Juniper
Sleep wouldn’t come. I threw myself into bed before nine o’clock, and by one in the morning, I’d done little more than toss and turn.
I lay awake for hours more, staring out the window at the night sky outside, wondering how I was going to win a fight against Eugenia, and also how to figure out what was going on between me and Levi.
He had some sort of hang-up about his last mate.
Naphele. Her name kept popping up. He was obsessed with her.
Keeping that painting in his cabin for damn near a century should have been the first sign.
Then he’d taken me to her favorite place and been sullen and upset that I hadn’t loved it like she had.
Then he’d had the audacity to bring her up while we were fighting?
Saying I wasn’t how she would have been? It pissed me off.
When sleep finally did come, it was fitful and filled with dreams about a woman I didn’t know and would never know. A woman who still had the man I’d grown to love in the palm of her hand even though she was dead.
The lack of sleep and stress had put me in a bad mood, so I skipped breakfast and headed to the open clearing on the other side of Hidden Grove. I spotted one of the men patrolling in the woods just beyond as I started jogging in place to warm up.
If I was going to fight Eugenia, I’d need to practice what little I knew. Since she was the challenger, it was her prerogative to designate the time and day for the fight. She could ask for it at any time. Hell, she could say she wanted to fight this afternoon. I had to be as ready as I could be.
Beatrice and I had done a few months of a kickboxing cardio class a couple years ago. Though it had been designed to burn calories rather than to learn to actually fight, it along with what Levi had taught me was pretty much all I had.
Thinking about Levi sent another wave of anger through me, and I began shadow boxing.
Imagining Levi’s face when I punched and Eugenia’s when I kicked gave me some catharsis, but after a half hour of that, my melancholy returned.
I didn’t want to hurt Levi. Not really. But what he’d done had hurt, and I wasn’t sure I could easily forgive him.
Deep down, I realized he’d had a good reason for what he did.
The problem was that the reason only made sense in his own head.
A hundred years of living as a wolf and only interacting with people when necessary had probably stunted his ability to see things from other people’s perspectives.
I could see that, but it didn’t make things any more difficult to accept.
“How’s it going?”
I whirled around to see Linnea walking toward me, holding a bundle of cloth.
“Fine,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. Thankfully, it was an unseasonably warm morning.
“I didn’t see you at breakfast. I thought you might want something to eat,” she said, handing me the bundle.
Inside the linen towel was a steaming biscuit and a couple links of sausage. Seeing the food, my stomach gave an angry twist, and I popped one of the sausages into my mouth.
“Thanks,” I said.
Linnea sighed. “So, how confident are you?”
“About the fight?” I shrugged helplessly. “No idea.”
She turned and looked at me, her eyes weary and anxious. “I’m worried about you. You still can’t shift yet, right?”
Biting angrily into the second sausage, I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Eugenia is older and more experienced than you are, June,” Linnea said, her voice full of trepidation.
“How are you going to get through this? I can see how much she doesn’t like you.
Everyone can. There’s no way of knowing if she’ll hold back.
” Linnea put her hand on my shoulder. “She could kill you, June.”
As I let her words sink in, I finished the food, chewing and swallowing before responding.
“All I can hope for is that the adrenaline and the fear will finally allow me to shift,” I said. It was my hope, but I had no way of knowing if that would happen.
Linnea shook her head. “That’s been known to happen, but it’s not a guarantee.”
“I know,” I said.
Sometimes, shifters had their first shift early due to circumstances.
There were records of kids as young as six being put into life-and-death situations and spontaneously accessing their inner wolves to save their lives.
Though, now that I thought about it, that hadn’t happened when the Red Maw men attacked me, which meant it was probably unlikely that it would happen during the fight.
Which meant I’d either get incredibly lucky, or Eugenia would tear my throat out in a few seconds.
I crumpled up the cloth and handed it back to Linnea. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“There’s something else wrong with you.”
Unconsciously, I glanced behind her toward Levi’s cabin, barely visible through the trees.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh.
Linnea lowered herself to the ground and patted the grass beside her. “Sit. Talk.”
I snorted a laugh, but I sat down beside her and told her about my fight with Levi and how I thought he was still hung up on his old mate. By the time I was done, I felt a little better about everything. Getting it out helped.
Linnea frowned. “So, you think he’s still in love with Naphele?”
“Yeah. You can see it in his face when he looks at that painting, and he’s always comparing me to her.”
“Well, that’s to be expected,” Linnea said. “I mean, you’re close to your grandparents. If they died, and you somehow lived a hundred extra years, would you still love them?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but you don’t find new grandparents later on. It’s not the same.”
“Sure. I get that, but this isn’t something most people go through. How many people do you know who’ve been blessed to meet not one but two fated mates.”
“Right,” I said, unable to keep the chuckle from accompanying the word, but soon the smile faded. “I worry that he can’t truly love me if he’s always comparing me to his last mate.”
As I spoke, I gazed at Levi’s cabin. Could you love someone when you were always measuring them against someone else?
Or were you simply trying to see the first mate in the new person, and latch onto the things that resembled the first?
That was the real question, and it was something Levi and I would both need to answer if this was going to go any further.
“Juniper?”
Linnea and I both turned to find a younger woman staring at us, shuffling her feet in nervous trepidation.
“Yes?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“Uh…I was told to come and find you. I have news,” the girl said.
“Is it from Eugenia?” Linnea asked, her face stony.
The girl nodded. “She said she’s chosen the time of your fight. Tomorrow at dusk.”
I let out a heavy sigh and nodded. “Okay. Understood. Thank you.”
She fled as if she was afraid I might try to attack her or something, and that only made me feel worse. I looked at Linnea, and she appeared less than excited.
“Well,” she said, “at least you won’t have to wait long to find out how this will go.”
“Apparently not. Want to help me practice fighting?”
Linnea gave a short bark of a laugh, then shrugged as if accepting her fate. “Fine. I guess we can pass the time that way.”
We spent the next several hours sparring, Linnea in her wolf form, and me trying my best to defeat her. It didn’t go well. I lost every time. By the end of it, I was even more terrified than I had been before. All I could do was hope that I’d find some way to fend Eugenia off the next day.