Healing the Wolf (BBW Paranormal Romance) (Luna Junction) Read online

  HEALING THE WOLF

  ~ A Luna Junction Story ~

  By Sage Domini

  Copyright 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living, dead or somewhere in between is purely coincidental.

  ~At the intersection of legend and reality, of human and beast, lies Luna Junction, Arizona.~

  Other Luna Junction Novellas:

  Feasts with Wolves

  Forbidden Mate

  Blood Wolves

  Chapter One

  Even before I opened my eyes I realized he wasn’t beside me. Again. The crude light of a winter morning offered little assistance but after a few heartbeats I heard the thick inhales of his uneasy sleep. He wasn’t far away. I squinted into the front room, already knowing what I would see. He was curled up by the front door in a drunken stupor, wearing only a pair of stained pants. Coiled protectively out of sight was the arm which ended abruptly in a scarcely healed stump. My mate’s right hand had been lost five months earlier in an attack which had also claimed the life of his only brother.

  When Talon’s young sister, Tess, had run to me with the news that he lived, I had fallen to the ground with dizzying relief. Since the hour Talon Ivanov had curtly nodded at me and the children before he disappeared into that perilous night, I had prayed to the moon or whatever power reigned only to spare my mate. Someone had listened, though the cost was heavy.

  My sister, Amy, had been mated to Talon’s brother, Anton. His death had exacted a heavy toll on her and when our father suggested she return to the safety of Saskatchewan with her children, not even the fervent protests of Talon’s mother, Kate, could make her stay.

  “Come with me,” she begged on the morning of her departure. Two of our Chevalier cousins, Richard and Frank, waited in the truck already packed with all the worldly possessions of Amy and her three children. As I held my sister in the softly falling snow of the Yule season, the thought crossed my mind. Our adopted home of Luna Junction, Arizona had become a violent frontline. Amy was lucky to be returning to the north, to peaceful Claw Creek Landing which was as yet untouched by the wars.

  But I shook my head. “No. He will never agree.”

  Amy pulled back, her mouth set angrily. There was a ferocity in her eyes which was not suited to her. I knew it to be a product of her grief. Amy had always been the tender one, a sweet girl who everyone loved. Who had been adored by her mate as she adored him in return. But my sister was almost unrecognizable, her face a fire of hurt.

  “Leave him,” she said through clenched teeth.

  The very idea was shocking. Talon was my mate. He was damaged but I was still beholden to him. Even though I heard the quiet mutters from everyone else that the mighty Talon Ivanov would never be the same, no matter how much time passed.

  I stared at her clearly. “I can’t.”

  Amy clutched me one final time and then she was gone in a whirlwind of snow. I was left alone with four young sons, a broken mate, and pressing threats of violence in a changing world…

  “Mom?” My oldest son, John, stood in the doorway of the bedroom shared by the boys. I had argued for the addition of more rooms but that was one of many fights I had lost. To Talon Ivanov, the small two bedroom home was more than large enough. After all, the cabin he was raised in by his iron-fisted mother was far smaller. John’s tenth birthday would be in the summer and he was already nearly as tall as me and the very image of Talon. He scowled when he saw the hulking shape of his sleeping father. “At least he came home tonight.”

  “Hush,” I warned, climbing heavily from the beautiful handcrafted bed Talon had fashioned ten years earlier. That, on the other hand, was a fight I had won, back when we were still new to one another. Growing up, he had slept on the bare floor in the wide loft of the Ivanov cabin. Or else on the raw ground of the woods surrounding Luna Junction. The Chevaliers of Claw Creek Landing were a little more accepting of the creature comforts common to the human world. And so Talon had relented to appease me. “Don’t wake him. I’ll get your breakfast.”

  My eldest boy crossed his arms and continued to stare at his father with mute dissatisfaction. It was true that since recent months had brought no new attacks, Talon had been spending more nights away. He often passed out at the bar in the Luna Junction Café and old man Hoffman, with the help of his bulky sons, would move him to a back room until morning. Infidelity never crossed my mind when Talon kept away from my bed. Ivanovs were nothing if not steadfast.

  In the dark days following the battle, we all waited in terror. It was rumored that this puzzling war was only beginning. A few allies from other communities to the north and the west heard of our troubles and offered their assistance in case there was another attack. However, aside from a handful of sightings around the perimeter of Luna Junction, there had been no new threats. It was an uneasy respite.

  Seth, the youngest of my children, the one who had been most difficult to bring into this world, peered around his older brother’s waist. At age three he still craved the soft hugs of his mother and I tenderly held him when he leapt into my arms. With a sigh his head rested on my shoulder and I inhaled the warm smell of my youngest boy, the lingering sweet scent of babyhood, while my stomach lurched with regret. Soon he would grow too large to sit on my hip with his arms around my neck. And John, he was only a few years away from the changes in his body which were his destiny. My other two boys, Jacob and Andrew, rolled in their beds sleepily and I quietly closed the bedroom door.

  “Let me down, Mommy,” Seth complained, and I set him down on the floor. A glance out the window told me several more inches of snow had fallen overnight. Those raised here in northern Arizona liked to nod to one another that this winter was a rough one. But I knew that a few inches of powder in early February was nothing compared to the severe climate far to the north, where I had been raised. Where Amy had returned to.

  Despite my efforts to keep the boys quiet, Seth’s high-pitched chatter roused his father. Talon sat up with a groan, his eyes red and hooded. I could never help but admire the swelling contours of his impressive body. Even slouched with an overgrown beard and haggard expression, he was a striking male exhibit. Automatically I felt a spasm of want between my legs.

  Talon opened the front door and squinted outside at the early winter morning. Though I’d lit the fire to warm the house for the children it was still cold. The temperature outside was likely only around ten degrees with the wind chill factor. Enough to reduce even the toughest men to a hard shiver, especially standing barefoot and bare chested at the mouth of it. Talon Ivanov didn’t even flinch as he stared out into the pristine morning. But then he wasn’t a man, tough or otherwise.

  He was a werewolf. We all were.

  Why isn’t everyone a werewolf? I had asked my father once, so many years ago. When I first learned about the differences between us and the ever expanding swells of humanity. It had seemed sad to me, that we couldn’t all grow to run under the moon.

  I eyed my mate as I turned up the heat on the stove to prepare the eggs which had been gathered from the weather fortified coop out back. Talon favored the raw taste, but I wouldn’t allow it for the children.

  “Hungry?” I asked him lightly, holding out a bowl of brightly colored eggs from the Easter Egger hens. He accepted a pair but then stared with irritation at the eggs laying in the large palm of his left hand. His right arm crossed his body, the stump tucked under his left bicep. I had urged him to take the Flagstaff surgeon up on his offer of a prosthetic hand but he had refused to even consider what he angrily called a �
��false limb’. A human man without a right hand could still learn to function, difficult though it may be. A werewolf without a paw could not run. Ever.

  As Talon continued to stare at the eggs in his hand, John spoke up softly. “You want me to crack ‘em, Dad?”

  A shadow passed across Talon’s face and he closed his fist, shattering the eggs and letting the yellow pulp run though his fingers and onto the floor. John started to say something smart but I touched his shoulder. Little Seth grabbed an embroidered dishtowel which had been a mating gift from my aunt and began to clumsily mop up the mess. “I’ll fix, Daddy. I’ll fix.”

  For the briefest of pauses it seemed Talon would crack. We had been mated for a decade and his aloofness was nothing new, but the combined losses of his hand and his brother seemed to have rent the very fabric of his soul. He barely seemed to see his children. And as for me, the affection we customarily lacked during the daylight hours had always been remedied by the heady joining of our bodies at night. But even in that he was distant. Talon no longer wanted me. He no longer wanted anything. But watching his tiny son eagerly wiping up spilled eggs to please him caused his face to crumble. Talon’s left hand reached out and roughly touched Seth’s head.

  “That’s all right, boy,” he choked, and crouched down to clean it up himself.

  I bent to his side, hoping, praying, that the invisible hard shell he had built these past months had cracked or even thinned. But when he raised his eyes again, they were as closed off and impenetrable as ever. Silently I took the towel from him and sopped up the rest of the eggs.

  “So what do you have planned this fine Saturday?” I kept my voice light, trying to remove any hint of sarcasm.

  Talon rose and began searching the floor for his shoes. “Work,” was all he said. The Bellini family had hired him after Yule to help with their herd. They raised and butchered grass-fed cattle, selling the meat at a premium to several organic grocery stores in Flagstaff and Phoenix. Since Carmine Bellini’s death Estelle and her girls were more or less limping along, trying to recover from their grief and keep their family business intact.

  I supposed it taken some measure of pity to induce Estelle Bellini to hire Talon. He had always been a hard worker but drink and despair were taking their toll. Some days I knew he failed to arrive at the Bellini ranch at all. Despite young Sheriff Casteel’s orders that no one was to enter the woods alone as long as there was even the vaguest threat of bitten wolves about, even he looked the other way when Talon wandered the woods freely. No one gave Talon Ivanov orders.

  Talon found his gnarled work boots and pulled them on one-handed. I caught John staring at his father’s back with confusion and felt a pang for the boys. Talon had never been brimming over with tender paternal affection but he had always been a watchful and commanding father. Before.

  John cleared his throat. “Hey Dad, wanna come watch us sled down The Hill later?” The Hill was out by the Landons’ property and it sloped enough to make a fine ride in winter weather. The Luna Junction kids would slide down its icy banks in old inner tubes, screaming with delight.

  Talon shook his head, staring at his loose shoelaces. “I don’t have time for that shit, John.”

  I winced at the harshness in his voice, as well as the crestfallen look on John’s face as he examined his plate of eggs. I gritted my teeth. “For the moon’s sake, Talon. When is this going to stop?”

  Slowly he turned his head. The look he gave me was icier than my front porch. “Don’t contradict me, woman.”

  Woman. It was more of an insult than it sounded. It was an accusation of humanity.

  I turned away, facing the stove. It would do no good to argue. I had tried it the other way. So many times I had attempted to scream my way into his stone wall. It was never any use. If I did so know it would end as it always did, with Talon brushing me coldly aside as he wandered through his misery alone. “Have a nice day,” I managed to say instead.

  Talon seized a grubby flannel shirt from our bedroom and shrugged into it. I struggled to reach him once more. “You want to try breakfast again?”

  He already had his hand on the door. “I’ll catch a meal in town.”

  “You’re not taking the truck, are you?”

  “No,” he said and shut the door behind him without looking back.

  I carefully scraped the last bit of egg from the frying pan with a wooden spoon. I told myself I was used to Talon and his brooding ways. I’d endured him for ten years after all. But, as I dropped the pan into the sink and breathed deeply, I admitted to myself this was different. He was different.

  Talon Ivanov had always withheld the loving gentleness I saw in so many other pairings. As a couple we weren’t in the habit of shouting our love for one another or even whispering it. But beneath our often gruff partnership there was something else. We hungered for each other constantly. Or at least, we had. Talon hadn’t touched me in an eternity. Before that our longest lapses had lasted a mere few weeks, and then only immediately following the birth of a child. I had cajoled him between my legs once in the months since his injury but it was changed; stilted and passionless, nothing like the heady couplings which had always been a solace for Talon’s indifferent moods. He was a little more lost to me each day.

  The skinny arms which went around my neck were a surprise. John was reaching the age where it wasn’t cool to hug your mother. But as the oldest he best understood how his father was retreating further away. “I love you, Mom,” he said.

  I hugged my boy in return as little Seth issued a squeal of delight and ran pell-mell at our legs, clutching us with abandon. The laughter of my sons was music.

  “Hey,” I smiled, with a sudden idea. “Who wants to take a trip to Flagstaff today?”

  Chapter Two

  Once all four boys were awake, fed and lurching around in a knot of wrestling madness, I took the luxury of retreating to the bathroom. The tub was small and narrow but I loved it. For years I’d begged for something more comfortable than the boxy shower stall where the water burst across your skin like a thousand needle pricks. It was during my long labor with Andrew, our third son, when Talon quietly installed the tub. In typical Talon fashion, he had never said a word about it. He only grunted when I radiantly expressed my gratitude.

  I let the water cascade over my fingers as I knelt beside the rapidly filling basin. It was lucky that a lack of hot water didn’t trouble werewolves because in winter the temperature reached only lukewarm at best. I peeled off my nightshirt and lowered myself into the heavenly depths. The boys howled like wild things in the next room but I was hopeful they would keep each other occupied for a good fifteen minutes. I piled my long hair onto a loose knot on top of my head and closed my eyes, remembering.

  ***

  My father had warned me to watch my mouth. The Ivanovs weren’t like the Chevaliers, he said. I thought about that a lot as we threaded a long path through a good portion of North America.

  Albert Chevalier had insisted on escorting his daughters the whole way himself. He had only listened to the odd suggestion from the distant Ivanovs of Luna Junction as a courtesy. But soon he found himself considering it carefully. The Chevaliers were a loving extended clan who had lived for generations on the banks of the northern Saskatchewan River but time and civilization had whittled away many of the other shifter families. Young alphas who were not kin were increasingly tough to come by and there were eight of us daughters to mate off.

  Still, my father would never have agreed to the arrangement if I hadn’t approved. The truth was I’d been itching to get out of rural Saskatchewan ever since my first childhood visit to Calgary. I’d looked upon the glittering metropolis with awe. If men could build such places, my young mind thought, they couldn’t be all bad. Men, my sisters and I secretly agreed, ruled the world. But when I was thirteen my cousin, Celeste, had run off with a human. She returned to Claw Creek Landing a year later; bruised, disheveled, and with a half human child at her breast. After that,
the memory of Celeste’s desolate face was enough to warn the rest of us girls away from risky mating.

  Albert Chevalier was determined to keep the ancient blood wolf line intact. When my father came to me one day with the picture of a pair of young werewolves from Arizona, I stared at the larger of the two.

  His clothing was drab and his hair tousled. He didn’t smile into the camera, but the stern glare of his eyes burned through me, as if I were already his chosen one.

  “Yes,” I answered decisively, handing the picture to my sister, Amy.

  My father eyed me. “His name is Talon Ivanov. He is the oldest son and future alpha to the Ivanov family of Luna Junction, Arizona.”

  I shrugged. “I already said yes.” True, it was my ticket to the wider world, but after one glance I would have agreed to go anywhere I could find the hulking Talon Ivanov.

  Albert Chevalier seemed surprised, though relieved. Amy would always do as she was bid, but I was another story and he knew that well enough. My mother had died birthing my youngest sister. I was named for her and was always said to be every bit as spirited as the young female who had enticed the powerful Chevalier alpha decades earlier.

  My father cleared his throat. “Sheree,” he said sternly. “It’s not like you can change your mind.”

  I glanced at the picture again and saw my mate. Talon Ivanov. His very name made me shudder. I wondered what he would think when he saw me. I had my mother’s clear-eyed face but I was tall and my body was anything but delicate. The Chevalier women tended to be large boned good breeders with wide hips. My sister and I were no exceptions.

  “I won’t change my mind,” I told him.

  I had been relieved to find Arizona was not all fabled sharp cacti and sand. If I squinted, the northern woods which surrounded Luna Junction looked similar to home.

  The Ivanovs all awaited us in the center of town as my father stopped the truck which had carried us from Canada. And by all, I mean all. My eyes blurred at first as I saw dozens of heads topped with variously hued red hair. There was a simmering, restless quality to the lot of them, as if they would any second tear their clothes from their skin and shift into beastly form.