I sighed, closing my eyes for a moment. “But…there’s still a chance that you might not be Naphele reborn, and if that’s true, then she could still be out there.”
“Got it.” June took a step back. “Maybe you should go run in the woods and try to find her.Holy shit, is that what all this is?” she said, sweeping her arm around. “A hundred years of picking up random chicks, hoping they’ll be your long-lost love?”
She was getting angrier by the second, and I didn’t blame her. All my words were coming out wrong.
“Not at all,” I said, taking her hand. Thankfully, she didn’t pull away. “I did that to make sure no one else would feel as lonely as I did. June, look at me.”
She pinned me with her gaze, her jaw set in an angry line.
“I love you,” I said.
Her eyes softened, now looking more shocked than angry. It was the first time I’d said it out loud to anyone in a century.
“You…” June shook her head, but she seemed less pissed, so I continued.
“Yes, June. I loveyou. Do I still love Naphele? Of course. I always will. But I loveyou. I love you now, and I’ll love you tomorrow, even if you decide to leave me. That much will never change. I don’t care if Naphele’s soul resides within you. Do you hear me? I don’t care.”
For the briefest second, a smile flitted across her lips, but it vanished as she shook her head. Some of the old anger returned to her face.
“But if I’m not her, you’ll never be satisfied, will you?”
“Yes, I will,” I said, though deep down I wasn’t sure if that was actually true. All I knew was that I didn’t want to lose June to my own idiocy.
“Is there a way to know for sure?” she asked.
That caught me off guard. “Uh, well, there’s a couple options, yeah.”
“What are they?” she demanded.
“Rainier can head to the nearest town and use the shifter blood samples that are on file. It can be cross-referenced to see whether a shifter has been reincarnated from another. It’s fairly accurate, but it takes around a week to get the final analysis,” I explained, suddenly feeling like I was in some surreal dream.
“Is there anything faster?”
I thought back on what Rainier had said. The stories his grandmother had told him about ancient shifters doing some sort of ritual to determine if someone had been reincarnated. I’d chosen not to go that route, but now with June here, I couldn’t lie or obfuscate. Not if I ever wanted a chance to be with her.
“There’s a ritual we can do. It requires a fresh blood sample. Rainier knows the details, but I don’t know how safe it is,” I said.
She nodded once. “Tell him I want to do it. And soon.”
“What?” I said, brow furrowed and eyes narrowing. “You want to do it even without knowing the risks?”
“Yes. We need to find out once and for all. Levi, I don’t know if I can trust you after everything, but once we know for sure—and only then—we can try to talk things out. Okay?”
I hesitated, then finally nodded. “Sure. Yeah.” I didn’t like the part where she said she didn’t know if she could trust me again, but I deserved that.
“Have Rainier tell me when and where,” June said as she walked away.
I opened my mouth to call her back, but then decided against it.
Something inside me withered a bit, like a plant under the heat of a flame. How could I be this stupid? Was I really about to losetwomates in the same lifetime?
43
JUNIPER
“Do we have everything?” Levi asked, glancing across the crackling fire at Rainier.
It had been a full day, and Rainier had apparently been scrambling to procure all the needed supplies. Now, it was nearing midnight, and the three of us were tucked away some distance from Hidden Grove. Levi and I hadn’t spoken much since I’d confronted him about the necklace. I’d been too emotional, angry, and confused, so we’d only exchanged short words to plan this. I felt a little guilty that Rainier was the middleman. He was doing a decent job of staying professional and calm, but I could tell he was annoyed with the both of us.
