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Roxy weaved her hands, a large portal opening in front of her. They wasted no time, the shield staying up as Cas and the witch jumped through. Roxy locked eyes with me, her dark eyes twinkling before she jumped through the portal. Seconds later it snapped shut, and the world fell quiet. Roxy had been a halfling this whole time.Cunty bitch.
With Cas gone, I slid the ring off of my finger, slipping it into my pocket for now. The second it left my skin, my exhaustion came flooding back into me, and I plopped my ass down right on the ground.
“I need to check on the others,” Wolfe said as he stood from where Lily was still being healed, Nia still hard at work on her. He ran off to the rest of the pack, but the fight was pretty much over. With the addition of Aura and Varus, they’d made quick work of the rest of the enemies.
Sweat beaded down Nia’s forehead as she worked. Lily’s change had also been triggered by the spell from the ring, and I could see some of the life come back into her complexion as Nia worked. She would be okay.
I felt a presence behind me, and I craned my neck backward to look, regretting it almost immediately as I looked upward into Callan’s nakedness from where he towered above me. “Happy to see me?” I quipped as I rotated away. He was a beautiful man, but no man looked good from that angle.
A surge of emotion rushed through me. Confusion, lust, anger, and the strongest one, happiness. Something suspiciously akin to love. But none of these emotions were mine. I felt them, but like they were outside of my heart, just on the outskirts.
“I can feel you,” Callan whispered, pulling me up to my full height as he scanned my face. His eyes glazed over, and suddenly he wasn’t looking at me. He was lookingthroughme as he rooted through the same emotions I was feeling. These weren’t mine.
They werehis.
“I don’t understand,” he whispered as he touched a hand to my cheek cautiously.
“Does this mean you’re not going to die?” I asked stupidly. I was so tired; it was hard to even form coherent sentences.
He laughed, the freest sound I had ever heard him make, both hands coming up to cup my face as he leaned down, planting a soft kiss on my forehead. “I don’t know what it means, but I think I like it.”
* * *
We satoutside the infirmary while we waited for Lily to wake up, discussing what had happened. Bloodied and bruised, we took turns getting healing magic from Nia as she did her best to help everyone out without exerting too much of her energy. She’d done as much as she could for Lily, and now she just needed to sleep it off.
“What does this mean? How can we be mates?” I directed my question to Finn, but it was Oliver who spoke. I sat next to Callan on the couch, his hand placed protectively on my lower back. He’d barely let me out of his sight since the fight ended, but I wasn’t complaining. I hadn’t been able to feel his emotions since the field, and I wondered if it only reacted to strong emotions. Or maybe he had learned to block me out?
“You can feel each other, yes?” Oliver gave us a hard stare, looking from one to the other.
I nodded.
“Have you had any shared dreams?”
I shook my head, but Callan nodded yes. “What, when?” I asked incredulously.
“It wasn’t a dream, but you came to me that one night. Right before I joined you in the Faerie realm. I’d call it more of an apparition.”
My eyes widened as the memory of the dream came floating back to me. “That was real?”
“Definitely true mates,” Oliver said matter-of-factly, leaning back in his chair to rest his tired bones. “True mates share a connection over everything else, a bond determined by the soul, between a Fae and their partner. There haven’t been many, not much is known about them really, except that the connection is stronger than anyone can ever experience otherwise. Connected in life, and in death.”
“But how could that be? He had a mate. Lexi was his mate; I saw their bond.”
“It’s impossible for one to have more than one mate. There is no room in the soul.”
“Then how?” I pressed. What if this bond with Callan was some sort of residual effect of the ring, which still burned a hole in my pocket. We all sat there, no one having a suggestion. I wracked my brain over our fight, and Lexi’s words came floating back to me, words I didn’t understand in the heat of the moment. I leaned forward, everyone’s eyes on me.
“When I was fighting her, she said something to me. Right before I . . . killed her.” I hesitated on the words, the realization of what I’d done sinking in. Whether or not she deserved it, I’d still taken someone’s life. “She said, ‘I always knew he’d find his mate.’”
Callan frowned, his head cocking to the side. I knew he was reading me, reading my emotions, and the more I thought about that, the more I didn’t like it. I needed to learn how to create a wall between these bonds. No one should ever have to know exactly how someone else is feeling.
“That implies she didn’t think she was his,” Finn said, his brow knitted.
“I recognized one of those witches,” Wolfe interjected, his face pinched in anger. After the battle had ended, we’d tallied losses. We’d killed all the enemy except the ones who escaped, but we’d lost ten of our own. We’d won the battle, but it sure didn’t feel like it, especially for the Alpha of the pack. “The dark-haired one. I’ve seen her before.”
“Where?” Callan commanded.
Wolfe ran a hand through his hair, letting out a calming breath. “In Montana. She worked closely with the Supreme in a lot of situations.” The Supreme Alpha, otherwise known as Wolfe’s dad. One of Cas’s witches did business with the leader of all the North American shifters. I knew witches worked for the highest bidder, but was it too much of a coincidence?
