27. Louise
F ated mates.
Such an idea seemed only a fairy tale a few weeks ago. But now…
The videos from mom and dad’s laptop were hard to swallow. Even though I watched the videos right alongside everyone else, it was hard not to be transported back into the haze of memory.
I don't remember exactly when I made them stop the videos, but I simply couldn't take it anymore. I burst out of the cottage and out onto the rocky shore.
As if I could go anywhere.
Standing on the beach, looking out over the dark waves, it feels as if the little salty whitecaps are laughing at me. A stupid girl, trapped here on this tiny spit of land with four men who have been both my curse and my deliverance.
Quentin joins me, bringing his own tears, his own pain. Silently. The two of us join hands looking out over the cruel surf together, a starless clouded sky overhead.
“How long have you known?” I ask, unable to look him in the face.
“Seb found the indicators for fated mates when he and Caz went to the university to run tests. As you can imagine, Frank completely dismissed it—and the rest of us were somewhat skeptical, to say the least. Of course, this was before the heat,” he admits softly.
“Why do you think Frank flipped his lid? It's not like he's any different from the rest of us,” I fume.
“Well, that's not entirely true,” Quentin sighs, pulling me against him—his fingers unlacing from mine to drape over my shoulders as he holds me, safe under his wing.
“The whole reason Frank started the Saints is because he lost his fated mate, setting him on a path hellbent for revenge.”
I allow the words to wash over me. If Frank and I, along with the rest of the Saints, are fated mates; then this means that a fated mate of Frank’s was a fated mate of mine of Quentin’s, too.
It’s only now that I see the dull ache in Quentin’s peridot green eyes; already having come to the same realization.
“Frank and his fated mate were working together in the field when it happened. I've never been able to get the entire story out of him, but there was an accident. A bad one.”
“What kind of accident?” I ask, not sure I really want to hear the answer.
“He was working for the DEA at the time. There was some kind of large drug bust planned in conjunction with the ATF. I’m sorry I don’t have any more details.
I was working undercover at the time. I didn't even hear the slightest rumblings of what was really going on. All Frank told me was that the operation was bad. The Feds thought they had set up an ideal sting—the kind of bust that would make everybody look good for years to come. The sort of thing that would make careers. Instead, an internal resource tipped the cartels off, and it was an absolute bloodbath. Frank was lucky to get out alive.”
Quentin squeezes my hand tightly, barreling right through the rest of his sad tale.
“Of course it wouldn't have done to have the Feds take responsibility for the loss of so much life and—heaven forbid—the waste of so many tax dollars. As a result, everything was swept under the rug and reframed as a ‘transit accident.’” A plane that went down.
Resources that were lost. Even though Frank hadn't been the one to botch it, he had to go down with the ship.
Compton, Lowry, Stoddard, Hell—possibly even Uncle Martin would have known about Frank—quietly struck from the record.
“As you can imagine, Frank had no intention of going quietly.” Quentin lets out a sound between a laugh and a sigh.
I let out a little whistle through the space in my front teeth and shake my head. “Of course! I'm here, aren't I?”
Quentin nods. “Right you are.”
There's a long stretch of silence that expands between us as I find the courage to ask the question.
“Did you know them?”
“Did I know who?” Quentin blinks, his gaze fixed far away on the dark horizon.
“Frank's fated mate. I mean… our fated mate,” I correct myself.
I hear Quentin struggle to swallow down more tears before he answers.
“Not very well. He was quite handsome, a bit more of a rogue than Francis, the Boy Scout; always second guessing authority as soon as he was out of the line of sight of his superiors—ever challenging and pushing Frank to look at the bigger picture, not just to follow orders.”
I don’t know what I expected—what I wanted to hear about this person that we were cosmically bonded to—whom I will never know.
“The two of them doted on that protégé of theirs—it’s so tragic in retrospect how everything turned out. It’s almost comical,” Quentin laughs coldly.
My heart skips a beat.
“You mean Dennis?”
“The strawberry blond meat head?” Quentin arches a brow.
I can't help but snort a laugh.
“Yes, I suppose Dennis could be remembered that way.”
There's an ache deep in my chest when I think of Dennis, of what Tenant said as he lay dying in my arms.
He didn’t believe it—didn’t believe you were dead—said he would have been able to feel it, said you wouldn’t ? —
Is it because of the bond of a fated mate?
That same magical thread that connects me to the rest of the Saints, to Frank’s long-lost lover?
No, it couldn’t be. The idea that we’ve lost one of our sacred circle of partnership—too early departed from this life—is already too much for me to hold in this moment.
Thinking that Dennis might be part of that broken ring of destiny might very well send me into a tailspin.
“Quentin,” I murmur, nuzzling my face against his chest, the cold ocean wind whipping through us as we shiver together in the night. “I'm exhausted. Why don't we go to bed?”
I can tell that he'd rather stay out here a little longer, but I really am exhausted and I don't know how much longer my legs will carry me. As if Quentin senses this, he makes a sound of affirmation deep in his chest, purring as he presses a kiss down into the part of my hair.
“Alright, Louie. Let's go to bed,” he agrees, steering us both back inside the cottage.
When I wake in the early morning, my body pressed between Quentin and Caz—Seb’s hand still twined in my hair on the pillow above Caz’s buzzed blond head; there's a sense of cognitive dissonance.
I never expected to see this place again. Much less to be here with the Saints; my fated mates.
Frank looks like a black rain cloud encroaching on the pale pink morning sky as he sleeps in one of the wooden chairs—his chin against his chest, his neck raked at a painful angle.
No doubt he'll be sore when he wakes.
I crawl from my place in the blankets and make my way over to Sébastien's abandoned leather jacket, slipping myself inside of it and allowing my hand to dip into one of the satin lined pockets, a half-empty pack of cigarettes and plastic lighter inside.
The heavy wooden door makes little sound as I ease it closed behind me and I step into the gray morning light.
I find my favorite rock, the one I sat on for hours and hours with a fishing pole or a book or a notepad and pen writing to my friends back home pretending that we were pen pals across not just oceans—but time and space rather than a mere group of kids on summer vacation.
Touching the rough stone, I allow myself a few moments to fall apart. I allow myself to be weak—to stop pretending that I'm so damn strong all the time.
I tuck my knees up inside of Seb’s jacket and look out at the mainland in the distance.
The beach is empty, just like you'd expect it to be this time of winter—only a tiny aluminum fishing boat braves the frigid morning water; a marine sportsman in a dark hat and coat cutting across the calm waters.
It's only one man in a tiny boat, but still, I start to feel the pressure of eyes on me. So, I pick up and round the back of the house. Nothing but the open ocean and the whistle of the wind through the wooden slats around the composting toilet.
With one of Seb’ cigarettes trembling between my lips, I close my eyes and let the tears fall.
I don't know where to go from here.
My parents obviously wanted me to become the hero that they couldn’t be, find their surviving research partners and make sure that a treatment for the Zeitnot virus is developed.
Seems obvious, but how am I supposed to beat the odds when I too have been struck from the narrative, just as Frank has?
Legally dead and thus a plaything for the Feds and the Windmill, should they decide to use or dispose of me.
Even if I were able to fulfil their wishes, what would become of me then? Me and my cursed fated mates—the men who stole me from my life—the men who held me captive.
I crouch down low to the ground to keep myself from falling over, the heels of my hands pressed into my eyes as I sob.
Just as I feel the darkness closing in, that I might go under—consumed by my sorrow and the impossibility of this situation, I hear a voice, clear and true against the shushing of the waves breaking on the shore.
“Louise,” Dennis chokes out, his fingers touching my hair—my face still buried in my hands.
At first I think I must be hallucinating—there's just no way that he could be here right now.
But sure enough, I look up and he's standing there—salt white skin, cheeks bright-pink and chafed from the cold and wind, a black ball cap pulled over his strawberry blond hair and a black rain slicker with the collar turned up against the gale.
“Dennis!” I gasp, barely above a whisper—launching from the ground into his arms.
For a few blissful moments we hold each other in silence, his bracing thyme, hyssop, and sea salt scent mixing with the ocean air around us.
“I just knew it! I knew you weren't dead,” he murmurs reverently into my ear, like a prayer.
“How did you get here? How did you even know to come?” I struggle against my tears, using my ebbing anger to buoy me.