Jory Strong - Healer's Choice

“I can’t.”

It would only prolong the suffering if he did.

Unlike him, she didn’t try to stop her tears. They coursed down her cheeks. “I understand,” she whispered.

He could see she did, that despite her request she’d known what his answer would be. Accepted it.

Pride made him release her and turn away.

This is her choice , he told himself, leaving her without a backward glance.

REBEKKA hadn’t thought she had any more tears to shed. But when she knelt next to Caius and solemnly took the amulet he’d found in the woods and kept safe for her, a new wave of pain washed through her and she felt the tightening of her throat.

His lips trembled and his chin jutted out. He already saw good-bye in her tearstained face and the shaking of her hands.

“I have to go back to Oakland,” she said, her tears starting to flow again. “I’m needed there.”

He swallowed, his small frame stiff as he tried to face yet another loss in his life. “Will you come back when you’re done? And teach me to read like you promised?”

Rebekka wanted to say yes, even if it meant returning and finding Aryck mated to a Jaguar female. But she knew there was every chance she would be killed if Allende found out she was helping the prostitutes escape. And if she managed to avoid death, there would be other cities, other places.

She’d been created for a purpose and given a choice whether to embrace it or turn her back on it. She’d been forced to choose between the two things she had always wanted the most, and now she had to live with the choice, though it felt as though her heart was being ripped from her body.

Rebekka pulled Caius into a hug. “I can’t promise anything except that I’ll try to come back for a visit.”

Caius gave a sob, his arms tightening around her and her shirt growing wet as he cried. Canino joined them, rubbing his side against them. Circling, purring in an offer of comfort and solidarity. Then finally butting his head against Caius’s back and pressing his nose into the cub’s armpit as if to say, “Enough is enough. You’ve got me.”

Rebekka ended the hug. Words clogged in her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to say good-bye. “You two should get back to Jaguar lands,” she said, trying for a light tone and failing, though her effort was enough to help Caius stop crying.

He took a long shuddering breath and offered a tremulous smile. “I asked Phaedra if she thought I should take Canino to my house again. She said yes. She said it’d be a good thing to do every day if Canino is willing to let my mother chase him away.”

“I’m glad,” Rebekka said, managing a wobbly smile, though she felt frozen in this final moment of good-bye, the last of them before she and Levi began the trip to Oakland.

Caius didn’t move away and neither did she. Canino came to the rescue again, pushing between them, grumbling deep in his chest and using his sheer size to reposition Caius so he faced Jaguar lands.

Rebekka swallowed hard and willed herself to turn toward where Levi waited and, beyond him, the Wolves who would ensure they made it to the border of Were lands safely. She forced herself to take one step, and then another, and another, to not turn around and look back one last time. She managed it until she heard the sound of running footsteps behind her.

She turned in time to have Caius barrel into her. He gave her a fierce hug. Then just as quickly released her and ran to Canino, climbing on the Tiger’s back so Rebekka’s last memory of him brought a smile instead of tears.

They traveled in silence. The Wolves almost never visible. Levi respecting her privacy, her need to deal with her heartbreak on her own, though she knew he wanted to ask what had happened to make her leave Aryck and the Were lands when she could have stayed.

Whether it was because of her father’s gift, or her desire to escape thoughts of Aryck, Rebekka kept moving forward, her endurance matching the Weres’. Surprising them.

For a time loss drove her on relentlessly, barely allowing for eating or drinking. Denying the possibility of sleep and making her push the others to keep running through the night rather than stop.

And then it was anger keeping her going, that Aryck hadn’t been willing to accompany her to Oakland, even for a little while. If he’d said yes, then he would know her reason for leaving and understand the choice she made.

Finally it was hope, excitement. Anticipation making it impossible to slow or stop until they reached the border of Were territory and the Barrens were visible in the distance, and, beyond them, Oakland.

She thought the Wolves accompanying them would leave without speaking. Other than appearing to mention the proximity of water or to call a halt long enough to cook and eat whatever game they’d killed, there’d been little sign of them.

Instead Jael emerged. He took her hands in his and met her gaze with piercing gold eyes, searched for something before giving a small shake of his head and saying, “I don’t understand your choice but may the ancestors welcome you again to our lands, and if the Jaguars are so foolish not to make you one of them, then become Wolf.”

He released her hands and turned, loping back into the forest. She and Levi traveled through the area where the ferals roamed and finally entered the blackened destruction of the Barrens. Levi broke his long silence then, asking, “Do you want to talk about it?”

She could hear compassion and caring in his voice, as well as anger and the desire to tear Aryck apart, with human fingers and knives if lion claws and teeth weren’t available. She took Levi’s hand, felt a lump rise in her throat at the prospect of returning to the place where it had begun, where she’d first seen the Jaguar barely clinging to life.

“Let’s go to the shelter we spent the night in,” she said, unsure of what would be involved in healing Levi and not wanting to do it out in the open.

He glanced upward and frowned. Opened his mouth, no doubt to say they could make it to the brothel if they pushed, but she stopped him by saying, “I want to try to heal you.”

She couldn’t tell him more, but he knew. It was there in his eyes, in his hoarse whisper. “The witches spoke the truth about your gift?”

“I won’t know until I attempt it,” Rebekka said, her palm growing damp against his. She didn’t think her father had lied, either about the gift or not being demon, but she couldn’t be sure.

Levi gave her hand a squeeze before releasing it. “It will only take a few minutes to get to the shelter. Should we walk?”

His nervous anticipation matched hers. She laughed, doubting she could walk now that she was so close to realizing a dream she’d had from the moment she’d stepped into a Were brothel and seen what life was like there for those trapped between forms.

“Race you,” she said, feeling carefree, joyous in those moments it took to reach the structure of narrow passageways formed by twisting, rusted steel.

They climbed slowly, careful of the jagged edges. She avoided the tearing of flesh even as memories of Aryck sliced through her with each step.

He made his choice and I made mine , she told herself, but the anger she’d managed earlier was gone, leaving an aching, empty place behind.

Despite her attempts to suppress the pain, her eyes grew wet with tears as they entered the room where she’d healed Aryck. A sob escaped when Levi hugged her to him, his hand stroking her back, his cheek against her hair.

“This is why you left, isn’t it? To heal the outcast.” She felt him swallow. “To heal me.”

“Yes.”

“And Aryck feared the ancestors’ wrath? He forbade you from doing it?”