by Cara Wylde
I fell on my face, exhausted. My four lovers cuddled with me – a pile of arms, legs, and too much hair getting into everyone’s mouth. Someone pulled a duvet over all of us, but it didn’t work out great since it was made for two people, and we were five.
“You knew, and you were never angry with me for lying to you?” I asked.
“Hmm… you just omitted a few things, didn’t straight up lied to us,” GC said.
“You did what you had to do,” Sariel added. “It’s okay. We know it wasn’t easy.”
I sighed. I fixed my gaze on the ceiling. A few dark spots were proof that insects had died there by the hand of some former occupant. Deluxe suite my ass. The truth was that Paris wasn’t great when it came to hotels. Now that I was more than well-traveled, I knew there were places in the world that actually understood what luxury meant and did it right. But Paris had its charm.
“I ruined someone’s life,” I mused. “I know I did. But somehow, I’m not sorry. Because it was the only way out for me. For us.”
“It’s not your fault the only weapon that could kill Morningstar was not a blade, or a gun, or poison.”
“A little girl…”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up.” Sariel ran his fingers through my hair, soothingly. I moaned, aroused by his touch. He grinned. “Again?”
“Again.”
EPILOGUE
She came to me as I exited a rundown building in the South Bronx. Drug overdose. Usually, Neutral Reapers dealt with these cases, but I was called instead, so I did my job. I jumped down the last few steps casually, waiting for blade of my scythe to glow red for the next reaping, hoping it would be somewhere nice and sunny this time.
“Mila.”
I looked up. She stood before me, tall, slender, and beautiful. Her hair looked darker in the faint light of the dirty streetlamps, but it was her.
“Mom?”
“My baby!”
She opened her arms, and I hesitated for just a second before running to her. I abandoned myself into her warm embrace and didn’t fight the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. It felt like I was hugging her for the first time in my life. Since I couldn’t remember her holding me as a baby, this was the first time.
“You’re here.”
She buried her nose in my blue hair. “You know I’m not really here.”
“You’re trapped in the other dimension, I know. And I can’t do anything about it.”
She held me at arm’s length. “It’s okay. I can visit you whenever I want.”
“Why didn’t you come see me? Yolanda told me you’ve mapped all the inter-connected dimensions, and you can go anywhere you want. Why did you leave me?”
She smoothed down my hair. “Baby, I couldn’t. You thought I was dead, and you had a new family that could offer you a normal life. To barge into it would’ve been selfish of me.”
“No.”
“I want what’s best for you. Always have. And look at you now.” She beamed. “You’re a Grim Reaper!”
“I am.”
“I’m proud of you. And as much as I would’ve loved for you to live as a human…” She paused, then continued with newfound determination. “To be a human… I must admit that the idea of you living forever does give me some peace of mind.”
“You know…”
“That you’re a revenant? Yes.” She kissed my forehead. “Yolanda told me. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. You did what you had to do to survive.”
“You know what I’ll have to do after the two hundred years are up.”
She nodded. “It doesn’t matter. You’re all that matters.”
“I don’t know…” I stepped away from her. “I don’t know if I want to live forever when you won’t. Even if you’re not here, with me. When Yoli won’t… Lena and Stepan, as horrible as they were to me… Hell! Not even Paz and Sariel are immortal. They’ll live for a long, long time, but not forever. And what? Will I just end up with GC and Francis until… when? Until the next apocalypse?”
“What are you saying?”
“This whole immortality thing doesn’t make sense to me.”
She was silent for a minute. She wrapped her arms around herself, and I realized that even if she wasn’t technically here, in my world, she could feel the cold. I took off my cloak and put it around her shoulders.
“What if I told you there is a way…”
I cocked an eyebrow. “A way to… what?”
“Make Yolanda immortal. Make anyone you want immortal. Me, Sariel, Paz… your father from the other dimension.”
“Your husband is not my father.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“It’s impossible.”
“What if it’s not?”
“Mom… Yolanda is human. Humans die. It’s the order of things.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I found something. Not here, not in our inter-connected universes. Somewhere far, far away. Far outside most dream jumpers’ reach.”
My heart started beating faster, but it wasn’t excitement. It was apprehension. I could feel it in my gut. She was about to say something that would send my world spinning. Again.
She pulled out something wrapped in an old newspaper. As she unrolled it, pieces of mud fell on her shoes. It was a plant.
“Do you know about Gilgamesh?”
“One of the first Grim Reapers…”
She nodded. “There’s this story about how after he served his two hundred years, he went on a quest to look for immortality. He was a hybrid, the result of the love affair between a fay and a human woman. Neither fays, nor humans are immortal, so he found he aged rather fast for his liking. He didn’t find immortality, but he found the next best thing: a plant that could keep him young forever, if he administered it regularly.”
“Did he?”
“For a while, yes. But the batch he got didn’t last forever. When he was left with not a single leaf of his life-extending plant, he went to get some more. And never came back.”
“A hybrid. Hybrids dream.”
“Yes.”
“You went there, and you found Gilgamesh’s plant.” She nodded, but even though what she was telling me should have made me dance with joy, it didn’t. On the contrary. A chill ran up my spine. “Mom, where did you find this plant? What’s this universe that’s so far, far away that most dream jumpers can’t reach it?”
She smiled mischievously. “Well, why don’t you try to guess?”
“No.”
She took the plant in her hand and held it into the dim light. “This comes from a world where there’s no life, nor death. Only existence. Eternal, unbridled existence.”
“The home world of the Great Old Ones.”
She looked into my eyes. “Exactly.”
“Then I know why Gilgamesh didn’t make it back the second time. Mom, you have to promise me you’ll never go there again. It’s dangerous.”
She groaned, as if disappointed at my reaction. “Is that the first thing you can think about? That it’s dangerous?”
“N-no.”
“Then speak your mind!”
“I can finally banish Yig. Our world… its world. I can open a portal between them, and…”
“Not you. You can’t dream travel, remember?”
“Then who?”
She handed me the plant. “When Yolanda turns eighteen, brew this into a tea and make her drink it. It will buy her one hundred years. I will bring you more.”
“Mom, Yolanda…” I shook my head firmly. “She deserves to have a normal, peaceful life. What you wanted for me. She can have it.”
“Mila, do you think the only reason you found Yolanda was because she had to kill Morningstar?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but immediately realized I would’ve gotten it wrong.
“It was never a coincidence. It was destiny. You found her because she has bigger fish to fry.”
“The Great Old One.”
“The Great Old Ones,” she corrected me.
We held each other’s gaze for a while, and I finally conceded. I wrapped my fingers around the muddy weed and nodded at Katia Angelov. She nodded back.
“Until next time, baby.”
“Until next time, Mom.”
THE END
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In 2020, stay tuned for…
Grim Reaper Academy – Legacies!
Want more Academy Romance by Cara Wylde?
Check out Lure Academy – a paranormal M/M/F romance standalone (not bully)!
Lure Academy
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Lure Academy. A place ruled by demons of love and lust. A place where cambions – the offspring of incubi and succubi – come to learn how to control their powers and use them to protect mankind. Lure Academy is the only place that curvy, insecure Sophie can finally call home.
Sophie’s first day at the Academy is equally exciting and frightening. She will attend the Midnight Ceremony and choose a mentor who will help her tap into her hidden magic. The problem is that the second she meets hot, dangerous Kain and sexy, mysterious Alexi, Sophie realizes it will be impossible for her to make up her mind. What if she chooses both of them? Would it be too much for her, a young and inexperienced apprentice, to handle?
Kain and Alexi are the best cambions Lure Academy has. They’ve been secretly attracted to each other for months, and now it so happens that they want the same thing: to possess Sophie. Will she bring them together, or tear them apart? Every time the three of them meet, sparks fly and the air around them becomes heavy with desire.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cara Wylde loves to write about strong, feisty women and their hot Alphas who will do anything to make them happy. Her books are filled with romance and just a dash of mystery, suspense, and that eerie atmosphere she fell in love with reading too many gothic novels. With a master's degree in Comparative Literature, she can't help but play with tropes and themes from various genres, trying to come up with fresh perspectives on the paranormal characters her readers love so much. Vampires, shapeshifters, demons, witches... Cara will always make sure they get their own twists.
When she's not writing, Cara is reading, planning her next story, or daydreaming. Oh! And also studying and reading Tarot. If you’re interested, you can visit her Tarot Website.
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