But even as she said the words, Cate knew they were a lie.
This onewasdifferent, although she couldn’t understandhowexactly.
As she ground the leaves, spices, flower petals, and sacred oils in the mortar dish once more, she noticed the glowing light of the moonstone in the corner of her eye.
Belle swatted at it with her paws, pushing it back and forth.
“Belle, leave that alone!” she quickly abandoned her bowl to shoo her cat away from the precious…Diviner.
Chloe had known exactly what it was, and Cate sighed in exasperation. She wished she would have asked Chloe more questions had she not been so… so…
Flustered?
In all her years dealing with the shifters, she’d never seen such an artifact, though Chloe was quite familiar with it, enough to know what it was, and she was most intrigued.
Cate sprinkled the dried herb mixture across Gunner’s chest, above the oil sigil. Tiny streams of oil ran over the sides of his body, pooling against his skin, soaking the wood of her kitchen table, the herbs sparkling like glitter in the eerie candlelight.
Cate braced herself as she started to speak the words she’d thought she’d forgotten, but it was like riding a bicycle. Though she hadn’t cast an awakening spell on anyone, let alone a shifter, in eons, the words came back to her almost instantly. As she spouted them, the room began to feel hot, and faint tremors started to vibrate the floors and the cabinets. Spike stood at attention and Belle meowed in protest once again at the sudden ruckus, but Cate kept going.
Gunner’s body started to feel warmer, and the pull to the Diviner was almost magnetic. Cate grabbed the moonstone, twirling it in her fingers. Its glow danced in tiny wisps around her fingers, and she closed her eyes.
The words came so easily, and she did not fight them.
With her spare hand, she slid it across his solid chest and placed it over his heart.
The rain fell quickly without warning, but she did not stop.
She could not stop.
She felt… compelled. Compelled to save this man, to free his caged spirit. As if it were her duty, her purpose. She hadn’t felt such things in so long, and the feeling was more than seductive.
To be wanted, needed.
But such thoughts were silly, meaningless to a goddess who’d lived so much longer than most.
Cate could feel Gunner’s wolf, the spirit within, separated only by a layer of flesh and blood. It called to her, begging for more, its energy louder than any spoken voice.
She repeated the words, over and over, and each time the draw of the stone, the magnetic pull she felt to look athim—this specimen of shifter she’d brought into her humble abode—only magnified.
The room continued to shake as the spirit wrestled above Gunner’s body, but it struggled still, unable to right itself.
Just when Cate had thought the end was nigh, and Gunner would not return to the land of the living, her body was met by full force as thunder crashed outside, and a hand reached out for her throat.