CHAPTER FIVE
Lero
Nightshade Bear Territory
The next few days passed with me preparing for my guest while dodging my Uncle Preston.
I loved my uncles.fwa All of them. Even the annoying ones but Preston without Mori could be a lot to handle.
He was so used to having his twin around that whenever he wasn’t, Preston sought out social interaction everywhere.
Now, he was a father to a baby who stuck his hand in anything that might be edible.
Kids were kids but it made me nervous to have him around because I liked to keep a cup of coffee out and couldn’t stop imagining Baby Andy dunking his hand in steaming, hot coffee.
Plus, babies often saw things grown folks didn’t. Especially in this family.
Between wrangling my family and the house, I argued with Vallis.
He was absolutely infuriating at times. He was locked up somewhere with a curse that he couldn’t quite talk straightforwardly about and didn’t want me to ask one of the hundreds of magical people I knew for help.
I was magical but not as magical as some of the folks I had in mind.
Once, I went to tell Grandpa and Vallis knocked a pie off the windowpane and into the snow.
The birds loved it but Grandpa cleansed his kitchen three times over and I didn’t get to even poke around for a single answer.
It was as if he wanted to die and leave me.
After that show of temper, he was gone for almost a full day.
He showed up around ten the night before my parents and the Snow Demon were due in.
I’d kept food warm in the oven the whole time he’d been gone because keeping him alive was more important than being right.
I had planned to try to astral project that night if he hadn’t shown back up.
I’d finally read and thought it through enough that I thought I knew how to do it.
Though, all the books said you shouldn’t go far from home the first few times until you knew exactly what you were doing.
Desperate times called for desperate measures and all of that.
Vallis appeared in the kitchen next to where I sat at the table with my notebook.
I was writing my will in case the astral projecting went really wrong.
It was a standard will leaving the vast amount of my belongings to siblings and younger sleuth members.
The house of course would go back to the Nightshade Bears since I didn’t have any kids who would need to live in it.
Without saying hello, Vallis pulled me to my feet and kissed me hard.
His tongue plunged into my mouth and my toes burnt hot inside my socks.
If he didn’t calm down with his twirling tongue we were going to be in trouble.
I didn’t want to be in heat when my parents and the Snow Demon showed up.
But I wanted him! All the anger I held onto while he was away fled as his arms held me close.
He was afraid that someone I loved was going to get hurt and as much as I didn’t want that to happen if we did nothing, we were ensuring it.
I barely had Vallis but if I lost him now, I knew I wouldn’t recover.
His passing would rip away all the possibilities for our future.
“I missed you,” he said. “I was so worried. I—I shouldn’t have done that but I didn’t want… I don’t want him harmed. I don’t want any of you harmed over me.”
“I am wounded each second you’re locked away,” I whispered.
Vallis cradled my face in his hands and kissed me again, softly this time, because there was no arguing with what I said.
“Okay, you can try astral projecting after we settle in the Snow Demon. Maybe he knows something about it. Hell, maybe he’ll see me and we won’t be able to avoid telling everyone,” Vallis said.
“I was going to try whether you liked it or not. You’re not my boss,” I said.
“I could try to stop you. Just because Pami outsmarted me doesn’t mean I don’t have any magic. You mess with me and I’ll conjure up another room on the back of your house and leave you to answer the questions about it,” he said, a teasing smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“You’d be gone for weeks and I don’t know that we have weeks.”
“We have as long as we have,” he sighed.
“There’s food in the oven for you,” I said, pulling away.
I couldn’t think about what happened if we failed.
I wasn’t raised to give up but if Vallis died I planned to close up shop and go out into the woods.
Sometimes shifters could do that and lose their human side.
Maybe as just a bear, I wouldn’t remember him so clearly.
“Hey! I would so remember him!” my bear cut into my thoughts.
I shrugged him off and started loading up the table with food. As much as I wanted to kiss Vallis forever I couldn’t. Most true-mates had eternity. We had a questionably short amount of time.
After he ate, Vallis insisted on washing up the dishes. I didn’t want him to waste the energy but eventually gave up and let him do it because I didn’t want to argue with him again. It seemed that’s all we did – kiss, eat, and argue. It’s all we had time to do.
After the washing was done up, Vallis took my hand and led me into the living room. It was only then that I realized that he’d only seen the kitchen, hallway, and living room.
“He’ll see the rest when he moves in with us,” my bear chimed into my thoughts.
Vallis motioned for me to lay down on the sofa and I did. He joined me, boxing me my cozily in between him and the plush back of my sofa. He moved a stray lock of hair away from my face and kissed my forehead.
“The way I see it is either we can kiss and stuff or I can teach you what I know about astral projection,” he whispered.
That wasn’t fair. He shifted his weight and his hard dick brushed against me. I wondered if he could even take his pants off while astral projecting. If he couldn’t now that would be really unfair.
“Can we do both?” I asked.
“Well, my mouth will be too busy to talk if we’re kissing,” he smirked.
“And stuff,” I added.
“And stuff,” he said.
“How about we try once – I try once – and then we move onto stuff?”
“Okay,” he nodded. “You’re awful confident that once is all it’ll take.”
“I’ve been studying and I’ve sat watch for Grandpa before when he was out of his body,” I said.
“Okay,” he got off the sofa, and I reached out for him.
He took my hand and pulled me gently until I was flat on my back looking up at him. I almost changed my mind. Almost told him to kiss me on my mouth and wherever else he wanted to.
“Close those pretty eyes,” he said, squatting down by the sofa. “Close them and clear your mind. Focus on that quiet spot right under your ribs.”
“That’s where my bear lives. He’s never quiet.”
“Well, tell him to shut up because yeah, focus on his inner sanctum. I don’t know how they teach it here but the way I figured it out was my bear could come and go as he wanted and I go inside there when I shift into him. So, technically, I can come and go from there as I wanted,” he said.
None of the books had approached it this way but I focused on my grassy hill I most often found my bear on.
For a long moment, the bear and I were one as we listened to our mate continue his lesson.
He talked about little paths here and there that led out.
That he even believed true-mates shared little paths that were only connected once they exchanged the claiming vows that allowed the beasts within them to communicate and pass back and forth without any trouble.
I almost asked if we’d even be able to exchange our claiming vows but decided to keep my mouth shut.
It wasn’t hard to remain quiet while Vallis spoke.
I loved the deep melodic sound of his voice.
I loved how even from a distance his warmth radiated against my skin.
How I knew where he was by the sound of his voice.
I could almost see him knelt down by the sofa talking to me.
“You’re going to follow my voice out,” Vallis said and I did.
As one with my bear, I stood up and trotted down the back side of the hill.
The side I never saw from my vantage point.
The side I never bothered to explore when my bear was the one in the driver’s seat and I was left waiting patiently inside.
I never bothered because usually his senses made the world around me impossible to ignore but my bear knew exactly what little pathways our mate spoke of.
He led me through a bunch of woods and then through a cave.
All the while Vallis kept talking to us and the further into the cave we ventured the closer he sounded.
Soon we came to a cavern that broke off into seemingly endless tunnels.
My bear sniffed each one and as the scents settled on the back of my tongue, I realized that these all represented the links I was on and the connections I made throughout my life.
I smelled the folks back home, the bears, the Hemlock Wolf Pack, and of course my parents and grandparents.
Eventually, we found one that smelled new but oh-so familiar.
“This is it,” my bear grunted and stepped into the tunnel.
It was dark and a tight squeeze but with each step we found a bit more light and the sound of Vallis’s voice grew louder as if it was starting to come from inside our head.
Then we stood next to him staring down at our empty body.
This I had read about. That urge to get back inside because the immediate knee-jerk reaction was that you were dead.
I stopped it in its tracks. I wasn’t dead.
I’d gone on a fairly long trek to get back to where I started – only outside of my body now.