Chapter 3
Creon
Night Shade Bear Territory
It was dark inside the house Xenos used for magic work.
He’d cleared away all the spirit stuff and put it in the little storage shed behind the house because he worried what wandering spirits might do to disturb our plans.
I’d been in Nightshade Bear Territory since the day before.
As luck would have it, tonight was the full moon.
Not all magic needed the full moon but those of us who were taught magic centuries ago or longer still clung to the moon cycles.
This particular full moon was extra convenient as it gave Xenos time to prepare.
While he and Barry worked the night before I stayed up late talking to Kodiak and Silas on the phone.
I almost didn’t tell them about the ritual but not saying something felt like cheating on them.
It didn’t matter if it happened long before any of us existed in our current form there was a decent chance I’d experience some intimacy in the memories.
Those moments might even feel real. So I had to tell them.
“They’re your memories,” Silas was the first to speak after a few beats of silence. “You have every right to see if you can reach them.”
“All that stuff already happened, Creon,” Kodiak added. “Plus, if Uriel was to show up tomorrow…”
“Kodiak, we said we wouldn’t bring that up,” Silas said.
“You’d kill him, right?” I asked.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment. The air over the phone was tense but not in a murderous way.
“Right?” I asked again.
“That would be your call,” Silas finally said. “But if he shows up here tomorrow a totally different person I don’t think we can justify murder. I don’t know that I’d ever trust him and I wouldn’t blame you for sending him away but I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to keep him either.”
“Crystal would give Finn another chance if he were reborn,” Kodiak said and in my mind’s eye I saw him rubbing the bridge of his nose.
Crystal was his ex-girlfriend and his dead brother’s true-mate.
He’d dated her briefly before Finn ever met her and had stepped aside like the gentleman he was.
He’d never forgiven Finn for some of his mistakes, but he still treated Crystal gently.
They’d never have another love affair, but hearts don’t stop loving people because relationships morph. At least not healthy hearts.
I opened my mouth to promise I’d never keep Uriel, but I couldn’t make that oath. Something deep inside me wouldn’t let me. What would I do? I couldn’t leave Kodiak and Silas. I didn’t want to.
“Hey, you might never run into him,” Silas said, trying to sound cheerful. “Let’s not build bridges into empty space.”
Then he changed the subject to talking about the kids and I fell asleep listening to him and Kodiak recounting everything that happened at the festival after I left.
That was my life. That was my home. If Uriel ever did find me and he was a changed man, he’d have to make his puzzle piece fit in with ours.
“Earthside to Creon,” Barry said, waving his hand in front of my face.
I’d spaced out inside the magic house, but what did they expect?
Xenos had arranged several comfortable pads on top of each other and covered me with furs.
He had me lay down in the dark as he sprinkled herbs in a circle around me.
Sage, lavender, and something soothing. Maybe bergamot. Of course, my mind wandered.
“I’m not asleep,” I yawned.
“It’s okay if you fall asleep once we start. Everyone experiences magic like this differently,” Xenos said.
“How will I know what’s a dream and what’s real?” I asked, fighting off the urge to yawn again.
“In a literal sense, some might argue you won’t and couldn’t possibly,” Xenos said sitting down inside the circle with me.
“But there will be clues because we’ll put them there.
” He reached up and slid a bracelet made from tiger’s eye beads onto my wrist. “You don’t wear this every day.
So it wouldn’t be in a dream, but it would be on you when you astral projected into your own soul because you’re wearing it.
Maybe you’ll see me somewhere because I’m guiding you or maybe you’ll smell the herbs. ”
After he explained everything one last time, Barry took his place as guardian next to the door.
He towered over both of us and for a moment I was sad I didn’t live in a world where Uriel had the honor to stand on the other side of the doorframe as a mirror to his brother.
I shook my head. I didn’t need Uriel to guard me.
I had more than enough people in my life who loved me and had my back.
After I was cozy, Xenos walked me through a few basic relaxation techniques.
I followed his voice until I lost it. Sinking into the feelings that came up around Uriel – the ones I never allowed myself to feel – was almost like falling asleep.
Except I still heard Xenos speaking. His words weren’t coherent but they were there.
I smelled him and Barry and the herbs. Then I fell.
I fell backwards through time and space, my fingers digging into the soft furs piled on top of me.
I fell through memories I recognized as my current incarnation and then unfamiliar ones.
I had been an elf so many times but before that I had been a wolf, a badger, and even a whale.
The last one wasn’t a shifter. Just a plain wild blue whale.
That was perhaps my most peaceful life. Still, Uriel was there.
He was there for all of them. It was as if we hadn’t ever been apart.
For the love of the groves, we had even met in my current one. He just had to go and fuck it up.
Then everything stopped. It all stopped and I fell into myself.
I was laying down and staring up at a clear night sky with unfamiliar stars.
I wasn’t alone. There was a hand in mine, playing with the tiger’s eye beads on my bracelet with his thumb.
My other side wasn’t empty either. It was Xenos.
Not the Xenos I had left behind when I fell out of my body into my soul but Xenos how he must’ve been some long, forgotten time ago.
He lay stretched out on his back, like I was.
On his other side was his true-mate. It was Barry.
Even back then he looked a lot like Uriel.
I knew without knowing how that Barry and Xenos had their binding ceremony almost a moon ago.
This moon it would be my and Uriel’s turn.
All the soul groups had their own way of doing the magic and even within the group no two connections performed it exactly the same.
We liked the moon, though. It was as if the moon was the witness to our magic and she alone bore the truth of what we were now.
We wouldn’t be this way forever. You didn’t know much about what would happen the first time you were born in the other place.
The place where people needed help and others sought adventure.
Uriel had spent months building our little hideaway for the ceremony.
He did it in between helping out with all his siblings.
There were so many of them that even after spending years with him, I couldn’t remember all their names.
I couldn’t remember their faces right now either.
The beads on my bracelet clinked together, reminding me why I couldn’t remember their faces.
Of course, not all the details would come back to me.
I rolled onto my side and stared at my Uriel. I ran my fingers through his thick, soft hair and smiled.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what to say. How could I tell him what would happen to us in the future? Only I didn’t have to. I didn’t even have the choice of what to say. This had all transpired in some fathomless time before the now. What I said had been said then and wouldn’t change now.
“Two nights from now we’ll bind ourselves together forever,” I whispered. “This is your last chance to back out.”
I was teasing him. We’d talked this all in circles for years. One should never bind themselves to someone without knowing the other person completely.
Uriel huffed and narrowed his eyes on me. He wasn’t amused by my little joke, and it was written across his face. Soon I’d know what was in his head and heart constantly and wouldn’t have to guess.
“Are you having second thoughts?” he arched a handsome brow, playing along with my game.
“Never in a million years but aren’t you afraid you’ll get bored of me?”
“You say bored as if it’s a bad thing. Who else would I ever long to spend my limited quiet moments with? In which other arms have I ever known peace?” he asked.
I leaned in to kiss him but remembered the others were with us. I glanced over my shoulder and they were gone. When had they snuck off? That was another perk of having a true-mate link. You could coordinate without speaking aloud.
So, I kissed him. It was a bottomless pit of time ago, but the brush of his lips still soothed something inside me.
How did this man – this wolf elf with glorious kissing skills who spent most of his time caring for others become who I knew him as in my life?
I lost the thread of my thoughts as his warm tongue swept around my mouth.
He lifted me onto him in a straddle. I kissed him hard, grinding my hips over him, making him as hard as I already was.
“Uriel?” Someone called for him. A little kid from the sounds of it but I never saw their face.
The memory shattered and I woke up in his arms. Surrounded by his scent, for a fraction of a second, I feared that I’d found Uriel in the real and solid world.
No, that hadn’t happened. Whatever Xenos and my brain were doing, I had lurched forward to the morning of the ceremony.
I lay there watching my mate sleeping and slowly forgot that I wasn’t in my present anymore. I was me back then and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be anyone else.