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“Patience,” I mutter as I rise from my cot in the cabin’s dark root cellar and start up the stairs to the kitchen to fetch her meal.
Each move I make—from pulling apples and dried fish from the pantry to breaking the ice in Laura’s barrel on the back porch and filling it with fresh water—is exactly the same. But for some reason, the air feels charged with unsettling possibilities.
I am oddly…agitated.
The hairs at the back of my neck stand at attention, my skin crawls, and a knot of irritation builds in my chest that no amount of assuring myself tonight is a night like any other can soothe away.
Finally, when I’m unable to focus on the words swimming on the page of my book or release the tension in my jaw, I throw on my coat and the sock cap with the least amount of bear hair clinging to the wool and call, “I’ll be back before sunrise. Don’t empty the pantry or you’ll sleep in the swamp tonight and fend for yourself tomorrow.”
Laura bellows something that sounds like a laugh, but she knows I’m serious.
The last time she broke the lock off the pantry and devoured its contents, I refused to refill it for two weeks. I survive on blood packets collected from the Blackmore estate every other Saturday and almost never have guests. I have no use for food aside from to provide for Laura’s needs. She was forced to hunt and scavenge like a normal bear who hasn’t been spoiled beyond belief and—judging by the non-stop wailing and the cord of firewood flung into swamp in protest—she didn’t enjoy it one bit.
Years ago, when I first found a wounded baby bear whimpering beside her dead mother, I assumed I’d spend a few months helping her heal and she’d be back in the wild by spring. Instead, I gained a demanding pet and devoted protector my brother Darcy calls my “Fur Wife.”
But, of course, she’s nothing of the kind. My affections for Laura are purely platonic. My affections for all females, regardless of species, are purely platonic.
Except for one…
One woman, who glides through my dreams every night, beckoning with her graceful hands and clever eyes, tempting me to break all my promises.
But I won’t break them—not ever again. That night with Annie Wonderfully was a terrible mistake, but she survived it and returned home to her sisters. She’s safe, and she’ll remain that way, as long as she remains far away from me.
I’ve been dead for over two-hundred years, but I haven’t changed. Not really. I’m still the same head-strong, arrogant man who thought he could bend Fate to his will. I’m still the selfish monster who was too blind to see that my ambition was putting everything that truly mattered at risk until it was too late.
And even if I have changed and learned the error of my ways, I don’t deserve salvation. I don’t deserve mercy or the affection in Annie’s hands, her kiss, her voice as she promised me that everything would be all right.
Everything will never be “all right.”
Not for me.
And that’s as it should be.
By the time I reach town, a light snow is falling, the kind that usually brings peace to a troubled heart.
But the flakes that perch on my nose for a breath before being swept away only add to the pressure in my chest. My hands curl into fists by my sides and my narrowed eyes sweep the streets of downtown, searching for a target for the rage building inside of me. Brawling in the city limits is frowned upon, but my brother, Colin, is the sheriff. He knows I only unleash my violent side on those who deserve it. If I slam a fist into the stomach of a man roughing up his girlfriend or kick one of the assholes who keep stealing Sally’s planters from the front of her salon, he’ll look the other way.
But the town troublemakers are nowhere to be seen.
The only soul dancing anywhere close to the line is a wolf shifter boy of maybe eight or nine who’s stolen his little brother’s sled. He laughs maniacally as he races toward the hill behind the police station, the Flexible Flier held overhead, while his little brother plops down on his snow-suited bottom to wail at his mother’s feet. A beat later, his mother scoops him up in her arms, cuddling him close and whispering soft assurances against his pudgy cheek until he quiets and loops his arms around her neck with a sigh.
For a moment, I can almost smell the warm sweetness of my own children when they were that small…
I glance quickly away from the scene, a poisonous knot rising in my throat.
I shouldn’t have come to town.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I won’t find it here, surrounded by people going about their lives, cuddling their children and planning what to make for dinner and wondering if the skating rink will be fully frozen by this weekend. I have never truly belonged here, but there are nights when being on the outside looking in isn’t so bad, nights when I can observe the goings on of this close-knit community like a favorite film I’ve enjoyed dozens of times before.
Then there are nights like tonight, when I want to run bellowing through the streets, warning these smug, happy people that life is fleeting and happiness even more so.
They have no idea how lucky they are or how quickly everything that makes them human could be snatched away, transforming them into wraiths with a gaping hole where their hearts used to be.
I’m haunted by every trill of laughter from the community center and the yeasty, homey smells emerging from the bakery. Haunted by the children screaming as they zoom down the hill on their sleds and the couples huddled around the firepits in front of the new Toil and Trouble restaurant, chatting and stealing kisses while they wait for a table to open. Haunted even by the stars spinning overhead through the breaks in the clouds, the ones that seem to promise that the darkness inside of me will continue to swell—larger and blacker—until it devours me whole, and I commit one final, unforgiveable sin.
I don’t deserve the release of death.
I deserve to live and to suffer for as long as the Goddess sees fit.
