Into the Light (11 page)

“This has nothing to do with protecting me, Dane,” Olivia said with a sharp glance at Tanner. “And I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t need you to protect me.”

“You’ve been missing for a week and when you finally show up, it is with a pack of shifters in tow. I’d say you need someone to protect you.”

If that were the case, Olivia knew who she wanted that person to be. It wasn’t Dane.

“Whelping a pup here,” the birthing mother grumbled. “Can you take all the inane conversation somewhere else?”

“Get out,” Tanner commanded, his gaze narrowed on Dane.

Olivia reached out, grasped Tanner’s arm. He shifted his focus from Dane to her. She noticed his gaze did not warm, but she chose to ignore that.

“Please just help her, Dane,” Olivia implored. “She just lost her mate. She’s all alone in the world right now. She really needs you.”

Dane was not remotely one of the strongest or largest or even smartest lightbearers Olivia knew, but he had a ridiculous need to protect those around him, and he too had a natural ability as a healer. His mother had birthed six of her own children, and all but Dane had birthed at least one of their own by this point. Dane had assisted in nearly every one of his siblings’, besides the variety of other lightbearer babes that had been born over the last two decades. He had ample experience as a midwife.

Just as she knew he would, Dane puffed out his chest as a look of determination came into his eye.

“This pansy is not helping me whelp my pup,” Lisa snapped, just before another contraction washed over her. Dane was at her side in an instant, cooing soothing words, one hand cupping her tightening belly, the other brushing hair out of her face. Lisa squeezed her eyes shut and panted through the contraction. When it was over, both she and Dane were sweating and breathing heavily, although Dane actually looked as if he’d suffered more pain than she had.

“Come on,” Olivia whispered to Tanner. “They will be fine.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Tanner growled.

“Get out,” Lisa yelled. She fisted her hand in the front of Dane’s shirt. “The lightbearer’s going to take care of us. Get out of here.” She twisted her hand more tightly, until Dane winced and tugged his shirt free.

Tanner looked as if he wanted to argue, but when another contraction hit, he turned away and strode from the room. Olivia hurried after him and tried to tell herself he was simply feeling responsible for one of his pack and that it wasn’t any more personal than it should be. She tried to tell herself that he would feel the same for any female in his pack that was birthing a child.

She did not do a very good job of convincing herself.

“Why don’t you do it?” Tanner asked abruptly. He looked harried, nervous, worried for Lisa and the unborn pup. They stood in the parlor, near the sliding glass door that led to the balcony where, the night before, they’d shared a kiss.

“You said you’re a natural healer,” he added.

“I have natural healing abilities, yes. But I have never been trained, and I have never before assisted in birthing a babe. Dane has. He is fully trained and has helped birth more babes than I can count.”

“Why was he trained but you weren’t? Is it some sort of sexist thing?”

Olivia realized he was talking to try to keep his mind off what was happening in the bedroom, so she kept up the flow of conversation, even though they were treading into territory that she would rather not discuss.

“No. There are several female healers. The best healer in the entire coterie is a female, as a matter of fact. It is just that my father would not allow me to go through the training.”

“Why not?”

She bit back a sigh. “It is complicated,” she said. “I am an only child. My mother had complications at my birth, and we both nearly died. As a result, she was unable to have any more babes. Because of this, I have certain…responsibilities that I must see to, as their only heir.”

Tanner focused most of his attention on her. “Are you saying you don’t get to decide what to do with your life? Your parents made that decision for you?”

His question irritated her. “It’s no different than being a pack master’s only child,” she pointed out.

“True, except I
did
determine my own fate.”

“Yes, well, I believe we all now realize how incredibly dangerous that would be for me. And the coterie is far too small for me to stay there and determine my own fate.”

Tanner opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but before he could formulate the words, Lisa screamed his name. He gave Olivia another harried look and then rushed back into the bedroom.

* * * *

When it was over, Lisa sat in the bed, nursing her healthy, pink newborn son, looking exhausted but serene. Tanner sat propped against the headboard on her right, sound asleep. Dane lay to her left, on his stomach, sound asleep and once again snoring quietly. Olivia had used her magic to clean up the afterbirth, so that when she brought Sofia in to see her mother and new baby brother, the room was as sparkling clean as if maid service had been there. Sofia crawled onto the bed, took one peek at the hungry baby, and then she curled up between Lisa’s leg and Tanner’s and went to sleep.

Olivia felt a stab of jealousy at the cozy little scene and a stab of annoyance that Tanner was in there, sleeping in the same bed as Lisa. It hardly mattered that Dane and Sofia and the newborn were there too. She wanted Tanner out in the sitting room with her.

“And then there were five,” Cecilia whispered from behind her. Olivia and followed her cousin into the sitting room. “At this rate, Tanner’s new pack is going to be plenty big enough to fend off the other one.”

Olivia sighed and plopped onto the sofa bed that Dane had not closed up before rushing in to help Lisa deliver her pup.

“He’s responsible for a grieving woman who now has to raise two children alone, plus his own dying, invalid mother. I hardly see how they would ever be able to fend off Quentin and his pack.” The thought was not a cheerful one.

“Which is why I think we should take them to the coterie.”

Olivia stiffened into a seated position. Her eyes flew open and widened. She stared at her cousin. “Take them to the coterie?” she repeated dumbly. Five shifters? Had the Las Vegas heat addled her cousin’s brain?

Cecilia nodded firmly. “It makes perfect sense.”

“It makes absolutely no sense,” Olivia shot back.

“They’ll be safe. Ariana said if that pack master finds them he will kill them all on the spot. Adorable little Sofia. That beautiful new baby boy.” She blinked at Olivia with beseeching eyes, as if Olivia had any control over whether Tanner and his small pack would be allowed into the coterie.

The problem was, she did have that sort of control, and Cecilia well knew it.

“They would never be accepted,” she argued, even as she thought to herself,
Where else could they possibly go and be safe
?

“You do not know that.”

Olivia shot her cousin a rueful look. “Have we not lived in the same coterie our entire lives? You know as well as I that our fears, our legends, and beliefs are just as ingrained as those of the shifters. To convince our fellow lightbearers that Tanner, his mother, Lisa, and the pups are all innocent and that they would not, someday, try to kill any of us—it’s a ridiculous notion.”

Cecilia refused to give up. She waved her hand at the closed bedroom doors. “You know how Dane gets. Now that he’s delivered that woman’s babe, he’s not going to just let her go. He’s going to be all big brotherly to her, just like he is to you and I. And Uncle Sander listens to Dane,” Cecilia reminded her.

This was all true, but still, Olivia could not imagine her father welcoming a small pack of shifters into his coterie. Maybe he would accept Lisa and her children, because he was a sympathetic sort of man, and maybe he would accept Ariana because she was all but helpless, but Tanner? Not in a million years.

Unfortunately, if anyone stayed at the coterie, Olivia wanted it to be Tanner.

“His mother is getting worse,” Cecilia said quietly. “I am not a healer, but even I can tell.”

Olivia shifted her focus from the room in which Tanner, Lisa, and Dane slept, to the one where Tanner’s mother lay, dying.

“Dane is in no condition to heal her today,” Olivia said, and then with a resigned sigh, she pushed off the sofa and headed into Ariana’s bedroom.

Ariana’s eyes fluttered open when Olivia sat on the side of the bed. “Lisa and the pup?” she asked in a rasping, belabored voice.

“Fine. He’s taken to the breast like a champ.”

“A male, then.”

“Yes,” Olivia confirmed. “She is exhausted, but unharmed. Dane helped her through, so she should have little discomfort. He is very good at healing.”

Ariana’s eyes fluttered closed again. “Good,” she whispered. “Lisa doesn’t deserve any more pain in her life.”

Olivia thought about Tanner, sleeping while propped up on the bed next to Lisa. He’d been in the room when she’d given birth. Judging by the bloody smears on his shirt, he’d probably held the babe minutes after he was born. Those sorts of things pulled people together, bonded them. Tanner had told her that he, Freddy, and Lisa were almost inseparable during their childhood. To Olivia, it would seem perfectly natural if Lisa turned to Tanner now that her mate was dead.

The thought was unsettling.

“Thank you for telling me,” Tanner’s mother said, pulling Olivia’s thoughts back to the here and now, where they belonged. While Ariana lay there with her eyes closed, Olivia placed her hands gently on the woman’s abdomen and summoned her healing magic. Ariana’s eyes shot open, and the woman lay there, staring at Olivia, as Olivia tried to make sense of what she discovered inside the woman’s body.

“Poison,” she whispered without taking her hands off the woman. “He was poisoning you.”

Ariana shook her head. “No. I did it to myself.”

Olivia stared at the woman, frozen in shock.

“Years ago,” Ariana said in her wheezing, pained voice. “After Tanner was born and I finally realized what a monster his father was.” She paused, breathing steadily for a moment.

“A concoction of certain herbs. The pack midwife gave me the recipe, although she thought I was asking for someone else. If she had thought it was for me, and told Quentin…” She shuddered, clearly imagining what might have happened.

“She told me that it was meant to be a short-term fix. Renders a female temporarily infertile, but long-term use would poison the body. I did not listen. It has only been in the last few years that Quentin finally stopped forcing himself upon me, demanding I give him another heir.” She turned her head to the side, staring at the window, as tears dripped onto her pillow.

“You poisoned yourself so that you would not bear any more pups?” Tanner asked from the doorway. Both Olivia and Ariana looked up in surprise. He stood, framed by the doorway, looking rumpled, sleepy, and incredibly sexy, despite the look of horror upon his face.

Ariana nodded and swiped at the tears. “I worked so hard to counteract all of the poison Quentin spewed at you. He knew it too, and punished me regularly for it. I knew I did not have the strength to do the same for any consecutive children. I could not take the chance that he would have a legitimate child who would carry on his evil ways.” She took another shuddering breath before continuing.

“I knew he had plenty of paramours on the side. I’m sure you have a dozen half siblings out there, Tanner. But I am equally as certain that Quentin is too proud to claim any of them. His heir must be legitimate, from his mate’s belly. You are his only hope for carrying on his name,” she said, lifting her tear-filled eyes to look steadily at her only son.

“I am so proud of the man you have become. I am at peace, Tanner. I know you will not be like him. I can die in peace. It’s okay. I don’t mind.” She tried to push Olivia’s hands away, but Olivia steadily refused to budge, as she continued to push healing magic into the woman’s body.

Tanner stood stock-still. He did not move a muscle. The entire room seemed suspended in time, waiting for him to react. Finally, he did. He turned away from his mother and stabbed his finger at Olivia. He looked furious.

“Fix her,” he commanded. He strode from the room without looking back, slamming the door behind him.

* * * *

She was healing his dying mother. Even though he’d demanded she do it, asking pissed Tanner off worse than his inability to resist kissing her last night. He’d only meant to thank her for healing him, but as soon as she touched him, he lost all concept of reality, of rational thought, and he simply grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her as if he needed to do so in order to take his next breath.

He felt better afterward, too, which meant she’d healed him while he’d been mindlessly kissing her. At least one of them was able to keep a clear head. That pissed him off too, because he did not like the idea of being the only one who was affected by their touch. Although she responded to the kiss, seemingly wantonly, clearly she was able to multitask, while he’d been wholly unable to think about anything else except whether they could have sex right there on the balcony without getting caught. Hell, at the time he hadn’t even been worried about getting caught.

He did not want to be beholden to the lightbearer, and yet, he did not want his mother to die. The woman had given so much to keep him from turning into his father, the very least Tanner could do was allow the lightbearer to do what she claimed she could do. And now he would owe her something. His life, in reality.

Although, he did save her just a few days prior, so really, they were even, right?

Not by a long shot, unfortunately.

She sat on the bed next to his mother, her hands pressed to his mother’s abdomen, while Tanner watched from the partially opened doorway. He’d left in a fury, but had been unable to resist checking on them just a few minutes later. He needed to see, needed to be near her.

He watched as sweat broke out on Olivia’s brow, and the color drained from her face, and she still continued to pump magic into Ariana. In contrast, color seeped into Ariana’s cheeks, and unless he was very much mistaken, some of the lines were fading from her face. Not only was Olivia healing her, she was giving years back to the woman. When this was all said and done, all Ariana would need was a little hair dye and she would look her age again.