Daniel told me I was here because I’d made enemies with the wrong fae back home, and it was better I forget what I did. Hence why my memory was wiped of it by my own request. My uncle Pierce told me that I’d come here alone. However, I had memories of a wedding. Did I have a wife? I couldn’t picture her if I had. Was I thinking of Aaron’s wedding to Melina? Some things seemed different than I remembered. Why was that? A side effect of the memory wipe, they told me. Why had I chosen Philadelphia to live when my fae kind, Daniel, was in Baltimore and my dragon relative, Pierce, was in Florida? They told me that I choose to be on my own to protect them in case the danger I left behind in the fae realm came looking for me.
It all made sense. It all felt wrong.
And on this fifth morning, I again found a journal and the pictures sitting on my kitchen counter. I’d see the beautiful woman with glowing skin, a bright smile, large doe eyes, and a crown of curls. I’d see the pictures of us together looking so happy that my heart would squeeze. My chest painfully tight. Had she been my wife? Was she still alive?
I would then open up the journal and read words I didn’t remember writing about a love for a woman I couldn’t recall. I had a mission to find some cure for my mind but was staying away from her as some type of kindness to her. I had my friends hold up a lie in my mind to ensure I kept my distance from her life when I didn’t not have the time or inclination to read the journal.
This morning, this fifth morning, I’d gone through the process again, and I knew why I felt heavy. Itwasa loss. The loss of my mate. A mate I could not remember.
I looked out the window. It was sunny and cool, and I still hated it all. The loud noise of the city. Cars, people, animals. However, I couldn’t remain inside. I felt like climbing the walls. I had time before my shift at the restaurant. It was just something temporary until I got my footing in this putrid smelling world.
I tossed on a T- shirt and some sweats and headed out to try to run and clear my mind. A futile task for the latter. I had no plan other than existing. At least for now. Until then, it was a lonely existence. It was still early in the morning and therefore not many people outside as I jogged down quiet streets past mostly shuttered businesses not yet opened for the day. The air smelled sickly to me, layered under a thick humidity. I thought of the one-room pool house I’d left back in Maryland. The air there wasn’t as crisp as in the fae realm, but it was ten times better than this.
My heart hurt again just at the memory of that house. I’d spent almost a month there connecting with Daniel and his pack. It was the time I’d spent with Jalisa. However, I only knew that from my journal entries. I had no visual memories of my experiences with her. The pain in my heart was not for her. I simply had no feelings for her. I didn’t remember her. The pain was ingrained because of our bond. Something the witch magic that masked our mate bond could not do is destroy the remnants of the connection. It felt like a wound that would not heal.
We did not have the benefits of a mate bond, just the negative pain from the disconnect. I didn’t have to dampen the bond, with my memory loss, I would have felt the same way. However, Jalisa would have been miserable. If I thought the pain now was bad, I knew enough about mate bonds to know that it could be ten times worse if we could not be together, and if I was doomedto not want her, I would inevitably leave. Whether I remembered her or not, I did not want to do that to another person. From what I’d read in my journal, I knew that Jalisa was too good for that. So, the pain that I felt in my heart was not because of a love loss but the pain one empathetic stranger would have for another. She was fully gone from my mind and that, in and of itself, was sad. It also made me anxious. This faerie I couldn’t recall, how was she coping? Who did this to us? How could I fix this?
Wrapped in my own thoughts, I didn’t notice that I was being followed and therefore, was not prepared when a big gust of wind blasted through me. It raised my body into the air, too strong for me to push through. Air tore itself out of my lungs, leaving a dizziness that soon resulted in my dimming vison until all consciousness left me.
I never felt my body fall.
The last thing I heard before my mind floated away was a flapping of wings.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jalisa
Ivan was missing. And not because he’d left me five days ago. It seemed everyone knew how to get in touch with him but me, and no one was talking. I would be leaving the human realm with a lot less friends. I had stubbornly waited to go home so that he’d have time to come to his senses. There was no way I would believe he’d completely forget me that quickly, despite Pierce’s warning.
We were stronger together. He was an idiot for leaving. Had he learned nothing from my mistake when I left? I didn’t know whether to be sad or angry at him. However, right now, I was worried. Because if Marcus was calling me to say his brother was reporting Ivan missing, something was very wrong. We knew we had targets on our backs, and now Ivan was out there on hisown. We were only lucky that Marcus’ brother, Harris, had eyes on him and that the restaurant Ivan was working at called him when Ivan didn’t show up for work. Knowing all that we did, we didn’t take that lightly. Harris immediately sent someone to Ivan’s place and verified that Ivan hadn’t just taken off. He then had one of his witches take an item from Ivan’s place to magically locate him.
They found nothing. Either Ivan was under a cloaking spell, or he was no longer in the human realm. I refused to believe any other option. If he were dead, even with our bond muted, I would have felt that. However, I felt a tightness in my chest from missing the bond. No, Ivan was alive.
“I need you to unmute the bond,” I told Billie as soon as I received the news that evening.
She nodded, waving her hand for me to sit down on her living room couch. “Do you think that will help you locate him?”
I took a seat, anxiousness clawing at my insides. “It should. We’re bonded. I should know wherever he is.”
One of her mates, a light brown eyed vampire with short curly hair named Tyson, walked into the space. He looked at us with empathetic eyes. I’d come to like him the most in the pack. He wasn’t what I expected at all from a vampire, with his friendly nature despite the dynamic personalities around him.
“When Billie went missing, Lila did a locator spell, but we didn’t have any luck until we all held on to something of Billie’s,” he explained. “We then knew exactly where she was even though she was under a cloaking spell. I’d like to think it was mostly due to the fact that I was bonded to her. None of the others were at that time.” He looked over to Billie with a sheepish grin, and she winked back at him.
I shifted in my seat, ready to get to action. “That’s good to know. So, Billie, you can unmute the bond, and then we can doa locator spell. Ivan has a shirt he left me. He said in one of his letters to me that it was in exchange for the one of mine he took.”
Billie tapped her chin. “Let’s do the spells in the guest house. You were both there for almost a month, it’ll have his essence, which helps.”
The three of us then gathered in the tiny space, Tyson there for morale support. In no time, Billie was able to undo the muting. I’d wondered if Ivan had considered that I would do such a thing. He thought he was doing me a favor by muting our bond, or more realistically, dampening it. However, he didn’t consider that I would undo it. Or did he think that I would abide by his wishes? Until this moment, I had. Despite my anger about his actions, I also understood his logic. There was a not so deep part of me that didn’t want to face the pain of having a mate who, through no fault of his own, didn’t want me. Although I felt the absence of him, it would be so much worse if we were still bonded. He had spared me, and he wouldn’t even remember it.
As soon as the bond came back, I felt like a weight had been lifted off me, but also, I noticed what I couldn’t determine before. Just as Harris’ people had said, Ivan was not here. I didn’t feel his presence in this realm. “He’s really gone,” I whispered more to myself than the others.
“Don’t freak out yet,” Tyson stated, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I almost crashed out when Billie went missing, but you have to focus. At least you don’t feel him in pain. That could mean he’s not hurt. The fact that you feel able to breathe better means he’s still alive.”
Billie nodded beside me in encouragement. She placed a hand on Ivan’s shirt that I was clutching and began to chant her location spell, her other free hand hovering over her tablet that showed a detailed map.
Unfortunately, her locator spell did not work as fast as the unmuting. I growled in frustration. “It’s not working, what’s going on? Should we get Lila and have her do the spell?”
Billie frowned, shaking her head. “No. I’m actually better at spells than Lila. I think this means that Ivan isn’t here. As in he’s not in the human realm. Like you thought.”
