“What does ‘hmm’ mean?” Carmen snaps, losing patience, her usual irritable persona showing face. Not that I blame her, and Leyanne smirks.
“It means, hmmm…. I thought that phrase was universally understood. It’s not like I’m not speaking English… although some from that country would disagree.” She chuckles at some vague self-joke and again fixes that penetrating gaze back at me.
“Hmmm, you know how to help, or hmmm, you don’t?” I chirp in, tenser by the second, and honestly getting so sick of this. She’s so good at vague, dragging things out, and evasive answering, which is annoying.
“Hmmm, as in, well now that makes sense, and hmmm, as in ….. I know what I must do. Does that clear up your inability to understand the worldwide use of Hmmm?”
“Oh my god, you’re infuriating, you know that?” Carmen snaps, riled and instantly tense all over, getting up to pace around behind me and shake off the obvious hostility that is making her stiff and frustrated. It’s this atmosphere, this holding on with bated breath and walking on eggshells as we try to suss this witch out. It’s detrimental to patience, and Carmen has low amounts of that in the first place. Leyanne sits back comfortably and prods at her kettle with a stick to see if it’s even beginning to steam. Unperturbed by the outburst.
“I have something to do, and you three should rest. We have to travel back to your home tomorrow and see what needs to be done. Help yourself to tea. There are blankets back there in that chest, along with the leaves, creamer… sugar. Whatever you need. Try not to make a mess. I hate sloppy campers.” She rises gracefully, dismissing us so easily, acting like this is fucking normal, and I gawp at her, my heart hitching in utter disbelief.
“You’re leaving?” I snap at her, my voice cracking in my throat with the raspiness I spat the words out and somehow jumped to my feet without even realizing it. We haven’t gotten anything from her other than an agreement to come with us, and she’s dumping us out here in the middle of the night while the moon is full and we have no means to shelter.
“Hmmm, things to do, people to see. As I previously stated, I didn’t just come here for you three. I was on my own little mission, which happens to be as important and beneficial to your little predicament.” She starts moving towards the exit, and Meadow is the one to lose her temper in a true feisty fashion. Letting rip with a roar, bouncing up in front of me with ambering eyes and a snarl to her tone.
“So, we’re to stay out here, unprotected. While you swan off and do, God knows what? Like sitting fucking ducks, just patiently trusting you! You, who has given us nothing at all even to trust!” that wolfish aggression comes through in waves of oozing anger, and her eyes glow even brighter as her temper explodes.
“You’re not very gracious or grateful for people seeking my help and towing themselves across the country. What do you think will happen to you here that won’t in your truck, protected by MY magic? Do you think a secondhand spell carried out by a half-witch is more effective than any I have in place here?” She smirks and gestures around us with an airy-fairy wave of her hands. “Safe as houses and a little warmer than a steel box. I’ll be back before sunrise with a guest or two. So be awake, ready to go, and have a more hospitable attitude because he isn’t the type to take any kind of rudeness and dismiss it as graciously as I’ve done. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood with a solution to an issue I’ve been agonizing over, and you happen to be important to someone up there.” She points upwards at the appearing stars in the velvet blanket of sky, gaining a squint from me, a confused frown from Carmen, and more intrusive verbals from Meadow.
“Meaning?” she interjects harshly, eyes still not simmering down to normal, and I’m getting the vibe that none of us are warming to this witch at all. She’s a strange one with an aura of something that makes you not trust her, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, even if her words are telling you that it’s not true.
“I was led here for one task, and it just happens to coincide with you three showing up…. hardly coincidence. Now why I came here makes sense. Looks like the planets are finally aligning, and your fates are sorting their mess out.” She smirks again, and I eyeroll at her use of the word soup to tell us nothing at all once more. She’s evasive for sure, talks in riddles, and literally offers no insight while seeming like she is. Carmen inhales heavily to hold her temper, slumping back down to sit and giving up, and I sigh, realizing this is futile. I, too, fall back, let myself land heavily on a log beside her, and stare helplessly at this strange woman.
“You’ll tell us when you think we need to know, right?” I point out, knowing this is looking to be a lot like how she operates. She plays things close to her chest, and maybe it’s her that doesn’t trust us.
“Right. And I hate to spoil surprises. Oh…. talking of which… This one, I’m afraid, needs some words of caution.” Leyanne eyes me steadily, locking on like I’m the target and her face falls serious and stern. She nods down at the vial on the long chain I brought with me from Sierra that we didn’t need at all. As soon as she eyeballs it, it begins to glow with low, white, faded intensity, and she smiles a little wider as though it contains an answer she needs to be sure of. “Don’t go turning anytime soon. I know you have, and you’ve been lucky up until now, so don’t anymore…. That little witch gift in you isn’t supposed to be lost.” She winks, smiles in a somewhat staggeringly pretty way, and turns to walk off, but this time I need her to be less vague with that.
“What are you talking about… the vial? What?” I lift it and take it from my neck, thinking she wants it back, that it somehow gets damaged by my turning, but I never wore it when I turned. Leyanne only chuckles at my obvious confusion, the questions etched across my face, and turns away from me to straighten her petticoats. Pulling her cloak back over her shoulders to conceal her slight frame.
“No, wee Darlin, I’m talking of those two little seeds of hope you have growing in your belly. Part witch, part wolf, part vampire….. don’t turn, and they won’t die. Something that took Sierra a hell of a long time to figure out. Ultimately, all those losses came after a turning… so that’s proof of what not to do.” She moves off with a steady step, and the blood drains from my face, turning my body icy cold as it infiltrates my fuzzy mind like a dripping tap. I blink down at my stomach, and it smacks me right in the chest with the force of a freight train
“Seeds in my? … Are you saying I’m? How can you ..? I can’t be… we never….. We were careful. We made sure that there wouldn’t be accidents. How could you know?” It’s a blurt of words, a spew of soggy rambling as my eyes mist up, and I find swallowing a whole ordeal. It stops her progression as she pulls up her hood.
“Because I can. Perks of being a creepy bitch, and careful or not, the fates decided these two bairns had to come to fruition. As I said, Luna …. Don’t turn or the wolf in you will treat them as a virus and cure your body. They're getting big enough now to be seen as such. Such a simple remedy that most wolves never figured out until it was too late.” It’s a commanding but gentle tone, full of the confidence of someone in the know, and I sit like a statue, gazing at my belly and having no idea how to react. I can’t think or feel as numbness crawls over my limbs and skin, enveloping me in mild shock.
“You’re pregnant….” Meadow mouths it breathily, finally caving from the fierce warrior wolf and slumping beside me to cradle my abdomen with a gentle hand and a face of instant tears. Carmen’s face colors darker as she looks away, her eyes misting so obviously, and her instant of heartache almost drowns out my shock and numbness at such a crazy revelation. “Chica? You’re pregnant!” Meds says it again with more energy. A hint of excitement, and I shake my head at her, still unable to let it absorb.
Colton doesn’t know or is capable of knowing about this, even if we were home. He should know. He should have been with me when we found something like this out…. It should have been together. A moment of shared happiness, and not this cruel twist of being hit in the face with it while hours away from him. Tears fill my eyes, and my heart shudders painfully at the thought that this should have been a life-changing discovery in his arms and not like this while he’s lost to me.
I don’t even know if this would make him happy, given we avoided the possibility because of the brewing war and the state of our lives under the shadow of vampires. I don’t even know if I’m happy. I don’t know how to feel. Our world is a mess, our lives aren’t simple, and my mate currently wants to kill me. This is so wrong, yet on some level, a tiny piece of me shines bright, and a warmth settles in my heart that twists it in a good way.
“Turning makes us miscarry,” Carmen whispers the words, seemingly more to herself than needing to have a question answered, and it tears my attention back to her swirling chaos of dark emotions. I can feel the deep and heavy grief of her mother’s death all over again, yet this seems different somehow, and a harsher, piercing kind of sorrow fills my senses and makes me stiffen in reaction. Carmen lowers her eyes and begins to cry softly, staring at her own body, much like I was. “Right, of course… hybrids, not pure. Makes sense.”
I don’t get why she is so upset, but Leyanne fastens a steady look on her and seems to soften slightly, seemingly knowing the why in Carmen’s dissolving emotional state.
“It was you or both. If you didn’t heal, you would die. There were no other options. Juan is a murderer, not you.” Leyanne seems to know something we don’t, and I gawp at Carmen as my brain registers what she’s saying. Pain hitting me tenfold for two reasons, and I can’t get my head around the possibility Carmen was pregnant. It feels like she stabs me in the heart, not only for her pain but for the chance of ….
“Colton’s?” Meadow is the one to say the words I literally can’t verbalize, but thankfully she shakes her head. I feel so selfish for the relief in that, but I don’t know. I’m stupid, jealous, and ashamed of my reaction and thoughts. Somehow if she had created a life with him first, it would have tainted my bond with him.
“A one-night stand that spelled disaster. It was never meant to be but still…….. just for that short time, I hoped. He didn’t want to know. Then he didn’t need to know anymore.” She can’t look us in the eye and turns her face away as it dawns on me that everything I suspected about a change in her…. It wasn’t just what Juan did. It wasn’t Colton’s betrayal or the pack leaving her. Hell, it wasn’t even her mom. It was deeper than all that, and this is it right here.
Carmen’s loss, her constant weight of guilt, her change about caring about others… she’d been pregnant, and she lost something she’d grown to love instantly. It must have been doubly crushing for a girl who craves genuine love and a bond from someone who might just see and value her.
I can feel her agony so much clearer now as the sadness rises, but she pushes it back down behind that tough demeanor and shoves it behind that haughty tone and superior frown. Just a glimpse of her despair, but enough to break my heart for her for the rest of time. Meadow is silent as she absorbs this, finally that compassion I know she has on full show, tears filling her eyes, and Leyanne breaks the eerie quiet.
“Well, you three enjoy the heart-to-heart. Sister bonding seems to be much needed in your pack of three. Joined by fate… maybe you gals need to work on that. Like I said – early rise, be ready for my arrival. You don’t want to miss who I’m bringing along.”
She doesn’t wait for a reply, not that any of us have one to give as a startling shock is causing strained silence and tearful faces, but she turns on her heel and leaves without a second glance. Disappearing into the darkness as smoothly as she first arrived, the atmosphere around the fire grows steadily worse.