I raised my gaze as I shouldered my backpack, and my green eyes took his breath away. Something in Drustan’s gut tugged toward me. Longing to be near me.
Could she be…?He thought.No. No, she couldn’t. He and I were too young. Drustan wasn’t twenty-six yet. He couldn’t develop a mating bond yet. I was even younger than him, so his sudden focus and infatuation had to be a mistake.
But wait. “My sister is human?” Drustan asked his mother. She nodded, and suddenly the image went blurry.
Fading. Shifting to something else entirely.
Darkness, fear, suffering, and distant screams consumed my being. Pain stabbing my skull. Drustan’s cry of agony.
Kill me, Drustan begged.End me already. Be done with it.
Wait for me!My voice from years prior rang in his mind, causing the shadows and demons of the Gravhune to lessen their attack.
Wait for me!The memory of my voice was getting clearer the more he focused on it. Years had passed, but Drustan could still remember my face. My freckles. My green eyes. My hair. The holes in the knees of my jeans. The way I bit my bottom lip as I adjusted my Walkman to restart my music.
Wait for me!He focused on the memory of my voice as pain threatened to tear him apart. As demons and misery clawed at his mind, taunting him to end it all. The agony of the torture still registered in his body, but he disassociated from it. Focusing on me.
He’d never get to know if that human was his mate or not. Revisiting the human realm to search for me would put his sister at risk, and after that one single visit to the human realm, he’d made a promise to his mother to keep his half-sister safe. But it wasn’t as if Drustan was ever going to see the light of day again anyway.
What was I doing in the human realm? Was I happy there? Did I have a family of my own now? Children? A human mate?
Wait for me!
My face solidified in his memory, moments before another prison mate growled and charged Drustan, ready to attack. Fully consumed by the madness of the Gravhune.
Wait for me!With my voice clear in his mind, grounding him, Drustan ripped apart the deranged prison mate with his bare claws.
The image shifted again. The torture of the Gravhune still haunted Drustan on occasion. Drinking helped numb him to it. Keeping the public at arm’s length helped more.
What didn’t help? His sister was being pulled into Hyvenmere by a lustful fae, too selfish to be near, what Drustan assumed was, his mate, to truly care about her safety. All the effort Drustan’s mother put into protecting Audrey from this realm was officially wasted. Because of Liam’s naïve narrative, Caelena and Drustan were ordered by Ilia to visit the human realm. To learn Audrey’s weaknesses. Find a way to take her down.
“I found something earlier today that you might be interested in,” Caelena told Drustan after scouting the human realm on her own that morning. She didn’t share with Drustanwhatshe found, ensuring that he would follow her back to the human realm that evening.
While disguised as humans, Caelena and Drustan entered a small but noisy dwelling with the wordsSun Beanon the front. My coffee shop.
Following the scent of Audrey, they decided to take a break from their spying, sit down, and enjoy the music. Caelena was always excited to experience new things, as sheltered as she was. She hummed along with the music, smiling at all the energy and joy filling the space.
That’s when Drustan heard my voice. It had been fifteen years since he heard it, but he recognized my voice as if a single day hadn’t passed. The voice that Caelena could surely recognize after flitting around in Drustan’s mind for years.
Drustan’s body tightened on high alert. The noise of all the other humans and musicians faded into nothing. My voice, singing backup for the performer that night as I played the drums, made his chest tighten, and his ears relax. Every cell in his body wanted to jump out of his chair and run toward me.
It’s her. He thought. Focusing on the stage, after humans moved out of his way, he saw me. Ripping the drums with a soft smile as I leaned over into the microphone to accompany the singer.
Everything he suspected as an adolescent was true. He and the human female he stumbled upon years ago were bonded in a sacred way.
In a blink, the image changed again.
“Bring her to me.” Drustan was drinking heavily again.This is dangerous, he thought. He couldn’t have a mate. Ahumanmate. Not in this political climate. His father would surely kill me if he found out.
But Audrey would put me in danger anyway.
“Is—is that the best option?” Caelena asked with crossed arms, frowning at the empty whiskey bottle Drustan set on the table.If I knew you were going to actthisrecklessly, I would not have led you to your long-lost human mate, Caelena scolded him in his mind.
“I can’t—” Drustan couldn’t stop picturing my face. All grown up. More beautiful than he remembered. Myvoice. He felt so spoiled, having practically an hour of new words I’d sung to commit to his memory. Memory he could call upon to help him whenever he felt the lingering darkness of the Gravhune start to creep into his consciousness. “I can’t focus on anything else.” He pinched his brow as he pointed to where Sergei stood at attention near the doors of his chamber. “Just—bring her to me—unharmed. I’ll frighten her right now if I go myself.”
“Dru, she won’t be safe here,” Caelena tried to argue. Red colored Drustan’s vision. Caelena was trying to keep his mate from him. Instincts he had only read about flooded the surface of his skin. Making the monster in him desperate to claw out. He put all his energy into ensuring his claws stayed retracted.Caelena wasn’t the enemy here, but this primal impulse didn’t care.
Logic was threadbare at this point.
