Beauty's Beast(43)

The news jolted her awake. “Alon?”

Her father informed her that the Skinwalkers and Spirit Children had signed a new treaty, but the Ghost Children had refused their invitation and had left at sunset.

Carried on a cresting wave of dread, she ran to the place where Alon’s tent had stood to find only a circle of flattened grass.

Her anxiety turned to grief and she crumpled to the ground in stunned silence. It was Aldara who found her there. One look at the pity on her face and Samantha understood the truth. Alon had done as he had promised. He had seen her safe and he had left her.

After that she didn’t recall what was said. She didn’t remember what she did. It was like a big black hole had opened and she had dropped in. It took weeks to crawl back out.

She knew her mother and father had taken her home. She knew Blake and Aldara were making a life together. She seemed incapable of feeling happy for them. She felt frozen over inside.

It was Aldara who finally snapped her back to reality when she bluntly told Samantha that she had to eat because the babies were growing weak. Samantha would not have that. She still crept through the days, but now she had purpose. The babies were here and they needed her.

Samantha now set about the job of seeing she stayed fit and healthy. She had a reason to rise and wash and eat and move. Her heart still ached and her mood easily turned blue, but she fought now, determined to see her children born and determined to live to raise them.

Her mother was delighted at her news, but her father was worried. He knew from Bess how the Ghostlings were born. But no Halfling had ever birthed such children. The uncertainty did not weigh on Samantha. She had Aldara to watch over her and keep her from venturing off alone to bear her children.

With a father and a brother who were both healers, she thought her mother’s precautions to send for a midwife were unnecessary. But she accepted the arrival of Virginia Thistleback, a wise, old Skinwalker swan who had delivered both Samantha and Blake. She had also fostered Alon’s mother, when Bess Suncatcher first grew her feather cloak and changed into her raven form.

Virginia was nearly three hundred, but strong and hearty as a hickory. Her hair was as white as her feathers and had always been so, according to Samantha’s mother. She examined Samantha and announced that the twins were growing more quickly than Skinwalker babies and would arrive within the month.

Three months into her pregnancy, Samantha was getting larger by the minute when Bess Suncatcher arrived to speak to Aldara. She was shocked to see Samantha’s condition and then overjoyed—until she discovered that Alon was the father.

Samantha had been unable to keep Bess from going to seek her oldest son. It was a terrible time, because Samantha feared he would return only out of duty and was equally afraid he would not return at all. She didn’t know which would be worse. She only knew that she loved Alon and he had set her aside as promised.

To him, she was a responsibility successfully discharged. The lovemaking that had changed her world and brought her this gift of children was a mistake for Alon never to be repeated.

Samantha found little joy in the recognition that she could now use her Seer gifts to expel ghosts and help those souls who were too confused to cross to the Spirit World. She could heal the ill and injured. Her family had all survived the war and, for the first time in their lives, they did not have to run.

But Blake and Aldara were planning to move to their own home as soon as Samantha delivered. And that forced Samantha to recognize that she was approaching her third decade and had never had a home of her own.

She wanted one with Alon and their babies. It made her feel ungrateful, since she had been given so much.

The first pains shot through her lower back and abdomen. She stood to discover her water had broken.

The twins were coming.

Samantha was filled with the sudden irresistible urge to move, to go to the forest alone to deliver her babies.

* * *

Alon smelled the wolf first, and a moment later he spied a familiar raven circling the camp. His mother had found him. He guessed the wolf was Nicholas Chien, a tracker and his mother’s old friend, but he did not make an appearance. Apparently finding Alon was all his mother required.

She landed in a branch above the rough-hewn bench upon which he rested. He had carved this bench with his claws, and it sat on the edge of the little compound they had created in the Canadian Rockies, between two high peaks, where humans rarely ventured.

“So here is my little hermit.” Her voice was high and raspy when she was in bird form, but from her tone and the ruffled feathers at her nape, he knew she was in a foul mood.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Oh, so you still call me this? I thought you had renounced all ties to the evil Skinwalkers. Since you still acknowledge my relationship to you, I will tell you that this is no way to treat those who love you.”

She dropped down to the bench beside him. His second in command, Cody, whom he had known almost since he was born, stepped forward.

“Mother?” he said.

“I’ll deal with you in a minute. Now I need some privacy to speak to my eldest son.”

None was as fierce as Cody in battle, yet a reprimand from their mother sent him scurrying for cover.

There was a flash of white light, like a lightbulb blowing out, and his mother sat beside him. She changed her feather cape so fast he nearly did not see it at all, for in only an instant she was dressed, from her high-heeled boots to her fashionable woolen jacket, in black. This was not a signal of her ire, which he marked now only by her flashing eyes, but the color she wore in both forms. He’d once asked if she was married in black and she said she had been, but would be buried in white to mark the passing of her soul across the veil that separates the Spirit World from the Way of Souls. Unlike the rest of the Halflings, his mother had actually seen that veil.

“You are breaking your father’s heart,” she said and then pinned him with her fixed stare.

It was a struggle not to squirm before her. But in the three and a half months since his departure, he had accomplished much. And in his heart, he knew this was the right course. The Ghost Children were Halflings, but they were different from the Skinwalkers and Spirit Children. They were not born in human form. They were capable of hunting from birth, and they had no souls. And so, no soul mates, no eternal love. He thought again of Samantha and felt the familiar stabbing pain strike his heart.

“It is not your obligation to raise Ghost Children. We agreed that it would be best to alleviate both of you of the responsibility of caring for us.”

“Did you, now? How noble. Did you also decide it would be best to alleviate us of the greatest joy in our lives, alleviate us of our children, our grandchildren?”

Alon felt the certainty that had sustained him for months begin to erode, like ice beneath warm water.

He tried once more. “We never meant to hurt you.”

“Small consolation,” she said, giving him her elegant profile.

“Mother, we know you love us. But we’re not like Skinwalkers. The young ones are dangerous.” He recalled that they had nearly killed Samantha when she had first arrived at their home. “They pose a threat to others.”

“That’s not so!”

She never could see the worst in them. But mothers were like that.

She faced him, her expression earnest and resolute. “Not one of you ever attacked Cesar or me. If you are so dangerous and deadly. If you are born killers. If the world must be protected from you, as they all say—then why did you not kill a small raven and her helpless Spirit Child mate? I have no fangs, Cesar has no claws. Easy prey. Yet here I am. Why, Alon?”

The muscles in his jaw unlocked and his mouth dropped open. Why hadn’t they? Both of his parents were strong, but Bess could not outfly him and Cesar could not outrun him. Yet they let these two scold and teach and direct and nurture. Was she right?

“But...” He could not come up with a rational explanation.

“You never attacked us, even when you did not like the consequences we set for you. You never threatened me and you never hurt Cesar, until now.”

“I never meant to hurt either of you.”

“We are not the only ones you have hurt.”

Did she refer to Samantha?

“I told her I would keep her safe. I made no promises I did not keep.”

“How earnest of you.”

“She has likely moved on.” He feared this was true, though it broke his heart to say it aloud.

“Really? Well, I know otherwise. She told me she never saw a better fighter than you. She said you were the one and only man who ever made her feel completely safe. That does not sound like a woman anxious to be rid of your odious company.”

“She said this?” He could not have her, could not let this tiny silver flash of hope lure him like a bait fish thrashing on a hook. Yet, he clung to his mother’s words, starved for more.

“Yes. She told me at your sister’s wedding.”