“So you knew I might be, what is the word—latent—and you still said nothing?”
Her mother nodded and Ashlee bit her tongue. They’d been through this already but it still ate at her gut.
Tristan raised his head for a moment. She had a prophetic dream tonight. That’s why she came to the zoo.
Her mother sucked in her breath and gripped Ashlee’s arm. “Does this happen all the time? Or is it just the time with that horrible vision and now this one?”
Ashlee suddenly felt incredibly uncomfortable that everyone in the room was staring at her. She stood up. “No. I think this was just these two times.”
Her mother looked down at the floor and her father shook his head. “You always had very bad dreams as a child, so intense, so real to you. The pediatrician told us it was normal, that you just had an active imagination. We should have known better. Again, your mother and I have become the king and queen of self-delusion.”
Rex snorted. “That’s for damn sure.”
Enough, Rex.
Ashlee was glad Tristan had said something. It was one thing for her to be annoyed at her family; it was another for someone else to butt in.
“About thirty years ago, darling, our pack leader—Tristan and Rex’s father—came to know a man named Claudius Brouseaux. Our pack had lived quietly and without problems for one hundred years on an island off the coast of Maine called Westervelt.
You won’t find it on any map. It’s very small, about fifteen square miles, most of it forest. I assume that is still the case?” Her mother looked at Tristan and Rex and they both nodded. “Kendrick was our pack leader and we trusted him implicitly.”
Tristan jumped up on the couch and put his head on Ashlee’s lap. Rex paced at the window and then turned around before he spoke. “Claudius convinced my father, or maybe my father convinced Claudius, that there was money to be made off shifters. We are human and animal. We think and reason like humans and possess the loyalty and instincts of wolves. Both live within us and it is a constant battle for control, but a glorious one. We live very long lives. Until we are thirty we age as a human does, and then we stop, and do not age again until we mate.”
“You guys don’t age until you have sex?” Ashlee’s mind whirled. Only Tristan’s head in her lap kept her seated.
No, little one, by mate he means bond. It is much like love but more so. It is eternal, the way all love should be but is not always. Ours really is forever; it cannot be destroyed once it is found. We recognize in the other person the other half of our own soul and we remain together until death.
“What happens when you die?” Tristan’s wolf eyes narrowed at the question and Ashlee swallowed hard.
Usually when one dies, the other does too.
Ashlee tried to speak but her voice came out a whisper. “That’s horrible.”
Her mother answered instead of Tristan. “It’s beautiful…I would never want to live a second without your father, not a millisecond.”
Ashlee watched Tristan do the equivalent of a wolf-shrug.
The remaining spouse is overwhelmed with a desire to follow their other half to the next life.
Ashlee couldn’t believe what she heard. Did the remaining spouse just drop dead?
“How does that work?”
They commit what we call ritual suicide. Unless there is a child to raise, in which case the parent waits to die until the child is old enough. Then, they too, are overwhelmed with the need to leave. We simply cannot live without the other. And those who try to resist the urge are doomed to living forever in agony…most do not try to resist.
Ashlee’s head spun and she shivered. “What happens if you don’t find your mate?
Do you stay thirty eternally?”
Unless we commit suicide, yes, or are killed.
Suicide?
Her mother paced the room. “So, honey, I began aging when I met your father. Until then I’d been thirty for about seventy-five years. Rex here, although he looks thirty, is three years my senior. I don’t know how old Tristan is. You were with the pack when they came to Maine one hundred years ago, yes?
That’s right. I was one year old. Tristan’s wolf eyes bore into Ashlee’s. Was he waiting for her to freak out? Another couple of minutes and she might oblige if she didn’t have a panic attack before then. Once again, she wiped her sweaty hands on her pants. I am the third of six boys. My two older brothers are so old they’ve stopped counting.
“How did you even meet Dad, Mom? Why aren’t you on the island with all of them?” She gestured towards Rex and Tristan.
“Thirty years ago, everyone went crazy.” Her mother swallowed. Rex slammed his back into the wall, which shook the pastoral watercolor that hung there so violently it almost fell off the wall. Rex’s hand steadied it before it did. Her mother continued, “Our pack leader brought Claudius to the island. It seemed strange. The only non-wolves on the island were mates of shifters. He was not. Claudius wanted to take the essence of the wolves in us and find a way to inject it into regular humans. He thought he could create an army of super-strong, aggressive, animal-like humans who would serve him. Kendrick wanted us to let him experiment on us. We objected. If I recall correctly, Trip here was the most ardent against the procedures.” Tristan growled and Ashlee stroked his head again. He settled down and closed his eyes.
“I was still mateless. In the middle of the night, our Alpha’s wife, Mary Jo, Tristan and Rex’s mother, awakened me. Part of what makes the Royals so special, so unique among us, is that something in their bloodline is different. An Alpha and his mate can live forever until he steps down or dies. Mary Jo looked twenty years old but she’d been alive for centuries. She told us that her mate had lost his mind. He’d brought in a witch…”
Ashlee jerked in her chair. “A witch?” Shape-shifters she could accept, she had no choice as she’d seen it herself, but witches?
You’ve been listening to this whole story and the witch is what you object to? Ashlee thought she heard a laugh in Tristan’s voice.
Rex stepped forward. “Kendrick, our father, had brought in a witch. He was going to kill all the unmated females, including babies and children, and then use the witch to cast a spell that would get our men to kill their mates if we didn’t consent to the testing. He’d gone to fetch the witch from the mainland. Our mother was an extraordinary woman. It takes a lot to defy your mate, especially if he is the Alpha of your pack. But she did. She grabbed all of the unmated women and sent them off all over the world. When the men awoke, we did not know what had happened to them. Our mother was an extraordinary mystic in her own right. She masked them with her magic so we could not find them.
However, the mated women refused to leave.”
Ashlee swallowed hard. “And did their mates kill them?”
Yes. They were completely changed by the spell; they could not control themselves or stop the need to kill their mates. All but two, that is. My uncles, my father’s brothers, did not harm their women. They took their own lives instead. My aunts remain alive to this day in agony, but as the only women still present in our pack—and only women can be healers—they must remain with us until some women return who can take over the mystical positions. Every day for the last thirty years has been a struggle for my aunts…
every minute that they are alive, they are wishing for death, to rejoin their mates.
“They still live then, all these years, they exist with the pain?” Ashlee’s mother’s eyes filled up with tears and Ashlee had to swallow her shock. Her mother never cried and this was twice in ten minutes she’d almost lost it.