by Amira Rain
Sam shrieked with joy when we left the house and stepped out into the warm sunshine, making me smile, though also making me feel guilty that I hadn’t taken her out sooner because of my Graywolf paranoia.
We spent all afternoon out in the garden, and she cooed, giggled, and napped on a blanket while I weeded the flowerbeds and plucked wilted petunias. Once done with these tasks, I carried Sam all around the garden, telling her the names of different flowers, and birds making use of the birdbaths. Birdwatching was probably Sam’s favorite garden activity, and she often clapped her hands at the birds, squawking indignantly when this made some of them fly away.
The following day, we had a picnic with Ally in the garden, and the three of us had so much fun that we planned to do it again the following day, with Ally promising to bring more homemade applesauce for Sam, who’d practically inhaled it.
The day of our second picnic, I decided to go out to the garden a little early in order to get some weeding work done before Ally arrived. However, the moment I stepped out the front door, I just felt funny in a way I couldn’t articulate, even to myself. Turning slowly, looking out over the property in all directions, I realized that maybe I felt like I was being watched.
With Sam looking up at me curiously, probably wondering why we weren’t heading over to the garden, I made another slow turn, peering out into the dense forestland to the east, south, and west. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I realized that I probably was being watched, by Warren’s bear guards somewhere in the trees.
“Silly.” Smiling at Sam, I shook my head. “Mommy’s silly, Sam.”
The garden was about a hundred yards from the house, maybe even more like a hundred and fifty yards, I really didn’t know, and I began the longish walk over there, holding Sam in one arm, and her diaper bag, a bag of picnic supplies, and another bag containing a blanket over my opposite shoulder.
Happy as a lark, as she usually was outdoors, Sam cooed and babbled, fingers sparkling, but maybe two thirds of the way to the garden, another sound rose above her happy noise. It was the sound of snarling.
Petrified, I froze, Sam quieted, and I realized the snarling was coming from somewhere in the surrounding forestland. Within seconds, a howl rose above the snarling, immediately followed by growling that I recognized as coming from bears.
“Oh, no.”
From the direction of town, some kind of a siren suddenly pealed three times and then stopped. That was the signal for a full-scale attack on the town.
“Oh, God.”
With Sam beginning to fuss, I finally unfroze myself and turned in the direction of the cabin, intending to race back there. However, I turned just in time to see a large gray wolf trotting toward the far side of the house in the distance, having come from the trees. Thinking that he probably hadn’t seen us, because if he had, I was sure he’d be speeding over, I turned back to the garden, which was clearly the safest place for Sam and me now.
After racing over the garden as fast as I could while carrying Sam, I flung the heavy wooden door open, having left it unlocked the day before, which I was now very glad I’d done. My key was somewhere in the bottom of Sam’s diaper bag, and it might have taken me a minute to fish out, and by that time, the wolf near the house might have spotted us.
I dashed inside and heaved the door shut before turning the lock, dropping my bags, and pulling out my phone. Thinking that Warren was probably in shifter form and not able to answer a call, I typed out a quick text to him and sent it off. We’re hiding in garden.
Hearing the alarm siren peal three times again, followed by sounds of escalating fighting in the nearby forestland, I walked with Sam over to the white bench by the gurgling fountain with my rapidly thudding heartbeat slowing just slightly.
“It’s okay now, baby. We’re safe.”
Sam continued fussing, seeming as if she wasn’t entirely convinced.
Sitting on the bench, I pulled a large blue umbrella from the diaper bag I always brought with us, opened it, and attached it to the back of the bench with a special clip attachment. Now with the sun out of her eyes, Sam quieted down, standing on my thighs as I held her up by her underarms.
“There. Now baby’s happy.”
Bobbling a little, she smiled, looking cute as could be in her little yellow sundress with her sparkling hands waving.
“Now we’re safe and happy.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
Gasping, I flew off the bench to see who’d spoken just a short distance behind us. I gasped again when I saw Brooke standing just a few feet behind the bench, to the side of the umbrella.
Pointing a gun at Sam and me, lip curled in a sneer, she spoke again. “This could not have possibly have worked out any more perfectly. The extra guard patrol told me that this was probably the chief’s property, so I started nosing around, coming in here first. I was just coming out when I saw you on the porch, and I thought, ‘you know… I bet the bitch likes flowers.’ Simple, trusting little idiots always do. I just knew you’d be heading in here.”
“Brooke, please. Lower the gun.”
My voice had come out in a petrified squeak.
With her flame-red hair throwing sparks in the sun, Brooke just sneered at me. “Not a chance. I want that magic baby. My people want her. And you’re going to give her to me.”
*
“We can talk about this, Brooke. Please just lower the gun.”
She snorted. “Are you deaf? I said not a chance. The gun was what I was missing the first time we met, and that’s why I couldn’t do what I wanted that day. I’d dropped it somewhere in the woods and was looking for it when you came down the trail.
If I’d had it, I would have blasted your face right off and taken Sam right then. But, hey… thank God for second chances, right? Now, hand her over. I might even let you live if you do. But if you don’t hand her over, I’m just going to shoot you in the face to get her, and at this close range, I’m pretty sure I can do that without killing her, too.”
Sam, who hadn’t been crying while Brooke and I had been talking, but more like just whining feebly, suddenly began glowing with bright white light, just like she’d done at the café with a Chihuahua.
Brooke lowered the gun just slightly, brown eyes widening. “Damn. That’s neat.”
Trembling from head-to-toe, I didn’t know what to do.
“Just listen, Brooke. You don’t want to do this.”
“Yeah, I do. Now make your choice. Hand over the little witch and possibly live, or don’t and die.”
A half a second hadn’t even passed when she suddenly raised her gun again.
“You know what? You’re too slow.”
I saw her begin to squeeze the trigger. Reflexively, I began turning to the side, trying to put Sam behind me to shield her. However, at the same time, she almost seemed to do some kind of lunge in my arms, lunging in the opposite direction that I was trying to turn her, as if she were trying to shield me. I heard the gun fire, instantly followed by a strangled cry.
Sure I’d been shot, it took me a second to realize that I wasn’t actually the one who’d been shot. Brooke had somehow been. She was on her back in the grass, unblinking eyes wide open, staring up at the sky. There was a small hole in her chest, and her forest green t-shirt was stained dark with blood, but not much of it, and no more blood was flowing out, indicating that her heart had stopped beating. She was dead.
After very quickly looking Sam over and seeing that she was fine, I began whipping my face in all directions, looking all around the garden for the shooter who had gotten Brooke, totally not comprehending what had happened. It was only when Sam began squawking, seeming to be trying to get my attention, that I looked at her again, realizing that she was still glowing with her protection shield.
With comprehension beginning to dawn on me, I just stared at her for a moment, incredulous. “Was that you, Sam? Did you deflect the bullet away with your shield?”
She squawked again, kicking he
r legs.
“Oh my—”
I was cut off by a wolf howl. Whipping my face up, I saw a large gray wolf standing on the portion of stone wall closest to me and Sam. Startled and terrified, I immediately began backing away, wondering how he’d even gotten up there. He had to have leaped some twelve feet in the air, which apparently shifter wolves could do. And now, as I was backing away, he leaped down from the wall, landing in a bed of marigolds not fifteen feet from Sam and me.
Trembling even worse that I had been, I realized that the wolf was now between me and Brooke’s gun, which was lying near her in the grass. Not that I would have even known how to use it, having never shot a gun before. However, I was determined to not let the snarling wolf in the garden get anywhere near Sam.
Immediately, before he could even take a step in our direction, I stopped backing up, knelt and grabbed an ornamental quartz rock about the size of a baseball. With a grunt, I heaved it at the wolf, putting all my might into the pitch. But, even though I’d been the star pitcher on my high school’s softball team, my aim was off, and the quartz rock only grazed the wolf’s ear. Beginning to pad toward Sam and me, he snarled louder, baring his gleaming fangs.
“Stay away!” After grabbing another baseball-sized quartz rock while still holding a crying Sam on my hip, I hurled the rock at the approaching wolf. “Stay away!”
This time, my target met its mark, hitting the wolf square between the eyes with an audible thunk. Howling in pain, he began staggering around a bit drunkenly, as if dazed, and I grabbed another rock, intending to daze him further before racing around to get Brooke’s gun and attempt to use it on him if I could.
However, I didn’t need to. A thunderous roar made me look up, and I saw Warren, massive in his bear form, scrambling over the wall, just above the wolf. Roaring again, he soon leaped from the wall, tackling the wolf. Holding Sam to my chest, I ran to the gazebo to take cover from what I knew might be a vicious fight.
It was, though it didn’t last long. Slashing at the wolf with his razor-sharp claws, growling, Warren soon killed him, almost even decapitating him with one final mighty slash. Immediately after, he shifted back into human form and began running over to me and Sam in the gazebo. When he reached us, I collapsed in his arms, crying, realizing that Sam had protected me, I had protected her, and Warren had protected us both.
He soon had us both safely in the house, which was surrounded by bears now, and then he left to go help his men who were still fighting in the forestlands around the town. When he returned a few hours later, I again collapsed in his arms, relieved beyond belief that he was okay. After a short while, though, my thoughts turned to everyone else, and I lifted my face from his chest, asking if all his fighters and everyone else in town was okay, too.
Making me weak with relief once again, he said that some of his men had sustained serious injuries, but none life-threatening, and that no one in town had been hurt. “Fortunately, I can’t say the same for the Graywolves. We killed at least a hundred of them, and the few dozen of them that were able to escape back to their village won’t be attacking us again anytime soon.”
Crying for the second time that day, just out of relief and gratitude, I once again buried my face in Warren’s chest. He held me tightly, rocking me almost imperceptibly, saying comforting things near my ear in a low, soothing voice.
Over the next couple of days, everything in Greenwood got back to normal. All the wolf carcasses, along with Brooke’s body, were burned in a field near the FDS border. The guard patrols around town were scaled back so that Warren’s men could spend more time with their families, although he still maintained a twenty-four-hour patrol around the town.
He repaired some damage that had been caused by his fight with the wolf in the garden, including a cracked angel statue and three saplings that had been flattened. There wasn’t much we could go about the hundreds of smashed flowers in a few particular beds, but I didn’t mind planting new ones. I also dug up the grass and planted flowers on the spot where Brooke had been killed, but definitely not to honor her or anything.
I just didn’t like the image that I saw in my mind when I looked at the grass, of her lying in it, dead. Once the flowers were planted, I stopped seeing this image, and once again, I felt like my garden was my paradise.
It was in the garden one humid evening in early August that Warren said he wanted to show me something. Curious and smiling, I asked him what it was, and he led me over to a section of vine-covered wall with his vivid blue eyes twinkling.
“I’ve been doing some more predawn work out here.”
He then brushed some of the vines back with his hand, revealing a recess similar to the one that held Elizabeth’s plaque on the opposite wall. In this new recess was a bronze plaque similar to hers as well, and I read the words etched into it with tears filling my eyes.
Tara’s paradise. With love forever from Warren.
Turning my face to look at him, I opened my mouth to tell him it was beautiful, but just then, stunning me, he dropped to one knee, pulled something from his pocket, and presented me with a glittering diamond ring, looking up into my eyes with his own eyes shining.
“I do want our love to be forever, Tara. Will you make me the happiest man alive by becoming my wife?”
I could only nod at first, but then managed to squeak out a yes with tears streaming down my face.
***
Just three weeks later, my dad and the boys came to Greenwood for the wedding, which was a small, intimate affair held in the garden. A large reception with everyone in town invited would take place at the enormous town meeting hall later that evening.
My dad, who was thriving his in sobriety, with a little color in his face again and the hollows in his cheeks gone, had cried when he’d met Sam. Cooing in his arms, she’d reached up to pat his face, making him cry even harder. Now on the porch, before walking me to the garden and up a rose petal-strewn aisle, my dad became misty once again, taking my hands.
“I’m so sorry for everything I put you through, and what I made you do to save my life.”
I blinked back a few sudden tears, glad my eye makeup was waterproof. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m so glad I was able to save your life, and everything definitely turned out okay in the end. Now you’re healthy, and now I have Sam, and the love of my life in Warren.”
My dad nodded, blinking back tears himself. “Not many dads can say their daughter is their hero. I can.”
With a tear rolling down my cheek, I suddenly broke our hand clasp to throw my arms around him. “Well, that’s funny, because you’re mine.”
That evening, as husband and wife, Warren and I sipped champagne at a long table for us and our wedding party, which included my dad, brothers, and another shifter as Warren’s groomsmen, Nathan as his best man, Sam as our flower girl, Ally as my matron of honor, and two other friends as my bridesmaids.
I’d hesitated on having champagne served at the ceremony, as well as an open bar for guests, not wanting to tempt my dad and threaten his sobriety, but my dad had insisted, saying he wanted everyone to be able to celebrate with a drink or two if they wanted. However, on the advice of his AA sponsor back home, he “hired” Kevin to be his “shadow pal” for the evening for a little extra insurance in case his willpower faltered.
Seeming glad to do the job, Kevin was going to follow him around all evening, no further away than arm’s length at all times, just to observe that he was only drinking non-alcoholic beverages, and help him if he saw our dad weakening, reaching for a drink or something.
At the moment, though, sitting at the wedding party table with a smiling Sam in one arm and a glass of sparkling cider in his free hand, he looked the perfect picture of contentment and happiness. Sitting next to him, also drinking sparkling cider was Ally, who’d recently learned she was pregnant again.
Out on the dance floor with Warren later that evening, I wrapped my arms around his neck, looking up into his eyes. “This is my real paradise, righ
t here.”
He looked at me with his full lips twitching with amusement. “Here, in the town meeting hall?”
I shook my head. “No. Right here in your arms.”
With his expression becoming more serious, he bent his head and kissed me, filling my heart with perfect joy.
THE END
Message From The Author:
Thanks so much for reading all the way to the end, I really hope you enjoyed it. If you want to check out all my other books (including the bestselling MELTED series) then just check out my Amazon Page here! :)
Amira x x x
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