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Natalie
Lucian's house sat by a pond. A dock jutted out from the stunningly clear water, and two wooden chairs had been put at the end.
The building itself was a modern cabin with lots of windows, which allowed natural light to light up the rooms, as well as high ceilings, wood details, and two chimneys. A long back patio overlooked the pond, and I noticed a stable off to the left of the house.
Lucian's home was exactly as I’d envisioned it—beautiful, warm, and welcoming.
Not only was the house gorgeous, but it was also functional. Although there was a small library, but there were also books in each room, many of them written in the languages of different species as well as various human languages, and even the sacred language of the gods.
Over the hundreds of years that Lucian had been here, he'd made sure that he wasn't just existing but learning and evolving. Even though the afterlife was our last stop, that didn't mean it was the end.
Looking around, I promised myself I would do the same.
After getting the full tour of his house, I walked out to the back patio and sat down.
I took deep breaths, becoming one with the forest, and my body completely relaxed. I'd felt the same way when I visited Elinor. She and Lucian had been here for a long time, so they'd made this realm their home, and their living spaces reflected that.
I decorated my house the way I wanted to so I'd be comfortable, but it still didn’t feel like home.
But I was going to change that.
“Hey,” Lucian said, joining me with two cups in hand. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” I answered. “Your home is beautiful, Lucian."
"Thank you." He sat down beside me, and we both stared out at the pond. "When I arrived in this realm and was faced with an eternity of existence, I forced myself to learn as much as I could. That allowed me to stop dwelling on the life I’d left behind." He lifted his glass to his lips and took a sip of the cool liquid. "You can do the same, Natalie. Find something here that interests you, do something you wouldn't have been able to do on Earth. It might help you settle in better.”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning over to bump his shoulder with mine. “I’ll try to do that. And in the meantime, I’m hoping to hear back soon from the Soul Recovery Facility. Interacting with new souls is something I’d really like to do. I can’t think of a more perfect purpose for me.”
"You'll get it," Lucian said reassuringly. "It’s not like Earth, they just want to make sure you will be happy there."
“Fingers crossed.”
He frowned. “What is that?”
“Fingers crossed?” I laughed. “It’s just something we do on Earth”—I crossed my middle finger over my index finger—“when we want to attract good luck.”
He copied me, though awkwardly, making me laugh.
"Yeah," I told him. "That's it.” Then I figured I might as well go for broke. “So . . .” I drawled. “Do you have any other powers I don’t know about?”
Lucian took my empty glass from me and placed it on the ground. "No. I can manipulate water and ice, as you saw last night, and you already know about my telekinesis. But that's it. Still, I'm the only white wolf who has these abilities.”
He raised his hand, obviously knowing I was about to question that last statement. "And yes, I know that on Earth, both Elinor and Ruby were granted special powers. But there was a reason for it. The Goddess gave them the power they needed to defeat the vampires. But that isn’t the way things usually happen.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought all white wolves had abilities.”
He shook his head. "I was the first, and the Goddess accidentally gave me more of her divinity than she had planned to. I survived. But when she did it with another white wolf, he died.”
"I understand. So all white wolves have her divinity—though not too much of it, or it could be fatal. But you’re the only one with special powers."
"Right, thanks to the large dose of divinity she gave me. It took her three tries to find just the right amount, and I think she would have given up if it had taken a fourth. The wolves died horribly, and she hated it." Lucian looked away to stare at the still pond. "But she was determined to create a stronger werewolf, one who could face down a vampire. Normal wolves were being slaughtered.”
"It's funny that no other god did anything to help, even though all species were in danger," I said.
Lucian just scoffed.
That was something I always wondered about after we'd found TheHistory of the Damned, which told of the vampires's origins and the first war.
