Chapter
Thirty-three
His hand on the white wolf’s broad forehead,
Connor’s eyes were closed. He sat perfectly still as if listening.
Long minutes passed before he finally looked up. “I can’t reach
him. I’ve tried and tried since this happened, but I can’t seem to
connect with him.”
At Jillian’s puzzled expression, Birkie
leaned over and whispered, “Telepathy, dear. Most Changelings can
talk to each other in their minds.”
“Of course they can.” Jillian felt as
if she’d just slipped a few notches further down the proverbial
rabbit hole. Can they fly, too?
Connor continued. “James may need help
finding his way back to us. If you talk to him, it could
help.”
“You mean he’s in a coma?”
“Not in human terms. He’s not only
inside the wolf’s body, but he could be locked in the wolf persona
as well,” said Connor. “For all intents and purposes, he is a wolf.
And James needs to be reminded he’s human. It’s the human side we
need to connect with. He’ll listen to you. You’ve got a powerful
connection to both the wolf and the man.”
“What do I say?”
“Anything at all,” Birkie explained.
“The sound of your voice might give him something to latch onto.
Like a lifeline.”
“And then he’ll wake up? Will he be
himself, I mean, will he be human then?”
“No. But just waking up would be a hell
of a lot of progress,” said Connor. He looked like he was about to
say more, but shook his head and abruptly left the
room.
Birkie hugged Jillian. “I imagine you’d
like a little time to yourself, honey. We’ve dumped a lot of
information on you. I’ll bring you some lunch in a while, answer
more questions if you have them. I imagine you’ll have a lot. Are
you okay for now?”
“Yeah, I’m mostly fine. Thanks.” She
put on a brave face, managed a smile even as emotions surged
through her. But as soon as Birkie left, the tears began to fall
and this time she didn’t try to stop them. Some were out of relief,
and some were out of fear. Eventually they slowed enough to let her
find her voice. “They tell me you’re in there somewhere, James,”
she said to the wolf, stroking its ears, its face. “I’m scared to
believe it and scared because I am believing
it. I need you to come back to me and help me understand it all.
I’m pretty lousy at asking for help, James, but I’m asking now.
Come back to me and help me sort this out, because I’m worried I’ve
gone crazy. I’m scared the concussion has hurt something in my head
and I’m delusional. Or maybe being pregnant has affected my brain.”
The tears started again, and she knotted her hand in the wolf’s
thick mane, held onto it as if she was dangling from a cliff and it
was the only thing left to hang onto.
“What I’m most afraid of is that you’re
gone. You know I love you, James, but you don’t know how much.
I didn’t know how much. And I’m so scared
it’s too late and I won’t get to tell you face-to-face just how
much you mean to me. I really want to build that life with you.
Come back to me.”
Deep within the wolf, a faint awareness
stirred. James struggled against the thick gray haze that seemed to
blanket his mind. Pain was on the other side of the fog, searingly
bright, waiting to stab at him. And he was tired, more tired than
he’d ever thought possible. Exhaustion pressed down on him like a
weight. A stray thought surfaced that he must be still alive.
Surely he couldn’t be this damn tired if he was dead.
Someone was talking to him. A woman. He
should know her, she was important. Green eyes. He knew she had
green eyes, so he should know who she was, shouldn’t he? He worried
at the puzzle for a few moments, then let it be. Just listened to
the soothing, pleasant voice, felt it stroke his mind with familiar
fingers. Listened until the dull waves of oblivion began to pull
him under again.
No. He couldn’t
let himself fade out, he had to find this woman. Somehow,
everything would be all right if he could just find her . . . if he
could just find. . . . Jillian! I’ve got to get to
Jillian!
Memories flooded back like an inrushing
tide. James had been in the clinic’s lunchroom, putting together a
meal for two. He’d had his head in the fridge when the most
god-awful fear had gripped him by the throat. Fear for her. He raced for the apartment but she wasn’t there,
wasn’t anywhere. The sense of danger screamed along every nerve he
had; the wolf within snapped and snarled. The wolf
will know where she is. It always knows where she is.
Instantly he’d called the Change, given the wolf its head. And the
wolf had wheeled and raced for the back door with all the power and
speed at its command, hurled itself through the narrow window in an
explosion of metal and glass.
He’d barely touched the pavement when
James caught sight of the gun trained on the woman he loved. His
heart stuttered for a single beat. And then he bounded across the
heated pavement, leapt with bared fangs. . . .
Then what? He
wasn’t quite sure what happened after that. He’d been injured,
probably shot, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he must
have been in time, James and his wolf together, they must have been
in time to save Jillian. She was alive, he could hear her, sense
her, feel her, right here next to him. She was all right. And the
child within her, his child, must be all right too. Safe. All safe.
James relaxed into the wonder of it, his heart satisfied, peaceful.
He focused contentedly on Jillian’s voice, listened to her
words.
“—please come back to me, James. I miss
you and I’m so confused. They tell me you’re in there somewhere but
I can’t feel you. I need you to come back and explain all this to
me, make it make sense—”
Wait! I’m right
here. He had never heard Jillian sound so lost, so sad. Not
since the wolf had found her on the trail all those years ago. With
a start, James realized he was in wolf form now too. He shouldn’t
be, he should have Changed—unless he couldn’t. Just
how bad am I hurt? He turned inward then, felt carefully
along the edges of his awareness where gray fog hid the bright
lines of pain. Followed those lines to their source and discovered
his shoulder to be all but missing. Again?
Good Christ, it had taken months to recover last time and this
wound felt even worse. But he hadn’t been trying then, couldn’t
have cared less if he lived or died last time. Now, he not only
wanted to heal, he wanted to be human again. He had to get to
Jillian, had to reach her, talk to her. Hold her. Especially hold her. But there would be no Changing with
this kind of injury. A Changeling had considerable regenerative
powers, but they could be accessed only in wolfen form. Not only
that, his lupine side would not permit him to Change. Period. The
wolf was devoted to James’s survival and all energy would be
funneled into healing.
Meanwhile, Jillian needed him, and here
he was lying down on the job.
Not for long, he decided. If the only
way he could comfort the woman he loved was by licking her face and
wagging his tail, he was damn well going to do that much. Slowly,
tentatively, James began the long agonizing climb through the haze
toward consciousness.
The full moon silvered the rocks on Elk
Point, touched the tips of the trees with sterling. Not to be
outdone, the stars blazed overhead in a deep velvet blue canopy.
Jillian wrapped her arms around her knees and allowed herself, just
for a moment, to forget everything except the vivid beauty of the
night. She drank it, breathed it, drew it into her lungs as if she
couldn’t get enough, drew it into her soul. There was a harmony
here that spoke to her deeply, that she had missed in the past few
years in the eastern city. Missed without even knowing what it was
she was missing. The work at the clinic fed her mind. The northern
countryside was unexpectedly feeding her spirit, comforting
it.
Coming here seemed to be good for the
white wolf too. She looked down at the magnificent animal stretched
out on a rock beside her, his snowy coat glowing in the moonlight.
James. James is in there. She reminded
herself of that often, although her wolf still felt like, well, a
wolf. The massive creature might have eyes that were the same shade
of Viking blue as James’s eyes—but she couldn’t see James behind
them. Her throat tightened with grief even though James wasn’t
dead. At least, everyone said he wasn’t dead, that he was right
there inside the wolf. But she couldn’t feel him
there.
Blue eyes looked up at her, and the
wolf nudged her arm with its nose. Jillian complied, putting an arm
around his neck so he could lay his massive head in her lap.
There won’t be much room for that soon. She
wondered if the wolf knew about the baby. She wondered if James
remembered the baby, or her, or anything at all. Was he thinking as
a wolf or as a man?
I should be grateful
he’s alive at all. I should just be glad for that. After
surgery, it had been four whole days before the wolf awakened. Four
long, terrible days when she didn’t know if he would live or die,
if she would lose both her beloved wolf and the man she loved. She
had watched over him, night and day. And on the fifth day, she had
awakened to a large pink tongue licking her face.
Things had been better then. She talked
to the wolf endlessly as she cared for him, although she still
couldn’t think of him as James. The handsome creature seemed to pay
attention to every word, was even more affectionate than before.
Sometimes she heard its voice in her mind, reassuring her that she
wasn’t alone. But it was never more than a few stunted words, it
wasn’t really James’s voice—did the wolf have its own personality,
separate from the man?—and it didn’t diminish the pain of missing
James. She still felt a great calm when she was near the wolf, but
there was sadness underneath, an ache that never went away no
matter how hard she fought it.
While he could offer no guesses as to
when her James might return, Connor had been right about the
incredible regenerative powers of Changelings. The white wolf’s
shoulder was largely intact now, healed from the inside out. The
gaping wound had closed over recently, but not before Jillian saw
that fresh bone and joint and tendon had replaced the broken and
the missing.
Exercise was the best medicine then.
Small amounts at first, slow circles around the clinic before and
after closing time, until the injured leg would bear the creature’s
weight. Then longer walks outside. Always at night of course. The
presence of a giant white wolf at the North Star Animal Hospital
would raise eyebrows if not alarms. Lately, as the wolf’s limp
became less pronounced, Jillian had been driving out to the
riverside trails below Elk Point. It was still a covert operation.
The wolf hid under a blanket in the back of the truck, and they
could go only at night. Occasionally Connor had accompanied them,
sometimes Birkie. But most nights she preferred to walk alone with
the white wolf. And every night she wished she was walking with
James.
She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve.
This whole werewolf thing is really getting on my
nerves. For a human being, she thought she’d been pretty
damn patient, accepting of the impossible, understanding of the
bizarre. She’d seen not just Connor but the other members of his
family Change into wolves several times now, had met all the
members of the Pack and gotten to know their stories. It had been
fascinating at first, especially to a veterinarian. But right now
she was just a woman who needed her man’s arms around her. And she
had no idea when that would happen—or if.
“Damn,” she sniffled. It was getting
much too easy to feel sorry for herself. She pushed the sadness
back, imagined packing it into a box and mailing it to Antarctica.
It didn’t really work, nothing worked, but it distracted her a bit.
After all, James wasn’t dead. He was alive somewhere, and she
should be glad for that. She was determined to try to stay
positive, both for herself and the baby. But it was harder every
day.
The wolf nudged her arm, sat up next to
her, dwarfing her. She leaned against the thick soft fur, felt the
wolf’s tongue on her forehead. He pushed her again with his nose,
leapt down from the rock and trotted away. Perhaps he was getting a
drink. The wolf was often restless lately, a good sign that he was
recovering fully.
Jillian watched the moon’s reflection
glimmer in the river below. The night was warm and dry, and she
considered sleeping right here in the circle of stones. She’d be
warm enough next to the wolf, and certainly safe.
Without warning, a blast of wind surged
out of nowhere, whipped leaves around her, chilled her. She yanked
the edges of her jacket together, but the icy current of air had
already ceased. What on earth was that? Wind sheer?
A micro burst?
She glanced up at the stars and froze.
One seemed to be moving, falling—and suddenly she realized it
wasn’t a star at all, but a spark. A tiny blue spark. It drifted
down and landed on the rock beside her, sizzled the edge of a dry
leaf and winked out.
“Jillian.”
She whipped around to see James
standing in the stone circle. Her heart caught in her throat and
she began shaking. “Are you real?” she managed at
last.
In answer, he opened his arms and she
ran to him.
“You’re alive, oh God, you’re alive,
you’re back, you’re here, omigod please tell me you’re really
here,” she sobbed out as she was enfolded in the familiar strength,
the heat. She breathed him in, smelled him, tasted him with frantic
kisses, ran her hands over every part of him she could
reach.
His big hands were moving too, running
over Jillian’s body, through her hair, cupping her face so he could
cover it with kisses, thumb away the tears. “God, honey, don’t.
It’s all right,” he murmured, tucking her head under his chin and
wrapping his arms around her tightly, rocking her. “It’s all right
now.”
She couldn’t settle, couldn’t relax.
Her entire body was alight with raw, instinctive need and she
struggled to get her hands under his shirt. “Just touch me, oh God,
James, please touch me. I need you, I need—” Words failed as
urgency overpowered her. She had to get to his skin, had to press
her skin to his. Had to. Some primeval
switch had been thrown, and she might die or implode if she didn’t
get these damn clothes out of her way.
The wildness infected him too. James’s
lips became hungry on hers, and the offending clothes disappeared
rapidly. Hands flew, his and hers, in frenzied need, to touch, to
grasp, to glide over trembling flesh. Lips left hot trails of
rapid, desperate kisses. Hearts beat with a primal need to be in
one skin. They tumbled to their knees, still entwined around each
other. He bore her backward and paused, about to thrust into her,
and touched her belly with a question in his eyes.
“It’s all right,” she whispered.
Jillian gasped as he filled her, as he reared back and filled her
again and again. Oh, yes. This was exactly
what she wanted, what she craved. Yes, yes, yes . .
.
She clung to him with arms and legs,
breathed his name into his mouth and rose to meet him. It felt so
good, so damn good as his much larger body moved over hers, into
hers. He overwhelmed her with heat and strength, yet she wanted it.
Wanted him, heart and soul and body. All the worry and fear and
loneliness of the past few months slid away as she called for him
to bring her. They peaked together, and on the long, slow drift
back to earth, she felt the world right itself.
James stirred reluctantly and found
himself facedown in the sand, half on Jillian, half off, but
probably still too heavy for her. Sense rushed in then and quickly
he raised himself on his elbows and looked at her. There were tears
on her face.“Oh Christ, I’ve hurt you.” He sat up at once, scooped
her into his lap, wiped the tears with his knuckles as he scanned
her body frantically. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so rough,
it’s just . . . I just . . . and the baby. I was worried about the
baby, but—”
She put her fingers over his mouth.
“Relax. The baby’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
“But—”
“But I totally
loved it. But I’m happy.” Her eyes were
dreamy, delighted as she looked at him. “You didn’t hurt me, so
quit with the sorries, okay? The doctor said that sex wouldn’t
bother the baby in the least.”
“Really?”
“I promise. Here, check for yourself.”
She pulled his big hand over her stomach, rested her hands over it.
“See?”
Her belly was sweetly rounded, just
beginning to bloom. Had he lost more time than he thought? “Um,
just how long have I been MIA?”
“About three months or
so.”
Jesus. He hugged
her to him then, kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry to have left you
on your own for so long.”
“If you say you’re sorry again, I’ll
have to hit you. Yes, I missed you like crazy, I was scared and
worried, and I had to take everyone’s word for it that you were
still alive. And why was that? Because you saved my life. Because I
needed you and you came. Don’t be sorry for that.” Her voice
gentled then and she cupped his face with her hands. “We’ve both
been through a lot. Let’s just focus on the now, okay? I just want
to spend a lot of time enjoying you.”
In answer, he kissed her long and deep
and slow, rubbed her tummy in lazy circles—and froze.
“What? What’s wrong now?”
“Shhh—nothing. Here, move this way.”
James sat up straighter, pulled her into the vee of his long legs
with her back against him. Kissed her temple to distract her as he
reached his hands around her, all senses alert. He sought a spot
low on her belly, skimmed his hands back and forth over the warm
skin like a caress. And suddenly there it was. Life. Carefully he
sought to discern, to sense, to sort the shimmering vibrations he
felt into—
Two. James’s
heart skipped a beat as he realized there were two. No mistake. The delicate sensations fluttered
beneath his hands and in his mind like faery wings. Joy and wonder
surged through him, and he began to laugh.
“What’s so funny? Did the baby move? I
didn’t feel anything.”
James only laughed harder, the sound
full and rich and deep, booming through the stone circle and
echoing across the valley. That little frown appeared between
Jillian’s brows and still he couldn’t stop the laughter. Finally,
he flopped weakly back on the sand.
Jillian found her sweater, blotted his
face with the sleeve. “Are you okay? Are you done
now?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” For God’s
sake, he was practically wheezing. And his sides ached, but oh, it
felt so good.
“Are you going to let me in on the joke
or was that just post-wolf hysterics?”
“There’s no joke, honey. We’re gonna
need two cribs.”
She goggled. “What?”
“Twins, we’re having
twins.”
“We are not.”
“Trust me, there’s two in there.” He
watched her struggle to come up with an argument, shook his head at
her. “Sorry but Changelings can tell. Have you ever seen Connor use
that fancy new ultrasound at the clinic?”
“Of course I—well, I don’t see him do a
lot of things,” she said defensively. “We’re both busy.” Her face
changed suddenly and she grabbed his arms. “This isn’t some cute
little way of telling me we’re having a litter, is it? How could I
have been so dumb? The baby’s a Changeling isn’t it? I’ve been so
worried about you that I didn’t even think—”
He nearly burst out laughing again at
the alarm on her face, but wisely decided to choke it back. “Twins
don’t constitute a litter, honey.”
She didn’t look reassured. “You think
this is funny, but I’ve never seen any werewolf children. No one in
your family has any kids except some sister I’ve never
met.”
“Carlene. In Wyoming,” he supplied.
“She has three.”
“Whatever. For all I know they’re all
running around on four legs.”
“Only when they want to. No, wait!” She
was trying to move away from him, but he caught her and pulled her
firmly back into his lap. “I’m sorry, I can see I’m not taking this
seriously enough. You deserve a straight answer. My brothers and
sisters and I are all Changelings but we started out like normal
human children. Looked like them, acted like them, played and
fought and laughed and cried like them. No pointed ears, no fangs,
and no fur. No eating of raw meat. Definitely no
tails.”
“You’re sure?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Really sure?”
He waved a hand at the circle of stones
around them. “Elk Point is a sacred place. I couldn’t tell a lie
here even if I wanted to.”
“The baby’s fine?”
“Babies,” he corrected. “Yes, they’re
just fine. In fact, they’re wonderful and so are you.”
She placed her hands over his where
they rested warm on her belly. Her fingers were trembling. “Oh God,
James, it’s all so much. We’re going to have a family. We’re going
to be parents. I’m going to be—”
“My wife. And a brilliant partner at
the North Star Animal Hospital. And the director of an innovative
new wildlife rehabilitation center. And the most beautiful mother
on the planet.” He moved his hands up to cup her breasts, nuzzled
over her hair to plant kisses on the sensitive nape beneath.
“You’re going to be busy, honey. I think we’d better do this again
while we can still fit it on your calendar.”
“Do what?” she laughed, although he
could tell she knew.
In answer he simply cradled her against
him and sought her lips. And loved her slowly, sweetly,
thoroughly.