The Thing About Weres

another dark smudge. “Shoo,” I said to the mallard. “Go find your mate before winter sets in.”

Trowbridge watched the bird, his lips twisted. “Let it go, Hedi.”

“Tell me about your life there,” I asked softly. “Have you found Lexi yet?”

He shook his head, ever stubborn. “It’s moontime there, isn’t it?”

“Tomorrow.” Three nights of hell. “How’d you know?”

“You’re more anxious around the full moon. That’s when the worst dreams come.” Trowbridge’s shoulders flexed as he spread his arms wide. He bent his head, his fingers skimming the surface—seemingly poised for a dive.

Don’t. Not yet.

Water curled up to his navel and then dipped back. “Have you heard from the NAW yet?”

The letter came this morning. I didn’t explain how the air in the trailer had thickened with the sharp spice of Were anxiety after Harry, Cordelia, and Biggs had taken their turns reading it. But then again, in my dreams, I didn’t need to.

His wince was the type that happens before a trigger is reluctantly squeezed. And for a second, it was all there. Despair worn down to weary acceptance, fatigue etched into bone weariness—the visual equivalent of a heavy sigh if my Trowbridge was a man given to such things. But he was not. He wiped out the bad and replaced it with a smile that promised hell and havoc. “I have to get out of this pool.” My mate started walking toward me, the sound of the churning water loud to my ears. “I’m coming out now. We need to—”

“No!” I closed my eyes. “One thousand, two—”

“Shit! Stop with the counting!”

“Three thousand, four—”

“It’s freaking annoying. Hedi,” he called, his tone sharp and demanding. “Open your eyes and look at me. I’m good now. There’s no scars on my chest or wrists. No silver in my gut. I’m healed.”

“Five thousand, six—”

“That’s it, I’m coming out of this water right now,” he promised, the sound of his splashing progress getting louder, closer.

My eyes popped open. “No! You have to stay in the Pool of Life.”

If anything he moved faster. “Dammit, I’m healed!”

“No! Every time you walk out of it, you die!” Acid began rising in my throat.

“I’d rather die on dry land!” he shouted back.

The wind came from nowhere. It whistled through the trees—frost tipped and javelin sharp—and whipped the water into a vengeful chop. It thrashed the trees and shredded their leaves. The remnants came in a whirl, a veritable barrage of dead and broken things; dry whispers of brown, bright flickers of yellow and red. They swirled and danced over my lover’s head.

He hunched his shoulders as he batted them away. “Hedi, you’re going to blind me with these damn things! I need to see! Chill. I mean it! Close your eyes and think of something else.”

I did. I covered my eyes and thought of something easy, but in the landscape of my dreaming mind, the wind still moaned.

“Okay, okay. Shh, sweetheart, I’ve got you,” he whispered in my ear. “Breathe deep. Steady now. It’s a dream. That’s all it is.” A sigh—I swear I felt his warm breath on my face and the soft press of his lips to the peak of my ear.

“Please, Tink, go back to sleep. Dream of Krispy Kremes and napoleons, not of me.”

Strangely obedient, my fist tightened on something soft and giving, perfumed very faintly of Trowbridge. I rubbed my cheek on its cotton softness, but as I wrapped my arms around it, a keening part of me registered the lumpy contours of my pillow.

“Sweet dreams, little one.”

Arm shielding my eyes, I rolled over, feeling the sheets catch on my hip.

Gray light in my bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling cabinet holding my clothes and his, reassuringly within arm’s reach. Good. Now wake yourself up, fully. Get out of bed for some water. Go for a pee. Move. But I didn’t. I lay there, drowsy and bereft, hovering on the brink of dread.

You see? I couldn’t leave him. I never could.

My eyes closed again all on their own.

In those brief seconds of semiwakefulness, time had passed. Merenwyn’s sun had fallen; its golden light given way to the silver shimmer of the stars. Fall had yawned, and trundled off for bed. Gone were the bands of vivid gold, the touch of crimson in the hills. Winter chill was in the air and, save for the firs, the trees in the vista were bare. Viewed from a distance, the horizontal swaths of their gray-taupe trunks and naked branches seemed to be a gray fog wreathing through the vertical spikes of the sharp-tipped evergreens.

Almost like Threall seen from a bird’s-eye view, I thought.

The pond was empty, save for the man I could not rescue.

Trowbridge’s back was goosefleshed and bluish in the cold. “Back so soon?” he asked, without turning. The muscles on his back pulled and stretched as he folded his arms.

“Karh! Karh!” warned a distant raven.

My mate cocked his ear, and took a step toward the deep part of the pool. “You should be dreaming of better things than this, Tink.” Water crept to his waist as he took another resolute step toward the drop-off. “Why do you do this to yourself? Always come back for the end? Why?”

“I don’t want you to die alone.”

“You should have checked the fine print of the mating bond. Our destinies will always be connected.” His gaze was fixed on the road leading out of the forest. “I told you a Were should never cross the portal. Nothing good’s going to come of it.”

“I had no choice.”

“You did. You could have had the courage to let me go. Instead, you broke the treaty. The Fae will come,” he said with a cold certainty that made me feel all kinds of awful.

The Fae have come. It used to be that I’d meet you every night and now I’m never sure who I’m going to meet in my slumber. Mad-one and some old Fae keep slipping into my dreams. Am I starting to go mad, too? Because that’s what mystwalkers do. We lose our marbles.

Numbly, I watched my lover draw a shape in the water with his hand. A backward S curve slid into an upside-down one, as Trowbridge carved a figure eight reclining on its side, infinitely graceful. “I’m tired of this,” he murmured softly. “Why does it always have to come down to a fight?”

As I’m tired of it. The welling guilt, the sharp bite of desire, the low swell of longing, the growing acid of fear.

“I’ll change into my wolf tomorrow night, Trowbridge. I promise.”

But he’d lifted his ear sharply to something only he could hear, and then he quietly asked, his breath misting in the cold air, “What could I say to make you leave now?”

That you’re coming home. That you forgive me.

“You ask for the moon, Hedi Peacock.” A snowflake fluttered from the sky to land on his shoulder with a frozen kiss. It lay there, a perfect crystal that did not melt. The raven issued another volley of urgent krahs, and then, over its sharp cry, came the sound of horses being ridden in haste. I heard the hollow drumming of hoofs on hard earth and the long metallic slither of silver swords being drawn.

Trowbridge swiveled his head to look at me. Blue eyes piercing. “These visits have to stop. It just makes things harder. You need to face the fact that I’m never going to find my way back.” Then, his jaw hardened. “Now go home, Hedi. Don’t watch this.”

The sound was getting louder.

All I could hear, those drumming hooves.

The muscles of his neck moved as he swallowed. “It’s time for my swim.”

My Trowbridge dived into the depths of the Pool of Life, hands pressed like in a prayer, just as the first arrow soared through the air.