Page 20 of Shifters Unifying

“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?”