Emily tsked. "It's the key for the collar, idiot. Keep still."

But Marie stilled her hand. "There's not as much urgency now," she said. "Why don't we get your almanac and see what it says about using the key?"

Emily nodded. "Ren?" she called, and Luc's sister came into the periphery of her blurred vision. She peered down at Luc, as if she wanted to peel everybody away and examine her for herself. d.a.m.n vet. Luc would never forgive her for siding with the Garouls, two-faced, underhanded, smart-a.s.sed...twin.

"...you'll see the stash in a net hanging from the cottonwood. The almanac is in an oilskin wrapper," Emily was giving Ren directions to collect the stupid book that started all this mess in the first place. Luc was becoming crankier by the minute. Why couldn't they all f.u.c.k off and leave her alone?

"Hey, Ren," she called after her sister. Ren came back at once, her face full of concern. "If you find a ham sandwich, eat it."

"This is all nonsense," Emily said. "If I put the collar on you, I can take it off." With a twist of the key, the collar split open and slid from Luc's neck.

"That thing weighs a ton," she groused and laid her head on the ground, exhausted. She sniffed. She sniffed again. And then she coughed, a big, wet, guttural hacking cough that made her shoulders heave.

"Looks like the virus is still present," Marie said. "Interesting that the collar suppressed it. Now we'll have samples for the lab."

"So glad to help," Luc growled. She grappled weakly at the collar lying at her side. "Put it on," she said between coughs. Emily removed it from her hands.

"No. Marie has medicines." She brushed the hair back from Luc's damp brow. "You're home now, and you're safe. And I think it's time you allowed your pack to look after you."

Chapter Thirty-one.

Luc was sitting up in bed, her leg cast resting on a pillow. Mouse played with a jigsaw on the floor, hammering pieces that could not possibly fit into place with her fist.

Emily frowned at Mouse's banging, her concern deepening when she saw the tiredness in Luc's eyes.

"Here," she said, "I thought you'd prefer this to more grapes." She handed over the paper bag she was carrying.

"I ate the fruit you brought yesterday, didn't I?" Luc pulled out the dead mouse by its tail. "Gee, thanks."

"I'm getting criticism from a woman who leaves dead squirrels in my bed?" Emily laughed.

"Cool." Mouse stopped banging and came over to look. "Did you kill it?" she asked.

"No." Emily shook her head. "I found it out front, stone-cold dead. Why don't you go see if you can catch some live ones?" Mouse took the dead rodent with eager fingers and ran for the door.

"Catch an army of them," Luc shouted after her. "And make sure you take them to your Aunt Marie's cabin and set 'em all loose."

"Is Marie still torturing you?" Emily settled on the side of the bed and brushed the dark strands of hair away from Luc's face. Her eyes were still puffy and discolored, and her nose was swollen under its bandage.

"That woman has filled every orifice with any old muck she can lay her hands on. And then she gives me injections to make even more holes."

"You're such a wonderful patient. I bet she loves working with you." Emily couldn't keep the smile from her face.

"I'm a lab rat. I bet if you left that critter you found on this pillow instead of me she would barely notice."

"Except it was a dormouse and they're quiet, timid creatures." Emily's fingers had now begun a light ma.s.sage of Luc's tense neck and shoulders. "But you're feeling better?"

"Oh yeah. I'm healing so fast this cast can come off by Friday. Jolie has to wait another week to get hers off." This seemed to cheer Luc up. "And the gloop in my lungs is nearly gone. Marie thinks the silver did its job."

"It did," Emily said. "Your relapse was slight. Most likely the shock to your system when the collar came away." She was currently a.s.sisting Marie. It was impressive to see the working lab Marie kept in the valley. She had not neglected her studies when she became Alpha. If anything, it gave her more resources to pour into her research. She knew Marie enjoyed her company in the lab. They had many overlapping areas of interest.

"You smell different," Luc announced. "Sweeter."

"I'm not taking the Lexotanil anymore. Marie gave me an herbal remedy for when I feel an attack coming on. But I haven't really needed it these past few days." Which surprised her. This week had been fraught with worry over Luc's health, and ma.s.sive upheaval in her own life, a perfect time for a panic attack.

"Oh?" Luc said. "What hole does she shove it in?" Underneath the general grumpiness, she sounded pleased at this news.

"You are so bitter," Emily said. "I never noticed before as you were so busy being insane. She gave me a tea. I have the luxury of drinking my medicine along with a nice cookie. No injections for me."

Luc's head nodded sleepily. "And you're ma.s.saging me," she said.

"So? I like ma.s.saging you."

"What's up? People are only nice when they want something," Luc said.

"People are nice when other people deserve it."

"Do you have another injection hidden down there?" Luc indicated Emily's pockets.

"No, silly. But let's talk." Emily pushed further onto the bed until they sat hip to hip. "Marie has asked if I can stick around awhile and help her out with this research. It doesn't stop because you have no more gloop to give. Ren's pack is arriving from Singing Valley soon and some of them are in a bad way."

"What's that got to do with me?" Luc asked a little sulkily, and began plucking at her bedclothes.

"You know Ren's pack." Emily saw she'd have to spell this out. "You taught them how to hunt and to survive?"

No answer.

Emily pushed on. "Ren says you turned most of them yourself. They were runaway kids and you thought you could give them a new start?" Emily wasn't so sure about the ethics of this, and Ren a.s.sured her that she and Luc had many fur-flying arguments over it. But she was not here to drag up old fights. She was trying to forge a new way forward for the two of them.

"It's not called Lonesome Lake for nothing," Luc grudgingly answered. "Those kids were dest.i.tute when I found them."

But Emily did not need Luc to qualify what she had done.

"Those same kids trust you and they'll need your help settling in here," she said.

"They'll have Ren and Isabelle." Emily could sense Luc grubbing around in her head, putting up imaginary barriers.

"Ren is busy in the lab. And Isabelle is new to this, too." Emily was losing patience. "Will you do it?" she said. "Stay here?"

No answer.

"With me?" Emily asked.

"With you?" Luc looked at her; her bruised, blackened eyes were guarded.

"I'm trying to be nice here," Emily said, "but now you've gone and made me pull rank. I claimed you, Luc Garoul. Everyone knows it. I claimed you first so I'm the boss."

"What!" Luc all but squawked.

"You can't deny it. I made the collar; I made the first claim in the RV. I've been talking to Ren about it, and I have it on the utmost authority that I'm the boss of you."

"What does that big blowhard know about anything? If Isabelle hadn't come along, she'd never have found her love teeth. She's clueless!"

"She's been very kind and helpful to me. She knows a lot about everything," Emily said.

Luc snorted at this.

"It's all in the almanacs," Emily continued. "But there probably weren't enough pictures for you to bother reading about it."

Luc blinked at her, for once keeping quiet at the appropriate moment.

"Luc, will you help those kids?" Emily asked again, the answer was important to her.

"Course I will. Someone has to warn them about Marie and her orifice fixation."

Emily suspected she was being played with, so she moved straight to the heart of her argument.

"Luc, I'm moving back to Lost Creek to help Uncle Norm with the shop. He needs me around. This visit showed me that. He's been an anchor to me all my life and now it's my turn to look after him. And on my days off, I'll be helping Marie in the lab. It's a done deal," Emily said. "I just need to know where you'll be."

"I'll be in the county jail doing time for sororicide. How dare she say you made the first claim?" Luc found her voice. Her cranky one. "You didn't even know what you were doing. It was just a lucky chomp."

"Luc. I want to be with you, but I need to be here. Will you help me out? Will you stay here with me?" Emily asked.

"I'm going nowhere without you. But you're not the boss. It was just a lucky chomp," Luc said. "Now rub lower, more to the right."

"You were going to stay all along, weren't you?" The truth dawned on Emily. Luc's sly smile corroborated it. "When did you decide that? When were you going to tell me?" Emily demanded. "I've been working up to this all week."

"I was talking to Marie. We do speak when she's digging holes in me with a needle. She wants me to be with Mouse. Seems Mouse wants that, too." She smiled shyly, looking very pleased, as if this was something she had never expected for herself. Emily squeezed her hand, delighted for her.

"But..." Luc's voice trailed off and she shot Emily a sideways glance. "But we agreed that Mouse needs a proper family den. When I left her with Ren, her pack was a lot older than Mouse. It was more of a community than a real family. Ren did her best, but Mouse missed out on a lot of things."

"I think it's wonderful news," Emily said.

"Wonderful enough to want to be part of it?"

"It's more than I'd hoped for." Her lips grazed the bruises along Luc's jawline. "Seems Marie has set us both up."

Luc turned her head and captured Emily's lips. "We never kiss enough," she murmured.

"Then we'll start to," Emily whispered. "We've got to start all over again, this time with no silver coming between us." She broke the kiss. "Luc? Tell me about Mouse's father?" She held Luc's dark gaze trying to surmise if she had crossed a line. Luc stiffened then relaxed against her, and Emily realized they were sitting in that close way she had noticed all the other Garoul couples doing and she had secretly been envious of.

"His name was Miller, and he was a big gray rogue who had a roaming range from B.C. to Alaska. I was young and out of control when we hooked up. I had no sense and soon fell pregnant. I was pleased enough though. It was all part of the adventure for me. He wasn't. He attacked me when I was near my time. Some feral males do that. They smell a change. The cubs came too early as a result. Ren helped, and because of her, Mouse made it, but her twin didn't."

Emily cradled her close. The story was a simple one.

"I got depressed afterward, and as soon as Mouse was weaned, I left her with Ren. I was always more wolven than woman, and I knew that Ren, with her job and the farm, and all her stability would be the better parent." Luc had gone back to plucking the bedclothes. "Ren didn't argue. She didn't want Mouse raised feral. You can't bring a cub back from that. And Ren was the one who tried to keep to the Garoul ways more than I'd ever done." She looked over at Emily for judgment. "I was always around though. I made sure I was there for her as best I could."

Emily had no judgment to make. These were wolven ways, and the Garouls had a culture and society too complex for her to, as yet, fully understand. Ren, Luc, and Mouse had worked it out for themselves. They were still close, and none of them seemed damaged, except perhaps for the woman in her arms.

"Mouse will always have a home with us," she said. "She'll just love her uncle Norman, once he gets used to having witches in the family." These last words were muttered.

"So this is it," Luc said. "This is what I came all the way down from Canada for. I wanted something, but I never knew what I was chasing."

"Ren says you wanted to get Mouse to Little Dip."

"The virus was scaring me. Ren was baffled. She had no idea how to deal with it. Little Dip was the only place I could think of. But, as usual, it all went wrong."

"That's another story for another day. I think you need to sleep now." Emily heaped the bedclothes around them into a little nest and slid down beside Luc so they lay cradling each other face-to-face. "This is how we sleep. Already, we have a tradition."

"We're building our own lore." Luc smiled back. "And our own den. I want it to be in a tree."

"Bit by bit, we'll build our life and our home together. And I don't care if it's in a tree, a cabin, or a hole in the ground, as long as its foundations will always be here in Little Dip." Emily kissed her Were on her human snout and watched over her as she fell asleep in her arms.

The End.

About the Author.

Gill McKnight is Irish and moves between Ireland, England, and Greece in a non-stop circuit of work, rest, and play. She loves messing about in boats and has secret fantasies about lavender farming.

With a BA in art and design and a Master's in art history, it says much about her artistic skill that she now works in IT.

What Reviewers Say About Gill McKnight's Work.

"A departure from the run-of-the-mill lesbian romance, Goldenseal is enjoyable for its uniqueness as well as for its plot. This is a story that will engage and characters you will find yourself growing fond of."-Lambda Literary "Gill McKnight has given her readers a delightful romp in Green Eyed Monster. The twists and turns of the plot leave the reader turning the pages to see who is the real victim and who is the villain. Along with the roller coaster ride, comes plenty of hot s.e.x to add to the tension. Spending an afternoon with Green-eyed Monster is great fun."-Just About Write "Angst, conflict, s.e.x and humor. [Falling Star] has all of this and more packed into a tightly written and believable romance. McKnight has penned a sweet and tender romance, balancing the intimacy and s.e.xual tension just right. The conflict is well drawn, and she adds a great dose of humor to make this novel a light and easy read."-Curve In Green Eyed Monster..."McKnight succeeds in tantalizing with explosive s.e.x and a bit of bondage; tormenting with s.e.xual frustration and intense longing; tickling your fancy and funny bone; and touching a place where good and evil battle it out. ...the plot twists, winning dialogue laced with sarcasm, wit, and charm certainly add to the fun. I recommend this satisfying read for entertainment, fantasy, and s.e.x that stimulate the brain like caffeine."-Lambda Literary.

Books Available from Bold Strokes Books.