Page 10 of Matched in Mayhem

“Sit down,” he had told me and I did take a seat across the table from him. “You’re in the right place. I know who you are.”

“So there was some mistake with my soul pool then?” I asked him and he laughed.

“No, mistakes like that aren’t made,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his arms comfortably beside his big head. “You’re right where you need to be. Not many avenues for you to return. Your parents didn’t have to be someone from a past life, but it wasn’t a bad choice either. It fit the guidelines for balancing the cosmic scales and all that.”

“So, that’s what this is? My punishment is to be your descendent and never get… Never have my mate again?”

“I’m not an asshole. I’m not stopping you from flying to your true-mate right now, Raziel. You’re choosing to abstain from meeting him. It’s not my place to judge that choice. Sure, it’s mostly omegas with the sight who have to juggle their deepest desires with the wellbeing of others. Maybe that part is a bit of cosmic scale balancing.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. While I’d rather hack off my own wings than say an omega was a lesser entity, the guy I was before would’ve probably had no qualms with it. That guy wasn’t here anymore. Sometimes I couldn’t believe I was actually ever him. Only I knew I was.

“So what do you want from me?” I asked.

“What do you want from me? You’re the one who finally opened the door,” he said.

“I… this sucks,” I said.

“It does. That’s the secret of life. Most of it will suck. It’ll be hard work or hard times or everyone around you is a pain in the ass. That’s life, hatchling. You have extra knowledge. So, like always, the more you know, the more you understand how much the world sucks.”

“So… It’s just going to suck forever?”

“Yes, the world is going to suck forever,” he nodded. “Overall, there will always be some terrible thing going on from now until the end of time. You cannot stop them all. For you, personally?” he asked and then shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll suck forever, kid. I think you’re so close to figuring out a lot of things. The biggest thing you must remember is that just as you were not always this version of you, you weren’t always that version of you either. You were others before and will be others again in the likely course of events. Who were you before all of this?”

“Someone who loved him,” I said.

“You were and you are. You’re not ready yet. Come back at a later date,” he said.

“What about today?” I asked him.

“You’ll figure today out. Look at it this way, you’ve figured out one hundred percent of the days of your life this time around,” he smirked.

“You’re sort of an asshole,” I said.

“Eh, I never said I was nice,” he shrugged and a second later I was alone in the room.

That’s how most of my early meetings went with Frost Moonscale. I still hadn’t told another living soul that I talked to him. At first, I thought my brain was making him up. Like I was hallucinating to deal with what a monster I had been before or hell, maybe my brain was broken then and now. After my fifth chat with him, I got my brain scanned for everything the healers knew how to scan for. After all the tests were done, I was told I had a healthy, well-developed, and appropriately sized brain. All my brain activity was as expected too. So, I had to accept that I was indeed talking to Frost Moonscale. I could’ve told my parents or grandparents. Hell, I could’ve told Bennie or Slyvin. Either of them would’ve believed me without questioning it. For them, Frost Moonscale was as real and alive as he was for me.

Now, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve opened the door to the inner chamber. No one has ever stopped me and somehow Frost has never failed to be there, leaning back in his chair as if he’s the dean of some ethereal academy and I’m the student he can’t seem to get to pass his final exam. Only, Frost had never told me I’m a failure. Honestly, no one’s ever said those words to me, except for myself. I’d failed my true-mate before in ways that I cannot talk about. Cannot even voice to the few people who know who I am. Maybe that failure is still encoded onto my soul, no matter what Frost says.

“You did it, kid,” Frost said as I walked into the room this time. “You actually pulled it off.”

“You didn’t think I could?” I laughed, sounding more confident than I felt.

“I knew you could, but… Shit happens, kid.”

It was over a year ago that Frost took me back to the time before. Maybe it was just a vision. Maybe it was a meditation. I’m still not sure how it works. Only I knew what I saw and I believed what he showed me too. Why would Frost lie to me? Wasn’t it in his best interest that his descendants not run around making fools of themselves? He showed me a bit of what life was like before I came to Earthside with my mate. Other people I know now had been there too, but so was Bennie. We were friends then. Seeing all these people as they were before Earthside – before corporeal forms were ever involved – really opened my eyes. Sometimes it made life feel like one big masquerade. When I came to the first thing I asked Frost wasn’t about life back then, but about who was Bennie’s mate now.

I’d never forget how his eyebrows quirked up and that amused, surprised look that danced through his eyes before it was replaced with sheer mischief.

“Bennie’s mate, huh?” he asked. “What’s your plan?”

“Bennie’s a good guy. He should have his mate,” I shrugged even as the memories of everything I saw before faded to impressions rather than images.

“Bennie’s your best friend,” he said.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “That’s not exactly top secret.”

“Not a bad place to start.”