Page 7 of Shifters Unifying (Shifters Destiny: Willow Creek Shifters #2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

emma

“Balefire! It’s balefire!”

The terrified shout rippled through the assembled fighters. “She’s casting balefire.”

Tendrils reached toward the shifters beneath, like a creeping vine seeking a hold on some unsuspecting warrior, more interested in fighting than surviving. As one, the members of the group returned to their respective sides, their altercation silenced.

A pulse of energy built in my chest. It exploded from me like a concussion grenade, cutting through the shifters, knocking several to their asses. A multi-color glow engulfed me.

But I wasn’t finished.

My eyes burned, and I cycled through a dozen shifter forms. Each one larger and more impressive than the last, the magic winds fluffed my hair, my fur, my feathers. Thunder and rushing waters echoed inside me, whooshing from me.

“I am the multimorph, and you will listen to me!” I no longer sounded like me as multiple voices spoke through me.

Logan staggered back, his brows nearly to his hairline. Beside him, Olivia stood with her hands clasped over her chest, her eyes glistening. Jasper’s face had gone slack, and every bit of mischievousness had drained from him.

I released the earth beneath me and stood. Bit by bit, my power faded, until the balefire disappeared altogether, leaving only the after images burned into any retinas which had lingered on it a second too long.

When the last had finally disappeared, Giselda’s cackling laughter cut through the night. She crowed as though she’d always known I would do something rash.

“None will die here today.” It had grown so quiet, I no longer had to yell my commands, and I crouched to catch my breath. “Please bring the injured here. Line them up beside me, and I will heal them.”

Logan padded nearer and placed his hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t know you knew how to create balefire.”

“I think I’ve been working on understanding it since Acheron used it on you,” I murmured and glanced over my shoulder at him. “Maybe I couldn’t stand the thought of Acheron being able to do something I couldn’t.”

“We were taught it was a dark magic,” Olivia breathed.

I shrugged. “I don’t know enough to know if it is or not, but it did what I needed it to do, and I don’t think I’m made of dark magic.”

Olivia shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t say you are.”

“Aye,” Jasper agreed.

“So maybe my balefire doesn’t come from the same place his does.” Destructive dark magic wasn’t something I wanted, and so much of what I did as this new version of myself was instinctual.

Logan helped me to my feet. “Are you well?”

“Tired, but that’s all.”

He ducked close to my ear, and his breath stirred my hair. “Maybe you shouldn’t heal them. At least not right now.”

“No, it’s my duty, and I’ve already offered.” His cheek felt rough beneath my palm, and he leaned into my caress. “I’ll be fine.”

The cat pride brought three shifters for me to heal, and the fox clan brought four. Jasper directed them on how to position them, so I would have easy access. They laid each out, gently positioning them in a line. None fought with their neighbor. Seven shifters equalized by their injuries.

I knelt beside the first and pressed my hands to his chest. A surge of power circled me, and I sent the force into this shifter who needed my help.

Healing. Healing. Healing… I pictured the cells knitting together.

His eyes went wide, and he convulsed under my palms. “Oof.”

“Easy,” I murmured. “This might take your breath away.”

Each gash zipped closed, slowly at first. Then every wound snapped closed, and the beginnings of his bruises disappeared. Within three heartbeats, I’d finished.

He gasped and coughed and retched, turning away, his face awash in a shimmer of multi-color magic. His last three meals spread over the ground, and he wiped his mouth. “Feck. Ye ain’t kidding.”

I moved onto the next—a woman, and the next, with similar results. More vomit wound up as fertilizer on the forest floor. The only one who didn’t lose their lunch was the final shifter—a young man.

His expression turned sheepish, and he shrugged. “I can delve, and I heal a bit. Maybe it doesn’t turn my stomach as much as the others.”

Logan helped me to my feet once more. “You should rest now.”

“Not until I work out the dispute between Tossle and Giselda.” My wave to Giselda elicited a glare from Tossle. “Your turn!”

Giselda snorted. “As you say.”

“And I’ll demand my turn as well,” Tossle yowled.

“Want me to come with you?” Logan asked.

“No need.” I made my way toward the older vixen and stopped beside her. “Giselda, may I speak to you in private?”

She leaned on her stick. “I won’t go.”

“You must. We’ve got to work this out. Can you create a warding around us?”

“I can.” Her shoulders slumped, and she followed me haltingly to the far side of the clearing. She flicked her fingers and encapsulated us in a see-through warding to keep our conversation private.

“Thank you,” I said, beaming at her. “That will help.”

She leaned heavily on her walking cane. “What do you want?”

“Tell me why this land is so important to you now, Giselda.”

“I dislike the cats and their sneaky ways,” she gruffed. “It’s better for Red Tail to drive them back. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, I don’t think that’s why you’re doing this now. What’s going on?”

A rasping sigh escaped her, deflating her ire. “I’m dying, girl, and I want to be buried where my mate still waits.”

“He’s buried on the cat side of the territory?”

“That, he is,” she said.

“How did that happen?”

She leaned harder on her support staff and stared into the distance as though she observed memories replaying as movie on a projector screen.

“Giselda?”

“It’s not a pretty story,” she began. “Our ways were wilder then.”

“So, I’ve heard.”

“Well, I had just finished burying him in the earth beneath our home with our kits surrounding us before Tossle attacked our home. He creeped in, sneaking like the coward he still is. If not for my large pregnancy, I’d have bested him.

” She took a ragged breath. “Tossle never let me visit the grave or retrieve the bones. Not that I would have. My mate wanted to die in our home, and he begged me to bury him beneath it. It’s where I wish to be buried. ”

“But you can’t possibly know how soon you’re going to die, Giselda.”

She pointed her stick at my chest. “Some things, you know because you know, and this is something I know, girl. I knew I’d see you before I passed, and the separation between my bodily form and the spirit world grows thin.” She paused. “I see him sometimes.”

“Who? Tossle?”

She shook her head, her gray waves trembling. A tear followed the wrinkles in her cheeks and dripped from her jawline. “My mate. He’s waiting for me on the other side.”

“And Tossle stands in your way…” I glanced toward the old shifter who had taken a seat on the ground with the others of Ville Platte.

“If I can convince him to allow you to live the last of your days in the place where your old home used to be, would you be willing to abide by the rules of Ville Platte?”

“Once a Red Tail, always a Red Tail,” she snapped.

“But you’ll be in their territory, and you’ll have to answer to Marcus because he is their alpha.

If you agree, then you should be able to build a small den.

Once you’ve breathed your last, Marcus will bury you inside, collapse your den, and Tossle will be forbidden from disturbing your resting places.

But Flynn will hold you to it, and Marcus will, too. ”

“How do you intend to get that coward cat to agree to all that?”

“You let me worry about that. Do you agree with these terms?”

She sighed. “If anyone can, it’d be you, girl. I agree to yer terms.” She snapped her fingers, and the privacy warding disappeared from around us. She leaned hard on her stick, but she didn’t follow me to the Ville Platte side.

Logan trailed after me, but I waved him away. This mediation was going to take finesse. Jasper and Olivia waited with him.

As I approached the cranky, gnarled old man, I wanted to tell him to take a flying leap and let Giselda have her land back, but my anger wouldn’t help either side win what they needed.

Instead, I adopted a sickly-sweet tone. “Tossle, it’s lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so many good things you, and I would like to make a request of you, sir.”

His eyebrows climbed nearly to his receding hairline. “What’s that?”

“I would like to make a request of you,” I said. “I am impressed with your long-life, and your ability to fight. You demonstrated such skill as a warrior for Ville Platte. Would you be willing to come to Six-Mile to help train others for our army?”

Tossle nearly tripped on his own feet as he hurried to my side. His chest swelled, and he preened to any cat shifter who would make eye contact with him. “I would be most honored, most honored.”

“However, I must make one request, and your agreement will be necessary.”

“Name it,” he said. “Anything for the prophesied unifier.”

“The old Red Tail vixen believes she’s close to death, and she would like to construct a den on the edge of your property in the spot where her home once was.

When she passes, this den will become her grave.

Marcus will summon me, and we will bury her beside her mate by collapsing the den.

” My emotions surged and threatened to turn my tone harsh, and I paused long enough to compose myself.

“Then you must agree to never disturb their bones.”

His eyes went wide, and he hummed to himself, talking under his breath for long moments, trying to find a way out of agreeing. “And in exchange for this, I will help the multimorph. Tsk, tsk.”

I moved closer, smiling as charmingly as possible. “You’ll come to Six-Mile and probably earn a spot in the histories. They’ll tell your story whenever they tell mine.”

He clapped his hands, the sound weak in the clearing. “Done.” He sneered toward Giselda. “But I don’t have to like it, and our alpha must still agree. He’ll be a harder one to convince.”

Marcus materialized beside us, his movements as stealthy as the large black panther he morphed into.

“Not true, Tossle. I’ve given Emma the jurisdiction that is her right, and I’ve already agreed to abide by her ruling.

” He crossed his arms. “I hope you don’t intend to try to use me as the way out of the agreement you’ve struck, Tossle.

If you go back on your word, whatever the multimorph’s punishment is will be much easier than mine. ”

Tossle’s eyes bulged, and he sputtered. That hadn’t been what he’d expected at all, but his upset with my ruling wasn’t my concern, and I didn’t care what the old coward had a problem with.

Without waiting for his sputtering to turn into something intelligible, I marched toward my mate and covered my giddy smile with my hand.

Relieved wasn’t the half of it. Olivia and Jasper beamed at me from behind Logan.

Tossle had agreed, they’d all agreed, and the conflict had been resolved for all involved.

Yet the eyes of the other shifters followed me, too, some filled with respect and others burned with anger and resentment.

I flashed Giselda a thumbs up, and her cackling laughter answered. But a pang of sorrow shot through me, nearly taking my breath. It knocked into the grief I still felt over the death of my adoptive father—the whole reason I had been at Site 52, gotten attacked, and first learned I could shift.

Giselda would die. Sooner rather than later. We’d secured her home for her final days and, by doing that, her burial plot. I didn’t know how I felt about that, but I couldn’t spare the time to process it.

“You did well, mate,” Logan murmured, pulling me into his arms and kissing my neck. “The first of many tests, I’m afraid, but this is an after, and I’m here for it.”

Olivia stuck her arm between us. “None of that now.”

I nipped Logan’s chin. “She thinks she can keep us apart.”

“Fat chance,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against mine. He laced his fingers through mine, dragged me back toward the Six-Mile SUV, and opened the rear door, groping my ass as I climbed into the soft leather seat.

When he hopped in, I wrapped my arms around him, leaned back, and pulled him in on top of me, gratified his dick was already hard.

I arched against him, but the driver’s door opened.

Olivia stuck her head inside, grunting in disgust when she caught sight of our activities. “Not in my car,” she wailed. “Can’t you wait for an hour or two?”

“This is not your car,” Logan snapped, stopping long enough to glare at Olivia. “You are my beta, and it is for the use of whoever I appoint as beta.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Jasper, get in the back seat with them.”

He snickered. “Do ye think it will stop ‘em?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Close the door, lass.”

The front door slammed, and we lost ourselves in one another.

Eventually, the rear passenger door opened a crack. “Are ye two done? The SUV stopped shaking, and Olivia’s in a hurry to get on to Acheron’s no-longer-hidden encampment.”

Logan snorted, startling awake, still in the spot where he had collapsed with his head between my breasts. “What?”

I tapped his shoulder and tried to adjust my position beneath him. “My ass went to sleep after you did, and I didn’t want to wake you, but it’s killing me.”

“Oh.” He scrambled backward and sat back into the rear passenger seat. “What’s the ETA to the location from here? An hour? Two?”

I settled in the other rear seat.

The driver’s door opened once more, and Olivia climbed inside. “Motherfucker. It smells like shifter sex in here,” she growled. “How is this my life? Everybody roll your windows down, and we’re stopping back at Six-Mile to get a different SUV.”

Jasper didn’t stop laughing as he climbed into the front passenger seat, and we took off. Every second tickled his sex fiend self, and I found myself grinning along with him.

Within minutes, Logan’s hand creeped toward my knee, and I shimmied to the center seat, glad for his renewed attention.

“Hey, there,” I purred. “Fancy meeting you here. Do you like to consume animal doctors?”

Logan chuckled, deep and low. “I devour them.”

When Olivia abruptly crammed on the brakes, I was thrown half-way into the front seat, landing on the center console between her and Jasper.

“What the hell are you doing?” Logan roared, vibrating the windows.

“None of that while we’re in here,” she snapped.

“In fact, Jasper you get in the back, and Logan, you get up here. When we get back to Six-Mile, we’re not just getting a different SUV, we’re splitting up.

I’ll go with Logan on the ATVs, and Jasper, you take Emma to see her Willow Creek people in the SUV. ”

Jasper rubbed his hands together. “Aye. At least yer finally letting me drive.”