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SWEAT RAN DOWN CHANTI’S face. What the fuck could she do to save Tania when she’d already tried everything she knew?
There were dead or unconscious people everywhere!
A vision of wolf shifter teeth and blood emerged from a hidden area inside her brain.
Marty’s saliva! It healed his bite! Could it do that for all wounds?
Marty sobbed, shaking Tania as she lay in his arms.
“Marty! Can you heal her? With your...” She motioned to her mouth. “You know. Seal her wounds like you did with the bite?”
Marty looked up, dark smudges beneath his eyes. “I think so. She’s my mate, so...”
She grabbed his arm and tugged. “Come on then. The baby tore her apart. See if you can close up her wounds.”
She remembered her own foretelling words. “Whatever’s going to happen, it’s going to be tonight. The bloodlines will mingle forever, or both will fall.”
He needs to use his blood, too.
“Marty. Can you cut your arm or something, mingle some of your blood with hers too, okay?”
He nodded as he eased Tania down, and moved to the space between her legs.
Their baby had mingled their blood together already, so hopefully they didn’t need anymore, but may as well cover all the bases.
Marty partially shifted, his face turning wolf shifter-like as he began to clean his mate’s body.
Chanti turned to her own mate, kneeling down beside him.
She pulled back the poultice she’d applied to his chest and gasped. Her heart achedas renewed hope fluttered through her system.
The gaping wound was gone.
There was still life in him.
She lay her hand down on his blood-soaked chest.
Was that a heartbeat?
She rushed to twist around and lay her head against his chest.
Her stomach dropped.
No heartbeat.
But she could hear something! An echo.
Maybe? Was she imagining it?
It didn’t matter.
She pushed herself up and grabbed for her bag.
She glanced over to Tania and saw the bleeding had stopped and Marty was pulling her to sitting. Her head lolled around and her complexion was pale as cream. But she was alive.
Just.
“Here. Make her drink this.”
She threw Marty a bottle of blood tonic and went back to searching through her bag.
What do I use? What do I use?
May as well throw everything at him.
She pulled out every amulet and health charm she had and placed them down on him.
She sprinkled healing potions and herbs on his body, all over his matted dark hair and his long limbs. It was strange trying to heal a wolf, but she could still see him. Her Kody.
Nothing happened.
She put her head down and prayed.
Jesus, please help the man I love. Loa, please help him. He is a good man.
She opened her eyes. Why the hell wasn’t this working?
Because bringing people back from the dead is only for those practicing the black arts.
“No. No!”
She was not losing this fight.
Blood. She needed more of her blood.
But what if she hurt her baby?
No... Kody would never forgive her if she bled herself to the point of damaging their child. But maybe, just a little of her blood closer to the baby.
She grabbed the knife and lifted her top.
Her hand didn’t even tremble as she slid the knife across her lower abdomen, where a c-section would open her if she needed one.
Pain broke through her threshold as the adrenaline that had been keeping her going all day began to run out.
She gasped as tears ran down her face.
Bright red blood spilled forth and she cupped her hand, gathering the blood there.
Kody had other injuries; his shoulder had been blasted apart.
She moved her hand across and pressed her blood to his. Then she shuffled down to gather more and spread it over every injury he had, her stomach dropping each time she took some of her life form and passed it to her mate.
Her eyes were drooping and sweat covered her shaking body.
She didn’t care. Anything, if it would save him.
When she was done, she grabbed a poultice and applied it to her cut. Before her eyes, the wounds began to heal and she put both palms together and linked her fingers in a prayer position, but she wasn’t praying anymore.
Time to fight.
She raised both arms up in the air and brought them down on his chest.
Hard. Pain ricocheted up her arms.
“Come on, Kody.”
Bang. She hit him again.
“Come back to me.”
She hit him again, her head spinning with fatigue and her arms like lead weights.
One more, a voice in her head whispered.
She didn’t have much left in her.
She raised her arms and stared straight at the ribs over the heart that she desperately wanted to beat again, and with all her strength, she brought them down, as hard as she could.
Kody jerked, a strange moan rolling from his animal throat.
“Is he alive?” Marty yelled from the bed.
She put her head to his chest and there it was. The sweetest sound in all the world.
A steady, thumping, heartbeat.
“Yes!”
The fur began to disappear, golden skin reappearing before her tear-blurred gaze. Kody’s face transformed and there before her lay her mate.
Her muscles turned to jelly, and she slid to the floor beside him. She lay an arm over his chest and wept.
***
KODY HAD BEEN SWIMMING in black ink, his head barely above the water. But sunshine appeared, then an arm reached out to him and pulled him to the shore.
It was his mate, her perfect skin and rose birthmarks glinting in the sunshine.
Was she an angel helping him to Heaven?
Everything hurt.
Nope. Not Heaven. He wouldn’t hurt this much if he was away with the gods.
He opened his eyes and he wasn’t on a beach, nor was there any water anywhere to be seen.
But he was alive.
Chanti sobbed against him.
Were they on the floor?
“Chanti?”
The sobbing stopped and she lifted her head, her tear-streaked, exhausted face the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
“Are you back? Really back?” She climbed on top of him, her boiling hot body almost too hot to touch.
But he did, reaching up for her flaming face.
“Yes. What happened?” he asked.
Her face crumpled and she collapsed onto his chest, her wet tears streaming down his skin.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right. Shh.”
He didn’t remember much. They’d been fighting the New Orleans Voodoo people, and the other... had someone stabbed him?
Oh, fuck.
“Are Tania and the baby okay?”
Chanti nodded against his chest and pushed back so that she sat next to him.
He tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t work. Damn. What had happened to him?
She wrapped a hand around his arm and pulled.
He gripped hard and got himself seated, his head spinning with the effort as pain exploded through his gut.
Shit.
He was naked, but that wasn’t unusual considering the amount of times he’d shifted.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“We’re over here,” Marty called from the bed.
Carefully, and with a prickling-like pain tugging at every cell in his body, Kody pushed himself to his feet.
He wavered, his knees like jelly.
Chanti tucked herself under his shoulder and they limped to the couch opposite the bed.
They landed and he almost passed out again, the exhaustion in his muscles making him feel like he would be able to sleep for a week after this.
What on earth had happened?
He looked over at the bed and gasped. Tania was covered from the waist down in blood.
“Where’s the baby?” Kody asked. Had the infant survived?
“I sent him off with your mom,” Chanti said, still clinging to his side. “We should go tell her everything’s okay.”
Chanti pushed herself to her feet and staggered out of the room, tripping and falling against the door.
Kody sat forward. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer as she hurried off, so Kody turned back to his brother, who was covering his dirty mate in kisses.
Even Marty’s face was covered in blood.
“Is someone going to fill me in? I seem to have missed a whole chunk of time.”
Marty chuckled, his eyes still on his mate. Then he turned around, his eyes sparkling with a crazy type of happiness. “You didn’t just miss time. You died, brother.”
“I... what?”
Impossible.
“Chanti brought you back—don’t ask me how. And she helped me save Tania. And our son. She’s a pretty incredible woman you have there.”
A lump lodged itself in Kody’s throat.
“How?” he asked, looking toward Tania for the answer.
Tania shrugged. “I have no idea. Your brother was busy saving me from death, but Chanti comes from some pretty incredible lines of Voodoo women. Fuck... what a night.”
Kody laughed. How could he not? The whole world had turned on its axis.
He looked around the room. There were people everywhere, fallen like dead flies.
“What’s with all the people?”
Tania glanced over, her face creasing with worry. “They’re all friends of my parents, and that’s my mom.” She pointed to the woman in the corner. “I’m not sure what happened to them.”
Marty chuckled. “It was Chanti again. Not sure what happened there, but she got pretty angry, and then they all fell. Incredible, actually.”
Kody shook his head in wonder.
The door opened and Chanti stepped back in, followed by his mother, who was cradling a small whimpering bundle in her arms.
“You’re all alive. I don’t believe it...” There were tears on his mother’s face as she handed the babe to his mother.
Tania pushed aside the material covering her and offered her breast to her son.
He latched on quickly and the small cries stopped.
Sharon caressed Tania’s face and then moved over to Kody, embracing him with a tight hold. “My son, I am so thankful you came back to us.”
He let his eyes close as his mother’s love washed over him. She had never been very demonstrative in her feelings. A classic Alpha mate, she was hard and strong.
“I love you,” she whispered as she pulled away.
Kody reached for Chanti’s hand, tugging her back down onto the couch with him.
She looked like she’d flown through a hurricane. She smelled of blood and sweat, fear and exhaustion.
“I owe you my life,” he said, bringing her hand to his heart.
A smile trembled on her full lips.
“I love you. I couldn’t let you go,” Chanti said, and they were the sweetest words he’d ever heard.
He pulled her in close for a kiss, her distinctive flavor lost amongst the day’s events.
“Shall we go home and shower?” he asked, needing to get clean and close to her.
She nodded and stood up.
As they walked past the people on the ground, Chanti stopped to check them.
“Are they dead?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. Thank the heavens. I didn’t want to kill them. But they were posing a threat and I, well, I don’t really know. But they got knocked out.”
He walked ahead, keeping her behind him. How much time had gone by? Was there still a threat?
“How are the other wolves? Is there still a fight going on?”
She shrugged, her eyes wide and alert as they moved to the front of the house and pushed the door open.
He tensed, uncertain what to expect.
There was nothing unusual he could see yet.
“Let’s walk down to our place, but keep your eyes open,” he said.
They crept along the road, but they didn’t see anything. Someone had come along and collected the bodies, that was obvious. It was like a ghost town.
“Where is everyone?” Chanti asked.
He shrugged, not liking this at all. “Hopefully, the wounded have been taken home for repairs.”
He doubted that, but it was possible that the women were tending to the men.
They arrived back at his home, and he opened the door. He paused in the doorway, taking took one more look around, then seeing nothing, locked the door behind him and Chanti.
“Shower time?” she asked, already peeling out of her dirty clothes.
“Absolutely. Then you can tell me what happened.”
Chanti smiled as she undressed, throwing all of her clothes straight in the trash can.
In the bathroom, they climbed under the hot water and washed the stench of the fight away.
After they were clean, they snuggled up on the couch, and Chanti regaled him of her last few hours, saving the baby, and Tania, and blasting all those Voodoo people.
Kody still couldn’t remember much. Running. Killing someone. It was a blur.
He gathered her close and their lips met. Her perfect scent had returned now that the shower had washed away the stink of battle and his Voodoo Queen’s win.
She’d conquered them all. And with nothing more than her own two hands.
“You’re pretty incredible, you know that?” he said as he stood, and offered her his hand. When she took it, standing, he drew her to the bed.
“Me?” She made a snorting sound, but as she averted her eyes and a pink blush stained her cheeks, he could see that his compliment had pleased her.
“You know, I think it had a lot to do with our mating,” she said. “I have never been so powerful. I think when you died you passed on your strength to me.”
He loved that idea, but hated it at the same time.
“Hopefully, you’ll be strong, even with me alive. I hope our bonding will help you. And if it did, then I am eternally grateful to my ancestors for that gift.”
They lay down on the mattress, their bodies fitting together like a lock and key.
He groaned as her warm body pressed against his side, her breasts squashed on his ribs that still ached.
“What’s going to happen now, Chanti?”
She ran a hand over his chest, her fingers dancing on his skin and running around his nipple.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Do you think your prophecy has come true?”
“Well, nothing fell. Except the Voodoo practitioners in Marty’s house. But they’re not dead.”
“So, was the blood connected, or whatever you said needed to happen?”
“I’m not sure, but I tried. I used my blood to heal your wounds. And then there’s the baby, and Marty mingled his blood with Tania’s. So yeah, I hope it’s enough.”
There was a strange movement at his hip and Kody looked down.
“What was that?”
Chanti rolled onto her side, a rather large bump between her hips that he’d somehow not noticed in the shower.
“I think it’s the baby.” She cupped her hands over her stomach and a gorgeous little chuckle emerged between her full lips. “Yeah. It is.”
“Show me.” He pushed her hands aside and rolled over, placing his palm over her rounded abdomen.
There was a push and a roll.
“Oh, my God.”
They had a child.
“So, our blood has mixed together, too?” he asked, unable to look away from the bulge of her stomach.
“Yes. There will be two babies of wolf shifter and Voodoo blood. It will be a new era.”
“Yes. Come here...”
He pulled his gorgeous woman on top of him and grabbed her face for a kiss.
In a time like this, there was only one thing to do. And that was to make love to his beautiful mate, and thank the universe for whatever forces had brought her to him.