Marked by the Moon

23

Julian didn’t wait for Alex to join him. He knew that she would. Cade came along, too. Julian didn’t try to stop him.

They made their way to the EAT Café. The place was already packed with customers.

“You,” he pointed to Rose. “And you.” He pointed to Joe. “Come with me.”

Julian tramped up the steps that led to the apartment over the café, going through the unlocked door in front of Alex and Cade. The three of them waited in silence for Rose and Joe to turn over the register and grill to their employees, then join them.

They appeared scared witless. Julian had been a little harsh. Before Alex had shown up he never would have noticed.

“Sit,” he ordered.

Alex made an impatient noise to accompany the scowl she aimed in his direction. “Don’t worry,” she said to the older couple. “He won’t bite you. Again.”

Rose smiled without her usual spark. Joe didn’t bother.

“What have we done?” Rose asked.

Julian opened his mouth, then shut it again. How was he supposed to explain this? He glanced at Cade, but his brother had never been very good at explaining things so anyone could understand them.

“If one of you goes on a trip,” Alex began. “Does the other one feel…strange?”

The worried expressions on both their faces smoothed out. Rose laughed a little. “Oh, that,” she said.

“What?” Julian said between clenched teeth. The worried expressions returned.

“Quit scaring them!” Alex ordered.

If possible, Rose and Joe appeared more concerned. Rose put her hand on Alex’s arm. “Don’t yell at the alpha, child.”

“Yeah,” Julian said. “Don’t yell at the alpha.”

“Bite me,” she muttered.

“Again?” Julian drawled.

“Oh!” Rose lifted her hands to her cheeks, then stared back and forth between Julian and Alex. “I see.”

“See what?” Alex and Julian demanded at the same time. Cade had retreated to the window, staring out at the street, and while he was obviously listening, he was pretending not to.

“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 tsked. “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…”

“Sex happened,” Alex finished.

“That’s amore.” Joe spread his arms wide, and Rose walked into them.

“Faet!” Julian said.

“Got that right,” Alex agreed.

After a brief hug, Rose faced them. “What brought this up?”

Julian glanced at Cade, but his brother still didn’t appear inclined to speak. “Cade did an experiment. Trying to figure out why Alex and I are so—” He searched for a word.

“Fucked,” Alex muttered, and he scowled.

Rose did, too, or at least her face creased into an expression that was the closest she ever came to one. “I don’t understand, child. The mate bond is a gift even greater than the one Julian’s already given you.”

“Given.” She snorted. “Yeah.”

Rose’s frown deepened. “A love like this will never go away.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Alex straightened her shoulders. “And it isn’t love.”

“It will be,” Rose said.

They weren’t getting anywhere, and there were still a few things Julian needed to know. “You’re saying that if Alex and I were human we’d be soul mates?” Rose and Joe both nodded like bobble-headed dolls. “But what if we never met?”

“Soul mates always meet. It’s fate.”

Considering that Julian had been a Viking while human—centuries ago, before Alex had even been born —he had a problem with that theory.

“What if he’d never made her a wolf?” Cade asked.

Everyone glanced in his direction as if they’d forgotten he was there.

“Becoming werewolves allowed the mate connection to be born.” Rose beamed at Julian like he’d done it on purpose.

Julian’s stomach began to burn as if he’d suddenly sprung a very bad ulcer. “So if I’d left her human, there’d have been no connection?”

“Why-a do you think I insisted on making Rose like me?” Joe asked.

Julian could have sworn the ulcer began to bleed.

“With me human,” Rose said, “and Joe a werewolf, the connection began to fade almost immediately.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Alex demanded.

Joe shrugged and looked at Rose. Rose shrugged and looked at Julian. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Julian growled, causing the older woman’s eyes to widen. “Sorry,” he said. “But I’ve never heard of this. And Cade’s never seen a reaction like he saw with us —” He flicked his finger between Alex and himself before setting his hand on his aching gut. “And you two.”

“What reaction?”

Quickly Julian explained what had happened with the blood hopping.

“I’d like-a to see that!” Joe exclaimed.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Alex muttered. “It was creepy.”

“If you think about it,” Rose said, “that makes sense. The mate bond is part of what we are. It’s a connection in the blood.”

“So there’s no way that Cade can cure it?” Alex asked.

Rose and Joe frowned. “Why would he want to?”

Alex opened her mouth to recite a laundry list of reasons, but snapped it shut again when Cade turned from the window, one brow lifted as he waited on her reaction. She decided to save comments of a more personal nature until she had Barlow alone.

“Why didn’t you know this?” she asked instead. “You and Alana—”

Rose and Joe gasped. Cade winced. Julian’s upper lip lifted in a snarl, and he bolted from the room.

Whoops.

“What’d I say?”

“When Alana left,” Cade murmured, “he didn’t know she was gone for days.”

“What? How could that be?”

“They had a fight. He thought she went to her grandmother’s. By the time he checked on her, she was dead.”

Now Alex winced. Luckily the others believed it was in sympathy and not guilt.

Guilt? Since when?

“I don’t understand,” Alex said. “If Alana left the village, why didn’t Julian know it in his gut?”

“Because Alana wasn’t his mate.” Rose stared at the open door through which Barlow had disappeared. “You are.”

“Oh, that’s gonna go over really well,” Alex muttered.

Silence settled over the room. No one seemed to know what to say or do.

“We should get back to the café,” Rose murmured. “If that’s okay?”

It took Alex a moment to realize that Rose had directed the question at her. “I—uh—Sure.” She shrugged and looked at Cade.

He waited until the older couple left before answering. “You’re the alpha’s mate.”

“So I hear. Why are they asking me if they can leave the room?”

“That makes you the second in command.”

“Fantabulous,” she muttered.

Cade’s gaze went distant. “It explains why you could resist his commands. Mates are equals.”

Alex didn’t feel equal. She felt cursed.

“And also why you could touch Julian’s wolves and they could touch you without the inevitable headache.”

“Why?”

Alex wasn’t sure she cared, but listening to Cade was better than listening to the voice in her head, which kept screaming that she was in big trouble.

“The mate bond must have given you the same link to Julian’s wolves that he has. Like Rose said, a connection in the blood. It’s the only explanation.”

“Glad we got that sorted out.” Alex’s stomach was starting to roll. She felt a little dizzy. “Is it hot in here?”

Her forehead had gone clammy. She stepped onto the landing and took several gulps of the chill Arctic wind.

Cade came up behind her. “Julian must have run pretty far this time.”

“What?” Alex wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Why?”

“You’re getting sick.” He stared at her as if he’d like to open her up and see what lay inside. “Fascinating. We don’t get sick.”

“Speak for yourself,” Alex said, and puked over the railing.

Since she hadn’t eaten since yesterday, she didn’t puke much. Which only made things worse.

“You’d better come back to the lab.” Cade helped her down the stairs. Alex felt so shitty she let him.

She tried to walk as if she weren’t drunk off her ass, but it wasn’t easy. Several of the locals gave her strange looks as she and Cade weaved past.

Ella was just pulling up in front of her house on what appeared to be, considering the dent in the fender, George’s snowmobile. She took one look at Alex and cried out, “What’s the matter?”

“That bad, huh?”

“I’ll take her.” Ella reached for Alex.

Cade didn’t let go. “She can stay with me.”

“She lives with me.” Ella pulled on Alex’s arm.

“Not a wishbone,” Alex murmured, and tugged free. “What are you doing here?”

Ella’s face was a mask of concern and at first she only stared blankly at Alex. Then Alex snapped her fingers in front of Ella’s nose. “I didn’t think you’d come home until tonight.” She’d said as much when they’d left her at Jorund’s yesterday.

“Oh!” Understanding filled Ella’s dark eyes. “There was another murder.”

Alex cursed. “We’re gonna run out of villagers.”

“Not a villager. A deliveryman I expected from Juneau. When he didn’t show this morning, I went searching for him and—” Ella winced. “I found him.”

“A dead deliveryman is going to raise a few questions.”

“You think?” Ella muttered, and Alex would have smiled if she weren’t afraid that would set off another bout of puking. The more Alex was around Ella, the better she liked her.

“We’re going to have to camp out in the Inuit village,” Alex said.

“I can do that,” Ella murmured.

Alex managed to navigate Ella’s porch steps. She used the door to steady herself as she turned. “Thanks, Cade. Maybe you’d better find Julian.”

He didn’t appear happy to let her go, but he nodded. “I’ll drag him back here; then you’ll feel fine.”

Alex didn’t think she’d ever feel fine again, but she did her best to smile before she went inside.

She barely made it to the bathroom before she tossed her cookies again. Too bad she didn’t have any cookies to toss. She’d never been a big fan of the dry heaves.

Ella came in behind her, leaning over and pulling Alex’s hair up and out of the way. Then she turned on the water in the sink. An instant later a cold cloth pressed onto the back of Alex’s neck. Nothing had ever felt so good.

“What’s going on?” Ella asked.

Alex flushed the toilet, stepped past Ella, who shuffled into the hall to give her room, then washed her face and rinsed with mouthwash. When her gaze met Ella’s in the mirror, the Frenchwoman arched a brow, and Alex told her everything.

“Mates,” Ella murmured. “Hmm.”

“That’s all you can say? I’m stuck here forever, unless I want to throw up until my insides are on my outside. Talk about a curse and a prison.”

“Calm yourself, mon amie. Is it so bad to have a man like Julian as your mate?”

In truth, Alex wasn’t that upset. She wondered if being sick until she had no sick left to be had put her in a state of shock—or perhaps just the news had.

“A love like that is not something that comes along every day.”

“It isn’t love,” Alex said, although what love was she couldn’t quite say.

“Are you sure?” Ella asked. “Didn’t you find it odd that you felt ill every time he went too far away? Considering that we don’t get ill?”

“I didn’t,” Alex said. “Until today.”

“Not even when he left you the first time, after he made you?”

It appeared that Ella not only knew the truth about Alex, but the truth about every damn thing.

“He left you when we are like babies, and we should never be left.” From Ella’s expression she wished Julian were there right now so she could kick him. Alex wished he were there right now so she could see it.

“I was busy shape-shifting,” Alex said. “I felt like my skin was going to explode.”

“Then it did,” Ella murmured.

“My stomach was the least of my worries.”

“Come.” Ella beckoned. “You need to lie down.”

Since Alex did need to, she followed the Frenchwoman into the bedroom where she tossed her clothes and crawled beneath the quilt.

“You should sleep now.” Ella sat on the side of the bed and brushed Alex’s hair away from her face with a cool, gentle hand, and Alex felt a flicker of memory. Someone sitting on her bed, touching her face—a cool hand against her fevered brow.

Mama?

The childish voice—hers—made Alex blink. She had few memories of her mother. She’d been so young when Janet died; then Charlie had packed Alex up and taken her away, leaving every memento behind. Once in a while, she got flashes—like now—but in truth they were becoming more rare as time went on. She wondered if the same thing would happen to her memories of Charlie. God, she hoped not. If she lost those, she’d be completely alone.

“You feel any better?” Ella asked.

Alex nodded. Maybe Barlow was back.

And the rush of warmth that followed that thought made her dizzy again. She closed her eyes as Ella slipped out.

She hated this. Alex had rarely been sick in her life, and she wasn’t supposed to be sick at all while a werewolf.

“Call it a perk,” she murmured.

What was she going to do about this bizarre development? How could she ever leave Barlowsville if leaving made her so sick she couldn’t move?

Although…If she could make it to Edward and partake of the Jäger-Sucher cure, wouldn’t that make this all go away?

Or she could man up, stick to her original plan, and kill him, though that option was becoming less and less appealing.

How did you put a bullet into the brain of someone you’d slept with? It couldn’t be that easy.

Hell, it shouldn’t be that easy.