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“I’m sure she doesn’t want me to bother her. I’ll be back tomorrow with a new report, and I’ll deliver this. Thanks, Alpha,” I say.
With that, I hustle out of the door. Thorne doesn’t need to know that I’m more than just ready to fulfill my pack duties.
I can’t deny it. I’m excited to see Coral tomorrow.
And if there’s anyone nearby who is even thinking of coming after her… I’ll finally have an outlet for the rage that’s burning a hole in my stomach.
Chapter 3
Coral
The larkspur are being difficult.
They’re gorgeous flowers, and I love them. Long, trailing stems that grow delicate tubular flowers, each a vivid blue color that entices the bees to come inside like nothing else. I try to encourage them to grow in my space, because they’re also quite toxic, and any ill-informed deer shifter could eat them and get hurt. Given that the pack often runs a lot of jeep tours, with a variety of shifters on them, I’ve done my best to coax larkspur to bloom in my meadow instead of out there in the world.
But right now, they’re clammed up in buds that absolutely refuse to bloom, and I’m getting mixed signals as to why. They make beautiful dried flowers as well, which is part of why I have so many of them. There are a few shifters in the pack who like to make lotions, and the dried larkspur flowers make a nice decoration for the tops of the jars. But they have to bloom first in order to get to that stage.
I huff, looking at a patch in front of me. I need to go deeper, I think.
Plopping onto the ground, I dig my fingertips into the dirt. Sometimes connecting with the soil and understanding themacros can help me to understand what’s going on, even if the plant itself doesn’t quite know yet.
When my fingers touch the soil, a shiver of power ripples through me.
Okay, let’s see. There are worms, that’s good, it seems like the rhizome networks from the grasses are intact and healthy. Aspen roots that want to encroach on…
Ah. That’s it.
Sometimes plants have arguments over resources. In this case, it’s an aspen grove. Aspen are actually all genetically one organism, if they’re in a grove together. They spread over hillsides, colonizing huge swaths of land, but since they’re all clones of the same organism that spreads through their roots, they’re really just one, very large, very dominating plant.
This tends to upset the other plants, who aren’t nearly as competitive. They think the aspen is a bully.
I sigh, shifting so that I can send my magic toward the aspen. I tug at it, urging it to spread its roots around the meadow, instead of going through it.
Water.
Yeah, yeah. The pushback is something that I expected.
There’s water everywhere, friend. You just need to know where to look.
The aspen considers this.Easy water.
Ha. Well, that’s true. The meadow is close to a very nice aquifer and has a little brook that runs through it as well. But there’s a deeper, older water table down the hill slightly. It leads to the lake that the pack uses for fishing and recreation.
I send thoughts of the lake to the aspen. The cool water lapping at the shores of rock. The rain in the summer running down the ravines and pooling in the lake.
The aspen grumbles but accepts my plan. It adjusts root hairs and small capillaries to reflect a new growth direction.
I turn my attention back to the larkspur.There. It won’t come block your sun.
Opening my eyes, I smile as the buds on the larkspur burst open.
Mission accomplished.
I stand, dusting my fingertips off on the edge of my garden apron. There’s a particularly sticky piece of dirt that I’m not sure what it is. I’m so focused on it that I don’t notice when someone crosses into the meadow.
“Excuse me,” a deep voice rumbles from behind me.
I can’t help it. I jump like I’m a startled deer, and I bound a full two feet forward before I freeze and remember that I currently look like someone terrified of their own shadow.
