Kenna
“Kenna.”
I reach up to rub my eyes, my back stiff from sleeping on the ground.
“Kenna, wake up.”
Someone shakes me gently.
“Hey!”
“What?” I groan, blinking into amber light shining directly in my face. I squint, and Evander’s features come into view, his expression washed with concern. “Ev? What’s going on?”
“You need to get up and come with me.”
As I come back to reality, unkindly thrust out of a dream I think had to do with the upcoming Rite, I hear voices outside.
Evander wastes no time. Suddenly, I’m standing, and he’s laying a cloak over my shoulders, clasping it over my sternum. He works deftly in silence.
Fabric brushes against my collarbone, and I feel a sudden spark of familiarity at the touch. I step back, feeling like I just experienced a shock to my system.
Evander is wearing gloves–black gloves. The same kind of gloves the man I kissed wore.
My lips part as I begin to ask what those gloves are for, but he takes me by the elbow and rushes me out of the shed into the crisp, night air.
The question flutters away into the dark abyss of my sleep-raddled mind as I spot Cleo standing with Neiman, the two of them flanked by three unfamiliar wolves.
“Is she old enough to shift?” Neiman asks with a nod in direction.
“No, she’ll ride on my back,” Evander replies, masking the cold hard truth about my predicament with a lie.
I look around, noticing the huge bag Neiman has slung over his shoulder. I can smell the herbs from here.
“Is someone hurt?” I ask, my powers prickling to life.
“There’s a woman in labor in Tiscoln, and she’s struggling,” Cleo says. “Her family came to me for help, but I’m just an alchemist. We need your help.”
I look from Cleo to the wolves. “Of course. I’m happy to help.”
Excitement flares in my chest, but also… nerves. For the past year, I worked in a midwifery clinic in Moonrise. I’ve delivered dozens of babies–mostly witch babies, though. Shifter births are always more complicated, more likely to have something go wrong.
I swallow hard to tamp down that nervous energy rushing through my body and nod. “Let’s go, then.”
I turn away from Cleo as she begins to undress, one of the wolves from Tiscoln taking her supply bag in its jaws.
But turning around puts me in view of Evander, who is taking off his shirt.
I lower my gaze a second too late. My eyes sweep over his broad chest–over the roping, tight muscles that coast down his chest and abdomen before disappearing in a sharp V below his waistband.
Goddess, when did he start looking like this?
I blush so brightly I’m sure my cheeks can be seen from the heavens as I turn to look at the shed while he takes his pants off.
“What are the gloves for?”
“Armor, if I need it while in wolf form,” he says behind me.
“Do you need it right now?”
I’m met with silence, and when I glance over my shoulder, Evander is replaced by a huge golden wolf with piercing green eyes.
He’s not wearing armor. I look down at his paws, which are as big as my face, for sure, and wonder where those gloves have gone.
His pants and shirt are neatly folded beside him.
I feel a little tickle in my… chest, not my brain, as Evander says through what I think is the mind-link, ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah, but this doesn’t feel like the mind-link–’
‘Get on.’
I square my shoulders. The idea of riding on his back makes me squirm, but I obey. I wrap my arms around his huge neck and get a mouthful of fur as I pull in a surprised breath when he tears off into the night without warning.
He smells very good, honestly. As a witch, I grew up hearing all of the jokes the others would tell about the shifters. How the shifters smelled like wet dogs, or dirt, or a damp forest, but Evander smells like… vanilla candles.
Weird, right?
Where have I smelled that scent before?
I keep my eyes firmly shut as we barrel through the barren, rocky landscape into a deep valley. Soon the smell of smoke rises in the air, and it’s clear we’ve reached a village.
It’s nearly sunrise now as I lift my head and blink into the clear, pinkish hue of early morning.
Evander skids to a stop in front of a cottage toward the edge of the village. Spruce trees tower overhead as I get off his back, but then I feel it.
Death hangs nearby, like a ribbon of smoke hugging the air above my head.
* * *
“More honey. It’s going to taste awful and she needs as much sugar as we can get into her,” I tell Cleo in a soft whisper as we grind herbs in the corner of the room. Behind us, nineteen-year-old Elsie whimpers as her mother lays a cold wet rag over her forehead.
No wonder she’s struggling so badly. She’s not even old enough to shift. Her baby is full term and ready to be born, but the child is bigger than her small frame can handle.
“Is the baby alive?” Elsie’s twin sister, Jessa, asks quietly as she comes up to my side to fetch the cup of tea Cleo just made for the struggling young mother.
“Yes,” I assure her, resting a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “But I need to turn the baby. She’s not in the right position.”
“It’s a girl?” Jessa asks with a watery smile, her eyes filling with tears.
I nod, hoping I didn’t just give away a surprise.
The cottage is full of women–young and old. I’ve been met with skepticism since arriving here an hour ago, and I’m generally given a wide berth as I tend to the laboring mother, but no one has outwardly tried to stop me yet.
I understand some packs are still weary of witches.
I just hope I can convince them that not all of us are evil.
I kneel at Elsie’s bedside while her mother and sister help her drink the tea–a concoction Cleo and I made to help ease the labor pains. The honey is just to help give her energy, but after two days of hard, painful labor, I can tell Elsie is ready to throw in the towel.
The idea of putting her under and cutting this baby from her stomach makes sweat prickle across my hairline. I do not want this to come to that.
I wait for Elsie to finish the tea, which she does with a grimace. “I know it tastes horrific,” I say with a tight smile. “But it will help you feel better.”
“I don’t want to die,” she whispers, her skin a pale cream in the sunlight pouring from the window behind her.
“You won’t, I promise.”
A few of the women in the room glance at each other. I wonder how many women in their pack they’ve lost to childbirth. It’s so common for shifters to struggle, especially the young ones. My own grandmother, aunt, and mother suffered greatly delivering the members of my family.
I flex then curl my fingers, making sure they’re warmed up.
Cleo waits for my command nearby. She’s been incredibly helpful when it comes to convincing these strangers that I am capable of delivering this baby.
I just hope I’m able to save the mother when this is all said and done.
Elsie screams as I turn the baby into position. Her agony tears at my resolve, but I don’t let it show. I’ve done this many times.
Finally, the herbs we used to calm her kick in, and the energy in the room changes from quiet panic to something happier, sunnier, and more at ease.
“All right,” I tell her, roughly an hour later as I feel between her legs. My fingertips graze the top of the baby’s head. “Wow, a full head of hair.”
A soft laugh ripples around the room, and a very sweaty, beet red Elsie grins deliriously at me from over the swell of her belly.
“She’s ready to be born. Are you ready to guide her into this world?” I ask Elsie.
“I am,” she says softly, nodding.
I notice the blood between her legs. It’s more than I’d like to see, but there’s no stopping this baby now.
I need to get her out, and once she’s safe, I’ll save Elsie’s life.
“Push,” I say, and her family gathers around her shoulders to help guide a new soul into their pack.
I feel hands on my shoulders and back. A few of the women–possibly aunts or the grandmothers of Elsie–are behind me, giving me the same kind of encouragement Elsie is receiving from her mother, sister, and friends.
It’s a magical, sacred moment. Prayers to the Goddess are raised in both murmurs and loud, booming songs that shake the windows in time with Elsie’s cries of pain, desperation, and eventually relief.
The baby girl is born in a ray of sun in the afternoon on a cloudless, perfect summer day.
But I don’t place her in her mother’s arms.
“Take her, dry her off,” I say hurriedly to Jessa, who jumps to my side. Elsie groans and trembles, saying something unintelligible. Blood rushes between her legs.
I’m panting, covered in sweat, as I shout, “Everyone out!”
Cleo jumps into action, herding the concerned family out of the bedroom where Elsie has been laboring for several days now.
They gather in the living room beyond the door. I can hear muffled sobs as their prayers and praises to the Goddess turn to desperate pleas to save Elsie.
My heart is in my throat as I turn to Cleo. “I need valerian root and silvertongue. Steep it only for two minutes, I’ll be done by then.”
“Done with what?” Cleo asks but immediately moves to the table where she keeps her herbs and boiling water.
I have no time to answer. Elsie starts to shake violently. I’m almost out of time.
“Why do shifters lose so much blood during childbirth?!” I say through gritted teeth as I pin her arms to her heaving chest. My powers fly out of my hands in ribbons of blue, shooting over her pale skin.
I hear Cleo startle behind me, but I don't stop. My eyes flare a bright shade of silver as I will all of my healing powers to converge at once, forcing life back into the dying mother.
“Come on!” I urge, imagining the broken parts of her knitting themselves back together again. I imagine blood rushing to her heart, to her brain. I imagine air filling her lungs. “Cleo! The herbs! Now!”
Cleo is beside me in a second, holding a teacup.
I blink, then blink again, digging deep to bring forth an old trick of mine from my youth.
Tears spring along my lower eyelashes–tears that glow a pale gold in the sunlight. Tears I inherited from my grandmother, Isla.
I swipe them away into the palm of my hand and squeeze my fingers so that they fall into the teacup, then raise it to Elsie’s mouth. I watch the tears swirl over her lips, then disappear.
She stills.
I take several steps away from her, panting, sweat pouring down my temples.
Elsie takes a sharp breath, a hand flying over her heart.
A strangled sob erupts in the living room, and then Jessa is rushing in with the baby.
“Elsie,” she sobs, kissing her sister’s cheeks. “Oh, Elsie.”
The rest of the family comes in as Elsie returns to life. The baby is placed in her trembling arms as her cheeks flush with healthy color again.
I walk on unsteady feet toward the corner of the room, finding it hard to breathe. My powers are going haywire.
“Here,” Cleo whispers, handing me a cup of tea. “It’s just chamomile.”
I drink it down, trying to ease my thundering heartbeat.
“You just performed a miracle,” Cleo says.
“I’m just doing my job,” I pant, meeting her eyes.
But Cleo shakes her head slowly from side to side, tears lacing her lashes. “No, child. That was a miracle if I’ve ever seen one.”
As she says it, the family begins to approach me, closing me into the corner and peppering me with tearful gratitude.
But I’m overwhelmed, and other powers are edging toward the surface.
“I need some air,” I say, keeping a smile plastered on my face as I hurry out of the crowded room and into the daylight.
There’re people everywhere, everyone looking at me, everyone talking to me all at once.
“It’s a girl,” I croak, and rush around the outside of the cottage toward the woods.
I’m barely in the cool, humid shadow of the spruce tears when my powers erupt, and I’m sucked into a sightless shadow.
I rest my back against a tree and slide to my ass, stretching out my legs.
I turn to a crunching sound nearby, and Evander steps out of the cover of a tree in his human form, dressed in his all black Ghost armor.
So, that’s where the gloves went.
How he can see me still, when I’m lost in my powers, I’ll never know.
“I think I kissed–I kissed a Ghost at the ball,” I say, panting between the words. “I think–did I kiss Flynn?”
Evander cracks an uncharacteristic smile.