CHAPTER EIGHT
∞∞∞
Ilona hit the ground at a dead run, stumbled, picked herself up before she could go sprawling down in the now-thick snow, and kept running.
It was only a short distance between the house and the barn, but she was certain she had never run so far or so fast. By the time she got to the barn door, she was panting, her ribs barely able to contain her heart, and, when she reached the door, she forced herself to take a long breath.
The urgency in Turner’s voice echoed in her head, and she knew that if she allowed it, she’d spiral into panic and be no good to anyone. No. Her mate had told her to come, and she had, and she would help.
Ilona cracked the door open, suddenly feeling as if she was intruding, but right away she saw how things really were.
Maisey was braced in the rear of the birthing stall, her head down and her horn leveled at Turner, who was standing just beyond the horn’s reach. Even from the back, he looked desperate.
“I can hear you,” he said without turning, and she realized belatedly he was speaking to her. “It’s all right, I know you’re there. Come in, but keep your distance.”
Maisey uttered another scream, and Ilona’s stomach turned. Even she could tell it was a pained and exhausted sound. Moving as quickly as she could without tripping or falling, she came to Turner’s side.
“Is it time?” she asked, and he laughed hollowly.
“It should be, but she won’t let me close. Something should have happened by now, and I can’t check.”
The fear in his voice hurt her. She would do anything to make sure he never sounded like that again, and then she realized there was something she could do after all.
“Maisey,” she called softly. “Hi, Maisey, it’s me. You remember me, don’t you?”
For a moment, there was nothing, and then Maisey lifted her head, making that horrible screaming sound again. Ilona could see the white all around the edges of the unicorn’s eyes, and it struck her all at once that this was Maisey's first foal, and how frightened the mare must be.
“I need to go into the stall with her,” she said, but Turner was already shaking his head.
“It’s too dangerous, she doesn’t know what she’s doing—”
“I’ll be careful. I will be so careful. But if I can do it without getting skewered, it’ll help, right?”
She saw the options flicker across Turner’s face, saw him come to the same conclusion she had. If there was any other way, he would have taken it, but there weren’t.
“I’m going to go in first, and if I give you the word, you have to get out right away, all right? Right away, or I’ll lock you in the other stall right there. That clear?”
“As crystal,” she retorted. “How do we do this?”
Turner entered the stall first, moving slowly and easily, murmuring soft words of encouragement and adoration. The moment Ilona came to the stall, however, Maisey forgot all about Turner. She lurched forward, trying to reach Ilona, prevented by the size of her belly.
“It’s okay, sweet baby,” she crooned as she approached.
“It’s just me, and we get along great, don’t we?
Sure we do, and I’m here to make you feel as good and as comfortable as can be.
I’m right here, baby girl. I’m not going anywhere.
You’re the first unicorn I’ve ever met, so of course I’m going to keep you nice and safe. It’s okay. I’m here.”
When she reached Maisey's side, she dodged that swinging horn as Maisey immediately buried her nose in Ilona’s armpit, shuddering with a nearly human relief.
If she wasn’t so worried for Maisey, she might have started crying, but she had a job to do.
She threw her arms around the mare’s neck, holding her tight, whispering comforting things as Turner circled around them.
After what seemed to be hours but was in truth only a few minutes, Turner uttered a short cry of triumph; and, a moment later, Maisey tossed her head, hunching over and sinking down to her side.
For a moment, Ilona was panicked she’d fallen.
Then Maisey groaned and a skinny thing, all white fur and long thin limbs, slipped to the ground.
Ilona stared, and then Turner was there, stripping a pair of gloves from his hands and grabbing her by the arm. He tugged her out of the stall after him and got it latched before turning to her.
“She likes you. She likes you so much, but unicorns tend to be testy after they foal. We need to give mama and baby some time to get used to each other and to also see what kind of mama Maisey is going to be. Here, watch with me.”
She watched, fascinated, as the unicorn walked a tight circle around the mewling thing on the ground. There was one horrible moment where she thought Maisey was for sure going to turn away or even attack.
Instead Maisey was finding the best place to stand so that she could lean down and set her strong sharp teeth against the thin, clear membrane covering the newborn foal.
“That’s right, honey,” Turner whispered. “Come on, you can do it. Get that caul open.”
At first Ilona wasn’t sure she could. Maisey fumbled it.
She licked it with the foal moving inside.
Then, as if a light bulb had clicked on over her head, she set her teeth in the caul and tossed her head.
From the rent in the membrane, emerged a little white unicorn foal—gawky, filthy, and utterly gorgeous.
Maisey looked down at the new arrival as if she had no idea what it was for, but, after a moment, she was suddenly licking its face clean, getting every bit of grime and gore off her baby until he uttered a tiny little wheeze and his flat sides pumped like a bellows.
“Oh he’s breathing,” Turner whispered with relief. “Now the colostrum. Come on, you can do it.”
Ilona didn’t realize that her hands were knotted into fists until the foal began to nurse, and she released the breath she had been holding.
The foal was perfect, standing albeit unsteadily, with impossibly delicate toothpick limbs, a tiny bit for scrub for a tail, and a golden horn the size of Ilona’s forefinger.
It was a miracle, and Ilona knew that she would adore them both, mare and foal, forever.
“That’s it,” Turner said, still dazed. “That’s it. She’s got it from here. Actually, maybe she’s trying to tell us just that.”
Ilona blinked, tearing her eyes away from the foal to see that Maisey was undeniably glaring at both of them. When she saw that they had noticed, she tossed her horn menacingly, pawing at the ground with one hoof, and Ilona chuckled.
“Oh, we’re yesterday’s news, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yup. And at this point, even in the wild, we know that mama and baby will likely be fine. I have a security cam feed direct to my phone that’ll let me keep an eye on things, but they’re doing great.” He laughed suddenly. “They are. They’re doing great, and—Ilona?”
Ilona didn’t hear him. Instead she was out of the barn and pelting back to the house.
She bounded up the stairs and threw open the door.
She expected the smell of burning, but it was more acrid than she remembered, more pervasive.
It soaked into everything like the smell of failure, and with a despairing little noise, she shut off the oven and pulled out what at one point had been a tray of sugar cookies ready to be decorated.
Now it contained tiny briquettes of charcoal, nothing like cookies at all, and she hurriedly switched off the stove, dumping the entire tray into the sink.
The highs and lows of this mad day crashed down on top of her all at once, everything from beginning to end, too much, and tears pricked at her eyes.
She knew it was silly, she knew that it was only a tray of burned cookies and that everyone, no matter how long they had been cooking, burned stuff sometimes.
No. No time for tears. There was never time for tears in the kitchen. She could make up for it. She could finish out the rest, scrape the bowl, decorate with rainbows and even more color…
She was just reaching for the scrub brush to clean off the tray when strong arms circled around her from behind. The window over the sink looked out over the woods, and, in the darkness, she could see her reflection and Turner’s, see the concern on his handsome face.
“Honey. Ilona. Talk to me. What are you doing now?”
“Baking,” she exclaimed with a hiccup. “I’m baking, I have t—Aunt Freddie’s depending on me, and this is the only thing I can do right now. I can’t do anything else, and I can’t let her down, I can’t let anyone down, it’s all I’ve done and—”
She could hear herself babbling as if from a great distance, and Turner waited until she trailed off. She was empty. She was exhausted. She didn’t know what to do.
“Okay. If there’s a problem here, we’re gonna fix it, but I don’t think there’s a problem. You got more ingredients?”
She nodded.
“You got close to enough cookies?”
She blinked, counted, counted again. She was closer than she had thought she was and nodded.
“Good. Okay. You can be a little short, or I can help out to make up the difference. And then tomorrow, you can drive them out—”
“I want to stay with you.” The words popped out so fast that it made her blush and Turner grin.
“That’s great. Then I’ll call a cousin who owes me one, and we’ll get ‘em delivered where they need to go. It’s really okay, and if it’s not, we fix it, all right? That’s what we do.”
“We do,” she said, as if it was a revelation, and Turner grinned ruefully.
“Honey, you are never just gonna be the things you do for other people, all right? And hell, even if they were expecting the cookies and you couldn’t deliver?
Even if you promised them up one side and down the other that they’d have them?
I want you to imagine what those people, who you love and respect, would say when you told them I couldn’t finish the cookies because I was assisting in the first unicorn birth in the United States in this century. ”
Ilona stared at Turner, and his face gentled to something achingly sweet.
“You’re loved, and if there’s forgiveness you need, it’ll be there. But darling, you’ve done nothing wrong, and I will tell you so every day of our lives together if you—”
She couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand to let another moment go by without kissing him.
She needed to kiss him again. she needed to put her arms around him and feel him do the same for her.
She needed all of him, and she was beginning to see, finally, that here and every day ahead, she could have him.
The kiss started out sweet, and then it was like they had struck a spark on a dry bale of hay. It took her breath away how hot it was, and then Turner simply lifted her up to sit on the edge of the sink, coming to stand between her legs as he pressed ever closer.
“You’re all I’ve ever wanted,” he murmured, his face pressed to the crook of her throat. “You’re all I need, I love you. I love you. I love you.”
The words were a sweet pain lodged directly in her chest, but Ilona realized that she knew this pain.
It was coming out of the dark into the light, it was the first bite of food after having been hungry for years.
It was love, it had always been love, and this love had been waiting for Turner all along.
She pulled back so she could see his face, so handsome with the wolf lurking behind his eyes.
“I love you,” she said, and she knew that she meant that to include every part of him, just like she knew he meant it to include every part of her.
They were going to love each other so well, and she brought him close again, because she could not for the life of her imagine how they had ever been so far apart.