Later, she awoke to an odd pressure on her arm, but she didn’t want to wake up. She was incredibly tired. The previous night had been a trial, of working with Warren to keep Julio and Glissane from taking over Savage, as well as the healing efforts that followed. Her reserves were depleted.
But the odd pressure continued.
Blinking slowly, she forced herself to wake up. “Warren?” She spoke his name on a hoarse whisper.
Try not to wake him up, Kiara. This is between you and me.
She leaned up on her elbow and squinted into the dark. Wavy, light gray smoke floated in the air near her. She was so tired and her head felt fuzzy.
You’re confused.
She switched to telepathy as well. Yes.
Let me enhance my form.
The lines coalesced. Is that better?
She recognized the intruder and her heart constricted. Tonya? What are you doing here? She pulled the sheet up to her neck.
Tonya was still alive and still married to the man Kiara had just slept with. It all seemed so wrong despite Tonya’s dementia. She wondered once more how Warren had born his wife’s illness and suffering.
Tonya smiled, a wavering line of mist that gave her a ghoulish appearance. Don’t be embarrassed. Warren has needs I can’t possibly fulfill. But there’s something you must know. If you stay with him, he will die.
A gasp left Kiara’s throat. What? How? I mean, how do you know this?
She swept a hand through the air dragging the bizarre mist with it. Because I’m connected to the afterlife, of course. I’ve seen the future. Warren dies in a terrible altercation with Glissane but only if you stay with him. If you leave, he will survive. Search your heart, Kiara, you’ll know I’m speaking the truth.
From the beginning, Kiara had believed her time with Warren had an expiration date. She wasn’t a wolf and at the very least, with everything Warren had endured, the man deserved a wolf to serve as his alpha female.
She was a witch, someone he could never fully trust. A witch had scarred him on his first week of arrival in Five Bridges. She knew on a deep level, Warren undoubtedly carried a level of distrust toward her.
I know you’re right.
The mist formed another smile. But at almost the same moment, Tonya’s ghostly form began to writhe as though fighting a battle. She watched Tonya’s neck jerk back and as had happened before, her mouth opened wide and black smoke poured out.
The ghost-form vanished in a sudden swirl of mist, then nothing.
Kiara, now fully awake, eased down on her side then rolled onto her back. There was a faint odor in the air as well, something like the pungent scent of tomato leaves.
She folded her hands across her chest. Her heart had begun to ache. She’d called her time with Warren a stolen season. But in this moment, the reality of her situation hit her full-force.
She loved Warren, body and soul, dreams and desires, from one end of heaven to the other. He was her man, the one she would choose if she had the ability or right to choose.
But she didn’t.
This was Five Bridges and so little was fair in their shared five territories, including the differences in their alter species.
How she’d fallen in love with a wolf, she would never fully understand. Yet it wasn’t ‘the wolf’ she loved. It was Warren himself, the fine, sacrificial man she’d come to know, always doing what was best for his pack and for Savage.
He’d stood by his wife, tending to her once-a-week for eight long, difficult years. He’d watched her waste away to nothing, with never a hope she’d recover and become the woman he’d once loved and who he needed by his side.
He didn’t even recognize her as the woman he’d fallen in love with and married, a surfer-girl with strength and joie de vivre until an alter serum had stolen her human life. Her transformation had rendered her a helpless, demented patient in a Revel Territory asylum.
Though Kiara’s heart broke, the time had come and there was only one decision to make. She would have to leave Warren for good.
~ ~ ~
That night, Warren sat on the heavy wood bench at the foot of his bed, hands clasped between his knees, eyes glued proverbially to the floor. He focused on taking air into his lungs because he swore he’d forgotten how to breathe.