The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (7 page)

I don’t even bother flinching.

“How about I bring that cabin down around your ears, wolf-man?” she spits.

“You would’ve already if you could.”

She grins, lifts a sculpted bone amulet and says, “I have something you need.”

“Food? Water?”

“Those as well.”

I smack the hatchet against my palm. “Then give them to me.”

“Invite me inside.”

It’s my turn to laugh.
 

“What happens if you cross the threshold?” I ask. “You catch fire? Your skin fucking melt off?”
 

The Skinwalker snarls and goes half-cat, fur bursting from her face, her back hunching low, then sprints three times around the cabin, mewling and scratching and pawing the wood. When she returns the cat is gone. She looks at me like she’s pondering what to say, then whispers, “We’re dying.”

I settle cross-legged on the floor and rub my bruised knuckles.
 

“That’s the consensus.The end of days.”

“No.
We’re
dying,” the old hag says, settling in the dirt a few feet from the child’s corpse.

“Who was she?” I ask.

The Skinwalker ignores me. “Our kind. Do you listen? Do you feel? Our time is done. I
know
you feel it. Your hunter has abandoned you.”

My eyes widen slightly at the mention of my animal, but I decide to let it go. “Who was she?”

The Skinwalker shrugs. “My daughter.”

“Why?”

She spits and flashes me that nasty black tongue. “Why? Because I was too
proud
. I wanted more.” She pauses, then says, “I answered your question. Now you answer mine. Do you feel it? The weakness?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s true? The Fallen is Becoming? The Age of Discord is upon us?”

“Yes.”

For a moment the hag looks almost frightened. “That burn,” she says, gesturing to my chest. But she leaves the question unfinished.
 

“Was it worth it?” I ask.
 

The Skinwalker glares at me with her bright blue eyes.
 

“The power you craved? Was it worth killing her for?”

She taps at one of her amulets for a while, and when she lifts her head her face is flat and expressionless. “No,” she whispers. “It never is.”

We sit staring at one another for so long the moon arcs across the ravine. I’m wary of speaking to her, wary of even looking directly at her. Skinwalkers have powerful sorcery. The ability to enter their enemy’s minds. Control thoughts and emotions. But here, in the cabin…I don’t think she can reach me.
 

“What is this place?” I ask, gesturing at the cabin.

“My home.”

“Her home too.”

The Skinwalker nods.
 

“When?”

The hag scrapes her claws through the dirt. “A hundred moons or more.”

“But the body, she looks—”

“Recent?”

“Yes.”

The old woman purses her lips and says nothing.
 

“The curse prevents her from joining the land of your dead?”

The Skinwalker nods, sniffing the air. “They’re coming,” she says, very quietly.
 

I squeeze the hatchet handle and ignore the shiver running down my spine. “Who?”

“
Them
,” the Skinwalker spits in disgust. “The stinking pales. Hordes of them. Fleeing their dying cities. Pursued by the black blooded. Mad with fear and bloodlust. This was a quiet land for a long while. It was
my
land. The curse…turned most trespassers away before the ravine. The smart ones, at least,” she says with a pointed grin.

“Yeah. I’ve been a bit…distracted.”

“But now our power weakens, and so does the curse that binds me and mine.”
 

The hag points to her daughter.
 

The corpse’s skin is slowly changing, swelling.
 

She’s beginning to rot.
 

“What will bring her peace?”

“She needs to be brought home. Inside.”

“I see.”

We stare at one another for a moment, then I say, “I will do that for you. If you leave her on the porch and fuck off. Go somewhere I can see you. I’ll gather her up and bring her inside.”

The woman looks at me with immense sadness. “I believe you would.”

“In exchange for my life.”

“Of course,” she says with a toothy grin. “But only I can carry her through the threshold. And to enter—”

“You need an invitation.”

The Skinwalker smiles while off in the distance a pack of starving coyotes howls to the Blood Moon.
 

I think about Lily. About what she did to me. The unnatural white heat pouring from her mouth, burning my chest and melting the iron collar, freeing my animal. Anger tightens my throat. The fucking bitch. Trouble is, I know if the situation were reversed I’d have done the same. Murdered my mother’s murderer. Fucking hell yeah.
 

But can I forgive Lily? Never.

It’s just not part of what I am.
 

“Your own curse…is beginning to bloat and rot,” the Skinwalker whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t feel you deserve her.”

“What?”

“‘I’m a nomad,’ you tell yourself. A lone wolf. A hunter. A killer. And so you run from what you need most.”

“I
am
those things. And worse.”

The Skinwalkers sniffs. “Maybe that was once true. But people change, Aaron of the Mountain River.”

I don’t even bother asking how she knows my name. Something tells me she’s been waiting for my arrival for a very long time. “An old dog new tricks? I don’t think so.”

My stomach growls. The hunger is becoming a distraction. Soon it’ll take over, become all I think about.
 

The Skinwalker leans over, brushes the bangs from her child’s forehead.
 

The eastern sky is a lighter shade of dark blue.
 

“Soon it will be dawn,” I say. “What then?”

“It’s remarkable how easy it is to believe we’re something we’re not.”

“What am I?” I ask, more to myself than to this cursed hag, “If not a hunter and killer?”

“Oh, you’re those things. And more. You’re a
leader
.”

I can’t help myself: I bury my head in my hands and laugh bitterly. “Try telling that to my dead brother. Or my old packmates. They’ll disagree by cutting your head off.”

“You might be right,” the hag says, flicking her hands in dismissal. “A leader fights for what he desires. Perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps you don’t deserve her.”

I smack the hatchet blade into the wooden floor, splintering it, then pluck at the splinters, lost in thought. There was a time when all that mattered was murdering Stricken and cruising on my Harley. Freedom. Not a fucking care in the world beyond my own immediate gratification.
 

If I was hungry I ate.
 

If I was horny I fucked.
 

If I wanted to kill I killed.
 

And that worked—for a while. But maybe some men reach a point in their lives when they tire of living only for themselves. Maybe they begin to think on what they’ve done with their time. What they’ve built. What they’re leaving behind. A
legacy
. It’s fucking bullshit…but still.
 

What we do matters.

My brother’s death taught me that.
 

Losing my pack and my bloodmate taught me as well.
 

Bet your ass it did.

What we do matters.
 

My legs are cramping up. I stand, stretch, motion the Skinwalker to her feet and say, “You want inside? Fuck it. If it’s my time it’s my time. I’m done dithering. Come on in.”

***

There’s a moment when we do something dangerous and reckless and foolish. It’s the moment just before we know how things are going to turn out. Before we know how bad we fucked up. It’s a moment ripe with potential. With…energy. Too many moments slip by unnoticed. A life can be lived in a kind of waking trance, going through the motions of living, the day-to-fucking-day, and the only moment some people really
live
is the one before their last breath, and that’s a damned shame.
 

But moments when you risk it all?
 

Just hang it right the fuck out there?
 

You notice them.
 

It’s like everything narrows: I’m conscious of each breath, the feel of sunbaked and splintered wood under my bare feet, the stars shining through a hole in the roof above, chill wind whirling through the cabin door, the ache in my legs from sitting for so long, the infected burn stinging my chest, but most of all I feel a heaviness deep in my heart, a sense of loss and loneliness unlike any I’ve ever known, the sadness of missing my brother, my pack and my bloodmate, and deeper still, the growing realization that I’m not entirely what I thought I was, a loner, a man who needs no one.

I need them.
 

The people who are important to me.
 

And I’ll fucking fight for them.
 

The Skinwalker gathers her murdered daughter in her arms and stares at the porch as if suspecting a trick. I invite her in again, louder, just to make sure she gets the hint.
 

She steps onto the low wooden porch, and when nothing happens she looses a choked cry, rushes through the threshold and past me into the center of the cabin. She might still feed on me, but she has some rather important business to attend to first.
 

“I’m leaving,” I say, turning my back and heading for the door as the old hag sets her daughter’s corpse down in the middle of the room.
 

“No,” she says, her voice oddly changed. “Stay. You gifted the cursed and undeserving this joy. Stay. Please?”

I turn, and what I see rips the breath from my lungs. The woman in the center of the room is young and slim, dressed in a leather tunic hung with sparkling silver and turquoise, her long black hair pulled into a loose ponytail. She has beautiful almond eyes that shine blue-black and glowing skin and a sculpted, flawless beauty.
 

“You were a princess,” I say.
 

The woman smiles and takes a step toward me. “My name was Anne’a. Morning Flower.”
 

Dawn’s pale pink light filters into the dusty cabin.
 

Out there it’s the end of the world. But in here? Something beautiful’s happening.
 

Anne’a takes another slow step toward me.
 

I lift my hand, warding her away.
 

“You must trust me,” she says, folding her hands at her hips. “You’ve lifted the curse. Freed my daughter. I am in your debt.”

A smart man would sprint on out of there.
 

But I was never that smart.

Anne’a lifts a glittering turquoise and silver amulet from her neck, approaches me slowly and drapes the amulet over my head. I flinch as the amulet’s cool stone settles against my tender burned skin.
 

“What’s this?” I ask.

“Trust me,” Anne’a says with a smile that must’ve charmed entire tribes.

I flash her a smile in return. “I’m not the trusting type.”

Anne’a steps so close I smell sage and lilac in her hair. Her breasts settle against my naked chest. I wrap my arms around her waist, and when she lifts her lips to mine I lean down and kiss her. She tastes sweet as honey, her lips warm and giving, and I pull her close, knowing how deadly this kiss might be but not caring. Our kiss is tender and questioning at first, then grows bolder and stronger with passion. I try and remember the black-tongued old hag this woman really is, but the image is faded, like a photograph from another century.
 

I’m about to pull away when I feel an odd tingling sensation in my chest, like a thousand ants swarming over me. I flinch, expecting pain, expecting the Skinwalker witch to steal my spirit, but instead the pain from my burn slowly fades and disappears. Anne’a presses closer, our hips tight, and without having to look I know she’s healing my wound. Something’s flowing from her into me…an energy, a strength.
 

The wooden exhaustion in my limbs lifts.
 

The nagging hunger in my belly relents.
 

I feel…almost like myself again.

 
I feel
him
, my animal, prowling and pacing, and his return makes me growl with joy.
 

I never thought I’d miss him so much.

I break from Anne’a’s kiss and stammer, “How did you—”

She silences me with a finger to her lips, then points to the amulet. “The azure stone keeps the wolf close,” she whispers. “A talisman from the time of the One War. Created to ward off the Fallen’s spirit-withering power.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Shh,” Anne’a says. “You didn’t have to invite me in. In truth, I didn’t think you would. I thought he was wrong. I didn’t think you capable of such selflessness. Such kindness.”

“He?”

Anne’a settles her cheek against my shoulder. “I was a gifted healer. The best the elders had ever seen. But proud. Ambitious. He came to me as coyote. Told me my daughter was an
apenak’a
. A malicious spirit escaped from the dead land. Told me if I returned her to that dead land there would be…a great reward bestowed on me in this life.”

“You were deceived.”

“No,” Anne’a says sadly. “I was willing. In my heart I knew the trickster coyote was lying. Testing my true spirit. He gave me reason to pursue my most hidden and wicked ambitions, and I leapt at it. So one night…it was a cloudy, starless night, I snuck into this abandoned cabin and kneeled over my sleeping daughter. Pressed a leather bedroll to her face. I didn’t even have the courage to see her spirit depart.”

Anne’a’s tears track down my chest. “I let my daughter lie alone all night, and in the morning I picked her up, carried her outside and buried her in the ravine. As I was marching to the rim the coyote arrived. He stood on the rim and looked down at me and my murdered daughter, and I felt my human form waver and break. Felt the animal loose. I’d never imagined such…power. I leapt up the rim, digging my sharp claws into the dirt, seeking freedom, rejoicing in my new form.”