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When an unfamiliar fellow park
ranger walks up moments after he prays for help, Jason sends his gratitude out
into the universe for answering his call. The last thing Jason ever suspected
would happen was for the same man to return to abduct him. But now Hania and
his people are insisting that he make good on his promises to repay his karmic
debt to them.
Jason is not opposed to helping
the Chileaans, or their beautiful Shaman, but it’s what they want him to do
that’s the problem.
Chapter
1
In the gateway room of the
temple, Aiyana unrolled the meditation blanket in front of a table that held a
bowl of water, a plant that never stopped blooming, and an assortment of
crystals the previous shaman had given her during her training. Then dropping
to her knees, she leaned back on her heels and lifted her hands out while she
bowed her head.
“I am Aiyana, faithful shaman
to her people. I serve Hehewuti who watches over us and the realms we serve.
Will you hear the requests of your servant today, Great Mother?”
Though the room was closed,
Aiyana felt the gentle warm breeze of Hehewuti’s energy wrap around her like a
hug. As always, she felt greatly comforted by the presence of such a benevolent
force.
I hear you, Aiyana. I also see the burden of your heart, and
yet—I cannot grant you the solace you seek today.
“It is not comfort for me,
Hehewuti. I ask for you to grant solace to the one chosen as my mate. Jason
Cloud’s heart is burdened with grief and can find no peace at the moment. Let
your compassion cross the dimensional realms to find him,” Aiyana pleaded.
Precious daughter, your future mate is fulfilling his
journey according to his life’s plan. Why do you ask for me to change the will
of the First Souls? This I cannot do. Be patient and let the future take the
course it is meant to take for him.
“Must I watch Jason grieve and
offer him no comfort or hope?” Aiyana asked. It wasn’t the first time she’d
been told no by the Great Mother, but this time it was especially hard to hear.
The breeze picked up and
wrapped tighter around her. Aiyana shivered in its embrace as her hair lifted
from her breasts to whip over her shoulders. Though she felt the Great Mother’s
love and compassion strongly, she also understood now that the answer was not
going to change.
Have faith in the timing of the First Souls. Your mate will
be with you soon. This is all I can tell you.
Aiyana fought back her
frustration, and the tears that threatened. She bowed to the floor to hide her
face until the emotions passed. There was no hiding the disappointment in her
heart and spirit. She hoped Hehewuti would not be angry with her for being
saddened by the news.
“Thank you for coming to me,
Hehewuti. I serve the Great Mother who serves the First Souls. Praise to you,
Hehewuti, for all your gifts,” Aiyana said.
You are welcome, Shaman Aiyana. Walk in peace today.
Then the breeze was suddenly
gone.
Staying on the floor several
minutes longer, Aiyana allowed the tears to come while she wept for what she
could not change. When she finally raised her head, the tears had dried and her
spirit had moved into true acceptance. Her ability to accept Hehewuti’s
guidance was why she was the Chileaan shaman. By the time she walked out of the
gateway room, Aiyana was already planning to go back to the portal.
She might not be able to help
Jason directly, but she hoped his spirit would be aware of her presence
watching over him, even if his mind refused to accept such spiritual
possibilities. While she wasn’t as energetically stealthy in moving around
within the human realm as the Annunaki tribe, Aiyana could still send her
future mate all the comfort she could until it was time for him to join her.
***
Expert tracker Jason Cloud
followed the murderer’s footprints through a thickly forested area of the Grand
Canyon until they ended at a set of trees and a pile of rocks. Fortunately it
hadn’t rained much in several weeks, so the prints he found were still clear.
Unfortunately, it was like the footprints simply stopped and disappeared into
dry dust beyond the one spot.
He’d been around the entire
area many times only to circle back to this point over and over. The prints
ended here. How that had happened, Jason wasn’t sure. Even now, staring at the
only evidence so far, he couldn’t understand how the escaped men had managed to
get away from all twenty-four people tracking them, including him.
Exhausted, Jason fell to his
knees in the dirt, the frustration of his failure overwhelming. Was there no
justice at all in the world?
His life’s work as a National
Park Ranger was to track down those who got lost in the canyon, so it was
doubly hard to accept his lack of ability to find three murderous men that
needed to be found. He’d been searching for weeks now with no results other
than the one in front of his knees at the moment.
“Emily, I’m sorry that I’m
failing you,” Jason said out loud, letting the painful reality escape him at
last.
His head ached fiercely from
too much walking and not enough sleep. His body was weak from not eating
regularly. At the moment he didn’t feel like doing anything but sit in the dirt
and cry, yet Jason forced himself to pull out his water bottle and take a few
sips. It was a fact that he didn’t feel like he had much to live for these
days, but he was not going to risk dying of heat stroke or dehydration if there
was still any chance at all that he might find Emily’s killers.
Two months ago his wife had
been shot and killed during a convenience store robbery. Her murderers had fled
but not gone far. With so many looking for them, they couldn’t have crossed a
state line without being recognized because their faces had been captured on
the store’s security cameras. Police believed the men had to be hiding
somewhere in the woods around the canyon.
With so many vacant cabins and
camping areas this time of year that instinct told Jason the men were just
hiding well—which meant they should be able to be found. And who better to find
them than the man who was supposed to be the best canyon tracker in the history
of the park? Apparently anyone else but him, Jason decided. He certainly wasn’t
going to find them by kneeling in the dirt and swearing at fate. It was just
that he didn’t know what else to do.
Though he’d gotten used to
turning thoughts of her away in the last few weeks, Jason now thought of
Emily’s smiling face the last morning he saw her. He had to put his head in his
hand, fighting not to indulge the tears that threatened. For a man who rarely
cried, he’d spent almost every night since her death doing so, at least the
nights where he hadn’t been able to drown the grief with enough whiskey to pass
out first.
If only his grandfather had
been alive, then maybe he could have told Jason what he was missing, what he
was doing wrong. That old man always found what he looked for and he’d taught
Jason never to give up.
Grief had to be making him
blind. That was the only answer.
Jason knelt there in the dirt,
and for the first time in a long time felt his spirit sending out a plea for
divine help. He wished he was a more spiritual man. Maybe then the gods would
help him.
He would have prayed if he’d
known how to pray, but he didn’t. His father had frowned on such things, and
his mother had not challenged his father’s lack of spirituality. Emily had
never pressed him to share her spiritual beliefs either, and he hadn’t
volunteered to open himself up to her faith. What little spirituality Jason had
ever known had been buried for good the day they put his grandfather’s dead
body into the ground.
It was only because of that old
man that Jason remained native enough to see the spirits of the land and those
in the people he encountered. Perhaps that was why when his spirit sought
guidance now in his darkest moments, it was his grandfather and his
grandfather’s people that came to mind.
But if they were listening,
Jason certainly couldn’t tell. Certainly, no divine help had been offered yet.
He climbed wearily to his feet,
dusty and frustrated, with no idea what to do next.
***
From her astral existence
within the dimensional veil separating their worlds, Aiyana had watched Jason
Cloud as he bent to check the tracks that ended where he knelt. Jason was a
protector in his human realm, but today he was not serving his people in his
tasks. Today Jason was searching for the ones who had killed his Emily.
Though not materialized fully
in the human realm or affected by the emotional vibrations of it, Aiyana could
still sense the depth of Jason’s frustration and pain just from the way he held
his body and the expressions on his face.
And as always, her heart hurt
when his did. It was the way of her people with their chosen mates, but usually
such emotional sharing did not occur without some physical bonding. Since her
situation was not normal, Aiyana could only accept what was truth for her,
despite the fact that her appointed mate was not even in the same realm yet,
much less in her life.
Maybe in her spirit she still
rebelled about some aspects of her ordained relationship to Jason Cloud, but
she had accepted the uniqueness of her tie in the time she’d observed him.
Jason had loved his mate in the human realm very much. She could respect Jason
for having such sincere feelings, even if it had distressed her that his
compassion was being given to someone other than her.
The Great Mother Hehewuti, with
a wisdom Aiyana did not understand, had long ago declared Jason Cloud would be
her mate. She had sadly passed this news along to her people despite the
Chileaan people’s disdain for their descendants who were still living in the
human realm. Few there had respect for their eternal spirits, which was a
grievous truth to witness.
Even Jason had very little
respect for his own spirit, though he was a direct descendent of native people
as well. His lack of understanding only made her sadder for him. Not that any
of his spiritual flaws lessened her compassion over his grieving. It was not
her place to judge Jason’s life choices while he remained beyond her physical
reach.
Nor could she question the
Great Mother’s wisdom in sanctioning the compassionate bond she felt for Jason.
Aiyana had learned that lesson quite painfully. Part punishment and part
service, she had watched Jason for many of his human years, watched as he wooed
and bonded with Emily, watched and tried not to wish too hard for the time he
would be hers.
But her faith had been strong
and remained strong now. In the time she had served as shaman to her people,
Aiyana had seen the Great Mother’s will work out over and over in many people’s
lives. The difficult thing now was not in wondering if Jason was going to be a
proper mate for her eventually. That would happen. It was how in her limited
existence in his realm she could assist him in finding comfort for the grief
that was affecting his entire life.
He needed someone to come to
his aide. She was compelled to offer solace, yet unable to do so. No that
wasn’t the full truth, Aiyana thought, she wasn’t allowed to help him. She
could have easily told Jason which direction the murderers of his mate had
taken into the woods. This made watching him kneel in the dirt with his spirit
calling out for help, a pain greater than any she had been asked to bear
before. Only being a shaman for her people kept Aiyana from attempting to
contact him directly. Though she might have found a way to penetrate the veil
to enter his realm, she wasn’t willing to disobey the Great Mother again.
Yet at the same time she longed
for Jason to find his mate’s murderers. Perhaps then his sad spirit could begin
to heal, and whatever needed to come to pass before he joined her, could at
last do so.
When her spirit brother Hania
appeared at her side, Aiyana watched as he saw Jason and sneered. Hania’s
disdain was not of Jason personally, but rather for Aiyana being bound by
destiny to the man from the human realm. Hania did not share the Great Mother’s
belief in Jason being her chosen one.
“Greetings Aiyana. Your
distress has brought me to your side. Is it time to retrieve your mate?” Hania
asked.
He did not really want to know
the answer, but did feel it was his duty to ask. It was no secret that he still
refused to believe that the Great Mother of the Chileaans would see their
shaman, his spirit sister, mated to a disrespectful man from the human realm
instead of one of their kind. After his work with those in the human realm, his
opinion was that most living there remained the spiritual equivalent of
emotional children.
The grieving human male he
observed carried some native blood in his physical form that should have
soothed him naturally. Hania did not hold anything against the man, even though
the majority of Jason’s native ancestors had hunted and killed the original
Chileaans. Only the ascended ones who answered the call of the Great Mother had
completely escaped the fate of being massacred like animals. For those
compassionate spirits who chose to remain behind in the human realm during the
Great Mother’s retrieval, life had become even harder.
But life for their descendents
was now even more limited. Jason’s family had all but set his roots aside. In
fact, most spiritual descendents in the human realm spent their time trying to
preserve what culture was left or to recover what had been lost.
As a Chileaan protector, Hania
had intervened to help in the human realm for too many years to keep count. He
had compassion for them, but still could not understand making a willing choice
to stay in that realm more than he could understand his sister’s acceptance of
her fate to be mated to one of them. He trusted the Great Mother most of the
time, but the decision about the shaman’s mate had caused him many moments of
serious reflection on her wisdom.
“Aiyana, did you hear my
question? Is it time to collect Jason Cloud?” Hania asked again.
“No,” Aiyana answered, willing
her voice not to be sad as her gaze remained on the grieving man she cared for.
“It is not time yet, Hania. I am here only because Jason is in great pain. He
hunts for the ones who killed his mate.”
Hania softened a little. “Jason
Cloud loved the female called Emily sincerely, and for that I respect him. Does
his loving grief for her cause your spirit great pain?” he asked.
Hania’s concern for Aiyana’s
feelings outweighed his own sense of disgust over Jason’s future role in
Aiyana’s life. While he did not approve of their alleged destiny together, he
also did not like the idea that his sensitive spirit sister would feel the pain
of longing for someone whose truest devotion still belonged to someone else.
Having caused such pain in his own mate, and then later been on the receiving
end of her rejection because of it, Hania knew full well how much suffering it
could cause.
He carefully studied Aiyana’s
concerned gaze resting on Jason Cloud as he waited again for her answer.
Through their connection as spirit siblings, he could see her feelings and
thoughts were for Jason, not for herself or her longing for him. Whatever pain
she felt personally had been set aside. Aiyana was the most unselfish person
he’d ever known, and the most truly worthy person in their tribe to be Chileaan
Shaman.
Aiyana turned when she felt
Hania’s concerned gaze directing all his compassion to her. She typically found
it impossible to lie even to spare someone feelings, so she certainly could
never bring herself to deceive Hania when he was so full of worry for her.
“Yes, I confess it hurts me
sometimes, but not always. I accept the Great Mother’s punishment and her
wisdom. I have learned much about Jason from observing his life in the human
realm. Though he is not very spiritual, he is mostly a good man, Hania. There
are many choices for a mate. She could have chosen worse for me,” Aiyana said
logically.
Part of Hania was actually
happy that Aiyana herself did not seem to really want the man from the human
realm as her mate, and that no great desire for Jason Cloud was yet upon her.
If it had been, she would not have been so calm. He remembered all the time he
had spent rejecting Sihu, followed by the time when Sihu had rejected him. He
could not think of a single moment in those years without still feeling the
pain. He would not wish such a fate on anyone.
So Hania studied Aiyana as she
continued to watch the man closely. Maybe Aiyana felt mating with Jason Cloud
would be a duty. Hania understood duty well and had great respect for Aiyana’s
choice to serve as their tribe’s shaman.
“If the Great Mother would only
allow it, Cheveyo still considers that you would be a good choice,” Hania told
her.
“I am aware of Cheveyo’s
devotion to duty, brother,” she answered.
Aiyana turned to face Hania,
looking at the marks on his neck, proof of his ascension. Her spirit brother
was mated to Sihu, who was next in line to become shaman if anything happened
to her. Sadly though, Sihu’s body remained just as lightly marked as Hania’s,
despite their frequent bonding. It was a source of consternation for both of
them that they had not yet reached full ascension together. Sihu was the best
of the Chileaan healers. She had dedicated every spare moment she had to
studying how to encourage the process of ascending.
“Until the Great Mother’s
punishment, I thought I would never know the need for a mate at all, Hania. But
I must be honest and say that the Great Mother intends Cheveyo for another. He
will not be pleased at first with the match, but will eventually see that it is
best. It is not yet time to reveal it or I would have sanctified their union
already. The council needs to set aside their goal of mating us. It is not
meant to be.”
Hania sighed to hear Aiyana say
the words with no passion in her voice and no regret at not wanting to be the
mate of the strongest, bravest Chileaan protector in their tribe. Cheveyo had
great affection for Aiyana. How could their union not be right?
“Do not worry about me,
brother. I would be content to serve the Great Mother as I am without a mate.
It is she who deems me not worthy enough in this state. I seek mating and
ascension to please her will for me, not my own. I want Jason Cloud because she
will bless our union with my ascension. I don’t understand why it has to be him,
but I accept that I will see her wisdom in due time.”
Hania placed a comforting hand
on her shoulder. “There are many things about the Great Mother’s will that I do
not understand either, but one thing I do. Mating releases your personal power
in ways you cannot begin to imagine yet sister. It is more than the spirit
being lifted from the body during the pleasure. Mating with the right person
frees your spirit from physical longing. It allows the spirit to focus on other
things,” he said.
Aiyana looked back at Jason and
shrugged. “Then I will mate with the male that the Great Mother has chosen for
me. The person matters not, so long as she allows me to continue to serve our
people.”
“Be careful of that decision,
Aiyana. As I learned quite painfully, there is only one true mate,” Hania
reminded her. “If the male from the human realm does not willingly remain with
you after bonding, you will either be alone for the rest of your physical life
or spend it going from person to person seeking temporary release from the
madness of your longing. The thought of you having nothing more than that is
too awful to contemplate. You are Shaman Aiyana. No one is more worthy to have
a proper mate.”
“You are a fine man, Hania,”
she said, her heart full of his caring for her. “One day full ascension will
bring you even greater wisdom. I pray the Great Mother continues to bless you
with happiness in your mate. Sihu has definitely brought out the best in you.”
Aiyana chanted softly, blessing
Hania in the old tongue, smiling and bowing her head in respect to the
compassion between them.
Hania felt the ancient blessing
slide over him, felt a peace almost as wonderful as a night spent in Sihu’s
arms. As an unmated shaman, Aiyana’s power was amazing. He could only imagine
how she might be once fully ascended.
They both turned as they heard
Jason call out his mate’s name again, then great silent sobs were shaking his
body. Even if they had not been able to empathically feel Jason’s immense pain,
they would have recognized the agony in his body.
“He thinks he has failed her,”
Aiyana whispered, her voice breaking along with her heart as she hurt with him.
Hania reached out a hand and
squeezed her shoulder. There was nothing Aiyana could do to help the man from
the human realm, but there was something he could do. He would hesitate no
longer. “May the Great Mother see to your happiness as well, sister. Since I
serve the Great Mother and her shaman, I will see to it that your chosen mate
does not fail in his quest.”
“Hania—thank you. May you be
blessed for it,” Aiyana whispered, tears flowing at Hania’s generosity for
risking the intervention. The Chileaan protectors only did what a predictor
declared.
When he disappeared from beside
her, Aiyana turned her full attention back to Jason, waiting now to see if her
future mate would open his spirit and accept Hania’s help.
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Hello Ladies! (just stopping by to help spread the word) :)
ReplyDeleteI can only gush about this book. I loved, loved, loved it. All Donna's work is fabulous, but this one really impressed me. It was so lyrical and spiritual, and the love story so true.
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Jowanna, your post is beautiful. I looked at this blog page and just am amazed to featured here among all these other amazing authors. And I see we have entries already! Yay!!!. I'm standing by to send a copy to the winner.
ReplyDeleteCannot wait to read this book!! Looks AWESOME!!!!
ReplyDeleteAlso after checking out your page I am going to have to read The Forced To Serve series!!!!!
Thanks!!!
julimills@aol.com
Thank you for the chapter. THE SHAMAN'S MATE does look like such a great read.
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Mary, you're welcome for the chapter. If you read The Shaman's Mate, I'd love to hear what you think of it. Make sure you sign up to win a free copy at the link offered in this post. Thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDeleteJulia, You can read Book One of the Forced To Serve series for free. Look for "The Demon of Synar" at your fav ebook retailer. I am in the process of releasing Book 4 this week. I am having such great fun writing this series. I write contemporary books as well, but writing the FTS series is like vacation for me. If you read them, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by the blog!
You can write to me at email@donnamcdonaldauthor.com. You can sign up for my monthly newsletter at http://donnamcdonaldparanormal.blogspot.com/.
Sounds good.
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