Power Ballad ch 97 - Mate (Dee)

Up and at em, Dee, says Niva. Packmistresses don’t sleep in.

I’m not the packmistress. I’m just your sister.

You are the packmistress, Dee. And you don’t have a sister anymore.

Wake up.

She opens her eyes. When did she end up in her yurt?

Her elf is sleeping next to her. There’s dried blood beneath her nails. My blood, Dee remembers. She lifts her fur blanket and beholds a wan bullet scar across her midsection. She pokes it and feels the rough kiss of scar tissue. There’s no pain.

Anise whines and shifts in her sleep. Then her eyes shoot open. “Dee!” She squeezes herself against the packmistress. “Oh my god oh my god you’re awake oh my god.” Dee is peppered with little green kisses.

She rasps out a chuckle. “Hi.” There’s a coppery taste in the back of her throat. She starts to sit up and a feeling of woozy dizziness flattens her back out.

“Stay down, okay? You’re low on blood right now. We’ve got iron pill things for you and then you’re gonna eat.” Anise gets onto a knee and opens the yurt flap, letting a gust of cool air in. “Guys! She’s awake! Guys—”

“Wait. No. No guys.” Dee pulls weakly at Anise’s arm. “Just Nicky.”

“Okay, baby. Hold on.” Anise kisses Dee’s forehead and shifts further away. Dee’s grip tightens on her. “I’ll be right back,” she says. “I promise. I just need to grab Nick and your meds and I’ll be right back.”

Dee tugs insistently. Her sluggish hibernation is sloughing away. There’s something she needs to say. “Mate.”

Anise’s brows lower in concern. “That’s Nick, baby. I’m getting him right now.” Dee feels a thin hand on her forehead, checking for fever.

Dee shakes her head and pulls at the elf’s elbow. “No. Ani. Be my mate.”

The hurried, excited, frantic elf freezes solid. A tiny “What?” emerges from her like a small animal peeking from its burrow.

“I want to imprint on you. Me and Nicky. We want you forever.”

“Let’s.” Anise swallows and forces her voice back to its usual silky alto. “Let’s get you those meds, okay? And get more oxygen to your brain and then we can uh we can talk about that.”

A spike of fear lances into Dee’s forebrain and urges her up to her elbows. “Do you not want it?”

Anise visibly wills herself out of her locked-up shock. “I’ve never wanted anything more.” She lifts Dee’s hand and places it on her cheek. “Never in my life.”

Dee flexes her fingers against Anise’s jaw. “You are written on my heart,” she says.

Anise’s shining eyes flutter shut. “I’m going to get Nicky,” she says. “Let’s talk about it with Nicky.”

“I have. He wants it. I’m not fucked up right now.” Another wave of fatiguing dizziness crosses her like a cloud’s shadow. She lets out a weak laugh. “Not about this, anyway.”

“But it would be forever.”

“That’s the point.”

“Dee. I’m so—I’m old. I’m worn out. I’m used up.” Anise is trembling as hard as she did when they were under fire. “I’m damaged goods.”

Dee hacks a chuckle. “Who in here just got shot, girl?”

A tear drips onto Dee’s hand. Anise sniffs hard and lets out a weak laugh. “Now I’m gonna be crying when I go out there and everyone’s gonna think something bad happened.”

“Then stop crying and kiss me,” Dee says, and her packmate obeys her. Dee runs her tongue across the roof of Anise’s mouth and imagines the sensation of the bond fizzing through her at the taste. A jolt of possessive longing makes her want to grab Anise and pull this little elf on top of her, to imprint right now, but she’s too damn weak to do anything but embrace her.

“I thought you were going to die,” Anise whispers. “I thought I was watching you die.”

“What, this?” Dee worries the skin around the scar. “Had way worse than this.”

Anise laughs a wet laugh into Dee’s neck. She plants another kiss on her. “You taste like pennies,” she whispers.

Dee rubs the nape of Anise’s neck. “Go get Nicky, okay?”

“Okay.” Anise is up and shouldering into her coat.

“Fucking shit.” Dee eyes her sleeve, her collar. “That’s all my blood?”

“Yes. So no running around, okay?” Anise sticks her hat on and flips the flaps over her big yellow ears. “Just stay in here and I’ll be right back with Nicky. And a steak. We are going to feed you so much steak.”

Then she’s out and Dee rests her head on the pillow. Alive. She is alive. Her mate saved her life.

So did the dragon, comes the unwelcome rejoinder. Shut up, brain. You’re still messed up on blood loss. Dee can worry about the dragon and all the bullshit once she’s filled her belly and kissed her boyfriend.

Muffled voices draw closer to the yurt. A gust of cold air and they’re thrown into relief. “—can wait until Dee is okay, for God’s sake,” Nick calls. The world’s cut off again as he buttons the flap shut. “Hi, baby.” He raises a plate. “I brought dinner.”

“Nicky Voraag you put that down and you get your beautiful pink self over here.” Dee starts to sit up, feels faint, and settles for making grabby hands at him. She feels like she’s moving underwater. That’s fine. You can make out underwater.

Nick dithers for a moment before Anise grabs his plate and smacks his butt. “Go.”

“Okay.” He slips to her side. “But you’re eating that.”

Dee lays a thigh across him, just as she did when they first met, and she was the one nursing him. “That’s not the meat I’m interested in.”

“Maybe she’s more recovered than we thought,” Nick remarks, and then Dee rolls him on top of her and his mouth becomes otherwise occupied. Dee kisses him until she feels faint, which is a lot sooner than she was hoping for.

“You saved my life. You saved my fucking life.” She runs her fingers through his hair. “It would be yours if it wasn’t already yours.” His smile brings light to those gazing, shadowy eyes and Dee chokes forth a sob to see it. “Nicky.” Her mouth moves and no sound comes out as she tries and fails to express the explosion of feeling in her chest. I love you just doesn’t seem sufficient, but Dee isn’t a poet and it’s all she’s got. Maybe quantity will help.

She repeats it over and over as she crushes him closer, the scent and the touch of her mate bringing strength back into her limbs. “I love you,” she sobs. “I love you I love you I love you Anise get in here I love you I love you wait wait bring the steak. I’ll eat the steak. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He kisses her eyelids and the tears along her cheeks. “Eat. Get better.”

Anise scurries over with the iron-rich slab of protein. Nick sits behind Dee and buckles his arms around her as she props herself up. She snuffles and hiccups as she cuts the meat. A packmistress is not supposed to cry this hard in front of her packmates. She’s almost certain that’s a rule. But she’s alive, and full of love, and she’s eating a remarkably well-prepared side of auroch. And her mates are here with her.

Mates. That’s right. She swallows her bite so urgently she nearly chokes on her steak. “I told Anise,” she says. “We’re mating with her. We’re turning this shit triangular.”

“Yeah,” Nick says. “She told me. My answer is yes, by the way. You guys went ahead and assumed correctly.”

“Obviously it’s yes.” Dee smirks through another runny sniff. “You’re obsessed with her.”

“You’re obsessed with her.”

“C’mere, hon.” Dee pulls Anise into her lap and balances the plate on the elf’s belly. “Help me with this.”

Anise pulls a cube of beef off the plate and pops it into her mouth. She nuzzles against Dee like a puppy as she chews. “There’ll be time to talk about this when the blood is all back where it’s supposed to be,” she says.

“You shoulda said no the first time, if you wanted to convince me not to do this.” Dee licks the juice off her fingers. “Now I’m set on it. I gotta lock you down so that I can keep drinking that crazy-ass coffee.”

“We’re going to need to import it from Earth, y’know,” Anise says. “No hate to the beans in the O Dub but I’m too old to mix it up.”

“So granted.” Dee passes the plate to Nick. “Who were you talking to when you came in, Nicky?”

Nick’s jaw shifts under his cheekbones. “Uh. Nobody that can’t wait.”

Dee pokes him. “Don’t make me order you, dude.”

He sighs. “Okay.” He tells her.

They convince her to finish her steak before she’s on her feet and out the flap. “I’m an orc,” she argues. “I bounce back.”

Nick insists on keeping her arm around his shoulder. “You’re anemic, baby.”

“You’re gonna make me look weak in front of the dragon.”

“You are weak right now.”

“Lousy responsible mates.” Dee grumbles. “Gonna be the death of me.”

The evening bonfire is setting up, and as Dee approaches it there’s a great deal of cheering and slapping on the back. She wears her voice out with thanks and good-to-see-yous and all-right-all-right-give-me-spaces.

Thekla sets her acoustic guitar aside to run over and embrace the packmistress, and the rest of the Kamiyons pile on, which is sweet but also Kell’s squeezing a little tight for where Dee is at, blood-wise.

Then there’s a drifting, vibrational boom. Not quiet, but not as loud as you’d expect. And Connatraiax of the Southern Zephyr is standing just outside the firelight.

Sion bows to her. “Mistress.”

She bows back. “Pupil. Well-summoned, my man.”

“I did only what I was instructed to do.”

“Well, you killed it.” Conna refocuses on Dee. “Hello, packmistress.”

“Hello, dragon,” Dee says.

“I’d like to pick our conversation back up,” Conna says. “I asked you to do something for me, but I never got to finish. What I was offering you.”

Dee shares a silent glance with Anise and Thekla. Then she nods. “All right. Owe you that.”

“The things that divide you all. They’re not as concrete as you think they are. The edges are malleable. The outskirts.” Conna sits up. Her body begins to shift and ripple. “My magic thrives in the outskirts.”

“If what you’re offering is magic…”

“Let me talk, Diak’zinae. My magic helped to save your life. Yours and your lovers’.” Conna’s eyes narrow. “Let me speak.”

Dee clams up.

Conna shrinks as she talks, her skin and her rumbling voice smoothing. “There’s a lot I can do, for those with draconic blood. Things you didn’t realize were possible. That’s you, Anise.” She reaches out a claw that’s looking more and more like a hand. “You’ve got your lovers. But you can’t imprint on them. What if you could?”

Anise’s eyes are full-moon wide.

“And you. Legendary.” Conna’s lips are humanoid again, enough to curve into a smile. “Thekla and Kell and Evan. You’ve been a friend to me, and I repaid it badly. I know I did. I want to make it up to you. Get me to Elfheim—that’s all I’m asking—and I will.”

“We only wanted answers, Conna,” Thekla says. “That’s all.”

“Sure. But I want to give you more. You, specifically, Thek. I want to give you something.” Conna’s wings fold into her back and meld into her scarlet skin. “Dragons have power over more than just blood. Power which many who have loved like you love have sought. A transformative power.”

Dee hears the tightness in Thekla’s throat: “What do you mean, loved like I love?”

“You’re a proud woman,” Conna says. “Proud of your clan and proud of your marriage. But there’s a mark on it, isn’t there? A mark you can’t lift. Something you always imagined. Something you can never have.”

“I don’t—” Thekla licks her dry lips. “Conna. I don’t want to hear this. I’m not in charge.”

“You say that. But you’re the last word in Legendary. And this is Legendary’s tour.” Conna’s focus is laser-sharp on Thekla. “Your band, your loves, your life. It’s all just as you dreamed. All except for one thing. A jealousy. One you’d never name, because of course you wouldn’t. It’s not Kell’s fault. It wouldn’t be fair of you. But it’s not fair of the world, either, Thekla. Is it? Half orcs everywhere. And no half goblins.”

Thekla’s smoky voice breaks. “Conna, stop—”

“Do you imagine them with his eyes? Those bright blue eyes? I would.”

Dee takes a menacing step toward Conna. “Lady said stop, dragon.”

“Help me, and I can change you,” Conna says. “Take me to Elfheim and I’ll give you my magic. And you can have Evan Kamiyon's children.”