I reached for her hand and pulled her to me. I laid down so that she was on top of me and I ran my fingers through her hair. Already, I felt my body respond to her nearness. I stared into her eyes as she stared back into mine. We stared at each other and it was the most intimate moment of my life. I moved to kiss her, breaking the connection. Ceres welcomed my kiss.
It was she who pulled away this time with reluctance. I looked up at her and knew that my eyes had changed. Any strong emotion or sensation would do it. "What?" I asked.
She bit her lip, the way she often did when she was nervous or anxious about something. "My suitcases are still in the living room," she said. "We should bring them in here."
I nodded. "Okay," I said before we sat up. We started walking toward the door and I stopped her by grabbing her wrist. I could feel the unease coming from her in waves. "What is it?" I asked. "Really."
She sighed. "I don't know," she said. "I know you said we should take a break, but I'm not sure if a break is a good idea. I feel like I don't have enough time to learn everything that I need to learn so I want to do something to feel as though I'm trying to be productive. If I go out there, grab my stuff, and bring it back here, I'm not just sitting around. I'm not just trying to think my way through things I don't know how to think about."
I nodded. "Okay," I sighed. "Here's what we'll do. We'll get your stuff, come back in here and put everything away. While we do that, I'll quiz you," I said with a smile. "I'll ask you a question based on what I've already told you and you give me the answer. That way, we'll know how much information you've retained and how much is slipping away from you because of the shock of today."
Ceres nodded. "That's a good idea," she said.
I smiled and we left the bedroom to grab her suitcases. Riley was playing his game again with a cigarette held between his lips. Like me, he often kept his hair in a ponytail because we liked it long and we liked it out of the way. He glanced us as we came out and paused his game long enough to ash his cigarette and take a drink of his soda.
Aside from the glance, he didn't seem to acknowledge our presence in the living room. We headed back to the bedroom with her stuff and started putting everything away.
"What's the title of the alpha male?" I asked her.
Ceres chuckled. "We're doing this?" she asked. I nodded. She chuckled again. "Enkidu," she replied.
"Female alpha?"
"Skaapie."
"What am I?"
"The Volsunga," she said.
She closed the top drawer of my dresser and opened the next one down so that she could start putting clothes in there. It was interesting to know that a woman's things would get mixed with my own. I had figured that this would happen a few more years down the road. I didn't expect to be a twenty-eight-year old carefree man who turned serious with the entrance of one woman into my life. I wondered if this was something of what women felt when they weren't expecting to discover that they were pregnant.
"What are the titles of the Guardians?" I asked.
She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Svowie, Roulette, Scythia, and Ruesulky?" she asked.
I chuckled. "Almost," I said. "Skvaeoi, Roulet, Scythia, and Rusalki” I said.
She smiled at me. "Those ones are going to take some getting used to," she said with a chuckle.
I nodded. "I didn't expect you to get everything right," I said. "Tell me what the Neuri is?"
"The council," she said.
We continued through the rest of the pack titles. She got most of the titles right. She was retaining the information better than a lot of people I had gone through this process with. Of course, she had less time than they did. Her life was in danger and we needed to ensure that she knew enough to save her life. While most of what she needed to know had to wait until after her first shift, there was still information crucial to her survival now.
Chapter 12 ~Wolfgang~
"What do you mean by heal?" Ceres asked.
I sighed. We were sitting on my bed with the last of the chips. It was getting dark outside, so the lamp on my nightstand was on, casting the room in a dim glow that she looked stunning in. I was explaining some of the more magical abilities that we possessed as Lycans, the most important being healing.
"Those who are strong enough have the ability to heal ourselves and others," I explained. "Some are stronger than others are which is why the pack has a hierarchy. No two Lycans are the same in ability and strength. When we tap into that strength, we can use the magic of the wolf in our human form. That's seen most in the ability to heal others. Everyone at the top of the pack must have that ability. We won't know for sure that you do until after your shift."
"How does it work?"
"It's easier for me to show you than it is for me to explain it," I said. "Do you trust me enough to know that I won't hurt you?" She gave me an odd look, as though she wasn't sure that she wanted to agree to whatever it was that I was proposing. "I have to injure you to heal you so that you can understand," I explained.
"You can heal me even though I can't shift yet?" she asked.
I nodded. "Yes," I replied. "Now that you believe, your wolf is awakening, and I can use the part of her that's there to heal whatever damage you have on the outside."
She shrugged. "Okay," she said. Just like that.
"You trust me?" I asked.
She chuckled. "If I didn't trust you, do you think that I would still be here?" she asked. "I'd have called the cops and been half-way to New York by now if I didn't trust you."
I smiled. "Fair enough," I said. I went to my dresser and grabbed one of the daggers I kept in the bottom drawer. I walked back to Ceres and held it out to her. She lifted it from my hand and looked it over. "That's beautiful," she said, looking at the wolf engraved in the hilt. She handed the weapon back to me and I reached for her arm. I held it steady in my hand because I didn't want to cut too deep on accident and make it scar. I wasn't looking for permanent damage here.
I held the blade to her skin, and she met my eyes. For the first time, I was looking at amber eyes. Her beauty awed me. The chocolate was stunning, but the amber left me completely defenseless. I had to kiss her. I leaned in and held the back of her head in my free hand. I left her breathless and drew the knife across her arm. She didn't even wince.
I knelt in front of her and looked up into her eyes as the blood pooled on her arm. I lowered my face to her wound and inhaled the scent of her blood. I knew my eyes were already amber. The wolf inside of me seemed to lift his head as if he'd been asleep and was now interested in something. I grabbed onto him and felt his instincts begin to take over. I licked the cut I'd made into her arm and let the coppery thick blood roll over my tongue. She couldn't shift yet, but I already knew she was going to be one of the most powerful wolves in our pack. Her blood was like a drug and I needed another hit. I licked again and felt the energy begin to build up around us. The pressure intensified every time I licked the cut until I felt like my ears needed to pop or my head would explode.
I latched my entire mouth around the cut and forced the energy into her arm.
Ceres cried out and the room became light again. I pulled away from her arm to see that the flesh had healed without even the shadow of a scar left behind. I met her eyes, knowing mine were almost yellow, and saw the color reflected in hers. We were both panting, and I knew that she believed me now more than she ever had before.
She pulled her arm out of my hands and stared at where I had cut her. She traced the line of it, as if she could still feel the pain and knew exactly where I had just cut her. There was a look of sheer amazement on her face at the sight of nothing but her arm.
"I don't believe it," she whispered before she looked at me. "Do you ever need hospitals?" she asked.
I nodded. "Some injuries are too severe to heal this way," I said. "If I hadn't healed your arm, your body would have healed it by morning. Some injuries we can't heal. We have doctors in the pack who know what we are and aren't surprised
by recoveries that should have been fatalities to humans. Human doctors like to look at us like oddities and want to put us under a microscope so that they can study us. Every pack has at least one doctor or is on good enough terms with another pack to use their doctor. It's something that is so necessary in the war that we can't afford not to have it. Another way for us to heal is to shift into wolf form because it's a complete restructuring of our body. This can be by force, which is painful and, if the damage is severe enough, can do more harm than good."
"So, what made the human doctors stop?" she asked.
"Money," I replied. "And blood. Those are the only two things in this world that make it go around. If we can't buy it through blood or money, it isn't worth having, at least as far as the general consensus goes."
I noticed her withdraw away from me. She met my eyes and I saw the question she didn't want to ask. "How many people have you killed?" she whispered.
I sighed. This, like the how many lovers question, was something I had hoped wouldn't come up for a while longer. "One," I said. "It was while I was staying in Moab when I was healing from what Alan and Abigail did to me and I wasn't given a choice. Someone who thought he was a bigger, badder wolf challenged me to the death. I wanted to let him live. I was fifteen. I wasn't ready to kill someone but I sure as shit didn't just fight for my life so some jackass could end it. My uncle, who was overseeing the fight, didn't let me back out. He warned me that it would negate everything that winning would do for me. He made me strike the blow that killed the man and I've pretty much hated myself ever since. In killing him, I made it clear that I wasn't someone to challenge and no one bothered me after that, but..." I shook my head. "I'm in constant conflict," I said. "The human half of me is the part of me that hates what I did. The Lycan half of me feels nothing. There is no remorse, no guilt, no pride... nothing. It came down to a simple process for that part of my mind. He challenged me to the death. He lost. He died. I am alive. Nothing else, according to the Lycan part of me, matters."
"He challenged you, you won, and you feel bad about it," she said. I nodded, feeling almost ashamed of myself for hearing it that way, even if I'd just said it. "I think that's the noblest thing I've ever heard," she said, causing me to raise my eyes to her again. I was having trouble believing that this beautiful, charming, and wonderful woman could care about me the way I cared for her.
I reached up and pulled her close enough to kiss, forgetting for a moment that I still had her blood on my lips. She didn't seem to care and kissed me back with ardor. I had to pull away from her just to make sure that we didn't find ourselves distracted by other bedroom activities. While we had three weeks to cover everything, it wasn't that much time considering that we only had eight hours every day to devote to it. I still had a job to go to and we still had to sleep at some point.
"What is it?" she asked as I pulled away.
I cleared my throat. "We have a lot to go over," I said. "Getting distracted isn't a good idea right now."
"Oh," came her breathless reply. "Okay."
I smiled. "We'll pick this back up later," I promised. I gave her lips another quick kiss. "I want to talk about mating next."
"What about it?"
I cleared my throat. "Well, you know that you're my mate," I began. She nodded. "We always know who our mate is. The connection is stronger than anything we have ever felt before and it joins my soul to yours and vice versa. True mates are rare in our world because most Lycans are content just to find a companion without finding a mate. In this pack, there are only four true mated couples, and I'm adding us in that number even though we haven't gone through the motions yet.
"Consider this: There are many packs in the world, we're spread out, and we don't interact with each other. When you look at that, it isn't surprising that there aren't many mated pairs. Look at us. You were on the other side of the country. If it hadn't been for Alan and his roots here, you wouldn't have come here. If you hadn't been hungry, you wouldn't have gone into the diner. We wouldn't have met.
"Until the act of mating, we can live without being in contact with our other halves. That bond unites us, body and soul, and strengthens us as it minimizes our weaknesses. Mating with you, in theory, will enable me to be able to smell Witches and Vampires. If your ability to know things is a result of you being Lycan, I'll gain that to a slight degree. It'll be easier for you to sense other Lycans. On the downside, you may not smell Witches and Vampires as well. We don't know what your weakness and strength are yet, and we won't know until your first shift. There's no way to know for sure what will happen."
"So, you don't smell Witches and Vampires at all?"
"Not the way that everyone else does," I replied. "Remember what I said while we were talking to my dad? I smell herbs and wax and that's how I know that a person is a witch. I learned that the hard way after not recognizing Abigail for what she was until it was too late. Once I figured it out, I tried to unite our people, but it didn't work. I didn't smell Alan and Addie in that room until they had me. I swore to myself that I would never be that vulnerable again. So far, I haven't been."
"That's good," she said. I nodded. "So, what changes between now and the act of mating that makes it so that we can't live without each other?"
"I don't think that anyone has that answer," I replied. "I know that it's a link between us that's completely metaphysical. I know that it merges our life force, but I don't know how. It does something to our brains that even prevents us from finding other potential lovers attractive. If you do this with me, you will never again look at another man and think that he's hot and that you want to take him to the bedroom. I will never again look at another woman and think that I want her. It is irreversible. Once completed, once we make the decision, there is no turning back. The bond is unbreakable."
"And how is the bond created?"
"Blood and sex," I said. "In the simplest terms, we make love and at the exact moment of climax, we bite each other where the neck and shoulder meet on the left side. The intent has to be there, or nothing happens. You cannot mate unless both people are one hundred percent involved.
"Once the mating is complete, both people find themselves reenergized. They are more powerful together than they ever were apart. They are faster. Mating enhances everything, making almost anything possible.
"On the downside, no mated couple can separate for longer than a few days, a week at most, before they start to get very ill. If the couple is not reunited, they will both die. The Vampires separated mated pairs with enough distance that they wouldn't die as one way of control. The couples would get rewarded for their work by reuniting with each other once every month."
"That's crazy...."
I chuckled. "That's not the crazy part," I confessed. She gave me an apprehensive look. "The act of mating... always leads to a pregnancy," I muttered.
"Oh," she whispered.
"Most of the time, with mates, it's hard to control that. In most cases, male Lycans can control whenever conception occurs. When they're with the person they're meant to be with, that control disappears. That's probably why you were such a surprise to your mom."
She stared at me for a moment. "What are the odds that I'm pregnant?" she asked.
I shifted, finding myself uncomfortable all the sudden. "Fifty-fifty," I said. "Since you're not shifting yet and we're not mated, at this point it depends more on your body than mine. I can't control that with you because you're my mate. We teach our men to know when a woman is fertile. As far as I've been able to tell, you aren't showing any of that. If you are, you're not going to shift at the full moon," I informed her. She stared at me in shock. "A pregnant Lycan is a mortal one. That means that you'll still have to be mindful of all the things you always have been. You can't shift pregnant. There's too much strain on the body and we've evolved, in a sense, to prevent shifting while carrying."
Ceres let out a heavy sigh and rubbed her face before she ran her hands through her hair in a nervous gesture. "S
o, you're telling me that, in addition to being Lycan, I may also be pregnant. However, if I am pregnant, then I don't have to worry about being Lycan because pregnancy and shifting don't mix." She sighed again. "My god, Mom, why couldn't you have just been honest with me?" she snapped in frustration.
"Is this the part where I apologize?" I asked.
She glared at me. "Why would you need to apologize?" she snapped.
"You don't seem very happy about this," I said. "I'm not sure what you expect me to do here."
"I don't expect anything," she replied as she stood. "In fact, today has taught me to expect nothing because the moment I do is the moment my life gets torn inside out! Do you know what I expected to do during the storm? I was going to go over the paperwork that Alan brought me to help him in his case against the tenants who destroyed Addie's house. I was going to spend as much time with you as possible today because I can't get enough of you. When I'm not by your side, you are the only person I can think about and all I want is to find you and be next to you. Now, I may never leave you and it's strange, but I'm okay with that. I'm a person who has relished privacy my entire life!" she cried. There were tears falling down her face. "I don't know how to not be alone. I don't know how to be Lycan. I don't know how to be me!" She let out a sob and I stood to wrap my arms around her. "Now you're telling me that I may be bringing another life into this world and I don't know what to think about that. In another year, yes, I'm sure that I would be more than happy to jump at the chance to be a mom without thinking twice, but right now?" She shook her head. "Right now, there is too much chaos for a baby too."
I breathed into her hair. "I don't think you're pregnant," I whispered before I kissed the crown of her head.
Vanilla Moon: Awakening Page 12