Chapter 30 #3
Just belonging. Unconditional and absolute. The thing I’d been starving for since I was five years old and covered in Jillian’s blood, wondering why nobody else would hold me.
I could stay here.
In this incredible place, where no dragon was trying to kill me. God, I wanted to drop to my knees and play in the sand with a violet-eyed girl, all while my wolf relaxed, content and in peace for all eternity.
The image bloomed with a bitterness that stung my eyes, then faded away. As appealing as it sounded to permanently shirk my duties and never again go through my aunt’s monthly torture session, I couldn’t stay.
The bloodstone throbbed against my leg, reminding me why.
The dragon wouldn’t rest until he had his treasure.
If I stayed in this tree, cradled in everything I’d ever wanted, he would destroy the people I loved. They’d have no bloodstone, no thief to surrender, and no chance of survival. Letting him live had been my mistake. I wouldn’t leave my pack to pay for it.
“I can’t stay.”
The silence that followed threatened to drown me. These people actually wanted me to join their Zen tree cult, and I could see myself happy here.
“I want to.” My voice cracked, and I let it, because there was no pack here to judge my tears.
Disappointment leaked from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, mirrored on the concerned faces watching me.
“You have no idea how much I want to. But a dragon is hunting us, and if I don’t leave, my people will die. ”
They stirred. The air shifted, and I got the feeling my words were being weighed against some standard I knew nothing about.
Another creature appeared, this one more tree than human. Her hair was woven with leaves, and her skin was the rough, silvery bark of the trunk. Eyes, the deep crimson of the flowers above, settled on me, and I felt stripped more bare than I’d ever been on Sereana’s table.
“You would sacrifice this?” she asked quietly, confusion etched into the wooden grooves of her forehead. “Peace. Safety. A family that would never ask you to bleed for its approval. You would leave it all behind to save those who can never truly know you?”
The blunt honesty of her assessment landed in my gut like a stone, but I didn’t flinch.
More tears fell as I mourned for the wolf who’d finally tasted peace only to have it ripped away.
The beast inside me was evil, and I hated her, but those bindings were torture.
It’d be nice to never have to endure another. But this place wasn’t for me. Not yet.
“My life belongs to my pack.”
The tree woman studied me for a long moment, and something shifted in her expression. Acceptance.
“You seek Raziel’s secrets.”
I blinked. Dad hadn’t gotten the chance to tell me what I was supposed to do in this place before the tree had sent me hurtling into it, so I didn’t know what I was after. Relieved that she did, I nodded.
“Yes.”
She stepped closer, and when she spoke again, her voice carried the weight of deep roots that had held the earth together for eons.
“I will grant you that which you seek, but hear me, child.” Her crimson eyes darkened, and everything around us went still and quiet.
Even the waves stopped moving. “Power of this nature remakes those who wield it. Knowledge can either liberate or corrupt. Even the righteous can become tyrants.”
Her gaze bore into mine, and there was nothing I could do but hold my ground, as if I had the faintest clue what she was talking about.
Something materialized in front of me. A sticky, crimson substance coated a glass vial that was no longer than my palm. It was so covered in what appeared to be bloody sap that I couldn’t even make out the contents.
Reluctant to reach for it, I asked, “Then why would you offer it to me?”
“Because it has been waiting for you. You are the only one who can decide which altars are worth your sacrifice.”
Her enigmatic response settled over me like a shroud, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
I was certain the alpha wanted whatever was in that vial, though.
Despite every question in the world swirling around in my baffled brain, I fell back on my training.
I would do what my pack needed. My hand reluctantly reached for her offering.
As I plucked the vial from thin air with my thumb and forefinger, trying not to get sap all over my hand, the tree woman pressed her bark-rough palm against my cheek. Her touch carried every ounce of love the beach had promised.
“Now, a gift for you,” she said.
Pain detonated in my stomach.
Not a cramp. Not nausea. A white-hot stab that folded me in half, driving me to my knees as fire blazed through my core. I gasped, clutching my midsection, convinced something inside me had ruptured. The warmth of the tree pressed in around me, holding me steady while my body screamed in protest.
Then the pain vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and I kneeled there, panting, one hand still pressed against my stomach, the other gripping the vial.
Everything felt… the same. And yet not. Something inside me had shifted.
Something small and dense and deeply, impossibly present, like a seed planted in fertile soil.
“What did you do to me?” My voice came out high and thin, as my mind raced through a parade of horrifying possibilities, each more insane than the last, before landing on one that made my blood run cold. “Am I… did you… I’m not pregnant, am I? Because that sure as hell wouldn’t be a gift.”
I knew how babies were made, and the tree had definitely not done that to me, but something foreign had manifested inside me.
Her gentle laughter held no mockery, but it didn’t slow my heart rate one bit. Not even when her crimson eyes softened with an affection that made her look almost human.
“It is a beginning of sorts.” She tilted her head, studying me with the patience of a being that measured time in centuries. “Your gift will reveal itself when the time is right.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I wanted to demand something less cryptic, but the warmth was already withdrawing. My wolf whimpered as it receded, and the sound carved a hollow in my chest.
“Go in peace, lost child. And return him to me when he seeks rest.”
“Who?” I asked, but she was already gone. Everyone was. The beach had emptied.
Light split the air, and the tree spat me out into chaos.