by Sam Hall
Hell yeah, I had, but I didn’t exactly want to talk about that with someone’s nanna.
“Eine Beschutzerin,” she said in a low voice, her German accent so much stronger now. Her eyes narrowed, as if that would help her see me more clearly. Her focus shifted to Jake, speaking to him now in a rapid flurry of German, his expression growing sterner and sterner. Margaret’s wasn’t much better. Her eyes flicked from them to me and back again.
“Paige, this is Greta, the matriarch I said it would be good to talk to. You need to stick around, talk to her, and work out what the hell is going on with your pack,” she said.
“Let me be clear, there’s no choice here,” Jake said. As he leaned back in the chair, my pack growled. “This is gonna cost me a lot of time, money, and effort to clean up. I’ll send some of my men to close up the gym, retrieve anything you need, but you’re staying here. Creating that kind of uproar when you were just going to a theme park?” He shook his head. “We’ll handle it, but we can’t afford another incident like this so soon after the last.”
“So you’re making an executive decision?” Zack snapped. “To close my business, to keep us here?”
“To keep the shifter community safe,” Jake replied. “Another incident like this? I won’t be able to smother it. If you can assure me nothing like that would happen again?” He waited for a reply, and when he didn’t get it, his eyes flicked to Gavin. “You’re from the local roo mob, right?” The man at my cousin’s side nodded slowly. “You can go. From the sounds of it, you weren’t involved in this. Neither was your date.”
The kangaroo shifter got to his feet slowly, then reached down to take my cousin’s hand.
“This was fucking wild, even before giant wolves started appearing,” he said with a cheeky grin. “If you’re keen, I’d love to take you out for dinner.”
“Oh…” I watched Bridget flush. “Well, yeah, that’d be awesome. You’ve got my number.”
“I can drop you home if you like?”
I saw her muscles tense, like she was about to get to her feet and do just that, but she shook her head in the end.
“I’ve gotta stay with my cousin.”
“Bridge, you don’t have to,” I said. “You can keep an eye on the gym, go out with Gavin. Explore the city.” I gave her a long look, hopefully communicating that having someone on the outside would be a good thing right now. She nodded slowly in response.
“OK, then yeah, Gav, I’d appreciate that.”
I felt her arms go around me, hugging me tight, and for a moment, I just leant into it. Then we talked briefly about the accounts she had access to and money she might need.
“I’ll be fine because you’ll be home shortly,” she said, eyeing the others before finally pulling away. I watched her leave, feeling a pull, a pang, but I stayed where I was because Jake had some of it right. We were unpredictable, and we couldn’t guarantee this wouldn’t happen again. When the door was closed behind them, I turned to face the strangers in front of me.
“So, what the hell are the Eine Beschutzerin when they’re at home?”
“Those who watch,” Greta said. “The ones who keep the balance between humans and shifters. Between all the factions.”
“This,” Margaret said, pulling up her phone and quickly googling something before putting the image in front of us, which stilled me instantly. The guys took their cues from me, seeing my frozen state and leaning over to take a look.
She’d been drawn differently, the stiff medieval illustration unable to convey her personality all that well, but with her long hair and strangely tilted eyes, I could see clearly who this was. But how could it be? The drawing, with its finely drawn calligraphic lines and gold leaf, made it clear it was an illustration from an illuminated manuscript, the date below it confirming it.
“Fuck, that’s Stevie,” Declan said.
Chapter 36
“Eine Beschutzerin are those who watch,” Greta said as she led us out of the house towards one of the many cottages dotting the property. Jake had handed our care over to her, making it clear we weren’t to leave.
“If you can guarantee that this won’t happen again, that you won’t cause another incident, you’re free to go,” he’d said. “But lemme just say, if this shit continues, if you put me and mine at risk, I’ll have no choice to treat you like the threat you are.”
I’d forgotten what it was like, having the will of an alpha beating down on you, having last experienced it when I’d seriously pissed off Dad. I felt like my body was pushed up hard against the back of my chair, like when a car accelerates too fast. The guys had quibbled, but Jake paid them no mind, just waiting me out. Implied in his words was a threat, a deadly one. He wouldn’t hesitate to put us down like dogs if we became too much of a risk to his pack. Finally, I’d nodded, and he’d instructed the others to set us up in a cottage.
“Here,” Greta said, coming to a stop in front of quite a large home. “This one, this will be good for your pack.”
“So the ulva…” I started to ask, but as Margaret drew up next to us, my voice trailed away.
“They are accepted here,” Greta answered. “Of course they are. Not all of us are blessed with the Mother’s call as you are, but I believe it the natural way of things for shifters. It is her blessing to us, her daughters. Now, you’ll want some time to settle in.”
“I’d prefer answers.” We both turned to see a very still Lorcan staring, his eyes gleaming moon bright. “Paige, what’s going on here…”
He was right. When I blinked, I saw Micah standing over him, his face a bloody mask, ready to beat him to hell and back. Greta noticed my half step forward, my need to move in close and feel his arms around me.
“Go to him,” she said in a low tone. “Why should you deprive yourself or him of that comfort?”
“It’s that comfort that causes all of this shit to happen. When we connect, he comes through.”
“Father Wolf?” she asked, then nodded when she saw my face. “Then I must request that you go to your mate, that you connect with him. We are far from the humans here, and our land is vast. I believe we will be able to contain what comes through if you do.”
Lorcan’s eyes flared brighter at that, but he didn’t move a muscle, that proud, mulish expression of his hardening the longer I waited. He didn’t think I would, was steeling himself for rejection, even as he wanted me to come closer. That’s what sealed the deal for me. I didn’t like my mates having to push their needs aside for me. I moved in, feeling like there was a weight to every footstep, until I reached him, sliding my hand under his shirt to feel his hot skin, pressing myself against his body, feeling his hands move, to hold me close, to stroke my face. Lorcan’s smile was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “You scared the ever-loving shit out of me before.”
“You too. I thought Micah was going to kill you.” Our eyes slid sideways to see the man himself looking shamefaced.
“He is your avatar,” Greta said with a nod to Micah. “Your connection to the divine. His wolf lives nearer to the surface and colours his actions. Move closer, young avatar. Let us see what happens when you connect with your mate.”
Micah’s eyes flicked up warily, moving from me and Lorcan, to Greta and back again. Finally, he shook his head and ambled over, coming nearer until I could breathe in his scent, feel the heat from his body, but not him. My hand raised on automatic, and those pale grey eyes followed it, then half closed when I touched his still bare chest.
“Mmm…” He let out a pleased little groan, which seemed to just spur Lorcan on.
Not to be outdone, my other mate wrapped his arm around my waist tighter, pulling me hard against his body so I could feel the tension throbbing inside him. Somehow, that made me soften against him and into Micah when I tugged him closer.
“I…” Micah said, a whole avalanche of stuff coming. I could see it, so I pressed my fingers to his lips.
“You didn’t set out
to hurt Lorcan.”
But it was my mate’s eyes Micah met, not mine. He shook his head.
“I didn’t see you or her. I just knew you were the enemy and I needed to put you down.”
“Well, whatever it was, we didn’t seem to suffer any ill effect. It felt like you were rearranging my face, but I don’t feel any of it now.”
“Nor your connection to the god,” Greta said, drawing closer. She nodded. “A divine being doesn’t come at our summoning, so we will wait. Come, let us go inside and set things up.”
“And then we can talk about those who watch,” I replied.
The cottage was pretty and contained so many rooms, I could tell it was purpose-built for an ulva and her pack. It was clean, light, and airy, though the rooms had that slightly stale scent that comes from being shut up for a long time. Margaret and Greta moved around, opening windows, so we helped. I watched the older woman as we went and noticed there was an ageless quality to her. With her white hair smoothed back into a bun and blouse and skirt of well pressed cotton, she looked like someone’s nanna, but she felt more like a mountain range or an ancient forest than a shifter, something endless. When she caught me staring, she smiled, then straightened.
“Margaret has told me some of what you have been through. I’ll not traumatise you and make you recount what you told my grandson. He can and will fill me in.” She sat down on the couch, and I found myself doing the same, mine and Margaret’s body language mirroring hers before the guys drew closer. “You recognised the Watcher?”
“The woman in the drawing? Yeah. She lives in my town, has run a bar there since…” I went still, frowned, then looked at the other guys. “When did Stevie come to Lupindorf?”
I should’ve known this on some level. That she’d been there since I was a child, a regular fixture to the town, or when she came. Lupindorf wasn’t exactly a massive place that a new bar wouldn’t have been talked about across the table at the alpha’s residence. I always thought of Stevie only being a few years older than me, but…
“I…” Dec said. “I don’t know.”
“She…” Mase started out confident, then his voice trailed away. “Jesus, how long has she been there? We’d have to be able to find it on public record or something.”
“Or I could just call her.” I drew out my phone, saw the reception was great, and pulled up her contact, then pressed call.
“Stevie’s Bar,” I heard…who? My friend? My confidante? My drinking buddy?
“Hey, Stevie, it’s Paige.”
“Hey! What the hell happened to you? The town’s in an uproar. You and Bridge have gone missing, so have your fellas. Some awful farce of a thing is being pushed between Aidan and Selma that’s not convincing anyone. Nance is trying to push it all through though, but the town is resisting. So where the hell are you, anyway?”
“Adelaide,” I said, then listened to the resulting silence, the dull hum of the bar the only background noise.
“What’re you…?” Her voice trailed away. “Who are you with?”
“A woman called Greta. She’s talking to me about the Eine Beschutzerin.”
The sigh that came was so much deeper, perhaps because I had only one sense to perceive it.
“She’s a matriarch for one of the local wolf packs?”
“Yep,” I replied.
“Shit, I thought we had more time. Stay with her, Paige. You’ve already worked out there’s more to all this than the vagaries of the Spehr family. This has been a long time coming, and you’ll need training before the final showdown. Nance…she’s not right, not what she should be. Stay there, listen to what Greta has to say, then come home and put things to rights.” I felt the resentment in me rise. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to keep cleaning up other people’s messes. “Nothing you build will last until you do.”
Well that was fucking ominous.
“And you?”
She let out a hiss of frustration. “I’ve already stepped too far away from watching and more into manipulating as it is. I’m sorry, kid, seriously. If there was any other way…”
“So what are you? I saw a drawing of you that looked like it was created back in the Dark Ages.”
She let out a low laugh. “That must have been Petyr’s work. Lovely boy, very sweet. Let’s just say I’ve had a vested interest in your family for a long time. You and the other ulva, you’re destined for great things, if you can just get past this. You need to, Paige, it’s important. Part of your heart is here. You won’t be complete until you come and retrieve it.”
For a second, I could see Aidan’s lazy smile, his eyes fogged momentarily by the alcohol we’d drunk at her bar, before they grew sharper, hotter.
“So that’s it? That’s all you’re gonna give me?” My voice cracked on the words, and I saw Zack move forward, dropping down onto his knees before me, taking my free hand.
“Kid, I’ve given you every damn thing I could without breaking the rules, and probably a little bit more than that.” Her voice was warm and corded through by frustration and pain. “Free will—that’s what I’ve reminded myself over and over. You’ve got to have the freedom to choose, otherwise what’s the point? You stick with those ladies, you’ll learn control. You’ll be able to stay in town, build a life. That man of yours, Zack, he’s created a haven for you, hasn’t he?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak as my throat closed up, realising she couldn’t see that, but somehow, she seemed to know.
“I thought he might. I saw him in your future, hoped like hell you’d take him on, and you have. He’s your mate.”
Her voice contained something I didn’t realise I needed. It was all there, rich and deep, something I’d missed since I left home and didn’t get when I returned—acceptance. But not just that, it was the enduring affection of a parent for a child, one that shifted but didn’t lessen when you became an adult. I felt seen and heard in ways no one else was ever going to be able to, and that corrected something inside me I didn’t realise was still aching. My breath came hard as I looked up into Zack’s eyes.
I’d never seen my mate back down from a fight, and he wouldn’t right now. He stared back, something tremendously naked about his gaze, like every barrier was down and I could go in as far as I wanted, even down to the very core of him, and he wouldn’t stop me. He bared himself to me, hoping I’d treat that with the respect it deserved but leaving himself vulnerable nonetheless.
“Yeah, he is,” I croaked.
“Adam, he set you up well. It’s why I feel so much hope. You got a rough deal, all of you have, but he helped… He helped you be strong enough to train and better yourself, make yourself as strong as you can be. But…” She let out a sigh. “He gave you the strength to open yourself to others, to your pack. To let them into your heart. To let him in.”
Her tone hadn’t changed, it still was all hope and call to arms, but I felt a shiver, my eyes flicking around the room, Greta and Margaret’s following mine as they did. I felt it, the gloom rising, the shadows on the walls getting just that bit longer, those cast by the trees outside no longer moving with the breeze. The older woman sat ramrod straight as they formed a familiar shape on the wall, the holes in the dark shadows blinking slowly.
“To let him out, you mean,” I said, staring at the shadow.
“That’ll happen no matter what, because otherwise, it’s more of this. More of women pressed down, forced to conform, in some cases kept from their wolves, in others kept from their true mates. He is the wild masculine, her true mate, freeing her of the role of beatific mother to become what she truly is.”
A spot of sunlight grew brighter on the wall, smoothing and becoming more perfectly round, the light a cooler, less golden shade. The shadow wolf turned his head, looking up at Mother Moon.
Or did he?
Something black formed on the face of the spot of light, a long black crack it looked like initially, a hiss coming from around the room as it resolved itself into a shape. Shar
p toothed, wide, I knew that smile. It matched my own when my blood was up, when I promised we’d bring my aunt, my father’s murderer, to justice. It widened and widened, until finally, it swallowed the moon whole.
“The lamb was never for us,” Stevie said. “I saw first-hand how he helped the humans of the lands he touched to rise up, gain strength in their numbers, as the many other gods they took into their hearts did. They needed that. They are weaker, easy prey, their minds too easily dazzled by us. They needed someone in their corner.”
“But not us,” I grated out, knowing the answer.
“We have our own gods and our own ways, and they are not the ways of humans. They never will be. Some want to go back to the bad old days of holding them under our sway, but me?” Her accent was slipping, something much more strident coming forward. “I want a balance. The humans always needed something to fear in the dark of night. It gave them perspective. But no matter what, I can’t watch any more women like your mother die like that.”
“You knew Mum?” I barely breathed the words out.
“I knew your mother, your aunt, your grandmother, your great-grandmother, right back to the first maiden. I was there, watching when they took her. I cried when she cried, screamed when she screamed, curses on my lips, all my hard worn objectivity tossed aside when they tore her apart.” One breath, two breaths. “But she came back beautiful, whole, and stronger than ever, stepping out onto the moonlit grass as the Mother stared down, a fucking goddess. I was just supposed to watch, record, and observe, but…”
Her voice cracked, shredding with emotion I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t ask why. Struck dumb by her break in composure, I saw panoramic images in my head in response to her words, and I was willing to bet everyone in the room did too.
“That was the start of it all, and now I’m here to see the end.”
“With vague prophecies and prognostications,” I growled out.
“What does any hero ever get?” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I can’t tell you what happens in the end. It’ll spoil it, change it. Just know I’ll be watching, waiting, hoping…”