Chapter 16
Evan
The afternoon sun returned, warming the damp stone and making wet leaves in the canopy glitter like scattered diamonds. It was hard to believe that minutes ago, a violent thunderstorm had torn through the sky.
No, not a thunderstorm. That was Adam’s magic.
Even with the world now bathed in golden light, the thought sent a chill down my spine.
Before I’d stepped outside, Adam had fired off questions about me and the world I’d come from. The man’s face had animated with genuine fascination as I described skyscrapers, cars, and electricity that didn’t come from a person’s fingertips.
He asked about my mother and anyone I’d left behind. I was in a different world, with different people, but it was the same questions I couldn’t answer that had the familiar, crushing weight seizing my chest.
The room began to lose focus. The scent of pine and smoke faded into the stale, antiseptic smell of a government building. I was drifting, my mind rushing past Adam to focus on the wall behind him where the cracks in the stone mirrored the ones in the old paint I’d traced for hours.
Police officers spoke softly, their looks holding no pity as they asked questions about my mother’s death. I never found out if the culprit took anything. By the time I searched through what remained, everything that mattered was already gone.
Social workers offered kind words and empty reassurances that everything would be fine. They asked again and again about my family, trying to locate my father to take me in. But there was no one. Mom was a single mother, and she had never once mentioned him. He didn’t exist in our world.
I kept counting cracks in the paint on the wall behind them instead of giving answers, and the truth that would define the rest of my life settled over me: I was completely alone.
No family. No safety net.
Only me and the promise I had given to a woman who would never see me keep it.
Shaking the image of that sterile room from my head, I got up from the couch, walked to the front door without saying anything, and stepped onto the stone porch.
Mismatched clay pots, most of which were overflowing with herbs, crowded the space.
The air smelled of pine and smoke. It was the kind of scent a fancy shop in SoHo would sell for two hundred dollars as a candle.
At the far end, Lyra sat on the stone ledge, her legs drawn up to her chest as she stared out at the path winding through the forest. The afternoon light caught the warm tones in her brown hair, but it couldn’t hide the puffiness around her eyes or the tension in her shoulders.
Wrinkles creased her blue dress where she hugged her knees.
Her head turned an inch in my direction, and she gave a flicker of acknowledgment before her focus snapped back to the trees.
I crossed the porch, the stone smooth beneath my boots, and wordlessly settled on the ledge a few feet away from her, letting my legs dangle over the edge.
We sat, two strangers sharing silence, as the forest breathed.
Lyra was the one who broke it. “I knew he was gone. When Gregory called for me, even before the healing spells failed, it was obvious. It was his body, but…” Her hand rose, fingers trembling as she pressed them over her heart. “…the part that was him wasn’t in there. It was only an empty space.”
She shifted on the ledge to face me. Her silver eyes glazed over, and the skin at their corners crinkled, an attempt at a smile that was all sorrow.
On instinct, I opened my arms, and for a second, she simply stared, as if she couldn’t understand the invitation.
Her face crumpled, and she scrambled across the stone and collapsed against me, burying her face in my shoulder.
I wrapped my arms around her, holding on as sobs she’d been holding back wracked her body.
A lump formed in my throat, and I had to blink hard against the burn in my eyes.
I’d lost the ability to pretend, to keep everything locked up and emotionless. All that remained was this tangle of exposed nerves. Part of my soul had died with my old life, and this new man—this stranger—was all that was left.
I ran my fingers through her long, wavy hair. “Shh.” It smelled sweet, more like cinnamon and spice than flowers.
The scent was out of place for summer, but on her, it was warm and comforting. It reminded me that seasons change, that things end, so something new can start. Someone’s life had ended, and now, ready or not, a new and uncertain chapter was beginning for me.
I held her as her hard, desperate sobs faded into tired, uneven breaths, and then into calm.
You never let go first. You hold them until they’re ready. That was Anita’s first rule. So, I stayed there, embracing her on that stone ledge, and a sudden, painful ache of missing Anita lodged right in my chest.
After a few minutes, Lyra backed away, her small frame separating from mine.
She wiped her tear-streaked face and runny nose with the back of her sleeve, a shy, embarrassed smile touching her lips.
A few strands of her brown hair stuck to her cheek.
Without thinking, I reached out and tucked them behind her ear.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
It took a second before I found the strength to speak.
“I’m not him. I know that. But as long as my soul is in his body, I’ll be here.
I don’t know how long that is, or what this second chance at life means, but I want to make sure the people who were special to him are okay.
I’ll do what I can, even if I don’t know how to survive in this world yet. ”
A small, wet snort of laughter escaped her.
“You don’t have to worry about us. We can take care of ourselves.
” She leaned in a little, her shimmering silver eyes dropping to my neck and then back to my face.
“But Gregory? He won’t let you out of his sight.
I can’t smell your own pheromones through his scent anymore. He’s already scent-marked you.”
I clapped my hand to the back of my neck, flinching as my fingertips found the tender indentations where his canines had pressed into my skin. “Scent-marked?”
Her sad smile returned. “It means he imprinted his pheromone scent against yours, a claim on his property. It’s an alpha thing. It tells others you are taken.”
A disbelieving gasp slipped past my lips, barely a whisper but deafening in the stillness.
“That is messed up.” As the words left my mouth, a dark, traitorous heat pooled low in my gut.
I should have stood from the ledge and cursed him out, but a thrilling satisfaction was already warring with my outrage.
“You like him,” she said as a matter of fact.
Did I? The man could be rough, but sometimes he surprised me with real gentleness. His eyes carried a familiar pain. And he was handsome, rugged in a way that stirred something in me, even if I didn’t want it to.
Lyra read my confusion. “The other Evan… He wanted his mate desperately, I won’t deny that.
He chased Gregory for two years without giving up.
But underneath all that pursuit, he was terrified.
Absolutely petrified of Gregory being his mate.
” She wrapped her arms around herself. “It never made sense to me. Why chase someone so hard while being afraid of catching them? I think he believed he didn’t deserve Gregory, or maybe there was something he was hiding that made the bond dangerous.
Whatever it was, that fear never left his eyes, no matter how hard he tried to win Gregory over. ”
Something he was hiding and a secret that made the bond dangerous.
That woman with the scar had mentioned his mother, said she’d sacrificed everything. The crystal. The portal. What had the other Evan been running from? Or running toward? And what did Gregory have to do with any of it?
I thought about the way Gregory looked at me now, compared to the cold rejection Lyra described. Whatever the other Evan had been hiding, it had kept them apart. I had no secrets. No hidden agenda. Only confusion and a desperate need to understand this world I’d been thrown into.
She tilted her head with new curiosity. “But with you… it’s different. Your scent even changed.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with my scent?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it.” Her hands fluttered in a reassuring gesture. “It’s still night-blooming jasmine, but it’s… It’s matured. That happens when an omega accepts the bond with their alpha.”
“I-I don’t…” I stammered. My face was burning again.
Lyra’s expression softened with a sympathy I hadn’t earned. My body kept making deals without my brain’s permission. Before I could begin to untangle that thought, the clearing of a throat from the doorway made us both turn.
Gregory leaned against the doorframe with his massive arms crossed over his chest. The last bit of sunlight caught in his dark hair, softening the strands.
His shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders.
He was at ease, the picture of confidence, and the sight of him sent an unwelcome jolt right through me.
I bit my lower lip, trying to suppress the reaction.
One moment, I was comforting a grieving woman; the next, my body responded to Gregory’s presence.
My chest tightened with guilt. How could I go from consoling Lyra about losing the man whose body I now inhabited to wanting the alpha who’d been his mate?
The contradiction twisted my stomach, though my body didn’t care about the ethics of desire.
“Sorry to interrupt.” The smirk on his face said he wasn’t sorry at all. “It’s time for us to go.”
Lyra stomped her foot. “No! You should stay for dinner, and maybe stay the night, right, Evan?” She nudged me with her elbow, urging me to agree.
A hot, mortifying flush burned my cheeks as I stared at the stone floor. “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”