The Dire Wolf's Mate (4 page)

*

Rain finished taping the last of the boxes shut and sat back heavily on the couch.

She wasn't really sure what to do now. She'd packed up the kitchen, the living room, her own old bedroom. She hadn't touched Grammy's room or the attic.

She didn't see herself renting a moving van and driving it back to the village. She wasn't even sure she wanted to go back the village. They'd lied. But Grammy's home wasn't home without Grammy, and she knew she couldn't stay there, either.

A few dishes remained in the sink - she'd kept out two plates, two cups, two bowls, some silverware, a sauce pan. She quickly filled the sink with suds and began working the dishes with the dishcloth. The summer heat was still strong outside the door, but she wanted something comforting. Hot chocolate. That was something she'd missed, in the village. Chocolate was in high demand.

A distant howl drifted in to her, and she shut her eyes tightly against the remembered sensation of fur sliding through her fingers. She wondered what Jamie was doing right then, without her sitting on the porch. They'd developed a routine, him and her, and the edgy feeling that came over her around sundown was enough to remind her.

The dishes didn't take long, even allowing for her to put the milk on the stove and wash the pot once she was finished. She took her mug outside with her, sat on the rocking chair Grammy had ordered a few years ago for the porch, sipped slowly.

In the distance, a wolf was singing - melancholy, bleak, deep.

*

At night she dreamed of fur, sliding softly through her fingers, pressing insistently against her side, a large paw pushing her backwards. She dreamed of a voice saying, "Rest," and of inky blackness with no traces of magic residue. She dreamt of a rough tongue, wet kisses on her face. She dreamt of a man on two legs, strong, gentle - uncertain.

She woke to spotted birdsong and wept.

*

The lawyer drew attention to her pendant. "How pretty," the woman said once they were seated, once Rain's fingers had found it, stroked over it. "Is it a family heirloom?"

"No," Rain tried to smile. "A friend gave it to me. She's a metalworker."

The lawyer smiled, bright, too bright, and offered her a glass of water. "Let's try to get this done quickly. I know this has been a shock for you."

When she walked out of the office later, Rain found herself a wealthy woman.

All she could think of was that she needed to unpack some of the boxes so she could give the bequests to the right people.

*

She heard the wolfsong again that night, as she had for the past five. It struck her then that there weren't any wolves where Grammy had lived. Not natural ones, anyway. She remembered the red threads that had connected her to Jamie, and the yearning to go back to the village was almost overwhelming.

*

She wasn't done. She hadn't made the decisions she needed to - whether or not to sell, or to rent, or to try to come back. She hadn't gotten rid of anything except spoiled products and what Grammy wanted other people to have.

But she was done. She'd found her grandmother's journals, packed them away in her backpack - they filled the entire thing. She'd found another bag in the closet, filled it with the things she'd brought with her, finished it off with things she wanted to take, and packed away everything else in the house in boxes, draped the furniture with sheets she'd bought at a yard sale down the road.

Her dreams were vivid because they were muted, a contrast to the shimmering world that filled her vision daily. She was serenaded to sleep of an evening with wolf song, and she missed Jamie and Myra and Hiram and her cottage. She thought her garden must be a mess; she hadn't been able to tend it, and it would need harvesting and water. She wondered whether or not little Shelby had lost her second tooth yet, worried that she would come back to find the acceptance she had felt there to be just a dream.

There was nothing for it but to find out.

She closed her eyes tightly, adjusted the backpack on her shoulders, gripped her bag with one hand and spun the dials on the necklace with the other.

It was a different experience. The first time she'd traveled that way, to the hospital, it was over in a moment. There weren't sensations other than a long, large "whoosh."

This time, the world around her spun and whirled. She could open her eyes and see the threads of magic propelling her, could feel the dizzying drop in her stomach. It seemed to take forever and no time at all, and by the time she found herself standing right in the middle of Myra and Jim's living room, she had an amazed smile on her face.

Magic.

It really was fantastic.

*

Rain set her bags down and began to look around her. The cottage was empty, as far as she could tell, but her eyes being opened meant that there were so many new things to see.

She was bowled over before she'd even completed a three sixty degree turn.

Wet kisses danced over her face, Jamie's tongue bathing her cheek, her neck, her lips. His tail was up, wagging, and he nudged his head against her hands, and she laughed.

It was good to be home.

How could she have thought it otherwise?

And -
oh
.

She was suddenly suffused by warmth, the clarity of her vision picking out the same crimson threads, overlayed with gold. This was why Jamie followed her. This was why the others looked between them with pity.

The word came to her on the tip of her tongue. "Mate."

All around her the world shone copper and gold, but Jamie, Jamie with the dark fur and the pink tongue and the sweet eyes shone the very brightest. Was this what he saw when he looked at her?

She was kneeling, her head tilted to the side, her neck bared to his teeth before she could even process her change in position. "Jamie."

His name was soft and low, sweet and yielding, and she found herself on hands and knees, body arched for him. "Mate," she whispered.

But he backed away and whimpered. His eyes clouded, his head swung from side to side, frantically looking for someone else to intervene. And then he backed himself all the way against the door, turned quickly, and with a pull of the latch, he was gone.

*

She stayed frozen on the floor for a long while. She could feel the distance between them as his legs ate up miles, knew instinctively that he was running far away from her, and she whimpered in confusion.

Myra found her there, curled beside her bag, and helped her up onto the couch.

"You've seen Jamie, then," she said.

"Yes."

"Are you okay?"

"I don't understand what's happening."

"You've been Awakened," Myra said with some surprise.

"Awakened?"

"When parts of a magic user are Bound, the unbinding process is called Awakening," Myra explained. "Your grandmother...?"

"She touched my head and said something, and then I - When I woke back up, she - She wasn't - "

Myra wrapped her arms around Rain and pulled her into her shoulder, stroking her head. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," she said.

Rain shook her head to clear it. "I - I'm going to have questions later. About Grammy. I don't even know what I am! But - right now -

What in the world is going on between me and Jamie?"

Myra winced. "You're mates."

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"The short version? Your souls are connected; you're two halves of the same whole. You are predisposed to love one another and won't find someone else who is more compatible with you. Cross species mating is rare, but it does happen. Can you tell me what happened when you arrived?"

"I could see - everything. I'm still not used to it," Rain said shyly. "I could see the link between us? The red threads..." Myra nodded encouragingly. Rain bit her lip. "And it sort of came all at once. He was - the most magnificent thing I've ever seen before. And then I ruined it."

"I'm sure you didn't ruin it, Rain. What happened next?"

"I think I, er, presented myself to him," Rain whispered, face flushed.

Myra nodded. "And Jamie?"

"He ran away."

"Oh."

Myra was quiet for a long moment, and Rain could almost see the words flitting over her face as she chose what she was going to speak.

"Jamie... It very rarely works that way. I think it must have been the tethering that gave you the wolf instincts. Dire wolves, the submissive partners anyway, they present for, um, mounting when they meet their partners. It's an instinctive reaction; if you knew it was coming you might have been able to fight it, but generally, they don't really want to fight it.

Jamie is a special case. Most dominant partners wouldn't hesitate to claim their mates, although with such disparities between you both right now, Jamie might have waited anyway. He could hurt you if he wasn't careful, and you know so little..." Myra paused, then let out a breath of air.

"I'm going to be blunt about this, dear. Jim wouldn't want me to tell you, but Jim isn't Jamie's mate, then, is he?

Jamie was horribly, horribly hurt the last time he was human. There are those that would hunt us. All of us - anything with even a little bit of magic in them. The witches are generally able to escape without too much untoward attention - there are so many false ones these days. But Jamie's family was ambushed. They were slaughtered, and Jamie was captured and brought to a research facility. They were very systematic in their experimentation on him.

We found him, Jim and I. There were a group of us who stormed the facility, but we were the ones who found him and took him away from there, and we were the ones who nursed him back to health. That's why he's still friendly with us.