Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

“You’re mates,” Rose said, then turned her adoring gaze to Joe. “Like us.”

Alex stiffened. Julian did the same. Each studiously avoided looking in the other’s direction.

“Explain,” Julian demanded.

“You know, Julian.” Rose patted his hand fondly. “You were there.”

“He was where?” Alex asked.

“He was there when Joe almost died.”

Now Alex did glance at him, but Julian refused to return the favor. Mates? This sounded bad.

“Go on,” Alex said.

“Joe volunteered for the army. He was a bit old, but he felt like he should serve his adopted country.” She paused and beamed at her husband. “He loves America so much.”

“I do,” Joe said in a thick Italian accent. “It’s-a true.”

Alex’s eyes widened. She’d probably never heard Joe speak, only sing, and when he sang, not much of an accent.

“He was hit at Gettysburg—”

“Whoa!” Alex held up a hand. “He was a soldier in the Civil War?”

Rose shrugged and spread her hands.

Alex turned to Julian. “What in hell were you doing there?”

“I’m a warrior,” he said. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again and stared at the floor as her cheeks flushed.

Well, he was good at that, too.

Rose gave a strangled cough that sounded very much like a stifled laugh, and Alex’s head came up, eyes snapping. “What did you do, Barlow? Hire yourself out to the highest bidder?”

“I don’t fight for money.”

“Then what do you fight for?”

“Whatever is worth fighting for.” Julian glanced at Rose, needing to shift the subject back to what they’d come here to learn. “I’m not seeing how my saving Joe from dying on the battlefield leads to—” He couldn’t say it, so he just twirled a finger to indicate that she should go on.

“Joe was dying and you—”

“Why Joe?” Alex interrupted. “Why not one of the thousands of other guys who died there? Or why not thousands of the guys who died there?”

“What would I do with a thousand werewolves?” Julian muttered.

“Make an army.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And what would I do with an army?”

“Rule more than Barlowsville. You could rule the whole damn world.”

“Ruling the world is highly overrated,” he said. “All I’ve ever wanted is my own little corner.” He turned again to Rose. “Continue.”

“You saved him; then you came to see me.”

Julian’s mind drifted to that long-ago day. The heat. The blood and smoke. The scent of gunpowder and death. Why had he volunteered to fight again?

Oh, yeah, because he was good at it. And he hadn’t wanted to see the Union die. Before Gettysburg, it had been.

He could have told the Yankees that when you invaded someone’s homeland, the invadees fought so much harder than the invaders. Unless you were a Viking. They just kicked ass all over the place.

The Yankees definitely weren’t Vikings—except for him and Knut. Speaking of which—

“Has anyone seen Neil?” The name Knut was using these days.

Rose and Alex stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Joe, who had met Neil the same day he’d met Julian and Cade, understood the connection.

“He’s fishing,” Joe said. “Or maybe it was hunting.”

“Has been for a few weeks now,” Cade murmured.

The question was: Had Neil been hunting elk? Or Inuit?

It hadn’t occurred to Julian to tally the village and discover who was missing. Werewolves came and went. They weren’t prisoners. But he didn’t like it that Neil was away. He didn’t like it at all.

“I took Joe to see Cade first,” Julian said.

“But gut-shot is no good.” Joe shook his head sadly as if he was talking about someone else’s gut and not his own.

“Cade was there, too?” Alex glanced at Julian’s brother, who nodded but continued to stare out the window.

“Neil also,” Joe said.

“Who in hell is Neil?”

“The only other Viking, besides Cade, that I made like us.”

Neil and Julian had joined the Northern forces to fight. Cade had joined to heal.

“Cade was an army doctor,” Julian said. “That day he’d just gotten back from visiting an Iroquois woman. He always talked to the healers in every culture we… visited.”

“Sometimes it helped,” Cade said. “They knew local herbs. Back then, that was all we had.”

Julian waited for Cade to take over the tale, but when he turned again to his window—what was so blasted interesting out there anyway?—Julian continued. He felt better when he was talking. When he was talking about the past he wasn’t thinking about the present.

“Like Joe said, gut-shot is gut-shot.”

“Why didn’t you magic him back to health?”

“The only way I can heal a human is with a bite.”

“So you bit him.”

“He wanted me to.”

Julian had liked Joe. Hell, he still did. He’d never regretted saving the man’s life, and he couldn’t say that about every werewolf he’d made. Anyone could become damn annoying after a few centuries.

“I don’t see how this is explaining…” Alex moved her hands in a semicircle to indicate Joe and Rose, her and him.

Julian didn’t, either. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to.

“Once Julian saved Joe’s life,” Rose continued, “Joe brought him to me.”

“Why?” Alex asked.

“We’re soul mates. Joe wasn’t going to leave me behind.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “You made her a werewolf so they could be together?”

Julian shrugged. “Why not?”

“I insisted,” Rose said. “So did Joe. Without each other eternal life would have been hell.”

“It didn’t bother you that another human being would give their life for your immortality?”

Rose frowned. “Of course it bothered me. But Julian took care of that. He found a very—”

“Bad man,” Alex finished, staring at Julian all the while.

“Yes!” Rose agreed. “I’ll always be grateful to him for assuring that Joe and I would be together forever.” She grasped Julian’s hand and squeezed it. “But we discovered that being soul mates as humans meant we were mates as werewolves.”

“What does that mean ?” Alex asked, her voice a little louder than necessary. Neither Joe nor Rose had ever been deaf, and they certainly wouldn’t be anymore.

“Wolves mate for life, child. Some humans do, too. And when you have humans that are soul mates and werewolves that are mates, you have the strongest bond of all.”

“I tried once to leave her,” Joe said. “Just-a to go to wine country and choose a few places to do business with. Before I even reached the cave where we rest, my stomach cramped. I could-a not move. I thought that I would die of the pain.” He gazed at Rose, everything he felt evident on his face. “I have never tried to leave her again.”

“Why would you want to?” Rose murmured, and kissed him.

“This is nuts,” Alex murmured. “I don’t even like you.”

Rose tsk ed. “That’s not true!”

Alex stood so close to Julian he could touch her, yet his stomach roiled and his head ached. That he wanted to touch her, would apparently always want to, was no doubt the cause.

“How did you know you were soul mates?” he asked.

“From the first moment we met, we knew there was something special between us,” Rose said.

“Love at first sight?” Alex let out a relieved breath. “That definitely wasn’t us.”

“No.” Joe laughed, the sound as joyous as his songs. “Not love at first sight. At first sight we fought like cats in a sack.”

“But the passion,” Rose murmured, staring into Joe’s eyes. “Whenever we touched…”