8. She Couldn’t Remember
Haera
She was awake. Immediately, embarrassment flooded her body from the memory of her dream. Her breaths were coming quickly, and the sheets tangled around her hips were far too warm. She crawled out of them, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and sitting upright. Shaking her head, she tried to rid herself of the intimate images and arousal in her body. She wondered whether she had been making erotic noises in her sleep – the pleasure of it all – it had felt so real. She was glad she lived alone. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a wet dream, but she knew it was before she had been –
Roses.
She blinked. They were on the small wooden table next to her bed where she kept important documents – like the documentation of identification that she was forced to take with her everywhere she would ever go. It was the paper that marked her forever, as a rogue.
The delicate, thorned stalks of the flowers in the bundle were bound together by what looked like a cord of the finest leather she had ever laid eyes on in her life. It was deep brown, its edges refined, and hand-sewn – not like the old, worn strips of leather that the werewolves of Avallon so often used. This leather had not come from here. She thought there was something…otherworldly about it – she was almost sure. But somehow, she could not remember. Her mind was empty, though her body was sore. So sore.
Her head ached, a ring of fiery pain pulsing over her scalp. The muscles in her neck and back were tight, wound like someone had spent houyras knotting their individual fibers together into one large incomprehensible ball of pain. Sharp jolts of an ache that was both harsh and dull spread through her thighs and down her legs to her ankles whenever she so much as moved her feet. There was something missing from this puzzle. Her brows furrowed and she ran a hand down her face, irritation at herself building. She could not remember.
Her eyes raised away from the rough stone floors in her bedroom to the glass vase across from her on the table, hoping she would find some clues there. It was odd to find roses in her room. Was she even in her room? Was this her cottage?
She slowly looked around, her eyes settling first on the window that looked out to the West, then back down at the unfinished stone floors. Yes, those were familiar. With the measly scraps of savings she had managed to recover from her previously abundant life, the one room cottage was all she had been able to afford. The bed she was sitting on had the same black linen sheets hers did, and reaching underneath the pillow, her hands closed around the final thing that served as her confirmation. The cold metal heart was small in her palm. Her locket. She pulled her hand back and sat upright again, focusing on the roses.
They were an assortment of blood-tinted blossoms, and a memory appeared in her empty mind right then. Yes, she was still herself. That memory haunted her. She would never be rid of it. The rose petals were exactly the shade of the tree trunks, wet with the blood of the soldiers that had collided with them. Despite her best efforts at suppressing it, her vision unfocused. The surge of images was replaying itself without her consent, detaching her entirely from her surroundings and pulling her backwards in time to the wintry air of the clearing. She could taste and smell the metallic tinge in the air, blending in with the scent of the roses across from her.
But that was when the fog in her head started to clear. These roses did not smell like she knew they should. As soon as she noticed the dissonance, their scent grew stronger. She returned to the present moment, her body jerking involuntarily like she had been falling through space and had suddenly hit the ground. As though noticing them for the first time, and only just recognizing the scent that was wafting towards her from them, she leaned forward, angling her body closer to the flowers.
With her eyes closed, she let herself sniff at them, wracking her mind for a name, an object, a food, something that their smell reminded her of. As though offended that she was comparing them to something so trivially mortal, the scent morphed into something so delectable and confronting, that her body jerked again, her cunt throbbing the way it had been when she had just woken up from her dream. Slick moisture was pooling in her underwear again, and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she leaned away from the bundle. Chills washed over her as the scent so effortlessly pulled her submissive nature to the fore. Her thighs were warm, and what remained of her panties were soaked .
Her heart hammered, struggling to keep up with her rapid shallow breathing. Her ribcage ached with the force of her heartbeat. She wanted to howl. That realization was frightening. If she were in wolf form, she would not have been able to restrain herself. It was far more confirmation than she could handle. Her shock descended into trembling. She had been caught up trying to figure out what they smelled like. But these roses did not smell like some thing , they smelled like some one .
The scent formed one powerful syllable in her heart as the ultimate confirmation. Mate . This was her mate’s scent. These roses were from him. If his scent made her feel so powerlessly invigorated, she couldn’t imagine what his presence would be like.
Mate.
Had she met her mate? Her eyes burned. She strained, trying to remember what had happened yesterdahy. As she struggled to understand and reverse the aching silence in her head, she faced the pointed lack of events that was coming up. The scent wound itself seductively through her mind, hammering its identity home through the cloud of disbelief that surrounded her.
Mate?
There was no way she could deny the recognition of his scent, even though she had not met him yet. But where had the flowers come from? Had she met him? Try as she might, she could not remember. Her jaws ached from the pressure on them.
The roses were a stark contrast to the much more subdued scent of her own home. Inside the walls of the small cottage, it smelled a little like the forests she had grown up in. Fresh pine, old cinnamon trees, and sweet airy wildflowers. The roses in front of her smelled like something that did not even make sense in the world she lived in, or the situation her life had led her into.
They were dark, spiced, and heavy, like musky, masculine cologne. They had a heavy edge that smelled exactly like she imagined the passion in the erotic romance novels she read felt. Otherworldly. Intense. Mind-shattering. This was exactly what she would imagine it felt like to be made love to by the gods.
Then, her heart was skipping beats and falling all over itself as she tried not to choke on that reckless thought. That was too far-fetched for her to consider it plausible. She needed to lay off the trashy romance.
“The gods want nothing to do with us mortals, and they certainly want nothing to do with me,” she breathed, letting the familiar rejection of the sentiment settle in and quell the sudden surge of arousal that had flooded into her bloodstream.
“That, little star, is excruciatingly incorrect. ”
For a moment, she felt as though she had died. But the sudden pains that assailed her in the next moment told her that she hadn’t. A searing hot jolt in her head pulled a shocked scream from her lips as she crumpled onto the floor next to her bed. Memories. They were all flooding back in at once, triggered by the voice that had so casually rejected her comfort thought. Through the aching and the pounding in her head, she turned to look towards the doorway of her bedroom.
A man. Her mate. Seven feet tall with blinding white hair and eyes. Tanned skin. Freckles that danced across his cheeks. Muscled arms she feared would break her in two if he so much as got close. He was hurrying towards her, kneeling at her side, an arm reaching out to close around hers.
There was a being – something she could not grasp. Something beyond explanation – made only of hot, white light. It was standing next to her, a barely discernible arm stretched out towards the freakishly suspended werewolf. Her mind was bending and expanding, trying desperately to understand the scene before her as fear flooded through her over and over like the waves on the shore of Lake Rue.
Recognition flared in her chest as the bond roared back to life. She remembered now. He was her mate; but he most certainly was not a man. She flinched backwards, heart thundering in her chest until once again, her body trembled, and her ribs ached. Frustrated tears slid down her cheeks as she cowered away, inch by inch, though she never took her eyes off him.
All the hazy thoughts seemed to dissipate as his eyes locked with hers. The deep intimate knowing of recognition was blooming in the corners of her mind, filling her body from toes to the tips of her ears. She wanted to run. Her legs trembled, trying to find the ground beneath them as she pulled herself away, closer to the wall, closer to escape. The power of his presence was raw, and her heart was caught in its vice grip.
He was still kneeling, arm still outstretched, eyes fixed on her. Something like confusion and hurt was swirling in his eyes, but she couldn’t override the fear that was already initiated in her body.
Large, strange man. Small enclosed space. Distance was her friend. It was the only thing she had left to defend herself. She needed to retreat as far as she could. Maybe, if she got close enough to the window in the opposite wall, she could leap up and do an easy flip out of it.
─── ?? ? ?? ── ─
Theos
She was still inching away. Theos retracted his hand. Resting them on the ground before him, he watched her retreat. She was still wearing the tattered clothes that he had found her in. The blood in her hair had dried so that parts of her long white curls had clumped into brown splotches of matted hair. She was the most beautiful living thing he’d ever seen.
She’d adopted the stance of a prey animal as soon as she’d detected his presence, instead of the predatory beast he knew her kind could be – should be. Instead of the predatory beast he had created her kind to be. She looked exactly like a wounded rabbit, crawling backward the way she was, and still, his heart was stumbling over itself in her presence. She was…perfect.
That was what her attacker had called her – little rabbit. Just remembering the derogatory honorific sent his heart soaring into arrhythmias of anger all over again. He’ d arrived in the middle of an attack on her life, with no clue how many attacks she’d been through before then, no one to come to her rescue.
By the way she was slowly moving away from him, careful not to move too much, as though he would suddenly lose sight of her the stiller and stealthier she was, he was sure of one thing. She would never need to feel like a rabbit in his presence – like filthy, discardable prey .
He raised his eyes away from her to glance at the window she was inching towards, then sat back on his haunches.
“You may run, if that is what you prefer. If that is what will make you feel…safer.” He’d kept his voice low, but she still jumped, startled.
He looked down at the stone floors. It was rough, barely hewn limestone, hardly appropriate for her delicate soles to walk on. The stone’s use was hard to ignore – it was the predominant material used in the construction of temples the Hellenes and Romans worshipped him in. And here was his precious mortal mate, inching backwards while her blood stained the floors like an ancient sacrificial rite. The Fates’ cruelty was a scythe that cleaved through him with the depth of its intimacy.
“T-That’s e-exactly what a p-p-predator would say.” She stuttered out, breathless and fearful .
His eyes hardened at that. He knew it from the additional flash of fear that spread through the bond. His full attention was on her once again, and he considered his words carefully.
“I can hardly imagine there exists such a predator that is concerned for the safety of his prey. But if my concern for your safety and offering you the option to escape makes me sound like a predator, don’t trigger my predatory response. Don’t run.”
He was half sure she would interpret his words the wrong way – as an ultimatum, which would serve only to make her feel even more unsafe. Relief flooded through him when her backward crawling stopped, and she switched to staring at him in disbelief instead of trying to get away. Her brows pulled together in confusion, and he recognized that she was about to speak. Good . He couldn’t get enough of her voice. It made him salivate like a starved man. He was starved. She made him feel like he hadn’t eaten in a lifetime. He wanted to eat her for all the rest of the eternities.
“Who are you?” she shook her head, frustrated by her own question. “I know who you are. But I don’t know… who you are.”
He angled his head at her, watching tears form in her eyes – hearing her breaths begin to come quicker. She was falling over her words, her muddled thoughts only adding to her feelings of being trapped. He answered the question he knew she was trying to ask.
“Mortals know me by many things. My name is Theos.” The confirmation of exactly who was sitting cross-legged before her slid into her features, and some primal part of his ego purred.
“ Gods ,” she muttered.
Her frightened eyes dropped to his canines as soon as he smiled. Her heart rate picked up again.
“Yes, Little Star?”