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“Listen. Explain to Noah about your gift. Make him understand, and I mean really understand how vitally important it is that he trust you one hundred percent. That he believes in you and what you tell him. If he doesn’t, all will be lost.”
“I . . . okay.” He raked a trembling hand through his hair. “I’ll tell him now.”
“Good. Don’t waste any time. Treasure every second you have together, because catastrophe is headed your way and I can’t stop it.”
“What’s going to happen?” he whispered. Noah edged close, tucking himself into Nix’s side.
“I don’t know, exactly,” he said with real regret. “Only what I’ve told you. Both of you remember what I said, and you’ve got a chance.”
“All right. Nick, thank you.”
“Sure. And if there’s anything else I can do to help you both, you know I will.” Clapping them both on the shoulder, he turned and left them standing there.
Noah hesitated a beat before turning to his mate. “What in the actual fuck was that about?”
Nix let out a deep sigh. “Let’s go sit somewhere and talk.”
Casting about, he settled on a popular grassy spot under a large tree at the edge of the field they used for ball games. That would be as good a place as any to unload the weirdness of his supposed gift.
Once they were seated next to each other, he began. “So, like Nick said, I was on leave—this was a few years ago, when I was about your age. I went down to New Orleans with some of my Navy buddies, and they thought it would be hilarious to go see a Voodoo witch. Get some love potions or some shit, who knows? Me, I was freaked the hell out and was just standing in the foyer of the old woman’s house while they conducted business with her.”
“If you didn’t go in to see her, how did you meet?”
“She came out with them when they were leaving and spotted me. Right off, she honed in on me, staring at me like she’d seen a ghost, and waved me forward. My friends wanted to stay, but she ordered them out. Said nobody could hear what she had to tell me until the time was right. She said, You are your namesake. I hadn’t even told her my name.”
The memory still gave him the chills.
“You are your namesake,” Noah repeated. “Phoenix?”
“Yeah. A bird that rises from the ashes.”
“Except you’re a wolf.”
“Well, I wasn’t then. The point is, she said my gift is that of the phoenix. That if I die, I can be reborn, but there’s a hitch.”
“Of course there is,” Noah said dryly. “What’s the hitch?”
“I have to die by fire.”
His mate stared at him, horror slowly dawning on his face. “No way. Fuck that shit! You’re not going to die, by fire or anything else! That’s insane!”
“I don’t want to die, but you heard Nick,” he said, taking Noah’s shaking hands in his. “You believe me, believe in me, don’t you?”
“Of course I do! But—”
“No buts. Remember what Nick said, when the time comes. I don’t know what it is, but it sounds bad. Believe in me, and remember my gift.”
He was every bit as freaked as Noah. But when he saw the tears well up in his mate’s eyes and spill over, his only thought was comforting him. Quickly, he pulled Noah into his arms and kissed him.
“Ah, baby. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”
“Nick’s visions always come true,” he replied with a sob. “I spent so many years wishing for somebody of my own to love. I can’t lose you now.”
“Hey, they come true, but not always exactly like he saw them. Micah was supposed to die, remember? But the course of events changed, and he didn’t.”
Belatedly, he realized what Noah had said—somebody to love. Does he love me?
“I know, but it still scares me.”
