Under the Harvest Moon

by Robin Hale

  She whimpered the quietest moan I’d ever heard and her hips bucked against my hand. I stared, wide-eyed and wild while waves of pleasure rolled through the other witch.

  “That’s it,” I whispered. I rolled my hips in time with the movement of my fingers and coaxed her through wave after wave of sensation. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

  When the shaking began to subside, I twisted my wrist and set about pushing myself over the cliff after her, chasing the feeling of her body quivering against mine, the red on her cheeks, the dark blown-pupil lust in her eyes. She was perfect and she loved me, and with a particularly vicious stroke against my body, I felt my climax crest. My arms tensed around her, clutching her to me, and her hands stroked down my back as she whispered soothing nonsense against my hair.

  I drove my hips against her over and over again, unwilling to let go of a single moment of the pleasure I’d found with her. But soon — too soon — pleasure turned to oversensitivity and I released Laurel from my crushing grip. Sheets pressed cool and smooth against the sweaty expanse of my skin as I rolled off of Laurel and tugged her against my chest.

  “I love you,” I said, lips pressed against the top of Laurel’s head, sleep already starting to swim in the edges of my consciousness.

  Laurel nuzzled happily against my shoulder. “I love you, too.”

  It was perfect, lying there weightless. Free from a burden I’d carried since I was sixteen. Free from uncertainty about Laurel. My soul mate was cuddled against me and everything seemed possible.

  Even things that had been beyond imagining only hours before.

  “Move in with me,” I blurted.

  “Move in with you?” Laurel blinked up at me in confusion and I couldn’t blame her. “I’ve never actually seen where you live.”

  “I moved into the spare room over the workshop after…everything happened.” The confusion on Laurel’s face deepened, and fuck, I was screwing it up. “But I don’t want you to move in there.”

  “Okay…” she said slowly. “So where do you want me to move in?”

  “Barleywick. The main house.” I pulled Laurel tighter against me and buried the question in her hair as if I could hide the thudding of my heart. “I want you to help me fill it with good memories again.”

  Understanding broke over Laurel’s face and it shattered the blackened lump in my chest.

  “Of course I will,” she whispered and lunged up to press a kiss against my lips. “Of course I will.” There was a pause, a moment where we breathed together in the stillness. “So you don’t want to knock it down?”

  “No,” I answered. “No, I think it can be saved.”

  I closed my eyes, wrapped myself in the feeling of Laurel’s body, the smell of her hair, and felt the kind of hope that I’d thought had been lost to me forever.

  25

  Laurel

  The sound of Rhea’s truck rumbling away from the Book Wyrm was a velvet shiver down my spine as I pushed my way through the front door. God, it had been strange to wake up next to her. Strange and perfect and so much like a dream I’d been pinching myself every time Rhea looked away. But it was real. It was my life. And there were a few things I needed to do before I could bury myself in Rhea for a week and forget the world.

  “Jean?” I called against the tinkling of the bell, but the word was hardly out of my mouth before I had my arms completely full of healer-witch.

  “Oh goddess, Laurel,” Jean breathed against my neck. “You’re here. You’re okay.” She jerked back from me, clasping my biceps, and did a laser-focused sweep from my feet to the top of my head. “You are okay, right?”

  The worry in her eyes was sweet but went sharper when she took in the bruises on the side of my head, the way I couldn’t help but wince when she squeezed.

  “I’m okay,” I insisted. “Slightly banged up. Some emotional whiplash.” I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and squeezed back. “But I’m okay. How did you even know that anything…?”

  A gust of breath blew Jean’s hair out of her face. “I’ve got a friend over at the Council building. Shapeshifter. Six feet of golden, affable butch charm?”

  A flash of memory brought the image of the blonde marshal in the Council chambers to the front of my mind. “I met her.”

  Jean scraped a hand through her hair. “Yeah, so, she let me know this morning — I have already ripped into her about not telling me immediately. Something about being in chambers where she couldn’t text me. Like that should have stopped her.” The frustration and relief in Jean’s voice were surreal. Way more intense than I would’ve —

  Guilt. The realization slammed into me. It was guilt in Jeans’ voice, on her face. What did she have to feel guilty about?

  “But she told me what the marshals found at the Absalon place.” Her brow furrowed like clouds moving in front of the sun. “And then she told me what happened — not everything, I promise she didn’t tell me everything — with the Council.” A tug on my hand had Jean leading me to the back of the shop and the coffeemaker waiting for us there.

  I sat in stunned silence while Jean poured a cup for me, adding the right amount of cream and wrapping my hands around the mug like I was a shock victim. “I really am okay, Jean.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Her smile was weak, but it was trying. “I’m just…sorry, is all. You shouldn’t have had to go through any of that without your coven behind you, you know?” A breathy laugh and Jean swept her hair back from her face again. “That’s — it’s why we’re here. And I’ve been a pretty shitty first coven-mate.” Her eyes held a spark of vicious self-recrimination. “The second you asked for access to the archives, I should’ve been helping you with all this. I should’ve asked. I almost got you killed.”

  ‘Killed’ wasn’t really the top of the list of ways it could’ve gone wrong, but there was no point in making Jean feel worse. Especially since I’d been the one to go off half-cocked. “I really can’t blame you for thinking I’d be smarter about this stuff.”

  That was clearly the wrong thing to say.

  Jean’s jaw went rigid and a muscle twitched, bearing an unsettling resemblance to Rhea’s frustrated face. “It’s not about being smart. If you thought you were alone, that’s my fault. If you thought you couldn’t ask me about this stuff — that’s my fault, Laurel. Witches gather in covens because we’re social, yes. But we also do it because we’re stronger together. That saying about chains and weak links? It’s wrong. Covens make all of us strong.”

  There was something significant in the way Jean was saying that. “Do you mean — wait, could I have been pulling power from the rest of Greenhollow?” That ward. That bubble. Had that been borrowed power?

  Oh, that made so much sense.

  “If my friend was at all accurate about what went down out there?” She took a slow breath. “You must have. I don’t know how you and Rhea could’ve survived otherwise.” Her drawl slid into a tight whisper and I wanted to pet her hair until she unclenched. Jean wasn’t ever like that. She rolled with the punches. She made things work.

  I hated seeing her so wracked with guilt. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  Jean reached out and squeezed my hand. She held on way past the point that I would have expected her to let go. “Don’t be. We’re your coven. You won’t be able to stop us from worrying.” She chuckled. “Or from putting some sort of tracking spell on you.”

  I laughed, relieved at the way the smile broke across her face. “Fair enough.”

  The storm passed, the clouds cleared, and the healer’s blue eyes glittered at me over her own cup of coffee. “That friend of mine said that you and Rhea left the Council building together, by the way.”

  “Well-informed friend,” I laughed.

  Jean grinned at me and gave me a single-shoulder shrug. “She knows my interests. So?”

  “She’s right.” I ducked my head. “We did.”

  “Sorted everything out?”

  Oh hell yeah. “You could say that
.” It was hard to talk around the grin digging into my cheeks.

  “Good. I’ve never seen her as happy as I’ve seen her with you,” Jean said. “And I think she could be good for you, too.”

  “She is.” She was. Rhea was the absolute best for me.

  “Well, as much as I’m looking forward to dragging all the details out of you, I should probably at least start opening the shop, yeah?” Jean sighed and slid off her stool to stand and stretch her legs.

  “Hey, Jean?” I said before the blonde could disappear into the office.

  “Yeah?”

  “If I wanted to tell my mom about,” I made a circling gesture. “All of this. Would the Council have a problem with that?”

  Stony determination settled over Jean’s face and I had a sudden flash of her on a battlefield somewhere — armor covered in dirt and blood, glinting in the light of a full moon — and knew immediately that I never wanted to be on the wrong end of that look. “Go ahead. She’s your mom. She raised you, she deserves to know about your life.” The hand that grasped the door frame went white-knuckled for just a heartbeat. “And if the Council has a problem with that, Greenhollow will handle it.”

  Warmth and affection and belonging flooded into my chest so quickly it brought tears before I could blink them back. I’d never thought I’d find it. Not really. Rhea had given me a place I would always belong even if the world burned down around us. My mom had given me a home that I could always go back to no matter what. But Greenhollow was the only place I’d belonged where my strength contributed to something larger than myself. The only place where my strength was bolstered by a community.

  A surge of gratitude made my heart clench. This was what Rhea had been preserving for me. This was what she was trying to defend. She’d known even better than I had how much I needed it.

  And I was dying to tell my mom all about it.

  “Hi! Hello, hi, yes. Hi, mom,” I babbled into the receiver when the line picked up. “Is this a bad time?”

  “Not at all! It’s so good to hear from you. So sorry about the phone tag. How are you? I want to hear everything.”

  Everything. Everything was a lot. A grin pushed its way onto my face. I finally had the go-ahead to tell her everything.

  But first things first. “I’m seeing someone! I mean, I’m involved with someone.” Wow, both of those were entirely inadequate. “I mean — I’m in love, mom.”

  Mom’s laugh rang with delight. “Well, don’t stop there! What’s their name?”

  “Rhea,” I breathed. “Her name is Rhea. And she’s perfect. She’s beautiful and smart and she’s the most supportive woman in the world.”

  “And how did you two meet?”

  The teasing hint in her voice was perfect. It was all perfect. I’d never been able to gush to my mom about someone I was dating — it never got far enough for that. It was all half-successful first dates and disappointing coffee and the growing certainty that I just wasn’t going to be right for anyone. But I’d been wrong.

  “I may have run out in front of her truck.”

  Silence on the other end of the line. Silence, and then the sound of my mom swallowing carefully. “You did what?”

  And I was off. Telling her about bundling herbs and flirting over the counter at the Book Wyrm. Giving the highlights of our dinner at Skyline Chili, a sanitized version of the Harvest Moon festival.

  “And there’s something else.” My heart was beating loudly. It probably shouldn’t have been that loud. But it was time. It was the Moment. It was the minute that mom would either take a leap of faith with me or start looking into how quickly she could have me in psychiatric care.

  “You sound so serious, honey. You know you can tell me anything, right? I’m going to be right here no matter what.”

  I took a slow breath and tried to slow my heart rate. She had always known just how to reassure me.

  “Mom, do you believe in magic?”

  Epilogue

  Laurel

  Light streamed in through the sheer white panels that hung in the kitchen window — the drapes were still sitting on the counter, waiting to be mounted once Rhea or I could find a spare moment to get it done — and I looked up from the seating chart spread in front of me over the kitchen table. It was going to be tight. The summer garden was gorgeous, but optimized for working, not for holding a handfasting. And working out how to fit enough chairs for the number of people we wanted to have around us was the best problem I had never expected to have.

  “That’s fine, Janice,” Rhea said, breaking the stillness with a stilted laugh and a sheepish cringe while she pushed her way in through the back door. She had a smear of dirt on the bridge of her nose, the stained and sealed wooden frame of a chair in her left hand, and her cellphone in her right.

  She was perfect.

  Looking at her brought the usual flood of warmth to my chest — just more. Seeing her talking to my mom, working on the home we were renovating together. Sometimes it still felt like a dream. That I could have someone like her. That I could have someplace that perfect.

  We were making it perfect even though the nightmares lingered. The ones Rhea had always had, sure, but there were new ones too. I’d wake in the night to find her rigid, fingers clawing at an invisible arm around her throat, tears in her eyes. I’d pet her hair until she woke up and hold her until the shuddering passed.

  ‘I killed him.’

  ‘I know. I’m so sorry, Rhea.’

  ‘I think I would do it again.’

  ‘I know.’

  It had been a long road and we had a long way left to go, but we were making Barleywick into a place that belonged to both of us. To our future. We’d swept away the cobwebs and bitter memories and took charge of refilling the house with good ones.

  And some of that involved getting rid of furniture that didn’t fit us and replacing it with things that Rhea created through sheer force of will, it seemed. Her will channeled through the workshop and my sewing machine, at least.

  “Yeah, she’s right here. I’ll let her know.” A pause and Rhea’s cheeks went red the way they always did when talking to my mom. “Looking forward to seeing you, too. I’ll talk to you soon.” She slipped the phone into her pocket and let a smile steal over her face.

  That was something I still wasn’t used to: the easy way that Rhea sometimes smiled at me. She still looked furtive about it so much of the time. Like if she dared to be happy that something or someone would come along to take it away. But every so often, when things were going well enough that it brought her guard down, Rhea’s smiles were sunny and easy and so beautiful they almost hurt to look at.

  “Mom pestering you about coming out for a visit, again?” I asked as I leaned back in my chair and tilted my chin up for a kiss.

  Rhea leaned down and pressed her lips to mine in a soft ‘hello’ that would never stop taking my breath away. “I think I’ve got her convinced that she wants to come here. She says she loves you and that you should get back to her about your shower registry, by the way.”

  I groaned. “Why do I have to register for tea towels? We have tea towels.”

  “Because it’ll make your mom happy?” Rhea shrugged and winked at me.

  It was the wink that did it. “She was trying to get you to do it!” I accused, jolting upright in my kitchen chair. I gaped at my devious soul mate, but could only hold the outraged expression for about a second. She had that effect on me.

  A mask of innocence spread over Rhea’s face in the blink of an eye. “I don’t know what you mean. You’re her daughter, she wants you to do it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I groused. “I’m pretty sure you’re her favorite.”

  Rhea ducked her head, a pleased blush and sheepish grin fighting to replace the scowl she’d painted on, and my heart fluttered in my chest. She grumbled about my mom’s attention: the family group chat she’d been added to, the emails asking about Rhea’s size so that mom could send her a shirt she thought she’d li
ke. But there was something so overwhelming about getting to see Rhea accepting maternal affection that I had to be careful about how much attention I paid to it. There’d been more than one instance of sudden tears — and neither Rhea nor I had been prepared for that.

  “Don’t forget, we’ve got the welcoming rite for you at Greenhollow tomorrow night. We’re supposed to bring lemon bars,” I caught Rhea’s free hand in my own and brushed my lips across her knuckles. “Thank you, by the way,” I said softly. “It means a lot to me that you’re willing to do this.”

  Rhea looked away from me as color rose in her cheeks. “I guess it’s okay for my soul mate’s coven to be mine, too.” A mischievous spark glinted in her eye and she looked back at me. “As long as she’s ready for that exam tonight?”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me,” I groaned. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into a business degree.”

  “You wanted to do it,” Rhea pointed out. “I only found the late admission process.”

  “Which led to homework,” I pouted.

  “Poor baby.” Rhea grinned down at me and dropped another kiss on my waiting mouth.

  “I love you, you know that?” I whispered, searching Rhea’s eyes, wanting to know that she was as confident in my love for her as I was. There was something fragile about that feeling, something that I was worried would slip away from her again and I needed to make sure that she knew she wouldn’t ever be alone again. Not if she didn’t want to be.

  “I know.” Rhea nodded and rested her forehead against mine. After a moment, she stood up again and hefted the chair frame she still carried. “I’m going to take this up to your office.” Her mouth quirked a little sadly and she paused. “I think my grandmother would like that you’re going to be using her old room. She would’ve loved you.”

  Rhea’s smile was soft and small, but it was there on her face when she finally headed toward the stairs. And once again I was left with the certainty that there was no one whose life was more perfect than mine. No one. And I promised myself that I would never forget it.