Authors: Judy Teel
We entered a large, bright room and the warm smell of milk and porridge swirled around me, followed by a more pungent, earthy odor. Cribs lined the walls on either side, mostly empty. But a few held small wrapped bundles of sleeping babies, and a few more sprawled out toddlers. Sunlight splashed across the floor from the long bank of tall windows across from us, showcasing a lush, park-like courtyard with thick grass, trees, a sandbox and a playground, even a tire swing.
A female Were in brightly colored nurse's scrubs bent over one of the cribs, changing a diaper, while another washed bottles at a sink in the back corner. They looked up as we came in and when they saw Cooper, shock and fear tightened across their faces. He held up his arm, flashing the symbol carved into it like a pass key, and their tension eased away.
Compassion touched the face of the caregiver at the sink. "Is he—?"
"Not yet," Cooper said.
She nodded and then gestured with her chin toward the crib by the window. "She's just getting up from her nap."
Cooper led me to where the other caregiver was putting the infant's thrashing chubby legs back into her pink footy pajamas. She gave us a sad smile. "Her name's Maya."
Stepping up to the railing of the crib, he gazed down at the baby. The little girl stopped squirming and stared at him with wide, blue eyes.
"She has her mother's spirit and her father's courage," the female Were said gently, as if that could somehow make what was inevitable better.
Cooper reached into the crib and brushed his fingertips across the infant's forehand. She kicked her fat legs and gave him a broad, toothless smile. Grabbing his thumb in her small fist, she pulled it into her mouth. He froze as if afraid the slightest movement might break her. Then softened, his shoulders relaxing. With slow deliberation, he extracted his hand from the infant's fist, then reached into the crib and picked her up.
My heart lurched in my chest as pride, love, and anguish tightened my throat. "I don't understand why we're here. What aren't you telling me?"
He looked at me over the top of the baby's head, his expression heavy with guilt, his eyes clouded with sorrow. "The One Who Dies, must live for all. He can never have children of his own. He can never be bonded to a mate. He must guard and teach the Alpha's heir, so that when she comes of age, she can prove her right to be Alpha by killing him in open combat."
I took a step back, shocked. Then a dark, empty hopelessness flooded my heart, the edges hot with anger. He'd accepted this, not me. He'd chosen to give up any hope of happiness for a child that he didn't know, one he'd never even been allowed to see. I hadn't.
It wasn't fair and I wanted to despise him for it. I wanted to curse him for not telling me the risks of loving him.
But I knew something about growing up without anyone to care if you lived or died. And I knew what it meant to promise someone that you'd never let that happen to their child.
I couldn't hate Cooper for giving Maya what I'd never had. And I couldn't stand the heartache of being near him, but never with him.
Turning, I rushed out of the nursery as Maya let out a wail.
*
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*
Sprinting from the nursery fortress, I fled across the compound, choking down my tears, not caring who saw me or what they thought. When I reached the main gate, I slammed the cast on my forearm into Bald Guy's chest, knocking him back. Before he could recover from his surprise, I escaped into the woods.
I ran blindly, not caring what happened, not caring where I went. I could feel Cooper's suffering torturing my heart and soul like a thousand hot needles and I cursed the link we shared. What an idiot I'd been to want it back. A pathetic fool to have ever let him in.
I wanted to go back in time, back to my tiny office and sparse apartment, back to Wizard and to picking up whatever cases I could to make ends meet.
Back to when Cooper and I had no ties, no expectations and no heartache.
Without slowing, I swung my arm against a tree as I passed it, shattering the cast on my right arm, and then rammed my shoulder against the next tree, crumbling the cast on my left arm. My sorrow broke free as the plaster fell behind me, and I sobbed uncontrollably, gulping air, my tears blinding me. I wanted to run forever and never look back. I wanted to outrun my misery.
I thrashed through the underbrush around me, branches and thorns whipping across my skin like claws. Loving Cooper had changed me into a person I didn't recognize. It had made me weak.
Rage burst through me, hot and brutal, and I welcomed the familiarity of it. I'd never been weepy or sentimental. I didn't pine for things I couldn't have. I didn't wait for others to rescue me. I fought. I survived. That's who I was.
I broke through a wall of underbrush into a wide expanse of blue sky and a sheer drop to a clearing below. Skidding to a stop in the dirt and gravel, I scrambled to reverse my momentum and landed on my butt; the edge of the ragged cliff dropping away in front of me, inches from my boots.
Thirty feet below me, the thick forest ended in an even circle of dirt and stones about two miles across as if the trees had stopped and refused to go any further. Even the scrub brush and autumn wild flowers didn't dare cross the line, cluttering up around the trunks like curious onlookers.
I frowned. The odd clearing looked vaguely familiar. Where had I seen it before?
Looking to my left, I gazed at the cliff, tracing the pattern. Three distinct slabs of rock as tall as the one towering over the Bone Clan stronghold. Their pattern meant something. But what? Then a chill slithered across the back of my neck.
Chapter Eight: The Ghost Clan — Legendary Interdimensional Walkers
The shiver scraped down my back as I remembered the few pages I'd read before I'd fallen asleep that night. I jumped to my feet —
Created to protect...
— And scrambled down the rocky slope to my right and into the woods at its base, information from the slim volume tumbling through my mind.
Champions born of practitioners, Weres, and the gods...
I stopped at the edge of the ring of trees, the pinched, empty hole in the middle of my heart that I could never fill urging me forward.
The Demon-Weres...sent beyond the destroyer's reach until such time as the children of the gods would need them again.
A hole born from the loss of never knowing where I'd come from.
I stepped through the trees and over what was left of a low stone wall. A whisper of power rolled through me and I caught my breath. The hair on my arms stood up as the faint sound of children playing, the ring of a blacksmith's hammer, and in the distance the cheerful bubble of a fountain danced around me. A touch of warmth seeped into that narrow, empty space in the center of my chest and I felt...loved. As if I'd come home. I took another step and the feeling vanished. Only the quiet splash of a fountain broke the eerie silence.
Walking around the broken corner of what looked like the ruins of a cottage, I followed the muffled splash of water, winding through the debris of what had once been a small village. On the other side of a crumbling chimney, the center of the village opened in front of me, broken flagstones forming another perfect circle and in the center, a fountain made from a single white stone — pristine and sparkling as if it had just been carved and placed in the village. Clear water bubbled from the top and trickled through the decorative grape vines carved into the stone tiers to splash into the basin below. Why hadn't I seen this from the cliff?
I hurried into the square, feeling the pull of that water, suddenly aware of how raw and dry my throat felt. I stopped at the edge of the basin and stared at my reflection, rippling across the surface. I reached toward the water.
A man's hand came out of nowhere and grabbed my wrist, pulling me back. "Don't."
I blinked and staggered, my stomach cramping as a gut-wrenching sense of loss clutched me. I looked up and shock rocked through me. A man, maybe ten years older than me, stood in front of the fountain, his sharp, purposeful features tense, uncertainty shadowing his brilliant blue eyes.
An odd feeling of recognition washed over me and then a memory, dim and misty...
The first time I'd shifted in the woods on Laswell's estate I'd seen a face. A man's face. And I'd felt a hum of certainty that was beyond logic or reason, a knowing that he was my father.
The ground seemed to sway under my feet and my body went cold. "How—?" I gasped.
Sorrow darkened his jewel-like eyes. He swept his hand through the air and disappeared.
*
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*
I searched the abandoned village until the sun hung just above the trees, careful to avoid the fountain even though it called to me, or maybe because it did. The man was gone.
Climbing back up the slope to the top of the cliff, I turned and tromped along the rough path of crushed underbrush and broken branches that I'd forged earlier, knowing it would eventually lead me back to the compound.
I was about five miles out, winding through a part of the path where rocks and boulders jutted up from the ground or tumbled along the creek below me, when a familiar scent touched my nose and I stopped. I debated turning back or heading up the mountain to find a different route and then chastised myself for being a coward. Clenching my fists, I pushed on, determined to hold firm in my new resolve and to never forget that I was alone in this world. To hell with Were bonding crap.
I marched around the boulder in front of me and stalled to a stop. Cooper blocked the path ahead, shirtless and barefoot, the bottom of his sweatpants littered with dirt and leaves like they'd been dragged through the woods in the mouth of something that ran on all fours.
Our eyes met and I pushed away his worry and frustration as it rolled toward me across the connection that we shared. I would not give in. I couldn't afford to.
After a moment, Cooper's shoulders relaxed and the determined set of his jaw eased. "Did you ever wish that our lives were different?" he asked. "That we were different?"
The rant about not needing him that I'd been about to launch died in my throat. "All the time," I said quietly.
"Maybe we would have met each other at work or through friends," he added.
"We did meet at work," I countered, resenting the ache clenching my throat again. "On a kidnapping case."
"If we'd met in a break room, I would've thought you had pretty eyes. I would have tried to make you smile."
I looked down at my hands, locked tightly together, and cleared my throat. "Would you have asked me out?"
"I would have asked if you'd like to get coffee. And then later, dinner." He took a silent step closer and then another, but I couldn't bring myself to mind too much.
"I would have kissed you on your doorstep while wanting more," he said in a low voice. "And when we started dating, there would have been no rules or prejudices to keep us apart. No bad guys to stop. Just a man and a woman discovering each other. I would have loved your spirit. Your soft skin. And your strength."
He stopped a few feet from me. "After six or eight months we would have moved in together and talked about our future. Where we wanted to travel, how many kids we wanted. We would've met each other's families."
"Both my parents would have been alive," I said, my voice catching. "I would've had a brother and a sister."
Cooper closed the gap between us and touched the bottom of my chin with his fingers, lifting it until our eyes met. He slid his other hand lightly over my hair and I tried not feel the soothing warmth that his presence gave me.
"I would have asked you to marry me," he said softly.
My heart thumped against my chest and I pulled away from his touch, darting around him and moving to a safer distance. "But we didn't have a normal courtship, did we? After that kidnapping case we went back to your hotel and had potion-induced sex. After that, we didn't see each other again for months. We would have never seen each other again if you hadn't thought I might be a murderer."
His delicious mouth quirked up in a half smile as he turned to face me. "I only thought that for a few hours."
"Our courtship involved solving a brutal series of murders and then stopping a crazy drug lord."
He glided into my personal space and I clenched my jaw, refusing to back down. "And I fell in love with you," he said, trailing the tips of his fingers down my cheek. "Even before you saved my life."
"You said our bond held us together. That nothing could ever come between us," I accused, my voice catching as the damn tears rolled up from my chest and into my eyes.
He tensed. "Maya—"
"I know that," I snarled. "I know that you can't turn your back on her." I looked up at the thick pattern of autumn leaves above us, trying to get control of myself as frustration and remorse stripped away my hope of ever having a happy ending. "I can't not be with you," I said, dropping my chin to gaze at him steadily.
His silver-green eyes heated with a flash of anger. "Bone Clan will accept you in time."
"As a human, they might have tolerated me for a while. Once they know we're bonded they'll kill me, and I wouldn't blame them. My presence threatens the Alpha line. It threatens you."
Cooper pulled me against his bare chest, his arms clamping around my shoulders like a vice. His fear rippled over me. "I love you, Addie. I can't turn my back on that."