Chapter 14 - Jasper
“Just stay, Tara. It’s better you lie down now, okay?”
“No, you don’t understand—"
She tries to get up from the couch, but I don’t even need to intervene—she’s too weak.
I’m not sure she wants me to touch her again anyway.
Things, as they often do, went wrong very quickly.
And this time she almost died.
I kneel by her feet. “Tara, please. Just stay, you need to rest. I’d carry you to bed, but I don’t know if you want me to, you know…”
I’d do anything for her right now. She’s not leaving my sight, not again.
She shakes her head. “I’m not going to bed, I’m fine. I saw something.”
I stand and fight the urge to move two loose strands of hair that cover her eyes.
“You mean the shadow monster that almost killed you? Yeah, I saw that too.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Hilarious. Pretty sure it almost killed you too, but whatever.”
There’s the Tara I know. Funny how I almost missed her sass.
“Some thanks for saving your life.”
Tara likes to act strong, too strong for her own good. But in all fairness to her, when it came to the shadow monster, she did put up a good fight.
“Thank you,” she says. There’s an earnest, vulnerable look in her eyes that makes my heart ache.
“Any excuse to kill one of those things.”
I smile, she smiles too.
“Look. I did see something else. It happened once you destroyed that thing. I got this vision.”
“A vision?”
Do humans get those? I thought that was a supernatural thing.
“Yeah, or, I don’t know what it was, but I saw a tapestry.”
My blood turns cold.
“You can’t have,” I mutter.
“Why? What does that mean? What is it?”
I sigh. All this is so much worse than I thought.
The tapestry, which currently resides in Ellis’ pack grounds, has been giving us hints about this curse ever since the first round of it began.
There was an initial image, and beneath that a second one—the one that’s currently still being shown on that cursed thing.
Personally, I try to stay away from it. Or leave it to the witches to figure out.
I tell all of this to Tara, and her face animates. “Yes. That makes sense, I think I’ve got a clue, I don’t know how or why—but you have to take me to it.”
This answer comes easy. “No.”
“Why not?”
I rub my temples; I should have never let her run out of the library like that. But I thought she was headed home.
“Because you don’t want to mess with this stuff, trust me. It’s probably a trap. As a human, there’s nothing you can do.”
“How can you say that,” she retorts. “When I literally saw something! As you said, the tapestry holds the clues; this could be huge.”
I sigh. “You don’t need to go to it, tell me what exactly you saw.”
She crosses her arms. “I’m not telling you until you take me to it.”
“Tara.”
“Actually, I can go by myself. I know the way to Ellis’ pack.”
She knows there’s no way I’d let her go alone.
“You don’t know where the tapestry is; you’ll never find it. You’re not going.”
She shrugs, daring me with her eyes. “Can’t be that hard. If I had to guess, a tapestry like that would probably be in the council meeting room or whatever you call it. If not, I’m sure Danielle will help me, and I don’t doubt she’ll be very excited to hear about this news.”
She’s smart. I’ll give her that.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope.”
***
It feels strange going into Ellis’ meeting hall at this hour, especially with a human, and especially with Tara after she was just almost killed.
Not to mention everything that happened before she left the library.
It’s been a weird ass evening, and no doubt it’s about to get stranger.
Her shoes slap against the wooden floors behind me as I lead her to the tapestry I’ve been trying to avoid.
If anyone could get me to do something I didn’t want to do, it would be Tara.
It is Tara, all the time.
“Here we are,” I say, switching on the lights.
Just staring at that ugly tapestry gives me the creeps. But Tara’s drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.
“Is this what you saw?”
She shakes her head.
“Well, yes. But not this image.”
Her eyes widen as she steps closer toward it. What is it with this tapestry?
I wouldn’t exactly call it a work of art. I’ve seen better stuff, even from human artists.
“Well, this is it,” I say. “What was it that you saw?”
She squints her eyes, looking as though she’s tracing the image’s details in her mind. Then she extends her finger, but without touching the tapestry, she hovers it over the ink swirls.
“It was like a crown,” she murmurs, absentmindedly. Then she touches the tapestry, as though trying to draw what she saw. “A crown made of feathers, it was blowing outward.”
She moves her fingers along the tapestry. “Like this.”
It’s possible, unheard of, but still possible that rather than killing her, the shadow monster has driven her insane.
A crown made of feathers?
That doesn’t even make sense.
Does it?
“Okay,” I say, “but if it’s not here now—"
A white glow bleeds out from beneath her fingertips. It’s as though there’s a layer of magic that spreads beneath her hand, expanding like a blot of ink.
But it’s white, and bright as hell.
Tara gasps, shooting her hand back. I step forward, my protective instincts kicking in.
“Wait,” she whispers.
The white glow is cutting through the tapestry’s surface, slowly peeling it back.
In its place, another layer begins to form. Ink spreads and weaves across the page.
The two forces work in tandem, like converging roads, one moving into the space, the other peels back from.
The tapestry is alive.
And then it stops.
In the place of the old picture is a painting, exactly the way she described it to be.
I couldn’t picture it before, but I do now.
A crown made of feathers blowing in the wind. I can’t believe it.
Is Tara a witch?
She notices the drop in my face.
“What is it?”
“I mean, Tara”, I can’t hold back, as much as I want to, this is too damn suspicious. “Are you a witch?”
She scoffs. “If I were a witch, don’t you think I’d know?”
“I’m not saying that you wouldn’t know.”
She crosses her arms, a fire burning in her eyes. “Oh, please, Jasper. Why do you think I’d pretend to be a human, something which in your eyes is probably worse?”
I knew that bringing her to the tapestry was a bad idea. I knew it.
“First, you say you have a vision, then you’re revealing a third layer of some witchy tapestry as a white glow spurts out from beneath your fingers? What do you expect me to think?”
“That if I were a witch, I wouldn’t have needed your help with that shadow monster.”
He cocks his head. “Well...”
“Ugh, you’re so arrogant,” she huffs. “So what, now I’m this secret witch who’s fooled you, somehow—even though it was your idea—into marriage so that I can do what, spy?
Clearly, you haven’t got the memo. I don’t know why, but the witches are willing to work with you.
So am I! Or I was, because at this point. ..”
Her voice trails off.
She’s mad, and I get it. I’ve been harsh. But still, none of this makes sense.
“Tara, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“It doesn’t make sense. How did you do that? How did you have those visions?”
There’s a tight friction in the air between us that feels like it’s about to give way to something far more dangerous.
The truth is, I do trust her. I know she’s not a witch. I just don’t like all the witchy stuff that's been imposed on her, is all.
It feels like she’s only in this situation because of me.
“I don’t know!” She exclaims, then softens. “I don’t know how any of this stuff has happened, but I can only assume that it’s a good thing. I mean, this must be a clue.”
“So, we’ll let the witches know and they’ll figure out what it means.”
“Yes, of course, and I’ll help. I mean, I’ve been doing all this research, and now I have something. It’s like the universe has presented it to me, I don’t know.”
“This isn’t a blessing, Tara. Trust me, this is a curse. You don’t want this.”
“Yes, it’s a curse, but we do want answers. How are we going to solve it otherwise?”
“It’s not your case to solve.”
“And why not?”
“Because you’re too vulnerable. You almost died tonight!”
A surge of anger courses through my veins. She’s so stubborn, and for what?
There’s no prize for solving this crap; it's life or death. A human shouldn’t be involved.
“But I didn’t die. I’m fine, and I’m the one whom the universe presented this information to.”
I shake my head. “Sorry, Tara, it’s too dangerous.”
“You don’t get to decide that!”
As her Alpha, technically, I do, but I know there’s no use in saying that.
“Tara, you’re just a human, for God’s sake.”
“Just a human. Right. Just a human who managed to uncover this tapestry.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Your fixation with being involved in all this supernatural stuff is going to kill you one day, Tara. It is totally irresponsible.”
She huffs, “It’s not a fixation! I’m technically your wife, isn’t this something your wife would do?”
“Except my wife would be a shifter, not a human.”
I realize how that came across. I didn’t mean it to be so harsh; it came out of my frustration at her getting involved in something she shouldn’t be involved in.
She bites her lip, and I expect her to have a comeback, but instead she nods silently.
“Okay, but I’m here and I am a human. I’m also the one who had the vision and uncovered the tapestry. There’s no changing that, unless you’re asking me to go.”
I shake my head.
Why do I have a desire to hold her?
“You should go,” I say. “And I’ll come with you, back home. I don’t even want to think about what the time is right now.”
Once we’re outside, there’s silence. She stays close to me, and we walk shoulder to shoulder, past the cabins in Ellis’ pack.
The protective instincts I feel over her now are crazy.
We both remain silent until I can’t help but talk.
Otherwise, I feel like I might explode.
“I don’t think that you should be walking around alone. At least not at night, and at least not out of the pack bounds.”
She laughs. “So I’m a prisoner now.”
“Why don’t you care about your safety?” I ask her. The sky is beginning to turn blue above us, and soon the birds will start to wake.
I’ll need to cancel my morning. Everything is so fucked.
“I do care about my safety, but I also don’t see myself the way you see me.”
“Do you want me to shift by the way?” I ask her. “You can ride on my back and we’ll be home a lot sooner.”
The human walking pace is slow. They’re like life-sized snails.
“This is exactly what I mean! No, I don’t want to do that. I’ll walk, and if my lowly human legs are too slow for you, then I’ll walk alone.”
I realize that the reason Tara is so worked up is because she thinks that I’m telling her she’s nothing. A weak human with no attributes, nothing useful to provide.
And that’s not the case. I know she’s smart, I know she’s strong, I mean, hell, she managed to keep off that shadow monster for who knows how long.
She’s impressive, but she doesn’t have the abilities we do. She needs to be protected.
We walk in silence until we get to the house, and once we’re inside, she begins to storm upstairs.
“Tara,” I brush her arm. “Wait.”
“What?”
“I don’t think you have lowly human legs.”
She smiles a little at that, but she’s still annoyed.
She does kinda have lowly human legs, but that’s not her fault. She actually has pretty nice legs; my wolf has thought about them a lot.
“That’s a lie,” she says. “You do.”
Looking at her now, all I feel is regret about the way I treated her in the past. I said some pretty harsh things to her, things about humans that I don’t even believe anymore.
Yes, we’re different.
They can’t do a lot of things that we can; we’re faster, stronger, heal quicker. But Tara has a certain grace that I don’t.
She has calmness that I’ll never have, and she’s smart. Super smart.
My chest aches.
“I don’t see you how you think I see you. At least not anymore.”
She nods, looking away, and I can see the pain in her eyes. Tara has changed the way I see humans; she did from the moment I met her, and ever since this ‘relationship’, she’s changed it a whole lot more.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I know you’re capable, Tara. You’ve managed to survive in a pack full of chaotic shifters.”
“If I’m so capable, then why won’t you let me help?”
“Because it’s still a death wish.”
“Why do you care?! Wouldn’t it be easier for me not to be around? One less problem to deal with?”
“So, I should have let the shadow monster have you then?”
I’m inches away from her, my body tightening with the idea of her getting taken by that shadow monster.
I feel so much anger, it’s like I need to shift.
And then my wolf tells me something else.
I’m hard.
I don’t know when it happened, but there’s no doubt about it. I’m rock-hard.
Fuck, I want her.
Her eyes are desperate, she stares at my lips and then at my chest. In true Tara fashion, she’s pretending she’s not doing it, but I know what her arousal looks like.
I can smell it too.
The feel of her wet pussy still lingers in my mind.
“I do appreciate you caring,” she says.
I’m aware of her neck as she swallows, the beads of sweat behind her ears. It’s not that hot. Her cheeks don’t need to be that flushed, but they are.
The air shifts between us.
“Tara, come here.”
I pull her into me and claim her lips. She tastes sweet and salty, and the smell of her mouth draws me in.
Tara moans, flinging her arms around my neck as I kiss her with force. My dick presses against her body, and she moans even more.
That’s it.
I take her upstairs, in seconds, we’re in my bedroom. I toss her down onto the bed.
She’s flushed bright scarlet, her legs open for me, revealing a hint of her pink and white panties.
I’ve never wanted anything so much.