Darkest Wolf

IX

The sun was dull through the windows of Lovelie's house. I tried to sit up but someone was there to push me back down. A cold towel was pressed onto my forehead.

"Nathaniel," I whispered, hoping it was him.

"Try again, cuz," Jade said calmingly. Her soft hands touched my face and I felt like I was dying.

Where is he?

"I saw him, Jade. He was so beautiful."

"That's real nice, E, but you took a pretty hard knock to the head when you were wiggin' out yesterday. Lay back down."

"Where's Lovelie?"

"She took the kid to school. Turns out that even hoodoo children need to go to math class."

"Crazy."

Jade must have changed me while I was asleep because I wasn't in my clothes anymore. I was in someone- I assume Lovelie's- purple button up. The socks I had on yesterday were, however, still on.

"Do you know where we go next?"

"In my vision we were at some kind of a bluff. Green grass, stone houses, grey ocean."

"How picturesque. Any idea where that is?"

"I don't know, but it was a long time ago. I was in a poofy dress and all that. The houses were made of stone with thatched roofs and all that."

"So he might not even be there anymore?"

"Well, no. Obviously it was a past life. But now I know what he looks like ans maybe if I go back there I can remember more about him."

"What good will that do if he is a different person now? He might not even be a wolf."

"I don't know, but its better than just sitting here and twiddling our thumbs."

I looked around me and found my phone sitting on the table next to me. When I turned it on I saw the screensaver of my brother and me at our graduation ceremony. There were almost a hundred messages from my parents and brother. Gwen and the Alpha and Luna were also going ballistic. Before we left I had turned my phone off and cut off my connections with the pack.

This is the result.

"Are you going to reply to them?"

I don't look bac up at Jade because I don't know the answer. Instead I open Google and plug in "cliffs by the ocean" and begin to go through the pictures provided by the search.

"Are you going to open them?"

"I don't know."

"They're worried, E. I would be, too."

"We've only been gone a few days. They'll be fine."

"You disappeared in the dead of the night after hearing that you and your brother are the ultimate ends of our race and possibly even the world. I don't think they will."

I roll my eyes at her as I click on another picture. This one looks similar but its hard to tell when I'm not plummeting to my death from it.

"I think this is it," I tell her as I hand the phone to her.

"The Cliffs of Moher? Where even is that?"

"Clare, Ireland."

"You want us to fly to Ireland because you think something there may be able to help you remember something about a guy that died 700 years ago?"

"Actually, I was thinking that we could probably take a boat. Ireland isn't too far from Greenland."

"Greenland?"

She jumped off the bed where she was sitting and ran her hands through her hair. At sometime when I was asleep she had put on a seethrough purple blouse and a lacey black bra. She wore leather pants and black heels and she looks like absolute hell to any mother and certain heaven to any lucky wolf.

I sucked on my lip while she paced. She looked like she wanted to quit already and we weren't even a week into the trip.

"You want to go to Greenland?"

She didn't look too pleased by my idea so I opted to stay quiet. She sat back down and put her head in her hands for a long second before sucking in a deep breath and pulling her head back up.

"What exactly did that spell do, Eve?"

That's a hard question, I thought to my wolf. She purred in agreement and I could feel the emotion of grief flow from her. Never in my life had I ever felt anything so horrible come from my wolf and to finally get this out of her was mind blowing. 

It took us to the last time we saw mate, which was when we died in our past life. 

"My wolf says that the spell took me to the last time I saw my mate. Like I said, a past life, but," I fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling from which a chicken foot hung daintily by the curtain. Jade watched me think for a few moments while I remembered how it felt to fall into the oblivion and leave him," But it was so much better than this one."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I died," she opened her mouth in horror at what I said but I just kept talking," I died and there was this person- this whole village of people, I felt- that would miss me more than anything in the world. I died protecting a woman and child from being attacked and that felt amazing. I had a mate and a home and I was so happy and peaceful.

"No one avoided eye contact with me because I was the lesser part of some ancient prophecy told by my own mother. I didn't find out that I was going to kill my brother and possibly the entire planet on my birthday.

"It was so good to be normal and loved and happy."

She didn't talk for a long while after that. We sat there in our own minds with our own wolves who understood us better than anyone else in the world. 

Maybe I was too harsh on the world today, because she didn't say much after we left Lovelie's house either. She didn't talk to me while we boarded the bus that would take us to a loading dock and, eventually, to Greenland. The only thing she did say was that the Luna of the Hvid Skoken pack owe her a favor while we settled down on our very illegal place at the back of the shipping boat.

I nodded softly, wondering if I had really upset her from what I said earlier. She just pulled out her mother's journal and started rereading it. I allowed my head to fall onto one of the crates that we were squished between and doze off.