Chapter 26
EVER
Ican’t take it anymore. The pain and urges are too destructive.
My limbs ache. My head is splitting in half.
And every inch of my body pounds with desire, pulsing and throbbing, so damn heated.
But beyond the miserable pain and the needy fire within, new connections stir.
Little strings tug between Kelter and me.
They tie themselves in knots and tighten.
Holes in my heart are stuffed with bits of him and patched, trapping him inside.
Where I was one, I’m now two. I’ve never belonged quite like this, never craved his company to such a degree, even during all the time we spent together in Caldera.
I stand, leaning against the wall and hugging my stomach. I need closeness, even if only with myself. I try to cool my sizzling blood. But it only boils harder.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I say.
Kelter kicks his heel into the wall behind him, the frustration evident in his clenched jaw, his flexed muscles, which have filled out even more over the last couple of days, thickening as fast as he adds inches to his height. “I feel it too.”
“It’s not like this between us.” I slide my rings up and down over my knuckles, noticing I have room for more now. My fingers grew. I must have finally lost my mind. “It’s really not,” I choke out.
Kelter closes in on me, trapping me with his hands on the wall. “You don’t have to be afraid of this.”
I study his familiar freckles, the green and honey warmth in his eyes, now consumed by lust. “This isn’t right.”
“Why can’t it be right? You know me better than anyone. It’s only you and me here. You don’t have to be shy. And you know I won’t hurt you.”
Right, you just ache to kill for the emotional thrill. That’s not his fault, but doesn’t he realize how much he’s already hurt me? I lean to the side, eyeing the doorless entrance. “It’s not only us. And even if it were, I don’t want you like that.”
Kelter presses his body into mine, pinning me against the scratchy animal hides on the cave wall. Brown swallows his hazel eyes as if Eli were pushing through, taking over. The swelling between my legs hits an intolerable point.
“Is it Eli? Is he what’s stopping you?”
I force the back of my head harder against the wall. “It’s you. It’s everything. I don’t understand what’s going on with me.”
“We’re linking, Ever.”
“Linking?” I push him off me. “I don’t even fully understand what that means.”
He sighs as if merely being in my presence were exhausting. “It’s a permanent connection. We’re pulled together in ways we can’t even comprehend.”
“Like fated mates in a book? I’m supposed to fall in love with you now or something?”
“No, it’s not about love. Some links fall for each other, like Coen and Sola, but not all of them.
It could be two friends, two men, two women, two anything.
Many hook up, especially while first linking, and others keep their links close and turn to friends or lovers for their physical needs.
I knew some of this as a kid, but not enough to understand.
I had to look back at Eli’s memories for this too.
We link so we have someone to help us when the magic we’re born with is activated and becomes our gift.
And forever after that. That’s why Half Links don’t have gifts.
They lose them when their link dies because we’re not meant to be alone with magic. It throws us out of balance.”
“No. I-I can’t link. This isn’t happening,” I sputter.
“It is. You’re getting taller because you’re going through maturation. And you can’t hurt me because magic doesn’t work against your link. Normally that’s not even a possibility until after maturing and linking, then receiving a gift, but you have your mother’s magic in you.”
I cling to facts, trying to disprove every word of his. “You were already taller when I got here, and I hadn’t grown yet.”
“Everyone matures at their own pace. But you must have felt the start of us linking when I did.”
“When did you know?” I ask.
“I had no idea until I was already here. I felt the pull toward you, like the need for air when I have none. But Zandrite wouldn’t let me leave, so I had to wait for you to come to me. I knew you would, and that Eli would have to let you, because being too far apart while linking is lethal.”
I did feel the start of us linking, the pull, while still in Caldera. But maybe not as strong as he did. “This is all wrong.”
Kelter’s face falls with my response, his words soft. “We’re meant to be together.”
“No, we’re not.” I don’t even know if I’m a Vaile. “I need Eli. Where’s Eli?”
“He knows. He gets it. If you keep resisting this desire, your body will be torn apart. It needs to have release to complete maturation. This isn’t just a feeling, Ever. It will kill us.” He heaves breath after breath, clearly as affected as I am.
“Like actually kill us?”
“Yes. It’s more than just pain. The imbalance of magic is fatal if you let it go on too long. All we have to do is be together—you know, physically—and we’ll be fine.”
Please stop, you awkward man. “Kelt, I love you.” I rest my hand on his chest, over the new tattoo, and immediately pull it away. Too much longing to show affection. “So much. I do, but I won’t do that. Not with you.”
He takes my hand back and holds it against his chest, leaving me no choice but to rip it from his grasp. He sighs. “Have you seen it yet?”
“Seen what?”
“Your impression, the markings we get on our chests when linking.”
“I thought those were some sort of Underbroke initiation thing. I don’t—” I pause.
I’ve been in these clothes for days. I pinch the collar of my shirt and pull outward, peeking down at my breasts.
How did I not feel this happening? Half my chest and ribs are covered in overlapping black circles like his—except all the ones on the perfect line down the middle that are incomplete. The other half of my chest is unmarked.
“It was already starting to show faintly on one side when you got here. I saw when—”
“I haven’t forgotten you took off my shirt.” I press the blue fabric back to my chest and look up at him.
He nods, avoiding eye contact, then stares at my chest with curious hazel eyes. “Can I see it? It’s a special thing between us. We match.”
“No.” We don’t match.
He blinks slowly, burdened and hurt. “Do not make me look elsewhere for release. I mean it. Eli can’t touch you, so let me save you from this, save both of us. Better me than Zandrite. Say yes.”
I drop to a squat and curl up tight, my veins searing my soul as frantic blood pummels through me. “I don’t want to.”
“But you need to.”
No. With all the things forced upon me, the deaths and the past I had no say in, this I choose.
I’m stronger than destiny or fate or whatever nonsense is behind this nightmare.
If maturation requires release, it will be Eli that pushes me over the edge.
Pain or pleasure, love or hate, rage or lust, he’s the only man I want inside me.
Kelter lowers to my level, squatting in front of me. “Eli says to tell you that this is your choice.”
I wrap my arms tighter around my knees. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
“I’m not going to repeat what he actually said, only what he should have said.”
I peek my head out. “You’re talking to him right now?”
“Yes, he’s being a dick, as always.” He throws a hand up. “I’m not saying that, Eli.”
“Now what did he say?”
Kelter wraps a hand around the back of his neck, wincing as he forces the words out. “He says that if he were in this room, he’d have put you out of your misery days ago.”
Thinking of him makes it worse. He can’t even touch me, but I won’t stop him from trying again. “Tell him and his cock to hurry the fuck up.”
Kelter breathes much too heavily in my face, as though taking in the same air as me might relieve the pain of the gap between us.
“I know what you like. I’ve seen.” Kelter tucks a finger under the collar of my shirt and pulls at my bra string. I stiffen at his hot fingertips against my skin. “And I know to watch out for the spillage of stolen goods.”
“Stay out of his memories!” I shove him away despite how my body screams for his touch. No, not his. Any touch.
Teetering on his feet while crouching, he loses his balance and falls back.
“They’re mine too now.” He scoots closer to me again and lifts my face.
“And I tried to convince him. I reminded him that he’ll feel what I feel.
You have to understand. We’re the same now.
Shared mind, shared soul. Two bodies. You’ll be with both of us through all of it. ”
“All of what?” I snap. “It’s not happening. You’re not the same.” My whole body shakes. His words strengthen the need, the physical pain at the lack of touch.
“This is going to kill us!” He averts his gaze. “Let me make it better.”
“You want to make it better? Bring. Me. Eli.”
Kelter snarls. “Shut up!” My head jerks back. “Not you. Eli,” he explains.
“What now?”
“He’s pissed at me.” He stretches his hand across his forehead and grips his temples tight. “Ever, I’m not going to let you hurt yourself like this. At some point, it’s happening whether you want it to or not.”
“You’ll make me fuck you?”
“No, of course not, but you’ll give in. You physically won’t be able to deny my touch.
Your body will choose survival. This isn’t about anything else.
I told you linking isn’t about love or attraction.
It’s about connection. I didn’t ask for this either.
Do you think I want to feel this way? To have these thoughts about you? ”
He rips his hand away from his forehead.
His eyes pulse dark green over a hazel background.
“I don’t. I spent a year with you trying not to feel any of this.
But we’re past that. The gods chose to bring us together.
They chose us to support each other through maturation and be linked forever.
So let’s do this before it kills us. We’re both miserable, plus I still have my other cravings. The blood only does so much.”
I try to stop the way I feel, the way my nipples harden, the way heat races through me.
It’s impossible to block the images I conjure.
Of Eli’s head between my legs, the feel of his knife deep inside me.
His tongue on my neck. Flashes of so many moments together.
“Kelter.” I’m breathless and beaten. “Stop.”
He holds my cheek. “Neither of us want this, but I’ve already seen you through him. I’ve felt you… tasted you.”
I extend my foot and drive my heel into his balls.
He groans and smacks both hands over his crotch. “You think I’m going to be the perfect example of a man when my heart is threaded with yours and my entire body is literally dying without you in my arms? You know this isn’t like me. I had no idea that linking would be this intense.”
My bones crackle with pain. My muscles burn. But the rage thrumming my nerves mixed with the tenderness I still have for him is the most debilitating of all. “I don’t need you to be perfect—I need you to be my friend! You only want me because we’re linking.”
“I know!” he bites out.
Contempt rolls over my shoulders and shoves them back. “If you knew me at all you’d know I would never want to be with someone just because fate thinks it’s a good idea.”
Still holding his balls, his cheeks red with the grimace he can’t wipe from his face, he spits out each word. “It’s not fate—it’s the gods. And we’ll be dead by tomorrow morning if we deny it.”
“Then we die.”
I might as well have pulverized Kelter’s heart with the gutted look he gives me. The strain is gone from his voice, quiet dejection in its place. “You’d rather die than be with me?”
I pound my fist onto the cave floor. “I’d rather die than hurt Eli!”
Kelter pushes away from me, the hurt in his eyes battering my heart. “Why?”
I cover my mouth. How did that come out? Why would I care about hurting Eli? That’s my first thought. But I know why. I do.
“Because he’s loyal and protective and as painfully blunt as he is perfectly mad.
And because he sees me. He sees every broken bit.
He sees my visions and my lies and scars from years of being tossed aside.
And he doesn’t want to change a damn thing.
With him, I’m—” I cut myself off. Not because Kelter looks like I’ve ripped his heart from his chest and squashed it flat, but because just as I venture deeper down that path of why, into the realm of forbidden feelings and layers of denial, my heart closes.
Little doors slam shut all around it, keeping me from exploring further.
Loving Eli is inconceivable.