Page 3 of Bone Collector’s Mate

Chapter Three

Noir

A few weeks ago, my bones singed with heat and throbbing pain. I would’ve called it a headache when I was fully human, but this was more.

My horns throbbed, no matter which way I roamed. It started one day and, while I thought it would go away, it hadn’t.

Until I stepped over a river. Going toward the northeast of the country. Every year, I followed the falling of the leaves. When the summer heat died away and was replaced by the renewing chill of autumn, all matter of things were revealed. The grass peeled back in its own way, dying and showing me the dirt underneath.

Tragedies and deaths during the spring and summer and even decades ago became apparent.

The leaves had turned some time ago but now, the trees had started to push those leaves away, and they made a blanket of secrets along the ground.

I hadn’t been to this part of the country in a while. The area, yes, but not to this county. I’d forgotten what it was called.

“Oh.” I spoke only because there was no one around. My voice when I was shifted to my monster head was gravelly and raw. Scary to most and on purpose. A monster who collected bones and made them into trinkets didn’t really have a group of best friends.

Other than my horns throbbing, another sensation had crept into my bones, the human ones and the others.

Longing. Exhaustion. Strange because before now, I hadn’t really been tired. I slept when and where I could. I had money from my life before being a bone collector, but most of it was in investments that, if I checked, were probably substantial by now. Then again, I might be broke.

My human body required food, so I would shift my skull to be a normal human head and go into towns and eat but didn’t take the chance of sleeping there. Shifting my head to human took a great deal of energy and I found it tedious.

I was a bone collector and destined to roam the earth no matter what my head looked like.

I’d accepted it.

But the tiredness scared me. Was I about to die? We bone collectors didn’t really have a membership club where we shared and had group sessions about how long our life span was or what happened when we died.

The throbbing and the weariness could be the start of me dying.

Perhaps I’d served my purpose to this world.

The thought saddened me. What kind of life was this? It had meaning, yes. Goals, no. Purpose…maybe. The beating heart in this chest longed for something out of reach.

Bone collectors didn’t have mates or omegas or families and yet, when I saw a family or a couple, I longed for it.

I stepped onto a gravel road and noticed a sign ahead. Quickly, I slipped back into the forest, enough for coverage but still able to view the sign.

Whisper Grove.

All Supernaturals Welcome.

I scoffed, my hands pressed to the rough bark of a pine tree. The word supernatural or paranormal usually included witches, vampires, shifters, orcs, and anything else. Anything except bone collectors. We represented death, and most people, human or supernatural, didn’t want to think about their death. Didn’t want to face the fact that every breath brought us closer to that end.

It was hard for them. Made them face reality. A life not lived. Things not done. Lists not accomplished. The world not seen.

And I was death walking on two legs.

I shifted to my human head only for a moment to look ahead as my eyes caught some movement. It was a man. Human. Two of them. There was a child on the omega’s hip. The sun in the distance began to dip, throwing rust and tangerine colors over the perfect scene.

Sucking in a breath, I watched as the taller man’s head changed from a normal, handsome if I did say so, head, into a pumpkin. A jack-o’-lantern. The omega near him seemed unfazed, and the child squealed and reached for the man, fists pumping.

“Dada,” I heard the child say, and my grip on the bark of the tree tightened.

A pumpkin-head man with an omega and a child?

And the child not only didn’t care but loved him? Reached for him?