Page 44 of Shifters Unifying
We stopped behind the large building where Jasper was probably beating up on the shifters we’d brought with us. In a small, ashen clearing, a pile of wood had been collected on a blackened spot made barren by repeated charring. A body, wrapped in shimmering white silks, rested in a shallow depression in the center.
Theo’s remains.
A disheveled woman and two small children, a girl near Callie’s age, and a boy who looked to be two years older, waited beside the funerary pyre. Tears rolled down the woman’s face, and the girl sobbed quietly. The stiff-faced boy made no sound, and he stood with clenched hands by his side.
Phil leaned close to the woman and offered the smoldering stick to her. She glanced at me, took one step back, and shook her head.
“It should be her,” she whispered. “It’s what Theo would have wanted.”
Phil turned to me and extended the firebrand. As I took it, my heart squeezed, and I wanted to flee from the weight of it all.Gently, softly, he whispered, “Press the ember to the end of the fabric, and the shroud will do the rest.”
Fighting another rush of tears, I crouched beside Theo, wishing I had something to say, anything… But I didn’t know this man, this shifter who had died for me, and no words of comfort coalesced in my brain. Not that it mattered. Nothing I would or could say would make any of this right.
Instead, I pressed the bright red end of the branch to the loose end of the burial cloth. Rainbow flames danced over the wrapped form, sending cinders and bursts of multi-colored smoke into the sky. A gentle breeze flowed from the forest and caressed each of us, breathing intensity into the increasing fire.
The woman lifted her face to the growing wind and closed her eyes as though relishing the movement of the air over her skin. “Be free, my love.”
Phil took the stick from me and laid it tenderly on Theo’s chest. Then he grasped my elbow and helped me to my feet. Together, we all stepped back, observing without speaking.
Within minutes, the supernatural blaze had consumed the body and the pyre, leaving only ash and the burned space behind. A puff of wind stirred the ash until it disappeared from the charred earth, and the air stilled.
The little girl sniffled, and the stoic boy looked on without expression.
Abruptly, Theo’s widow turned to me and approached, and I squelched the desire to hurry away. When she stopped in front of me, she took my hand in hers. “Theo would have been pleased to have the multimorph release his essence back into the universe,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“He was an incredible man,” I rasped, saying the only thing I could. He must have been incredible to have a family and be willing to sacrifice himself for others.
Then she gathered her two children, and they strode away with squared shoulders and lifted chins.
“Is it always like that?” I asked as they disappeared into one of the far cabins.
“It is,” Phil answered.
“Should we do anything else?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing else to be done for Theo.”
“What about his widow and children?”
“They’ll be cared for. We always take care of our own.” He glanced at me. “As I’m sure you’re learning.”
“I am learning,” I said. “Thank you for allowing me to come.”
“It was an honor to attend a Death Rite with the multimorph.” Phil grinned, his mirth a stark contrast to the heaviness of the shared moment before. “Ready to head to the Gathering Place?”
“I’m ready if you are.” I turned to him. “Oh, how did Logan get a meeting called so quickly?”
Phil froze, but he only hesitated a moment. “He made Olivia tell everyone you called the meeting.”
We eased to a stop in front of the Gathering Place, and Phil cut the engine. With a groan, I climbed from the back of the four-wheeler we’d ridden from Six-Mile and reached for my toes. That’d be the last time I rode bitch on an ATV. Especially bare-assednakedbitch.
Without waiting for Phil, I marched toward the entrance, flush with the reality of what this meeting was and how Logan had lied to get it done. The magic of the warding slid over my skin, and I shivered as I stepped inside. Construction had continued since the last time we’d been to the Gathering Place, and it had taken on a more finished feel. Shifters of all kinds filled the tiered seating and lingered in the aisles. A tense silence filled the space, as though a civil war might break out at any moment.
Logan stood on the grass-covered, raised platform in the center of the arena at the bottom with Torbin seated at the council table behind him. Marcus, the big cat alpha of the Ville Platte pride, stood in front of Logan, and my foolish mate looked pissed.
I stopped at the top of the cavea, at the first of the stairs which led down to platform at the bottom. “What the hell did you do, Logan?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
