I didn’t have time to respond to him, though, because the doors to the Pink Room opened and I heard a familiar voice.
“Juneau?” My mother, dressed in a nightgown, gasped as she stepped further into the room. “Are my eyes playing tricks on me, is it really you?”
“Mama!” My throat tightened with tears as I ran to her and threw myself into her arms. Her familiar scent filled my nose as I pressed myself tightly to her frame. She was thinner than she had been before I left, reminding me that she was sick.
“Oh my stars, my girl.” My mother began to press kisses to my face, her eyes watering as she took me in.
“Where have youbeen, and what on earth are you wearing?” she asked, taking in the jeans and t-shirt that I was dressed in. “We thought that someone had taken you away that night!”
I shook my head. “No, that didn’t happen. It’s very hard to explain, but I fell through that mirror and into the future, Mama,” I said, bracing for her to call me crazy, to say that I must have been wandering around in some kind of a state for the past three months.
But instead of doing all of that, my mother seemed to digest the information in the same way that she would anything else. She took it all in stride.
“It doesn’t matter what happened to you, I’m just glad to have you back. Nicky and Timothy will be ecstatic to see you again, they’ve been out in the streets looking for you every night.” My mother began to pull me toward the door. For just a moment I let her, just happy to have her back again. But then I remembered my guys.
Could I go the rest of my life without them? I already knew the answer to that, even if it meant I was going to hurt my mother.
I pulled my mother to a stop. “Mama, I can’t stay. I have to go back to the future, to my pack.” I reached up to rub Rex’s bond mark on the back of my neck.
She didn’t believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed me either.
“Mama, the night of the gala I fell through that mirror and landed in 2022. I met my pack there. I can’t just leave them behind,” I told her, nibbling on my lower lip.
My mother frowned at me. “Juneau, I don’t think you are completely well. Magic doesn’t exis—”
I raised my hand in between us, cutting off her words as a shaky flame flickered to life in my palm.
“By the gods,” my mother whispered as she watched me play with the flame. She was quiet for a time before she finally looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears again. “It’s true then? You have a pack waiting for you?”
I nodded. “They are good men and being without them feels as if someone has punched a hole through my soul.” I couldn’t imagine feeling Rex’s bond stretched like this forever, I wouldn’t survive.
My mother’s gaze softened as she wiped at her tears. “I’ve felt the same way about your father ever since he passed… I can’t in good conscience force you to remain here and feel like that for the rest of your life.”
I hugged her again, hoping that she could feel every ounce of my love for her through it. “I love you, Mama, I’ve missed you so much.”
“And I’ve missed you, my Tot. We all have.” My mother’s breath hitched on a sob, but by the time we pulled away from one another she had already regained her composure. “So, how do we get you home?”
I frowned, therein lay my main problem. The mirror was broken, so that path was closed off completely to me.
I needed to find something that could be connected to my pack, but I was drawing a sudden blank.
Then the sound of a clock chiming midnight came from the top of the stairs. “The clock,” I gasped, leaving my mother to hurry up the steps where the grandfather clock still stood proudly on the landing. In 1915 it was well-cared for and shining, but its pock-marked counterpart had definitely still been sitting in the storage room of the bar.
“The clock, Tot?” my mother asked as she joined me.
“Yes, they bought it when they bought the mirror from an auction,” I explained as I pressed my palm against the cool glass, hoping for something to happen but making a frustrated noise when nothing did.
“What sort of world is the future where the Wildes have to sell their property? We must have fallen on hard times,” my mother muttered, scandalized.
I didn’t answer her, instead I called out to the voice in my head.‘I have a connecting object, what do I do now?’
‘Someone connected to you needs to be touching the clock as well. The stronger the connection the less magic I have to use,’the voice explained.
‘Connected, like a bond?’I asked, thinking of Rex’s words about the strange feeling that hehadto bond with me during my heat.
‘Precisely, though I fear that the stretch of time might be too much for you to overcome, Juneau,’he said, his voice sad.
‘You leave that to me, just be ready,’I said as I began to mentally start to reel in the bond. It was hard to do because it was heavy, like I was pulling an anchor up into a boat.
