Chapter 5: Jealous Talk

Azandra POV

As Azandra walked to Cresta House, she felt thankful Lilia’s barrier would still keep Azandra’s interfering parents out of her house. She needed some privacy, clearly, and she should have asserted herself a long time ago.

The early afternoon sun lit up the town and made her smile. This was her favorite time of day, mostly because the thatched and tiled roofs of the houses gleamed in the sun, and the wildflowers surrounding the town smelled particularly sweet. Insects buzzed, singing their song.

Every shifter felt in touch with nature, and their wolves connected with it directly. They connected with their homeland. But Azandra had always been more sensitive to it. She could feel the energy surrounding her, and it didn’t feel unpleasant. It felt as soft and delicate as a spiderweb most of the time, except when something disturbed it.

She had felt the effects of the war against the Crimsontails. Thank the Moon Goddess that was over.

She tried to explain all this to her parents, this deep connection to nature and to their pack lands. She might as well have been speaking Elvish. They felt the basic connection, but not in the way other shifters did. Certainly not in the way she did.

She thought Kyon understood. His brothers probably did too, but …

“Kyon,” she called out.

Walking to Cresta House, he stopped and turned, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

“Do the insects bother you?”

“Only when the bees try to sting me. Otherwise, no. They sing if you can believe it. Or maybe it’s a hum. Anyway, I don’t mind it. It’s comforting. Why?”

She smiled. “No reason. I just wanted to check.”

And as they kept walking, she heard buzzing, but not from insects. Members of the pack stopped whatever they were doing to stare and whisper as she and Kyon passed.

Look straight ahead. Don’t look at them. Don’t listen to what they’re saying.

But her hearing wouldn’t cooperate. It was sensitive too.

“Look at her, throwing herself at another Cresta brother.”

“Shameless!”

“She seduced him. She kissed him.”

“What can you expect? Kyon has been living in Dane’s shadow for so long he’ll take his discarded toys …”

“And she’s only too happy to be taken. She’s a beautiful toy, but watch out …”

“Don’t be too hard on her … she probably just wants to get away from that mother of hers. Poor thing.”

“Hah! Blood will out. Titania was just like her when she was younger.”

“I actually LIKE Azandra, though …”

“Give her time, she’ll turn into Titania soon enough.”

“Have you forgotten the way Azandra acted toward our Luna? Disgraceful. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“Kyon is too good for her.”

And a particularly vicious barb made her want to turn and fight. “Too bad Alpha Cyran has fled into the mists. He’d have been perfect for her.”

Never mind that Alpha Cyran only wanted Lilia and tricked his entire pack into fighting a war against the Evenhide Pack. But the rest of it felt like daggers in her because it was all true, including wanting to get away from her mother and her behavior toward Lilia, who she now considered a friend.

She caught up to Kyon, gripping his arm. His big arm went around her and he whispered, “Hold me back. Keep me from doing something to those idiots that I’d stop my brothers from doing. Dane didn’t ‘discard’ anyone, and you and Lilia are now the best of friends.”

Kyon had a point. Lilia forgave her and so did Dane. He even apologized to her for taking her for granted. But it still didn’t excuse what she did.

She hung her head, angling it away from the merciless stares. “They’re right about my mother. And the way I acted toward Lilia.”

He tugged the ends of her hair gently, but hard enough to make her lift her chin. “You apologized to Lilia and Dane and they knew it was sincere. I can’t ever remember your parents apologizing to anyone. You’re nothing like them. Dad always said that.”

Touched, she ruffled his hair. “He did?”

“Repeatedly,” Kyon said and pulled her even closer.

She laughed softly. He had thrown down the gauntlet, and nothing and no one could make him back off. Sometimes she forgot Kyon was just as capable of asserting himself as the rest of his brothers.

Tulaska’s voice snapped her out of her self-loathing. “The way they gossip, you’d think they were talking about some silly, frivolous noblewoman and her numerous love affairs instead of the pack healer. Disgraceful! What are we, humans in some royal court somewhere?”

With a smile, Azandra turned to see the pack Wise Woman, Tulaska Volkov, who looked formidable. With her sheer presence, she cleared a space around them and the gossips’ tongues went strangely silent.

Gray-eyed and mature, Tulaska had that presence that screamed authority without hitting people over the head with it. She wore a necklace of crystals in honor of Lilia, who, along with her mother Ravyn, knew more about them than anyone Azandra had ever met.

Azandra looked at Tulaska with a sardonic grin. “At least most of us fight each other openly when we have a dispute. We don’t smile and scheme and have a knife hidden behind our backs.”

“Exactly.” Tulaska patted her arm with the satisfied smile of a mentor praising her prize pupil. “You have more important things to do. Time’s a-wasting.”

Azandra spotted the troubled look in Tulaska’s eyes, like swirling storm clouds. “What is it?”

“Your prospective fated mate isn’t the only one who suddenly got a rather garishly colorful wound,” Tulaska said with bluntness. “My home is full of cases.”

Azandra’s hand flew to her mouth. “Fenrir’s teeth! There are more cases? More attacks?”

Kyon growled, and she could hear his teeth grinding like rocks rubbing together. “If only I’d been more alert and watched where it went …”

Azandra swatted him on the arm. “You were in pain. So for once, you didn’t act like a Cresta self-sacrificing idiot. You’re still around, and if you hadn’t gotten to me in time, we’d have been blindsided.”

“So, I was a hero by being selfish,” he said in a dry tone.

“You’re the Beta of the Evenhide Pack, you half-wit. Your loss would be a blow,” she said, trying for logical and rational and ending up with a voice that sounded near tears.

Tactfully, he brushed her hair back from her face. “Thanks for reminding me.”

She squared her shoulders. “Tulaska, how many cases do we have?”

The wise woman’s words made her feel like she’d just plunged into an icy lake. “At least a dozen.”

“Can we call the witches in Wildefell?”

“Already done, girl, do you think I’m just sitting on my hands? Besides, we have three of them that rather like our pack and our lands and are just itching to use their witch powers.”

Azandra grinned. “You, me, Lilia, Ravyn, and Anneliese. Quite the formidable group.”

Kyon murmured, “And it gives us all confidence. I’ll go and brief Dane on the situation. You join me when you’re ready.”

Azandra murmured a distracted thank you and broke away from his warm, strong presence to join Tulaska on the walk back to the wise woman’s home.

Tulaska always strode like she had a long journey ahead of her and she couldn’t afford to waste time, yet she still turned to Azandra with a questioning expression. “Am I right? Prospective fated mate?”

“Yes, according to Lilia,” Azandra confirmed. “But maybe now wasn’t the time–”

“If it wasn’t, you would have settled for telling your interfering parents to mind their own business for a change. And with fated mates, it’s time when the Moon Goddess says it’s time.”

Fenrir’s breath, she never knew how many people in her life held such a low opinion of her parents and thought she was entirely too passive with them.

“I have told them, repeatedly,” she answered Tulaska.

Tulaska huffed, “Then maybe it’s time to let your actions speak for you instead of contradicting you.”

Azandra filed that away to consider when she had the leisure to do so.

Other than Cresta House, she loved Tulaska’s home the best out of all the places in New Moon City. Plants grew around a reflecting pool and threatened to take over the courtyard because Tulaska sometimes forgot to trim them, assuming that either nature or her wolf visitors would take care of them. The wolves of the pack ate the greens in order to soothe their stomachs and also clean their teeth, tongues, and gums.

Right now, several wolves with oozing wounds gnawed on the leaves and stalks, maybe because the pain was upsetting their stomachs, or as a way to soothe themselves and distract from the agony. Azandra gestured to them. “We’ll help you all,” she said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice.

Inside Tulaska’s house, a powerful trio of witches, namely Lilia, her mother Ravyn, and Lilia’s bubbly best friend Anneliese Chalice flitted about with crystals in their hands and focused the energies on one patient at a time. A dozen shifters in human and wolf forms either sat or lay quietly, letting the witches do their work, with Tulaska supervising.

Azandra’s heart squeezed and twisted. Her hands shook, seeing so many shifters with a wound just like Kyon’s, in various places. The worst cases were the ones with wounds disfiguring people’s faces.

Pink-haired Anneliese, a serious expression on her normally friendly and pink-cheeked face, waved Azandra over. “How IS Kyon? I was just telling this fine man here that Kyon is doing well.”

The wolf in question, a border sentry named Aardwolf, glared at Anneliese. “Did I say I was worried? I’ve been through worse than this.”

Given that the wound wrapped around his neck looked like the world’s ugliest scarf, Azandra doubted the man’s bravado. “We’ll have you fixed up soon, I hope.”

The odor from the disease nearly made her gag, and she saw the tough Ravyn hold her nose, too, when no one was looking at her. Ravyn hurried over and put an arm around her. “You’re to be commended for treating this ailment, although I have no idea how because I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Me either,” Azandra muttered.

Lilia offered a hopeful solution. “It’s a magical wound for sure. And you need magic to fight magic. We need a LOT of magic.” She looked right into Azandra’s eyes. “We need you here in the Evenhide Lands, not in some other pack’s territory.”

Tulaska smiled and Anneliese shouted in agreement, while Ravyn gave Azandra the kind of motherly look that should have made her absolutely hate Lilia’s guts for having it all: loving mom, loving mate, and a mom that accepted her mate AND her daughter’s destiny. But then she remembered that Lilia’s creep of a father had abandoned these two beautiful, amazing women, and she couldn’t hate Lilia. Truly, she probably never did, beyond the sharp bee sting of jealousy in the beginning.

“Don’t worry,” she assured her three witch friends and Tulaska. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my pack and my home, and they’ll have to drag me away from it. Especially with a magical medical mystery on our hands. Shall we start, ladies? This wolf right here needs healing.”