“B-Bas…pl-please…need…to go…back…” Her head thumps to the floor and rolls loosely to the side as she blinks slowly up to me.
“Eden! Oh, Eden what have you done?” I kick the door closed behind me and scoop her off the floor and lay her on the bed before examining her hands to see where all the blood is coming from. I frown in confusion when I find her fingertips shredded and some of her nails missing and others half ripped off. I turn and look at the door where she was scratching and see the deep grooves stained with blood. I turn back to her in disbelief. She’s gone mad to do this to herself. There’s an abrupt knock on the door so I toss a blanket over her to cover her damaged hands and rush to let the servants in with all that I ordered. I stand between them and Eden until the bath is filled and the food and water have been placed on the table and then dismiss them once the foul chamber pot has been emptied I dismiss them and lock the door once again.
I just stand and stare at her laying so lifeless on the bed and consider if it would be a mercy to end her life to send her back to her own time. Whether I do or don’t, I cannot let her suffer in such a state. I pour her a cup of water and lift her hands gently to bring the cup to her lips so she can drink. She turns her head away once she drinks half the cup so I set it aside and pull the knife I have in my boot and slice across my palm and then cup my hand so my blood pools in it. I dip each of her damaged fingers in it and clamp my free hand around her wrist harder when she hisses at the pain and tries to pull away. Once all of her fingers are starting to heal, I tip her head back and pour what’s left of my blood into her mouth and then reopen the wound and do it again twice more until I’m satisfied it is enough to clear her mind but not enough to send her into a frenzy like before. I hold her in my arms until she struggles to pull away.
“Ah! My hands! Fuck, what the hell?…Jesus! What did I do?” She stares down at her healing fingers with horror and then looks at me in shock. “Am I crazy? Bas! I think I’m losing my mind! What the fuck is going on?”
I pull her back against me and bury my face in her hair. I have no answers for her and I am at a loss on what to do. She struggles once again for me to release her and when I pull back her hand comes up and slaps me across the face and then she’s jumping to her feet.
“You fucking bastard! You LEFT me here, trapped me here! I couldn’t open the door. I couldn’t call out to anyone for help. How could you do that to me?”
I reach for her but she pulls away with a flinch and glances over her shoulder at the door and then back at me with a betrayed look.
“Take it back! Release me, Bas. You can’t keep me a fucking prisoner here!”
“Eden, I…I can’t. I need to…protect my brothers.”
She rears back in outrage. “From me? You have to protect them from me? What? Fuck! Tell me what’s going on right now!”
I reach for her again, slowly this time and she lets me pull her down next to me on the bed.
“Something is…wrong…with you. You don’t remember how you got here or some of the things you are doing. You seem…obsessed. I don’t know if the mirror has done something to you to make you this way but it is only when I give you my blood that you become clearheaded and rational. As soon as it wears off you become manic again. Look what you did to your hands! You promised you wouldn’t come back again and hurt us this way but you did it anyway and you can’t give me a reason why. So yes, I have to protect the others from you. I am sorry. I do not know what else to do.”
She clutches at her head and moans before pushing back to her feet and turning toward me.
“Then kill me. Send me back to my own time but you can’t leave me here trapped in this room!”
I shake my head. “Don’t you think I’ve considered doing that? I could easily snap your neck and have you fade away again but what is to stop you from coming back again and again and then whatever is making you this way could get worse and worse every time you travel. Eden, I love you. I never want to let you go and I hate seeing you this way, in so much pain. I am doing this to protect my brothers but also to protect you. I can’t help you if you are descending into madness a hundred and fifty years in the future!” I shove myself up to my feet and grab her by both arms. “What if you travel again and I don’t find you? Do you remember how I found you this time? You were surrounded by rough men who would have hurt you if I hadn’t intervened. You came back dressed in your modern clothing. You had no one and nothing to protect yourself, not even your sanity. Eden, I’m trying to protect all of us by keeping you here!”
Tears fall from her eyes and she looks so broken, lost, and small as the fight drains out of her.
Her voice is flat and lifeless when she tells me, “This won’t work. Keeping me trapped here? Hiding me from the others? None of it will work. I can feel them, Bas. I can feel my wolves searching for me, right here.” She rubs the middle of her chest with a shaking hand. “I can hear Luca yelling for me to come back, here.” Her hand lifts to the side of her head. “You need to take me to them. Whatever is happening to me, I think it’s because we aren’t together. Please, help me.”
I pull her against me, needing to feel her closer. She could be right. Maybe putting all of us together again would…cure whatever is happening to her. Luca’s mental state would stabilize with her back and the wolves would stay with us again. I would have my family back in one piece…for a time. But I know what would happen when she leaves again. Luca said it is a circle that we will go around and around on until every single one of us is destroyed completely. It has been ninety-three years since the others have seen her. They’ve had time to grieve and maybe with even more time they will fully accept her loss and we can get back what we once had before she came into our lives. Do I want to bring her back to them and start this damaging cycle all over again? What if she is wrong and the madness taking her just continues to worsen. What will it do to all of us to watch her destruction? Giving her my blood is only a stop gap unless I fully turn her into one of my kind and that would bring a whole other set of tragedies. I still do not know the right thing to do so I kiss her instead, trying to convey how much I love her but she pulls away and my arms drop from her. I turn away and pick up the sack of clothing I brought with me and begin pulling them out.
“You should bathe before the water cools and then eat while your mind is still clear. I have brought you some of the clothing you left the last time so you will be more comfortable. When I lay her robe out on the bed her trembling fingers brush the fabric. Her voice is hopeless and filled with despair, matching the look in her eyes.
“You will destroy what you are trying to protect, Sebastian. They will find me and when they do, they will hate you for what you have done.” Her voice drops to a whisper and what she says next almost breaks me. “As I do.”
The last of the clothing falls from my hands to the bed and I force myself to turn my back on her. I strip my clothes off and toss them to the side and then scrub her scent from my skin before dressing in the clothing I brought. I need to leave. I need space from her and the madness that will soon be on her again when the small amount of blood I gave her wears off but I must be sure that the wolves will not scent her on me. When I reach for the door, I can’t stop myself from turning back for one more look. She’s curled up in the mess of sheets on the bed with her robe clutched against her chest, staring blankly at the wall.
“Eden, I promise I will figure this out. I just need more time. I know you said you hate me but I love you.” She doesn’t even blink at my words and I sigh. “Lock the door behind me.”
I leave the tavern a defeated man and slowly make my way home. Her words ricochet around my head.They will hate you, as do I.Is she right? In my quest to protect them all, have I destroyed us? I can no longer make these decisions alone. I will explain everything to the wolves and ask them to take her far away from here without them telling Luca. I will lose them and Eden forever but I will stand steady in my will to protect Luca. Time will heal him. I am sure of it.
I do not see the two wolves with watchful eyes crouched in the trees as I ride past them nor do I see when they rise and split apart. One running back the way I came from with his nose to the ground and the other trailing me all the way back to the house.
Finn
Icircle around to the back of the house unseen and shift to my human form before slipping in through the back door that is closest to the rooms Luca designed for Cade and me, quickly wash and pull on some clothes. Sebastian is lying to us. At first, we thought it was Luca hiding her away somewhere but after talking to him and watching him closely we know it is not him. His mind is fractured, just as Bas told us it was.
Our brother’s mind plays tricks on him and he often does not even know what era we are currently living in. One moment he believes she is here with us and the next he is ranting and raving at her for leaving. In between bouts of rambling he berates himself for not being the man she deserves. I do not think Luca is even capable of hiding her and lying to us about it.
The bond we feel for our mate came back to life in a jolt of panic and urgency and despair that knocked us off our feet it was so unexpected. Sebastian assured us she wasn’t coming back so when we shifted to run the wilds and escape the loss of her we never thought we would feel it again until the years took us to her time. We traveled back as quickly as we could but when we felt her happiness and sexual pleasure we knew our brothers had found her and would keep her safe until we arrived. Two days we felt the pleasure through the bond only to have it change again to the deepest despair and then just a few hours ago to anger and confusion. Sebastian is lying.
Eden, our mate, would not lay with another man outside our pack. If not with Luca then she was with Bas and we will find out why he is hiding her from us and what he has done to cause her such pain. Cade has gone to track his back trail in hopes of finding where he is keeping her and I go to confront him. I search the house to find him but cannot locate him. I spot Luca through one of the many windows. He seems to have a fixation on chopping wood to ensure that the many fireboxes stay roaring to heat the water tanks he installed for Eden. Since Cade and I have been back, we have seen him out there with the ax for hours at a time.
I turn away from the window and continue my search for my lying brother. I finally locate him in the room that Luca made for her. He’s sitting in a chair with the red dress she once wore long ago in his lap as his fingers run over the material. It’s faint but I catch her scent in the air. I do not know if it is from the gown or if it comes from him being with her. Bas lifts his head slowly to look at me in the doorway and I see the pain and suffering written clearly on his face.
