Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) Read online

  “Children,” she said, “someone is on her way to the village. Jack, you will take her on as a student. Cara is the daughter of Lily Many-Winters, who left here for the outside world many years ago. You may remember Lily and Cara visiting when you were a cub. Raphael, you and she have some things in common, including that her heritage is coming as a surprise to her and she is fighting it. I trust you will both be kind to her, for she needs it.”

  “Of course, Grand-mère,” Rafe said, all respect. He even bowed his head a little.

  “Is Cara pretty?” Jack asked with a leer, knowing it would get his grandmother’s goat.

  “Stop thinking with your little head, Jack. She’s coming to us because she needs our help. She’s gone into crisis, and no one around her knows how to handle it.”

  He racked his brain and came up with an image of a little girl, a few years younger than him, who used to visit in the summers with her mother. Cara had dark blonde hair, which made her unique among the humans he’d met at that age. He couldn’t remember anything else about her; he’d been just enough older that she wasn’t too interesting. She hadn’t been back since her mother died.

  He remembered her mother’s death all too clearly, though it happened many kilometers away. He and old Sam Many-Winters had been magically linked, with Sam trying to beat some shamanic lesson into his stubborn adolescent head, at the moment Lily died.

  Lily was Sam’s daughter.

  He’d been just shy of fourteen when Lily died.

  That would make Cara over thirty herself, which was damn old for a shamanic crisis. At twelve or thirteen, your body bounced back, and you were so awash with hormones that a few more waves of crazy seemed almost normal. As an adult, not so much. “Right. So Cara’s taking after her mom and turning into a shaman. Why give her to me instead of Nella or Mary Running-Deer or her own grandfather or someone else who’s, oh, human? Rafe’s giving me enough to do.”

  Grand-mère let out a big, whooping belly laugh. “Jack, Jack, Jack, I’m giving her to you because she needs your bad attitude. Even as a child, Cara Many-Winters Mackenzie was overly serious. You will be good for each other.” She laughed again. “And if her real self looks anything like her dream self, you’ll be pleased to have her around.”

  Oh, great. Funny how something that would normally be good news, like the arrival of someone attractive, single and not related to him, sounded less appealing when it came with a huge obligation attached. “All the more reason to give her to someone else as a student, Grand-mère. How am I supposed to impress her with my manly charms when I’m making her life miserable like I’m doing to poor Rafe?”

  Rafe, getting into the spirit of the game, tried to look hangdog and frail with fatigue. He failed miserably.

  “Oh, my poor Raphael. Go home and let Elissa and Jude tend to you.” Grand-mère didn’t sound a bit sympathetic. “More to the point, tend to Elissa and your daughter. If Jocelyn doesn’t start sleeping through the night soon, half the village will wind up with insomnia, since she projects so much. Not to mention your poor tired wife is going to do something crazy if she doesn’t get some rest soon. I’m not keen on having everything in the hoop houses turn to poison oak because our green witch is so underslept her magic backlashes.”

  At that, Rafe’s expression changed, letting his concern for his family and his real, bone-deep, new-daddy exhaustion show. “Jack, I’ll catch you later.”

  “Wait, I’ll go with you.” Jack silentspoke.

  “No you will not, grandson.” Grand-mère’s expression was positively evil in its glee. “Didn’t I tell you? Cara’s coming from the main road even now. You will go meet her.”

  It was one thing to tease Grand-mère. It was another to gainsay her directly. “All right. I’ll just turn back to town for my…”

  “Snowshoes?” Grand-mère pulled them out from under her buckskin coat, where he was pretty sure they hadn’t been seconds before.

  Especially not when she pulled out another pair. “These are for Cara. Let’s hope she knows how to use them. Otherwise you may have to carry her.”

  Predictably, Grand-mère vanished, leaving Jack alone in the snowy woods with two pairs of snowshoes and a desire to shout and rant.

  Chapter Six

  It had taken Cara two weeks to buy the supplies she’d need for the trek and to arrange a leave of absence from work. Luckily, Becky, Goulding’s college-age sister, was eager to get out of the city and stretch her wolfside, so she offered to drive Cara out to the boonies in the old 4x4 Cara used for back-country skiing trips.

  And every night of those two weeks, even the ones when a crisis seizure had struck and she’d doped herself insensible with prescription drugs, she’d dreamed of the incredibly gorgeous man.

  Her phantom lover.

  That first time, she’d written it off as an unusually powerful version of Random Fantasy #178, a lover who was as wild and fierce as Phil had been sweet and gentle. But each night the dreams became more realistic and more intimate. She didn’t have a name for the man or know much about him other than his extraordinary prowess in bed and a sense that he was a Different too, his aura as much a crazy quilt as Xang Kue’s, but she was sure he was real, real as Grand-mère.

  And that she might be meeting him in Couguar-Caché.

  A thought that haunted her now, almost at the village, in a panty-dampening, yet stress-inducing way. If he lived in Couguar-Caché and was a human shaman, he was probably her cousin or something, but still…why would she be dreaming of wild sex with the same dream man, over and over again?

  And why now, when in her waking life her libido was locked up tight, as much in mourning as the rest of her? She was musing on that as she and Becky Goulding came to the place where a small handmade wooden sign pointed to Couguar-Caché, under a big provincial sign stating: Limited seasonal access only. No motor vehicles between November 1 and May 1.

  Which was a no-shit statement, since the road was invisible under snow. Snowmobile and ski tracks showed people were still coming in and out, probably heading to the larger town fifteen kilometers down the road, where there was a grocery store, a post office and a bar. But there were no tire tracks at all, though an ancient Jeep was parked off the main road, half buried in snow.

  “Sweet! What a great place to go. Serious back country,” Becky bubbled at Cara. “I hope you’ve got good gear, though. It’s awfully cold for someone without fur.” The young dual was planning to leave the 4x4 with Cara and travel back in wolf form to her pack’s compound in the countryside close to Toronto, where she’d call her brother for a ride. The girl considered the ten-day run “just the thing for getting rid of the winter doldrums.”

  Cara was more dubious about the trek than she had been in the city. In summer, that road-that-was-really-a-trail would look inviting. Now it looked like it was designed to keep strangers out—and she was a stranger now, wasn’t she?

  “Is someone meeting you? Should I wait awhile?” Becky asked. “You did call and say we were almost here, right?” The girl knew damn well she hadn’t. They’d been in the 4x4 together for six hours, ever since a predawn breakfast in a diner near their roadside motel. And before that, they’d been on the road for a day and a half. The village was definitely farther than it had been in the past, north of Mistassini.

  “I didn’t call. That’s not the way they do things. I have to go in alone.” She struggled for words and settled upon, “It’s a shaman thing. Just wish I had a better idea where I was going. I’ve never been up here in winter before. Dad wouldn’t let Mom come up once it started snowing because you could be stuck until spring.”

  “That’s why this place is great! I’m so jealous. You said there were a lot of duals in the village. Any cute wolf boys? Maybe I could head in with you, to make sure you were safe, and get snowed in too.”

  Cara laughed. There must be a shortage of “wolf boys” in the city, at least ones who met Becky’s brother’s standards for his little sister. “I haven’t been the
re for twenty years. The boys I knew could have kids your age by now.”

  As Becky pulled a disgusted face, Cara flashed to one “cute boy”—make that devastatingly sexy man—she was pretty sure was in Couguar-Caché, wondering if she could manage not to blush when she met him.

  The world surged. Auras flashed into bright precision. Becky’s earthy one, her own rainbowed with many neon colors and streaks of mourning darkness, even the trees by the side of the road haloed in deep green. The road to Couguar-Caché opened up, a clear path to those with eyes to see it. She was sure the snow would still be there for her to slog through, but now she felt truly invited and welcomed.

  She gave Becky a quick, impulsive hug. “Do you see that?”

  “I see a lot of awesome snow.” The girl smiled. “This is going to be great!”

  “I see the way home.” Cara swung her feet out of the truck, strapped on her snowshoes and grabbed her pack.

  As she waved good-bye to Becky, she felt a surge of grief. Somehow, she knew she wasn’t going to see the girl or her brother again. Wasn’t going back to Toronto.

  Phil’s face hovered between the trees, his lips whispering something she couldn’t make out. Her old life was dead anyway, dead with Phil. It didn’t much matter if she made it back to Toronto or not. She willed herself not to cry until she was in a house in Couguar-Caché. Out here, the tears would freeze to her cheeks.

  Then a glowing golden path opened under her feet. She opened to the energy of the forest around her. Her doubts fell away, replaced by crazy excitement. She was on her way to Couguar-Caché and a new adventure. And after all she’d been through in the past few months, that might be just what she needed.

  About a kilometer in, snow whipped out of what, until a few moments earlier, had been a clear sky. The effort of snowshoeing kept her warm, but her face was freezing, and the wind cut through her knit wool hat, earflaps and all. She thought wistfully of that comfortable 4x4 parked at the edge of the main road, and of warm motels and the lonely but cozy condo in Toronto, currently sublet to a friend of Goulding’s.

  She might end up crazy, but at least she’d be warm while she lost her mind.

  Or maybe thoughts like that are the crazies starting in earnest. I can’t turn back now. The person who can help is somewhere ahead of me, in Couguar-Caché.

  Or closer, she thought as she caught a glimpse of someone through the trees. When she’d come as a child with Mom, her grandparents had always been the ones to greet them, Gramps’s magic tamped down so he was just an older guy in a faded Bugs Bunny T-shirt. She’d heard tales, though, of other visitors who’d been greeted in various unexpected, magical ways: Grand-mère seeming to materialize from thin air, or a big, dangerous-looking animal—cougar, wolf, bear, moose—appearing to serve as a wordless guide.

  The figure that appeared on the path before her was no wizened, cock-eyed elder in shamanic regalia (which, judging from her grandfather, sometimes involved Looney Toons boxer shorts worn on the outside of the clothes) and no animal that might or might not be a sentient being silently laughing at her.

  It was the man from her dreams.

  He was dressed in a mixture of buckskins and modern clothing, as people in the village tended to do, and his long black hair was in braids instead of loose, but it was definitely him.

  He looked even better in the flesh, except for the expression of annoyance that contorted his handsome face and made his body—and a damn fine body it seemed to be, even under the layers of winter clothes—quiver with tension. She recognized that tension as a barely restrained desire to smack someone. Not necessarily her, but someone. Since she was the only person around, she hoped he’d snap out of his bad mood fast.

  She’d spent a little quality fantasy time thinking what she might say if she met the dream guy. But under the weight of his inexplicably hostile gaze, what came out of her mouth was, “Who the hell are you?”

  She braced for something bad, because Mr. Hunk looked like he’d been about one annoyance away from going postal and she might have provided the annoyance.

  Instead he threw back his head and laughed, a rich bass sound that filled the forest and seemed to warm it.

  Maybe did warm it. It could be coincidence that the bitter wind died down right then, but in Couguar-Caché, it didn’t do to assume all synchronicities were coincidence.

  “Cara Many-Winters,” the man said through his laughter, “I think you’ll do just fine here. I’m Jack Long-Claw, and Grand-mère sent me to make sure you got to the village. I guess you won’t need these.” He tossed a pair of snowshoes off to the side, where they fell apart into a collection of twigs before they hit the ground.

  While she was still processing that careless use of magic, Jack added, “Welcome home, Cara.”

  He smiled, a devil’s sexy grin, slightly lopsided. He had a small gap between his two top front teeth, and that eccentricity made his otherwise perfect face even more attractive.

  It also dredged up the memory of who he was.

  She and Jack had been quasi-friends when they were kids. At that age, three or four years was a huge difference, but there hadn’t been that many children in the village, and they’d all played together at times. She hadn’t placed his name when he said it; she may not have ever known his family name. But she remembered him now as a half-grown boy, one of a passel of young duals who, in the last year she visited Couguar-Caché, were all learning to shift to their animalsides—sometimes when they least expected it. One time he’d turned, mid-lacrosse game, from gangly boy to equally gangly half-grown cougar, all paws and thrashing tail.

  Who knew that awkward boy would grow up to be smoking hot?

  Who knew that she’d dream about him years later—or what that might mean?

  Think about that later, Cara. Forcing herself to look nonchalant, Cara cocked her head and said, “Let’s go. It’s chilly out here.” Without waiting for him, she set out toward the village.

  Jack stared at her retreating figure. For a city girl, Cara moved on snowshoes like someone who’d been doing it all her life.

  Then he stared some more, just appreciating the view.

  And some more, at nothing in particular, because he needed time to process.

  He’d seen this woman in a vision in a fire, and then he’d dreamed of her, right down to her slightly raspy voice, which had shifted to something smoky and delectable in his dream. Dreamed of her every night for the past two weeks, in excruciatingly erotic detail that had left him waking to a straining hard-on demanding his immediate attention.

  He knew what she looked like under those bulky winter clothes, knew where her birthmarks and moles were, had kissed a scar where a bullet had ripped into her shoulder. He’d made her gasp and sob with pleasure as he rode her, and she’d torn an orgasm the likes of which he’d never had in the waking world from his body.

  Who knew that dream woman was someone he’d known from childhood—or that she’d appear in Couguar-Caché as if she’d been sent by the Powers for his delight?

  He growled under his breath, about as close to a cougar’s growl as he could get in wordy form.

  Who knew? Grand-mère, that was who. This whole situation smacked of manipulation. Oh, he believed Cara was a baby shaman. When he narrowed his eyes and squinted at her, he saw chaotic energy pulsing around her, unsure where to go and what to do, but sure it could find something to fuck up if it tried.

  Unfortunately, at this point what she was likely to fuck up was herself. Cara needed a more experienced shaman to help her learn to work with her awakening abilities before they fried her synapses—and being Lily Many-Winters’ daughter, she must know how easily shamanic powers could turn on you.

  It made sense she’d come here for that help. She was a child of Couguar-Caché, and the village’s children always came home when trouble struck. Look at Rafe. He hadn’t even known the place existed and the village still found him when he and his family needed refuge.

  Cara definitely was the
kind of woman Jack found attractive. Self-assured and strong, she carried that big pack easily and moved on her snowshoes like a winter goddess. Fascinating, with bronze skin and strong features she must have inherited from her mother and dark-blonde hair and greenish hazel eyes that must be from the Mackenzie side of the family. Tall enough she’d be able to kiss him without stretching. Built with just the right mixture of curves and muscles, if the dreams were true. Yeah, left to his own devices he’d be on her like snow on still more snow.

  The problem was he hadn’t been left to his own devices, and he was willing to bet she hadn’t been either, not from the way she’d greeted him so angrily, flushed, then taken off at the earliest possible opportunity.

  Grand-mère couldn’t resist meddling. She loved romance, loved seeing her kin get paired or trioed or whatever off and, biology permitting, making lots of babies for her to dote on. Jocelyn’s birth had gotten her excited about more many-times-great-grandchildren.

  Jack wasn’t averse to the idea of eventually pairing off and having a cub or two. But Trickster’s tits, he was going to pick the woman and the time, not Grand-mère. Not even if Grand-mère was, among her other many alarming attributes, a love and fertility spirit.

  Someday he’d meet the right person, with no help from his meddling many-times-great grandmother.

  And that woman wouldn’t be Cara Mackenzie. Even if she turned out to be everything he could imagine her to be from those hot dreams, he could never be sure it wasn’t Grand-mère’s magic pulling them together, instead of mutual desire.