Werewolves and Chocolate (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was freeing, somehow, to run in the snow.
She now knew what Kara’s mate David had meant when he told her there were times
when she’d wish she could turn into a wolf like her mates. With the subtly
enhanced senses she got from being bonded to the two of them, she could see
well enough in the gibbous moonlight even in the forest. She ran until she was
out of breath and then stopped, gasping out puffs of mist.

Having found a fallen tree Ellie sat down, contemplating
the moon through the trees. It was really beautiful out here. If it weren’t for
the conflict and the asshole behavior, she’d really enjoy this place. It
reminded her of SpiralStone.

Finally hungry, she pulled out the sandwich
her lovers had made for her and began eating it. She thought about when she had
first moved to the SpiralStone retreat center.

In the first weeks, she had wondered why
there weren’t more classes or devotional services. Everyone there practiced
varying types of alternative spiritual paths which made that somewhat
difficult. Moira followed a more Druidic path, Angel was devoted to Aphrodite,
and there were dozens of other staffers. Jake and Kyle, like most of the
shifters, were more animistic in their spirituality. She hadn’t really known
what to call her own spiritual path when she had moved there, and she’d hoped
for more direct guidance from Moira or some of the other teachers.

And then she’d mated Jake and Kyle and things
were crazy for a while. But then there was a night where she’d followed them
out into the woods. They’d both shifted, and of course, she couldn’t follow
them running. Instead she sat in the warm, moonlit forest looking up at the sky
and she’d felt what she could only call the spirit of the place. She wasn’t
separate from the land, she was a part of it. The moon, the sky, the trees, the
ground. There wasn’t her and other, there was just connection.

She looked at the moonlight on the snow and
wished she felt the sense of peace and connection now. She wished for the
resonance, the hum in the center of her chest.

And as she so often did when distraught,
Ellie wished she could see the stars.

She’d been obsessed with astronomy since she
was a kid. Every time she looked up at the sky, every time she saw a shooting
star, she was lit up with questions. She wanted to know how it all worked, how
light could take a million years to reach Earth.

Of course, the work she was doing at the
University was a little less thrilling than she’d initially imagined. Currently
she worked whatever data and physics equations her physics professors put in
front of her. Eventually, she wanted to do research on light. Not long after
Jake had found the amazing purple couch on Craigslist, he’d also found a
10-foot whiteboard for her. He’d installed it in the spare bedroom for her and
she’d used it to explore some of her own theories about light. She had so many
plans for when she had her Ph.D. and was able to run her own research.

Her dream, though, was still long years away.

Thinking about her career wasn’t calming her
down any. Her heart was still thudding. She hadn’t been this pissed off since
her former boss at her last school had harassed her. When Ellie had spoken up,
she hadn’t had any proof but her word. People had believed the professor who
had been her boss.

They’d said, “Oh, he couldn’t possibly have
done what you say, you must have been mistaken.” Ultimately speaking up had
cost her the office job she’d relied on to pay for tuition. For a long time
she’d been furious at the injustice of the situation. It had cost her not only
her job but it had forced her to quit school. She didn’t regret speaking up
then, and she didn’t regret speaking up to Matthew now, but both situations had
placed her in a completely untenable situation.

Would Jake and Kyle be forced into some
hopeless battle? She couldn’t bear the thought of them getting hurt.

And yet, she could feel the fear of the Uruz
pack. She had certainly seen the ugliness of the Hagalaz wolves; they’d tried
to kill her and Jake and Kyle just out of spite. She understood why Matthew was
afraid, but she knew that attacking the Hagalaz was a bad idea. Maybe it was
just because she hadn’t been embroiled in the conflict her entire life, though
Cassia seemed to have a cooler head about things as well.

Under her own skin she could feel the tension
Jake and Kyle were feeling. She assumed the pack would be arguing for some time
about what to do. Part of her was a little bitter Jake and Kyle hadn’t followed
her out. But then, she also trusted them to do what they needed to. She
especially felt for Kyle, who wanted to honor the traditions of the pack. Jake
had always been more ambivalent. He cared about his family and his pack, but he
also wasn’t going to do anything stupid just because he’d been told to.

Kyle, for all his occasional cockiness,
wanted to be respected by his pack. And she knew he struggled with his
relationship to the other wolves because he sometimes had a harder time
shifting than Jake did. Or at least, he had a harder time controlling it. Jake
could shift between forms fairly easily including returning to human form with
all of his clothing intact. Kyle often griped about the metaphysics of shifting
and how his clothing sometimes vanished when he returned back to human form.
Often enough he was able to shift again and find his clothing in that energetic
whatever-it-was that facilitated his transformation.

As a physicist, she was fascinated by the
transformation and the disappearing and reappearing clothing, and the intuitive
mastery the shifters had over the conversion of energy and matter. As his mate,
however, it had become clear to her now how much the other wolves probably
judged him for it.

How much they might judge her own children for
it, if she and her mates ever had any. Would they have trouble shifting? Worse
than Kyle did? It wouldn’t bother her in the least, but would it put her
children in danger with other shifters? Or at least, cause them social problems
within the pack?

She wasn’t opposed to having children. She
had occasionally laughed at the fantasy she’d concocted while she was still
mooning about Jake and Kyle before the three of them had gotten together.
“Little physicist on the prairie,” she whispered. Back when she’d been lusting
after them, she’d started imagining living out in the woods with them, having
their babies. She thought she’d gone mad, wanting two men.

Now she couldn’t imagine living without them.

“They let you out alone here? Smelling that
ripe?” A man’s gruff voice asked from the darkness. She jumped to her feet and
saw a man in blue jeans and a leather jacket step forth into the soft light the
moonlight afforded. She didn’t recognize him, but she didn’t know all the
wolves.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Gareth. I remember you. You’re
the one mated to Kyle and Jake. We’ve met before, at SpiralStone. I was with
the wolves that came after Kyle.”

“You’re Hagalaz.” Pure fear shot through her
entire system but she held her ground. She knew it was pointless to run.

“Yes, but I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve
come a long way to deliver a message, but I’ve been unable to get past the Uruz
defenses until tonight.” He sniffed the air. “Everyone is up at the clanhall is
my guess.”

“Yes.”

“Listen, I know you have no reason to believe
me, but I’m here as an envoy of peace. Not all the Hagalaz are with our half-mad
leader. Bane is up to something really stupid, and some of us have had it. We
want out, and we need help.”

“I have no power to help you. I’m just—”

“I know. You’re human. But not too long from
now, your mates are going to come charging out here after you.”

“How do you know that?”

“If your fear of me doesn’t bring them out
here, when I approach more closely, they’ll smell me.”

“And why are you here again? Why are you willing
to risk what a hall full of wolves will do to you?”

He was close enough for her to see his eyes,
and she saw a sadness in Gareth. “Because this conflict has to end.”

“We’re in agreement. So why you?”

“I followed along with my pack, my Alpha.
Bane seemed to have the right idea and I believed in him. I betrayed the woman
I love because I believed my Alpha was in the right. And months ago, Bane sent
us out to fight for the Fae lord. So many of us died, including my father. I
had to watch my mother go mad from grief. I listened to the screaming of the
others whose mates had died. And our Alpha wouldn’t stop. He’s planning
something else. He sent someone else up to Minneapolis to gain some kind of
magical weapon. My cousin followed him to try and stop the transaction from
happening but one of the Uruz ended up in the middle of it.”

“That’s how I ended up here. Long story.”

He nodded. “My cousin went north and I came
here to try and speak to the Uruz. I’ve been waiting on the outskirts watching
all day for an opportunity. All I want is the chance to speak to them.”

“They are going to tear you apart. They are
not happy campers in there.”

“Probably. But, it’s better than going home.
It’s better than listening to my mother cry. And it’s better than living one
more day knowing I betrayed the woman who should have been my mate.” He lifted
his head. “Here they come.”

She could feel them, the surge of adrenaline.
Jake and Kyle raced into the clearing in wolf form and flanked her, growling at
the Hagalaz.

“Jake, Kyle, Gareth didn’t try to hurt me.”

Jake shifted back. He was only wearing his
jeans; she knew he must be worked up if he had lost some of his clothes in the
transformation. Though she had to bite back a laugh; he’d kept the suspenders.

“Hagalaz!” he shouted.

“Jake, he says he’s an envoy.”

“He tried to kill you. He was there at
SpiralStone.”

Kyle let out a vicious snarl at Gareth. The
sound was still a little terrifying for her, given that in wolf form she
thought Kyle and Jake were the size of small ponies.

“Gareth says there are Hagalaz who want to
defect. Wouldn’t it be better to hear him out first?”

Jake growled and looked at Gareth. “Why are
you here?”

“My father died working for a Fae lord as a
mercenary. My mother went mad, and other mates went mad and died after the
battle. And Bane will not stop. Not all of us stand by him. Not anymore. Some
of us want peace. Please, just hear me out. We can’t do this alone.”

“Shit.” Jake looked over his shoulder.

“What?”

“They’re coming,” Jake looked back at Gareth.
 

Ellie could hear the wolves baying. “Jake,
this could bring peace. We can’t let them kill Gareth. What can we do?”

“Take me prisoner,” Gareth said, stepping
toward Ellie. Kyle jerked forward, snapping at him. Gareth held up his hands in
peace. “Quick, subdue me or—”

She heard the low snarling and the thump of
paws racing through the snow and then there was a rush of air beside her before
another huge wolf leaped onto Gareth.

“Fuck! That’s Matthew,” Jake said as he
guided Ellie backward from the fight.

“Well, stop him! He’s going to kill Gareth
and then this whole peace process blows up!”

By then the other wolves had arrived. Some
stayed in wolf form, others shifted back, including Cassia.

“Cassia, please! He’s here as an envoy.”

Cassia’s eyes were strangely wide. “Is that
Gareth?” she asked weakly.

“You know him?”

She didn’t respond; her body was frozen in
place as she watched the battling wolves. “Kyle, Jake, you have to stop this!”

“Shit. He’s an Alpha. He’s…fuck. Kyle,” Jake
and Kyle met eyes, and she saw Kyle nod once in agreement. Jake shifted back
and the two of them launched onto the wolves. The already terrible sound of
snarling and fighting got worse, and the watching shifters made an almost
collective gasp at the interference. Ellie wondered what kind of trouble Jake
and Kyle would be in.

Cassia finally snapped out of it and began
muttering something rhythmic until Ellie realized she was chanting some kind of
spell. Ellie felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise up the same as they
had when Moira had summoned the storm. Rocking back and forth, Cassia’s eyes
had gone amber. Her singing increased in volume and she was almost singing
along with the fighting wolves until she stepped closer to them. “Cease!” she
cried out. She circled them, singing, and Ellie saw an amber glow encompass the
wolves until all four of them howled and began to shift back. Jake and Kyle,
half clothed, both pulled Matthew back from Gareth by the arms. Matthew was
shouting and swearing at the both of them.

Cassia knelt down next to Gareth. He was
naked in the snow, bleeding from the wounds he’d suffered.

“How dare you!” Matthew finally stood up.
“You attacked one of your own to protect a Hagalaz! You have broken pack law.”
Jake and Kyle backed up, still standing between Matthew and Gareth.

Kyle panted. “He is here as an envoy. We need
to listen to what he has to say.”