She stretches her arms high above her head like she’s warming up in gym class.
“This is going to feel a little like three wishes.” She cracks her neck, twisting to one side and then the other. “And maybe a little like that sea witch from the Little Mermaid.”
“What are you talking about?” Abertha isn’t always the clearest. She’s mystical, and she smokes a lot of weed.
She gets on her knees in front of me, hovering her palms above my body, sensing my aura like she does when I’m sick.
“I can, for lack of a better term, yank the bond out.”
“Do it.” I’d do anything to make this all stop.
My wolf is pushing at my skin. She demands that we run to him, find him. If he’s dead, avenge him. If he’s living, present, thrust our pussy in the air, ass up, face down, and beg him to mount us. The picture is starkly vivid in my mind. It makes me want to puke again.
Our weakness is the only thing that’s stopping her from running to him. We don’t have enough strength left to shift.
It’s horrible—the pain, the humiliation, the heat, the rejection, all twisted and jumbled. I’m so close to losing control.
“Do it now.”
She chews her cheek, considering. “It can’t be undone.”
“Good.”
“If I yank it out, you won’t be able to use the bond to bring him around.”
“I don’t want him.” My wolf howls her dissent. “I don’t.”
“You can only have young with your fated mate. No mate, no young.”
I didn’t think I ever would. I’d come to terms with it. But—another pain slices through me, sharp and deep. A loss, a terrible longing. Despair.
Abertha seems to note my hesitation. “There might be—side effects.”
“I don’t care.” Another spasm racks me and my womb cramps, knotting my guts, stealing my breath. Nothing is worse than this. Nothing.
“I can’t really predict what might happen.”
“Please.” Tears stream down my cheeks.
“The Fates have a tendency of getting their way in the end.”
“Abertha, you said you could help.”
“No young,” she says again.
I wail. I’m past being able to argue. I can only beg. “Please.”
She blows on her palms and rubs them together. “This might hurt.”
I’d laugh if I could.
She places her right hand against my upper chest, splaying her fingers. She closes her eyes, balancing her weight and inhaling through her nose.
“I’ve never actually done this before—” Her other hand hovers above my heart, fingers twitching. “I’m not sure that—” She closes her eyes and sways. “Got it!” She clenches her fist and yanks her arm back, flinging it behind her.
Somewhere in the woods behind us, there’s a crack, like a thick log is split by an axe.
And it’s gone.
The pain is gone.
All of it. The heat. The pain from shifting. The scrapes from the thorns. Haisley’s bites and scratches. The only thing left is the dull and familiar throb of my bad leg.
“Oh, wow.” I blink.
Abertha grins wide enough to reveal the gold tooth in the back of her mouth. “To be honest, I didn’t think that would work.”
“You did it.” There are tears in my eyes. “Thank you.”
“I am an uncommonly powerful female.”
“You are.” I struggle to my feet and offer her a hand. She takes it.
She’s agile for her age, but she’s not too proud to accept a little assistance.
“A legend, some might say.” She brushes off her skirt. She’s wearing a white cami. Thank goodness. I don’t want to give her T-shirt back. I’m raw in my body and my mind. I don’t want to be naked.
Memories flash in my mind of the great room, surrounded by the pack, covered in blood. Killian’s unwavering voice.
I have no mate. It is known.
I shiver. He doesn’t now. I can feel the silence inside me where the fledgling bond had been.
“Thank you.” I grab Abertha’s dry hand.
She shrugs. “You’ll pay me back.”
“I will. I promise.”
Abertha already takes a percentage of everything we make at the market. Lately, I’ve been debating whether to cut her in when I figure out how to do online sales. I’m definitely cutting her in after this.
“Let’s get you some tea,” she says. “And pants.”
We pick our way through the thick underbrush back to one of the trails. I don’t remember crawling into the thicket. It was a smart move. In my heat, I was defenseless. At least the brambles offered some protection.
We aren’t far from Abertha’s cottage. I must have been heading there when I lost it. It’s reassuring to see our wooden beehives busy with activity, and the herbs bushy and tall in the raised gardens.
I’m mostly numb. I feel like a rung bell. And I’m parched.
Abertha leads me inside, and I sink down at her familiar oak table, tugging her shirt as low as it’ll go so my bare rump doesn’t touch the chair.
Her cat Apollonia winds a figure eight around my ankles. It’s strange, a cat who tolerates wolves, but Abertha is strange. She’s a crone, but she’s nothing like any of the other lone elders I’ve met. She’s wise as hell, but she curses, gives zero shits about pack politics, and she never sighs when she sits.
And she disappears, sometimes for days or weeks at a time.
Annie and Kennedy think she goes on spirit quests. I think she has a lover in another pack. We don’t ask, and she lets us do whatever we want on her cottage grounds. The rest of the pack steers clear of this whole area. Wolves are superstitious, and everyone knows that old, unmated females are bad luck.
Abertha rummages around the kitchen, filling the kettle and hanging it above the fire before she prods the embers with a poker.
“So I guess I missed an interesting dinner last night, eh?” she says over her shoulder.
“I finally shifted. My wolf attacked Haisley Byrne. I lost.”
Abertha chuckled. “I heard.”
“From who?”
“That gaggle of girls you live with. All three of them showed up in the middle of the night, looking for you.”
“They did?”
Abertha nods and opens the trunk at the foot of her bed. Her cottage is open concept, so to speak. It’s one big room with a low ceiling. Very reminiscent of a hobbit hole.
She takes out one of her long hippy skirts and throws it at me.
“Thanks.”
I have to admit, my heart warms a little. Kennedy I can see walking through the woods past curfew, but Mari and Annie are still afraid of ferals and bugbears. They were pups not that long ago.
“That short, squealy one wanted me to go down to the commons and talk to Killian.”
“Mari’s—” Well, she’s hopelessly na?ve, but that seems cruel to say. “Mari’s a good egg.”
“Egg.” Abertha snorts. “You’re on the internet too much. You’re starting to talk like a human.”
I shrug. I don’t mind humans. They’re easier to deal with than shifters.
“You can’t live with them, you know,” Abertha says. My gaze flies up. She sees too much.
“I know.”
“You’d end up hurting one. Your wolf will never understand that they’re not prey.”
“My wolf listens to me.”
“Was she listening to you just now in the thicket? Or last night?”
I sigh and rub my temples. She’s right.