by Jan Delima
He grabbed her wrist and held it midair. “You are my wife,” he ground out. “I will protect you.” His gaze bled blue. “I don’t share what’s mine.” The last was spoken with a low growl, as if the wolf spoke through the man.
They stared at each other, a battle of wills and inner wolves, with her wrist held high in his grasp, his eyes flashing like diamonds in a blue flame.
She wanted to say something rash; she wanted to whip words against his arrogant face like Boadicea might have done, the Pagan warrior who had led an army to battle. Or Joan of Arc, who had done the same, later burned at the stake for heresy and then canonized a Christian saint.
I can defend myself was ready to roll off her tongue, but Luc had destroyed her last potion and Mae had yet to awaken to make her more. Until then, pride be damned, she would accept any protection offered.
The consequences of failure were too great.
Caution had always been at the forefront of her survival. She had lived too long among the Guardians to make false boasts or tempt fate. More important, she did not ignore prophecies given by drunken demigods.
“You must understand . . .” So weary now she could barely stand, she relaxed her arm and yielded her stance. “This isn’t about you. I’ll accept your offer of protection, but I’ll not ignore Taliesin’s prophecy, either. I cannot be mated to a Guardian.” She let her forehead fall to rest against his chest; such an intimate gesture but it felt right, and she needed to touch him. Or her wolf needed her to touch him. “I cannot . . .”
He exhaled and she swayed into him with the release of his breath. Perhaps it was her final fear that had registered, turning insult to understanding. She felt his hand loosen and his lips brush the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Then be mated to me,” he offered in a husky voice filled with promise. “Or at least let us try.”
So tempting, his whispered words filled with need, she could almost forget his heart still belonged to another. She had been an unwanted wife once, and could probably endure an eternity as an unloved mate. But why must she always be the first choice for breeding and the second choice for love?
A bitter laugh nearly fell from her mouth. Such nonsense thoughts she had, one would think her a virgin again who imagined honorable knights, innocent kisses and favors without a price. Her innocence had died with her parents, and truth be told, love had never been offered by either of her husbands, not even as a second choice.
With Math, that had been a blessing, but with Luc . . .
It was different with Luc—because he calmed Wulflings with cookies and cared when she hurt. Because he had shown her pleasure and a taste of how it could be.
She lifted her head and ran her hands over the taut muscles of his chest. His skin was smooth, likely from his Egyptian heritage, except for a soft stretch of dark hair that trailed down his stomach and disappeared below his waistband. She had an urge to follow it with her hand, and such carnal thoughts had never entered her mind with any other man.
The owl tattoo remained even after his shift; a careful execution done with great concentration and even greater skill, to keep the ink retained in his skin while fur emerged from his pores. She would consider it an extraordinary feat indeed—if it didn’t constrict her heart with envy—and over a woman who no longer lived in this world.
His Koko may be dead but he had yet to let her spirit rest.
Rosa traced the outline of a wing. “Ask me that question again when you no longer carry the totem of another woman on your skin.”
“Rosa . . .” He exhaled a ragged breath that would have called to her were it not for someone else. “What you ask for—”
“I know.” What she’d asked for was the one thing he wouldn’t give.
Koko’s Journal
—
March 15, 1931
My dearest Luc,
I write this journal entry solely for you. Do you remember the first day we met? I waited just outside the cobbler’s shop where my papa worked when ships came to port. Bangor’s harbor was crowded that day, and the taverns across Devil’s Half Acre filled with sailors who smelled of rum and searched for tainted women’s special favors. There were many of those women to be found in the city, sickly with the disease of their trade, staying in homes made of brick, with balconies trimmed white and chimneys billowing smoke, promising more than one source of heat. My papa made me walk the streets, pointing to each and every one only to bid me stay clear. I was of an age by then to be lured into the pretty nests of painted birds, and because my skin was dark I offered their callers feathers of a different color.
Little did he know it was not the paws of a drunken deckhand that would find me that day, but those of a wolf?
My papa was inside the shop collecting his wages, while I waited outside. You stood out to me like a hawk among mewling pigeons, tall and imperious while men with white skin scurried in black woolen clothes. Did you feel my gaze on you? You must have, I think, to turn and search the crowded walk until our eyes met.
Or perhaps you heard Mr. Perkins mutter, “Gypsy.” The baker smelled of yeast and owned the shop next to the shoemaker’s. He shooed me away as if I were a raggedy hound begging for scraps, discouraging the good people of Bangor from buying his bread. “Brown as a filbert,” he had said, though I was accustomed to worse. “Find your people and be gone from my place.”
Wary, as I knew to be, I turned to run, to find my papa, only to bump into you instead. You made Mr. Perkins apologize, do you remember? Such things are not done. I may have fallen in love with you in that very moment. You waited with me afterward, until my papa took me home.
That night I dreamt I was the brown owl for which I was named. I flew over the Penobscot River; I saw ships and tall church spires, and the natives on their island mourning their lost children. I saw the cabin my papa built for my mother. And in the woods, just outside our home, I saw a black wolf.
When morning came I walked to that place in my dream. You were there, not as a wolf but as a man. My people called your kind Vukòdlak. I knew what you were, and because of my dream I also knew that you were mine.
You always will be my love, my heart, and my husband. My body is passing but my spirit remains as strong as our love. Wherever I go after this life ends, be it my Heaven with angels, or your Otherworld with tiny winged creatures who drink nectar from flowers, know that I will be there waiting for you.
~Koko
Fourteen
Thence they plan, upon Ceridwen’s last fertile daughter, eight forsaken warriors to feast.
CHAMBERS OF THE COUNCIL OF CERIDWEN, HOCHMEAD MANOR
GWYNEDD, WALES
Merin rested her hands on the scored wood of the Council’s table and pretended to examine her nails. Unlike the round table of Avalon, this one was narrow and long, and forged in blood-soaked secrets and vacant chairs. Their order ran with the nature of their beasts, not democracy. The weak died; the strong survived; the most dominant ruled—and his name had always been Pendaran.
William sat across from Merin, skin florid with rage, and Neira by his side. The tedious woman had yet to stop chirping since the session began. Maelor sat silent and sullen that he’d been called from his tower. Gweir, Edwyn and Rhys appeared suitably irked. Bran, like Merin, looked on with relative boredom while avoiding Pendaran’s pale gaze.
All nine Council members had been summoned by him; the eldest Guardian now that Math was dead—though Math’s demise mattered not in the hierarchy of the Gwarchodwyr Unfed. Stupid, narcissistic man deserved to rot in the ground.
No, it was Pendaran who sat at the head of the table, who had done so since the beginning when the Council of Ceridwen was formed. He appeared the dapper gentleman, black hair, pleasant mouth, elegant allure, but under his tailored suit beat the wicked heart of a sadistic wolf. If one dared to look long enough they would find his eyes were green, though faded with depr
avity. He had no family, no mate, no conscience to hinder his rule; he governed with supremacy and fear, and no Guardian ignored his summons if they wanted to remain in this world without pain.
Only Taliesin knew freedom from his dominion.
As was his right, Pendaran had claimed first initiation with Rosa as one of the eight Guardians to fulfill the prophecy. If not for Taliesin’s involvement, he might have taken Rosa for himself, simply for the purity of her lineage, and most certainly denied the other seven.
And now Luc stood between Math’s useless widow and the most dangerous Guardian of them all.
Merin swallowed her fear but it threatened to consume her all the same. Taliesin would hear a word when they next met for not giving her even a small warning.
“Do you have naught to say, Merin?” Neira wore a red suit with odd-shaped buttons suspiciously the color of bones, and an expression just as boldly perverted. “It is your runt who is disrupting our plans. You should have hunted Dylan down when he dared to abscond with the Bleidd.”
Merin blinked slowly and forced an agreeable smile.
Oh, Neira . . . If only you knew how I dream of the day when I will kill you in your sleep.
Openly, Merin said, “How many times must I tell you this? I did not have all my wits about me when I gave birth. I had just lost my mate. Over the years I have found Luc’s penchant for survival interesting enough to see where it might lead.” She pretended a passing curiosity. “He has proven powerful enough, would you not agree?”
“He has the favor of Taliesin,” Edwyn admitted, tossing the printed photographs that had prompted this assembly in the center of the table. “Perhaps we need to reexamine the prophecy. That boy has always played in riddles.”
Merin scanned them absently.
Aemilius . . . if only you could see our son. You would be so proud. He is strong and stubborn, but he is also rational and kind, like you. But he is in danger now, the greatest he has ever been, and after all I have done to keep him safe.
Please, if you hear my prayers . . . help me! I am at a loss of what to do.
Hardly sparing Rosa’s image a glance, a cowardly creature for dragging her son into this mess, Merin circulated the photographs. Luc deserved a more worthy mate than Math’s widow—or the human before her.
Pure blood did not make a warrior’s heart, and if her children were to survive, then their mates must be nothing less.
“He plays with us, is what he does,” William leered. “Taliesin cleared the accounts shortly after sending the messages, then destroyed his phone.”
Neira gave a dramatic sigh. “I have no idea what has come over Rosa. Or my Cadan.” Not one Guardian responded to her chatter, perchance in hopes that she would desist. “What are we to do about them? And the Walkers? And the prophecy? I think we should garner all our guards and return to Avon and—”
Rhys slammed his palm against the table. “Give it a rest, woman, for the love of my sanity.” He stretched his neck to the side, rubbing his right ear. “I swear on the Gods, Neira, you must have done something truly offensive in your former life to be given a voice such as yours.”
Her breath inhaled on a squeak and her bottom lip trembled, forlorn as a spanked child; a tiresome pretense from a tiresome woman.
“Rhys,” Pendaran scolded, “must you taunt her?”
“Haven’t we all heard enough of her whining?” Rhys stood as if to leave. “Personally, I don’t care to sit here and watch William pout over the loss of his little Hen Was. Look at him . . . One would think he fostered a shifter the way he sulks, or lost a sexual pet.”
Pendaran’s gaze darkened to dragon green, directed solely at William. “If I learn there’s been any perversion with a child, even a Hen Was, there will be another empty chair at my table.”
Even Pendaran had a code of acceptable behavior, low as it was. He allowed children to be enslaved under the pretense of fostering, even tortured to call their wolves—but never raped.
William stiffened with the insult. “I am a purist,” he sneered, “not a molester. I am grooming her to be a proper servant. If she proves minimally intelligent when she comes of age, then I may train her to service other needs, but that will be determined after her seventeenth year. I will have her sterilized beforehand, of course.”
“Gwilym likes his virgins,” Neira twittered, articulating his name in their ancient tongue. “Is that not right, Gwilym?”
“You will call me William,” he corrected her with intolerance. “The Hen Was have become old and disfigured, and”—his nostrils flared—“well used. I don’t care to exercise the same chasm as a thousand other men.”
Neira patted him on the hand. “I will talk to my Cadan and see if we can get yours back.”
“Can we return to the topic at hand?” Rhys rolled his eyes to the heavens as if asking the Gods for either patience or death, with an expression that both might suffice. “Taliesin is a grown man. He has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want our interference.” He leaned over the table and grabbed the picture of Taliesin’s middle finger, waving it like a flag. “Just in case you don’t understand what this means, let me explain—”
“Sit down, Rhys, before your insolence turns to disrespect.” Pendaran’s hand rested on the crown of his knotted cane. He was as fit as an Olympian. All at the table knew the true purpose of that modified staff. Only two weapons of its caliber had been forged, then encased in carved limbs taken from the Druids’ Great Oak: Nerth and Cadarn, Might and Strength. Pendaran held Cadarn. Nerth, its twin, would soon be buried with Math.
Rhys returned to his seat.
“Now,” Pendaran continued once his order was obeyed. “Do you have anything useful to add, other than repeating what we already know?” Not a stupid man, Rhys remained silent. “Fine, let us then discuss our dissenters. We have allowed them too much freedom and in our folly their numbers have grown.”
“They will always be weaker than us,” William spat.
“Individually, of course,” Pendaran agreed. “They carry too much human blood in their veins, but they outnumber us five to one. Numbers mustn’t be ignored.”
Rhys’s gaze flicked to Merin. “There is another rumor circulating among the guards who returned from Avon,” he said. “Supposedly, Merin’s daughter possesses an extraordinary gift. And Dylan has sired a son who can shift. More interesting, the mother of the boy, this Sophie, retains the Serpent of Cernunnos.”
Unable to be outdone, Neira leaned forward and shared in a breathless whisper, “And a hound from the Otherworld has been sighted in their woods, and later at Castell Avon. They said it protected the human.”
Pendaran laughed softly. “I read Math’s reports on the subject. The man’s mind had softened long before he lost his head. Do you honestly believe such gifts would be given to them over us?” He gave an exasperated shake of his head. “Really, you mustn’t believe everything you hear. I suspect these are simply rumors fostered by guards who fell to weaker swords.”
While they spoke of her family, Merin deadened her emotions, as she had countless times to keep her children alive.
“Regardless,” Pendaran continued after a long pause, “I have known Merin long enough not to discount anything that comes of her loins, even if their father was human. These rumors must be investigated further. We will continue with our plans, but after the debacle last week, and yesterday’s episode at Avon, it is clear to me that our execution requires a different tactic. We shall contact them under the guise of acceptance into our fold.”
“I refuse,” William chimed in. “I will not mingle with the likes of them. The Cormack get, the Bleidd . . . he walked freely among—”
Pendaran slammed his staff on the floor; the resonance of wood against wood thudded with an ominous warning. “We will do what we must for the greater good of our race. If you can foster a Drwgddyddwg to be your
whore, then you most certainly can walk beside a Bleidd.”
William snapped his mouth closed.
Satisfied, Pendaran turned to Merin. She concentrated only on keeping her breaths even. “Your children have become a nuisance. Nonetheless, Taliesin is in their midst and we must tread carefully. For now, I want you to reestablish a relationship.”
Her heart pounded even as it wept. Her highest wish had been granted but only as the carrier of poisoned deeds. Her children would hate her even more after this.
“As you know,” she answered carefully, “I am not in their favor. I doubt they will let me beyond the door unless I break it down.”
Pendaran ignored her excuses. “Make contact. That is all I ask for now. Then report back to me afterward.”
She acquiesced with a nod.
“And, Maelor,” Pendaran called out across the table, “you will go with Merin.”
Slouching in a wrinkled suit, Maelor resembled a turned-out troll with thick brows over a bulbous nose. He had attempted to groom his hair with gel, or mayhap the sheen came from natural grease run through with a comb.
“Maelor,” Pendaran repeated when the lesser Guardian turned his gaze to the floor. “My always-silent Maelor. Never ready to volunteer when duty calls. How does Briallen fare? I hope she will be at Math’s funeral. If not, we might think you are keeping her locked in your tower.” Pendaran grinned as if it were a jest when all in the room knew it was not. “The Continent might do her some good.” His voice lowered with dangerous intent. “You have been of little use to us for some time.”
The last was no mere warning; it was a sentence were he not to agree.
It prompted Maelor to speak. “I am not the proper choice for arbitrator.”
Pendaran stood, approaching Maelor; he leaned forward on his staff, hovering above the hunched Guardian while he issued a string of commands. “You will go to Castell Avon in the creditable mission of checking on the Walkers. You will be hospitable. Math was our scribe, so you will ask for his ledgers. Let us see how they respond. While you are there you will investigate the rumors we have heard, and you will bring Merin and Briallen with you.”