see a specialist. There are some Citlali in the Western States that are good with healing, we could call one in and see what he thinks.”
Troy chuffed once and barged into the room, snarling at Remington. Hm, interesting. Evie stopped trying to pull away. Right up to the exam table, Troy went, between Remington and Ella, using his nose to shove Track onto his belly, before Ella or Remington could react. Troy put his paws up on the table, leveraging himself to grab Track by the back of his neck, delicately, but firmly, then taking off across the room and out the door