AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not,” I said.“It was worth it, to touch you again.”
Her brows furrowed as her lips twisted.“Jasper--”
“Don’t.”I couldn’t stand to hear that she didn’t feel the same way.“Let’s go back.We need to tell the Micah and Dylan what happened.”
“Who were those wolves?Are they coming back?”
“I don’t know,” I said in answer to both questions.
It was nearly midnight before we got all the tourists fed and tucked into bed.Edie had smeared some ointment on my jaw that kept the itching just below torturous.Micah had promised to go out in the morning and mark the Hen’s Teeth for removal.I’d told the night guards that I’d found bear scat nearby, and asked them to be extra vigilant.Now, Dylan, Micah and I were all crammed into Edie’s small tent.
“Are you sure she wanted to mindshare?”Micah asked for the third time.
“Can one of you explain what that means?”Edie said.She was sitting at the head of the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, clearly stressed out about her first trip into the high country.All I wanted to do was snuggle her.
Well, that wasn’tallI wanted to do.We hadn’t talked about our kiss or what it meant, but I knew what it meant for me.Leaving her alone was agony, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Mindsharing is like, I dunno, Professor X or whatever,” Micah said.
“That’s not at all what it’s like,” Dylan said.“It’s not one-way.It’s like…have you ever seen pictures off the Gulf of Alaska, where the ocean water and the fresh water meet but they don’t mix?Mindsharing is like being that water.You’re rubbing alongside another consciousness and it’s hard to control how much penetrates.And that’s with another shifter.With an animal…” he shook his head.“It’s like water and air.Same substance in different forms, but they aren’t the same.”
“But you can do it?”Edie said, leaning toward Dylan eagerly.“You can share your mind with other shifters?And animals?”
Dylan shrugged uncomfortably.“Sometimes.”
I’d always gotten the impression that Dylan was better at it than he liked to let on.“I wish you’d been there.I suck at mindsharing.I’m sure she was trying to tell me something, and all I got was that one image.A cave.”
“Where?”Dylan asked.
I sighed.“Fuck if I know.”
“There are caves all over around here,” Micah explained to Edie.“And the wolves have a huge territory.It could be anywhere on our land, or in the National Park.”
“And they’ve never tried to communicate with you before?”Edie asked.
My brothers and I looked at each other.“How much do you know about the former Alpha, Victoria?”
She eyes flicked up, as if she was searching for the file in her memory.“My father didn’t know much about her.Her reign was before his time.She was your mother’s aunt, correct?Ruled for ten or twelve years.She had a son with an odd name.”
“Leopold,” I said, then pursed my lips.“Victoria was a pretty brutal Alpha.Not the worst I’ve ever heard of, but she was cruel and selfish and greedy.There’s a school of thought among some shifters that our abilities make us superior to both humans and animals.Victoria thought the wolves didn’t deserve to share our resources.She made a game out of killing them.There was a period of time where every family was expected to produce a wolf pelt once a week if they wanted to eat.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Eventually, they started avoiding our land.Those were bad years for the wolves—between us and the other ranchers in the area, who will shoot any wolf they see, the packs were nearly destroyed.When my mother took over, she had a mindspeaker come in from San Jacinto and pass the news on to all of the animals that the wolves were welcome and safe on our land as long as she was Alpha.It took them generations, but in the last few years they started coming back.We went out of our way to avoid them so they would feel safe.”
She nodded slowly.“Do you think this could have anything to do with your mother’s illness?”
“I don’t see how,” I said.“How would the wolves even know?Or would they understand if they did?”
“Animals understand illness,” Dylan said.“Your mother’s horse knew something was wrong before she did.”
“What?Really?You’ve never mentioned that before.What did Sunflower, um, say?”I asked.
Dylan shook his head.“It wasn’t words.It was more like I could feel her worry.”He looked up and saw we were all staring at him.“Look, it’s not like I’m a true mindspeaker.I spend a lot of time with the animals, and I’ve gotten to know their personalities.And sometimes I can pick something up that someone else might not, that’s all.”
I narrowed my eyes.It sounded to me like Dylan was trying to convince himself more than he was convincing the rest of us.Not that I blamed him.Mindspeakers didn’t have to be in shifter form to communicate with other shifters, and they could also touch minds with humans and other animals.They were rare, and more than one Alpha over the years had felt threatened by the power of mindspeakers.Victoria had killed hers, which set off the chain reaction that led to my mother taking over the clan.Even when they were respected, it was hard to include them with the rest of the clan.No one liked to be around someone who knew everyone’s secrets.
“Do you think you could do that with these wolves?”I asked him.
