The door to the treatment room reopened, and the woman who’d been helping the doctor came out with a bundle of fabric in her arms. She smiled gently at Marilee. “You can go back in, if you like.” She sniffed the air and smiled. “Oh, good. The food’s here. Can you bring it in for me? The doctor wants to start her on liquids. There should be soup,” the woman said, a questioning expression on her face.
Marilee looked in the bag, and sure enough, there was a big bowl of soup in a sealed container. Marilee took it out of the bag and walked into the room, trying her best to smile brightly. Then, she saw her mother—her mother—sitting up in the bed, wearing a pink cotton hospital gown, and the smile was real. She looked better with each passing moment.
Marilee had thought this day would never come. She’d never dared to dream she would meet her actual mother. She hadn’t known what had happened to her, or her father. Whether they were dead or alive had always been a mystery. Well, the mystery had now been solved. Thanks be to the Mother of All.
“Good, the soup’s here,” the doctor said, coming over to take the bowl out of Marilee’s hands. He placed it on a rolling table that was made to slide over the bed. He adjusted the height and placed the bowl of soup in front of Laura. “Now, try this. We’ll start with fluids, and if all goes well, we’ll move slowly into mushy foods, before getting you back onto a regular diet. You’ve been starved for a long time. Your body will take some time to readjust.” The doctor’s head tilted to the side as if he was considering. “Of course, you’re a shifter. And you have a lot of magic on your side.” He shrugged. “It might not take that long, after all, but we’ll wait and see. Start slow and see how you feel.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Laura said, starting to eat her first meal in freedom, with hands that shook only a little bit.
“I’ll leave you, for now, but I’ll be back in a bit, and if you need me sooner, just call. I won’t go far,” he told her before leaving the room with a nod to his Alpha. John and King had come in behind Marilee and were standing against the wall a few feet away.
“Sorry about before, ma’am,” John said. “I guess you heard what the hawks reported.”
“That my daughter was betrayed by the Pack who promised her sanctuary and hunted because the latest evil bastard that held me captive thought he could use her to wake me up—only to kill me, and then her?”
Damn. Mama was angry, and she was getting stronger.
Laura’s personality was a force to be reckoned with. That worried Marilee a bit. Would her mother be disappointed to learn what a wimpy person Marilee had turned out to be?
“That’s about the size of it,” John admitted on a gusty sigh. “I’ll be talking to the Lords in short order. If Tobias is playing both sides—or if someone in his Pack is a traitor—steps will be taken. And, I can promise you this: if the Lords fail to act, we will do it ourselves. You have my word.”
Laura nodded. “Thank you for that, Alpha.”
“Now relax. Eat,” John said, straightening away from the wall and heading for the door. “I’m going to make a few calls. I’ll let you know what happens the next time I see you. Probably tomorrow, unless my mate wants to see you before. All right?”
Again, Laura nodded. “That’s fine. It’ll be a while before I’m fit. Thanks again, for your hospitality.” John nodded and left, leaving only King and Marilee with Laura.
Laura patted the side of her bed, inviting Marilee to sit. She did so, feeling the little spark of recognition when Laura’s hand squeezed hers for a moment. Marilee helped Laura arrange the table just so, then paused while she started slowly eating the soup, one slow spoonful at a time.
“You know, I thought about you so often over the years. I don’t even really know how long I’ve been…away. How old are you, Lee Lee?”
“Lee Lee?” Marilee laughed, scrunching up her face. Nobody had ever called her that, to her knowledge.
“Sorry. It was what I called you as a baby. I guess you’re Mari now, or something similar,” her mother said in a questioning tone.
“Mostly people use my full name, but some friends…well…Sabrina calls me Mari. I don’t have a lot of friends,” she admitted in a quiet voice, looking down.
Her mother’s hand cupped her cheek and raised her face, their gazes meeting. Laura’s eyes were full of compassion and…love. That must be what a mother’s love looked like, Marilee thought with wonder.
“I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t know what else to do. You’d surely have been killed if you’d been captured with me. Or worse.” Laura’s eyes held the shadows of the pain she had suffered for so long. “It may not have been ideal, but at least you were free to grow up in a wolf Pack, even if it wasn’t among family.”
“They tried to be good to me. I was just…different,” Marilee said.
“Being a white wolf among a Pack of timbers must not have been easy,” Laura said. “Plus, the fey side of you probably ruffled a lot of fur.”
“I didn’t know,” Marilee said, her words trailing off.
“Of course not. You were just a baby when I had to leave you. There was no way—no time—to make anyone aware of how truly special you were. I never intended to leave you for so long. How long?”
“Nobody knew when my birthday was, so I think I’m about twenty.”
“Twenty years.” Tears shone bright in her mother’s eyes. “You were born on a snowy day in March. The air was crisp, and the sun was getting brighter each day. It was March fifteenth. The Ides of March,” Laura said softly.
Marilee chuckled. “Figures. The Ides of March was a very unlucky day for Julius Caesar. I guess it was for me, too.”
“Caesar died,” King spoke up for the first time since re-entering the room. He stepped closer and put one hand on her shoulder, offering the touch her animal side needed so badly. “You lived to fight another day, despite the bad stuff that happened in the interim. In fact, you both survived,” he said, including Laura. “I think, from here on out, things are going to be much happier.”
Laura smiled brightly at him, though tears still shone in her eyes. “I think you’re right. I like your attitude.” She paused a moment as her expression grew more serious, once again. “Thank you for killing the mage who attacked my baby, and freeing me. I can never repay your kindness or thank you enough for your courage and strength in doing what you did and keeping my daughter safe.”
King nodded gently. “There is no need for thanks or repayment. I did what I had to do. I’m just glad it worked out. I only wish I’d had time to question the mage a bit. Maybe we could have learned something important. There’s a lot going on in the world that you may not be aware of, considering your…uh…status for the past years.”
“You mean about how the Venifucus are on the rise and the Mater Priori has been returned from the forgotten realms?” Laura’s words were matter-of-fact, but their meaning was troubling.
“How do you know all that, ma’am?” King asked quietly.
“You know, it’s true… People in comas can hear what’s going on around them, and that last mage liked to gloat,” Laura replied somewhat indirectly, but her meaning was clear. Marilee sucked in a breath.
“Then, the Destroyer really is back in the mortal realm,” Marilee said, just to fill the awful silence.
“Everything I heard indicated that’s what the Venifucus believe, but wherever she is, she is weak from her journey. She’s rebuilding her strength, right now, before renewing the war that we thought had ended so long ago,” Laura told them.
“Someone needs to know what you know, ma’am,” King said, his voice holding a hint of urgency, but Laura was already nodding as she took another spoonful of soup.
“And they will. I’ll do a full interview with the Alpha, or the Lords, or whoever else needs to know, as soon as I have a bit more energy,” she agreed in a gentle voice, taking another spoonful of soup then setting aside the bowl. “You have your father’s smile,” Laura said, looking at Marilee intensely. “And his hair. His was curly where yours is wavy, but it was the same strawberry blond.”
“Can you… Will you tell me how it all happened when you left your Pack to travel south?” Marilee asked, hoping her mother wasn’t too tired to tell her all those details that she’d thirsted for, for so very long.
“Ah. Well.” Laura rested her head back against the pillow. The head of the bed was raised so that she was in a mostly sitting position. “Roger had made a connection with a mage to the south, as I told you. We went, but the mage turned us away. He had no idea Roger had mated with a shifter, and my animal didn’t like the mage one bit. There was something…off about him. I realized later that he was already turning to evil. Roger hadn’t known. There was no way to know before meeting the man, and back in those days, travel wasn’t quite so easy from where we lived way up north. When we got there and the man turned out to be such an ass, we weren’t sure what to do. Roger had arranged an apartment on the edge of the city for us, and we stayed there while we tried to figure out what to do next.” Laura paused, her gaze shifting to focus on something in the past, or so it seemed. “We didn’t get the chance to decide our next move, for ourselves. The mage must have had friends—Venifucus friends—already, though he was only just starting to work for the other side. They came for us in the night. Roger stood his ground and tried to repel them, sending me ahead with the baby. I took off up the fire escape and onto the roof. I jumped from building to building, with you in my arms, Marilee. I’ll never forget that mad scramble in the dark, but we got away. I got on a bus and headed west, as your father and I had discussed in the brief minutes before I fled. We thought it would be better to head away from my home territory, with the intention of doubling back at some point.”
“But you never got the chance, did you?” King asked gently. “They followed you and kept you moving.”
Laura nodded, her expression filled with grief. “I never saw Roger, again. I just kept on the move, going farther and farther west, until I came to Tobias’s territory. They were on my trail almost from the very beginning. I had a number of close calls. Times when they almost got you away from me.”
Laura reached out for Marilee’s hand, and she took it, squeezing gently in reassurance. She looked so distraught as she remembered what must have been a frantic flight from danger.
“That’s why, when I stumbled across Tobias and his people, I thought a minor miracle had occurred. I’m just sorry it didn’t turn out that way,” Laura had tears in her eyes, again.
“Maybe it did,” Marilee said quietly. “Maybe this was all meant to happen this way. I might not have fit in very well, but my life with Tobias’s Pack wasn’t altogether bad. I made friends with Sabrina, and because of her, I came here and found you. It’s like we’ve come full circle.”
King couldn’t disagree with Marilee’s reasoning. Fate was definitely playing a role in his life. It had in hers as well, he had no doubt. The women talked more about Marilee’s childhood and schooling in Tobias’s Pack as Laura finished her soup. When the bowl was empty, Marilee took it away, leaving King with Laura for a moment. He wouldn’t let the opportunity pass to gather more intel, but he’d do it as gently as he could.
“Can you tell us more about the mage that captured you?” he asked, using what he hoped was a gentle tone, watching her reaction carefully. He liked the steel that came into her gaze. She was a strong woman who would recover well from her ordeal, in time, if he didn’t miss his guess.
“The one who captured me was, in fact, the same man my mate had wanted to study with. His name was Geoffrey von Reuben, and he was based in Quebec last time I saw him, but that was some years ago. He held me for several years, and, I’m sorry to say, he managed to siphon off quite a bit of my power before I figured out how to put up roadblocks against that sort of thing.” She grimaced. “It was a painful lesson.”
Marilee came back into the room and sat down on the side of her mother’s bed, again. She took Laura’s hand, compassion in her every motion. She was such a sweet woman. Such a sweet mate. His inner bear approved.
“You don’t have to talk about this, right now, if you don’t want to,” Marilee said, shooting a slightly chastising look in King’s direction. Laura laughed, and it was a magical sound.
“It’s nice to finally be able to tell my story,” she said. “I don’t mind. There are things that need to be known. I’m happy to be able to tell it.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” Marilee said skeptically. “But, if you get tired, we’ll go and let you rest. I’m sure others will be asking you some of the same questions tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.”
“You’re probably right, but I really don’t mind,” Laura insisted.
“You were saying that this von Reuben guy only kept you for a few years,” King prompted her. “What happened?”
“Geoffrey turned out to be the worst mistake my mate ever made,” Laura said, shaking her head slightly. “Roger thought he was just a regular mage who was willing to take on an apprentice. Neither of us had any inkling that the man was headed down an evil path. When Roger met him years before, Geoffrey hadn’t yet started following the blood path, but by the time he accepted Roger for that apprentice spot, he’d taken a turn to the dark side. When we got to Quebec, we discovered Geoffrey much as Roger had remembered him, but he became almost violent when he realized what I was. He flew into a rage and then banished us. He actually used that word. Roger and I left, dumbfounded, and tried to regroup, but in that short space of time, Geoffrey must have changed his mind and devised his evil plan to try to capture us all.”
Laura shivered, and King could see this was difficult for her to relive, but she kept going.
“Roger held them off, while I ran with you, Lee Lee. Geoffrey came with a group, though he was the one in charge. I guess they were henchmen, or something. Venifucus, for certain. I could smell the evil and see it swirling around them. Blood magic. It was the first time I have ever seen such a thing. It turned my stomach.”
“But you got away and were on the run for…how long, about?” King asked after a moment’s pause.
“A few months. I had the money Roger and I had taken out of the bank so we could move to Quebec. I bought bus tickets, train tickets, taxi rides. You name it. But they were always one step behind me. Sometimes, even closer than that.” Laura shivered again. “After I placed you with Tobias,” Laura looked at Marilee, “I led them back east, and they eventually caught up with me about three weeks later. You were safe. I had led them well away from you, and my money had just about run out. They caught me and brought me back to Quebec. To Geoffrey.” Here, Laura cringed and paused for a moment.
“The first year was horrific,” she went on a short time later. “I didn’t know how to protect myself against his blood magic, and he took quite a bit out of me. I was mourning Roger. And you, Lee Lee. I was a mess emotionally, and he took full advantage. He kept me in a cage, and I stayed in wolf form so I would be better able to defend myself. It didn’t matter. He liked slicing me through the bars, letting the red of my blood show against my white fur. Then, he’d have his people hose me down so I’d be white again for the next time. The bastard.” Laura looked away, clearly angry at the memory. “He got me so furious, and that helped me out of my grief. Slowly, I began to figure out how to block him. He didn’t like that at all.” A grim smile touched her lips. “Finally, he got so frustrated that he gave me away in a fit of temper. He had an apprentice who claimed he could get at my power, given half a chance, and Geoffrey shouted at him and drove him off, but not before throwing me out with him, cage and all. I think that’s why he goaded him.”
“Sneaky little bastard,” Marilee observed, showing her anger in her choice of words and harsh tone.
“They were all that way. One was worse than another. The Venifucus is a nest of vipers,” Laura told them. “The cast-off apprentice took me with a few of his hangers-on to Saskatchewan. I think we were somewhere above Saskatoon, but I can’t be sure. The apprentice’s name was Kelly. Morris Kelly. He was a careful S.O.B., who kept me in the dark, more often than not, but he never did manage to break through my protections. He finally gave up trying and gave me as tribute to his new master, a piece of filth named Justin Lafayette, who took me to his lair somewhere near Winnipeg. I don’t know exactly where I was most of the time, but these are my best guesses,” Laura emphasized. “Justin kept me like a zoo exhibit and showed me off to his guests. He tried for years to crack my protections—let others try, too—but nobody was able to get in. Then, one day, he had Giles Brand over to visit. He was a necromancer who did awful things to the dead. Giles’s magic was different, and I couldn’t fight it as effectively. He bought me from Justin, and those years were…incredibly painful. I don’t know where I was. The only way I could escape was the self-induced magical coma in which you found me.”
“But the mage we fought didn’t seem to have much power,” Marilee said, her expression puzzled.
“Oh, that wasn’t Giles. After I’d gone under so deep that he couldn’t reach me, even to kill me, he traded me to someone else,” Laura explained. “I went through a succession of captors until the final one, who was a new protégé of Giles’s. He thought he would get brownie points if he could finally be the one to get to my power or even just wake me up. He would have too, if he’d been able to do it. He was the creature who came up with the idea of using one white wolf to wake the other. He heard about you from somewhere—possibly a traitor within Tobias’s Pack. I know he routinely bribed people for information. Shifters, too, I believe. Otherwise, he would never have known about you, Marilee.”
“He must not have been much of a mage,” Marilee said. “His magic sluiced right off me.”
“On the contrary, even though I was in a coma, I could hear everything, and I could observe, in a way, from just the other side of the veil between this world and the fey realm. I was in-between. What I saw led me to believe he was a very powerful and very evil mage, doing his best to follow the necromancer’s path. I’m glad he’s dead. His sort of power wasn’t meant for the realm of man.” Laura looked closely at Marilee. “You must have inherited magic from both sides if you were strong enough to withstand his attack.”
“It was a full-on assault, ma’am,” King confirmed. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The power just rolled off her fur as she stood there. Impervious.”
Laura narrowed her eyes. “Your father had a sort of natural shield. That was his greatest strength as a wizard. Maybe you got some of that from him.”
“I wish I’d known him,” Marilee said softly. Laura reached up and cupped her daughter’s cheek, but King noted the slight trembling of Laura’s arm. She was getting tired and needed to rest.
“I’m going to have to break this up.” The doctor was back, having stopped in the doorway before speaking. “My patient needs sleep. Doctor’s orders. You can come back and sit with her tomorrow, okay?”
He was kind about it, but he basically chased Marilee out of the room. But not before she gave her mother a teary hug and exchanged kisses on both cheeks. King scooped Marilee under his arm as the doctor shut the door on them, interrupting her view of Laura, so pale and fragile-looking in the huge bed.
Sabrina and Ace were waiting for them in the parking lot. Sabrina held out her arms, and Marilee went into them for a hug as King stepped up beside his brother.
“Sabrina wanted to make sure Marilee was all right,” Ace explained.
“It was rough, hearing Laura’s story, but she’ll be all right,” King said quietly while the women talked privately a few feet away. “I’ll take care of her.”
Ace gave him a measuring glance but said nothing more on that topic. “How are you set for dinner? Want to hit the restaurant with us?”
“It’s up to Marilee,” King replied. “If she’s up for it, I am.”