Aviva
The air in my old home is humid. The sucking, sticky kind that makes me feel dirty and uncomfortable. Summer swept through the Deadlands last night after what felt like weeks of rain, and now, what’s left of the moisture hangs in the heated air, weighing me down, making me sweat, stopping the tears from completely drying on my cheeks.
I brush them away with the backs of my hands and press my back to the cool, stone wall in the center hall, trying to gather myself. My heart is still beating rapidly. I arrived in Endova less than an hour ago. Far less. I still can’t catch my breath, and my legs are on fire from running like my life depended on it–because Ryan’s life was in my hands… clenched between my teeth.
I run my fingers over my knife belt, counting hilts. I absently reach over my shoulder and count each arrow in my quiver. I make note of the press of the bow against my back, the strength of the leather of my new halter.
Run. My mind is telling me to run. To go far, far into the hills. To run into the forest until my legs eventually give out. I’ll meet the sea eventually. I’ll outrun this. I’ll outrun him, and the feelings skittering around in my heart trying to find a home. I’ll outrun the crushing weight of this new feeling in my chest that festers into something so painfully raw it takes my breath away.
It’s a feeling I can’t name. It’s the same feeling I felt when I watched the light dim behind my mother’s eyes six years ago. The same empty desperation. The same crushing grief.
I’d come so close to losing Ryan. Now, I’m not sure how to feel. I don’t want to feel like this… like I have something to lose.
The front door swings open, sending in a fresh spray of hot daylight. The shadow that darkens the doorway is one I expected, but I hadn’t expected Mercy to be wearing the expression currently engraved on her face like it was cut from stone.
She looks me up and down, drinking me in, her gaze roving over my weapons before her eyes finally meet mine. She reaches behind her back and firmly shuts the door. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t,” I try to say, but she shakes her head violently, her head lurching as she struggles to swallow.
She keeps her hand curled around the doorknob, her knuckles white. “I’m not letting you go.”
I straighten up, my heart thundering. I haven’t made the decision yet, but she must see the answer written in my eyes.
“You’re not leaving.”
“That’s not up to you.”
“I’m not going to stand by and watch you run away again, not this time.”
Fresh fury ripples to life as I square up to my sister. “I don’t run–”
“That’s all you’ve ever done. For six years.” She heaves a breath, and her beautiful face shatters, revealing guttingly raw emotion I don’t think I’ve ever seen in her before.
“You don’t understand.” The words wobble off my tongue. “Mercy, I can’t–I can’t do this–”
“You have to.” She lets go of the door knob and raises her hands in surrender, but her tears spill over her lashes.
“Ryan–he didn’t want a wife. He was forced into it, just like I was. He doesn’t want this, with me. He nearly died tonight and would have just–just let it happen.” I think of the powers Andrew mentioned. I assume they’re healing powers. Why hadn’t he just healed himself? Why would he go head first into battle without a care in the world about who he was leaving behind and then allow himself to go so easily into death without a fight?
I’d seen the peaceful look on his face as he took a single, rattling breath the moment I rushed through the healer’s door. He was ready. Unburdened. Ready to let go and say fuck it.
I hadn’t been ready to let him go, which burns through me, the truth tangling through my soul and undoing the stone fortress I’d built around my heart, brick by brick.
So, I didn’t let him go.
“You went into the woods the morning after Mother died,” Mercy whispers, the words broken by stifled sobs. “I followed you after Father said you’d gone hunting. I watched you standing at the bank of the creek, sightless, for hours. I stood there with you, and you had no idea I was even there.”
She shakes her head, finally breaking from my gaze to look down at her feet. “It was the shock of it. I told myself that. You needed some time to get over the shock of losing our mother so violently, so unexpectedly. I understood. I understood until months passed and you were still gone, still hunting, still chasing down the god of death every night to enact some form of sick revenge, to take back what he took from you. From us.”
My lower lip begins to tremble as her face twists with despair and grief. I’ve never seen her like this. Never. Mercy has always been so cold, so domineering. So scary, honestly.
But she breaks. Completely, utterly breaks. “You left us. You left me with two little girls, Aviva. You had sixteen years with Mother, but Shoshannah? She only had four. She didn’t understand what was happening. Lora didn’t even have a chance to know her face. I didn’t have a chance to grieve for our mother. I couldn’t grieve for you both. I couldn’t do it.”
“Mercy,” I choke, tears blurring her image.
“You ran from all of it. You ran from us.”
“I didn’t–”
“You did. You did run. When it got hard, you’d run. I haven’t slept in six years,” she admits painfully, hugging herself with her arms as her voice splits over every syllable. “I haven’t slept at all. I lie awake at night wondering if I’ll find you in bed with the girls or if your bed will be empty, if I’ll finally find your body in the woods, and I hated–I hated feeling like when that happened, I’d finally know peace because you would have found peace.”
I strangle myself on a sob that nearly splits my throat in two. Mercy sniffles, growing quiet. A heavy silence permeates the air around us for several long, drawn out seconds. Maybe minutes. Then, she says, “When Alpha Ryan came here… it was the first time in years I’d seen light in your eyes again. And honestly I felt… angry. I wanted to ruin it. I wanted to hurt you in the same way I’ve been hurting for years. I spent so long trying to bring you back to us, to find my sister again, and suddenly, you were just… you were alive again.”
“Don’t,” I rush out, breathless.
“You’ve been running away for years. Today was the first time you’ve run towardsomething. And you ran toward him.”
I close my eyes.
“Now you’re going to run again, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what else to do.” The admission is brutal. It crushes me.
“You’re going to go back to Silverhide with him,” she says gently, motherly. I feel the ghost of her touch, but her hands stay raised, like she’s afraid to move, like a single twitch of movement will have me sprinting toward the door. Like I’m a nervous, wild animal, and she’s doing everything in her power to finally tame me.
I meet her soft green eyes. Her cheeks are raw with tears. For once, she doesn’t look perfect. She’s let that mask drop, showing me a face I recognize from a time when we were close, the best of friends.
“I can’t be what he needs.”
“I think he just needs you,” she whispers with a shrug, trying to smile. She fails miserably. “Maybe you just need him.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know enough to understand that people don’t usually look at each other the way he looked at you during your wedding.”
I drop my gaze. She risks a single shuffled footstep in my direction but stops. “You have to go back. You are his wife… maybe more.”
“More?” I laugh bitterly. “More, what?” I think of those few intimate moments between us when his touch set me on fire in a way I hadn’t thought possible. Like he was built for me, and I for him. Like he understood me in a way others didn't. That he can see things others can’t.
“I can’t be there without you.”
“What?” When I meet her eyes again, they’re clearer, sharper. Her smile softens the sharp planes of her face.
“I’m going to Silverhide. With my… my mate.”
My stomach hollows out as my sister’s eyes soften and drop to her sandals. She lowers her hands and folds them neatly across her waist, taking a soft breath.
“Who?” I already know the answer, but I ask anyway, watching her face with feline focus. Her mouth twitches at the corners. Her brow pinches together as if in disbelief. Her eyes shine as she meets my gaze again, heavy with surprise and a deep, clear happiness that edges on relief.
“Jacob.”
I roll my eyes to the ceiling before closing them and taking an audible breath. I want to tell her mates aren’t real. I want to drill that into her skull, reminding her that to be fated to someone, and especially to find them, is so rare it’s nothing but legend.
“Does father know that he imprinted on you?”
“Aviva,” she says, shaking her head. Her hand comes to rest over her chest, her heart. “He didn’t imprint on me. We felt–I felt it. Here.”
My nostrils flare on impulse. I hadn’t noticed before, but her scent is different. Her usually soft, sweet, clean scent is punctuated by something heavier–something sharper and more masculine. Jacob, I realize. That woodsy scent he carries that reminds me of walking by the sawmill in Silverhide–rich, sharp cedar.
Jealousy strikes me in the chest. I can’t fight it.
She curls her hand into a fist over her heart. “We haven’t even touched–”
“How do you know?” I swallow past the bite in the words, trying to hide the fact that I’m begging to know what she felt, how she knew he was her mate, and it wasn’t just a visceral attraction.
“That night, when Alpha Ryan gave Father the Golden Elk pelt, I stormed out of the meeting hall. I was so mad. I wasn’t even sure why I was angry, but I was. Everyone was in the meeting hall, and I thought I’d be able to be alone for a minute to gather myself, but I wasn’t the only one standing near the bonfire. I looked up, and he was there. I felt… lost, for a moment. Then it just snapped–something here, in my chest. Like a piece of me had been missing, and I didn’t realize it, and suddenly, I had it back, and it was overwhelming.”
She goes on to explain how they stood there in silence for several minutes just looking at each other. She hadn’t been sure what was happening, but Jacob voiced it, lowering his voice to tell her that he’d talk to her father. He’d been so gentle about it, she explains. He didn’t touch her, didn’t tell her she had to come away with him or leave her family. In fact, they didn’t speak for days until the night after the wedding, when Jacob told her he’d find a way to offer her bride price.
“Seeing him leave for Silverhide was the most painful thing I’d ever felt,” she says weakly. “That distance just wrecked me. I barely know him, but I know him, if that makes sense. I know it doesn’t.” She looks down at her toes. “I feel like I’ll die if he doesn’t just… touch me. Touch me anywhere. Stroke my cheek, lay his hand on my shoulder…. His touch is like fire, Aviva. Like I was made for him.”
Her words echo through me, untangling the knots in my brain.
Why is that what she feels for Jacob is the same way I feel for Ryan?
Why doesn’t Ryan feel what I feel, if that’s the case?
“Has he spoken to Father about the bride price?”
“I don’t think so,” she says hurriedly as voices approach the front door. “There’s so much that needs to be discussed and decided upon. The girls, more than anything. I don’t think–I wouldn’t feel right about leaving them here.”
I lick my lips and nod. The sudden shift in conversation away from me and cowardice is a welcome relief, but it highlights several painful truths. We love our Father, but in our culture, the mother’s do the childrearing. The men are warriors and hunters–leaders. Our mother taught us everything we know.
If both of us are gone, someone else would have to step in for Lora and Shoshannah while Father runs our pack.
“Father will want them to be with us.” I meet her eyes. “They’d come with us.”
“It feels wrong taking them from home. From Father.”
“He wouldn’t see it like that. He’d want us all together.”
The voices draw closer, and the door opens, revealing two shadows I recognize without turning to look at their faces.
Jacob, I’m not surprised by.
Ryan?
“Aviva?” Ryan’s voice is steady but edging on pained. “We need to talk.” I hold Mercy’s gaze for a few seconds before turning toward Ryan, but then he says, “You too, Mercy.”