People on the grounds glanced at them, detoured away from them, but didn’t interfere. Merely one more fight in the hot-tempered shifter world.
“Let’s clean up.” The sound of a babbling creek drew Donal toward it.
Near the water, the air was cool and moist under a canopy of the alders and willows. Farther upstream, cublings were trying to catch minnows in the clear stream.
Going down on one knee, Tynan splashed water over his face and hands. Head tilted, he listened to the laughter, then sighed. “I wanted a mate…and to raise cubs if the Mother so gifted us.”
Wanted. Past tense.
Tynan rarely asked for anything for himself. He gave and gave. To Donal, to the wolves, to the Daonain. To the God. Ten years in a human city.
Of course, now he was home, he would want to have a family. To find a mate to share with Donal.
And they had.
They had.
Donal rinsed the blood from his cheek.
“You told Meggie you wouldn’t lifemate her,” Tynan said slowly. “That we wouldn’t. Can you explain this to me?”
“I mate with multiple females to have enough power for emergencies. I told you this before.” Donal sank down onto the ground, his back against a tree trunk.
“Aye.” Tynan frowned. “But I didn’t realize if we found a female to love that you’d reject her.”
Cat-scat. “One…one isn’t enough, brawd.” Donal scowled. How could he explain this? “You know how Mother never lifemated but had numerous matings at every full moon. To ensure she had shifters available to give her power.”
“Yeah.” Tynan paced across the tiny space between the trees. “Go on.”
“You were in Ireland when she reached the change of life, and her tie to the moon was broken. No longer fertile, she attended no Gatherings. No one wanted to mate her.” She hadn’t been a likable female. “Without a full moon heat, she wasn’t interested either.”
“Not surprising.” Tynan sank down onto his haunches. “How’d she acquire extra power?”
“She didn’t.” Donal ran his finger through the dry dirt under the tree. It had rained days before. Under the dry top layer was the one filled with moisture and life.
He continued, “After you left, I spent time with the Visser littermates. Three years older, remember? Roel is crazy, but Senne was quiet. Kind. I was lonely, and he let me tag along with them.” Red hair, freckles, gentle blue eyes. A balance for his frantic littermate.
The werebear had taught Donal how to raid beehives.
With a sigh, Tynan settled on the ground, his back against a tree. “Was quiet. What happened to him?”
“A cliff crumbled out from under a bunch of young shifters. I was healing then but didn’t have any reserve. No matings yet.” Males started attending Gatherings when younger than their female agemates, but he’d not reached that point then.
“I healed Roel and another one, then was out of energy. Mother was the same, depleted before she got to Senne. With no one to give her more power, she couldn’t save him.”
Kind, quiet Senne had died. Because the healers ran out of power.
The guilt had never left.
Donal’s throat was dry as the dirt under his fingers. “Letting our people down…I can’t do it. Even if it means the rest of my life gets fucked up.”
“I know all about that kind of reasoning.” Tynan gave him a wry smile. “It’s hard on the people who love you.”
Gnome-nuts. Donal rose and sat back down beside Tynan. For the ten long years Tynan was in Seattle, Donal had missed him with an unending ache. All too often, he’d yelled at the wolf for his idiotic guilt that drove him to serve the God. For damaging both their lives.”
Now Donal had smashed Tynan’s hope and dreams.
For guilt.
Donal’s shoulder rubbed against Tynan’s. Here was warmth. The rightness of the brother-bond. “How do I make this right for you, brawd? Without power…”
“If a healer doesn’t have enough power, some shifters will die.” Tynan’s voice was dispassionate. Level. “You have more power than Mother ever did. Why is that?”
Donal blinked as the question went a different direction than his well-reasoned, too-familiar arguments. “No one knows why healers have different levels of power. It’s not because of size or gender. I always thought it was partly from how much a healer cares.”
“I heard Mother had a lot of power when she was younger.”
“So she said. Maybe storage diminishes with age.” Donal frowned, thinking of his apprenticeship. Master Quany had been ancient—and immensely powerful.
“Doubtful. I met healers in Ireland whose powers remained the same or grew as they aged. Most were lifemated.”
“Lifemated?” Had he ever met lifemated healers? After Mother grew too irritable to teach, Donal had apprenticed with Master Quany. The old male hadn’t been mated. When traveling, Donal had met a few healers in passing, but hadn’t bothered to ask if they were mated or not.
Still… “Lifemating means only one person provides additional energy.”
“Aye, that’s what it means.” Tynan studied Donal. “Let’s play with numbers. As she grew older, our mother possessed little energy of her own, had no lovers to supply more, and she died younger than most Daonain. Probably because she felt useless and unloved.”
The thought of being so reduced as a healer and as a shifter was painful. Donal could understand why she’d simply let herself die. “Go on.”
“The two Irish healers in my village were over a hundred. Strong and stable in power. Lifemated and able to draw on their mate.”
Where was he going with this?
Tynan nudged his shoulder. “I assume the lifemated healers might lose some patients in a disaster since they have only their bonded mates to call on. But, Donal, how many were lost because our mother had no one, died early, and left no healer in the village at all?”
Donal pulled in a breath. “That’s a different way of looking at it.”
Hope sparked to life inside him.
Tynan’s voice softened. “The Irish healers were happy, Donal. Beloved by the town and their lifemates and their cubs.”
Their cubs. He’d always wanted cubs. A mate to share with Tynan. The idea of such a gift was…impossible.
“I’m not giving her up—or you, either.” Tynan rose. “Think about it.”
The water was cold on her paws as Margery splashed through the stream toward the black bear on the other bank.
Oliver.
She gave a yip to tell him it was her and saw him freeze.
After slowing to lap up some water, she scrambled up to join him on the soft grass.
What a mess. With every step farther from Donal and Tynan, she felt her chest hurt more. Like it or not, there were bonds between them, and oh, the ties ached like a badger was chewing on them. Leaving everything unresolved was tearing her to pieces.
Then there was Oliver…
She’d been following his scent for an hour or so, grateful that as a bear he tended to move far more slowly than a wolf.
With a sigh, she shifted, pulled off the bag she wore tied to her neck and stomach, and pulled out the ultra-thin clothing. The bag was the same color as her chest and belly fur, the straps thin enough to be hidden beneath her thick ruff. She pulled on bike shorts that held her money and ID in the pocket, an elastic tank top, special slippers that compressed with hard enough soles to finish a hike. Such very light-weight clothing—the humans were good at the oddest things.