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I’ve shifted before I know it, nose to the ground and paws clawing the earth as I desperately search for any sign of my woman. The ground is churned, vegetation freshly dead everywhere, but not a single track from Cricket.
Follow his scent…
A voice in my mind, masculine, but not my own. I pad over to Chase obediently and smell the eyeball. Corey’s blood and flesh reeks, and like a path appearing before my eyes, I can see every step he took away from here. His path is lit up before me like flecks of blood in the air and I follow it without delay. My steps are slow, calculated, searching for any sign of Cricket while I follow the blood trail of the monster.
“No signs are good news, Jackson,” Chase says, still human by my side. “No signs mean he didn’t catch her, means he’s still out here looking…”
“Means I can take my revenge…”I send to his mind, to all the wolves around me in both human and wolf form. When I catch him I’ll devour him, no matter how rancid his flesh, I’ll eat every bit of him until he’s nothing but my shit as I scatter him across the forest floor.
The moon above us shifts, clouds scattering the sky and thunder roaring, until it seems as if there’s a path of moonlight laid before me. I stop, scenting the air, unsure of what to do when a vision of Cassius appears before me. I look around, no one else can see him, and he’s pointing down the moonlit path. I need no more convincing. I take off at a breakneck pace, following the vision of my ancestor running beside me as a wolf himself.
He is leading me to Cricket, I know it.
Beside me Rachel catches up, howling into the night, and I see in her eyes that she can see Cassius between us. Cassius summoned a healer to me. Which means Cricket needs a healer. My blood runs cold when I feel another wolf at my other side, and when I look my heart skips a beat. Evelyn, her pure white wolf form runs beside me as well. Faster that she should have been able at this age.
This is bad, this is very, very bad.
She too can see Cassius. She, too, has been summoned. Cricket… Moon above, Cricket!
Panic spurs me to run faster, and I leave the healers behind in my dust. Cassius’ form disappears through a wall of ivy and my paws don’t falter a second before I’m running headlong into what looks like the sheer face of a mountain. I’m immediately enveloped in darkness, but I run forward anyway. Let me die by bashing into a cave wall if that’s what is meant to be, but no amount of darkness or shadow will slow me now.
I burst into the main room of the cave, dimly lit by moonlight from above, and see Cricket thrashing in the arms of an illusion at the base of a great willow tree. I run forward, leaping over a babbling brook, and sliding to my knees as I shift to human form and take my lover’s wolf into my arms. Tears streaming from my eyes, I watch as Raina rises and Cassius enfolds her in his own arms. Both of my ancestors look full of trepidation and sadness, but I won’t accept it.
Suddenly the cave seems to sparkle with light, and I turn my head to see Rachel and Evelyn walking through the cave entrance. All around them fireflies swarm, flying away and lighting the cave with ethereal beauty. I can see the entire cave now, walls full of carvings and mysticism. Various tables and shelves line the circle around the tree. This place is sacred, and I watch in awe as Raina guides the healers to potions and vials and strokes their faces with love.
Raina is here, Raina is guiding them… Cricket he will be healed. I know it.
The cave is churning with wolves now. Concerned parties looking over shoulders, hoping beyond hope that the seizing wolf in my arms can be saved. I don’t see anything but Cricket. She’s so small, even in her wolf form, almost no bigger than a pup herself. She’s shaking so hard, eyes rolled back in her head, that I have to hold her to my chest and use the tree to stabilize myself.
“Cricket, Olivia… I’m here…you’re safe.”
She seems to halt in seizing when she hears the name she was given as a child, but she can’t seem to stop. Her fangs are gnashing, her tongue bleeding, and her whimpering is so loud I can’t hear anything else. I know there's someone in the cave singing, likely the woman from the bonfire, but I can’t make out any words. Just a slow sad cadence that mingles with my mate’s cries of pain and my silent, mumbled prayers.
Outside the thunder roars, lighting crashing so often that it illuminated the night as if a new day has come. Raina is holding her hands in the air, calling the storm, summoning the power of nature. Rachel and Evelyn appear at her side and kneel beside me.
Rachel drops a tonic past Cricket’s mouth. Evelyn lays her hands on either side of Cricket’s head.
Raina hovers over us all, mouthing a silent incantation.
With hands on my mate, the three of them chant in unison. Scarlett’s voice rises and falls with the storm outside, harnessing the power even as our healers are using it to bolster their magic. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and every wolf in the cave is dead silent. Murmured spells, songs ebbing and flowing, lightning crashing and thunder rolling, and an eerie lack of any other noise seems to crash in on us at once.
Cricket arches in my arms, her wolf body straining as every drop of energy is channeled into her. I can feel the power radiating off these amazing women, their dedication and determination clear on their faces. I’m holding my breath. My heart is locked in my chest.
My soul is hovering in suspended animation.
Will this work? Is a beautiful, amazing life of love about to be gifted to me?
One word is a mantra in my mind.Please.Please.Please.
My arms tighten around Cricket as she shudders, an invisible war waging inside her. Magic against sickness. Love battling darkness.
Life versus death.
The singing reaches a crescendo, the storm a furious peak, an explosion of energy ricochets through the cave. Every living being inside feels it, is touched by it. Just as suddenly, everything falls silent. The thunder disappears, the chanting and singing go silent. Cricket is shifting, her body finally still. Her long limbs stretch out, her skin so pale, hair sprawled over my chest.
I feel her breathe once, twice.
Then nothing.
