Page 61 of Wolf Divided
“And that is the blessing of the mate bond.” Dillon pressed a kiss to her hand. “He got to go with his mate and child instead of being left here without them.”
“I’m so sorry, Tanya,” Jewel told her. “The amount of loss you’ve suffered, and yet you still seem so…”
“Not a jaded jackass?” Myanin offered.
Tanya chuckled. Myanin might be a little rough around the edges, but she was great for comic relief. “We live way too long to become jaded. What a sad, miserable existence that would be.”
Jewel nodded. “Sometimes I still think in terms of a human life span. Being jaded for sixty years seems much more doable than for a couple hundred or more.”
Dillon looked her way. “The point is, we make bad choices, we own them, we deal with them, and then we grow and become better people. Hopefully, the kind of people who can help people like Alice, Lizzy, and Finn. Our pasts don’t define us. They refine us and help us become the kind of people the Great Luna wants us to be.” He looked at Tanya and then back at the small group. “What Tanya and I have been through will look like a walk in the park compared to what could happen if Alice falls in love with the vampire king and then meets her true mate. A human male isn’t as possessive as a Canis lupus male, nor does he stand a chance in a fight. But a vampire, not to mention the king of vampires? If he feels toward Alice anything as possessive as he feels about his meals, then a fight between him and her true mate could be a bloodbath, and they wouldn’t be the only ones hurt. There would be lots of collateral damage.”
“So what I hear you saying is that we need to kill Cain.” Myanin sat up and pulled a knife from the side of her boot and began cleaning under her nails. “If Cain is dead, then Alice doesn’t have to choose because the choice is made for her. Boom! No bloodbath … except the one I get to cause when I kill the vampire king.” She slipped her knife back in her boot and pushed up to her feet. “Okay, story told, lessons learned, plan made. I think we can all get some sleep and then head out to kill the king tomorrow.”
Tanya patted Dillon’s arm as he muttered under his breath.
“It’s not quite that easy, Myanin,” Tanya reminded the djinn. “We’ve got Lizzy and Finn to worry about, as well as all of those dormants.”
Myanin waved Tanya’s words away as if they were gnats. “I hear ya, Alpha chick. I’m not going to go on a killing spree tonight. But I at least got to give myself something positive to think about after that train wreck of a bedtime story you just told. I mean, it’s like reading a book that ends so badly you feel like you’ve just wasted seven hours of your life that you can never get back, leaving you so depressed you’ll most likely need therapy. So not only did the book cost you money to buy, but now it’s costing you the expense of therapy.” She shook out her hands at her side. “Just point me in the direction of a bed so I can attempt to dream of beheading things and wipe away all the junk you two just planted in my head.”
Gerrick stood and followed his mate who had simply begun to wander toward a hallway.
“Go right,” Dillon called out. “Then first hall on your left, second door. You can use that bedroom.”
“It better not be the dead sister’s room,” Myanin called back. “I don’t want sad, dead-sister mojo messing up my sleep.”
“Do you think Gerrick would be mad if Peri put a binding spell on her?”
Tanya shrugged. “She’s a little uncouth, Kara, but she’s good to have in a fight.”
“A little?” Dillon’s brow wrinkled.
“Don’t be judgy.” She pointed a finger at him. “We’re all animals here.” Tanya glanced at the two healers. “Well, most of us. We all have our uncouth moments.”
“She’s downright feral,” Jewel jerked a thumb at Myanin.
“And Jewel knows,” Nick added. “She’s a genius.”
Kara laughed. “That has nothing to do with knowing if Myanin is feral. Any idiot can see that just by looking in her crazy-ass, wild eyes.”
“Well…” Tanya took a deep breath. “I’ll take the crazy-ass, wild-eye chick on my side of a fight any day. Speaking of which, we should all take a note from her crazy book and get some sleep.”
The group said their good nights, and Tanya held Dillon’s hand as he led her to their room. After he closed the door behind him, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply. His hands cupped her face, and she felt his deep love pouring through their bond. When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers.
“You will always come first. Your needs, your wants, your comfort, your safety, above my own. I vowed this to you when we bonded.”
“You did,” Tanya agreed, her lips swollen from his kiss. “And you have kept your word.”
“Even as I told them all about our life? Even as I opened back up wounds that had healed?”
Tanya held his face. “My love, talking about past wounds doesn’t reopen them. It reminds us that those wounds didn’t kill us. We are still here. We are still fighting for this life we’ve built, this love that we choose every single day. And we will fight for others to have the same chances we’ve had. I love the life that we have, in all of its messy glory. And I wouldn’t change it. Not a single second.” Her words were the complete truth because Tanya knew that everything they’d been through had made them who they were today. Their struggles, their passions, their triumphs and failures had all been used by the Great Luna to help others, to love others. And wasn’t that what their Creator had been trying to teach them from their very creation? To love unconditionally, selflessly, and without asking anything in return.
Tanya had realized over the years that it didn’t take a second person to make you feel divided over who you loved. You could have created the discord yourself. For love to truly flourish, there could be no divide between created and Creator. For it was the Great Luna who gave them the capacity to love as she did, and it was the Great Luna who would give them the courage and strength to continue to do so.
“I love you, Dillon Jacobs,” she said as she thanked the goddess for the man before her. “Until my last breath.”
“And even after?” He smiled.
She nodded her head against his. “And even after.”
