Chapter 6 Living in the Land of Ravers

Quinn Shalom...

I don't know how long I stood there freaking out about being in Jacob's house, but I was startled when the Gray Raver nudged me. Looking around, there were the carefully preserved images of a man and his family, his younger brother's childhood, parents, grandparents, cousins and other relatives. Some of the pictures were old sepia prints, others were silver prints between glass. A hundred years of photographs showing barely aging people. I could tell from the quality and coloring of the prints, that Jacob had barely aged since the 1950s or 1960s. He was an adult for decades before I was even born. I blinked back tears of fear and heartache, so they wouldn't fall. Looking back, at the picture of Will's graduation, there was a man who was an older mirror of Jacob. The elder brother who was the current werewolf monarch, James, and just behind him with graying hair and beard was Joshua. I tapped the image with a trembling finger.

"This is you, you're Joshua," I said. The gray bowed his head once in agreement.

"Do all the children of your family have J-names?" Again, the single nod. "I suppose you expect me to name Jacob's baby after him?" A nod and slight growl.

I didn't want to name my child after him, not after the way I was made pregnant. "But what if I don't want to after what he did to me? What if I want to name my baby something else?"

White cloudy eyes regarded me without emotion.

"And I suppose you want me to live in Jacob's house?" My voice rose in pitch as I asked the obvious. I knew that was what he expected, and he expected me to obey. But the last seven months had been too much, and I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't live in my rapist's house.

The Raver growled at me, and suddenly I was too angry to be terrified, as I shouted back, "No! Go to hell and say hello to Jacob when you get there!"

Maybe I was being petty, but I didn't care. It made me angry that part of me wanted to stay in His house, that I wanted to smell His scent. I hated the feelings looking at his picture in his office made me feel. I pushed past Joshua and stomped out the door, slamming it as hard as I could. Wading through the deep snow, I wished I had my boots instead of the pair of house slippers I found by the back door. I knew they were Julia's, I was even wearing her clothes today as I fought my way through the thigh-deep snow because I had nothing. The clothes I had escaped the castle in vanished when I took them off, all except the crimson cloak. Suddenly I was even angrier. I don't know why but I stopped and shrieked at the top of my lungs. I stood there, just screaming in frustration because I couldn't do anything else.

"I don't want to be here! I don't want to be a werewolf! I don't want any of this!" The sound echoed off the buildings and trees and mountains around me.

Richard approached me cautiously, as I stood crying in the tall drifts like a lost child. He picked me up and carried me back toward his house. He tried to set me on the porch, but I clung to his neck and sobbed, so he held me, rocking slightly and making soft whimpering sounds. Other Ravers came and sniffed me or licked my hand. All seemed to share my pain because it was their pain too. We had all lost so much.

Finally, I was out of tears. Gently I scratched Richard's cheek and he set me down. I went to the door, "Thank you, Richard. Do you want to come in? It's your home."

He looked past me into the doorway, made a sad sound, and backed away, then he wandered back toward the woods, vanishing into the dark forest. As I watched him disappear, I realized something terrifying, the bear I thought I was seeing around my house was Richard. The time I thought I saw Jacob in my yard and my wolf took over, I'd seen Joshua. I had been living surrounded by the Monarch Mountain Ravers since Saul and I burned and buried their dead.

VvvvvV

I guessed the pack had its own power plant because I had electricity and natural gas. I washed four of Julia's maternity outfits several times so I wouldn't smell like her. I didn't want to do that to Richard. I made myself eat the roast rabbit and rice before I took a warm bath and went to bed in the guestroom. As I lay in bed, looking through Julia's beautifully done scrapbooks, I was shown a happy and hard-working family. The image that stuck with me as I went to sleep was one of Julia and Richard looking at each other. Their love was so visible, I felt like I could touch it. I'd had that once, or had I? Kenneth, my perfect and hardworking husband, cheated on me for years. He slept with his boss to work his way up to the top of the Human Purity Movement, so he could protect me and our children and those like us.

My mind understood, but my heart didn't. My wolf didn't either. As I lay there, I realized that I grieved for Molly and Miles, but never for Kenneth because I was mad at him. Yet I missed him so much. I knew I needed to say goodbye, I needed to move forward before my son was born. A long keening cry came from my chest as I lay curled in a stranger's house. It was answered. Outside in the darkness, Ravers howled with my grief and their own.

I shuddered at the sound. I was living in their land now, in the land of Ravers.

I cried myself to sleep.

VvvvvV

I dreamed of our first Father's Day together.

Kenneth was holding our thirteen-week old Molly and a Father's Day card. "Is this for real?"

I grinned at him. "Yes."

"It's really real, you're not toying with me?" He demanded, and I began to doubt everything.

"Do you want it not to be real?" I asked meekly. "I thought it would make you happy."

"I... I just..." He stammered.

I picked up Molly from his arms and walked back to our bedroom, and began to change her diaper, trying not to let the tears fall down my face but they painted glossy tracks down my cheeks anyway. Every doubt I ever had washed over me with each one.

"Oh baby, don't cry." He turned me to face him. He held my face in his hands and wiped my tears with his thumbs. "Your news is more important than mine. I can't tell you how happy you make me." He kissed me until I forgot what I was upset by.

Afterward I whispered, my forehead pressing into his," I love you. What's your news?"

"I got the job I wanted, just like you believed I would. We can buy a house and live in the country. I am getting paid to make a difference. By the time our kids our giving us grandkids, the world will be a better place," he answered with his lips against my temple. "And I love you more."

I woke with the memory of the warmth of his whisper on my skin, 'I love you more'.

Sobbing, I sat up in bed. Those words became a lie. I laid awake for a long time before I managed to fall back asleep. I tried to figure out if there were any signs, if I should have realized it. But there was no clue of his betrayal that I could remember. Without the letter, I never would have known.

During the night, the wind started to blow again, but it was much warmer than it had been only yesterday. Soon spring would come to the territory.

VvvvvV

I woke feeling refreshed and relaxed, surrounded by the most wonderfully soothing scent. As I breathed in and out slowly, I tried to talk myself into opening my eyes. My wolf seemed happy in my head. I would have laid there longer, but the bump decided my bladder was crowding him and kicked. When I came out of the bathroom, I almost shrieked. Jacob's comforter was on my bed as were several men's shirts. A trail of snowmelt and muddy Raver tracks led to the backdoor. Joshua let himself in and put the things from his grandson's house in my safe haven. I wrapped them up in a bundle and got dressed, I was not having it. I dragged the bundle over my shoulder and followed the trail back to Jacob's house, throwing the bundle on the bed.

I was back to Richard's house and eating oatmeal with raisins when the Gray Raver's heavy pounding sounded from the porch. Joshua was holding the bundle above the snow. He growled at me and I glared at him.

"No! And you know why!" Then I slammed the door in his big, angry Raver face.

This pregnancy was making me insane. I don't know if it should be called Hormones or Horror-mones, but I was a werewolf now so it might be a little of both, or maybe I just finally cracked. I had, after all, just slammed the door in the Alpha Raver's face because I didn't like his grandson's bedding.

For the rest of the first week, I woke up with Jacob's comforter and part of his clothes piled on top of me, followed immediately by Joshua stomping after me through the melting snow as I carried them back to Jacob's house. Joshua seemed to think I needed them, and I disagreed. While it was true, I slept better and ate better with the scent of my mate, I wanted nothing to do with Jacob, his rustic house, his beautiful photographs, or his deceptively soothing scent. Joshua even carried me back there, but I slammed the door and returned to Richard's house, only to hear him roaring his frustration behind me. Yet no matter what I did or said, every morning was the same, waking up surrounded with Jacob's things. For such a giant creature, Joshua moved too quietly, he was like a freaking ghost.

It was a battle of wills that I finally lost on the first day of the second week. I barricaded myself in Richard's house and in the guestroom. Joshua couldn't get in without breaking something, and I fell asleep to the sound of Joshua testing the doors and grumbling. When I woke, my pregnancy sickness had returned with a vengeance. I was really nauseous and was in the bathroom returning last night's dinner to the daylight world when Joshua pushed the door open and wrapped the comforter around my shoulders. As I gagged and sobbed, the sick feeling started to fade. He patted me and whimpered. Sniffing the edge of the blanket then holding it to my nose for a deep breath, I cried in defeat while Joshua rubbed and tapped my baby belly until the little one became still.

"Fine, you win. I'll sleep with the blankets and wear the shirts, but that's it. I won't live in his house. Not after what happened." I held stubbornly to that line for my sanity. Joshua only nodded, then licked my cheek. I thought we had come to a truce, but I was wrong.

Twice more Joshua carried me back there, and both times I walked away through the deep snow and darkness until Richard rescued me. I wouldn't live in Jacob's house. I refused vehemently. The third time he tried, Joshua and Richard got into a tussle and nearly killed each other, only stopping when I got between them, screaming at them to stop. Joshua stormed off into the dark forest. I could hear him growling and raging in the distance. It sounded like he was tearing trees apart and again I was terrified of where I was trapped. But my fear didn't matter because that night I made a breakthrough with Richard.

I randomly pointed at two Ravers who watched the battle between the alphas and yelled at them to bring me something for Richard to eat. They obeyed, retreating into the dusk. It wasn't long at all before they were back with a small brown calf. I guessed it was from a ranch nearby. I couldn't get Richard to come inside so I could clean his wounds, and I had to do it outside. He knelt on the porch in the freezing air as I washed the bites and clawed gashes while he slowly ate. I put on one of Julia's coats against the cold, and I noticed the way Richard kept sniffing at it.

The words of the dark fae came back to me. They need you, they need you to remind them of who they were.

"Richard, did you kill Julia and the girls on accident that night? Because you couldn't help it? Like Jacob couldn't help what he did to me?" I asked softly. He made a whimpering sound and tried to stand, but I pulled him back down. "She knows, Richard, she knows you didn't mean it. I know it's hard. I killed my daughter that night too. Do you remember when I told you what happened?"

He bowed his head and pawed at my hand in a gentle way.

I knew I was at a moment of truth, I spoke as gently as I could, "Can you show me what you remember about that night?"

He pointed at the door and then waved a gnarled claw at the burned-out house that I knew had been Joshua and his mate Lena's, Saul told me about his grandparents' house and why they tried to run there.

"So, they tried to go to her grandfather's, to the safe room, yes?"

He made the same strange chuffing sound he made the night he carried me through the storm. He rocked back and forth slightly as he nodded. I could literally feel the sorrow and guilt radiating off of him.

"And she died over there, but the girls died inside in the fire..." His whole body shook, as tears ran down his furry cheeks. I didn't want to ask but I needed to know. "Richard, did you take the baby out of Julia to try to save him?"

A nod as he whimpered.

"Where did you put him? Saul and I searched everywhere for the baby." I didn't reveal we assumed the Ravers ate him.

Richard painfully crawled off the porch on all fours and lumbered into the night, I waited. I knew he was coming back. Perhaps half an hour later, he emerged from the darkness, carrying a dirty bundle. The 'It's a Boy' blanket was wrapped around a tiny body. It had been buried in the dirt. He cradled him like the most precious thing in the world. Rushing inside, I grabbed a small tote from Josephine's room, dumping her art supplies on the table and hurried back out. Carefully, I placed Richard and Julia's son in the box and snapped the lid down. Richard stood by the porch, watching, and making pained sounds in his throat.

"It's okay, tomorrow we will take him to the grotto and put him with Julia and the girls. I'll go with you," I promised.

Richard stared at me with his clouded white eyes glistening in the porch light. Then he threw back his head and howled, a long single note that shook the windows and echoed off the mountains above. I set the makeshift coffin on a chair and pulled him back up on the porch, then I took off Julia's coat and turned it inside out. Gently pushing him down, I put the coat against his chest.

"It's okay, it's okay to grieve." I picked up one of the cloths I used to clean his wounds and carefully wiped the dirt from his son's grave off his paw-like hands.

He rocked back and forth whimpering and sniffing the coat. I rubbed his back and said any soothing thing I could think of as this giant beast shrank in on himself, curling like a wounded animal around the coat, with his nose buried in the scent of his mate. I could hear the other Ravers moving in the darkness, feel them watching me. Finally, Richard fell asleep on the porch. I dragged the comforter from their bed out and wrapped him in it before wrapping myself in Jacob's.

I sat up the whole night and when Richard whimpered in his sleep, I patted his head or back and rubbed around his ears. I didn't know what soothed dogs, or wolves for that matter, and I had no idea how to comfort a giant beast that looked like it stepped straight out of a horror movie.

How does one comfort a nearly eleven-foot-tall, mutated werewolf?

I didn't know. I only knew that he was hurting. I remembered how my Aunt Judith comforted me when I cried for my murdered family and tried to do the same for him. I realized something tragic; the land of Ravers was really a land of sorrows, of horrors remembered. Monarch Mountain had become their own personal hell on Earth, and I was sharing it with them.