Marking Melody (9 page)

She turned her attention to the book on her lap and began to read.

The goddess of furred beasts, Rhesa the Kind, loved her creations to the depths of her heart.  Her home was not in the heavens with the other gods and goddesses, but on Earth where she could spend time with her creations.  Lonely, with no other gods or goddesses to speak with, she chose to instill humanity into the mountain lions, gifting them with beauty and compassion and the ability to change form.  Her new creations could shape-shift at will, from their human forms to their beast forms, and they worshipped her and loved her, and she loved them.

But all was not well.  The female mountain lions grew jealous of the adoration that the males bestowed on the goddess.  The jealousy festered and grew, until they rose up together and entreated the human followers of Rhesa to rise up against her and cast her back into the heavens to leave the males alone.  But the humans, instead of helping the females, told Rhesa what her females were attempting to do.  Rhesa was filled with anger that the females believed she was trying to steal their mates, distraught to learn that the females accused her of vile, disgusting acts with the male lions.

In her rage, she cursed the female mountain lions to forever be blinded to the males of their species.  To never know love.  To never know their children.  To never again form family bonds and live in happiness.

The males begged the goddess for mercy on behalf of their mates, and the goddess, in her wisdom, promised a way for the males to reclaim their mates and make their families whole. The females could be changed back into their natural, loving forms by the sharing of blood through marking.  Only a truemate could change his mate into her natural, compassionate form, and the female must desire the marking or she would remain unchanged.

The goddess then changed the claws of the females, tipping them with poison that would hide their true, compassionate nature until it was revealed through blood sharing with a truemate.  The generations would be told that any females not cut by the claws of the adult females would be killed, and her blood would be on the heads of the females.

Jilly stared at the last word on the yellowed page, her vision blurring as tears filled her eyes.  Wyked and Fate leaned closer, surrounding her, and she struggled to regain her composure.  Looking up at their uncle, she said, “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

He blinked slowly, his green eyes filled with so much wisdom she could almost feel the weight of the knowledge he carried in his mind.  “I believe, Jilly, that the reason the females of your kind are the way they are is because of an ancient curse.”

“A curse?  Gods?  Goddesses?  Isn’t that stuff just mythology and stories?”  She didn’t want to believe in what she’d just read, but she couldn’t deny how
right
it sounded.

Hanai raised a dark brow.  “There is truth in old stories.  And the book you hold is very old and a trusted resource.”

Fate stroked his thumb on the top of her hand.  “It makes sense, though.”

“Really?”  She looked at him.

“Sure.  You said that you felt drawn to us immediately even though it went against everything that you’d been taught — not to mix the species, not to want to mate — and you ignored all of that for us when you came back.”

She’d felt as if a veil had been clouding her vision her whole life once Wyked and Fate shared blood with her when they kissed the first time.  The veil was gone now, and she had free access to her memories, her life before she left to live with the females, and her emotions that had lain untapped for so long.  She frowned.  “You didn’t ask me if I wanted to share blood with you.  Both of you nicked me when we kissed.”

Hanai said, “It doesn’t say a female had to verbally say yes to mating, only that she had to desire it.  According to the boys, they could tell that you wanted them, could feel the connection to your beast even before you understood what it meant.  Panthers have very keen senses when it comes to their mates.  Almost telepathic.”

Wyked kissed her shoulder.  “It’s true.  I can tell that you’re really confused.”

Fate reached behind her and smacked Wyked in the back of the head.  “Brilliant.”

Jilly giggled.  “I
am
confused, though.  How come I’m the only female this is happening to?”

“You want to know why no other females have been mated?” Dag asked.

She nodded.

“Maybe they haven’t found their mates,” Dionne answered.

Hanai agreed.  “I think the males are too soft from what I’ve read.  They wouldn’t be aggressive like Wyked and Fate were,
feeling
your desire instead of waiting for you to say it out loud.”

“So even if there were truemates among the pride members, the males aren’t aggressive enough to do anything about it, so things kept going as they did until the pride exploded because the males found truemates in other species,” Jilly said.

Hanai and Dag nodded.

She looked at her twined hands and jerked them free suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” Fate asked.

“It said the females’ claws were tipped with poison.  What if it’s on my hands?”

Hanai shook his head and picked up another book from the table.  He carefully turned the pages, clearly searching for something.  “Here, this is a poem about the curse.”  He turned the book towards Jilly and she took it.

“A poem?” she asked.

Hanai shrugged.  “People had more time on their hands centuries ago, and poets and songwriters were not uncommon.”

She touched the page with the edge of her finger.  “Why don’t my people have these books?  Why don’t we know about the curse?”

Dag exhaled slowly and frowned.  “I don’t know the answer to that, Jilly.  If I’m speculating, then I think that it’s because the females don’t view what they do — the marking — as anything but tradition.  They’re blinded to the marking being the cause for the gradual change of the females from loving to callous.”

She turned her attention down to the book in front of her and read out loud:

As punishment for your jealousy, love you’ll know nevermore

To carry on this legacy, or deaths you’ll have to answer for.

Three by three to seal their fate, the hatred of all your males,

Only finding one’s Truemate, will thus remove the veils.

As she finished speaking, the room fell silent for several moments.  Then Hanai asked, “Do you remember being marked three separate times?”

She let go of Wyked’s hand and lifted her arm.  On the inside of her arm were tiny scars that resembled freckles.  “Until I kissed Wyked and Fate, I never thought about these at all, but it’s like parts of my past had been locked up in my mind.”

“It’s probably the poison that shielded you from remembering.  If you went right to your dad as a youngster and told him that you had been hurt by three females, he would have known that something strange was going on,” Dionne said.

If she’d remembered that she’d been marked the first time for certain she would have told her dad that they’d hurt her.  She could see it so clearly now.  How the females lured her away from her class in the park. Before, when her memory was clouded, she remembered that some time had passed but she didn’t remember what had happened.

Several years later, she was called into the school office and taken into the nurse’s room where three different females from the ones who had first marked her were waiting.  The nurse accepted an envelope from one female, what Jilly now suspected was a bribe, and left her alone with them.  They marked her, their hands shifting into claws and sinking into her upper arms where her other scars were.  She’d felt sluggish, her vision going dim as they held onto her with their claws and told her that she was turning into a perfect female and would soon join them.  Like before, she had not remembered who they were at the time or what had happened.

The last marking had been just before she turned sixteen, when she was walking home from school.  She’d almost hated her father at that point, but she’d always felt torn about it, as if it wasn’t the right way to feel.

“Things began to change after the first time the females hurt me.”

“How so?” Dag asked.

“I started to resent my dad and my younger brother.  I didn’t want to be around my brother or hug my dad.”  Tears started to fill her eyes again as she remembered how hard her dad tried to keep her with him.  How he struggled to show her love and compassion in the face of what was clearly some kind of supernatural curse.

Hanai said that the females had poisoned her, but they most likely didn’t know why they did it.  “Likely, they’re so steeped in tradition that it never occurred to them to question why they do it, only that it must be done.”

One by one, Dionne, Dag, and Hanai shared with her what they had learned about mountain lions from the various books in Hanai’s library.  She didn’t understand how her people could be turned so inside-out with a curse from an ancient goddess, but she could not deny that she was different now. 

“It’s late,” Dionne said, covering her mouth as she yawned.  “Jilly, although you are not mated officially to our sons, you are welcome to share their bed tonight, but only for sleeping.”

She blushed sharply.

Dionne tut-tutted.  “Don’t be embarrassed.  They’ll explain our mating practices to you, and if you have any questions, we can talk privately tomorrow.”  She came around the table and kissed Wyked, Fate, and her on their cheeks.

Hanai said, “I’ll leave the books for you to look at more, Jilly.”

He said goodnight and left, and after Dag said goodnight, she was left alone on the couch with her mates.

“We’re not officially mated?” she asked, leaning back against the plush couch cushions and looking at the twins.  She didn’t know how it was possible, but she could tell them apart easily.  Although she could see that they were identical, from their straight noses to their lush mouths to their blazing green eyes, she instinctively knew that Fate was sitting on her left and Wyked on her right.

Fate asked how old she was, and she told them she would be eighteen at the end of August.  “We’re nineteen,” Fate said.  “Panthers don’t mate until everyone is twenty-one.  We blood-shared with you, which is a mild form of marking, but
real
mating, with the neck marking and
other stuff
, doesn’t happen unless everyone is twenty-one.”

Immediately she thought,
We can’t have sex for three years?

Wyked inhaled slowly and growled in his throat.  “It won’t be easy, but it’s our way.”

“If we were all twenty-one?” she asked.

“Then we’d be finding a private place for the night,” Wyked said with a low voice.

She shivered and Fate snarled.  “Knock it off, Wyked.  I’m not a masochist, so stop thinking about things that can’t happen right now.”

“Sorry,” Wyked said, but he winked at her and she smiled.

They stood together, and Fate carried her bag to a small bedroom with a set of bunk beds attached to the wall.  The top bunk was a small, twin-size bed, and the bottom bunk was a full-size bed.  “I think we can fit if you don’t mind snuggling,” Fate said, flicking on the overhead light.”

Wyked mocked, “I thought you weren’t a masochist.”

“Want to sleep tied up to a tree outside?” Fate shot back.

Jilly chuckled at their banter.  Although their words were harsh, there was nothing but brotherly love between them.  It made her ache for Henry.

She left them in the bedroom and went to the small bathroom where she changed into pajamas from her backpack and brushed her teeth with a toothbrush left on the counter for her by Dionne.  When she joined them in the bedroom, Wyked laid against the wall on the bottom bunk wearing jeans and no shirt.  She’d never been attracted to a man before.  Yes, she’d seen good-looking guys, but there was something about Wyked and Fate that spoke to the very core of her.

Patting the space in front of him, Wyked grinned slyly.  “Normally, you would be going back home to sleep tonight, little kitten, because like Fate said, we’re not masochists.  We can’t mate you until you turn twenty-one, which is three agonizingly long years away.”

“We can hold you tonight while we sleep, though, and then tomorrow we’ll figure out what to do.  You have a lot to learn about yourself and your people,” Fate said as he came to stand next to her.

She nodded.  “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

The humor dropped away from Wyked’s face.  “We wouldn’t be anywhere else, Jilly.”

She climbed onto the bed and settled on her back next to Wyked.  Fate turned off the light and shut the door, joining them.  After some maneuvering, she ended up tucked on her side between them, Wyked’s arm banded around her waist as he cuddled her from behind, and Fate’s smooth, warm back against her chest, the spicy scent of them filling her nose with each inhalation.

Although her mind was still spinning with what she had learned in the last few hours, she closed her eyes and let herself rest in the safety of her mates’ arms.

After the most restful sleep she’d ever had, a delicious breakfast cooked by Dionne, and many stolen kisses, she found herself facing her stubborn mates, arguing.