18. Kezia

As I sankonto the grass across from my brother and the shaman, I didn't realize how close I had chosen to sit beside Cannon until I literally knocked elbows with him.

"Sit on his lap, why don't you," Kris grumbled, and I flipped him the finger in response.

"You would prefer Landon?" Cannon asked quietly. When I looked at him, I recognized he was serious, and it struck me then that while he was my mate, he had not only gained me for his mate, but he had also gained Kris. Worriedly I looked at my brother, who seemed to have reached that understanding long before me.

"No. It's bad enough he's my mate's brother." Kris cricked his neck from side to side, a sign he was uncomfortable. "But I can't say I'm overjoyed at you either."

"We're still trying to break it," I blurted, ignoring the sharp stab of panic I felt at the thought. "Remember?"

"Are we?" Cannon looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Maybe at one point, but are we still?"

"We're not?" Had they changed the script? I no longer knew what was happening. I glanced at Kris, who was avoiding making eye contact. "You told me distance helped?" I accused the shaman.

"From revealing too much to your enemy," he answered simply. "Breaking the actual mating bond? I think death is the only way to break it."

My jaw slackened as I regarded him. "You sent me away to break it!"

"No, I sent you away from the Anterrio Pack," he corrected. "You are not safe there, child, you never were."

"Yet you let her stay there," Cannon spoke softly. "Knowing they would never accept her."

The shaman turned his head to face the alpha at my side. "And what would you have me do, Alpha? Turn two powerful children into the wild for the elements or rogues to take them? Luna sent a strong alpha male to me, and his equally gifted sister. I have served my pack and both Kris and Kezia since the day Bale took them in. I have protected them both, and now I am here, protecting them still. I didn't need the pack to accept her, I just needed them to keep her, keep them both, close."

"Why?" My voice was a whisper as my whole entire being felt like I was receiving blow after blow.

"The spirit inside you." Cannon rubbed his forehead. "Your wolf spirit is not separate from you, Kezia. Have you ever spoken to anyone about their wolves?"

"Yes," I scoffed. "I'm a shifter, we talk about our wolves all the time."

"Do we?" Cannon looked at Kris. "Do you?" My brother shook his head. "Why is that?" he asked him, and when Kris didn't answer, Cannon turned back to me. "Because when we are in our wolf form, we are not as aware as we are as humans. We shift, Kezia, into wolves. We become the wolf."

"I know."

"But you don't know," he said with frustration. "For you, it is always you and her. It is never you or your wolf. How many times have you been lost, pup? How many times have you shifted and never known and have no memory of it?"

"He's right," Kris said grudgingly. "I'm me, or I'm my wolf. I'm never separate. My thoughts are my thoughts in this form or wolf form. My wolf does not talk to me like yours does," he added gently. "Because he is not separate from me. I carry the spirit and the power from the magic of Luna to shift, but whatever I am thinking, it's me. As man or wolf, it's always me."

Frowning, I considered all of them, even the quiet shaman. Three males of varying ages. Two alphas and a shaman, three powerful males. All I would trust with my life, even Cannon. That startled me but was something to dissect another day.

None of them had a reason to lie to me.

"You don't talk to them?" I asked uncertainly.

"Not really," Cannon answered firmly, but I was watching my brother who shook his head sadly. "But you know I speak to her." Rising to my feet, I looked across at Kris as I started to pace. "You were the one who named her!"

Cannon turned his attention to Kris. "Named her or were told her name?"

Kris swallowed. "She told me her name."

"How many times have you spoken to her?" Cannon asked Kris while I stood against the wall, my fists curled at my sides as I tried to process.

"A handful." Kris stood too. He liked to move when he was thinking, a trait we both shared. "I don't believe you about the four-year missing gap," he added bluntly. "But"—his head dipped—"I do agree I am probably older than I thought. Some of the things don't make sense. Some do. I don't recall much after our parents were killed. Kezia was stuck in her wolf form. I could talk to her while she was a wolf. I know now that was an alpha ability."

"Very young." Cannon's voice held respect. "You will be very powerful when you are done with your training," he told him, admiration lacing his tone.

"Yeah." Kris rubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable with the praise. "But I couldn't make my sister shift back, no matter how much I pleaded. Kezia was a child, her speech limited, then one day, a voice, not my sister's, spoke to me."

"She guided you to the Anterrio Pack?" Cannon guessed.

"She did."

"She told me there was pain with the imposter," Cannon said carefully. "Bale as pack leader cannot force a shift."

"A pack can," the shaman interrupted. "A pack leader has power from his pack. He can pull energy from them if they allow."

"And if they don't allow?" I asked warily.

"It hurts."

Staring at the ground, I closed my eyes briefly. "Now I know why they hate me so much. I caused them pain." I could hear the bitterness of my voice as I spoke.

"A long time ago," Cannon reminded me. "The truth is they're just dicks."

That made me smile and I looked up gratefully. "So, Bale can make us do what he wants if he uses the pack?"

Kris nodded. "Everyone but us," he confirmed. "And the shaman, obviously."

"Obviously?" I muttered. "There is nothing obvious about any of this to me."

"He didn't get you to shift," Kris said hurriedly, looking guilty. "I did." Even Cannon looked surprised at that. "I mean, I didn't command it, but I knew the pack were hurting, and I knew he couldn't be an alpha. Dad had told me about alphas, and I knew…" He cleared his throat. "I knew Pack Leader Bale wasn't one. You were in pain. Whimpering. I can still see you lying on the ground, your back legs kicking as you struggled." He was pale as he recalled that day, and I felt a little of my resentment ease. "I hated that you were in pain, so I asked her to let you shift. She fought it, but…eventually, she listened. Then Bale used the pack to keep you in human form until you stuck in one form and wouldn't shift back."

There was silence for a long moment, but as I pushed myself away from the rock face, I met my brother's stare. "What did you promise her?" If possible, he got paler. "I know her, remember. She's spoken to me almost every day of my life. She likes to bargain." I refused to look at Cannon. "What did you promise her?"

"A secret." Kris sighed. "I promised to keep it a secret from you that your wolf was different."

"But her wolf isn't different," Cannon spoke into the silence that followed. "Kezia's wolf is like every other wolf spirit, but it's the other spirit that lives within her, that's the problem."

"Other spirit," I muttered bitterly.

"A passenger within your soul," the shaman spoke for the first time in a while. "There are many legends of them. A guardian of sorts, they can be good, evil, both, or neither." His hands rubbed together as if he were cold. "I do not think she means you harm. I think she protects you, but I also think, in doing so, she will in time harm you."

"She has always protected her," Kris argued. He looked worriedly between the two of them. "Why would she harm her now?"

"She wants her body," Cannon spoke bluntly. "Each time she takes over, Kezia takes longer to come back. When Kezia shifts to her white wolf, she is like any other shifter. But when the other spirit takes over, Kezia struggles more and more to come back." He turned to the shaman. "Did you know she could do magic?"

"I can?"

"No, you can't," Cannon clarified, not breaking his gaze from the shaman. "She created a ball of light. Her strength is like nothing I've ever seen. She bent bars of steel like they were made of paper."

"How did you get her to give control back?" Kris asked as he paced.

"My Will."

Kris nodded. "I started using it more as she got older," he confirmed. "When I let Kezia escape, I knew there was the chance she'd be gone forever."

"Kris!"

He looked at me and shook his head. "A chance, Kezia, I said a chance. But as I told you that day, you are strong. So fucking strong, little sister, I knew you'd make a fight of it."

"Where is she now?" the shaman asked curiously.

"She isn't here," I confirmed. "I haven't felt her since I woke. We ran here as wolves, and I assumed the quietness was because my wolf was happy being out of bed and in the fresh air."

"And does she stay gone long?" the shaman asked me.

"A few days, sometimes more. Longer with Cannon sometimes." Tilting my head back, I stared at the sky. "A passenger." What the actual fuck? "I thought she was my wolf." But as I said it, I thought about it, and I knew deep down that I had perhaps always known she was different. My beautiful white wolf never spoke to me. When we ran, we ran together, there was a shared awareness. Moonstar was very much a separate awareness.

"I'm sorry."

Lowering my chin, I looked at my brother. "You should be. It shouldn't be a male from another pack that tells me this." Glaring at Kris and the shaman, I felt my anger boiling over. "She wants to bodyjack me for fuck's sake! You couldn't warm me? Say to me that I was a complete freak show!"

"You are not a freak show," Cannon corrected me. "You're unique."

"Well, I don't want to be unique," I protested, frustration making my tone sharp. "How do we get her out of me?"

"First we need to know how she got in," the shaman said carefully.

Cannon stood, walking over to me. He took me by the elbow and led me back to the small circle we had formed. "Sit, we have much more to talk about," he told me quietly. Unresisting, I sat beside him, my hand taking a firm hold of his. "All these months, I've longed for you to stop talking, and now I wish I could hear you screeching," he joked lightly.

"Give me time," I muttered. "It'll come," I warned. The slight squeeze of my fingers took most of the heat out of me.

"I've been researching," Cannon told the shaman. "There is a shit ton of information out there, not a lot about spirits. Well, that's not true, not a lot about spirits who possess shifters. Because we aren't real to humans. Or we shouldn't be. But Norse, Celtic, Native American, and many other cultures all have their form of mythology. The nearest I can narrow it down to is either the Norse v?rer, a warden spirit, or Garmr, said to be a dog or maybe wolf guardian of the Goddess Hel's gate." He took a deep breath. "Even the Ireland myth of the Faoladh, which can allegedly shift into a wolf and is said to be a guardian or protector of sorts to others."

"Guardian," Kris murmured. "All three you've mentioned are guardians?"

"Yes." Cannon was nodding. "Their parents were murdered," he spoke to the shaman. "A traumatic event for anyone to witness, not to mention two gifted children. Alphas are powerful, we know this, but a child shifting so young? Gifted children are strongly tied to Luna. Their pain and fear would have been a strong beacon to any nearby spirit."

"We are always surrounded by spirits." The shaman was nodding thoughtfully.

"And when the ones that killed their parents were done, they'd have come hunting for their children." Cannon let my hand go when I tugged it free. "Two bullets in the back of the head would have done the job. Should have done the job," he corrected himself.

"And a wolf pup is more enticing than a young boy for a passing spirit," the shaman murmured.

"I think so," Cannon confirmed. "Whatever spirit is in Kezia, I believe it is, or was, a guardian. She protected her by ensuring she lived. When I shot Kezia with the silver bullet," Cannon spoke quickly, ignoring Kris's angry growl, "she told Kezia the silver binds. It slowed her down, it prevented her from shifting to heal, but she did not die, and more importantly, she did not shift."

"That's more important than the fact I didn't die?" I asked him incredulously.

"Don't be dramatic." Cannon waved my protestation away carelessly as he focused on the shaman. "Obviously, I can't shoot anyone else with silver to test it, but I think"—he paused—"no, I know, that any other shifter, they'd be dead. Because Kezia has the spirit inside her, it is her magic that makes her immune to the silver."

"Am I not another shifter?" Kris asked him. "I was also shot, you claim. Why am I alive?"

"Because you're Kezia's brother," the shaman spoke slowly as he thought about it. "If the alpha is correct, then when the spirit entered Kezia, she would have known only three bonds. The bond to each parent, and the bond to her brother. You. Two bonds were severed, meaning she only had you left."

Cannon was nodding quickly in agreement. "And when the spirit takes over Kezia's body, Kezia is weak afterward, or she takes a long time to recover. I had a conversation with the spirit that lasted no more than a few minutes, and Kezia took five days to regain consciousness." He looked at me. "You are strong, no one can deny that, but as a child? You would have been weak, plus you were dying."

"Which is why it took four years for us to recover?" Kris asked slowly, looking at me with wide eyes. "Whatever she did to Kezia to keep her alive, the familial bond in turn kept me alive as well?"

"I think so," Cannon told him.

"Is it why my hair is white?" When they both looked at me in varying degrees of confusion, I shrugged. "What? It's a valid question."

"It's a vain question," Kris scolded me. He pointed at his brown hair. "I don't have white hair."

"Your hair is silver, not white," Cannon mused before turning to Kris. "You confirmed you have the same scar as Kezia, which would suggest you were also shot with a silver bullet?—"

"Or," the shaman interrupted, "he wasn't but was too young to shift to heal. With the exemption from Kezia, we don't usually shift so easily as children. Kris would have a scar because he wouldn't have been able to shift to heal until he was older."

I felt sick. It was all so much to take in, and confusing, and I had so many questions. I wanted my wolf to come forward. And then I remembered she wasn't my wolf.

She was a passenger.

I felt a little bit violated.

"Why would Kezia be the one to be shot with silver?" Kris asked them both.

"I used two bullets when I shot her," Cannon spoke candidly, ignoring my brother's anger. "If they shot your parents with silver too, then maybe it's as simple as there were only three bullets in the gun that were silver. The wolf pup was shot first and then the child. They may not have known she even was a shifter." He sighed. "But I don't know, it's all guessing, trying to figure out a puzzle, with pieces missing."

"Which leads us back to who shot us?" Kris sighed with frustration. Cannon grunted in agreement.

"Wait, all this, and you don't know?" I demanded, looking between them both.

"Well, I thought it was him, or his pack," Kris said defensively. "I mean, it still could be? Why have you got my father's buckle?"

"It was no one in my pack," Cannon growled. "The buckle? The wolf head?" When Kris nodded, Cannon turned to the shaman. "It was a gift I received with the invitation for the Luna Ball."

"A gift?" Kris demanded. "From who?"

"Me," the shaman answered simply.