Before utter panic could take her, another image forced the one in the Fellowship garden away. Of skeletal, bone-white hands offering the amulet, calling it protection for one with her gift.
Rebekka trembled so violently that Levi crouched down next to her, asked urgently, “What’s wrong?”
She couldn’t tell him, wasn’t sure she ever would. Her heart thundered and she knew all of them would hear it, just as they would all scent the terror gripping her. First that she’d lost her ability to heal Weres, and then, that she hadn’t, but to use her gift meant she would have to remove the amulet and risk calling the diseased to her.
Her breathing was little more than short pants. She felt as if she was running again from the maze, from the demon Abijah’s words, from the Church spies positioned outside the witches’ house. But there was no outrunning this nightmare. No escaping it. And watching the Jaguar die as a result of her cowardice would only add to it.
Rebekka lifted her hands away from his matted fur and took off the necklace, shaking so badly the beads woven into it clacked. She set it on the ground next to her, gasped as an ice flower bloomed immediately in her chest, while at the same time her fingers felt as though fire streaked through them.
It was similar, yet different than it had been before. But there was no time to consider it and give it meaning.
She gathered her will. Gripped the Jaguar’s legs again on either side of the crushed bone and torn skin.
Rather than come as a tingling sensation followed by a gentle blending of purpose and desire to heal, her gift came as a taking. As if she were nothing more than a tool, a conduit for a power rooted in the earth, something raw needing eyes and intelligence to focus it, and a soul to judge who was worthy of being touched by it.
Pain screamed through Rebekka, originating in her legs, her side and abdomen, the locations mirroring the Jaguar’s injuries. The shock of it made her try to jerk her hands away, to stop using her gift. But it was too late for that.
It was like standing against the flow of molten lava. And in her mind’s eye she saw her blood seeping into the amulet.
Red like the beads that were a part of it.
Red like those her father wore in his hair.
Perhaps not a power rooted in earth after all, but in the flames of a fiery hell.
It didn’t matter. Of one thing she was sure—her gift was meant to be used on the Were.
Rebekka stopped fighting and felt the rightness of the choice deep within. Her will flowed into the Jaguar, walling off enough of the pain so she could concentrate on healing him, recognizing as she did so that while her gift had come without any cost except for exhaustion before, that was changed now.
Pain sliced through icy numbness. The intensity of it overwhelmed Aryck, turning human and Jaguar souls away from the steady, strong pounding of the ancestors’ drums.
Heat followed. Flowing in and forming a wall. Blocking the shimmering pathway to the shadowlands and trapping his two earthly souls to the faint beat of a heart housed in flesh, denying them the possibility of joining the eternal soul in triumphant unity.
Slowly he grew more aware, Jaguar and man rolling and tumbling in the warmth, bathing in it as though it were a pool of water. For long moments both were content to remain submerged.
Strength came with the heat, a feeling of wholeness, rightness. Rich scent pervaded, lush and feminine and totally unfamiliar.
The Jaguar mentally sprawled on its back, playfully exposing its belly, making the man, the enforcer, struggle away from pure sensation and toward conscious thought.
Memory returned in bits and pieces, with the concentration of burn in his leg, the slow mending of bone and flesh.
Healer. The word came into sharp focus and Aryck forced jaguar eyes open. His beast soul purred in approval at the first sight of the woman kneeling next to him.
Mate. Not a word but a recognition by the Jaguar, a claiming that had Aryck snarling in denial, rejecting the possibility of it.
“Stay calm,” a man’s voice said, accompanying the command by positioning the barrel of a gun in front of Aryck’s face.
Behind him Aryck heard Melina’s hiss of fury, sensed movement, but it was halted by low, rumbling growls. Tiger and Lion. He remembered them now, racing ahead to attack the feral hyenas.
Aryck subsided, heart beating even faster when he realized the Jaguar was very content to lie still beneath the healer’s hands, to luxuriate in the heat spiraling into its body with her touch, connecting the two of them in a way that had the man anxious to shift form so he could heal the rest of his injuries and break away from her.
For the first time in memory Aryck felt a separation of self, his two earthly souls diverging rather than integrating, preparing to battle against each other for dominance instead of existing in seamless harmony.
Even now the Jaguar was noticing the Lion who smelled too human hovering protectively at the healer’s side. It wanted to warn him away from her, to press between them, crowding her into a corner where she could be kept apart from other males.
A low growl threatened to erupt, this time the Jaguar’s instead of the man’s. Aryck suppressed it, as alarmed by the Jaguar’s desire to guard a human female as he was by the unraveling of self. He forced rational thought to prevail over instinct, ruthlessly overpowering the Jaguar soul when animal possessiveness bled into human images of coupling.
The healer’s hands moved to his other leg. It was less badly damaged, the bone more broken than crushed.
Additional strength poured into Aryck. He focused inward, as if watching an unseen gauge slowly rise until it finally reached the place where he was well enough to shift.
Pain returned in a heartbeat, marking the transition between beast and man. It was a price Aryck paid willingly, thinking he could more easily repudiate the Jaguar’s claim of having settled on a mate. But the moment he saw the healer through human eyes, desire raked through his belly. She was beautiful with her dark brown hair and blue eyes, with her gentle features and body created for pleasure.
No, he silently snarled, denying his physical reaction to her. Denying the Jaguar’s need to assure itself she was okay when it noticed her trembling as she reached for a necklace on the ground next to her.
Aryck turned away and found the collar of clothing. He untied it and dressed with uncharacteristic haste for a Were who found no shame in nakedness or the evidence of desire.
He’d barely fastened his pants before Melina was there, her clothed body pressed to his, rubbing against his erection as though claiming it for herself and publicly marking her territory. The Jaguar threatened to rise inside of Aryck and drive her away if the man didn’t do it.
At least in this his two souls were still in agreement. Aryck pulled her arms from around his neck and met her gaze with one ordering her back.
Her eyes flashed and her lips tightened. She obeyed, her face taking on an expression of disgust as she turned her attention to the healer and the man with her.
Had the healer not come, Aryck knew he would be dead and any hope for the cubs dead along with him. He’d heard the drums calling him and seen a pathway shimmer into existence. He’d felt the tug of the eternal soul anchored in the shadowlands, holding his place among the ancestors until his two Earth-bound souls joined with it there.
A thank-you was due before he spoke to the healer about the cubs. Aryck steeled himself against feeling the claw-sharp rake of lust as he turned to go to her.
Despite the Jaguar’s claim, she was not his mate. To want a human in that way was an invitation to become rogue and ultimately be made outcast.