Xenos
While Barry cleaned up Stephie and the kitchen, I stretched out in front of the fireplace and whispered, ‘atsilv ko’ to light the hearth. My bear chattered away to Barry’s wolf, and I did my best to ignore them both. Quieting my thoughts to hear the spirits wasn’t always easy. On days like this when I really-really wanted to ask them something it took some extra work. I was pretty sure I’d get the same answer as always when I asked about Mori and Preston’s mates – which meant none, but I still had to try. Lotus had reportedly been reborn as Nelum and was back with Fred. So, I couldn’t try to poke her to ask.
“ORMUND!” I shouted inside my head.
My bear and Barry’s wolf both jumped to their feet ready to fight and flashed me dirty looks when they realized I was the one raising all the racket just to try to get the attention of a dead man.
“What?” I heard in the very solid world a second later.
There he stood. The man with the wings who caused all the trouble. He swept his long dark bangs away from his face and sighed at me. Someone had never grown out of their ‘emo’ phase but somehow even in death it suited him well.
“Are you going to cause trouble for my kid?” I asked, pushing myself up to my feet.
“No one’s going to shoot Mori or his friend,” Ormund sighed.
“Is Teddy Mori’s mate?” I asked.
“Ugh! Why do you do this to me? Why do you ask questions that I don’t want to answer? You called me all the way here to try to get your son laid? You’re still so fucking weird, Xenos,” Ormund sighed. “Why are you this way?” He tossed his hands up in the air and a second later said, “Don’t worry. This is why my and Dern’s sons moved away. He meddled a lot too. Here’s the thing. I know the answer. I know a lot of answers right now and I’m not telling anyone. Dern’s put a lot of work into all of this and things are gonna play out like they should. I’ll keep my promise and you’ll get what you need too. Well, eventually you will. You should call Dern, though. Before or after the kids visit but not too much after, okay? Organs don’t last forever.”
I let out a long, slow breath as Ormund faded away. Sometimes dead men can stick around with their mates. It helps if their mates are extra magical like Dern was.
Was.
Dern is.
Dern wasn’t a was yet. Not like Dad was a was. Not like Ignatius and Mariam and my carrier and….
No! No! I wasn’t going to have a crying spell right now. It was our night. Well, our evening together. The big kids were out and soon Stephie would be out too – like a light, but out none the less. Still, tears came. It didn’t matter if I knew in my soul, we all circled around again and again, and that the dead could be happy between lives – I was so tired of people dying. For the love of Juda and all his little babies! I was even tired of people like Finn dying!
“Mate? Do I need to leave the baby to ‘read’ her own book?” Barry asked over our mating link and I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down. No one had died recently. No one had wasted away or been cut down in recent days.
“I’m okay. I’m fine,” I managed to tell Barry but even I smelled the lie. “Spend time with the baby, okay?”
“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind. She’ll be out soon either way. Do you need attention or time on your own when she’s asleep?”
“Attention,” I said too quickly.
“Attention it is. The spirits haven’t said anything disturbing, have they?” he asked as I stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace again. They sort of had. Nothing I wasn’t expecting. Dern had… Well, he’d been getting up there in years and missing Ormund a lot. Eventually, all true-mates reunite one way or another.
“I’ll tell you later. Life is hard, alpha, but it doesn’t last forever. I just know I have to get the boys to go see Dern.”
Barry let it drop while he finished reading Stephie her bedtime story. I took a deep breath and tried to let go of what might or might not happen in the future. Years of working with spirits and visions had taught me nothing is set in stone. Darian was never delivered the head of a boyband drummer in a box and that was all the proof I needed to know that not everything that was predicted came to pass.
I must’ve dozed off in front of the fire and rolled onto my side because when I woke Barry was spooned in behind me, stroking my braid. He preferred my hair down and free but with a toddler in the ‘mush’ everything stage long, free hair was a recipe for disasters and there were enough of those in the world at any given time that I didn’t feel the need to add to them. I kept my eyes shut for a few moments and reveled in soft touches. He kissed my earlobe, letting me know he knew I was awake. When you’ve been on a mating link together as long as we had it wasn’t easy to trick the other person.
“Affection or talk?” he whispered in my ear.
I wanted to shout affection but knew I wasn’t about to focus on anything below our waists with Ormund’s words hanging in my thoughts.
“Talk it is,” he said.
“Sorry, alpha. I know this stuff always gets in the way.”
“Judging by the number of children our mateship has produced I don’t think anything really gets in our way for long,” Barry smirked at me, and I melted a little bit. He made it so freaking hard to be afraid of the future. Curled up with him and surrounded by his scent while he looked at me like that made the future brighter. Wars would come and go. They always had. People would come and go but as long as I had him and our kids, I’d be okay. Well, I didn’t want to lose my brother and his mate either, but I didn’t want them in the room right now.
“Ormund thinks Dern is going to die,” I said, cutting to the chase. “And dead mates are usually spot on about these things. I know Dern is old and I know I don’t even know him that well. I’m just…”
“Tired of people dying? Of people leaving? Of everything being in a constant state of change? You’d freeze time if it was within your abilities?”
“You got all that from my thoughts?” I laughed.
“Some from my own,” he shrugged. “Seriously, turn over here. I want to see that beautiful face while we talk about it.”
Wiggling around, I rolled over in his arms and he captured my lips in a soft, lingering kiss. Ancestors above and below me, I could kiss this wolf forever and ever.
“Change is inevitable but uncomfortable,” Barry said.
I opened my mouth to say I knew that. I spent so much time talking with the dead that I knew that as well as anyone could but sometimes you just wanted things to stay the same for a while. I need them to stay the same for a while. For everyone to calm their tails and let me have a minute to breathe in the moment we stood in.
“We’re here in this moment,” Barry whispered. “Right here together and I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know. I just…” I wasn’t sure how to explain the bundle of emotions growing inside me.
“Is this about Mori?”
“A little bit. I know our other kids have found their mates but Mori and Preston…”
“You expect trouble to follow them when they do. Especially Mori, huh?” he grinned.
“Yeah. A lot of trouble. You remember when we first met. The world tried to kill us.”
“But it did not succeed and we got Colton as a bonus too. Whatever comes for the kids will have to go through us and we’re still pretty damn scary, I think.”
“We are but they’re not going to stay around here. I could advise Mori not to go. I could tell him I’m wrong and that he was right about staying here. He’d probably even listen but I can’t do that. If Teddy Moonscale is his mate, he has to go meet him. If Dern is meddling to get them to meet, he really has to meet them.”
Barry said something under his breath, and I laughed. It was a mishmash of two elven words only a syllable apart. That was his way of reminding me that in his elvish tongue the words for wisdom and meddling were only separated by that syllable.
“My dad meddled for us.”
“But you already knew who I was. You knew what we’d be for each other. I don’t think Mori knows. I think if he did, he’d have let it slip to someone by now.”
“He’d have told me,” I frowned. “I know not every magic user is like me or Liam Moonscale and know ahead of time but sheesh! It would make my life easier if he did. You don’t really think Teddy Moonscale would be a bad mate do you?”
“No,” Barry shook his head. “I still don’t care all that much for Fred. Can’t say I’m sad that he’s living on a different planet across the universe but I don’t think Teddy will be a bad mate. Though, I have heard about how much he gets around. I’m not one to slut shame but….”
“Mori isn’t a virgin,” I reminded him. “I know that’s not something you like to talk about but ….”
“I know he has a love life, mate,” Barry chuckled. “If Teddy or anyone cheats on Mori and breaks his heart, I’m going to catch a case somewhere.”
“Stop it,” I laughed. “Really, stop it. I get it. They’re omegas. I know that. You know that and they sure in the name of all of Juda’s little babies know that but stop it. Believe me, I wouldn’t want to be the one who cheated on Mori or broke his heart. He’s our kid. Not to mention Ni would probably hex them or something too.”