Chapter 4
Creon
Night Shade Bear Territory
I lounged on our cot, waiting for Uriel to wake up.
He was so beautiful in his sleep that sometimes it made me want to cry.
Out of all the souls that I’d met and encountered how did the most beautiful one pick me?
He was kind and generous to his family and strangers.
He made time for everyone he cared about.
He knew how to make a sword and fight with it.
He also knew how to bake and weave. We’d had so many of our best conversations while we worked side by side.
I was a little afraid of the ceremony. Not because I’d be bound to him forever but because within the next thirteen moons it would mean we’d be separated.
That was the double-edged sword of the ceremony.
Once you chose your other half or halves in some cases, you were eligible to be ‘reborn’ or ‘transported.’ There was no guarantee that you’d find your other half over there.
You might not even be born on the same world.
You might have to wait until you ‘died’ to see each other again and that was only if you crossed at the right time to cross paths.
Sometimes you could wait, but not always.
You could seek shelter in one of the zones that made you stay for a certain amount of time and hope that your mate remembered to do the same when he died, but if he’d forgotten…
It was all so uncertain. Still, Uriel was already part of my soul and there was nothing I wasn’t willing to risk for him.
“Uriel! Creon!” Someone shouted our names from outside. It was Xenos and panic danced on every syllable that tumbled off his tongue. “Barry’s door is here! They’re making him go without me!”
Uriel was on his feet from a dead sleep before I even wrapped my brain around what Xenos’s words meant. They sank into my brain one by one. Barry’s door was here! His life door! He was off to have his first life!
I wrapped the sheet around my middle and took off after Uriel and Xenos!
I didn’t want him to leave without having the chance to say goodbye.
We found him standing in front of a tall mahogany door.
The wood was engraved with leaves, vines, and a wolf.
I wondered if that meant he’d be a wolf in his first life.
I never got the chance to ask the others what they thought.
Xenos threw himself into Barry’s arms and cried into his chest. This was a good thing. This is what they had planned for. It was good, right? This wasn’t the beginning of the end or anything?
For a split second I remembered this was the past and this very well was the beginning of the end of the time we wouldn’t remember. Our good time. Our peaceful time.
We all hugged Barry goodbye and he told Xenos over and over again that he’d find him as soon as they were both born.
He promised that he’d find him in every single life they lived.
He whispered about how he’d talked to old ones who had lived so many lives and that they decided to stop doing the whole life and death thing and that they would guide him if he needed help.
He clung to Xenos until his features began to change.
The door swung open and a force like I had never seen before or since sucked my friend through the door and out of the grasp of his mate.
I moved to hug Xenos but the memory shifted again as if there was another gap.
I sat on a soft blanket, surrounded by trees and Uriel’s scent.
He was braiding his long hair back so that it didn’t get in the way.
Bare shoulders were sort of essential for how things were done.
That’s where we’d have to plant the seeds.
Not everyone used seeds but it’s what our soul family did.
I scratched my hand feeling the little green seed wanting to poke out of my skin.
It had been there all my life, hidden away under my skin.
It didn’t start poking up when I met Uriel.
That began once I knew in my heart that I was going to choose Uriel to be my companion through all the cycles of life and death.
It started to press toward the surface once I wondered when it would.
The seed would never pass through on its own because it was driven by choice.
If you wanted to give your seed away it had to be cut out.
“How do you want to do this?” Uriel grinned at me. “Your hands are steadier. You can cut with both hands.”
“You can get mine out first,” I said, offering him my palm with the sort of pure unbattered trust that only a young soul could.
I did trust him. He’d never given me a reason not to.
My Uriel had never given me a reason to doubt him for a single second and in that moment I could never imagine that he ever would.
The knife blade was small and attached to an ornate handle made of antler. These such athames were made just for the true-mate ceremonies. The rituals had a million names and a lot of mingling between groups had happened so the names were sometimes used interchangeably.
It was a tiny cut. I’d had paper cuts that hurt worse.
A tiny cut across my palm was all it took for my seed to poke out.
Then one more little squeeze then a seed no larger than that of the sunflowers that grew around Uriel’s family home lay in my palm tinged in the small smear of blood.
I shut my fingers around it as he passed me the knife and held out his own palm.
I bit the tip of my tongue as I made a small incision into my mate’s palm.
He winced as the feathered end of a tree pod seed broke through the skin.
Not wanting to do further damage, I grasped its end gently and slid it out until it was free.
Back then I wouldn’t have recognized its similarity to the sugar maple tree pods that littered the air of the Raven Hollow Wolf Pack Territory seasonally, but I did now.
It was as if our eventual destination was part of our original makeup.
Uriel’s fingers closed around the pod. Our eyes met and then we kissed.
I lost myself to him. My memory of the actual act was fuzzy.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been with him but this was the time that we’d plant our seeds in each other.
I rode him, reveling in how big and warm he felt inside me as we pressed our blood-tinged seeds between our palm and each other’s shoulders.
My head reeled. That’s why the placement of claiming vows weren’t exact. Well, at least for my soul family.
Pleasure shuddered through me and I thought about the one night I had with Uriel in this life. Everything inside me missed him even as I felt his seed taking root in my shoulder and spreading throughout my soul.
“I’ll find you over and over. We’ll never really be apart,” Uriel whispered to me, kissing my hand.
“I love you.”
Those were the only words I had for him.
“I love you,” he said and kissed my hand again.
We didn’t know what the future had in store for us.
Barry was gone. I knew somehow that Xenos would leave in a few days.
We’d have to wait longer. Nearly a full year before my door showed up and then…
Well, at some point Uriel’s door arrived.
It had to or he wouldn’t have been in every life with me.
“RAZIEL!” I gasped the name as I came to in the little magical house with Xenos lying next to me. The bear clamped his hand over my mouth, but it was too late. All three of us had heard it and all three of us knew exactly who he was.
Xenos and Barry shared a look as I tried to make sense of being back in the present. How far back into my soul memories had I traveled? So far back that I wasn’t sure the time period had numbered years.
Raziel. How had I picked up that name? Uriel/Raziel couldn’t possibly have known back then who he’d end up as. My fingers went to my shoulder. Lingering bits of his seed were probably attached to me still. I pressed my hand there as Xenos swore us both to secrecy.
Raziel. The guy who showed up at Alpha Talk meetings from time to time.
He’d offer to castrate a few guys for not treating their mates well.
He always wore pheromone blocker spray and fled when I walked into the room.
I figured the guy hated me. He was Zeke’s kid after all.
Oh. Wow. Yeah. Uriel had jumped back into his own family line either by plan or punishment.
“It’s like I said before,” Barry said, leaning against the door as if someone would attempt to smash through it any second now.
“I’m not going to bother him. As far as I’m concerned Uriel is dead.
I was there when he died. I know bigger minds and souls than mine have argued this question about whether or not crimes carry over.
For my own sanity, I’ve decided I don’t think they do.
What’s done is done. It was horrible but it was done.
None of us here can know for certain that there aren’t crimes we should be punished for from our past lives. ”
“If I—” I tried to speak but my head ached. “If I ever meet him and we respond everyone will know who he is.”
“If you ever plan to do that, give me a head’s up,” Barry said. “I’ll be damned if I let anyone make you miserable over this.”