Chapter 35 Chloe
CHLOE
The first bee appeared on a Tuesday.
Chloe was kneeling in Corin's orchard, her bare hands pressed flat against the soil, when she heard it. A single, tentative buzz near her left ear. She held perfectly still, barely breathing, and watched as a honeybee landed on her wrist.
It walked across her skin, antennae twitching, then lifted off and flew toward the hives.
She sat back on her heels and laughed.
"They're coming back," she called to Corin, who was checking frames three rows over. "I just had a visitor."
He straightened up, a grin spreading across his face. "That makes twelve today. Up from four yesterday."
"Twelve." She pressed her hands deeper into the soil and felt it, the steady pulse beneath the frost, warm and alive and reaching back. No fear. No recoil. Just recognition, like an old friend greeting her after a long absence.
The land was healing. She could feel it in her blood, through the bond that had always been there but that she'd never trusted enough to use. The corruption was fading, the poisoned channels clearing, the ancient magic settling back into the earth where it belonged and she was helping it.
A week ago, she'd nearly died channeling that magic. Now it flowed through her as easily as breathing.
"You're doing that thing again," Corin said, walking over to stand beside her. "The glowing thing."
She looked down at her hands. Faint silver light traced the veins beneath her skin, pulsing in rhythm with the earth's heartbeat. She hadn't even noticed.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize." He crouched beside her, pressing a kiss to her temple. "It's beautiful."
"It's still weird."
"Beautiful and weird aren't mutually exclusive." His eyes were warm as he studied her face. "How does it feel?"
"Like..." She searched for the right words.
"Like I've been wearing gloves my whole life and finally took them off.
Everything's sharper. Clearer. I can feel the roots waking up beneath us, the water table shifting.
There's a patch of wild garlic about fifty yards that way that's about to break through. "
He looked in the direction she'd pointed. "There's never been garlic there."
"There is now." She smiled. "The land's making up for lost time."
"Chloe!"
She turned to see Wendy coming down the path from the house, her dark curls bouncing, her overnight bag slung over one shoulder.
She'd been staying at the inn for the past week, but today she was heading back.
Back to her life, her work, whatever it was that seers did when they weren't saving their sisters from dark druids.
"You're leaving already?"
"My flight's in four hours." Wendy set her bag down and looked around the orchard, her brown eyes sweeping across the rows of trees, the white hive boxes, the patches of green pushing through the frost. "This place looks different than when I arrived."
"It is different."
"I wasn't talking about the plants." Wendy's gaze settled on Chloe, something soft and proud flickering in her expression. "You look different. Stronger."
"I feel stronger." Chloe stood, brushing dirt off her knees. "I can feel everything now. Not just the sickness or the damage. Everything. The way the roots communicate with each other, the way the water moves through stone, the way the soil composition changes from one yard to the next."
"Show me."
Chloe knelt again and pressed her palm flat against the earth. She reached down, not physically but through that channel in her blood, and asked. The soil responded immediately, a warm pulse of energy that traveled up through her hand, her arm, her chest.
A shoot of green pushed through the frozen ground between her fingers.
Wendy's breath caught. "You couldn't do that a week ago."
"A week ago I didn't know I could." Chloe watched the tiny shoot unfurl its first leaf, pale and perfect. "I spent so long being afraid of this. Thinking it made me dangerous or broken or wrong. And the whole time, it was just waiting for me to stop running."
"That's what I was trying to tell you." Wendy knelt beside her, touching the new shoot with gentle fingers. "Druid magic isn't something you control. It's something you participate in. A conversation, not a command."
"You could have just said that."
"Would you have listened?"
Chloe considered. "Probably not."
"Exactly." Wendy sat back, her expression shifting to something more serious.
"I talked to some people back home. There's a woman in Vermont, a full-blooded druid, who teaches others how to work with land magic.
She's willing to mentor you remotely. Video calls, guided exercises, that sort of thing. "
"I'd like that."
"I thought you might." Wendy paused. "She also said that what you did at the well, pulling stolen magic out of a siphon and returning it to the earth, that's something she's only read about in texts. Never seen in person."
"It didn't feel special. It just felt right."
"That's what makes it special." Wendy stood, brushing off her knees. "You're going to be something remarkable, Chloe. You already are."
Corin appeared with two mugs of coffee, handing one to each of them. "Wendy. Heading out?"
"Unfortunately." She took the mug, wrapping her hands around it. "Work doesn't stop just because my sister decided to become the most powerful druid in the Blue Ridge Mountains."
"I'm not the most powerful anything."
"Give it time." Wendy sipped her coffee and looked between them, a slow smile spreading across her face. "You two. I can feel the bond from here. It's practically humming."
"Is that normal?" Chloe asked.
"For mates? Yes. For mates where one of them is a druid connected to the land and the other is a bear shifter rooted in the same soil?" Wendy shrugged. "No idea. But it suits you."
Corin's arm settled around Chloe's waist, pulling her against his side. She leaned into him, feeling the bond pulse between them, warm and steady.
"Take care of her," Wendy said to Corin. "Or I'll know about it before you do."
"I don't doubt that."
"And you." Wendy pointed at Chloe. "Call me. Every week. I want updates on the training, the orchard, everything. And if anything feels wrong in the land, even a whisper, you tell me immediately."
"I will."
They walked Wendy to her car, the three of them crunching along the gravel drive while the February sun warmed their faces. It was still cold, still technically winter, but something had shifted in the air. A softness. A promise.
Spring wasn't here yet. But it was close.
Wendy hugged Chloe hard, her arms tight, her face buried in her sister's hair. "I'm proud of you," she whispered. "Mom would be too."
"Don't make me cry. You're about to drive mountain roads."
"I'm a seer. I'll see the turns coming." Wendy pulled back, her eyes bright. "I love you."
"I love you too."
They watched the car disappear down the road, Chloe leaning against Corin's chest, his chin resting on top of her head. The quiet settled around them, comfortable and full.
"She's something else," Corin said.
"She's my sister."
"Exactly."
They walked back through the orchard together, checking the progress as they went. Three more buds had opened since morning. The soil in the north section, which had been dead and gray a week ago, was showing the first hints of brown, of richness, of life returning.
Chloe paused beside one of the recovering hives, listening to the gentle hum inside. The bees were rebuilding. Slowly, carefully, the way all living things recovered from trauma. But they were recovering.
She pressed her hand to the hive's wooden side and felt the vibration through her palm. Warmth. Industry. Life.
"You know," she said, "when I first came to Hollow Oak, all I wanted was somewhere I could be useful without being feared."
"And now?"
She stared up at him, at his kind eyes and his gentle hands and the mate mark that pulsed silver on her hip whenever he was near.
"Now I want more than that." She laced her fingers through his. "I want to build something here. Not just tend gardens and mix herbs. I want to learn what I am. What I can do. Help this land become what it's supposed to be."
"And what's that?"
"I don't know yet." She smiled, feeling the earth hum beneath her feet, alive and patient and full of possibility. "But I have to find out."
He kissed her, slow and sweet, the late winter sun warm on their faces.
Around them, the orchard stirred. Buds swelled. Roots deepened. And somewhere in the white boxes at the very edge of the property, the bees began to sing.