Chapter 62
The tears of memory
I step back from my Winter Wolf, pulling away. “Who are you? What’s your name? Tell me the truth now.”
“The Anarchy Wolf, the Alpha God of Winter,” he murmurs. “I have been wanting meet you for so long.”
I stare at him. He’s a ghost. One I desperately want to cling to, but it’s impossible. It’s always going to be impossible.
He’s really here. Panic cuts straight through me, the All-Seer’s words are loud in my mind, but everything is so confused. My memories are out of order.
“How are you here?” I plead, tears filling my eyes. “Did you fall? Please, tell me you fell.”
He slowly shakes his head. I press my fist to my mouth to stop the sob that tries to escape. I creep towards him, staring up, wanting to scream.
It’s not fair. It’s not. Why is this happening?
“You shouldn’t be here!” I murmur, swiping at my tears, but memories slam back in, sorting themselves out, and I remember the wolf in chains. “Oh, Cadel, you need to go back. You can’t stay here.”
His eyes flame, and he reaches for me again, but I step back, unwilling to let him touch me. It doesn’t matter how we feel; a god of his strength shouldn’t be here. It upsets the balance. The All-Seer’s warning comes back, louder and louder.
“There is a final way, but if the god goes to Earth and stays there, he will destabilise the world, his power leaching out, destroying everything. It’s forbidden.”
The damage he’s doing to both worlds just by being here will only get worse.
I don’t want to lose him again.
I press the back of my hand to my mouth and spin away.
Flames burn my vision and through them, I spot Jarek.
Memories slam into me. He’s just standing there, staring at me, his face white, eyes intense, looking far too nervous.
Waiting for me to remember him. He doesn’t look like a god anymore, but I have loved this alpha in a thousand ways in a thousand lives.
“Jarek,” I whisper.
He rushes me, wrapping his arms around me so tight I don’t think he’s ever going to let me go. “I missed you, Kaida. I missed you so much.”
I sob into his shoulder but lift my head, searching for…I pull free of Jarek and throw myself at Mordecai. He catches me and lifts me off my feet, holding me close as he kisses my hair, my face, my lips.
“I’m here now. I’m here. We’re never going to leave you again,” he murmurs. “Kaida, I missed you.”
“You died!” I say in a broken whisper. “Where did you go? I woke up, and you were gone. I could feel you through the bond; it was fading. Mordecai, I tried to get to you, but it was too late. Why did you leave?” My broken, frantic questions are dismissed with each kiss he presses to my face.
I curl my fingers in his shirt, pulling us closer, refusing to let go as I search his eyes.
“I know, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left. I don’t know why I did, I’m so sorry.”
Jarek sniffles, and I open my arms. He rushes into them and hugs us both. The trauma, the pain of seeing them dead and dying, the lives we’ve lived and lost.
I didn’t sign up for this. It’s not fair.
“What happened?” Mordecai asks. “To you after I was gone?”
“She went looking for you,” Jarek says through his tears. “We found you, but you were already dead. We were attacked, Kaida…she didn’t even know what happened I don’t think, and I couldn’t live without you, so I stopped fighting.”
“Jarek,” I whisper in horror.
“It’s okay; we’re together now.”
“In the Culling Grounds,” I remind them. “About to die again.”
“We’ll be okay,” Jarek says, but I think we can all hear the lie in his voice.
I pull free, knowing I need to deal with the wolf in the room. Cadel is staring at us, his eyes blank, but I know it’s hurting him to be excluded.
I take a breath and hold it.
“He’s part of our pack,” Jarek says firmly, cutting off my words before I can say what needs to be said. “He belongs to us now.”
I don’t tell them that he won’t be here with us long and that once he’s gone, it will be forever. One lifetime is enough, right? We can have that, can’t we?
Cadel approaches slowly, looking at me cautiously like he expects me to hit him. “If you don’t want me—”
I slap a hand across his mouth. How could he think that?
“I have wanted you since the moment I saw you. I tried to find you, waited as long as I could. The All-Seer was to pass on a message. Cadel, my Winter Wolf, I loved you then, and I love you now,” I pause.
“I just can’t bear the thought of what will happen. Of losing you again,” I confess.
His eyes glow red as he stares at me. I slowly remove my hand, but he surges forward, and I’m lost in a kiss that is full of ice and snow. I can hear a howling. I cling to him, kissing him back, trying to show him exactly how I feel.
When I pull away, he lets me go. It’s so hard, I just want to hold on to him.
I turn and catch a glimpse of the skull. My mother, I go to walk and stop, my whole body shakes as I turn back to stare at it.
“Why is the All-Seer here?” I ask in a hollow voice.
“We don’t know,” Jarek says quietly.
My mother, the prophet, and the All-Seer are the same. “She was here. She came here, too, my mother? What kind of game is she playing now?”
“Well, she’s been sending us dreams for the last few years, so maybe she’s helping,” Mordecai says gently.
I stare at her skull. No wonder I felt such intense love for her. No wonder she was so skilled.
“My mother,” I say slowly. “She became my mother? Did she love me, or was this a manipulation, too?”
Jarek presses up against my back, kissing my shoulder. “Kaida, she loved you.”
“Do you think the beta knows?” I say instead of answering.
“No, I think if she knew, you would have been killed outright. Besides, the goddess is so arrogant she probably is sure she got everyone.”
“Are there others here?” I ask carefully. “Like, have you met any of them yet?”
There’s a long, heavy silence.
“Yes,” Mordecai says at last.
“Who?”
“We don’t know. We’re all fairly reclusive; I didn’t meet many other gods. So I don’t recognise them, but from the things that they have been doing and achieving, I would guess there are a lot.”
“But not like us?”
“Some like us,” Jarek protests. “I suspect Legion is a fallen.”
I stare at him, my mind boggling.
“But others…they just don’t feel the same. Like your mother.”
“Spiriting,” I whisper. “The gods are spiriting and using temporary placement to be here and affect the future. But how? It’s dangerous; they’d need to have themselves hidden in Remmilow somewhere. How did they escape the massacre?”
“I can answer that,” Cadel says. “Gods have been going missing since you three disappeared. One at a time, all knowledge of them being wiped away. No one speaks of them. I can’t recall who, though, I just remember chasing dead ends.”
“Cadel isn’t spiriting or temporary placement,” Mordecai says.
I turn to Cadel, who raises an eyebrow. “No, he’s breaking all the natural laws to be here.
A god who is truly a god in his own body.
There is nothing human about him. He destabilizes the world, shifting the balance and being an impossibility that will make things worse the longer he’s here.
” I stare at Cadel, my heart breaking. “You have to go back.”
“No. I belong with you.” His jaw sets, and he glares at me.
“We can’t be together. Not here, and I can’t go home.”
“I’m not leaving you again,” Cadel snarls. “Fuck the worlds.”
I turn away, swallowing hard on the emotion that is trying to choke me.
Jarek clears his throat and steps between us. “Let’s table that one.”
“We should go and find Legion and see what he knows, if he knows anything.” My suggestion is tinged with urgency. I feel like I need to move.
The memories keep coming. Mixing and twisting. Throughout the years, we have been born and died. Only in times of extreme stress for the world. Not all the deaths have been easy; some of them have been horrific. I don’t like remembering how I died; it is disconcerting.
We step out onto the street, and I look up at the teens that have been strung up. Their lives extinguished. The guilt and grief that had been drowned out by my resurfacing memories return with a vengeance.
“I gave them money and ran at the Path and managed to run straight into Walker. While I was running from him, I found Cadel. It’s all a bit—”
“Coincidental?”
I jerk my head away from the bodies. “Yeah.”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Hope is hard to come by. You gave them a chance.”
I press my lips together and lead my pack away from this street of ghosts. I promise myself that if I survive, I will come back and set them all free.
After hours of searching, I call an end to this hopeless hunt for Legion. When the omega doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.
We crawl into a building and go up to the tenth floor and sit down. The wind howls through it, but because of the surrounding buildings, it’s not strong enough to be a concern.
Cadel sits beside me and hands me a bottle of water. I take it, drink some, and hand it back.
There’s a strain between us now. I don’t want it there, but I don’t know how to undo it either.
“You have to go back,” I murmur.
“Stop saying that!” he growls. “I could fall.”
My heart slams against my ribs, and I twist around so I’m staring at him. “Don’t say that. Please, don’t ever say that. You could, but that wouldn’t guarantee we’d end up together. I don’t want you to be here alone, Cadel.” The thought of what that would do to his beautiful soul hurts me.
“I wouldn’t be. I’d find you.”
He’s so confident, and I want so badly to believe him. I reach out and take his hand and hate that one touch from him makes the world right. I lean my head back on the concrete pillar and exhale roughly.
“I was so young back then. Do you remember? I think about it, all excited over butterflies and happy all the time. I was always smiling.”
“You were beautiful, you are beautiful.”
I lift his hand to my chest, holding it there, like I can keep him forever.