Moonsong, page 8
“Not an open declaration of war right now, no. We’ve got accords with all of the neighboring packs. But with you here now… that puts us in a precarious position.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did; it’s what you’re going to do. The prophecy is a pretty big deal to our people; we’re a superstitious bunch even in this day and age. But as soon as word travels that you’re here, things will get… well, you already know after what happened to your family,” she added softly.
“You think they’ll come for me again?” Amelia’s head came up sharply.
“Probably not the way they did before. Nothing so overt, it’d be too dangerous and might risk open war, but maybe something… I dunno sneakier.”
“Sneakier? Like what?”
“Like… trying to grab you when you’re alone in town, or maybe try to charm you away from your family.”
“Grab me off the street?” Her voice was barely above a squeak; did people really think they could get away with that in the twenty-first century?
“I’m not trying to freak you out, I swear Millie. I just want you to be careful, alright? Just keep an eye out for anything weird or unusual when you’re out on your own, that’s all. You were at the gathering; you saw how many of us there are around here. You’re well protected if anyone tries anything out in the open, and you’re safe on our lands.”
“Everything is weird and unusual to me here,” Millie frowned, looking out the window as they approached the town center.
“It’ll be okay, Millie; we’ll protect you, I promise. There’s not one of us who wouldn’t give our lives for you, you’re part of the pack now.”
Amelia didn’t want anybody giving their lives for her, but she didn’t want to sound like she didn’t appreciate the offer. “This is the way it’s gonna be then? Hunted, all because of some moldy old words that may or may not even be about me?”
“You make it sound like a death sentence, it’s not,” Scarlett tried to explain. “And it’s not like this is forever, it’s only until you choose a mate and have your firstborn.”
“What if I don’t even want to have kids? Now it’s like it’s not even my choice anymore,” Millie’s voice rose with frustration.
“You don’t want to have kids?” Scarlett gasped in surprise.
“I don’t know… I don’t know what I want, that’s the whole point I guess. I’m only twenty-one years old; I’ve never even thought about getting married or being a mother. This is… it’s kind of a lot to have thrust upon you all at once. Oh, and by the way, there are killer werewolves out there, so no pressure or anything; better make that decision quick,” she smirked. A deep cleansing breath, Millie tried her best to refocus and not dwell on what she couldn’t control, not wanting to let it dominate her life if she could help it. There was plenty of time for that in the sleepless hours of the night. “Let’s forget about that for now, okay? It’s off to the post office for us and then it’s shopping Friday!” She offered her cousin a cheery though slightly forced smile, making an effort to lighten the mood.
Scarlett met her smile with a cheerful grin of her own. “That’s right, no more doom and gloom, let’s get back to the really important stuff. Shopping.”
Chapter Ten
The rest of the morning passed with none of the heavier topics of conversation. The locals were getting used to her, or at least they seemed to be getting control over the impulse to stare at her at any rate.
Browsing at Jack’s Trading Post, which boasted all manner of wares from wading boots to arts and crafts supplies, local made jewelry and gift items, Millie looked over the new stock since her last visit the other day. The store was rapidly becoming her favorite in town, (even though she was full up on hiking supplies and had no need for net repair kits) because there were so many kinds of wares she’d never checked out before, some whose uses completely escaped her.
A wolf figurine caught her eye, and Millie wondered if it was new or if she’d missed it the last time. She might not ever have looked at it twice except it reminded her of the one she’d seen at Cutter’s place being used as a bookend. So that was where he’d gotten it? It stood to reason, they had everything else.
Scarlett joined her, a few purchases in her own hand basket. “They’re good aren’t they? Hard to believe he churns them out so fast, but then again, it’s not like the guy has anything else to do all day,” she moved on to look at the jewelry.
Not quite ready to leave the statue behind, Millie picked it up, surprised by the weight of it. The price sticker underneath showed seventy-nine dollars; a high ticket item for a place like that. Still… the way he captured the lines of the wolf, its mix of raw power and soulful gaze… it spoke to her. Though it was more than she intended to spend, Millie couldn’t quite bring herself to put it down and carried it with her.
“You like that one? His wolf ones are my favorites, but the horses come in as a close second for me. There’s a whole series of them on display over at the gallery, but those will cost you an arm and a leg. They used to be really cheap until they started catching on. I heard he sold one piece on eBay for over a thousand dollars,” Scarlett whispered conspiratorially.
“Wow, so the artist is from around here then?” Amelia turned the carving over in her hands, fingers stroking over the back of its neck.
“Uh huh, he lives out in the woods, not too far from us. We can go and see the other ones if you want, but I can guarantee they’ll be marked up at least double what this one costs since they’re part of the exhibit.”
Staring down at the wolf, Amelia decided to buy it. After all, she had ample spending money thanks to her grandmother, and she might even approve of the impulse buy considering its subject. “Yeah sure, let’s do it. I’m gonna get this guy first though and stick him out in the car.”
“Alright, I’ll meet you at the gallery in a few minutes then. I need to go and collect the rent from the glass place next door first before I forget. Everyone else sends their check in the mail but Ernie thinks the mail is going to steal his money or something,” she rolled her eyes. “The gallery is two streets over up towards the big anchor statue at the mouth of the harbor. You can’t miss it; it’s called Two Hands Gallery.”
“Okay, I’ll see you there in a few,” Amelia promised, stepping up to the register to make her purchase. The proprietor, a lanky man named Jack as the sign promised, refused to take her money, vowing to add it to Adele’s account on her behalf. Taking the carefully wrapped carving back to the car, she walked to the gallery, finding it right where Scarlett said it would be, under a hand lettered sign suspended by two hands.
A bell jingled when she opened the door, but beyond that sound, there was no sign of life as she entered the gallery which occupied the entire ground floor of a large Victorian house. The high ceilings and large bay windows made for a bright open feeling, and the homey setting made it easier for her to picture some of the exhibits in her own place rather than the stark white setting she’d always associated with galleries from movies and TV shows.
Wandering through the house, she found the section she wanted easily enough; an entire corner had been devoted to the wooden figures. The smaller ones sat behind glass in a lighted cabinet; larger pieces on display on pedestals, she studied them with interest. They were undoubtedly by the same artist as the wolf she purchased and the two carvings she found at Cutter’s place. Most of them depicted woodland animals or flowers but there were a few human studies as well, including a chubby cheeked little toddler sitting on his rump, face poised on the brink of tears. It was a clever piece, as they all were, considering that they were fashioned from a single piece of wood. The largest piece stood on its own table depicting a mermaid sitting on a rock with a spray of water rising from behind her, seashells in her long hair that covered up all of the necessary bits to keep her decent. Her expression was serene but also a little sad, as if she’d lost something to the sea.
“A masterful piece isn’t it? Destined to be the showpiece of any home.”
Millie turned to regard the speaker, a plain woman in her early fifties, dressed in a brightly patterned, flowing caftan, a matching scarf tied in her hair. “Yes, it’s beautiful, how much is it?”
The woman smiled and leaned close, whispering a figure in her ear. Millie’s eyebrows rose at the quoted price, it was far more than she had expected even with Scarlett’s warning.
“Expensive, I know,” the woman smiled again. “But I can assure you, the piece is guaranteed to rise in value. The artist is much in demand, especially since we opened our website. Why only last week we sold one of his pieces for nearly twice that,” she added confidentially.
“What can you tell me about the artist? He’s obviously very talented,” Millie probed.
“He’s notoriously reclusive. I can never drag him in here for shows, and he’s turned down offers from bigger galleries, even when they offered to fly him down to LA, all expenses paid. Here, I have a little informational flyer that has some bare bones information on him; he wouldn’t even let me take his picture for the website!” she laughed as though that was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. Retrieving the flyer from a stack stuck to the wall in a plastic holder she handed it over to Amelia.
“Thank you,” Amelia replied automatically, her eyes scanning over the press release. There was very little personal information on the man himself, only that he lived in the hills surrounding Cutter’s Folly which his family had helped to found back in 1876. The dominating feature on the slick paper was a picture of one of his carvings; a large wolf in mid leap, cleverly balanced by a massive base fashioned to look like a pair of boulders. Apparently the statue was donated to the town and could be found in Cutter’s Square by the bakery. In lieu of a picture, they had a representation of the artist’s signature across the bottom corner of the flyer.
“J. Cutter.” Amelia read out loud. Was he related to her Cutter? Not that he was hers by any means, but the Cutter she knew at any rate.
“I see you found it alright,” Scarlett’s voice came through as her cousin joined her before the exhibit. “See anything you have to have?” She smiled pleasantly at the owner who backed off, the smile still fixed on her face but not quite reaching her eyes anymore at Scarlett’s appearance.
“You were right; they’re gorgeous pieces and a lot more spendy than the wolf I bought at the trading company. How come he lets them sell there for so much cheaper than the prices here?”
“He’s old friends with Jack, I guess. Jack’s been selling his pieces ever since Cutter decided to put them out for sale. Besides, he’s got to be socking away a decent amount of money from his sales here and online, he can afford to cut his friend a deal. And it’s not like he’s going through money like water, he’s probably got it all stuffed in his mattress,” Scarlett snickered.
“You make him sound like an old kook, have you met him?”
“Lots of times, everybody knows Cutter, he’s lived here his whole life. He just doesn’t talk much and I’ve never seen him at a pack gathering. It’s sad really, he thinks he’s cursed.”
“Cursed?” Millie’s voice dropped. It was getting interesting and her suspicion started to grow that her savior Cutter and the artist Cutter were one and the same. Both lived in seclusion, both were less than talkative, both were pack members and of course they shared the same name.
“The story goes, he was Grandmother’s Beta back in the day; you know, like a second in command?” Scarlett stepped closer, lowering her voice for Millie’s ears only. “He had his whole future in front of him, big plans on going away to college on a scholarship, though him and Gran had a difference of opinion on that. He was just as stubborn as she was I guess, and wouldn’t bend to her will. She still gets mad if you bring it up now, so I wouldn’t,” she grinned.
“So, he went away to college, and then what?” Millie prompted.
“See that’s just it, he didn’t go to college. Instead his high school sweetheart turned up pregnant and he gave up those plans to marry her instead.”
“So, he thinks he’s cursed because he didn’t use a condom?” Amelia cocked a brow at that one and Scarlett giggled again.
“No, she had the baby and they lived together over on Cutter Way in their big ol’ family home. Everybody thought they were happy as clams for a couple of years. He started working on a fishing boat and Celia, his wife, she settled in to raise their little boy.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Where did the curse come into play she wondered?
“Except that apparently being a fisherman’s wife didn’t sit so well with Celia and she started… running around if you catch my drift.”
“Oh… I see.”
“Nobody knows if he knew about it and didn’t care, or if he was too busy out working to notice, but then little Ian died and it blew them apart, there was nothing left to hold onto.”
“Oh God, their little boy died?” Pity welled up for anyone to have suffered through something like that.
Scarlett nodded solemnly. “Celia was supposedly entertaining a gentleman caller when the little boy got up from his nap and wandered out of the house and into the woods. They never found him.”
“Then they don’t know for sure if he died?”
“Trust me, if that little boy was still alive, Cutter would have found him. He went crazy insane when he found out what happened. Pulled off his clothes and shifted to wolf right there in front of the search party and took off after him trying to track him. Adele was absolutely livid that he’d done such a thing in front of so many witnesses but… I mean you can understand why he did it.”
Amelia nodded, feeling in her heart that Scarlett was definitely talking about the man she’d met in the woods the day before.
“Anyway, he never found the little boy and he’s the best tracker in the pack. Others helped with the search, of course, and so did the local law enforcement. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth,” she said sadly. “Cutter didn’t come home for weeks and when he did it was to an empty house. Celia ran off, leaving him a note. I don’t know what it said, but the story goes he was so upset, he cursed the Gods for what they’d done to him. He’s been cut off from most people ever since. He stopped living in the big house and moved to a little cabin in the woods. For a few years nobody saw him at all, we all assumed he either moved away too or went rogue.”
“What does that mean, went rogue?”
“When you give up your human form and choose to remain in wolf form, cut off from your pack, like a wild animal, that’s what going rogue means,” she replied solemnly. “But then he started showing up in town again for supplies, keeping to himself. He only ever talks to Jack at the trading post and a couple of his old buddies in the Muddy Rudder sometimes. For the most part he just grunts at you if you try to talk to him.”
“That sounds like Cutter alright,” Millie snorted before she realized what she’d said, and it was Scarlett’s turn to gasp in surprise.
“You’ve met him?”
“I… yeah, I met him out in the woods yesterday,” she hedged, recalling how he said her grandmother would be less than thrilled by the revelation.
Scarlett guided her outside before she pressed her for more details. “So spill, did he actually say anything to you, or was it like he just stepped around you and moved on?” she asked, eyes dancing with excitement.
“No, he talked to me, eventually anyway. He ah… well he sort of saved my life,” Amelia admitted, unsure what else to say in the face of her cousin’s enthusiasm.
Eyes round as saucers, Scarlett grabbed her arm. “Shut up! He saved your life? How?” Amelia took a deep breath and briefly described the scene in the woods with the mountain lion, downplaying the danger as much as she could, as well as his injuries. “Then that’s whose blood was on you when you got home?”
“Yep.”
“Wow,” was all the blonde could say while they walked along the waterfront. “And he actually let you help him back to his cabin?”
“Well, I didn’t give him a whole lot of choice, and it was my fault he got all banged up in the first place after all.”
“So, that’s where you were all afternoon then, at his cabin? Didn’t he kick you out?”
“He tried to, but he needed me to sew up his shoulder, and then after a few drinks he was… friendlier.”
“Friendlier?” Scarlett quirked a single brow and Amelia couldn’t help but laugh.
“Not that friendly. He just stopped trying to toss me out after that. Then he passed out and I couldn’t leave him there. Let me ask you something, is it normal for shifters to pass out and burn up with fever after being wounded?”
“After a serious wound, yes. It’s very common,” Scarlett nodded. “It’s the body’s reaction to our metabolism shifting into high gear to repair the damage. You fall into a deep sleep and when you awake you’re usually pretty weak and ravenous for a while, but we heal very, very fast.”
“That must come in handy.”
“It’s a good thing you came home when you did, that would have been an interesting scene for Chase to walk in on,” Scarlett snorted in laughter.
“Why, doesn’t he like Cutter?”
“It’s not about Cutter; I don’t think he’d like you being in any other man’s house alone.”
“Why not? It’s not like we were in there for some afternoon delight or anything. Besides, Chase and I, we’re not… I mean like I said, there’s only been one kiss between us.”
“But he’s declared his interest for you,” Scarlett replied matter of factly.
“Declared his interest…” Millie sighed, it must be one of those pack things again. “Scarlett, I like your brother fine, but I just got here, I’m not planning on choosing a mate at any time soon if that’s what he’s thinking.”
“I know. But Chase is used to getting things his way, patience isn’t his strong suit. Just try to be as upfront with him as possible, okay?”
