Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle (Books 13-15)
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2015 by Melissa F. Hart. All rights reserved worldwide.
No part of this book may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written consent of the author/publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
http://www.melissafhart.com/
Books in the series
In Darker Shadows- Volume 1
A Place in the Dark - Volume 2
To See the Dawn - Volume 3
By Moonlight Bound - Volume 4
Only Your Touch - Volume 5
Broken Bird - Volume 6
Flying High – Volume 7
Deep Waters – Volume 8
An Eternal Love – Volume 9
Innocent Days – Volume 10
Dangerous Quests – Volume 11
Judges Ascendant – Volume 12
Woman of the Storm – Volume 13
Wandering the Wilds – Volume 14
Across a Thousand Years – Volume 15
***
Table of Contents
Woman of the Storm
Wandering the Wilds
Across a Thousand Years
***
Woman of the Storm
***
Synopsis
In her wanderings to find and kill a monster released into the world by an evil sorcerer, the werefox Aja finds herself the victim of a powerful storm. She nearly dies, but instead is rescued by Stefan, the leader of a powerful werewolf clan. Her relief is short-lived as she finds herself thrust between two warring wolf clans, and all too soon, she realizes that the monster is closing in.
***
Aja had been traveling for months, but the specters of the north stilled preyed on her. She could remember too clearly how the sorcerer that she and her cousin and her cousin's beloved had defeated, and what it was like to be helpless as he had raised a knife over her body. The wounds on her wrists had healed cleanly, but they were still there, and she had a feeling that the scars the cruel man left on her mind would linger much longer.
Still, she had found her own power. In the tall tower where she had been imprisoned, she had unlocked the elemental powers that had been lost to the shape-changing people for decades. She was now a mistress of the wind, and she would never be so beaten or so helpless again. She, Tonna and Ulfrik had killed the man together, but they had not killed the strange and prehistoric monster that he had unleashed on the world.
As she traveled south, listening for rumors of the monster from passing human travelers, she thought often of Tonna and Ulfrik. She and Tonna were members of the fox clan, shapechangers who assumed the sly and clever form of the fox, while Ulfrik had been of the wolf clan, in a shape that was powerful and beautiful to behold. She remembered how well her cousin was suited to her mate, and though it brought her a pang, it made her happy as well. It reminded her that there were good things in the world, even as her search drew on and on.
She had come farther than she had ever known, and sometimes, it felt as if her search would never end. She was in a country that was hotter than the northlands where she was born, and she had quickly realized that she could not read the weather patterns. Her command over the winds was still true, but she was dealing with a foreign climate now. She had left her wool and fur clothing at the last port, changing them for a light, sleeveless tunic that seemed like undergarments to her northern sensibilities.
For three weeks, she had followed the rumors south, but now she was beyond any human settlements, and though she used the winds to bring her scents from all four directions, there had been nothing of the signature scent of the monster she tracked.
Aja shook her head and, shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up at the sky. It would be dark soon, and she knew that she would have to find shelter.
She frowned.
The winds were rolling over each other like fighting wolves, and there was something menacing about the way that they whipped the tree tops. The sky had taken on the ugly yellow color of a bruise, and the temperature had dropped significantly over the last hour.
I should get to shelter. At that very moment, a thunder clap broke the sky like an egg. She started moving more quickly, but a few minutes later the sky opened up, soaking her instantly.
Aja growled in irritation, but up ahead, close to the ravine that she was walking along, she could see a rock outcropping. It would provide her with shelter, and she struck out for it grimly.
She was just thinking of the fire she would make that would dry out her clothes when she stepped a little too close to the ravine. The earth crumbled out from underneath her, sending her tumbling to the ground, but then the ground kept falling.
Weak earth, running water, she thought with dismay, and she struggled to hang on to the side. Below her, she could hear the water at the base of the ravine, and she knew how fast that could run in a spring flood and how deadly it could be. Aja knew that she couldn't fall in, and she clung to the side for dear life.
Slowly, moving with painstaking care, she pulled herself up along the side. Her fox form might have made it easier, but she couldn't risk letting go long enough to assume it. Every muscle ached, and her body trembled with stress, but she was slowly gaining the top.
Then a rock that had felt solid gave way just as she was putting all of her weight on it, and she went tumbling down into the water.
The shock of cold knocked the breath right out of her, and now she did turn into a fox, knowing that animal instincts and a smaller size might be all that stood between her and drowning. The water whipped her along, and all she could do was steer herself in the rapids, trying to get closer to the bank without being bashed against the rocks.
Time after time, she tried to climb out, only to be whipped away from the sides of the ravine. After a while, all she could do was stay afloat, keeping her sharp black muzzle above the foaming water.
I don't want to die here. Please, please, I can't die here...
Still it seemed like nothing heard her prayers, and as the water dragged her on, she felt her strength grow less and less as her body continued to be battered against the rocks.
She was sinking, her vision was dimming, and she could have wept if she had the strength for it, but she didn't.
Suddenly she was snagged out of the water as neatly as she had snagged roasting chestnuts from the fire when she was a young kit. She heard a deep voice that instantly made her feel safe, and just as the darkness became too much and she fell into a dead faint, she felt herself becoming warm.
***
When Aja awoke, she was only aware of two things. The first was that she was human again, and the second was that her entire body ached. She whimpered before she remembered that she didn't know where she was and that there might be hostile people around, but when the sound didn't bring anyone, she opened her eyes and sat up.
She was entirely naked, but she lay under a beautiful buckskin, tanned to a velvety softness and imbued with the gentle scent of sage. Aja wrapped the buckskin around herself and swung her legs over the edge of the cot she was sleeping on, looking around.
She was in a large round tent, and though it was luxurious, she got the idea that it was a temporary housing rather than a permanent one. Through the light coming through the seams and the f
luttering door flap, she could tell that it was morning, though she couldn't have guessed how long she had been sleeping. There were voices outside, and Aja hesitated for a moment.
Well, they haven't killed and eaten me yet...
The smell of roasting meat and something surprisingly sweet made her mouth water, and that decided her.
She decided to stand and to at least seek out her rescuer to thank them, but the first time she tried to take a step, her knees buckled. She would have sprawled onto the plush carpets beneath her if she hadn't been caught in a pair of strong arms.
“That was terribly ambitious of you,” commented the man who held her, and before she could make a protest, he set her back on the bed.
“Most people who are fished out of the spring floods don't try to get up so early or without figuring out that they've taken a beating.”
“Well, I suppose I'm not most people,” she said with asperity, and then she bit her tongue, reminding herself that she knew nothing about this man.
He was tall, but rather slender. His brown hair had a hint of red to it that spoke of time in the sun, and his skin was bronzed and immediately beautiful to Aja, whose own skin was fair. The man's most striking feature were his eyes, which were a bright and lively green, and when he tilted his head to one side with a broad smile on his face, something in Aja's mind felt a tickle of familiarity.
“Wolf clan?” she asked softly, and he smiled even wider.
Instead of responding to her, he transformed instead, and in his place sat a midnight-black wolf with those same laughing green eyes.
“Hmm, skinnier than I'm used to,” she said, and without thinking about it, she reached her hand out to scratch him behind the ears. It was a gesture that was very common among people who were familiar with wolf shapechangers, but where she was from, it was reserved for people who were close friends or lovers. She cringed, but he leaned into her touch, his bushy black tail swishing back and forth like a pleased dog's.
There was something so wonderfully familiar about touching another person this way that it made tears leap to her eyes. It only reminded her of how far from home she was, and how much she missed her family. She tried to stifle the sobs, but instead, it only made it worse, and in a few moments, tears were running down her face.
“I... I'm sorry,” she tried to say, but thick sobs prevented her from doing even that.
Instead of stepping back, the wolf nuzzled her gently. Giving up the last bit of her dignity, she threw her arms around his neck and simply cried.
At some point, he turned back into a man, and she buried her face in his chest, seeking the comfort that had been denied her for far, far too long. She wept for the terrors she had endured after being kidnapped from her home, she cried for the cousin she’d had to leave behind, and for the strange life she led now, searching for a monster she knew had to be stopped.
Finally, her tears dried, and self-consciously, she pulled away.
“I didn't mean for that to happen,” she said, blushing a little, but he shook his head.
“You're carrying a great deal on your shoulders,” he said. “I can tell, and believe me when I say that all I want to do is to comfort you.”
“Perhaps you can do that by telling me who you are,” she said, a little self-consciously. “I've never really cried on someone whose name I didn’t know.”
The man chuckled. “My name is Stefan, and I am the leader of the Blackbone wolf clan. I and some of my cousins were hunting. I don't know what drew me out in the middle of that deluge, but when I saw you tumbling through the rapids, I imagined that it must have been you.”
“You saved me,” she said softly, and the smile he gave her was soft.
“I was meant to,” Stefan responded. “Something drew me out there...”
Aja understood fate and destiny; it was something that had been taught to her when she was young, but at the same time, she also understood that she was on a quest.
She drew back, smiling a little shyly. “My name is Aja, and I belong to the fox clan of the far north.”
“You're a long way from home, Aja,” Stefan said, his eyes considering.
“I am,” she said, and there was something final about the way she said it that made him nod understandingly.
“Keep your secrets then,” he said, standing up. “Perhaps you will tell me more over breakfast?”
When he mentioned food, her stomach grumbled, and she laughed a little.
“I'm afraid I'll have to crawl,” she said, but then he lifted her up in his arms. She yelped with surprise, but he only grinned.
“You're as light as a little piece of charcoal,” he told her. “It's nothing to me.”
She would have protested that she was still only wrapped in a deerskin, but the smell of food and her hunger were too strong.
“Well then, onward, sir,” she said, pointing imperiously, and he carried her into the light.
Stefan settled her down by the cooking fire, where she was met by three pairs of curious eyes. Stefan's cousins all had his chestnut hair, but there the resemblance ended. Soren was the most similar to Stefan, but he was shorter. Dar was as sturdy and stolid as a brick wall, and Hallan was the youngest, still skinny and wide-eyed about being allowed out hunting with his worshiped male cousins.
Dar offered her a strange thing, shredded meat wrapped up in a very thin round of bread, but it was delicious, and Aja decided that manners at the moment mattered less than getting food in her mouth.
Between bites, she answered questions from Hallan about the north and about how she had come to be in the water. A little distance off, Soren and Stefan were talking in quiet tones about something that made Stefan increasingly displeased. If he were in his wolf form, he would be bristling, but as it was, he only shook his head.
Even as she talked with Hallan, and with Dar, who only gave her another roll of meat when she finished the one that she had, she kept an ear pricked for Stefan's conversation. Eventually, she heard Stefan snap his teeth, very wolf-like indeed, making everyone silent.
“I will not be bullied, and I will not show that old man my belly. I owe it to our clan to be strong, and Soren, you will not tell me otherwise.”
Soren flinched, but there was obviously a spine of steel in him because he met Stefan's eyes without blinking. “You know I'm not trying to bully you. I just ask you to face facts.”
“I am facing them,” Stefan said hotly. “There are some alliances I do not wish, and our clan has its pride.”
“You mean you have your pride,” Soren said, and Stefan threw his hands up and stalked back to the fire.
He sat down on the same log that Aja was sitting on, and impulsively, she reached out to stroke his hair comfortingly. He leaned into it just as he had before, and Dar handed him food as well.
“Trouble?” she asked lightly, and he sighed.
“I don't know what the clans are like where you are, but here, I swear nothing good comes when we meet at all.”
“My own clan stayed away from moots for five years because of a tragedy,” she murmured, and Hallan instantly asked what a moot was.
She explained the clan gatherings to the fascinated cousins, and from there, she started to tell them more about the north. Aja told them about the various games that they played, and when she started to tell them about game called rabbit catch, they insisted on a demonstration.
She laughed, not sure when she had last felt so light-hearted. “Well, I can, but it requires a partner.”
“I volunteer,” said stolid Dar, earning hoots and cheers from the others, but Stefan only frowned.
“Play with me,” he said, and he grunted with surprise when she sat on his lap.
“I like this game already,” Stefan joked, and Aja smiled. It reminded her of being at home and flirting lightly and harmlessly at the moot.
She picked up a piece of meat from her leftovers. It was juicy and dripping, and she knew how delicious it was.
“Look, I'm going to ho
ld this between my teeth, and you have to steal it with yours,” she explained. “I can't leave your lap, but you can't use your hands at all.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Stefan mused, and she smirked.
“Let's find out?”
She held the meat delicately between her teeth, and when Stefan came in for it, she merely tossed her head to one side. He was fast, but at this close range, she was smaller and faster, and she easily kept the meat from him.
When he growled with frustration, she chewed and swallowed the morsel with evident delight.
“Still think it's so easy?” she asked. “It's how mother foxes teach their babies to hunt.”
“Let's try it the other way,” he suggested, putting another shred of meat between his own teeth.
He was quicker than she thought he would be, but it only took her four passes and lunges to get the meat away from him. He put another piece between his teeth, but instead of dodging, he held still, dropping the meat just as she lunged, and instead, they ended up in a kiss.
His cousins cheered, and though Stefan would have let her go, Aja clung to him, deepening their kiss. It felt good, so good, and in a moment, he was responding in kind, his hands light on her shoulders and his mouth opening under hers. He made her forget about her quest, about the home she had left behind, and she threw herself into the simplicity of it, and the joy of it.
They were so involved in their kiss that they didn't hear the new arrivals.
“What the hell is going on, Stefan!”
Aja pulled back as if she had been burned, but Stefan wouldn't allow her to go far. Instead, he settled her carefully back on the log before standing to confront the newcomers.
Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle - Books 13-15 Page 1