Chapter 104: Inseparable

Nash

“If King’s took her mate, he’s dead,” Jericho stated flatly. “King’s doesn’t take prisoners. It’s too messy.”

Eudora stood up from behind her desk. She really was quite short for a werewolf, an alpha one at that. As she walked around the desk she let her fingers trail over the leaves of some of the plants until she came and stood in front of my chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jericho circle around the other side. He seemed to be keeping his distance, giving his mate space, but staying close enough so that he could rip my head off if I made a wrong move.

“I wonder, Nash Turner, why do you care about this bear-shifter’s mate?”

“I don’t,” I said, perhaps too quickly. And I didn’t, not really. He was nothing more than a grainy picture to me. He didn’t even seem like he was that great of a guy, if the conversation with his father was any indication of his character.

Eudora held out her hand, and I had no idea what she wanted. Was I supposed to offer her money for her time?

“Your hand, Nash Turner. Let me see your hand.” She coaxed softy, a little smile playing around her full lips.

Hesitating, I lifted my hand. She wrapped my fingers in her small palm. It didn’t feel like anything special, just normal skin-to-skin contact. But her breath pushed out of her chest like someone had squeezed her ribs, and her eyes watered slightly as they met mine. “Oh, Mr. Turner,” she said softly. “So much pain.”

I pulled my hand out of hers, and resisted the urge to wipe it on my pant leg. I’d heard there were werewolves out there that had extra abilities, as if shape-shifting were not talent enough. “I do have another question, Mr. Carrole. They are called the King’s Assassins. Are they in the employ of the Canadian werewolf king?”

Jericho shook his head. “No relation to the Northern King whatsoever,” he said, rolling his neck, like the subject made his muscles tense. “The King's Assassins were based on some medieval secret society.”

“I see.” I sucked in a deep breath. I’d come all this way, but the little information I gleaned from the Carroles wasn’t going to help me find what I was looking for. Truth be told, I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for anymore, or why. I pushed myself to my feet. “Thank you for your time, Alpha Eurdora, Alpha Jericho.”

I gave them both a respectful nod and turned to the door. But the doorway was blocked by a small person, a girl of maybe five or six. She was a miniature of Eudora, petite, with golden brown skin and dark, thick hair that spilled around her shoulders in waves. The only difference was the girl had silver-grey eyes. She stood there, her hands clasped in front of her little body, a pose that seemed too grown up for a girl who looked like she had just got home from kindergarten in her pleated skirt and pastel blue t-shirt.

“Hi.” She had a voice like a little angel.

“Hi.”

“I’m Victoria.”

“I’m Nash.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“Mmhm,” I agreed. I thought to glance back over my shoulders at her parents, to see if they were okay with this conversation, but I couldn’t seem to look away from those silver eyes. “It’s short for Nashville, that’s where I was born.”

“I was born in Florida.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” She stepped forward, stopped right in front of me. She made a motion that I understood meant I should get down to her level. I squatted down until we were eye to eye. I flinched a little as her soft little hands cupped my cheeks. Unlike her mother, I felt a funny jolt of power when she touched me, like a pulsing electric fence. It was very uncomfortable.

Her head tipped a little, like a curious bird. “She that you seek is also seeking you.”

She sounded a little bit like a talking fortune cookie, but the pulsing power of her hands had me whispering, “The–the bear?”

“The wolf.” She said, her voice a little eerie and flat, like she was talking in her sleep.

“Daphne?”

“She’s gone to the north,” the little girl continued, her fingernails digging slightly into my cheeks. Her voice dropped to an almost imperceptible whisper. “She’s in the garden, can you see her?”

I did see her, like a hologram behind the girl, in the space between her back and the open door, a scene, three-dimensional, and yet translucent. I saw my Daphne seated on a bench under a shrub with wilting purple blooms. But she wasn’t alone. She was pressed against the side of a tall man, a man I had only seen in photographs. Their posture was intimate. The man had an arm wrapped around her body, and she was gazing up into his face with a tender expression.

Had she ever gazed at me that way?

“I don’t think she’s looking for me at all.” I said, feeling a darkness settle over me. It seemed Daphne had already moved on. She wasn't stuck, or suffering like I was.

I lifted my hands to the little girl’s wrists, and pried her hands away from my face. When her fingers left my flesh, the vision behind her disintegrated.

“But she is,” the child insisted. “They both are.”

I straightened up, and was finally able to tear my eyes away from the little girl. Eudora had moved next to her mate, leaning against him as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Her eyes were shining with a sort of maternal pride. I swallowed and turned back toward the door, but the kid was still standing in my way.

“I’ll walk you out,” she said, and then she took my hand and started pulling me back through the door.

I looked back over my shoulder at the powerful alpha couple, but Eudora only smiled and shrugged. “It was nice to meet you, Nash Turner. I have a feeling we will see each other again.”

Jericho Carrole only stared at me with that vaguely threatening look in his silver eyes. I wondered that he trusted me to walk out of his sight with his little girl. But they made no move to stop Victoria from dragging me out into the hallway, back down the corridors that seemed a lot more like an insane asylum than a home.

She stopped before the double doors and tugged me down again, until she was staring right into my face, almost nose to nose. “I have a message for you from the trees,” she whispered.

“From…the trees?”

“Yes. Did you know that trees are connected to each other through mycelium networks? If there are enough trees, they can pass a message from hundreds of miles away.”

“Um…Okay.” I looked around, hoping for some adult to come and take this creepy kid away. But we were strangely alone in the front foyer.

“My mom talks to the trees all the time, she says they are faster than the internet.”

“Really?” I had no idea what this kid was babbling on about. I would have dismissed it entirely as some kind of playing make-believe after science class. Except I couldn’t entirely dismiss it because Victoria had shown me something back there in the office.

I sighed, “Okay, I’ll bite, what’s the message?”

“The bear is missing.”

“What bear?”

“The broken girl-bear. They took her to a safe place in the forest, but she ran away again.”

“You mean Kodi?”

The kid just shrugged. Apparently she was tired of playing weird oracle. “Bye Mr. Turner.” \

Victoria skipped away, leaving me alone in front of the door. But I wasn’t as alone as I thought. The young man with the cowlicked hair appeared out of nowhere to open the door for me. I was just about to brush past him, when his hand caught my arm.

He looked me up and down like he was trying to figure me out. “You must be special,” he said, his voice a little tinged with envy. “Miss Victoria doesn’t do that for everyone, you know.”

“She’s just a kid,” I said dismissively. “She’s cute though.”

He gave me a disgusted look and released my arm. “She’s not just a kid. But I suppose a human can’t see that.” As soon as I stepped over the threshold, the door shut firmly behind me, and I heard the distinctive click of a locking mechanism.