Chapter 10 - Aurela
When I wake up the next morning, I realize I’m completely folded into Soren.
He has his chin on my shoulder, his arms wrapped around my middle, my ass tucked firmly into his lap.
For a second, I wait for the feeling of self-consciousness to flood back to me.
For my brain to remember my new body, the places where I’ve changed since the last time he saw me, touched me.
But it doesn’t come.
I feel nothing but comfortable, accepted in his arms.
And I feel his erection against my lower back.
I bite my tongue, trying to ignore the flood of heat that pools into my lower belly, the urge to roll my hips back into him.
I have the wild, impulsive thought that if I have to spend the rest of my life with Caspian, I could at least have Soren right now. I could have him in this bed, in this hidden cabin, and nobody would have to know about it.
All it would take would be for me to wash myself clean of his scent. To scrub myself of him before returning to my life. And maybe the memories of actually having him, being with him, would be enough for me to make it through a life with a man like Caspian.
“Are you awake?” Soren asks, and when his voice rumbles through me like a tiny earthquake, I struggle to control the impulse to press back into him.
Feigning a stretch, I arch my back, my hips rolling against his, and he sucks in a breath. “Yeah,” I say, as though I have no idea what I’m doing, even as I’m hoping he’s going to push back against me. Initiate something.
But he doesn’t. Of course, he doesn’t. Soren is the one who broke this thing off between us all those years ago. He only got into this bed last night because I was afraid of the storm.
And now, he sits up, sliding out of the small bed until he hits the edge, swinging his feet over the side and standing.
“Come on,” he says, clearing his throat and running a hand over his hair, not looking at me. “We can get ready to head back to town.”
For the next hour, Soren prepares the cabin to leave it again, washing the cups we’ve used, prepping the power—which I discover comes from a few solar panels on the roof—and checking all the plumbing.
He takes a quick shower and offers one to me, but I just want to get home.
Then we open the door and step outside, and realize we’re not going anywhere.
“Oh, shit,” Soren mutters, taking another step, but that’s as far as he can go on the path leading back down to town. It’s a complete mudslide, the occasional fallen tree blocking the space, and mud built up around them like hurdles.
“From the storm,” I whisper as what this means really starts to set in. “We’re trapped.”
“Hey,” Soren says, turning around to me, his brown eyes glinting in the early morning light as he focuses on me. “It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
“We’re trapped up here, and you already said Xeran is furious—”
“You let me handle that.” Soren’s voice is determined, steely, and it quiets me instantly. He’s always been this person—knowing what to do next. “We have to wait this out for a few days. If anything, this gives us a good reason for why we were up here.”
I close my eyes when something sharp tugs at my stomach, urging me toward the trees beyond. It’s Tara, calling for me. It’s the same thing I’ve been feeling over the years since that first big fire.
Maybe it’s the mudslide, the fact that I physically can’t get to her as easily, or maybe it’s the fact that Soren is standing right here with me, but it doesn’t feel as strong. The tug isn’t quite as painful.
Like she’s losing her grip on me.
“Come on,” Soren says, and when the tug subsides, I realize he’s looking right at me. “Let’s head back inside. We have to get everything ready to be here for a few days.”
I follow him back into the cabin and go through the motions of redoing everything we’ve just undone—making the bed with a fresh set of sheets, turning the power back on, finding and switching on the main water line.
“Now, we’d better figure out something better than beef jerky for food,” Soren says, his eyes wandering over to mine. “How would you feel about going for a hunt?”
“But what about the mudslide?” I ask, eyes darting to the open window above the bed, through which I can see the mud, which looks like lava cascading down the side of the mountain.
“We can hunt up,” Soren says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the back of the building.
I swallow at that simple motion, trying to keep my head clear from the illicit thoughts.
Everything he does gets under my skin. Watching him under the sink, one leg stretching out, his pants rising up at the ankle to reveal skin.
The nape of his neck, the soft copper hair stretching down and toward his back.
The way he reached up to the top shelf effortlessly, pulling down several jars of preserves.
“Do you want to?” he asks now, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I suck in a breath and nod, thinking a good hunt might help me push away some of these feelings.
Soren wants nothing to do with me. He didn’t back then, and he certainly doesn’t now.
Besides, I should be far more concerned about what the pack is going to do to me when we get back to town.
I should be more concerned about the fact that Tara is alive, and she’s calling to me.
That she wants something from me.
My magic. Apparently, just like she wanted back in high school.
“Yeah,” I say, pushing my hair back from my face and gearing up to shift, my wolf already howling to get out. “I really, really do.”
***
“Almost done,” Soren says from over his shoulder in the kitchen, glancing back at me.
His cheeks are still flushed from our hunt, his hair damp and falling into his face from his shower. I took one, too, and changed into one of his old shirts. It’s snug on me, which was embarrassing at first, but I don’t miss the way his eyes dip to my chest each time he turns to look at me.
My mouth is already watering. After skinning and cleaning the elk we caught together, he’s been busy in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how he was going to make anything without fresh food—other than the meat—but he assured me something great was coming.
“This is just like Foods Club,” I say from the little table.
“Ha,” Soren says as he stirs something in a pot. “I guess it kind of is.”
I joined Foods Club at my mother’s pressuring, to fill a hole in my schedule. She’d also slyly insisted it would be good for me to learn how to cook for my future alpha, despite the fact that she never cooked. We had a chef for that.
Soren joined Foods Club because he was genuinely good at it. The teacher and club leader loved him and ended up pairing the two of us up together all the time, likely thinking his excellent skills and my horrible performance in the kitchen could somehow even out.
They did not. But I got a lot of experience in sitting and watching Soren cook, and I got to accept a lot of compliments for food I had absolutely no hand in making.
Now, Soren pulls me out of my memories by bringing two bowls to the table and setting them down in front of us before he takes his seat across from me.
I strain to see the food in the low light.
More storm clouds have rolled in over the horizon, so even though it’s relatively early in the evening, it’s already pretty dark.
“Here,” Soren says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a lighter.
He tries to light the little lamp above our table.
He’s turned on the power again, but with the storm last night, the batteries are running low.
When he flicks his thumb against the lighter, though, there’s a brief spark but no flame. “Shit,” he grunts.
“That’s alright,” I say. “We can eat in the dark. It’s…charming.”
“Well,” he sighs after trying the lighter a few more times. “You could…?”
I blink at him. “What?’
He clears his throat, nods toward the lamp. “You could light it with your magic.”
“What?” The word bursts out of me, the surprise impossible for me to cover. Soren is suggesting I use magic? I blink, wondering again if I’m dead. “Are you crazy?”
“It would just be a little,” he says, shrugging one shoulder like it doesn’t matter to him either way. “I don’t see the harm.”
“I can’t believe Soren, the rule follower, is suggesting I break one of our pack’s strictest tenets.”
Soren shakes his head, his brow furrowing slightly, “But it’s not anymore. Xeran is…Well, I mean, Phina uses her magic.”
I swallow down my body’s reaction to her name. I try to think about my other friends—Phina, Maeve, and Valerie—as little as possible. When I do, I just get overrun with grief and shame.
“I didn’t know that,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Soren says, his face softening as he moves his spoon through the bowl in front of him. “I mean, kind of hard for the supreme to be pissed about magic usage when his luna is a proud magic wielder. And, besides, I mean, her magic has helped to strengthen the town against the fires.”
I bite my lip, then lift a finger and light the lamp effortlessly. After that fight with the cryptid, I’ve been slowly regaining my strength, magic pooling back into me steadily. Lighting a lamp is practically nothing.
“Wow,” Soren breathes, his face illuminated by the flame when he turns to look at me, something like admiration in his eyes. It takes my breath away. “That’s…that’s pretty impressive, Aurela.”
Heat blooms inside me uncontrollably, spreading to my face and forcing a smile over my lips. This feels just like high school again—Soren and I, sitting and talking quietly during Foods Club. Him feeding me bites casually, my stomach turning over with pleasure at the sudden influx of food.
“Thank you,” I whisper, forcing myself to take a bite before I say something else. Something about missing him, about not understanding why he broke things off back then.
Something about how even though it’s not true, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something fated about me and him. Something written in the stars, always trying to pull us back together.