Quest (Shifter Island Book 4) Read online

  He felt again the agony of Micah’s knife cutting deep into his body. Felt Micah’s rage coursing through him, as if the blade had been poisoned with Micah’s wrath and not the juices of a deadly plant.

  Felt the despair of the wolf, that first time he had walked away from Allison.

  His own fear, watching his brother battle Micah.

  Each time he stirred, he realized that Allison was somewhere nearby, but not within reach. That brought its own kind of pain, as if he’d been abandoned on some spit of rock out in the middle of the ocean, left there to die of hunger and thirst. He could smell her, hear the sound of her voice…

  Then he felt the touch of something cool and damp.

  That made him shudder and curl up more fully, wishing the bed could swallow him whole and deliver him to some other place. His gut felt as if it had been turned inside out, and somehow the wolf wasn’t there. It too was some distance away, keening its misery—even though it ought to have been happy, because they were with Allison in a beautiful place, a place that smelled fresh and clean, where there was very little noise. They weren’t confined any longer.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing more I can do?” Allison asked.

  Faintly, Luca heard footsteps and the rustle of clothing. A voice that wasn’t very close said, “It’s something like withdrawal—from drugs or alcohol. He’s come a very long way from home. From his pack.”

  “Willingly, though. It was his idea to come.”

  “He may think it was willingly. The bond pulled him.”

  “But he—” There were more footsteps, and a soft creak. Then Allison went on, “He walked away from me four years ago. He had every chance to do that again and go back home.” She groaned. “I can’t watch him like this. It’s awful.”

  “He’ll recover.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The fever will burn itself out eventually.”

  “Eventually? How long is ‘eventually’? Is this fever going to hurt him? It can’t be doing him any good, Russell.”

  “But it is.”

  “Russell—”

  “Sshh. Let him rest. You should get some rest too. Helene and I will watch over him.”

  Then Luca could feel her moving farther away. Part of him cried out for her, but it was buried deep inside him.

  What might have been a minute later, or an hour, or perhaps even a day, someone sat alongside him and held something fragrant near his nose. It was a sharp smell, one that made him inhale deeply.

  “There,” a new voice said. “That’s the way.”

  What…?

  “Let the wolf guide you, Luca of the island pack. Give yourself over to his wisdom and strength. Let him heal you as he has done before. Then, when you’re ready to wake, you’ll find yourself reborn.”

  A gentle hand caressed his cheek.

  A mother, he thought. Or a healer. Perhaps both.

  “Sleep,” said the voice.

  So he did.

  It felt like days later when he opened his eyes.

  He felt weak, hungry, thirsty—but no longer in pain, either physically or emotionally. All around him, the house was silent, but he could sense that there were others nearby, Allison among them. Slowly, he sniffed the air, hoping to be able to identify who was there, but all he could smell was pine and flowers. Food, too, though most of that aroma had faded away.

  The room was dim, which seemed to indicate that it was either very early in the morning or late in the evening. Morning, he decided; there was a sense of expectation in the air, and when he listened carefully he could pick up the sounds of birds trilling their morning songs.

  His muscles balked at allowing him to sit up, so he rolled onto his back and examined the room that way, as best he could.

  It wasn’t very large: maybe ten big steps across, and a little less than that from the head of the bed to the door. The walls were painted a soft cream color that he was sure made the room seem bright when the sun was shining. Other than the bed, there were few pieces of furniture: a dresser, a chair, a small table on each side of the bed. The curtains were cream-colored as well.

  Someone had put clean sheets on the bed. It didn’t smell as if Allison had slept in it for a while.

  Her bed, he thought. This was her bed.

  But where was Allison?

  Again he tried to sit up. By the time he managed it, his head was swimming, enough so that it made his stomach turn over.

  This was worse than the healing after Micah had stabbed him.

  He tried to struggle out from underneath the covers, but they held him as solidly as a trap. He reached inside himself, encouraging the wolf to surge up and help him, but the animal still seemed out of reach—something that had never happened before. That sent a bolt of fear through him.

  Was the wolf dying? Could it die, if he didn’t? And would he die then, too?

  Unable to pull himself free, he tipped back his head and howled his fear and dismay, as he had out in the woods. He was aware that someone might hear him—those people he’d heard talking—but he couldn’t find it in him to care. For now, he needed to break free. To let the wolf break free.

  But these damned covers…

  “Here, now.”

  There was a woman standing in the doorway, an older female who looked somewhat like Granny Sara. Gray hair, round in the hips. A mother, one who had had several children.

  A mother.

  His own mother was so far away.

  Quickly and efficiently, she lifted the covers away from his legs and helped him move his feet to the floor. He was no longer wearing his own clothes; someone had dressed him in a pair of soft, lightweight pants. Pajamas, he remembered. A human thing; no wolf wore them.

  No wolf…

  “I am afraid, Mother,” he said in a whisper. “I cannot find my wolf. I don’t know where I am.”

  She sat down beside him and wrapped an arm around him. “You’ve come a long way,” she told him. “That’s difficult for someone who’s unaccustomed to roaming. It will pass. Let us be strong for you until you find your way.”

  “The wolf—”

  “Is finding its way too.”

  “Will it die?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain?”

  With a hand placed on his cheek, she turned his head so that he was looking into her eyes.

  Golden eyes.

  “My name is Helene,” she told him softly. “My mate is Russell. Our pack came here long ago. We live nearby.”

  “Your…”

  He could see it in her eyes: her wolf, not far below the surface.

  “You are welcome here, Luca of the island pack,” she said, as gentle as a lullaby. “If you decide to stay, you will be one of us.”

  Another wolf, here in Allison’s bedroom.

  A wolf Allison had said was her friend.

  You will be one of us.

  He struggled to his feet and stumbled to the doorway, where he had to hold on for a moment before he could go any farther. From there he could see much of the rest of Allison’s house: the comfortably furnished living room, the kitchen, the big windows that provided a wonderful view of the mountains. There was a car parked in front of the house, but it wasn’t the one he and Allison had ridden in.

  “Luca.”

  Allison was there, suddenly, coming out of a room he hadn’t noticed. She looked as if she’d been asleep; she was wearing pajamas too, and her hair was mussed.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He tried to let go of the doorframe, but his head swam, and he grabbed the wood again.

  She came closer. “You should go back to bed.”

  Stubbornly, he tried again. This time he was able to reach her, and he tugged her with him to sit down on the sofa.

  “There are more wolves here,” he said when he’d caught his breath. “You didn’t tell me all of it. You said there were two, but there’s a pack here, and they know about me. About the island, and my pack.”<
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  “My grandsire came from your island, Luca.”

  That was the gray-haired woman. Helene. The mother. Luca turned to watch her come out of the bedroom and take a seat on a big blue chair near the sofa, where she wove her fingers together in her lap.

  “Long ago,” she explained. “His name was Ezekiel.”

  “Was he banished here?”

  Sadness crossed her face, but it passed quickly. “He offended the alpha. They… competed over a female. So he was brought here and abandoned. But they knew, Luca. They were well aware that there were other wolves in Colorado. They knew he would only suffer for a little while, until the others found him.”

  She looked past Luca and smiled brightly as a gray-haired man in a plaid shirt and faded jeans came to join them. “This is Russell,” she said. “My mate. One of the elders of our pack. He’ll be alpha soon—our present alpha is very ill.”

  Russell stood in front of Luca and placed his hands on Luca’s shoulders.

  For a few seconds, nothing happened, although Luca could feel an intense heat in Russell’s hands. Then he felt himself growing stronger. Not amazingly so; just somewhat better than he’d felt since he woke up.

  “We’re of the same blood,” Russell said.

  “From… my pack?”

  Russell chuckled softly. “No. From the earliest wolves. The ones who roamed these mountains—roamed all across this land, all the way to the sea. In a sense, we’re all part of the same pack. You won’t be among strangers here. The unfamiliar, yes, but we are all family. Let yourself accept that, and the transition will be easier. Easier, too, because your mate is here.”

  Helene got up from her chair and went to the kitchen. She came back carrying a mug of thick, pale liquid that she pressed into Luca’s hands with the instructions, “Drink this. It will settle your stomach. Allison tells me you haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday. You need food and drink.”

  Luca took a sip, expecting the liquid to taste bad, but it was cool and soothing. He felt like gulping it down, but he drank it slowly, trying to savor that good taste. When it was gone, Helene brought him another mugful, and he drank that too.

  Then Russell crouched down in front of him and put his hands on Luca’s knees. “We’ll leave you now, so that you can rest with your mate. Later, we’ll talk more. We’ll tell you about the pack.”

  “How many are there?” Luca asked.

  “Many,” Russell said. “We are many. And you are welcome here, Luca.”

  Twenty-One

  “I had horrible visions of this place.”

  Helene smiled softly at that as she slid another heaping plate of food onto the table in front of Luca. She’d told him a little while ago that it was a treat for her to cook all these things, that Russell’s tastes were very simple and he seldom asked her to cook a grand, elaborate meal. Not since before her youngest son had left home had she prepared a meal for a young wolf with a good appetite.

  His mother’s food tasted better, he thought, but he supposed he felt that way because she was his mother. He supposed Helene’s son felt exactly the same way about her cooking.

  “We shouldn’t do that to our young ones,” she said as she put an empty pot in the sink and ran a little water into it. “I’ve learned that most cultures do it—frighten the young with tales of monsters and hellfire—but that doesn’t make it right. I don’t believe in it, myself.”

  “You never told such things to your son?”

  “Never.”

  “Did Russell?”

  Her eyes twinkled a little. “All Russell ever had to do was allow the wolf to stretch him a bit.”

  “Make him larger?”

  She nodded. “I believe his ‘personal best’ was six feet, eleven inches. It was very impressive.”

  Luca looked past her out the window at the beautiful sprawl of mountainside that was visible from Helene’s kitchen. Some of the trees had begun to change color, so the view was a breathtaking spill of green, gold, amber, and rusty red. When he felt better, he decided, he would explore those woods and see what sort of interesting things he could find. Maybe he could find some gifts to bring back to Allison, keepsakes she could add to the shelf in her living room.

  “When I came for my Involvement,” he told Helene, “I had a sense that this land was very big. But I never imagined all of this. It’s so large that it seems unreal. Like something I saw in the dream world.”

  “Maybe you did see it there.”

  Luca frowned a little. “All I see there is the island. Although, during my fever, there were other things.”

  “Nothing that looked like purgatory?”

  “No.”

  Smiling again, Helene set a big bowl of bread pudding in front of him. “There isn’t a young wolf alive who doesn’t like a treat,” she told him. “This is my special recipe. It’s Asher’s favorite.”

  He hesitated for a moment, thinking he might be stealing Russell’s portion—along with several other people’s. On the island, what Helene was offering to him would be enough to feed an entire family. True, his appetite had been boundless today, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat what might be Helene and Russell’s food supply for an entire day. Maybe, the entire week.

  But Helene seemed to know what he was thinking.

  “Eat,” she told him. “No one starves here. We have access to everything we need. If we don’t grow it ourselves, we can buy it at the market.”

  “The supermarket?” Luca asked skeptically.

  She shook her head. “There’s a special market nearby. Only a few of the humans know about it.”

  Then, too, she and Russell had a refrigerator. They could store food for much longer—and much more reliably—than anyone on the island could. Luca had peeked inside the last time she’d opened the door, and had been surprised by the quantity of food in there. So much, for just the two of them.

  When he had finally finished eating, she shooed him into the living room so that he’d be out of her way while she cleaned up the kitchen. That didn’t take long; barely ten minutes had gone by when she joined him and curled up in what he thought might be her favorite chair. Luca had taken a seat on the big, soft couch, a place he thought might be wonderful for naps, particularly on a cold winter day. From there he could see a row of framed photographs on the mantel: several pictures of Helene and Russell, some in which they looked much younger than they were now. And several more of a young wolf with tousled, light-colored hair.

  “That’s my Asher,” Helene told him.

  “Where is he now?”

  “He works on a ranch about two hours’ drive from here. He loves it there—working with the horses.” She sighed a little. “He’s found someone there. She’s lovely, but I’m afraid that once they’re joined, they’ll stay there, and Russell and I will see their little ones only once in a while.”

  “You could go there to live,” Luca suggested.

  “We could,” she conceded. “But this is our place. We feel very connected to this spot.”

  From the looks of her home, she and Russell had lived here for a long time. Maybe from the very day they’d been joined. Asher had grown up in this house, Luca decided. It was only a collection of wood and stone, but what had happened inside its walls made it as important as a shrine. That was exactly what it was, he thought: a shrine to their family, to their history together.

  “If you left here,” he asked quietly, “would you feel as sick as I did?”

  “I think I might.”

  “Even if you were once again with your son, and could see him every day? If you could be close to your grandchildren?”

  “Maybe.”

  Something caught her attention, and she cocked her head to listen. Luca duplicated the gesture and picked up the sound of an approaching car. No, several of them. Russell was back, then—and he’d brought others with him.

  He came striding into the house a minute later, flinging the door wide to admit the others: four men and two women, all
of them younger than Russell and Helene but older than Luca, including a man with a thick white scar running along his jawline. The sight of it made Luca shudder; for it not to have healed properly, the original wound had to have been a terrible one.

  The way the others moved around him said that he might be an elder. Luca quickly stood up from the couch and offered the man his place.

  The others took a moment to greet Helene, who then disappeared into the kitchen and returned with some snacks and a big jug of water. While she was bustling around, the others took seats, one of the women sitting very close to a man who was clearly her mate. She was very close to giving birth, and the man put his arm around her protectively.

  They were all wolves. There were no humans here.

  When they were all seated, including Helene, Russell introduced all of them. “Peter. Henry. Alexander, there with Emily. Judith.” Finally, he nodded to the man with the scar and said, “And Malachi. This is our new arrival, Luca. He comes from the island pack.”

  “Were you banished?” Malachi asked.

  Luca shook his head. “No, sir. I came to the mainland in search of my mate. She brought me here.”

  “Allison,” Russell explained. “You’ve all met Allison.”

  The others all pondered that solemnly. To Luca’s relief, none of them seemed disturbed or wary. A couple of them reached for snacks or a drink, and Emily sank a little deeper into the cushions of the couch, then laid her hands over her belly, a gesture that seemed more tenderly loving than protective.

  None of them were afraid of Allison, then. None of them thought his bond with her was a bad thing.

  He hoped.

  “Where is she now?” asked the man whom Russell had introduced as Henry.

  “Working,” said Helene. “In the city. Russell and I thought it might be better to have you meet Luca this way, so that we can all talk. Luca has been… a little uneasy about being in a new place so far from his home. I hoped you could all help put his heart at ease.”

  “I came from Wyoming,” Peter said. “As a young one.”

  Wyoming? That sounded familiar to Luca, but where it was, exactly, he didn’t know.