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“Yup,” she said, popping the P. “I wanted to, but it was safer to stay. My dad traveled all over the continent, helping abandoned and orphaned kids. He won’t leave them, so he brings them back. It’s partially why my family is so big.”
“Are any of you related?”
“Oh, absolutely. My dad and Tío Amos are brothers. My Tía Sarah is their half-sister. She had my cousin, Danni, and adopted my other cousin, Adora. Tío has made a lot of babies with a few different women, and he brings home kids too. Once he found my Tía Celeste, though, he became a new man.”
“Mates?” I asked, knowing it was still a touchy subject.
“You guessed it. They don’t have any of their own, though. Nog and Clara have different moms, and Tío Amos is their father. Jo was brought home when he was a baby. He’s so powerful, and we don’t know anything about his birth mother or what kind of supernatural he is.”
“He is a special one.” I hummed, recalling the way his inquisitive eyes had assessed me the day I’d met them. Reagan looked hopeful.
“Do you know what he is?” I nodded, and her face lit up. “Well?”
“It’s not my place to say. I’m not even sure he knows it yet, but I do know he’ll tell you when he’s ready.” Her face fell a bit, but she seemed to understand. “I’m sorry I can’t answer that for you.”
“No, it’s okay. I trust him. Both of you, actually. I’m just happy Tío brought him home. That’s what matters.”
I didn’t want her to dwell on it, but it made me happy to know she trusted me. “Where would you go, if you could have left The Crossroads?”
“Oh that’s easy,” she said with a soft smile, easily transitioning to a new subject. “Where the mountains meet the ocean.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know, actually. I think it’s where my cousin Danni lives, but I’m not sure.” She stared at the ground, rubbing her fingers over the soft leather of the animal hide. “I used to dream about it. It was a castle embedded in a mountain, overlooking the sea. I painted a mural of it in my old room.”
“If you haven’t been there, what makes you think that that's where your cousin lives?”
“I don’t know where else it would be? She ended up marrying a vampire, and it does have a very vampire look to it. Danni and Elias—that’s her mate—only met about four years ago. It was a big deal. But I’ve been dreaming about it for longer. It wasn’t clear at first. Just a fuzzy picture in my head. Then it started to get clearer. The lines were sharper, and I could make out shapes. Then I could remember the details more vividly, even after long hours of being awake. I never got to see a better color palette though. It was always dark. Weirdly, it was a comforting place. Painting it felt like . . .” She chuckled, shaking her head.
“Felt like what?”
“Home? It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the best word I can come up with. Maybe I saw Danni’s future. Could be foresight is a power I have, but I just don’t know it yet. It’s not like anything I can do makes sense anyway.” After a moment’s pause, she huffed a humorless laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“When my ward was breaking, and the infection was starting to—you know. I saw you in a hallucination. It was like you were there, somehow built into the painting on my wall. I get it now that I was seeing things, but it felt so real at the time. Like you belonged there too. Have you ever had a dream like that? It sounds crazy, right?” Shaking her head, she sighed.
I ran my fingers through my hair, resting my elbows on my knees and looking up at her. “I have to tell you something.”
A frown formed between her brows. “Okay ...”
“I’ve been dreaming about you for ten years.” She looked at me in shock and opened her mouth to speak, but I held up a hand. “Let me finish. It was different than your dream. It wasn’t fuzzy. Always clear since day one. I had everyone searching Tartarus for a woman matching your description. Anyone they found didn’t come close. I never knew why I dreamed of you. Didn’t think it had anything to do with a mate; didn’t have any attachment to my soul. I knew that whole-heartedly. The day I walked through your door, I recognized you. I had seen you every night for a decade, and I felt like I already knew you. It damn near broke me when you didn’t recognize me in the same way.”
It still threatened to tear me apart, but I wasn’t here to make her feel guilty for it.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because it’s important for you to understand why I feel what I feel. It’s not just the mate bond. I knew you before I met you, and I knew you were mine from the very first moment.”
“I want to be with you, Caius.” She looked down, not meeting my gaze as she spoke with a cracked voice. “But what would you do if you found out I wasn’t your mate?”
“If you think I’d kill—” I started, feeling heat rise within me.
Her eyes widened. “That’s not what I meant. I mean would you even want me? Let’s say it’s not real, for whatever reason. What then?”
All the anger that had so quickly arrived instantly faded.
My love needed assurances. Was I any different? She could deny fate, and deny the mate bond, and the truth was, I could let it go too. It wasn’t an all or nothing. Love shouldn’t be. I wanted her. She wanted me. Did it matter how it was classified? No. It didn’t.
