A Death To Live For

CHAPTER 4

Odelia

Marie settles a hot cup of herbal tea in my shaking hands. The heat of the cup warms its way into my palms, up the raw nerves and into my back. I shiver. The feeling of strangeness, of floating through time, has receded into a more concrete one where I'm both angry and sad.

I take one sip, then another. And another, while Marie watched me, the way a doctor would watch his patient in a psych ward. She places a hand on my thigh and rubs.

“Its going to be alright, babe.”

“Will it?” I ask, looking at her. She nods. “He said she's his fiancee. They're getting married.”

“It doesn't matter. Maybe he'll change his mind when he sees you again.”

“How does he get on making his mind to marry someone else to begin with?”

Marie sighs and shrugs her short shoulders. We're in her place because she won't let me be alone. Also, Lotan was coming over to my place this evening and I'm in no shape to see a new suitor. Not when my real husband is about to marry someone else. The bitterness grips my heart again. I shake my head, biting back tears. There seems to be an endless reservoir of tears in a woman's head, and I can't stop it when it comes. I hate it.

“Men, alphas, they're all like that, I guess,” Marie says, almost to herself. “But we have something. He wants to meet. That's something.”

“But he's with her now,” I reply bitterly, "They're together, Marie. He's been with her. Making love—”

“Stop, Odelia. Don't torture yourself with that thought.”

My shoulders begin to convulse as I sob. “I can't . . .”

She joins me on the couch, takes the cup of herbal tea from my hand and puts her around me. I lay my head on her shoulder and weep till it feels like golf balls have been forced into the back of my eyes. Soon, toilet paper litters the whole place filled with snort and spittle.

Much later, I fall asleep on the couch. I wake up to see Marie has put a blanket over me, and the clock on the wall declares that it is a little after midnight. My head feels like a kiln and my eyes like pieces of metal left to soften by fire.

Marie is on the floor, asleep under another blanket. My cup of tea is stale now. In the kitchen, I drink two glasses of water. The knot in my chest loosens a little more as I let go in the toilet. When I come back to the living room, Marie is awake, eyes bright with concern.

“I’m okay. Go back to sleep.”

“Not if you stay up.”

“Really—”

Marie is already up. She puts the TV on and joins me on the couch. She throws a blanket over my back and snuggles. There isn't anything interesting to watch on human networks at this time of night so Marie searches wolf networks. She stops at one where the news is on.

“Do you think humans would find it odd that our networks all broadcast all night?” she asks.

“They have 24/7 broadcasts too.”

“Cartoons and old movies,” she mumbles. “Boring.”

On the Territory News, the newscaster is saying the kingdom is preparing for the ascension of the Moon Goddess Incarnate. She has already been found but the Lycan king is keeping the information private for the time being.

“Wow. Can you imagine being the goddess incarnate?”

“Must suck,” I say dryly.

“They say she's the ultimate healer. You've got competition coming your way, Odelia.”

I look at my friend and laugh. “Me? I don't heal. I just know herbs. That's all.”

She laughs too and the sound of us laughing feels good. “Odelia, what you do, that's not just ‘knowing’ herbs. Uncanny. Herbs talk to you. Doesn't get more incarnate than that.”

I laugh again. She's right, I guess. Leaves of the fields so talk to me, if one could call the feeling I get when I see them, talking. It's in fact how I met Vardi—I was talking to a wild mushroom growing from the stump of a dead oak. I was whispering to it, asking it if it knows anything about stomach aches that won't go away. It said it didn't but could point me to someone who could.

The mushroom told me where to go, what scent to follow, and how to cut the shrub of a wild amaranthine. I was in my wolf, scouring the forest, looking for this rare amaranthine when Vardi spotted me and we locked eyes. I knew instantly that he was mine. He didn't. But I did.

I sigh and shake the memory away. A tall show comes on featuring two alphas from packs in the Eastern territories. One of them is saying there's rumors the moon goddess incarnate was found in the Red River pack. Marie and I share a look. A small smile is dancing on her lips.

“It's gotta be you, Odelia.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

“Maybe you don't know it yet,” she presses, her eyes lighting up like a teenage girl who's just discovered a vulgar secret. “Maybe the mages already know it and they're simply waiting for you to grow into it.”

I shake my head, suddenly tired, and sleepy. Mages could know stuff like that. For example, one mage knew I would be a Luna when I was 15, five years before I met Vardi in the forest. This mage had heckled my parents endlessly about taking me to the Lycan temple where I'd be sequestered, waiting for an appropriate Alpha.

I lay on my side and stare at the TV, at the two alphas as they go back and forth, trading rumors and speculations about the goddess incarnate. Marie shuffled to the floor again, but she keeps throwing furtive glances my way.

“Its not me,” I say, yawning. “It can't be.”

She goes back to watching the show, that light brighter still in her eyes. As I fall asleep, one of the alphas asks his partner, “Will she know it?”

“Every incarnate knows,” says the other.

Just before I fall into the darkness of slumber, Marie looks at me again. She's smiling.