The Gift She Gives Ch. 24: Finale

"But how? You're an elf-wizard hybrid." Vesper frowned, that was genetically impossible.

Natasha shrugged, "I don't know."

Vesper looked at her friend, waiting for further information and getting none.

"I don't think he'll hold what you did with Cynric against you." She finally said when Natasha wasn't bothering to speak.

"He won't. In the end, he will do and feel what is best for his flock."

"But he might love you."

"Vesper, I know that. But this is the circle that I am in, see. He might love me, he called me-he feels different, but he is a satyr and his whole BEING rotates on this axis of flock behavior. I will never out-nature nature. I can't fall in love with someone I cannot have."

"I'm sorry, Natasha." Vesper whispered as she watched tears fall from her friend's eyes.

"I also told Thorontur to leave. And that I never want to see him again."

Vesper tensed a little bit, not being quite able to imagine turning family away, she'd had close to done herself. "There's no way to save that relationship?"

"He pretty much called me a whore for anything with hooves and horns, so no, there's no saving that one." Natasha's voice stung from the pain of that particular conversation and Vesper sighed.

"I am so sorry, Natasha. I know I already said that, but here I am, happier than I have ever been, and I the woman I love more than anyone else on this planet is in the grips of so much pain. My heart breaks for you."

Natasha choked a little and smiled over at her friend, "But I'm going to have a baby, Vesper, I can be glad of that. Without your ability to heal me, that never would have happened."

Vesper nodded, "Yes, you are having a baby. A boy. A a-horned boy. Do they, do they grow in utero? Do you know?"

Natasha nodded, "I believe so, but I am also thinking the kicking is going to be quite intense. I can use a spell to strengthen my uterine walls, but I will need to stay close to wherever you are at some point in my pregnancy."

"Of course, I will do whatever is necessary." Vesper agreed with her friend.

Natasha licked her lower lip and then looked over at her friend "Last time you healed me, all I wanted was to be left alone. I'm afraid this time, you might find yourself making a beeline for the mountains, Vesper."

Vesper smiled sadly at the brunette at her side who looked absently back out the window after she'd spoken. She wished there was something she could do for her friend to make her feel better, something she could say, but there was nothing. Nothing could keep her friend's heart from breaking. Damn it.

That evening, Vesper sat at a large table with her husband beside her at the head, Anya and her family, Natasha, Shi, Faeron and their daughters, Piltrum, Samir, Brunhild, the dragons, and a few of the other employees eating dinner at the spa. This wouldn't be normal, her husband had told her, he wanted them to eat at home alone together whenever they could. He wanted their lives to be as close to "normal" outside of the bedroom as was possible, he had told her. But tonight, before the dragons left the following morning, and then the wolfpack the next day, they had decided to eat with their friends. The fair was simple, it was about the conversation between the people among the table. Some of whom had been friends for centuries.

"It was a really beautiful wedding, Vesper." Yegor said to her in-between giving Boris a stern look when the boy kept trying to leave the smaller table he sat at with the rest of his siblings, as well as Elarinya, and Saerwen.

"Thank you. Everyone did such a good job making everything perfect." She felt her husband squeeze her hand. "And it was perfect."

"I personally loved the flowers. I don't know how you did it in the middle of the winter, Arc, but they were beautiful." Anya smiled down at the man seated at the end of the table and held his eyes for several moments before she nodded. Vesper could tell that the girl had finally come to terms with how she had left the spa, and what had happened here between her and the angel. She was glad.

She hoped that Grigory would return to his family soon. They would need him to fully heal their pack, and Vesper knew that his absence was the one thing to dull the spark within the large, loud pack as they celebrated this last night at Vorhees.

"Boris, take your siblings back to the rooms." She looked over to see Yegor speaking to the siblings that had been seated at a smaller table near theirs. They'd been served first and were getting antsy having to remain seated at the table.

"Yes, papa." The boy grumbled and shifted into his wolf form, the way he almost always stayed.

Vesper watched as Sam rolled his eyes at his brother and grabbed his clothes and took them with as the whole large brood moved out of the room they were in to head back to the rooms where they were staying at the spa.

"It's too bad that you can't go to England like you had planned." She heard Samir say to her and Vesper looked across the table at him.

She shrugged, "We still will go...eventually. Just right now, it doesn't seem so safe for me to leave the spa."

"The baby is the only reason I'm able to get her to promise to stay put. She doesn't think she's in any danger herself." Mr. Hughes explained.

"I'm not. He couldn't have hurt me, Arc." Vesper looked at her husband a moment before turning back to her food. She wasn't going to live the rest of her life being afraid of the devil.

"Still." Mr. Hughes started and then sighed, this was a fight they would continue to have quietly for the foreseeable future, he didn't feel the need to have it in front of their friends.

"It was nice of the satyrs to allow us to use the mountain." Anya said when no one else spoke, "I would have thought it was covered in snow like the valley out was, but it was gorgeous."

"They spent all night clearing it off for the wedding." Mr. Hughes smiled, passing a sideways glance at Natasha who was using her fork to make piles of the mashed potatoes that she had hardly touched.

"That must have been a huge task." Vesper's eyes widened as she looked at her husband, she hadn't known that the satyr's had had to do that.

"They didn't mind. It was the perfect place to make you my wife." He winked at her, knowing his thoughts and her would both be on the cavern where they'd spent so much time alone together.

Vesper was grinning so wide at her husband, she almost missed the way Sergei stiffed, and then the rest of his pack, including Anya, nor the whimper Yegor released when he shot up from the table and ran from the room.

Mr. Hughes immediately stood as the rest of the wolves left the room, Anya at their heels without another word. He'd set his napkin down and was rounding the table to follow them when he heard the sob come from Natasha. Looking down at the elf, he saw her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip was shaking as she shook her head.

"I'm so sorry." She whimpered.

"What?"

"Thorontur, he didn't fully rebuild the spell. I didn't know. He-he didn't rebuild it."

"Natasha, what has happened?" Mr. Hughes growled, slamming his hand down on the table top.

"Hannah's gone. The devil took her."