Years were stripped away, lifetimes torn apart, as the walls around my mind and heart were completely destroyed. Two realities collided and it hurt.
I remembered everything.
He was Alaunus and he was mine. I loved him more than anyone else in the world. I couldn’t live without him. He had once been the son of an important man, respected and admired in our village. I had been the outcast, a widow with healing abilities. The villagers often asked for my help in private but shunned me in public.
Yet I endured it because I wanted to help those in need. I cared about them even as they treated me as an oddity.
I remembered our daughter and the joy I felt when I conceived her. Tears gathered in my eyes as numerous questions were answered. My pregnancy had frightened me when I recognized it for what it was. I had woken on the bank of the stream two thousand years ago, frightened, alone, and with no memories. Then within weeks, I discovered I was pregnant and I couldn’t remember how or who I’d loved. Was I married? A widow? It was terrifying to not remember.
And the villagers, who had been so kind and compassionate with me at my unexpected arrival, had turned on me. I was unwed and pregnant. They assumed my memory loss was a pretense to prevent them from judging me. And when my little girl died within minutes of her birth, only one woman had comforted me. She had taken the baby and buried her while I lay in my bed, delirious from grief and an infection. By the time I resurfaced from the feverish hallucinations, it had been a week and the woman had moved on to another town. The villagers had shunned her as well. Because she helped me.
The scars that I had thought long healed were reopened anew, bleeding and raw. The loss felt fresh once more.
Our daughter had died and I hadn’t known who her father was. He’d never had a chance to hold her, to kiss her sweet face. He’d been denied the short contact that I’d had with her.
And the fault lay with Rhiannon.
She had done this to us, used her power to curse us and send us to another realm. And even then, she wasn’t done. She had followed and watched us from afar until the time was right.
My grief tangled with my rage, gathering in the pit of my stomach. The magic that swirled around us now was a combination of his and mine, twisting and closing in on us like a hurricane. Yet we were within the eye of the storm.
Macgrath—no, Alaunus—lifted his head and stared down at me, his eyes like two green flames, brilliant and hot. He looked ferocious, furious, yet as grief-stricken as I felt. Rhiannon had taken us from our home and cost us lifetimes together.
Alaunus and I had wandered this world alone for two millennia, always seeking something more and never finding it.
“It’s you,” he murmured, his gaze searching my face. “You’re truly here.”
I touched his cheek with trembling fingers. The emotions filling me were overwhelming and uncontrollable, and my mind was just as chaotic, overloaded from trying to process everything that was happening.
“And it’s you,” I whispered. “It’s been so long.”
He looked down then, his hand going to my belly. “Our daughter. Did she survive the curse?” he asked.
The tears I’d been holding back streamed from my eyes. I shook my head. “She didn’t live more than a few moments after her birth.”
His eyes closed and he lowered his forehead against mine. “What was her name?” he asked, his voice so soft that I could barely hear it.
“Calla,” I answered.
A small drop of water hit my cheek and I realized that my strong, hardened vampire was crying for the child he’d never even seen.
It broke me.
I cried out, sobs escaping me in harsh exhalations, and the power surrounding us exploded with the force of our emotions. The entire house shook from the magic that left our entwined bodies. The beautiful life we could have had together had been stolen.Wehad been stolen from each other. Holding each other close, we mourned all that we had lost and all that we never possessed.
