The Dragon of Sedona by Genevieve Jack

Author:Genevieve Jack [Jack, Genevieve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carpe Luna Publishing

The wendigo did not show itself that night or the next in the forests surrounding the village. But Alexander barely had time to reassure Maiara of this. There was little time to discuss much else either. Her teepee was overflowing with patients in need of healing. Many illnesses and injuries had festered in the absence of the tribe’s regular healer, Keme.

He told himself her withdrawal from him was a consequence of her compassion. Maiara had simply become distracted with caring for the tribe. But when Tobias demonstrated a special affinity for healing and Maiara invited him to assist her, Alexander burned with jealousy. Somehow his brother intuitively knew which patients would benefit from being packed in ice or from spending time in the sweat lodge. He also understood how to set a bone and learned quickly how to make a paste to heal rashes and abrasions. This freed Maiara to use her healing amulet on the sickest patients, those injured while hunting or suffering from debilitating infections. It left Alexander to pine for her.

Although Alexander would have liked to take Tobias’s place to be closer to Maiara, the language of healing made no sense to him. He found it difficult to be around the sick without being drawn into their stories by his creative brain. Talk to them, sketch them, feed them, those were things he could do, but hurt in order to heal? Tobias was far better at that than he was.

So he and Gabriel were relegated to patrolling and occasionally fetching water or wood for her fire. He would watch her when he could, linger in her teepee after bringing her what she asked for, or brush her hand with his own when she asked for help binding a wound. It never went anywhere, and during mealtimes, she would often sit near the chief and his council.

After weeks of this, he was convinced he’d made a terrible mistake. All this time, her affection for him had been transactional. She’d needed safety. He’d wanted her. But now that she had a home and everything she needed, she had no use for him.

He wouldn’t go back on his word to the tribe, but his dream of having her as his mate had grown foggy around the edges.

“Tell her how you feel,” Tobias said one night. Alexander hadn’t complained, but he supposed his withdrawn and sulky mood told its own story. “You can’t go on like this. Tell her. Then you will know for sure.”

Resolved to do just that, Alexander made a point of lingering in Maiara’s presence the next day.

“Hold this here,” she ordered him, pressing his hand to a scrap of cloth covering a nasty gash on an elderly woman’s hip. “Pressure.” She nodded at him and he complied. The old woman moaned softly. “She fell on the ice. We need to stop the bleeding. This will give me time to heal her from within.”

“The cloth is soaking through. What do I do?” Alexander asked.

“Rinse it in the bowl. There.

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