Once Upon A Time (14 page)

As my blood
poured out of my wounds, and I found myself going in and out of
consciousness, my vision becoming blurry by the minute I managed to
see a third wolf, and that's when I knew that's my end. Who would
have thought; that someone like me would die devoured by
wolves?

I heard a
yelp, I tried to focus, all I can see now is the wolves fighting, I
find it odd, I fell back into blackness yet I fought, not willing
to die just yet, and come back, by now all I see is the third wolf,
bloody, slowly walking to me, I blinked trying to focus my sight
and move away, then all I see is Owain, and no wolf. I'm already
hallucinating.

I tried to
speak to him, but I can't; all I do is gasp in pain and fear, as
hard as I try, I keep losing conscious, whenever I come back I can
see his lips move as if he is talking but can't understand him,
then back to black, feeling something wet and warm against my lips
I let it slip down my throat, it's a metallic taste. I open my eyes
again, and all I see is his blurry face, and those pools of
chocolate that are his eyes, that's when I knew I'm safe, and
passed out exhausted from the pain.

As I circle
the Gosselin wolf who thought that attacking Bran from behind was a
good idea, my teeth were bared. This fucker is going down. No one,
and I mean no one, attacks my friend from behind, particularly when
the idea behind the Challenges was a competition between
competitors, not between Packs. Gavril has the other wolf in his
jaws, but after giving his opponent a damn good shake, let him up,
taking a hefty nip out of his side, as he released him. I realised
why he had done this. If we kill these idiots, particularly with a
Shifter Council rep looking on, we are no better than them. Using a
combination of speed and flashing, I change my position so that I,
too, could nip the little shit in front of me. His tail between his
legs, he took advantage of my sudden burst of 'mercy' and legs it
out of the area.

I was about to
shift back, when I heard the screams. My heart froze. Human screams
and I recognised the voice. Swinging my head back at Gavril and
Aaleahya, my mind link was almost frantic.

[Open ML]
That's Merida's voice. [End ML]

Gavril shifted
back to human form, and flashed a pair of leather trousers on for
decency. Bare chested and barefoot, the cold of little consequence
to him, he glanced at the Shifter Council rep. "Go, my friend. Your
Mate needs you."

Those frantic
moments are seared in my mind. The words didn't even register, as I
ran. I don't know what I was following, how I knew where to find
her, but I ran, knowing that I had to find her. The clearing I
reached was a mess. Blood spattered the snow, and I could see the
bright red of arterial blood coming from at least one wound. "No!"
My mind screamed. "I would not let this happen." The two fuckers
that Gavril and I had sent running circled my little human.
Snarling my challenge to them, I attacked them. I needed to get
them away from Merida, before she bled out on the snow, and I lost
her. This time, they felt the full force of my wrath, as I fought
not as a wolf, but as a Cŵn Annwn Sentinel, my teeth tearing into
them. They ran, as cowards would, and for good measure, they
received a blast of metaphysical power on their butts, singeing
their fur, and making it clear that they had been beaten.

Spinning round
to where Merida lay, I dropped to my knees beside her, calling her
name. My hand was shaking as I felt for a pulse at her neck:
thready, but there, thank the Goddess. But, if I didn't do
something soon, I would lose my little human. There was only one
way that I could give her the ability to stop the bleeding, but it
would mean that my little human would be human no more.

Tearing into
my own wrist with my fangs, I allowed my own blood to flow, the
blood of a Cŵn Annwn, gifted by the Goddess to carry the ability to
heal from within. Holding my wrist over Merida's mouth, I begged
her to swallow.

"Please,
Merida, swallow. Please, little human." I whispered. As the blood
dripped over her lips, I saw her throat move, as she swallowed. I
moved my wrist to where the bright arterial blood pumped from her
leg, and dripped more blood directly into the wound, praying to the
Goddess that this would work. As the flow stopped, and the wound
started to seal, I breathed a sigh of relief. Opening a mind link
to Angharad, I told her what had happened.

[Open ML] I am
bringing Merida directly to the Infirmary, Healer. Please, I beg
you, meet me there. [End ML]

Gathering the
now unconscious Merida in my arms, I flashed us both to the
well-equipped Infirmary at Negrescu Hall.

A CHRISTMAS
INTERLUDE

“
Welcome to my word, Merida.”

When I awoke
on the morning of Christmas Eve, it was then that I realised how
much my life had changed in a matter of twenty-four hours. Less
than a day ago, I had been single. Footloose and fancy-free. Well,
apart from the matter of being the joint Pack Beta of the Negrescu
Cŵn Annwn and the main trainer of the Pack younglings, that is, I
was footloose and fancy-free. Don’t get me wrong, I did not
begrudge the time that I devoted to my Pack duties. The point was
that my Pack was my main focus, and had been for the last 140 or so
years.

Then just two
days ago, everything had changed. A young human had come into the
Hunter’s Arrow, and I had noted the lines of strain on her face. I
care for those around me, a facet inherent in being a Pack Beta,
and the fact that she was human was irrelevant. She was in need of
something, even if that was just a sympathetic ear, which as the
‘bar manager’ of the Hunter’s Arrow, was part of what I offered.
That was all that I had intended to give her initially. But that
initial offer had morphed into more. On realising that this young
human, Merida, was alone at this time of year, the one time of year
when ‘being alone’ seemed so much worse, impulsively I had
suggested that she come to the Hall for the Christmas Event, our
annual snowball fight. That had changed to offering that she spent
the night at the Hall, and then joined us for the second day of the
Christmas Event. Inviting her to watch the biathlon challenge had
been, again, a suggestion so that, at a time of year when ‘family’
was so important, she would not be alone again.

Everything
changed on the day of the biathlon competition. What had started
out as my having a role in ensuring that my fellow Beta was not the
victim of the cheating planned by his Mate’s birth pack, had turned
into something so much more. Unlike Bran, I had not been under any
misconceptions that I would not find my Mate at some point, but I
had perhaps thought that she would be either Cŵn Annwn, or perhaps
a shifter like Alix.

When the
Gosselin Pack had attacked a young human spectator, just because
she had the scent of the two wolves who had just beaten them in a
fight, I had been driven to defend her. I had been responsible for
her both having that scent trace, and for her being at the
biathlon. In order to save her life, I had had no choice, but to
transfer some of my own blood to her, to heal her sufficiently that
I could transfer her to the Infirmary at Negrescu Hall so that our
Healer could finish what I had started.

I had thought
that my sense of obligation I had towards this young human had been
due to my being responsible for her being in a place of danger.
Never had I thought that I was driven by the fact that, in order
for me to find my Mate, I had to carry out a blood exchange with a
human female, whom I had met days before.

But that was
what had happened. My Mate turned out to be a slim, dark-haired
human, with eyes that spoke of sorrow, with tiny lines of tension
on her face, from a nightmare that kept her awake at night. That
young human female, about whom I knew nothing, other than she had
been so alone. My Mate. And she had no idea of the world in which
she now found herself.

She had
thought that she was dreaming, when, despite our best attempts, she
had woken on the night of the Pack celebration of the Winter
Solstice. I had known that she was there. I could not have said how
I knew that she was there, but as I had blessed little Liszka, the
daughter of my friend and Alpha and his Mate, I had looked up, and
my red, Cŵn Annwn eyes had met the dark eyes of my little human, as
she had looked down, and listened to the song of my people, as we
celebrated the return of the light into the world.

I had looked
up, and just like in the best romances, our eyes had met, and I had
known that my little human had seen a small part of the world that
she had not thought existed. The ‘people’ with whom she had spent
the past two days were not people, because ‘people’ didn’t have red
eyes, and ‘people’ did not raise their voices in the eerie wolfsong
that came from the heart. But such things could be attributed to a
dream, particularly in someone who knew that they tended not to
sleep, in whom nightmares were a regular occurrence. Perhaps it had
all been a dream, and that was that. But it was not. I knew she had
seen me.

Part of me
wanted to tell her. Part of me wanted to say to my little human
that the world is not as you might have thought, but to do so would
have put her in danger. What is I had told her? Would she have been
more cautious on the biathlon course had she known? Or, would it
had only made her more fearful of me. If it had been the latter,
could I have borne to have my little human look upon me with fear
in her eyes? If I were to speak from the heart? No. I could not
have borne to have my little human look at me with fear. She meant
more to me that that, even if my brain did not wish to acknowledge
how much that was.

So, when I
woke on the morning on Christmas Eve, I had more than ample
evidence that my life had changed forever. For the first time, I
woke in my own bed, in Negrescu Hall, in my own suite, with my arms
around another. I may have been lying on the top of the bed, whilst
she lay under the covers, but still, I had woken with my arms
around my Mate. I had woken with my arms around my little human,
Merida. Never, in the seventy years since the Pack had made the
Catskill Mountains our home had I brought someone else to this
place. This was our Pack home. I had woken with women aplenty in
the last 140 years. But never, not once had I brought a woman home
to this place: to my suite in Negrescu Hall.

But when I
woke up on Christmas Eve 2014, I woke up to find my little human,
who was a human no more, in my arms. The quilt lay between us, a
chaste barrier to anything untoward, even if Merida was the Mate
who was predestined to be the other half of my soul. Until I could
explain everything to her, until I could prepare her for what was
to come, for how having my blood running in her veins would change
her, I did not want her to feel forced into anything, and that
included sharing my bed with me.

Make no
mistake her life would change. No longer was she a human alone in
the world since the loss of her parents. Now she was one of us, one
of our Pack. She was Cŵn Annwn through the blood I had given her.
It was only a New Moon now, but by the time of the Full Moon, the
first full moon of 2015, her blood and mine would merge, and she
would have the ability to change her form. I would be able to run
with my little human though the forests around Negrescu Hall. She
would discover the freedom that came with being able to run. She
would find the pleasure in the world of scent and sound that humans
would never dream existed around her. But, she would also find out
that her ‘barman’ was the Beta of a Pack of Cŵn Annwn, that her
Mate was a harvester of souls of those who had committed evil to
such an extent that they would die. Sometimes they would die at my
hands, and sometimes they would die at the hands of others, but the
net result was still the same. I had killed, and I would continue
to kill when sanctioned to do so by my Goddess and by my Alpha.
Would my little human come with me when I carried out a harvest?
She was the other half of my soul. As much as Aaleahya provided the
light to Gavril’s darkness, my little Merida would provide the same
for me. She would collect the souls of the victims, and she would
prevent the darkness, the evil taint of those I would harvest, from
contaminating my soul. Bran had commented that part of the role of
our Mates was to prevent us from turning into something akin to a
rabid dog. This was the world in which my little human would now
live.

But, when I
woke that morning, I had a smile on my face. Nestled in the crook
of my arm, her long hair partially shielding her face, her head
resting on my chest, but the quilt bunched up between us, was my
little human. Her arm lay across my hips, covered modestly with a
pair of cotton track-pants. Even in sleep, she was drawn to be
close to me, as I was to her. It was the nature of Mates, to need
to feel. In a tactile race such as we are, this was normal
behaviour. Pack mates would brush arms, a child’s head would be
stroked, a gentle kiss exchanged. Between Mates, a kiss, a touch,
being held was also normal. I would be drawn to know that my Mate
was safe, because my soul would know that her safety would ensure
that I would never know the darkness that would otherwise be my
fate.

A smile still
on my lips, I stroked my little human’s head, the touch of her hair
feeling so good. How can I explain that feeling? Warmth, knowing
that I was not alone. I was Pack, I had my Pack, and so, I was not
alone in that sense. But, until I had met my little human, until
that crucial exchange of blood, in a forest, the snow spattered
with her life’s blood, I had not realised that being alone is more
than not having a family. I had not realised just how much my soul
had craved to find the one being in the world who would make me
feel complete.