Sunshine.
I close my eyes and picture the beautiful man named after the brightest fire. When I say he’s my mate, it isn’t a hopeful theory. I’m not being romantic. It’s a fact. I recognize him the way flame recognizes oxygen. It’s instinctive.
And inconvenient.
Because he doesn’t recognize me as his mate.
Yet.
He’s too caught up in the fact that I was too young a few days ago, even though that is not who I truly am on the inside.
The demon driver hums softly to a song playing on the radio. Something very modern and kind of terrible, but incredibly catchy. I watch the city pass by through the tinted window. Every life resets my body and mind, and I haven’t yet had the chance to learn to drive in this incarnation.
We turn onto my street, and the car slows as my house comes into view.
It’s modern, all dark siding and warm cedar beams. Clean lines and large windows. It sits back from the road and is partially hidden behind tall ornamental grasses and towering oak trees. In other lives, I lived in houses and castles with little to no light or windows, and although I don’t really remember those places, the feeling of being trapped has stayed with me through many incarnations.
When I built my home, I wanted it filled with light. When the sun sets, it spills gold across the glass front, making the warmth spread on the outside as well as the inside.
It reminds me of the man I left at the funeral home.
Across lifetimes, I searched for something I couldn’t name. A presence just out of reach that called to me. And now that I’ve found him, I don’t want to be away from him. His warmth is a strong pull on my heartstrings. I would give anything for him to feel even a quarter of what I feel for him.
“We here,” the beta driver says with a thick Cajun accent, rubbing a hand over his red, horned head.
“Yes, thank you,” I mutter, and step out of the car. The gravel crunches under my shoes as I walk toward my house. The air is quiet here. The kind of quiet I used to crave.
It unsettles me now.
Nothing has changed except I now know who my mate is. I’ve lived in the sentient funeral home for so long that I’ve become used to the creaking of the building talking to me. I miss it. And him.
I unlock my front door and step inside, kicking my shoes off before walking further in. The scent of rain greets me, clean and calming and familiar. I have the plugins all over my house because I remember liking the neutral scent. Now all I can smell is chemicals.
When compared to Sunshine’s natural honey scent, there’s no contest.
The polished concrete floors are cool beneath my feet. The soft white walls are clear of clutter, and the staircase cuts cleanly along the far wall, leading up to the loft where my bedroom is located. Everything is precisely where I left it.
The living room opens around me, wide and uncluttered. The charcoal sectional takes up space, virtually untouched. The fireplace is cold, and there’s nothing on the walls. No art or photos, or evidence of a life lived.
I used to love that. The minimal clutter and ease of cleaning it afforded me.
Now it feels like I forgot to add something important to my past life.
I stop in the middle of the room and listen to the sound of nothing. No footsteps overhead. No muttered complaints about the picture frames shifting on the walls or uneven floorboards tripping him at inopportune moments. No clatter of dishes. No voice calling my name like it’s both a greeting and a curse.
No Sunshine.
The quiet is loud.
I exhale loudly and drop onto my unused couch. The cushions are perfect, supportive, and comfortable. Objectively, it’s better than the one I slept on at the funeral home. And yet, it feels wrong. Everything about it is wrong.
In past lives, I married because it was expected. None of them was my true mate, and not a single one was important enough to warrant a memory in my current life. I enjoyed my solitude. Preferred it, actually.
But now that I’ve methim, solitude feels like torture.
I stare down at my hands, sitting seemingly harmless in my lap. The hands that have held swords and lit pyres. The hands that reached for comfort from people whose names I’ve long forgotten.
For weeks now, they’ve ached to reach for Sunshine. I couldn’t, for obvious reasons, but gods… I wanted to. The pull I feel toward him isn’t just hunger or instinct. It’s deeper. Older.
