Lifesong (4 page)

“But wouldn’t stealing the ones who are causing the problem make more sense?”

“Only if all humans had the same level of energy. Adults have used up most of their energy anyway, and the effort the Earth would have to make to steal one adult from his or her bed would cost more than it’s worth. Children don’t fight back.”

“The Earth is acting like a damned lion, then?”

The words came out in a growl, and I winced at her anger.

“In a way, yes. I guess you could look at it like that.”

“So what now? If we want to stop the Earth from stealing, where do we go from here?”

“We need to heal it. Sing to the Earth.”

“Sing? That’s it?”

“It isn’t as easy as you might think. We can’t sing without our human companions and not until after we’ve imprinted.”

“There’s that word again. What do you mean by
imprinted
, and why would you having me cause the other guardians to be jealous?”

“You remember the images I showed you, the memories I shared with you when you were just a child?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what imprinting is. Think of it as sharing a photo album—small snapshots that can include images, emotions or sometimes even sound.”

“And the other guardians are jealous of you because you showed me two little pictures?”

“Not exactly. They’re jealous because I’m the only one who was able to imprint on a child, and because there are a few of them who think having a human bond can make us immortal.”

“Is it true?”

I shrugged. “No one really knows. The guardians who want you for themselves aren’t doing it for the same reasons I am.”

“What’s your story then? Are guardians wolves, or humans?”

“Both. I started out as a human who turned into a wolf, but now I’m a wolf who sometimes turns into a man.”

“What? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“It will.”

Another long pause.

“So what, when you were a wolf, was it because of the moon or something?”

I had to admit, she had a good sense of humour. “I’m not a werewolf, Emma, I’m a guardian—they’re two entirely different things.”

“Then tell me, guardian, what made you change? And what are you guarding?”

I bowed my head, deep in thought. “You caused me to change.”

“How?”

“It’s hard to explain. Without going into all the science of it—a guardian needs a human to imprint on him, to trust him in order for him to change.”

“I did trust you. Or at least, I thought I did.”

“You weren’t ready.” Emma turned off the shower and peeked through the curtain. “You weren’t the right age,” I explained. “When you were young, you imprinted on a number of individuals—guardian and human alike. It’s the person you keep at the front of your mind after you come of age that matters most.”

“And since I imprinted on you…or you imprinted on me, you can change?”

“Because you’ve remembered me this long, yes. In simple terms, the fact that you remembered me even during my absence, even after what everyone else said, allowed me to shift.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Emma began, opening the shower curtain the entire way, her naked form shaking in the cold air. “You need a human—me—to imprint on, in order to change, and you need to bond with me in order to sing?”

I stared into the other room, away from Emma’s skin. “Not exactly, but it’s close enough for now.”

“It isn’t like you haven’t seen it before,” Emma teased, not moving from her place in the shower. “Tucker, look at me.”

I knew better than to look at her.
Not all of her, that is.
I knew if I did, we’d have a repeat of what had happened earlier. I watched her from under my brow. Her skin was a brilliant red from the hot water. She turned her head, as if to shy away from me, but her scent—sweet with spice—permeated the room. It was easy to sense what she had in mind, and it wouldn’t take much for me to join her.

“We can’t,” I said with regret, handing her a towel.

Emma used the towel to dry off her shoulder-length hair. “Why not? You’re a guy, and I’m a girl…”

“You only want to because of what I said. It wouldn’t be right.”

“What if
I
said I want to do it for the sake of wanting?”

I glanced up at her and studied her eyes. They were free of fear, softer than I remembered them being when she was a child. She wasn’t just asking because I’d mentioned our needing to bond. She was asking because it was something she wanted—something her body needed me to share with her.

“It won’t be enough,” I warned, hugging my arms around her body with the towel between us. “The bond isn’t sexual—not most of it, at least.”

Emma let the towel fall down around her ankles as she took my hands in hers, holding them between us. “Come on,” she urged, tugging at my arms so I would follow her into the bedroom. “You can’t tell me I’m the only one in this room…in this house who’s thinking of other things. Right?”

I nodded.

“And we’re doing it for the sake of the Earth, aren’t we?”

I figured it wasn’t just the Earth Emma was thinking about, but I nodded anyway.

“Then what’s wrong?” She lifted my chin with one of her hands.

I felt myself falling into her eyes, lost to the words she’d kept to herself. Even though she hadn’t spoken them, her body screamed against my ears. A wave of heat brushed over me as I parted her lips with my tongue, growing hotter when her tongue pushed back.

I’d forgotten how powerful a kiss could be, all thought lost behind a wave of passion. With one hand still at the nape of her neck, I used my free hand to unbutton my shirt. The swish of skin on skin made my breath catch. It was a sensation I hadn’t experienced since I’d been the one who’d fallen in love with a guardian. But I’d had experience behind me. Emma didn’t.

And as badly as I wanted to show her what I knew, as terrible as it felt to push her away, I did just that. Her playful expression from before was lost behind a glare of disappointment. The same disappointment I’d felt many times before.

I coiled my arms around her before she could back away or lock herself in the bathroom. Her body tensed, and I could tell she was biting back whatever rage she felt towards me.

It took some coaxing, but I lifted her chin so I could look at her eyes. “We will get there,” I promised, kissing her on the cheek. “But I want you to be ready.”

Her eyes darkened as if to say,
I am.
Deep down, I knew she wasn’t.

“I’m not pushing you away,” I said, after a long moment. “I just want things to feel right between us. We shouldn’t have to rush.”

Finally, she crumpled in my arms, surrendering, at least for tonight. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her. God knew I did. But it was something I wanted her to experience, to remember it without regret, and if we rolled into bed at that very moment, I knew she would. She’d regret it, then hate me for it even more.

Reaching behind the bathroom door, I handed her a navy blue robe along with one of my T-shirts that hung down to her knees. And as we headed back downstairs, I tried to convince myself I’d done the right thing—even if every ounce of me insisted I hadn’t.

Chapter Five

Tucker

That night, after we were both dressed and fed, we returned to the main room of the house. It was the warmest place in the cabin without lighting the fireplace in the master bedroom, and it was still too early to go to bed—
to sleep, anyway.
And she already knew how I felt about that.

Emma sat in the chair opposite me, her legs curled beneath her as she sipped a cup of tea. After everything she’d experienced today, it amazed me how much she seemed to belong there, as if I were the one who was out of place.

I caught Emma smiling at me and I sat up. “How long have you been in love with me?”

It was an honest question. While Emma hadn’t told me, it was almost as if I could read her thoughts just as easily as she could read one of her books. I knew she’d already fallen in love with me before I’d picked her up at the psych ward. Her body language since we’d left had been evidence of that.

Emma stared down at her tea, the warm liquid steaming against her face. “A while,” she admitted, furrowing her brow. “I’m not really sure.” She adjusted her weight in the chair to look at me. “You were my escape, you know?”

I cocked my head to one side.

“Even though I couldn’t leave the ward, my dreams…my thoughts of you let me escape. I guess I’ve sort of loved you ever since you left.” She shrugged.

“It makes sense, especially because of where you were.”

I couldn’t even imagine what had gone on within those walls, and I didn’t have the heart to ask. If she’d used her memories to escape, it was only fair for me to keep it that way. Making her look back on the ward and everything inside it would’ve done more harm than good.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” I said, hanging my head.

Emma hugged her mug in her hands, its contents seeming completely forgotten. “Couldn’t you find me?”

I licked my lips. “I never lost you, Emma, but I couldn’t shift. Not until recently.”

“How recently?”

“Your eighteenth birthday.”

“But that was two months ago,” Emma pointed out, sounding hurt.

I nodded. “Yes, but I needed to round up some papers to get you out first. They wouldn’t have let you leave otherwise, and I didn’t want to risk getting caught until I was sure I had all the necessary documentation.”

“Is the bonding…” Her voice shook, and she looked away. “Is that the reason you had to wait until I was of age?”

“Mostly. It was also because I wanted you to be sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“Your dreams, me, how you felt about what I told you so long ago. The other guardians might have been able to take you much sooner, but I needed you to need me, to want my company before I’d come to you.”

“Because of the imprinting.”

“Yes.”

“What about you?” Emma asked, her eyes on me. “When did you fall in love with me?”

I stared at the flames in the fireplace. I’d only ever been in love twice, and both times I hadn’t been able to explain it. The first time I fell in love with a guardian, it was a mix of being in love with the idea of bonding with a wolf, as well as becoming one. And I was sure Emma felt the same way. But now, I couldn’t say if I’d fallen in love with Emma the first night I’d seen her in the streets, or sometime after that.

“I’m not sure,” I said, after giving her question some thought. “I want to say back when you were still a child. I had a need to protect you, but what I felt then isn’t anything like how I feel now. That love—that bond is even stronger since I found you.”

“You’re still overprotective. You know that, right?” Emma stared down at her tea. “I’m not as delicate as you think.”

“Oh, I know that. It’s just that—”

“I’m not ready,” Emma finished for me.

I shook my head. “I think it’s mostly me who isn’t.” I took a moment to look back on her last question. “Sometimes the need to protect another, and our instincts alone, can be mistaken for love. That is why I cannot say for sure.”

“Is love the other half of the bond?”

Her question caught me off guard, and I gave her a sideways glance.

“You haven’t said anything to me since we got here unless it was worth saying,” Emma said. “And since you just asked when I first fell in love with you, I figured it had to do with the bond you mentioned earlier. I was listening, you know?”

I cleared my throat, feeling a little stupid. “Love is the other half of the bond, yes.”

“So after we bond, what happens next?”

“We wait. Unfortunately, the bond isn’t enough. The songs I mentioned earlier, the ones I need to sing to the Earth?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know the words. It’s something I need to learn from our bond. I need you to give me the words. I need you to inspire me.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“It probably seems like some messed-up guessing game right now, but I’ve been here once before, only the roles were reversed.”

“So that means you were bonded to another, once.”

“Yes, but that was many, many years ago.”
Way too many for it to be relevant.

I watched Emma’s face twist in pain and hated the fact I was the reason she felt that way. I could’ve kept the truth to myself, but what good would it have done?
It’s better I tell her now.
The ache was something I’d carried with me ever since I’d lost my guardian, and I had sometimes wished she had told me ahead of time.

“What happened to her?” Emma asked, setting her mug of tea on the floor before coming over to join me. She took my face in her hands so that she could look into my eyes. “What went wrong?”

I took an unsteady breath and patted my lap, signalling for her to sit down. Emma accepted my invitation, curling up in the chair beside me.

I combed my fingers through her hair as I spoke, twisting one of her curls around my index finger. “When a guardian and his or her human fully bonds, the guardian learns these special lyrics from the human’s memories or actions. This is why imprinting is so important. Think of the memories you have now as a set of photographs. Each one stands for a different word, and the stronger the memory, the more important that word is.”

Emma leaned against my chest. “Can’t you just sing the song your guardian learnt from you?”

I closed my eyes. “It doesn’t work that way, and still I tried. The song must be given to a guardian from his or her human. When the time is right, they sing together, becoming a single form in the night.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “I need you to open your mind. I can show what you happens, but there are words I cannot speak. Words that are too painful. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes.” Emma’s voice shook.

“Good girl. Now, close your eyes and empty your mind. Let all of your thoughts go, think of nothing else except what I’m about to show you.”

I pushed past the pain, sharing a series of images with Emma. She tensed when our minds connected, then went limp, falling victim to my memories.