Chapter 17: after the storm comes love

One year and a few months earlier at the Eye of the Goddess Temple...

Two days after the fall of New Wemyss, Esther woke to feel her grandfather’s hand in hers, he was muttering to someone on a telephone.

“Look Reg, I don’t care if the Empire State Building is buried in snow. Send two Wanderers to New Wemyss. The Delphi saw them attacked. Use the scent masking tincture to help any who needs to flee escape the territory, get them to White Mountain. If you do not call me from Wolfville in two days, you will find my bite far worse than my bark!” Eliazar snarled before he slammed to phone down.

“Grandpa...” Essie’s throat was so dry she could barely get the word out, her head was pounding and ringing so badly she was surprised she could hear anything over the cathedral tower between her ears.

He seized her hand and kissed it. “Essie, you’re back. Thank the Goddess.”

“Del? Is Del?” She couldn’t make herself finish the question. She couldn’t feel her sister or any wolf at that moment and she was afraid Del had died, lost to the storm on the Tides.

“She’s going to be fine.”

Her grandfather’s eyes were kind as he helped her to sit up. He pressed a cup of cool water to her lips and she drank greedily. Delilah was laying on the bed across from hers, Luca laying next to her, hugging her against himself as if he was afraid she’d vanish if he let go. He looked like he had been in a terrible fight, but Delilah looked worse, pale as death except for her bruises.

“What happened? Did we lose any one? How long were we out?” Essie blurted out between gulps of water.

“We lost Oracle Carmen and Acolyte Mandilyn. You have been asleep for two days. There was a storm on the Tides, Del got caught on the other side. You made Luca mark her to get her back. New Wemyss has been destroyed, we think. There is no response from anyone in their territory.” His eyes held such grief for allies who were more like family. “Essie, the Des Rues change the paths of the Tides, they killed the warrior king and pure-hearted queen.”

Esther looked at the glass in her hand, noticed how the water vibrated as she trembled. “I remember being with Del, we saw a witch and went to warn their oracle, then... then I lost her. I felt the Goddess’ rage, Del’s fear and desperation. Luca fighting to get them out of the Tides, then nothing.”

“You got them back Essie, you did. Your power isn’t completely gone. You can still...” Eliazar started.

“No grandpa, I can’t. I can’t be an oracle, not like her. My head is pounding like a bell tower. I can barely hear anything over the noise. I can’t use my power, it hurts too much. I just did it to save Del, I... I can’t lose her.” Tears wet her lashes and cheeks as she confessed, “I couldn’t let her go. I shouldn’t have kept telling her I... I would have let her die, because I wouldn’t!” Her voice dropped to a strangled whisper. “And now she might not wake up. She might have a worse fate than mine.” She sobs choked off her words and her grandfather held her, whispering comforting things.

Delilah was walking through the green fields and beautiful forest of the Moon. It was so tranquil, she never wanted to leave. To go back to the horror of the war to come was too much to bear. She had already paid with her family and pack, and now the hope of their generation had been crippled and possibly killed. All the nightmares every thunderstorm had ever shown her would come to pass. Luca had stepped out from behind a tree and surprised her.

“How did you know I was going to be here?” she demanded, backing away from him. In his hand, he held the tide stone. He had come to make her go back, she didn’t want to. She couldn’t stop the pain in her heart or the tears threatening her eyes, “You’re not supposed to be in this place.”

“Eliazar sent me,” he answered, then begged, “Please, please don’t go to the Moon yet, I need you.”

“I can’t stay here, I have to live through the war, ” she told him bitterly. “I shouldn’t be talking to you, we can’t be together, Luca. Not anymore, we can’t be mates or you’ll die too.” She turned to face away from him, thinking if she didn’t look at him, it wouldn’t hurt so badly. “My only chance to save you is to reject you.”

“I can feel your pain,” he had said softly, his tone sounded anguished. He had closed the distance between them and wrapped her in his arms. She had stood perfectly still, except for her trembling.

“Please let me stay with you,” he begged. “If I die, I want it to be with you, for you, for the Goddess and all that is good in the world. Don’t reject me, Delilah.”

Del lost it and had begun sobbing uncontrollably, stammering,“I... I’m so sorry...I...I c..can’t save you if I don’t.”

She turned in his arms and clung to him as tightly as she could. Luca was the one person she had met in her whole life that made her feel safe. With him, she didn’t feel the pull of the Tides constantly, hear the murmurs, or dream the horrors. If he stayed with her, she would see him be murdered by the same monsters who had taken everything and everyone else from her. When she stopped sobbing, he had gently tipped her face toward his and kissed her.

“I am so sorry to hurt you this way, my beloved, but I will not let you leave me,” he whispered against her lips.

Falling back toward the world of flesh and suffering.

Del inhaled a deep painful breath trying to fill her lungs. Opening her eyes, she was laying against Luca’s chest His heart beating steadily against her cheek. His breath fanned her hair. “Mon Oracle Belle, if I die, I die. I shall not regret a moment. Toi are ma vie (my life)... mon amour (my love)... mon espoir(my hope). Je ne suis rien sans toi... I am null, nothing, no one not having you.” He pressed a kiss into her temple. “I am not afraid of the war, I have seen the storm you risk every night. If you have such courage, such altruisme, ummm selfish... non, selflessness, then should I not have them too, oui?”

Del could only stare up into the brown and green of his eyes, and think they reminded her of the place she just left, and how Luca would go back there before her. But he was willing to face his death with courage, and love her with his whole heart and its every beat until its last. His neck bent and his lips hovered over hers as if waiting permission to kiss her. She lifted herself up slightly, his lips were always warm and soft. His breath on her cheek, the promise of springtime in the deepest part of winter. A contented growl rumbled through his chest and into her body, making her quiver inside.

Luca muttered something Del didn’t understand in French before pressing a kiss into her forehead. “Les six mois à venir est l’éternité. Déesse, me donner de la volonté. (The next six month is going to take forever. Goddess, give me strength/ willpower.)”

However Del could feel the meaning behind his plea, it was the same thing she prayed for. The summer solstice could not come soon enough.

Not realizing other eyes watched them, they closed their eyes and rested in each others’ embrace, mates not yet mated, lovers who had not know each other yet. One set of deep blue eyes watched with sad envy, peeking at them through her hair, knowing she would not be as blessed as her sister, and wishing she could hear their whispers over the ringing in her head. Another set of eyes colored like mottled leaves watched with covetous lust from the door, so jealous that his brother’s gift was not his own that those eyes should have been emerald green in envy.

Louis frowned, as he placed the food on the table. He dwelled about what he overheard Luca say before he kissed Delilah. ‘If I die, I die...’

Had the Delphi seen his brother’s death? Would she accept Louis if his brother died? While he was wondering, Luca trudged in tiredly, but he did not look as worn out as he had the past two nights.

“Are you alright, brother?” Louis asked in french.

“That is a problem. Del says there is going to be war now, worse than the one that was to be. She says I will die, she even tried to reject me, but I will have none of it. She is lucky she wasn’t killed on the Tides... but she wants to go back tomorrow,” Luca’s answer was gruff and frustrated

It was obvious to Louis that Luca did not approve of the risks Del took to get her visions, and he agreed with his brother, the Delphi cannot be lost. But since Luca would die, then perhaps he could.... Louis shook the hopeful, inappropriate thought away. He may fight with his brother about everything, but he did not wish him dead. They ate and spent most of the night talking about what Luca saw on the Tides when he went after her. Luca did not say how he would die, and Louis did not ask.

Laying alone in his room, Louis felt ashamed for hoping his brother would die and that his brother’s mate would then choose him. He just couldn’t help his envy, everything had always come so easily to the youngest son of the Dolbeau. Later that night when Esther came looking for him, he pretended she was her sister as they have sex and it was the most intense experience of his life. Essie huffed out of his room in a rage, slamming the door. As he lays there with his body still vibrating, he realized his error. In the moment his climax caught him by surprise, he had called out her sister’s name, he had called out, “Delilah.”

Louis realized he didn’t care, he wanted the Delphi, or perhaps both twins, but mainly her. The shewolf who could walk through the raging of the Goddess herself and live. He wanted to taste that power, to feel it in his soul when he marked her for his own. His brother was destined to die, and he was a patient wolf, so he would wait. Be her friend and comforter until the moment they became more.

5 months later...

Luca was flying a plane across a broad expanse of land toward the sea. Delilah sat impatiently next to him squirming. She did not like to fly. They had come to Canada to visit his brother Leon before going to the Moon’s Gate and away from Essie. Her sister had finally pushed her too far.

“Are we there yet?” She was getting annoyed.

“Not yet,” he answered, with a grin. “Put this on.” He held out a blindfold.

“Where are we going again?” She grumbled but slipped the silk sleeping mask over her eyes.

“It’s a surprise, mon bel ange.”

She groaned out an exaggerated sigh. “You’re as bad as Essie.”

He just laughed.

Half an hour later, Luca landed the plane on the water and beached at the edge of a raised meadow. He looked to the top of small hill over a little sheltered cove. It was spring here but still cooler than the lands around the Eye of the Goddess. He wrapped a cloak around her shoulders, looking toward his goal. A gift from his brother and family for their mating.

“Why are we here and when can I take this off?” Delilah grumbled as she stumbled in the thick grass.

Luca held her arm gently, leading her up the hill.

“Just listen, then I’ll take off your blindfold. Oui?” He asked, she nodded curtly, but her lips twisted into a frown.

He turned her. “Below us in the valley by the petite baie, after the war, our pups will swim and fish and play in the grass to their hearts’ contentedness. Our chateau will be here, that stone lighthouse style you like so much, with your garden where we are standing,”

Luca took off her blindfold, but she only looked up into his forested eyes for a long moment. Then Delilah looked around at the rough stone walls and the tower that would be a faux lighthouse. It was almost built.

“How?” she breathed out.

He smiled smugly. “My oldest brother and my uncles.”

“But why here, er... we... the war...” She couldn’t put her fears and certainties into words, it was too horrible.

“Because here the water is as blue as your eyes. The war is nothing, the lumière of your amore will always lead me back to you. The beauty of your soul in more lovely than chaque fleur. No matter how far apart we are, we are together. Nothing else matters. Not what might happen to us. No lies told to you by your vision. I refuse to accept them, our fate is not sorrow. Once we are mated, no separation will remain between us, not even death can take me from you. I would come back from the Moon, les chiens maudits ne me arrêter (the cursed hounds would not stop me). You are my treasure, mon saphir (my sapphire), ma vie. I know you are afraid of what the war will bring. But I promise, you will always have love, you will always have me. Even when you stop being the Delphi and I stop being your Guardian, you can still be a dreamer of dreams, and I will always find a way to protect you.”

Delilah could not look away from his sincere determination, his proclamation that he meant with his whole soul that she knew to be false. She wanted to believe, she wanted to believe him more than the Goddess Herself. But she knew from her Great-grandmother’s teachings, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. She had been warned so she could be ready, but she doubted her fortitude. Her responsibility as Delphi was to all wolves, not just her mate.

Tears blurred her eyes as he traced her cheek. He lead her into the house. Some furniture was already laid in a few rooms, including his parents’ wedding bed. During evening, she made dinner as he chopped wood and moored the water plane. They laughed and talked and drank some of his cousin’s excellent ice wine, and pretended for a night this was their life, that this is what their lives could be.

As the moon rose, Delilah Ayala, the youngest Delphi in 20 generations, walked alone in front of their future home. A home she knew she and Luca would only share on this single night. Tears glistened on her cheeks, and for only the second time in her life, she begged the Moon for a boon. A cloud in the shape of a rune passed over the half-lidded eye of the Goddess. The Love of Mates.

Falling to her knees, she sobbed her gratitude before running back to the house. Luca was asleep on what was meant to be their mating bed. He woke to her kissing him desperately, startled, he pushed her away slightly.

“Del, what is it? You’ve been crying?”

She nodded rapidly, wiping her tears. “Oh Luca, the Goddess heard me, she answered me. Answered us. It’s going to be okay.”

Then she was kissing him again, pressing against him in a more demanding way than she ever had. The bond made him feel drunk as it pulled him under, he was drowning in it like they had almost drowned in the Tides. She tore his clothes away.

He held on to his reason long enough to whisper one last question, “What of the solstice?”

“Tonight, Luca. I want you here, in this place, in this bed. Just us... please.” She begged as she straddled him, the warm wetness of her center resting on his firmness.

The smell of desire and purest snow swirled around him and he lost his battle for control. She cried out as she shifted suddenly burying him all the way inside herself. Her body trembled at the pain and force with which she had impaled herself. The curse exhaled from his lips sounded more like a prayer of worship, when she rose and sank back down on him. The movement so slow and tentatively made, like an angel of mercy’s caress to a dying man’s cheek. His breaths caught in his chest each time she rose and fell back upon him like the ebb and flow of the waves upon the shore of his most ardent desires before he rolled them to claim her. It seemed to last for hours and it did. His lips tasting her breast and neck in suckling, tongue swirling circles. Growling as she sucked and nipped at his chest. They rolled over more than once. She hovered over him in the last moments. His hips bucked fiercely when she cried out, finally clenching around him, baptizing him in the font of her desire. Fangs descended, his teeth found their purchase in his mark as his wolf growled his approval. Then her teeth were in his neck, and he groaned into her flesh as his seed painted her spasming walls. Too soon they were falling backward onto the bed, his back pressed into the quilted cover as she rested on top of him, dark hair falling around them like a veil.

“Nous sommes des amants maintenant, oui?” He murmured, surprised he could still speak.

Her lips brushed his, “Yes, we are mates now.”

In moments, his breath evened out and he was asleep but Delilah did not rest. She watched the sunrise painting the dawn, its soft light caressing her mate’s handsome features and dark hair. Memorizing every moment, knowing how few they had left... Del was determined to cherish every one.