Chapter 20
Julian
Idreamed of running circles around the moon, my paws touching nothing but sky, my heart soaring high above the earth as I hunted the sacred light.
In the dream, she was there, of course. Her wolf’s spirit was smaller than mine but far brighter, as if she had been hunting the same light for far longer and had found her quarry night after night.
Little star?
The lithe wolf yipped, ducking behind the moon. I followed, or tried to. But when my own paw slid into the shadow, something inside me whimpered, though the sound was more human than wolf.
I peered into the darkness, the night wind pushing me from behind to follow. There was some reason I shouldn’t go there, though my wolf quivered to run to her, with her. A tether of light stretched into the blackness, pulling me deeper into the shadows, tracing the passage of her howl.
Why weren’t my feet moving to reach her? Little star! I howled again and tugged on the leash that held me. It wouldn’t release me.
Incensed, I turned to gnaw at the base of the cord, and froze.
Another tether, an unfamiliar one, stretched down to the earth. At its end lay a fallen star, sleeping on the earth. She didn’t shine, but glowed, and pulsed with heat. A dark enticement. A desperate need.
She was so lonely on the ground, by herself.
So small. Separate from the moon, from the pearly light that ruled and comforted our kind.
I longed for her to join me, but my wolf-shaped throat could not form words.
I struggled against myself, knowing I needed to shift to call her to me.
To us. But she was fixed to the darkness beneath her, held by a far thicker cord to the earth than the one that connected us.
Bond. It was a bond that tied our souls together. A vow. The memory of the vow chased me into this dream. “Anything you want,” I’d promised. “You can have anything from me.”
I’d meant that vow. And she’d asked me to stay with her.
So I would.
My wolf howled to follow his mate, but I knew now that the leash holding me was one I welcomed. I did the only thing I could, to honor us both. To honor her.
I let him go, though it tore me in half.
I wasn’t certain I could survive this pain, but I knew I had no choice. She was at the end of the suffering.
She was waiting, as she had been for so long.
I woke to the sound of weeping, but not my own. I tried to form her name with my lips, but my mouth was too dry, my tongue a lump of dry stone. My mind was clouded, and I had no idea where I was. Who I was.
“Sergeant?” The voice was close to my ear, and I blinked my eyes open. It was dark, but the breeze was gentle, and the softness underneath me was a mattress, scented with rosemary and mint.
That’s right. I was Sergeant, and also Julian, which meant this was Leroy and she… Zinnia. I swallowed. She wasn’t here. “Leroy, tell me. Is she…”
“She’s outside,” he replied softly. Mournfully. It had been him crying.
I tried to sit up, but the room whirled around me like I was tumbling over river rapids. I lay back instantly. A match flared, and Leroy’s face swam into view. Something was wrong. It felt like— “Is she alive?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Yeah, um. I’ll take you to her,” he finally said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
He held up a cup of water and lifted it to my lips.
I drank greedily. When it was empty, I tried sitting up again.
Somehow, I managed to put my feet on the floor, though my stomach churned.
I had on a pair of cut-off sweatpants and nothing else.
Memories began to surface in my mind. My idiocy and cruelty to Bo. Him running from me. The mountain lion. The fall.
I’d been injured, and enough time had passed to get me down the mountain, to dress me, to heal me. She’d healed me… I tried to remember what came next, but my mind went blank. Instead, I stood, willing the room to stop spinning.
Something was missing, almost like I’d lost a limb. Zinnia. I had to see her, had to make certain she was alive. I couldn’t feel her, couldn’t feel anything. The sensation of a yawning abyss had my vision dimming again, and it was only Leroy’s strong arm holding me up that kept me from falling.
“Where is she?”
“Outside, Sergeant,” he replied, helping me shuffle to the doorway. “She can’t come in just yet.”
“Is she hurt?” My heart raced. What was wrong? Why was my head so empty? My skin felt like a husk, like I’d been emptied out while I rested.
“Ah, sir, no. You are, though. She’ll be spittin’ nails to see you on your feet.” He grabbed the door and opened it, before muttering, “If she wakes up. She fell asleep as soon as she knew you was safe.”
My heart thudded painfully in my chest. From the light, it was an hour until dawn, maybe less. The birds were already waking, and one swooped low overhead, landing behind the cabin.
“The garden?” I asked. Leroy nodded and led me toward it.
At the gate, he hesitated. “Bo was with her at first, until… well, you’ll see. We didn’t leave her unguarded.”
“Why wasn’t she inside the cabin?” I staggered through the gate, his arm holding me up. The morning was foggy, making it hard to identify what lay in the center of the garden, but I could see movement.
“She can’t, ah, be that far from the ground just yet, or at least that’s what she said.” He rubbed the back of his neck, then led me forward. “Don’t worry about the critters. They’re all friendly.”
I didn’t ask what he meant, but let him support me as I made my way around the clumps of peas on their trellises and the rest of the vegetables she’d tended.
Ahead of me, birds flew up from the ground, chirping nervously.
A hawk perched on one of the nearest fruit tree branches, but paid no attention to the smaller birds.
Its attention was all on me, its yellow eyes gleaming with disapproval.
It wasn’t the oddest thing in the garden, however.
Zinnia lay under a blanket of living creatures. Everything from badgers to voles, chipmunks, weasels, and squirrels, covered her in a living fur coat. The large black pillow at her head rose up as Marta lifted her snout in the air, snuffling once.
Leroy immediately stopped in place, letting out a noisy breath.
“I know she won’t hurt me, but it still gives me the willies to see somethin’ that dangerous next to Miss Zinnia.
” He sighed again. “They’re all her babies, though.
She looks like that princess in the story, Snow White.
Ain’t that the one where she sings to the critters? She’s like a fairy tale come to life.”
“She is indeed.” I hesitated. “Where’s Bo now?”
“He’s off fishin’ for trout. I’m supposed to gather some greens and onions to go along with it. ‘Course with Miss Zinnia feeling poorly, I’m not sure the food’ll be all that good. But I’ll do my best. You oughta wait out here beside her and her friends.”
“Her friends?” I muttered, stepping away from his arm, glad to be able to walk on my own now. I was still unbalanced, but I ignored the feeling.
Zinnia’s head rose slightly. “Leroy?” Before he could answer, she’d slumped back to the ground.
A few of the animals shot us grumpy looks, and two squirrels raced over to chitter angrily at our feet before racing back to her side.
The pre-dawn gloom seemed to lighten just as she tried again.
This time, she half-rose from the ground, and the golden light illuminated her face.
She really did resemble a fairy tale princess, surrounded by animals.
“Miss Zinnia, don’t get up!” Leroy called, then sucked in a breath on a whistle as Zinnia tried to stand and failed. The bloodstained, filthy dress she had on was the same one she’d worn last night when she’d… when I’d… I dropped to my knees, a knot forming in my throat as it all came rushing back.
“Leroy, bring him closer, please,” Zinnia murmured, her voice the only sound that cut through the static hum of loss and pain that filled me. I felt myself being lifted off the ground, half-dragged across the garden, the scent of crushed greenery reminding me of the first time I’d seen her.
My eyes snapped to hers, as she gave quiet orders from the center of her garden. The animals all scampered or slid away, watching from a distance, as Leroy maneuvered me into position, letting me slump next to her.
“That’s right, put his head on my lap. There.”
I blinked, and he was gone. All I could feel was emptiness… and her hands on my hair, smoothing it back, soothing me.
“I know. It hurts,” she crooned. “Let me help you.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but then I felt the power I’d sensed in her the night before surging up from the soil, through her lap and into me, finding every place where our skin touched and running like warm honey through me.
The emptiness was the lack of my wolf, and my Alpha power, but also the magic of the moon.
But slowly, as she comforted me, I felt the magic she was offering soothing the ragged edges of my torn soul, filling in some of the places where my wolf magic had resided, calming me.
“Can you sit up?” she said at last.
I tried and found it easy, my strength returned. “Not my strength. Yours.”
She knew what I meant. “Ours.” Her hands folded around mine as I moved to kneel beside her, taking her in.
She appeared as some sort of nature goddess, with small, white flowers blooming in her hair and grasses clinging to her legs as she sat up, as if the earth itself longed to touch all of her, all at once.
I knew that feeling, and I found myself smiling as I realized the blossoms were forming a crown on her head.
Suddenly, kneeling felt more than appropriate.
“You’re magical,” I whispered, seeing the area around her no longer as a garden, but a kingdom.
The rise in the center where we sat was not just a hill, but a throne. “Thank you for saving me.”
“I wish…” Her eyes moved to the moonless sky, one of her hands to her slender neck. I waited, but she didn’t go on.
“What do you wish, my love?”
A tear brimmed on her lashes as she admitted, “I wish we’d been able to claim each other. That we could have kept our wolves with us. We could’ve been mates, with a claiming mark to show the world.”
“We are mates, my beloved. We are now and always will be,” I vowed.
“Our wolves wait for us in the moon, and someday, we’ll join them.
But just because we are broken apart, doesn’t mean we’ll never be whole.
” I kneeled lower, pressing a kiss to the top of one of her hands.
“Let me try to be enough for you, Zinnia. Let me make up for some of the pain I caused you.”
Her gasp had me looking up, and her lips on mine silenced me. “You are enough, Julian. I promise. You are.”
Enough. I wasn’t sure that was true. But it wasn’t what mattered. I drew back and whispered the only question that did. “Are you mine? Are you still… Are you still mine?”
“Forever, my love,” she assured me, kissing me again, our tears running together to flavor the kiss with salt.
As she kissed me, the emptiness I’d felt upon waking diminished.
I was enough. This was enough. And deep in the night, when we folded our bodies together, the last wisps of fog burned away behind the flower-crowned nimbus of her hair.
Then, I glimpsed two bright meteors, streaking across the dome of deep blue above, like a promise.
We’d lost everything. We’d lost nothing. The earth’s wisdom filled me. My mate and I were beams of moonlight and currents of the earth, wandering stars and raindrops, finding our way to one another, again and again. We were the dreamers, and this was only a moment in our journey.