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“That’s why you kept pushing him my way? I remember thinking you were strangely insistent and relentless about it.”
Ben shrugged.
“You know how I get these…feelings. I justknow. Even if I can’t explain it, I feel compelled todosomething.”
“I know what you mean,” his father Gabriel said from a couple seats down.
“You’ve always been precocious for your age. Wise, I would even say. You always saw the truth of things when no one else could.”
“But why are you just realizing now, Benjamin?” Ere asked.
“What are you thinking? There’s something important you haven’t told us, isn’t there? What is it?”
Trust Ere to see right into the heart of the matter. The man’s intuition was uncanny.
Ben shook his head, trying to make sense of his own thoughts.
Conversation around the table had stopped, as if everyone present knew that this was important. Whatever Ben had stumbled upon was critically, vitally important.
“I…remember…things…from my past life, I think,” Ben said haltingly, absently rubbing his temple as a headache began to throb behind his eyes.
“Is it your Awakening, Benji?” Annie whispered from his right side.
She was here for a two-week visit before classes started back up. She slipped her hand into Ben’s beneath the table, and he was suddenly, terribly glad she’d come.
“I don’t know,” he rasped, frowning to gather his thoughts and because of the ever-increasing headache.
After a few seconds, he jerked his head up and blurted at Ere, “You must not go on any more of the Jade Emperor’s quests. It is I who must go.”
“What?” Ere squawked.
“But that’s ridiculous. Those quests are repayment toward the debtIowe. I won’t be putting you at risk on my behalf, Benjamin. I am beyond grateful for what you’ve already done. Even though I want to lock you in your room sometimes to prevent you from doing more crazy stunts like that.”
“As if,” Ben huffed, sounding a bit more like his twenty-year-old self.
These days, his human youth made an appearance more and more rarely.
“You can’t lock me anywhere, Ere. I’ll just figure out a way to break out and do what I feel is right.”
“This child!” Ere gasped to the table at large.
“Since when!”
“Since he was old enough to walk and talk,” Inanna, Ben’s mother, muttered beside Gabriel.
“Anyway,” Ben interjected, “it’s too risky for you to go on these quests. Sorin would never let you go alone—”
The male in question grunted in absolute agreement.
“—and you would lose your mind if anything happened to Sorin—”
Ere growled a dragon growl deep in his throat in fucking adamant agreement.
“—so, it’s best to keep you both from taking too many risks. At least for now. Until we know for certain Sorin is one hundred percent. And until we know what we’re dealing with in terms of the JE’s games.”
“Are they games, Ben, or something else?” Tal asked from his left side.
Ben shook his head.
