“I know they snap the necks of pups born without hearing.”
She goes still, her entire body coming alert. “You know you were Moonborn.”
I nod.
A frown mars her forehead. “The prophecy–” Her hand flies to her temple, and her face crumples with pain. She starts to jerk and shake.
I lunge from my chair, not able to catch her in time, but throwing my hand between her head at the floor as it hit.
Fuck.
I scoop her jerking body up and carry her to the couch, where I sit, cradling her in my arms.
It’s all right, Seeress. I’ve got you. I project the words to her. You’re safe.
Her eyes roll back in her head. Her feet tangle and thrash around mine.
Come back to me, starlight. I pour energy into her. It’s not something I’ve done before, but it must be what an alpha wolf does with his pack members when he lends his strength for their healing or to help them when they first learn to shift.
Somehow, I’m sure she’s absorbing it. In fact, it feels like she pulls it from me until her fit gradually eases, and she slips into a quiet slumber.
Damn.
Her visions take so much out of her. My wolf wants to rip someone apart. To give her something–some kind of tonic or medicine or talisman–to take this burden away from her.
I push away the lewd thought that I have exactly the thing that would take this from her–my dick.
I kiss the top of her head, unwilling to lay her down or remove her from my arms. As she naps off the after-effects, I mull over what she said. There was a prophecy about you.
What was the prophecy? And was the seizure a reaction to the prophecy or just that she was thrown back into her vision world?
As I stroke her silky hair, grim thoughts march through my head.
The prophecy is probably that I am the wolf who will destroy the Moonborn. But what if, in doing so, I destroy my mate? What if I take from her something she loves?
Fuck.
She’s not even my mate. As long as she, too, remains brainwashed by the Warden and the Adalwulfs, she won’t give herself to me.
What’s more, any harm I do to them could harm her.
And that, my wolf may not allow.
Aster
Visions of hundreds of years of the Grandmother’s wisdom and millions of their memories spear my mind, moving in fast forward, too jumbled to read.
Then, they crystalize into a single moment. A memory.
* * *
“Are you spying on me?” Oma glares at a younger Warden as she leaves the yurt of one of Odin’s females. His face paint is even more dramatic than how he wears it now.
He falls into step beside her. “Is she pregnant?”
“No.”
“Odin needs an heir,” the Warden warns. “If he doesn’t produce one soon, Catherine’s Blackthroat pup will have a claim to the throne.”
