Chapter Fifteen

 

Angie stood frozen, uncomprehending what he was doing. Mark vanished beyond tree trunks, and she realized he meant it. He was going to leave her out there. Her best friend had just deserted her because she wouldn’t fall for a line of hocus-pocus mythology that didn’t exist.

Her mouth popped open, but no sound emerged. Her throat gurgled with the angry yell that she wanted to shout at him, but her heart was unable to voice it.

“Bastard,” she whispered instead, furious that he’d left her with a near stranger to die alone! She whirled on Loren. “What the hell did you two discuss yesterday? What kinds of stories did you tell him?”

“None. I didn’t have to,” he said, crouching once more to continue cooking, pulling the pan from his stock to place on the rocks around the fire. “He was able to read them fine on his own.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “He believed them, Loren! Why didn’t you tell him you were pulling his chain or something? That the legends he read were wrong?”

“Because I wasn’t pulling his chain, and he wasn’t reading them wrong,” he told her dispassionately. “I’d have preferred it if he had.” He added water to the pan and stirred in canned beans, completely disregarding her confusion and anger. Mark had deserted her, and Loren was absolutely unemotional about it.

“Fine,” she ground out, plunking to the ground. With a cup of coffee in her hand, she shoved the fact that Mark left out of her mind. “When are we going to search the next cave?”

“We’re not.”

She choked in shock. She lowered her cup, coughing to clear her throat. “What?”

Loren’s shoulders rose with a deep breath, and he swept his hair back. “We won’t have time to worry about them today. Mark sacrificed being here so I could help you. He’s unbound me by not staying to witness what’s coming. I can help you. There’s not much time to prepare you.”

“Oh great,” she said, her scathing tone matching the toss of her hand. “What is with you two? There is nothing to believe!” She wanted to shriek, though kept her voice lowered by sheer force of will. “The legends are theories for heaven’s sake! I wrote them.”

“You wrote them because you recognized them, didn’t you? They meant something to you?” He continued to stir the contents of the iron pan, his questions almost an afterthought.

Her mouth popped open, but after two seconds of stunned silence, she snapped it shut again. “Mark told you that, didn’t he? Isn’t anything private anymore?”

Loren’s expression showed very little, his concentration on the pan and the food he was preparing for them. He tasted it, then set it aside, grabbing packages to add to the beans to make a stew of sorts.

“He’s made it clear he wants you to survive. Don’t you think you owe him the same to at least try?”

She dropped her forehead to her hands, massaging her temples with stiff fingers. “You don’t get it, Loren. Every doctor I’ve seen has found nothing. Not one knows what is wrong with me.”

He stirred the mass in the pan, and it thickened. It actually smelled really good.

“I do.”

She groaned, massaging harder.

“Mark recognized it. I recognized it. You’re the only one who is fighting it.” He looked up, absolute blankness in his gaze. “If you continue to fight it, it will kill you. It is the brother’s way.”

He plated the breakfast stew for the both of them and sat to eat.

“You should eat. You’ll need the energy later today.” The silence was only broken by the sound of the fire and the scrape of his fork on his camping plate.

“I don’t believe this, Loren,” she finally said.

He sat straight, chewing, giving her a thoughtful look. “Not believing will kill you. You need to listen, and until you’re ready, there’s nothing to discuss. You only have a few hours to accept it and learn what I can tell you. Don’t take long.” He returned to his plate to eat.

She reached for hers, even though she wasn’t sure she’d be able to eat a bite. Her recent record with eating had been unremarkable. “Why now? Why didn’t you say something when I met you?” she asked, looking for a hidden agenda, something to call him a liar. He had to be as delusional as Mark. She knew what she was facing.

“I was ordered to silence, physically bound to not help you in any way by the council. They see you as a threat, an unknown with an in-depth knowledge and interest in the Jahehn. Only one person has that much historical knowledge in our entire community, and she’s earned the right to it. You endanger every person in town with what you know. I was ordered to let the transition finish the job that you had already accepted, that your illness was killing you.”

She swallowed the lump of food in her mouth, as tasty as a coarse wad of mud with those words. “You’re insane. Do you know that? The Jahehn are extinct. Even I know of Inglewood’s Cheyenne reservation background. I researched it as much as the Jahehn because they intertwined so often. If Croma or whoever told you to bring me out here to distract me from finding the talisman, fine. It worked. I know they don’t want it found. Fearing future treasure hunters will come and disturb a balanced wildlife sanctuary, or for whatever sick reasons they have. I get it, but you don’t have to tell me you buy into the same idiocy as Mark. I knew he was off on the legends.” Anger added scorn and disappointment to her accusations.

He finished eating while she ranted, barely acknowledging a single word. He drank deeply from one of the canteens. Setting it aside, then wiping his mouth, he asked her, “Did you feel that way when you first tried to break the language code? Did you think either of you were wrong then?”

Well, no, of course not, not then, she thought. But time and acceptance changed perspective on a lot of things in life. “It was new then. Nothing seemed like it could be wrong. There was nothing to negate the findings.”

“And now none of the legends seem probable?”

The answer was on the tip of her tongue. Of course none of them were probable. It was the look he gave her that made her swallow the immediate answer. He believed in them. Mark did too. She put her still full plate down, thinking carefully before she answered.

“I think I’ve outgrown the amateur wonder of finding them,” she admitted. “Rationally, I know the difference between wanting to believe and knowing logically how they can’t be real.”

He pressed his fingertips together, resting his chin on the steeple they created. Staring into the fire, he asked her, “And that’s safer for you, isn’t it? Not believing means they can’t hurt you. They can’t desert you.”

She sucked air through her nose at his rationalization, and her eyes narrowed to pinpoints. “You don’t know anything about me, Loren. Don’t look for explanations to what I believe.”

“I don’t have to. It’s all in your history.” He tilted on his neck, staring unblinking right at her. “And because I see something that no one else has, and if they did, it only compounded the reason they wanted you gone. Or dead.” He paused, considering. “You are taka-ja-meh.”

She gasped, her lungs aching following the harsh single thud of her heart. “You think I’m a returning soul? A real reincarnation?”

He nodded. “It makes sense, at least to me, after spending the last two days with you. It also means you’re important to the tribe and to the council. And whoever shot at you knew that and was threatened by you. Taka-ja-meh are revered by the council for numerous reasons.”

“I didn’t exactly get that feeling from them.”

He cracked a smile at her prim tone. “You are an unknown. An outsider, and untracked. That we know of, a situation like yours has never happened. The laws are there to prevent it. You did say you never knew your father.”

“No, I didn’t know him. Mother never told me much about him. I think she was ashamed that the relationship wasn’t deeper, when she thought it was. When she found out she was pregnant, that was it. She did tell me that once he knew, he vanished.” She shrugged. “So he was a loser, and she thought they were stronger than sex. We all make mistakes. I’ve never blamed her or the man she slept with for anything. I’m here. Daniel is my father, the one who matters.”

Loren nodded, although discomfort and an echo of pain crossed his features when he told her, “I’ll have to ask Croma. He or Grace might have an idea of who your father was. It could be very important.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s more to happen if you survive your merging.”

It hit her then. Her vision faded to gray for a brief instant. She’d completely listened like she believed him, because he’d got her to discuss the man who had impregnated her mother. And worse, she’d admitted some of her darkest secret pains.

“I can’t believe this.” Outrage turned every word bitter. She leaned closer, wanting to strike out, but held herself taut. “That was low, using my parents to get me to listen, much less think any of this is real. I am not a returning soul. You suckered me good, using something that would catch my attention. I have no Cheyenne ties. I have no Jahehn blood. Want to know why?” She didn’t give him the chance to answer. “Because they don’t exist in today’s world.” She lurched to her feet. “That was really good. You really had me going there. There’s a whole town of Cheyenne descendants in that pass.” She tossed her hand in its direction, ignoring the way he stiffened where he sat. He stood with her, yet she couldn’t make herself stop, refusing to feel intimidated when he towered over her.

“Look, I understand. Bureau of Land Management did a number on all the native peoples. The government and the white man. I don’t blame anyone their resentment of a culture that invades and, even worse, does it under the guise of goodwill when they only intend to conquer and take over. But you don’t have to pretend you’re a hidden race of people. There’s an entire town thriving in that pass. And it’s Cheyenne, not Jahehn.”

She whirled to walk away, but his hand clasped her arm.

“If you walk away, I can’t help you with the little time we have, Angie. You think you’re dying? You think you’ve suffered? You haven’t even come close to what the brother can do to a body when the merging is off balance. He can tear you apart from the inside out. The brother spirit is relentless and will challenge and test you until the pain you’ve suffered is nothing but a memory by what he can do when he feels you are not worthy.”

The cold steel in his voice brought her up short.

“I don’t want to die, Loren,” she whispered, more than a little scared at the intensity in his voice and in his grip. The pressure of his hand fed that fear.

“I don’t want you to either. I want to help you.”

“This makes no sense.”

“If you live through it, it will make complete sense. It’s the only way you’ll understand. You have to accept it and want to merge with the spirit.”

His unblinking stare glowed with a reddish heat from the sun’s rays, and she swallowed, feeling the pulse of her blood tick beneath her skin.

Silently she nodded, agreeing to listen for the moment.

“The town, our ancestry, is camouflaged to look like we’re Cheyenne to protect us from discovery. There are other bands, small ones, and no one but the tribal elders know the connections. I am not Cheyenne. You and I, we are Jahehn. There’s the brother spirit and the soul spirit. I sense you have the energy of both. That is enough of a reason for someone in town to not want you around all by itself.” She sucked in a hard breath, but he continued as if he’d not said the most shocking thing she’d heard in her entire life. “Are you willing to listen, to learn as much as you can? To accept the merging and become one of the tribe? It’s not an easy process, and painful as all hell.”

“Of course it is,” she muttered. “Like I haven’t seen enough of that.” When he pinched her arm in rebuke, she murmured, “Sorry.” She wasn’t mocking him, not intentionally.

“Then I will coach you.” He released her. “When the brother spirit comes to you today, remember what I tell you. It’s the only thing that may save you. You’ve been fighting him for a year. You’re on his homeland now. He won’t accept anything less than your full transition or your life.”

“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Why didn’t the doctors find this before now? Surely a mutation—”

A sharp head shake silenced her. “It’s not a mutation. It’s spiritual. There’s nothing but a promise made in blood between you and the spirit brother. It’s a bond that has survived hundreds of years.”

Breezes shook the branches overhead, sunlight streaking through them in fine arcs to split the earthen shadows with golden color. She inhaled, filling her lungs as reality weighed down on her. There was no avoiding this. And only one way to reach the other side.

“Usually the entire council witnesses the merging. There’s ceremonies and offerings to the brotherhood of wolves for sharing with us.”

“Wolves?” She staggered back. That was the first time he’d mentioned that!

“Mark nailed it on the head yesterday.” When she continued to gape at him dumbfounded, he added, “You thought he was wrong. He’s smarter than you give him credit for, Angie. I think he knows you better than you’d like to admit.” He turned from her then, cleaning up from breakfast.

She snarled at his hunched form. “That’s really none of your business.”

Once done, he sat, ignoring her irritation. She watched as he pulled a pouch from his gear, lining herbs up near the fire.

“You know what you’ve told me is insane. There are no such thing as shifters in our world.”

“Because humanity doesn’t believe in the spirits that once shared our earth with us. They were real, but humans prefer to ignore them. The Jahehn have respected the bond with the spirit world and will never break the vow. I believe you can survive the change, but you have to want to. You have to believe in it as well. It is painful. But it’s an honor to share the spirit, and the pain reminds us of that shared honor.”

“It never goes away, does it?” she asked, filing the knowledge away.

“No, every time we take the shared form, it is there. The first one is unavoidable when he calls. No one can avoid his test. You will always have the choice after that. No one can force you to merge after the first time.”

“You… You are one of them?” she asked, refusing to acknowledge the twinge of weakness in her stomach. She shouldn’t be asking at all, but what if he was telling the truth? What if all these years she’d been following her own legacy? Becoming her own legend? It was almost more than her brain could absorb.

Loren tilted, thoughtfulness in his answer. “The wolves yesterday?” She encouraged him when he hesitated, yet feared what he would say at the same time. “The black wolf didn’t attack either of you because that was me. I know who the other was, the gray one, and he was punished for interfering. I don’t doubt he returned to town to report that we’d arrived and you still lived.” He lifted amber eyes. “I wasn’t here to see either wolf or their color. Not in this form. I can tell you the entire fight, bite by bite after I knocked him off Mark if you want to hear it. I can tell you which way he went, that he has brown eyes and in any form, he’s an ass, because I know him.”

“You?” It was a croaked whisper. The fine hair on her arms and neck stood, and she wanted to deny him but was terrified he wasn’t lying. When he made no effort to refute her, her stomach completely froze into a solid void of cold.

Trembling, she sank to the ground next to him. It was her first concession to really listen to what he was going to tell her. “What happens first?”

“The first thing to remember is that while you have to share, you are in control. Nothing will harm you, and you’re protected here.” He pulled several knotted bunches of herbs from his pouch and rubbed dried leaves between his palms, then sprinkled them into the fire, murmuring as he did. The bittersweet essence of the herbs quickly filled the air over the fire.

She listened to the deep cadence of his voice, the rhythm of the language rolling off his tongue like a crooner’s musical seduction.

He repeated the herbal incantations a few more times, then stood, reaching for two blankets out of his tent. “These will have to do.” He spread one out on the ground and handed her the other. “When it is time, go to your tent and undress. Wrap this around you for the final blessing before the first pain strikes.”

Her hand hesitated, her throat tight with uncertainty, the blanket hanging in front of her, daring her. Challenging her beliefs and her disbeliefs. She almost dropped her hand, logic over myth. Seeking Loren’s expression, his calm acceptance waited for her decision. When numb fingers finally gripped the coarse weave, she realized the concession she was making. Turning from her, he searched for a long stick and burned the tip off. Dragging it around her and the fire with the charred end, Loren created a circle emblem scored with symbols that she recognized from her records. The confident way he worked spoke volumes about his knowledge. It also quickly destroyed the chance that he wasn’t telling her the truth.

Who else would know those symbols? Why would this one man unless he was Jahehn? They made no sense to anyone other than the tribe.

She stared at the blanket, trying to comprehend what was coming, and fearing it. Is this what had been ripping her apart for so long? Was she truly Jahehn? She tried to swallow but realized her mouth had gone bone-dry.

It took her a few minutes to realize he’d finished and was sitting again. He studied her. He held his chin with curiosity in his eyes. “What I’m wondering is what your totem spirit is going to be. It’s strong in our family.”

“Our family?” she squeaked, confusion raking her like a battering ram, over and over. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged indolently. “One of two things. You’re either my sister or my cousin. I won’t know until someone admits to being your father.”

Her world spun off its axis—again. How much more could there be? “Are you serious?”

There was no denying the grimace of anger, something that only Loren knew. Angie felt out to sea and was quickly losing sight of land. “I’ve felt it since the first meeting that you were one of my clan, but it’s been…hard…to picture you as my father’s daughter.”

Immediate understanding rushed through her. This was at least one question answered. “Is that why I’ve felt…” Her thoughts tumbled as she tried to put them into order. “Sensations from you?”

His grin was kind and much more understanding. “Essentially. It’s a recognition ward. You’ll probably feel it when you meet my brothers too. The closer the blood bond, the stronger it is.”

“Wow,” she breathed, overwhelmed at the idea. “Suddenly, I have family everywhere.”

Loren’s expression tightened with a new seed of worry. “You need to go get ready.”

She didn’t question him, rising and dashing for the tent. “God, please don’t let me die,” she prayed once as she stripped in a flurry of shaking hands and erratic misses.

She tugged the blanket around her. As a last measure, she unbound her hair. Twisting the blanket in her hands, she joined him by the fire.

“This feels so weird,” she muttered, standing, shivering with fear and indecision. “And you’ve told me nothing.”

“I will help you as much as I can,” he told her, his voice soothing. “You would have been trained had your family known, had either of your parents known.” With a sorrowful glimpse, she realized he meant it. “Since your mother was not Jahehn, your father has quite a few things to explain.” His lips thinned when he stopped speaking. “I can only guide you from here forward. There isn’t time to detail your training.”

“Cliffs Notes?” she queried with a prayer of hopefulness. The grimness in his expression told her the answer plainly.

She watched his every step when he began to chant. Every pace as he walked and murmured, dusting the fire one more time with an aromatic concoction she couldn’t begin to dissect. Her heart rattled with the harsh staccato of steel rails beneath a speeding train. She clenched her jaw when her teeth almost clacked with the jarring tempo.

He stopped before her and put his palms to either side of her head, speaking in some tongue she didn’t understand. She almost called it quits right there, feeling foolish and stupid for believing in something that couldn’t possibly be proven as truth. But something kept her knees locked and her feet frozen to the ground.

“When the transition starts, relax as much as possible. Allow your mind to open and welcome the merging. Your physical self will change, but not the mental. You will still be Angie, though you will share the spirit’s ability in form, and it will share with you.”

She closed her eyes and deepened her breathing. Panic wasn’t going to do her any good. “Why is this the last one? Why did it not work any other time?”

Concern and confusion crossed his features. “I don’t know. It might be your lack of knowledge or a block to withstand the request. Not knowing may have been your saving grace for as long as you’ve been suffering his calling. There’s a vibration when you’re close to the merging. You’re so loud right now, you could shake windows loose. It helps us prepare the one being called well in advance. When the first sensing of the wolf brother appears, training begins in earnest.”

Training she never received. “Oh.” She dropped her gaze and obeyed his motions to sit on the other blanket. She settled at the center, pulling the clutched blanket tight over her shuddering shoulders. Angie tried to focus on one thing at a time to keep from losing her nerve. “You said the brother spirit was wolf.” She licked her lips to hide the quake in her voice. “And the soul spirit, if I had one, would be different.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a soul spirit?”

He crouched by the fire, resting on a knee, almost as if he were counting the seconds as they ticked on an invisible clock. “I do. Mine is the falcon. And yes, it hurts just as much to call on him.”

She felt the grin fighting to form at his humored tone. He was trying to comfort her. She’d never felt more alone in her life. “Does this have to do with the shaman legend?” Angie asked, taking a chance on the histories that she’d deciphered, testing her own knowledge and the merest probability of being right.

Her heart pounded when he nodded. His answer gave her a lightheaded feeling, but she focused on him and didn’t allow herself to crumple where she sat. It was a tough fight, but she won.

“Yes, that legend is true. One of the ancient fathers was attacked while hunting. He killed the lion with a solid strike to its side, but he was almost killed in the process. His throat had been nearly crushed by the cat’s attack. He lived but had lost his ability to speak.”

She watched him, encouraging him to continue, wanting to hear the real version.

“The merging of the wolf spirits happened not long after that. It’s rumored how that happened. Especially over the years, even the most sacred tales become a little warped.”

She laughed, albeit shakily. Fingering the blanket edge, she said, “I can imagine. Please, tell me the story.”

He rubbed a thumb against his lower lip in thought. “It has been passed down that this same ancestor went on a vision quest at the prodding of the tribal shaman. He had lost his status in the tribe because of the injury. He was still physically strong, but the injuries were much harder to overcome then.”

“He couldn’t communicate?”

He grimaced, sadness weighing heavily in his voice. “Not well, and he wasn’t able to be on watch because he couldn’t warn. He had no wife, so there was no family to rely on.”

Sympathy struck hard and deep for the man who’d lost everything on the chance of a bad hunting encounter. “And he wasn’t considered marriage material.” Loren’s expression said it all. “So what did he do?”

“He sought the shaman and asked what he should do. He was told if he went into the deepest mountains, he would find his voice, but he had to be willing to see it when it appeared because it would not be apparent through his eyes.” He dropped his hand, stirring the fire coals with a protruding stick. “This warrior had fallen within the tribe and had lost many things. Belief in what he was still living for was one of them.”

She tried to ignore the first niggle of heat and pain on her neck, concentrating on the story instead. The stiffening of her spine didn’t go unnoticed, though.

Loren reached for her, but she shook her head. “Don’t stop. I have a few minutes.” If she had to kill for them, she would get those few minutes to hear this legend.

After a tense, watchful pause, he continued. “He walked for more than a moon’s return—a full moon, no weapons, no food, and no water. He traveled over mountains and through the canyons, following nothing but the shaman’s order to search for his voice. He walked until he collapsed.”

Loren stood to circle the campfire once more, this time sprinkling herbs on the symbols he’d drawn. When he finished, he came and sat with her on the blanket. She turned to face him, to have his face to focus on as the heat crashed over her.

The timbre of his voice filled her ears, and she watched the motion of his lips as much as heard the story. “When he awoke, wolves had gathered. He knew fear like he’d never known before. He was weak, defenseless. He’d never survive if they attacked. Yet an amazing thing happened. They didn’t attack him for being an invader in their hunting territory. They howled. Songs like he’d never heard.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she automatically gripped the hand that found hers as the heat intensified, rolling in all too well known waves over her body. “What did he offer them for the gift?” She knew enough to know it had been nothing less in the mythos of the story.

“He said nothing. He couldn’t, and the wolves gathered wouldn’t have understood. He searched the ground and finding the sharpest rock, gouged pits out of his chest and off his legs.” She envisioned every word, seeing the blood bond that he’d offered them for the gift of their song. “He bled for them, swearing his life to them. His fear had been eclipsed by a new belief, and he knew what he had to do.”

“Tell me,” she choked out, knowing the ending was near, but she had to hear it herself. She had to know.

“The largest male approached the fallen warrior until he stood nearly at his hip, sniffed at the blood, and howled, a cry that carried to the four winds. When the pack joined him in salute to the warrior’s offering—and this is where the spiritual starts—this wolf, strong and proud just like the warrior who’d lost everything, bared its teeth before the warrior in pact. Something happened in that moment that has never been explained.”

She felt the grip of his hand in hers, focusing on his skin against hers as much as his voice to stay above the building pain.

“When the shaman had told him to believe in the voice when it came to him, the warrior had believed it was the wolves themselves which had found him. It wasn’t. The voice he needed was their song, a song that animal or man would recognize, and there was only one way to sing.”

She gasped as heat burst up her spine when she was unable to forestall its rage another wrenched second. “They shared one body.” Her jaw clenched around those few words.

“Yes.”

“Beautiful.” The word burst free, ripe with pain.

“It really can be. But it is deadly if abused,” he warned. The strain she found on his face through the slits of her eyes was evident as the merging began. “Many believe that wolf, the alpha of the pack, was a god on earth in wolf form, and he claimed the warrior and his blood as his eternal vessel. That ancestor became the shaman of the tribe and spent years sharing his teachings and reverence of the wolf pack’s ways. The clan became immersed in the gift, and that spirit is with us today, guarded and protected because that was the vow. Some of his bloodline have learned to embrace their totem spirit of our wild ancestors also.”

“So the Jahehn were shifters of the wolf and their totems?” Wonder built inside her, side by side with the engulfing pain that was knifing up and down her spine. She arched into it, feeling the familiar spasms, the known waves of crystal sharpness, clawing sensations of bone and muscle as though she were being shredded from the inside out. This time she felt the request in the pain, a pact formed from centuries past, and recognized it for what it was and how it was meant.

Tears leaked from her eyes as the pain fireballed. The spasms she’d suffered up to then were only the precursor to what was going to happen now. That realization didn’t make her feel any better after already living through so many and for so long.

“Don’t fight it,” Loren warned her, except miraculously she heard it in Mark’s voice.

His image hovered on her eyelids, and she desperately clutched at it as fear rose on her tongue. The concern he’d shown her, the real want to help her when she’d done everything she could to push him away.

Trying to protect him from being hurt, she realized she’d only been trying to protect herself. She didn’t want to cause him pain. Didn’t want to desert him. It was a lie. She didn’t want to be hurt.

She clung to Mark’s face, Loren’s hand, like a lifeline. Could she do this? Heat encased her, drove into her. She cried out as the fire mushroomed. As if a flaming army hiked up and down her body from the inside, leaving destruction and suffering in its wake. With the legend still echoing in her ears, she opened herself up to the whispered voice in her mind, hearing the howled song of the wolf pack in the ancient legend, and felt a growing sharpness merge within her, a sound she’d only vaguely heard or acknowledged in the past, not knowing what it was she’d carried all this time. Their song reached through time, joining hers, filling her with their strength.

The rising agony made her arch, dragging the scratchy thickness of the blanket over her skin. The next scream formed on her lips but never emerged. Her throat had closed as she suffered the same injury of the warrior of long ago. She panicked, clawing to fight it, to not succumb to the blackness crashing around her. Breathing became a harsh exercise as her world vacuumed to that ancient injury.

The soothing melody of a chant fell over her, and she struggled to reach it. Heated waves of lava rolled over her, scorching every part of her until she feared she’d incinerate on the spot. There wasn’t a part of her this time that didn’t feel the shifting of her own skin as the wolf brother laid claim to her body.

A new pain erupted from her hands, shooting up her arms until it raced past her shoulders, more ruthless than any other part of her. Even her feet and toes screamed at her in agony. She clawed at the blanket and dirt beneath her fingers, fighting to embrace the merging instead of fighting the pain completely.

Every muscle and bone cried out with renewed pulses of torture, and black edges crept into her vision. She wouldn’t survive. The blinding pain was unbearable. It was crippling. Death had finally come for her. Another rocket-hot shard sliced her in half, and the screams poured out of her.

She continued to hear Mark in her mind, comforting and tender with every breath, encouraging her the way only he could. The blazing hand she’d felt began anew, pummeling on organs and bones. She felt herself beginning to lose the fight, at the end of her endurance.

“Hang on, Angie! Open to the spirit!”

Steady hands touched her, reminding her she was human and she was the one in control. It was the only feeling that separated her from the bone-splitting torment. Ultimately, she couldn’t deny the timeless plea.

She released a gasp for life and plunged forward into the unknown. The sensation beneath her palms immediately changed. The drag of claws felt awkward, the tension of her touch different as skin and bone realigned.

Sensations bombarded her from every angle and direction. Scents, sounds. Everything she touched caused her to moan in renewed, exhausted agony. Her skin felt as though it had been heavily burned, prickled and dry, then raked with sharp tines over and over until it split in a burst from toe to finger.

The ache in her jaw amplified, and any movement of her mouth or tongue brought up another unavoidable whimper.

Bones popped and ground, the sound echoing inside her own head a thousand times, snapping like dry twigs. It happened so fast, yet the agony of it all made it feel as though it took an eternity. She wasn’t sure she was still alive even after it was finally over.

Blackness enveloped her senses, and she collapsed completely to the ground. Whispered words were the only reassurance that she had survived the merging.

The last murmurs disappeared in a deep silence as she simply let go and let the clan claim her. She had taken on the spirit of the wolf brother and accepted her place in the tribe. What was left could wait.