Page 6 of Mates in Memory

After he explained everything one last time, Barry took his place as guardian next to the door. He towered over both of us and for a moment I was sad I didn’t live in a world where Uriel had the honor to stand on the other side of the doorframe as a mirror to his brother. I shook my head. I didn’t need Uriel to guard me. I had more than enough people in my life who loved me and had my back.

After I was cozy, Xenos walked me through a few basic relaxation techniques. I followed his voice until I lost it. Sinking into the feelings that came up around Uriel – the ones I never allowed myself to feel – was almost like falling asleep. Except I still heard Xenos speaking. His words weren’t coherent but they were there. I smelled him and Barry and the herbs. Then I fell. I fell backwards through time and space, my fingers digging into the soft furs piled on top of me. I fell through memories I recognized as my current incarnation and then unfamiliar ones. I had been an elf so many times but before that I had been a wolf, a badger, and even a whale. The last one wasn’t a shifter. Just a plain wild blue whale. That was perhaps my most peaceful life. Still, Uriel was there. He was there for all of them. It was as if we hadn’t ever been apart. For the love of the groves, we had even met in my current one. He just had to go and fuck it up.

Then everything stopped. It all stopped and I fell into myself. I was laying down and staring up at a clear night sky with unfamiliar stars. I wasn’t alone. There was a hand in mine, playing with the tiger’s eye beads on my bracelet with his thumb. My other side wasn’t empty either. It was Xenos. Not the Xenos I had left behind when I fell out of my body into my soul but Xenos how he must’ve been some long, forgotten time ago. He lay stretched out on his back, like I was. On his other side was his true-mate. It was Barry. Even back then he looked a lot like Uriel. I knew without knowing how that Barry and Xenos had their binding ceremony almost a moon ago. This moon it would be my and Uriel’s turn. All the soul groups had their own way of doing the magic and even within the group no two connections performed it exactly the same. We liked the moon, though. It was as if the moon was the witness to our magic and she alone bore the truth of what we were now. We wouldn’t be this way forever. You didn’t know much about what would happen the first time you were born in the other place. The place where people needed help and others sought adventure.

Uriel had spent months building our little hideaway for the ceremony. He did it in between helping out with all his siblings. There were so many of them that even after spending years with him, I couldn’t remember all their names. I couldn’t remember their faces right now either. The beads on my bracelet clinked together, reminding me why I couldn’t remember their faces. Of course, not all the details would come back to me.

I rolled onto my side and stared at my Uriel. I ran my fingers through his thick, soft hair and smiled.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure what to say. How could I tell him what would happen to us in the future? Only I didn’t have to. I didn’t even have the choice of what to say. This had all transpired in some fathomless time before the now. What I said had been said then and wouldn’t change now.

“Two nights from now we’ll bind ourselves together forever,” I whispered. “This is your last chance to back out.”

I was teasing him. We’d talked this all in circles for years. One should never bind themselves to someone without knowing the other person completely.

Uriel huffed and narrowed his eyes on me. He wasn’t amused by my little joke, and it was written across his face. Soon I’d know what was in his head and heart constantly and wouldn’t have to guess.

“Are you having second thoughts?” he arched a handsome brow, playing along with my game.

“Never in a million years but aren’t you afraid you’ll get bored of me?”

“You say bored as if it’s a bad thing. Who else would I ever long to spend my limited quiet moments with? In which other arms have I ever known peace?” he asked.

I leaned in to kiss him but remembered the others were with us. I glanced over my shoulder and they were gone. When had they snuck off? That was another perk of having a true-mate link. You could coordinate without speaking aloud.

So, I kissed him. It was a bottomless pit of time ago, but the brush of his lips still soothed something inside me. How did this man – this wolf elf with glorious kissing skills who spent most of his time caring for others become who I knew him as in my life? I lost the thread of my thoughts as his warm tongue swept around my mouth. He lifted me onto him in a straddle. I kissed him hard, grinding my hips over him, making him as hard as I already was.

“Uriel?” Someone called for him. A little kid from the sounds of it but I never saw their face. The memory shattered and I woke up in his arms. Surrounded by his scent, for a fraction of a second, I feared that I’d found Uriel in the real and solid world. No, that hadn’t happened. Whatever Xenos and my brain were doing, I had lurched forward to the morning of the ceremony.

I lay there watching my mate sleeping and slowly forgot that I wasn’t in my present anymore. I was me back then and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be anyone else.

Chapter 4

Creon

Night Shade Bear Territory

I lounged on our cot, waiting for Uriel to wake up. He was so beautiful in his sleep that sometimes it made me want to cry. Out of all the souls that I’d met and encountered how did the most beautiful one pick me? He was kind and generous to his family and strangers. He made time for everyone he cared about. He knew how to make a sword and fight with it. He also knew how to bake and weave. We’d had so many of our best conversations while we worked side by side. I was a little afraid of the ceremony. Not because I’d be bound to him forever but because within the next thirteen moons it would mean we’d be separated. That was the double-edged sword of the ceremony. Once you chose your other half or halves in some cases, you were eligible to be ‘reborn’ or ‘transported.’ There was no guarantee that you’d find your other half over there. You might not even be born on the same world. You might have to wait until you ‘died’ to see each other again and that was only if you crossed at the right time to cross paths. Sometimes you could wait, but not always. You could seek shelter in one of the zones that made you stay for a certain amount of time and hope that your mate remembered to do the same when he died, but if he’d forgotten… It was all so uncertain. Still, Uriel was already part of my soul and there was nothing I wasn’t willing to risk for him.

“Uriel! Creon!” Someone shouted our names from outside. It was Xenos and panic danced on every syllable that tumbled off his tongue. “Barry’s door is here! They’re making him go without me!”

Uriel was on his feet from a dead sleep before I even wrapped my brain around what Xenos’s words meant. They sank into my brain one by one. Barry’s door was here! His life door! He was off to have his first life!

I wrapped the sheet around my middle and took off after Uriel and Xenos! I didn’t want him to leave without having the chance to say goodbye. We found him standing in front of a tall mahogany door. The wood was engraved with leaves, vines, and a wolf. I wondered if that meant he’d be a wolf in his first life. I never got the chance to ask the others what they thought.

Xenos threw himself into Barry’s arms and cried into his chest. This was a good thing. This is what they had planned for. It was good, right? This wasn’t the beginning of the end or anything?

For a split second I remembered this was the past and this very well was the beginning of the end of the time we wouldn’t remember. Our good time. Our peaceful time.

We all hugged Barry goodbye and he told Xenos over and over again that he’d find him as soon as they were both born. He promised that he’d find him in every single life they lived. He whispered about how he’d talked to old ones who had lived so many lives and that they decided to stop doing the whole life and death thing and that they would guide him if he needed help. He clung to Xenos until his features began to change. The door swung open and a force like I had never seen before or since sucked my friend through the door and out of the grasp of his mate.

I moved to hug Xenos but the memory shifted again as if there was another gap. I sat on a soft blanket, surrounded by trees and Uriel’s scent. He was braiding his long hair back so that it didn’t get in the way. Bare shoulders were sort of essential for how things were done. That’s where we’d have to plant the seeds. Not everyone used seeds but it’s what our soul family did. I scratched my hand feeling the little green seed wanting to poke out of my skin. It had been there all my life, hidden away under my skin. It didn’t start poking up when I met Uriel. That began once I knew in my heart that I was going to choose Uriel to be my companion through all the cycles of life and death. It started to press toward the surface once I wondered when it would. The seed would never pass through on its own because it was driven by choice. If you wanted to give your seed away it had to be cut out.

“How do you want to do this?” Uriel grinned at me. “Your hands are steadier. You can cut with both hands.”

“You can get mine out first,” I said, offering him my palm with the sort of pure unbattered trust that only a young soul could. I did trust him. He’d never given me a reason not to. My Uriel had never given me a reason to doubt him for a single second and in that moment I could never imagine that he ever would.