Wolf-Bound: Unfamiliar Territory, page 5
When he returned, he stood behind her, rubbing her shoulders. Jenny sighed. “Mmm. That’s nice.”
Damien kissed the top of her head. “Well, we’re off. We decided to ride the fence line today.”
She stifled a burst of disappointment. As large as their portion of the mountain was, that meant they wouldn’t be back until after dark, and would still have to go back out and finish the job the next day. “All right.” Short notice, too. They usually planned these things days in advance. She tilted her head thoughtfully, looking up at him. “You’re worried about that sound we heard last night, aren’t you?”
The look her husbands shared irritated the heck out of her. “Look, just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’m some kind of china doll. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what’s wrong?” She speared Dev with her gaze.
He looked to Damien.
Jen sighed. Though both her men had strong alpha leanings, Damien had been the first of the twins to be born. In weyr families, the firstborn male of twins was usually the dominant one, and this was certainly true in their case. The fact was evident in both their manner and their appearance. Physically, Devlin stood slightly smaller, his body lithe and athletic. Damien’s build was thicker, more solidly muscled. He also measured an inch or two taller, making his the more formidable build. This was true in their wolf forms, as well.
And when it came to personality, outgoing Devlin radiated positive energy and good humor, but also reacted to things a little less maturely, tending to be rash and impulsive. Damien, on the other hand, was often serious, self-contained, even somewhat tense, but infinitely more responsible.
What all this meant in practical terms was that Devlin ultimately deferred to Damien when it came to serious matters. The only saving grace was that Dev would actually back her up in arguments if he thought what she said had merit. But after last night ‑‑ she couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of her lips at the memory ‑‑ she was really too tired for a long, drawn-out argument.
Dev’s gaze flicked back to her. “Don’t you think I should know if there’s something dangerous going on?” she asked, eyes wide and innocent.
Dev made a sympathetic face, glancing up at Damien again. “She has a point.”
His brother frowned. “But she’ll want to get involved, and if she gets involved ‑‑”
“Hey.” Jen raised a hand. “Sitting right here. I hate it when you talk around me like that.”
“Sorry.” Damien sighed, glancing back and forth between the pleading faces turned up to his. “All right, fine,” he grumbled. “You can tell her, but it’s only going to cause trouble.”
“I did some sniffing around this morning.” Dev plunged in immediately. He did, of course, mean this literally. “There’s a rogue wolf on the mountain.”
“A rogue wolf? Is that a big deal? What exactly is a ‘rogue’ wolf?”
He picked at a nonexistent spot on the table. “A rogue weyr, I should have said.”
She frowned, still not understanding. “Okaaay.”
Damien stepped away from her and leaned against the kitchen counter, taking over the explanation. “It’s a lone male weyr, a full weyr.” He sighed, rubbing his hands through his hair. “Hell. This is going to require some background information.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Males born to any breeding set that includes a full male weyr are always twins. You know that. What you might not know ‑‑ I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it ‑‑ is that even when these twins are apart, there’s this incredible bond, a psychic connection that’s palpable to other weyr. No matter how far away the other twin is, we should sense that connection. We should still perceive that other wolf.
“In this case, we don’t. The connection’s been severed. This wolf’s lost his twin. It’s…a very dangerous situation. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of human twins who fail to thrive after they lose their sibling. Well, it’s even worse for weyr. The bond between us, it’s…” He shook his head, while across the table Dev shuddered. “I pray we never have to go through anything like that.”
“I don’t understand. What’s so dangerous about it?”
Damien sighed again, plainly reluctant to explain. “Generally, one of three things happens when a twin is lost. If the weyr are over eighty, it’s painful, but generally the remaining twin will survive and finish out his lifespan, maybe a little subdued, but for the most part fine. It’s as though nature recognizes that age takes its toll, and lessens the effects for those who have lived more than half their lives.
“If you’re under eighty, either the remaining twin becomes…I don’t know, sickly, I guess. We call it the ‘pining,’ and it’s the most common response. Basically, they become very passive, losing the will to live and wasting away until they finally die themselves. Then there are the ones that revert.”
“Revert.”
He nodded. “Their minds can’t accept what’s happened. It’s a form of insanity, I guess, weyr style. They revert to wolf form, in order to run from their loss, and stay there. Instead of pining away, they let the animal take over. They become less and less human, more and more wild, but their urges are still human, so…they can wreak a lot of havoc. They’ll still desire human women, but will be more likely to try to take them in wolf form, indiscriminately. They’ll kill livestock and pets, not for food, but out of rage. They quit caring who knows what they are and may even shift in public.”
Damien pushed away from the cabinet, arms crossed over his chest. “What it boils down to is this: there’s no cure, and they can’t be allowed to expose us or harm others.”
Jenny frowned, the rogue weyr forgotten momentarily as the implications of what he was saying sank in. “So, when we get older, if one of you dies before the other…”
Damien shrugged. “Like I said, if we live past eighty, which is the rule more than the exception considering that the average length of a full weyr’s life is a hundred and fifty years, neither the pining or reversion will be an issue. The loss would be hard to weather, but most do manage.”
“A hundred and fifty years?” This was the first she’d heard of this. Some day soon, they were absolutely going to have to sit down and give her a much more complete understanding of what it meant to be weyr. Of course, that was something her mother should have done when Jenny was younger. It still riled her that her origins had been hidden from her for so long.
Dev leaned forward. “Don’t worry. You’re going to live almost as long. Half-weyr are almost as resistant to disease as full weyr and tend to have healthier bodies overall than pure humans.”
“It’s not that. Well, it is, a little, but I’m also wondering how you hide a lifespan that long from society.”
“Oh. Well, in our case, eventually the boys will take over the homestead, and we’ll build a nice little house in some very secluded portion of the land and keep to ourselves. Outwardly, we only look about ten years younger than normal humans up until we’re about sixty; then the difference becomes a little more noticeable, but there are ways around that. You’d be surprised how good a weyr is with makeup. Also, there’s a ritual that can be done, where the bond with the land is passed on to a younger pack, and it’s not unusual for older weyr to do that and then move to another country, where the problem isn’t an issue ‑‑ it’s only hard to hide your age among people you know. And then there’s the fact that the human lifespan is increasing. Some weyr have lived openly to the age of one hundred and twenty, and they might get a spread in a local newspaper, but other than that, there’s no big uproar. There’s no medical test that will tell a human physician what we are, just that our body systems aren’t wearing down as fast as others.”
Jenny held up a hand to stop him, her mind whirling. “You know what? That’s an education for another day, I think.” She tried to order her muddled thoughts. They needed to get back to the immediate issue, the rogue. What was it Damien had been saying before they veered off on a tangent? Oh, yeah. “You said that the rogue couldn’t be allowed to expose us or hurt others. What did you mean by that?”
He looked away, his jaw tightening into something closely resembling granite.
Jenny gasped. “You’re not saying…please tell me you don’t want to…to kill him?”
Her husbands shared the look.
“No.” They opened their mouths simultaneously to respond, but she placed both hands on the table and stood, body rigid. “No. There has to be some other way.”
Damien started shaking his head.
“Damien.” She stepped over to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. She looked into his eyes. “Please. Promise me you won’t do anything until we’ve talked some more. Do you even know that he’s done anything wrong yet?”
He reluctantly shook his head. “No, but that’s why we’re going out today. We’ll know more by the time we get back.” There was regret in his gaze, but also grim determination.
“Please.” She placed a hand on her belly. “For our sons’ sakes. I don’t want something like this happening on our land. I don’t want them to inherit that tragedy. Let’s think about this, okay? At least try to come up with something better.”
She could see in his furrowed brow and worried glare that he didn’t believe there was a better solution, but as he searched her eyes, his gaze softened. He brushed a stray hair back from her forehead and sighed. Slowly, he nodded. “All right. For you, we’ll try to find a better way.”
Jenny enfolded him in a tight hug. “Thank you.”
He grasped her chin and tilted it up. “As long as you understand that this won’t wait indefinitely. We’ll go ahead with inspecting our holding, see what we can find out. But if we discover he’s attacked a human or gone on a livestock rampage, or see something that indicates he’s likely to shift in public, all bets are off. We’ll have to contain the threat.”
“I understand.” Though she really didn’t. She couldn’t imagine that in all their time on earth, the weyr hadn’t been able to find a better way of dealing with these instances. Of course, if such an occurrence was as rare as Damien had indicated, that didn’t offer much of an opportunity to study the problem. Still… “But if he’s not that far gone yet, maybe there’s a way we can help him through this.”
He and Devlin raised their eyebrows and shook their heads, clearly thinking she was nuts or, more probably, simply incredibly naïve when it came to weyr. Damien kissed her forehead. “We better go. As it is, we’re going to be pretty late getting in tonight.”
Dev nodded in agreement, standing up to peck her cheek. “You stay inside. Don’t go wandering the woods.” They waited for her grudging nod of assent before they strode purposefully together toward the front door.
She watched from the front bay window as they climbed into their old blue truck and revved up the engine. She could tell from their sour glances back at the house that they weren’t too happy with the deal they’d made with her. Still, she knew they wouldn’t break their promise. The man ‑‑ wolf ‑‑ was safe for at least another day.
She sighed. Now all she had to do was come up with a plan to save him, and convince her stubborn husbands that it would work.
Unforeseen Request
After they’d left, she found herself full of nervous energy. She puttered around, trying to find things to keep herself busy, but Sally, their nearest neighbor’s daughter, came weekly to do the deep cleaning while she was pregnant. The guys were surprisingly good about keeping most everything else done, so by ten o’clock she was completely out of busy work. She could bake something, but the heat from the oven really got to her at this stage in her pregnancy, even on cool days. She could read, but perusing the “to be read” file on her e-book reader yielded no particular title that reached out and grabbed her, which was highly unusual.
She thought about going into town to see Tara. Since their mutual obstetrician, Tom Byers, had given her friend the okay to go back to work given that the new job with Marshall would allow her to sit for most of the day, they hadn’t seen much of each other. Tara spent her weekdays at the office and was often unavailable in the evenings as well. Jenny didn’t know whether to worry that Marshall was working Tara too hard, or be happy that she had lots to keep her busy ‑‑ to keep her mind off the lost twin.
Actually, Jenny was beginning to suspect there was a little more to Tara’s relationship with her boss than she’d admitted so far. There was a certain look in her friend’s eyes, when Jenny had seen them together… She grabbed her keys from their hook by the door. Just thinking about Tara set her to missing her best friend like mad. She would go. Her husbands wouldn’t be in until late tonight; she’d just sleep over at Tara’s and drive back in the morning. She’d call Damien on the walkie-talkie and let him know. He’d be thrilled that she was taking herself out of harm’s way.
But then she sighed. Tom had emphasized during her appointment earlier in the week that with her being pregnant with twins and so close to full term, she could deliver at any time. Though she felt fine, she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t go into labor an hour from now and end up stuck in a car alone on the side of the mountain. As it was, Damien had tried to get her to agree to let Sally live in with them for the last two months of her pregnancy so that she’d never be alone, but Jenny had nixed the idea ‑‑ what if Sally saw something she shouldn’t? They’d be careful, of course, but if the girl stayed that long, there was too much of a chance that they’d get careless and give away their secret, and teens were nothing if not curious.
Besides, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable having sex with someone else’s sixteen-year-old daughter in the house, and she and her husbands really enjoyed sex. Desire became a physical ache for them when they hadn’t made love even for just one day. A powerful sex drive and an actual physical response to the lack of sex were other common weyr traits, Devlin had explained, and ones Jen had discovered she, as a half-weyr, shared.
She smiled, still amazed that they could want each other so much. Where practical points had failed to sway him, that argument had finally convinced Damien not to bring someone into their house to stay. But he went out the same day and purchased two things ‑‑ military grade walkie-talkies, one of which was clipped to her waistband even now, its mate either with him or Devlin; and cell phone relay equipment that she hadn’t even realized existed, which guaranteed that she’d always have a signal on the mountain. Whichever way she tried to reach them, they’d get the call.
Her mother had suggested that she could come and stay during Jenny’s ninth month and for a little while afterward to help with the babies, but Jenny had sensed that her mom’s heart wasn’t in the offer. Not that she didn’t love her daughter and wouldn’t adore the babies, but Jen’s father had suffered a heart attack in late July. It was mild, and he’d recovered very quickly, but Jen knew the episode had shaken her mom to the core, and she understood completely. She’d feel just the same if it were Damien or Devlin. And now that she knew about the length of weyr lifespans, she understood even better. Her father was human, without the advantages of weyr genes. Her mother couldn’t be sure how much longer they would have together, so of course she wouldn’t be anxious to go off and leave him behind. For that matter, Jen herself had wanted to go see him, but Tom had advised against flying or a long road trip, so she’d had to settle for frequent phone calls the last couple of months.
That line of thinking served only to renew her irritation over how very little real knowledge she had about weyr, and led to a bunch of questions there was no one around right then to answer. Making a mental promise to visit her parents as soon as the pediatrician felt it was safe for her babies to travel, she turned on the radio in an effort to distract herself. However, instead of listening, she ended up pacing back and forth through the kitchen.
She faced the fact that what she really wanted to do was go outside. She had a feeling that if she could just sink her toes into the loam, she would be able to find the rogue. Not that she would go after him by herself, but she had a special bond with the Goddess. At least, it seemed that way to her, more and more, here lately. Something beyond the usual weyr connection to the land. Perhaps the Goddess would help her to find him, maybe even give her some insight as to how to help him. She had just decided to make her husbands very angry and leave the house when the gate phone rang.
They weren’t expecting anyone, so she considered not answering, but after the fifth ring, she went ahead and picked it up. “Yes?”
“Jenny?”
“Tara? What are you doing here? You didn’t drive yourself, did you?”
“Wow, what a greeting!” Laughter floated over the line, though to Jenny the voice sounded strained. “Let’s see, to answer your questions, in order: yes, it’s Tara. I really need to talk to you. And yes, I drove myself.”
“Shame on you. It’s a two-hour drive! You can’t be up to that.”
“I’m fine, Jen. Well, physically, at least. Emotionally…not so good. I really need you, and I wasn’t about to drag you out to my place. Besides, this isn’t something I wanted to discuss at home. I just…I really needed to see you out here.”
Jen frowned, worried about her friend. “Tara, you know you’re always welcome. Of course. Come on up.” She pressed a code into the keypad. “The gate should be opening now.”
“It is.”
“I’ll be waiting for you on the front porch.”
Jenny walked slowly to the front of the house. She stepped out onto the wooden decking and sat on the porch swing, wondering what the crisis could be. Had Tara’s loss finally caught up with her? After the one outburst in the hospital, she had seemed to accept her baby’s fate rather stoically, though her silent tears had flowed like a river at the funeral service a few days later.
Jen’s muscles tensed, and she leaned back, determined to relax. She wouldn’t be any help to Tara if she became agitated herself. Inhaling deeply, she let the restful scents of pine and juniper and the soft whisper of wind work their magic. That was a good explanation for Tara wanting to meet out here ‑‑ the land Jen and her husbands owned was blessed by the Goddess, their mountainside a welcoming sanctuary of rest and renewal for both beast and man. Tara had made remarks in the past, comments that led Jen to believe she knew more about the Blakes than she let on. Perhaps she knew about the Goddess, too. Maybe she just wanted to stay here a while, to rest and heal, both body and soul. Losing a baby…Jenny pressed her hands over her belly protectively, unable to imagine the grief.
