Rought is in the kitchen with Cay, cooking dinner. Presh and DeVille are watching a movie on the couch.
They don’t stop me from passing through into the mudroom, stepping into rubber boots, and exiting the house. I’m not certain Cay, Presh, and DeVille even notice me. Though Rought meets my gaze and offers me a sweet smile.
I should have grabbed a jacket. Even on a summer evening, the breeze is cool off the water as I cross the lawn all the way out onto the bluff. The back fields have all been trimmed, though I’m not certain who climbed on the mower in the last twenty-four hours. Perhaps DeVille?
The cu-sith watches me steadily, red eyes aglow as the last of the sunset fades and stars begin to appear in the expansive clear sky.
I see no planes, no satellites, overhead. The intersection point is a restricted airspace, though I’m not actually certain how that restriction is enforced. Perhaps by the energy of the intersection point itself.
Cradling the two severed soul bonds to my chest, I slip around the cu-sith — the hulking beast doesn’t seem inclined to move from his outlook perch — until I’m standing on the sheer edge of the bluff. I vaguely remember jumping off the bluff over many summers, and now understand that I must have done so with my three mates. But not from this edge. The rocks below and the height might actually kill a young shifter and would have killed me for certain.
What would happen if I was swept out into the ocean by a rogue wave before I woke from that death?
I shove the weird thought away. I’m not going to jump. I’m not going to fall. I’m not going to die. Not while on the intersection point. The universe wouldn’t allow any of it.
Shivering from more than just the chilled breeze, I step back from the edge, slipping around the cu-sith again and facing the house with all its lights ablaze.
Underfoot, I feel the crack in the intersection point. Like a wound. It wasn’t so acute the last time I stood here. The last time I lay down here with the indistinct memory of my first death filtering through my mind.
Rath stands on the back patio of the main house, watching me but not approaching. I remember him grabbing me in terror that night — his own terror — leaving bruises on my arms …
I crouch to set down the glasslike container that holds my severed soul bond to Rath, keeping my bond to Rought in hand.
Muta shifts on my forearm, taking on his bushmaster form again for the first time since we reunited. He dangles off my wrist in a slow twist, sliding down onto the rock.
“Don’t go far.” The essence that often precedes a full-blown knowing threads through my soft command. “We don’t have much time.”
Muta, still feeling distinctly pissy, curls around the bond I’ve set to the side, settling in to watch me instead of going off hunting for his dinner.
As I straighten, the cool breeze catches my hair and the loose fabric of my dress. I try to stifle a shiver. But the cu-sith must note it, because he moves up against my back, fur brushing against me as he presses close enough for me to feel his heat. Then he settles again with me between his front legs, close enough and tall enough, even while sitting, that I could lean back against his chest.
I reach for my renewed connection with Rought instead, then the much more established bond with the gryphon. I untwist the coiled energy my aunt somehow snipped, collected, and contained — our shared severed soul bond — without ever noting the why or how in her journal.
I suspect that snipping wasn’t done here on the bluff, or over this wound that I’m beginning to suspect is something far more nefarious than a crack in the energy of the intersection point. I don’t think there would have been any reason to take my soul-bound mates from me while I lay dead at my aunt’s feet, or while she ejected my mates from the estate — with at least two of them so injured that they were likely unconscious, likely to die.
No.
I suspect Disa took these bonds from me while I lay recovering in my bed, right before she bundled me up, took me back to Vancouver, and never allowed me to set foot on the estate again during her lifetime.
Pulled by my focus on the threads stretched between us, Rought steps out onto the back patio of the main house. Rath stands sentry as before, gaze locked to me on the bluff.
Rought jogs down the steps, then checks his pace across the expansive lawn just in case I need to wave him off.
I didn’t want to be all dramatic about it before, but now I find I also don’t want to be alone with it. Not even with the cu-sith a malevolent but somehow still comforting presence at my back.
The bond that I hold in my hands belonged to Rought as well. The destiny we were to walk together.
Keeping my gaze on my chosen mate as he approaches, I allow the thick rope of golden-threaded essence to lay across my hands. I don’t look within it. I don’t dwell again on why Disa would even have kept it in the first place. I simply will the bond to release into the aether.
Perhaps my aunt stood over me in my bed, obviously understanding I wasn’t fully dead but not knowing if I would ever wake, and took it from me — only to discover that it remained. That she was unable to release it because no matter how powerful she was, that energy wasn’t hers to manipulate.
The bond shimmers and shifts in my hands, pulling my attention to it. Then Rought is standing before me, sliding his hands under mine but not touching me as the essence slowly fades from existence. From this existence.
“You needed to do this now?” Rought asks gently.
“I think so, yes. For the wounds to fully heal, perhaps. We’re going to need to be whole.” The cu-sith shifts behind me, pressing closer and reminding me that we’ll all never truly be whole. Not as we were meant to be.
Rought watches the cu-sith warily. But, seemingly placated when the beast peers over my shoulder but doesn’t otherwise move, he brushes a kiss over my cheek.
