Page 53 of Midlife Shifter Unexpected

I sat back on my haunches and let out a howl. The bones settled down and calmed themselves.

“Keep doing it, keep doing it,” Anita and Hilda said.

I howled and howled until I couldn’t howl anymore, and with each howl, the bones retreated, until finally they were all back in the ground.

“Can we close the holes up?” Anita asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Mae said. “This is a cemetery, not a boneyard. Everyone should be in the ground with the ground on top of them.”

At first, I thought they were going to ask me to do it, so I trotted off, looking around the cemetery and keeping an eye out for any loose bones that might be needing to be helped back into their graves. It wasn’t until I got over to the corner of the cemetery where the Celtic crosses were that I saw a platform. Suddenly it all made sense.

The pendant, the werewolf, the platform.

I leapt up on the platform and from the top of it, I could see the slopes of the entire cemetery. I could see where the rest of the coven were. I let out a howl, my voice echoing across the cemetery. It wasn’t until the howl died down and I rested my head that I looked down at my front leg and saw that the wound from the skeleton bite was growing angry and infected.

Chapter 39

I tried not to show my pain as we made our way back to the house. I had shifted back into human form and the wound was hurting and making my arm was weak.

“It’s not going away,” I said to Hilda, who was walking just behind me.

“It will,” Hilda said. “It can’t fight the double magic that you have inside you,” she said. “It’s second grade dark fairy magic.

“So, are you saying that it can’t turn me into a zombie?” I asked.

“If it had bit you while you were in your human form, then yes, it could. Those cells are weaker, but since you were in your wolf form and we applied the antidote immediately, then you don’t have to worry about it,” she said.

“I will keep an eye on you and decide if you need any more treatments, but the only thing that can stop this type of magic if it does take hold is a dark Fey, and that’s the last thing you want to have around here.”

When we got to the house, Matheus carried me up the stairs to the porch and into the house. We went straight to the red room and he laid me down on the sofa in front of the fire.

“I’m going to be spending a lot of time in the cemetery,” I said, leaning into him.

“I like to think of it as a place where there’s meadows and flowers and deer and wildlife,” Matheus said with a smile. “It's the kind of place we could hang out in quite a bit of the time.”

“So, you’re going to go down and hang out while I’m sitting on in the cemetery?” I asked.

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” Matheus said.

“I can't just spend my whole time at the cemetery,” I said. “I have a job. I work for the sheriff and I also have a business.”

“Well, it seems like Jane is taking very good care of the business,” Mae said. “If we could make it possible for you to spend more time working for the coven, would you be willing to do that?”

“It seems like I’m destined to do that whether it’s easy or not,” I said. “We were all going to die out there if it wasn’t for the one thing I can do, which apparently is make a lot of noise.” I reached over and squeezed Matheus's hand, grateful for his companionship.

“Working with the coven comes with a stipend,” Mae said. “You don't have to work for the sheriff anymore.”

I snuggled in tight against Matheus‘s arm. “Are you sure you’re up for hanging around for all this chaos? Wasn’t it what you said you didn’t like my world?”

“If I don’t stick around to help you, I’m pretty much thinking you’re not going to make it,” Matheus said.

“He actually might come in handy,” Hilda said. “Those satyrs make pretty good bodyguards at the end of the day.”

“Well, he can always be my bodyguard,” I said, pressing myself back against him.

Matheus wrapped his arms around me. And I felt a deep well of contentment inside, sitting in front of the fire with a man who cared about me and who I cared about. It had been a long time since something like that had happened and I really enjoyed it. I had lived in this town for twenty years and had mostly been single the whole time. I wasn’t friendless, but I had nobody close, no connection, no tight group of friends that would always hang out together.

Now I had that.

I was bound to this group. They were my family. Eventually I would bring my son to know these people and we would find out if he was a werewolf also or not. For now, I was content to know that these were my people. They belonged to me and I belonged to them. It had been destined long before by the pendant and I was the happy recipient of my heritage. Finding a home in the family, even though I’d been here for so long, was quite surprising and fulfilling. Where there was family, there was strength. The opportunity to leave the job at the sheriff's office and focus just on being with my friends was exactly what I wanted in life right now. It felt almost like a second set of teenage years.

The supernatural world was giving me semi-retirement and something delightful to do; spend time with my new family and battle the demons and monsters that were surely coming.

* * *