Chapter 50
KAI
Kai had no idea what the fuck was happening.
One moment, he’d been running for Isla, and the next… he was here.
Phobos, in the past.
Honestly, there wasn’t much that could shock him anymore, but he needed to find a way out, to find Isla and their family.
He’d heard the howl before this magic took him, but dredging up his power and slamming it against its confines had yielded nothing.
Roaring into the void for that woman to explain this had been met with silence.
But there had been a flicker of their bond, and Kai knew, deep within himself, that Isla was here. Isla was safe, and he just needed to find her.
He’d figured out that he was Aneurin fairly quickly. And with that same otherworldly sense that he’d felt the thunderstorms, Kai knew the strange power he possessed also lay dormant beneath Aneurin’s skin.
Did he understand why he was seeing everything through Aneurin’s eyes? Not really.
But had he figured that the best way to find Isla would be to find Aneurin’s fated mate, Saoirse? Yes.
Too bad he had no control over this damn body.
At an aggravatingly leisurely pace, Aneurin strode through the Pack Hall’s corridors, high and curved like the ones in Deimos, with his best friend, whom Kai had learned was named Viktor, at his side.
“If you don't find her tonight, just choose someone,” Viktor said. “It’s becoming more common. You can’t go this long without a mate. You’re the prince.”
Aneurin bristled and ran a hand over his dark hair. Kai caught the feeling that Aneurin didn’t even like Viktor much, but he’d been the son of his father’s beta, so he felt he had to be his friend. He supposed it didn’t work out for everyone.
“Fate is on my side tonight,” Aneurin said, the seal ring—not quite the orientation of wolves and moon Kai had in Deimos, but similar—glinting on his finger. “I’m going to meet her. I can feel it.”
He certainly could. There had been a tugging at his gut as he stopped at the top of the grand staircase and stared into the packed crowd, a nagging at the back of his mind.
Saoirse—Isla—was here.
When they approached the ballroom’s double doors, trumpeters blared their instruments, and the revelers who’d been mingling and dancing came to an abrupt halt.
“May I present,” a voice proclaimed from the dais set at the head of the ballroom, “His Royal Highness, Alpha Heir Aneurin of Phobos.”
The crowd cheered and clapped as Aneurin ascended the stairs to his small throne, where one after another, his guests would greet him, most of them unmated women.
He cast his eyes along those who already lined the dais, heeding that gut-deep feeling to see if his wolf would react. But no. Nothing.
But she was here. Somewhere, calling to his blood, bones, and breath.
Kai had felt it, too. Felt it now and felt it then when he’d first seen Isla across the room at the feast.
All of this seemed so typical. Why was it crucial for them to see this to understand themselves?
“I’m going to take a walk around first,” Aneurin told someone who seemed to be his equivalent of Marin, and didn’t wait for his answer—or for Viktor to catch up—as he descended the dais stairs.
The women around him became a flurry of abashed giggles and sultry stares. He smiled at each of them and bowed his head, but—
Not her, not her, not her.
Until—
He, or maybe it was Kai, had seen a luminescence first. An aura of gold surrounded a dark-haired girl he did not know, which eventually flashed to the one he did—the one he loved.
Neither Kai nor Aneurin could have moved fast enough. There had been the strangest sensation of pulling before he saw Isla emerge from Saoirse, and then he finally felt like he was standing—though airy—on his own two feet.
“Oh, thank the Goddess,” Isla muttered, wrapping her arms around him, embracing him. Though even this felt light, and she didn’t have her scent. Like they were only illusions of themselves.
She pulled back to examine his face, her eyes dropping over him. “You’re in your clothes.”
He glanced down at his attire, then at hers, neither of them in this day’s fashion, before scanning the rest of the crowd.
No one seemed to notice them. No, they were looking at Saoirse and Aneurin, the will of Fate before their eyes.
The air hummed between them. And as if he were still tethered to the other alpha, Kai felt the dormant power within Aneurin crack from its shell.
“How do we get out of here?” Kai asked Isla as the ballroom floor cleared, leaving Aneurin and Saoirse in the center of it.
The future alpha had taken his mate’s hand, preparing to dance.
They’d both started at the touch, the first brush of skin against skin, but that had been it.
They surely had better self-control than he and Isla had.
As if she were afraid they’d get separated again, Isla held Kai close. “She said the only way we get out is once we understand, once we see, and everyone will be fine if we play our parts, so, I guess—Goddess.”
“What?” Kai whipped his attention around as Isla craned her neck, seeking something while the orchestra had begun a new aria. This one started with a simple, hauntingly beautiful violin.
“This is it,” Isla breathed. “This is the music I keep hearing—the one from my nightmares and my dreams, it’s always been this.”
“The song from their first dance?” First meeting, first dance, first touch.
Isla furrowed her brows. “Yes, but—”
“But what?”
“This doesn’t feel like why I remember it.”
“What do you—”
Before Kai could finish the question, they plummeted again.