Chapter 5 Julian
Julian
Mate! My wolf’s howl was victorious, and grew louder as the stranger’s hand landed on my shoulder and I understood who she was to me. My true mate, the other half of my soul. The one soul in the world who completed me.
Before the thought had fully formed, I collapsed, half on top of her, and her scent hit me. Rosemary and mint. And then blood.
Too much blood.
My fur grew warm where her arm was caught under me. Sticky and sharp-smelling. She was bleeding out. Dying, right in front of me.
No. No, this can’t be the end. I couldn’t wait my entire life, find my true mate in an instant, and lose her just as fast.
I heard Ida shouting at the boys as I shifted faster than I ever had before and wrapped my hand over the pulsing wound. Her face was tanned, possibly from hours spent in the sun, but was growing paler as I watched.
“Mate,” I muttered, my voice a croak. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t rouse. The corners of her lips turned up slightly, though, as if she wasn’t afraid.
Mate! Claim! my wolf insisted.
I was horrified. Claiming her might save her, though if she was too far gone, it might also take me along with her.
The idea didn’t stop me from pushing the blood-soaked fabric of her dress away from her neck and shoulder.
We would run with the moon side by side, if we both died.
We would be together as we were meant to be.
But first, I would try to save her life. I’d claim her, even though doing it without her permission was almost a crime. Without moving my hand from her wound, I lifted the woman’s narrow frame to my face. Kneeling with her draped over my arm, I set my lips on her neck and whispered, “Forgive me.”
The bear, whom I hadn’t forgotten, gave a rumble of disapproval.
The boys loosed matching, alarmed whines.
“Absolutely not.” Ida’s sharp voice cut in, as she grabbed me by one shoulder and pulled the woman away, though I kept my hand on her wound, unwilling to let up on the pressure. “Julian, stop growling. You can’t claim her, not unless she accepts you.”
She barked a few more orders at Bo, who was shivering on his feet in human form, muttering, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to hurt her, Sergeant.”
I wanted to reassure him that I knew, but my tongue was frozen in my mouth. I couldn’t even move my head to look at him.
Ida murmured, “We all know that, sweetheart. Go on and get the kit; it’s just inside the door, on the pine table.”
Bo repeated the apology, then wheeled and ran into the nearby cabin, emerging with a basket a few seconds later.
He handed it to Ida and moved back to stand beside his friend.
Leroy was still in wolf form, facing the bear, who was obviously not a threat.
The thing was… crying? I had never known a bear could weep, but this one’s shoulders were rounded as it made whimpering sounds of grief.
Ida kneeled at my side. “Julian, give her to me.”
I snarled at her. “She’s my mate.”
“And she may still be your mate if you let me help her. Give me space to try.”
“I can claim her—” I began, but she was already gently pulling the woman away, moving her own hand to cover the wound. If I didn’t have the utmost respect for Ida, I would’ve fought her. But I owed her my respect, and my life, so I resisted my wolf’s impulse.
Ida pulled a mass of something—cobwebs?—out of the basket with her free hand, then pressed them to the wound. The bleeding appeared to stop, or at least slow significantly, though that may have been because she’d already bled too much.
My mate was a mess, covered with dirt and blood.
Her hair was a tangled mass of dark waves with silver threads throughout, her limbs almost too slender, and her skin far too pale.
One whole side of her torso was blood-slicked, her pale green cotton dress twisted around her legs and torn from her shoulder to wrist. She looked to be a few years younger than me, though it was hard to tell.
“Let’s hope this works,” Ida murmured.
“If she dies…” I snarled, ashamed of the threat I couldn’t keep out of my voice.
Ida ignored me, still holding the cobwebs on the wound as she barked at Bo to get something else out of the basket. Herbs of some kind? Bo handed them to Ida, who glanced up at me, a stern gleam in her eyes. “Chew these for her.”
I blinked, but obeyed, the foul-tasting herbs leaving my tongue numb. I handed back the masticated lump, and she took it, pressing it between the woman’s lips.
The woman. I didn’t even know her name.
“Who is she? What is her name?” I asked as Ida worked, instructing me to hold the cobwebs in place, while she pulled more things out of the basket.
I sniffed and realized everything inside it reeked of strong magic.
No. Not strong magic. Deep magic. As if small spells had been laid over everything inside, one at a time for years. Decades, perhaps.
“This is the one I was bringing you to meet,” she said. “Her name is Zinnia.”
Zinnia. I had called her a crone in my thoughts. She was nothing of the sort.
I drank her in as she lay almost motionless, only her chest rising and falling unsteadily, as if the act of breathing might cease at any moment.
“She’s a witch.” I had almost no power over my own magic now, but since the first scar that had blotted out the tattoo on my upper arm, I’d been able to sense it again.
Like the medicines in her basket, this woman’s magic was potent. Concentrated, as if it had been increasing in strength for a very long time. But I couldn’t pick up a trace of wolf in her.
My own wolf snarled his denial of the thought, but not even he could locate a connection to her shifter side, if she had one. My magic, though, roiled under my skin more violently than it ever had before. I ignored the sensation, the pain that had become even sharper after she’d touched me.
I suddenly remembered Ida’s words. “She was a shifter?”
A long time ago, she’d said. Not now. My wolf panted, in panic.
“Once,” Ida replied, pulling her discarded dress back on.
She kneeled back down and pulled a handful of dried vines and foliage from the basket, which I realized must be some sort of magical first aid kit.
I’d never seen such a thing. My original pack had been magically strong and healed easily from all but the worst wounds.
We never got sick. But Zinnia had human medicine in her home, which meant…
I swallowed hard, my throat dry. “Tell me.”
Ida wrapped the plants around Zinnia’s head, like a dried flower crown.
It practically wept magic from every dried-up leaf and blossom on it, and I could sense it falling on Zinnia’s skin and vanishing, as if she were drinking it.
“When I met her, her wolf was still… discernible. Now, well, you can feel for yourself, can’t you? ”
I could. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know all of it, and what I do know isn’t mine to share.
She’s a hermit, and thanks to her magic, only a few in our pack even know she’s here.
” She made a clicking sound with her tongue.
“Bo, Leroy? Bring out a quilt for her. She’ll need to lie on the earth, if I’m not mistaken, but it’ll get cold soon.
You two will go back to the campsite with me and leave her to heal, if she can. ”
“Lie on the earth?” I reared back in shock. “You’re leaving her?”
“We are,” she corrected. “We all are.”
As if she understood, the bear lumbered toward Ida and nudged the woman’s thigh with her black nose in what had to be an apology, then disappeared into the woods.
The birds and animals that had filled the clearing, flinging themselves at the boys earlier, now vanished as well, though a wary hawk kept watch from a branch above.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I replied, fighting for calm. “She’s my mate.”
“She’s my friend, and this is what she asked me to do, long ago, if she needed healing.
She needs privacy, and silence. She can’t be touched.
She was very clear about it. You will not keep her from healing, do you understand?
” Her wolf’s eyes shone in her face, assessing me, the power almost stifling.
“I will… not touch her, unless she asks,” I promised, pulling away. It felt like something inside me was tearing slightly as I let go. “But I can’t leave her. I won’t be apart from her, ever again.”
Ida’s dark eyes flashed as she gave me an assessing stare. “If she chooses you.”
I snarled, then managed to speak through sharpened teeth. “Even if she doesn’t. Even if she doesn’t accept me, I will not leave her. I will protect her, and guard her—”
“You will leave her alone, if she asks you to,” Ida half-shouted, only quieting when a slight furrow formed on Zinnia’s brow.
“I made a vow on the moon to her, Julian. That I would protect her privacy here, that no one would disturb her while she lived on Mountain packlands. When I found her, years ago, clawing her way across these mountains… Well.” She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.
“I’ve never seen anyone so broken, not even my boy Samuel after his mate was murdered.
” She breathed deeply, then finished, “All Zinnia ever asked for was to be left alone. She promised in return to help heal anyone in the pack who needed magic. She’s quiet and kind, and she has no one else. ”
“She has me now.” I swallowed. “If she wants me.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
I clenched my teeth, but answered, “I’ll… I’ll let her choose after she heals. I’ll guard her until then. Is that enough?” It had to be. I couldn’t leave her, not yet. Not now, while she was vulnerable.
I was aware of Leroy comforting Bo, and I managed to tear my gaze from my mate. Bo was sobbing, his friend holding him up. Leroy nodded his head to me, or to Zinnia, I wasn’t sure. “He didn’t mean to bite her, Sergeant. It was a mistake.”
“I know.” There was no anger in my reply, only fear and a heavy sense of resignation. If she didn’t survive, I wasn’t sure I would either. “Tell him, when he can hear you, that I don’t blame him. It was a mistake. He thought he was protecting her.”
“The pack protects,” Leroy responded, the mantra of our pack, the ones I’d left behind to take this final journey.
The atmosphere grew even more somber as the afternoon slid into evening. Ida escorted the boys back to the campsite quietly while I shifted into my wolf form. I lay close to Zinnia, not touching her, though I longed to.
The shadows grew longer, and the air colder. A whippoorwill sang, and the frogs at the nearby river began to trill, as my mate breathed quietly.
Eventually, I slept as well, and dreamed.
Little star, where are you? The homes and buildings of Occidens had been constructed around the tall trees at the base of the Blue Mountains, the rocky cliffs providing protection on one side and the trees a natural camouflage.
But for the first time, I wished the birches that edged the heart of the packlands, and the pines that towered behind them, were gone.
They were hiding her, though her scent wafted through the needles and branches, taunting me. Fresh green mint, and the rich, herbal scent of rosemary, mixed with something else—the shimmering electric scent that hinted at magical power.
I caught glimpses of her as she ran, but every time I grew close, she slipped behind a tree and was gone. She twinkled like a star, as she always did. I’d never caught sight of her face, but I could sense her light, her spark, from miles away.
Why? I called out. Why are you running away?
The answer came in my ear, a whisper. I ran after you, Julian. You were the one who left me behind.
I whirled to see where she was, my hands reaching for her, but there was nothing behind me, only a faint shadow in the shape of a too-thin wolf, flitting across the fallen leaves and then gone.
I never left you!
A soft sigh brushed my cheek just before something moved above my head, wreathing me in that perfect scent again, then rose above the trees like a trail of smoke, wrapping around the moon and dimming the silver light.
From the top of the tallest pines, a slender form rose as well, running into the sky on four paws. Going where I couldn’t follow.
Little star? Wait for me! I blinked and leaped into the sky, but fell to my hands and knees on the ground. When I looked up, I couldn’t find her wolf, or see any trace of her in the sky. I howled out my pain, though, and she answered, though the wolf was gone.
I’m sorry, mate. The faint whisper spun in the air around me like a strand of spider’s silk. I waited so long. It’s too late now.