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It was like an explosion erupted in my head the second Abigail’s flesh contacted mine. A thousand images plowed through my mind, one after the other, in no true order, flooding me with such force, I wanted to double over.
My life before, the war, my business in Pario City… and Abby. Always Abby.
“What?” Abby gasped, blinking as she cautiously stepped closer.
My mind continued to swim as I sorted through the files racing, the lost years attempting to reconnect, but it was all too much for the moment, and I had to sit down. I plopped unceremoniously onto the dirty floor of the shed and buried my head in my hands.
“What do you remember?” Abby pressed, rushing to my side.
“Everything,” I implored through the noise.
I saw her, Abby, her teary eyes, but she was lost among the horrors of war.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
Although it seemed made of lead, I managed to raise my chin and look at her, a haze filling my vision.
“I was here. In Pario City. You were here, too,” I muttered, struggling to put the events in order as they came in. “We were together…”
I inhaled sharply, my hand touching the glowing arch on my chest, the sensation making complete sense now. “We’re mates.”
I saw her face tighten, but her eyes softened at the same time.
“You rejected me,” she said coldly, and I cringed at her anger.
“I’m immortal,” I sighed, the details excruciating now. “I didn’t want to outlive you, to watch you grow old and die…”
I froze, realizing something else on top of all else, the reality slapping me in the face.
“You’re not human anymore!” I rasped. “You’re a shifter—a wolf, like me!”
She grimaced. “That happened after you disappeared,” she growled, casting me a sidelong look.
I stared at her closely, realizing how little she appeared to have aged over the past two hundred years. She looked exactly as she had the last time I’d seen her, flawless skin unlined by wrinkles, not a hint of gray among her strawberry blonde mane. Even for a shifter, she was aging well.
Would it have mattered if I’d known she would become a shifter? She’s still not immortal.
“Abby, I—”
“I don’t need to hear the same tired rhetoric you gave me back then,” she grouched. “What happened after you went to war? You died. Ash said you died in his arms.”
“Ash…” I breathed, remembering my demon shifter friend at my side through the war. I shook my head, trying to recall the details of that fateful battle.
“I died… no…” I paused, thinking. “I thought I was dead.”
Gnawing on the insides of my cheeks, I closed my eyes, the images popping through. Life drained out of me, my body falling limp on the battlefield. Blackness. I had been sure I was gone.
“Elijah!”
I opened my eyes again and looked at her.
“I was buried,” I explained. “Buried alive.”
Horror colored my mate’s face. “What?! But how could you die?”
I shook my head again. “I wasn’t dead,” I drawled. “I’m immortal.”
“Who buried you? Why would they think you were dead if you weren’t?”
