Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Runa

Two months after the incident, I was back to moving around on my own. My hands didn’t shake, and I even had the energy to garden again. I got most of my food from my gardens until winter rolled around, and it needed frequent tending. I was used to doing it without magic. I could heal a plant, but I couldn’t make it grow. And trying to use magic to get rid of weeds had only bitten me in the behind and burned down half my crop before I put it out again. It was a lesson hard learned and never ever repeated.

Two months with no access to my magic had given me a lot of perspective. While I still felt like a piece of me was missing, I also gained a few things as well. Working in the dirt gave me a better feeling of connection to the goddess and Mother Earth. I no longer feared someone would come looking to hurt me or use me for my powers. If they did, they were going to be sorely disappointed. I wasn’t sure if my magic would ever come back, but at least it couldn’t be used against me.

A tinkle in the wind caught my attention, and I looked over my shoulder for the culprit. I rolled my eyes, giving my attention back to the dirt.

“How long have you been sneaking around, Ethan?”

He normally visited as a wolf. His broken wolf became attached to me after I saved his brother’s life. I tolerated his presence at first, but I began to look forward to his visits after a while. He didn’t fear me like the others did.

Today, he wasn’t a wolf, his shirt a little baggy on him. I had to assume he stole it from his mate. Corey didn’t come when Ethan did, he respected his mate’s need to check on me without hovering, but I heard his bear nearby whenever he did. They were almost inseparable at this point.

“Corey made these fancy cinnamon roll things. I brought you one.”

A smile pulled at my lips, but I masked it as I pushed to my feet, dusting my hands off on my apron. The pockets were full of herbs because even without my magic, I never stopped gathering. It was a habit I wasn’t willing to break, and at this point, my ceiling was more drying herbs than wood since I didn’t have much use for them at the moment.

Ethan came closer, holding out the treat wrapped in a paper towel. He looked awkward, but he wasn’t an outwardly affectionate person to anyone but his mate and his brother. It meant a lot that he was willing to come out here to share this with me.

“I appreciate you not carrying it in your mouth.”

He snorted, rolling his eyes. “It was one time. And a sweater. It washed fine.” He tipped his head towards the bell. “When did you put that in?”

“When sneaky wolves wouldn’t stop showing up. It’s not the only one, so don’t act like you can just step over it. Be polite and trip it on purpose instead of wandering around without permission.”

The paper towel was warm, which meant the roll was fresh. Most of the smell was muted, but when my stomach roiled, I frowned. That was odd. I brushed it off, pulling the towel away to reveal the treat underneath. The moment the full smell of it hit me, I gagged. My mouth filled with saliva and I knew what came next. I thrust the roll into Ethan’s hands and stumbled away, throwing up into the bushes.

Ethan was smart enough to pocket the treat before coming closer, hovering behind me with a concerned frown.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. I had water inside, but aside from my strange visitor weeks before, I didn’t invite people into my home. I didn’t want Ethan to follow me.

“It’s been happening a lot the past few days. Certain things upset my stomach. Especially sweets.”

His brow furrowed, and he tipped his head. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

I gave him a bland look as an answer. He shrugged.

“What? I’m just saying. That’s how it started with the girls. First smells made them gag, then they couldn’t look at it, and eventually just saying the word made them dry heave. Theo got his ass kicked for doing it on purpose to get payback on Liv.”

While he spoke, my mind flicked to Nathan. When I woke up the following morning after our drunken night together, I couldn’t remember any of it. It took a few days for it to come back to me. We’d gotten extremely drunk and fell into bed with each other. But it was one night. Surely that wouldn’t be enough…

Since I wasn’t willing to admit out loud that I had drunken sex with a stranger, I tossed out a half-truth.

“To get pregnant, I’d need to meet someone. Currently, the only one who visits me is you. And I don’t believe I’m your type.”

He snorted, bobbing his head in agreement. “True. You’re nice and all, but you’ve got nothing on Corey. No offense.”

“None taken. Anyway, I’m sure it’s just a bug. Maybe I cooked something wrong.”

I sent him on his way with the treat as far from me as possible, heading into my cottage to the book I now kept tucked away on my shelf. My family was made up of healers. We kept notes about every illness and remedy for hundreds of years. I flipped the pages, stopping on the one marked for pregnancy.

“Nausea, vomiting, exhaustion…” It all sounded very familiar, and when too many of the symptoms correlated to me, I felt my stomach drop. No. It couldn’t be true. I flipped through the book, trying to find something else to explain it. It was one night! Shifters didn’t procreate easily! It was a known fact! I might not have known what type of shifter he was, but humans didn’t growl like that. I was less certain about a witch’s fertility, but surely it wasn’t so much that it’d negate the shifter issue. It wasn’t possible.

I was so focused on the book in my hand, I didn’t hear the knock at the door until someone stepped inside. Whipping my head around, I glared at the intruder, and Andrew’s hands came up in surrender.

“Sorry. I rang the bell, but you didn’t answer. Is everything okay?”

Snapping the book shut, I shoved it back onto the shelf. “Everything is fine. What do you want?”

He didn’t look like he believed me, and I doubted I was being very convincing when I was close to panicking. I made an impatient noise, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I was just going to town to pick up a few things. I was wondering if you needed anything.”

My automatic response was no. I made a list of things I needed and left it on the stump where Christian used to meet me. He didn’t come around anymore, but he always picked up the things I needed and left them on the stump for me. But my stomach roiled again and anxiety licked up my spine. I couldn’t use the old ways to test for pregnancy because I wasn’t sure if they worked without magic. And I didn’t have my own to check. If I wanted to find out, I needed to use something more modern.

“Actually, yes. I’ll join you. Let’s make it quick.”

His eyebrows jumped in surprise. I didn’t often leave the mountains, but this was important. I needed to know.

It didn’t matter how many times I shook the test, it didn’t erase the lines. Positive. Because my life needed more complications right now.

Sitting heavily in my chair, I let out a breath. This was… unexpected. I didn’t even know who the man was, aside from his name. It was one night. We were both drunk beyond all measure. It shouldn’t have led to this.

A whisper in the air made my head jerk up. I hadn’t heard that sound since the incident. For a moment, I thought I imagined it. I let it go, considering my options again on what to do about the seedling. It felt unfair to ambush him with this. My life was too complicated to deal with it myself. We both had baggage–

The whisper got louder, more insistent. I leaped to my feet, rushing to throw the windows and doors open. Wind rushed into the room, scattering herbs not properly tethered and knocking books off the shelves. The hearth crackled, flickering from the force of it. I covered my face with my arms, protecting my eyes from the dirt caught in the gales. When it died down, I looked around with a frown. Despite the force of it, I couldn’t make out what it was saying. If it was saying anything at all.

This was a sign that I was in no place to bring a child into the world. With my heart still grieving the loss of my connection to my family, I didn’t have the emotional capacity to raise a life.

A book fell, or more like jumped, off the top shelf, skittering across the floor to stop at my feet. My first grimoire. I kept it because my mother helped me write it. It felt like a piece of her and it was the first thing I learned to ward when I was a child, desperate to protect it. The book opened during the fall like it was giving me a message. I picked up the book, scanned the page, and sighed.

“Really? You’re insisting?”

The wind swept through the room again, fluttering the page without turning it, while everything else got tossed about. It wasn’t the way it used to be, I still couldn’t hear it, but the message was clear enough. Written in my sloppy childhood handwriting, but with my mother’s voice behind it.

A healer protects all life, down to the smallest seed. It is our job to help it grow and see it thrive.

Pressing my hand against my belly, I frowned. “Down to the smallest seed. You really left no room for argument, did you?”