Authors: T. S. Joyce
Woodsman Werebear (10 page)
Damon Daye’s house was so cold.
The midwife requested the heater be turned up to someone outside the door.
Clean towels, clean linens, everything in white. Why white? Why not black to hide the stains better?
Screaming, curling into herself, agony.
She’d left Drew at the door. The separation had already begun.
Diem held her hand tight, but the room was a blur.
Sweat, effort, pain.
Push, rest, push, rest, forever and ever.
It would never end.
But then it did.
A baby’s cry.
“It’s a girl,” the midwife said in a proud voice.
Eyes closed. Keep them closed. Don’t look at her, or you’ll never be okay.
“Do you want to see her?” Diem, so sweet. So caring about her feelings.
This was her moment, though. Diem had her daughter.
“Can you take her away?”
“Riley—”
Ragged whisper. “Please?”
Harper’s cries faded. Door clicked closed.
Midwife looked sad as sobs wracked Riley’s body.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
She was supposed to feel relief.
This was supposed to be her redemption.
So why did it suddenly feel like she’d just lost everything?
The nurse hugged her shoulders and the midwife, Dora, followed.
It was the older woman’s sad smile that brought a sigh of resignation from Riley’s lips. “What?”
“I just don’t want you to rush and do anything you’ll regret, dear. It’s okay to have feelings about these things, you know?”
She did know. She’d been trying desperately to keep her well of feelings from overflowing completely and ruining Diem and Bruiser’s moment. “I’ll be fine. I’ll deal with everything better if I’m not right in the thick of it like I am here.”
“Okay.” She and the nurse headed for the door, but Dora turned back to Riley before she left. “You know, Riley, you fit in the shifter world. You’ve slipped in here and found your place seamlessly. It’s been wonderful to watch you and Diem’s relationship grow over the last few days here. Don’t take friendship like that for granted.”
“I won’t. I’m going to call her the second I get home.” Emotion made her words come out too airy, so she stopped talking and gave Dora a little wave.
Puffing air out of her cheeks, she fingered a small, gold heart necklace Damon had given her as a push present. On the front, her initial was engraved, while on the back, there was a cursive
H
for Harper with the baby’s birthstone jewel beside it—a tiny opal. She would wear it every day for always to remember the little girl she’d protected and loved. The little dragon, or bear, that owned her heart.
Damon knocked softly on the doorframe. Dressed impeccably, as always, he stood with his elbow extended. He’d already asked her to stay. It had been so hard telling everyone no, especially since she hadn’t been able to put into words the reasons she couldn’t stay. No one would understand.
Mason had already taken her bag down to the car while Dora and the nurse had checked her one last time to approve her for travel, but now it was time to leave this place and begin to heal.
Damon waved goodbye from his front porch as Mason drove her away. The man was always stoic, but today he seemed to be wrestling with his emotions. He kept swallowing hard as she waved back to him.
Heart in her throat, she turned around and cradled her duffle bag over her now-empty stomach like a comfort blanket.
She was about to leave Diem and Damon and Bruiser.
She was about to leave the Ashe Crew and the mountains she’d fallen in love with.
She was about to leave Drew.
The ache in her chest burned brighter, and she swallowed a sob so she wouldn’t catch Mason’s attention. Already, he’d cast her a few concerned looks in the rearview.
Scooting over to the window, she bit her thumbnail and tried to blink her tears back. She couldn’t say goodbye to Drew or to the others. She’d always been shit at goodbyes and wouldn’t ever leave if she had to go through something so traumatic. This was for the best, she told herself, as she had a hundred times already. A clean break would be easier for everyone.
On and on they drove as, outside the window, evergreens passed in a muddy patchwork of greens and browns. The sky was overcast with fast moving, rain-heavy clouds, creating a dark ambiance that fit her mood. They passed the switchback and the landing. The long arms of the metal equipment stood frozen in the air, as if in mid-chore when the Ashe Crew had called it a day.
She searched for Drew’s truck, but the dirt parking area was completely empty.
“When I was your age, I fell in love with a woman,” Mason said.
Riley frowned and looked at him through the rearview mirror. His eyes had gone emotional as the road passed beneath the tires of the dark Town Car.
“Do you know what I am, Riley? What kind of shifter?”
“Drew told me you are a boar shifter. Not a pig, but one of those huge Russian boars with the long tusks.”
“Yes. And in my culture, the males sometimes take two or three mates in a lifetime. We’re not monogamous by nature, but I was. I am. My mate was human, and she died after we’d been paired for only two years.”
“Oh no, Mason. I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head slowly and told her, “Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault, Riley. Not ever. I got two beautiful years with my Esmerelda. Two years of memories that will last a lifetime because there will never be another for me.”
Unease filled her as the Asheland Mobile Park came into view. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I believe in love and not wasting it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mason didn’t answer but instead pulled through the back entrance of the trailer park and pulled the car to a stop in the middle of the street.
He turned in the driver’s seat, sadness pooling in his dark eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to say goodbye, but I can’t take you out of here without you hearing what they have to say.”
“What?” she asked in a panicked voice as her door opened.
Drew stood there, one arm behind his back in a formal gesture she’d never seen him do, the other hand outstretched to her. His chin was lifted high, and hurt was etched in every beautifully masculine facet of his face.
She couldn’t breathe.
Be brave.
Slipping her hand in his, she allowed him to help her out. Tenderly, she stepped out of the car to face the Ashe Crew. Every one of them were gathered in a half-circle in front of her—everyone but Diem and Bruiser.
“I know you’re leaving,” Drew said quietly. “I knew it from the moment you looked at me with your heart in your eyes when you went into that room to have Harper. I knew I’d lost you, and it gutted me. I can’t live with myself and with your decision unless I try, though, Riley. You’re it for me. My mate, my better half, the part of my soul I thought had gone dark before I met you. You’re my light.” His voice hitched, and he cleared his throat and rested his hands on his hips, staring at her helplessly before he continued. “I’ve talked to Tagan and the others. I’ll leave this place for you. I understand the reasons you don’t want to be here, and they revolve around Harper and the pain of giving up a child who you love so completely. I’ll come with you if you’ll have me, Riley.”
“You’d leave all this?” she asked in a wrecked voice. She gestured to the mountains and to the Ashe Crew. “You’d leave them and the life you’ve built here. For me?”
“In a heartbeat. You’re my mate.” He said it with a tiny shake of his head, as if that should’ve been obvious.
“I can’t ask you to leave your crew,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
“Okay, then there is someone you need to meet.”
Diem cut through the crowd, holding Harper wrapped in a fuzzy white blanket. Bruiser followed his mate, his dark eyes steady on Riley.
“No,” Riley said thickly, shaking her head. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and two warm tears slipped down her cheeks. “I told you I can’t see her.”
Something warm and soft bumped against Riley’s chest.
“Hold the daughter you gave us,” Diem said, sniffling.
Riley cradled her in her arms, but refused to look. She couldn’t. Her heart would break if she did.
“Mate,” Drew said in a deep, thick voice. “Open your eyes and see what you’ve given to us.”
A sob escaped Riley as she cracked her eyes open and looked down at the baby she’d grown and protected. At the tiny baby she’d given birth to. Riley gasped at her beauty. Perfect little nose and ears. A crop of brunette hair like her father’s and puckered pink lips. It was her eyes that stunned Riley to stillness, though. One of Harper’s eyes was a soft brown, the color of Diem’s, and one was blue with a long, reptilian pupil.
“She doesn’t need to have her first Change for us to know what she is,” Bruiser said in a proud voice. “You have given us the last-born dragon, our little Harper girl.”
“Vessel of the Dragon,” Kellen said, kneeling.
“Vessel of the Dragon, Brighton rasped out past his ruined vocal chords, following Kellen to his knees in the dirt.
“Vessel of the Dragon,” the others repeated, doing the same until every last member of the Ashe Crew was kneeling in front of her except Diem, who hugged her shoulders tightly.
“You have it in your head how it will be, living here while Bruiser and I raise Harper,” Diem said in a voice as soft as a breath. “It’s complicated, and emotions are running high, but I want you to know before you make the decision to go or stay that it doesn’t have to be how you imagine. It takes a crew to raise a cub, Riley. Every one of us has a part in bringing Wyatt up, and now every member will play a role in raising Harper. You can be a part of that if you want. I know it’s not a conventional way to do this, but you feel important. For Drew and for the rest of us. I want Harper to grow up knowing you and knowing the sacrifice you made to give her to us.”
Riley hugged Harper closer, inhaling the sweet baby scent of her hair as another pair of tears slipped down her face.
“Drew will be broken without you,” Diem said, resting her head against Riley’s. “The rest of us will be, too. Stay.”
Harper blinked slowly, and her pupils, both human and dragon, contracted, then dilated to normal again. So beautiful. So perfect.
Riley couldn’t leave now if she tried. Diem was right. Things didn’t have to be the way she imagined as long as everyone was willing. She wasn’t being kicked out of Harper’s life. She was being invited to take part in it. To watch her grow up and help guide her into the strong woman she knew her real parents would raise her to be.
She could stay here with Drew and be happy and cared for.
She could stay with her friends.
Riley imagined it now, living here, refurbishing furniture and having her own booth at the market in town on the weekends. Living with the man she loved and someday perhaps having a cub of their own. Learning what it would be like to really fit into a place—to belong. If she stayed, she would get to see Drew’s face when he saw the headstone she’d ordered for his mother’s grave—the white one with the ducks carved into it.
She could be one of the Ashe Crew if she could only force the words past her tightening vocal cords.
Looking at Harper, then at Drew, whose slow-forming crooked smile said the answer was already written all over her face.
“I’ll stay,” she whispered.
Drew pulled her in close, kissed her lips before she was pulled away into embrace after embrace. Her mate watched her with such adoration as she was passed through the crew. She couldn’t keep her eyes from him and that easy, happy smile. That hadn’t existed when she’d first met him.
She handed Harper back to her mother and smiled at the woman who had changed Riley’s stars with a simple letter pleading for a surrogate.
Riley wrapped her arms around Drew’s waist and rested against his chest as his heartbeat drummed steadily against her cheek. “I’ll need a workshop,” she said.
He chuckled. “Negotiations already. Woman, you can have whatever you want.”
“And you can have all of me,” she said, looking up into his blue-flame eyes. Pushing up on her tiptoes, she placed her lips near his ear and whispered, “I heard what you said when I was falling asleep in the tent.”
Easing back, he said, “Yeah? I do. And?”
“And I love you, too.”
The smile on his face faltered and returned slowly. “Riley, you’re not just the Vessel of the Dragon anymore. Now, you’re a part of the Ashe Crew.” He kissed her lips softly, then rested his forehead on hers. “Welcome home.”
