Undeniably Chosen

by Shelly Crane

  His interest was piqued, knowing I’d seen it, but how? Significants don’t see in each other’s minds for quite some time after they bond with each other. The first day? My eyes slid over to my parents to find them talking in the kitchen while Rodney did some schoolwork on his laptop.

  Should I ask? I had heard his voice before in my head, but I thought it had been wishful thinking…

  Ava.

  My eyes flew to his and my lips parted. He smiled again—that devastating smile that made me question how I had existed in this world without it until now. That smile needed to be experienced.

  The why’s and how’s of us being able to speak to each other in our minds and see visions so soon was forgotten.

  “No matter what happens—and I know that things aren’t going to be easy for us—I’m glad I was early getting my coffee today.”

  “Running late didn’t suck for me either.”

  He smirked and it slayed the breath in my lungs. His last step was deliberate and final, his eager gaze moved from my hand to my eyes. His eyes weren’t really dark at all, they were blue in every sense of the word. So blue. His hair was in a small fauxhawk, which I didn’t know when I saw him before but I know now is a Watson ‘thing’. They always have their hair done in harsh ways and angles, bangs slashed against their dark hair, making them look so angry all the time. Or maybe that’s just their face. Naturally Seth would pick up some of their habits and things living with them all these years. It was a good thing he had black hair or they would never have adopted him, I was sure.

  He took my hand in his and must have known that I’d need the extra help to keep standing because when we sighed with the force of our touch, the breath rushing between us, his other hand reached up to grip my elbow gently and bring me into the warmth of his chest. He was almost a full head above me he was so tall.

  He murmured against my temple, “I can say with absolute surety that it’s nice to meet you, Ava.”

  “I’m sorry I ran out on you today,” I said softly and pushed his chest to lean back enough to see his face. I needed to see him.

  He shrugged casually and moved back, but kept my hand in his. “I would have run out, too, if the situation were reversed.”

  I shook my head. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  He smiled and it was adorable. He smiled almost as if he were caught in something. “Okay. I probably wouldn’t. You got me.”

  He was thinking about joking around and being able to be silly with someone. I got a flash of something then. No…someone.

  “Who was that? Who is she?” I asked, a spike of jealousy rushing through my veins like hot anger. It came out of nowhere, but my body knew that this girl wasn’t just a nobody. She was young and pretty and she had brought that smile to his face a second ago in that vision…not me.

  He seemed surprised. His face ducked and he tried to find my eyes straight on. “You saw Harper just now? In my mind?”

  I groaned. I hated her name from his mouth, but not an hour ago I wasn’t even sure I wanted him at all. I closed my eyes. What was happening to me? I wasn’t this girl. I wasn’t some jealous, stupid girl.

  “It’s not stupid.” I opened my eyes and found him so close. His lips were parted and his eyes heavy. “It’s not stupid. Significants are supposed to be possessive and protective. And even jealous. That’s how we keep each other safe and happy. If you saw her in my mind and didn’t want to know about her, I’d be upset.”

  I sighed and realized that only then were his fingers on mine drawing off my anxiety. I looked down at them and back up. Before I could say the words, he went on.

  “She’s nobody that matters to us. She’s my cousin, my friend. I was just thinking that it’s nice to have someone who jokes around with me like her, who has the same sense of humor.”

  “She’s not actually your cousin though,” I said softly, but regretted as soon as it was out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “They’ve always treated me as such.” He smiled and rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. “Mostly,” he amended. “But Harper has always just been a really good friend. You have nothing to worry about. I’ve always believed that I would find my significant one day so I’ve never looked elsewhere.”

  That thought made me pause. He had to have a reason to believe that, but the Watsons were human so why would he think… “Have you had bonds happening in the Watsons?”

  “Of course,” he answered and squinted. “Haven’t you?”

  Oh, God, no. The experiments.

  I took a deep breath, knowing we had a long night ahead of us. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  But first. I pulled him down to hug me, letting my arms wrap around his neck, and sighed really loud and embarrassingly when his arms settled on my lower back, pressing me to him so tightly. “Thank you for finding me,” I whispered in his ear and pulled back.

  He took my face in his hands, his warm hands holding my cheeks, and leaned in to kiss my forehead. I gripped his shirt in my fist at the assault of tingles that spread through me.

  “Wow,” he murmured against my skin.

  Yeah—wow. I felt like I was losing myself. I pushed him back a little and felt my head swaying with pleasure. “Um…we need to talk.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed too quickly. “There’s lots to talk about.”

  “No, Seth, I mean we need to talk with my parents. There are things that you don’t know, things that we need to tell you. We didn’t know until tonight and I’m so sorry that all this is just getting dropped on you. There’s a lot that’s happened. Do you…remember Ashlyn?”

  “Ashlyn.” He thought and tilted his head even with his squint. “Yeah, she was the ghost of the old Visionary. She used to come visit me when I was kid sometimes.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  His head snapped up and then he remembered, just as I had. “Ava…” he muttered my name slowly as he recalled it.

  “Yeah. Let’s go talk to Mom and she’ll explain everything better than I can. There’s so much…to say.” He seemed less thrilled now and I felt awful. “I’m so sorry, Seth. I just want to say upfront that I never knew about you. I promise. You can read that from my mind and know the truth, but there are some things that may not have been coincidence about us.”

  He gulped and then came a step closer, taking the ends of my fingers in his. “Things are bound to be weird from now on, right? I just found you, beautiful girl. I’m not giving up on you so easily.”

  With my heart skidding, I nodded and he followed me into the kitchen.

  Four

  “So, you see, we never meant for any of this to happen. We never meant for you to spend your life with them, the Watsons,” my mother said carefully. “We never meant for anyone to get hurt. We’re only sorry we didn’t make it in time…to save your mother.”

  Seth stiffened beside me a second before his phone went off. It was a short, sharp, loud ringtone. He apologized and mumbled something about it having to be loud enough to wake him up at night at the fire station as he looked at the text message. I wasn’t trying to invade his privacy, but I heard it loud and clear in my mind as he read it over and over in his mind. He stared at it for a few long seconds before shaking his head and then tucking it in his pocket.

  Have you finished with her yet?

  He looked up with a grimace at my mother and I felt all his emotions at once. Anger, abandonment, happiness, jealousy, sadness, appreciation that they had tried, but they had failed. It wasn’t enough. He had lived in a certain kind of hell his whole life and the fact that they had been right there and he was the only one not rescued was like a slap in the face.

  I however couldn’t stop thinking about that text. Have you finished with her? What did that mean and who had sent it? It was obvious it was about me. So he had told his family—the Watsons—about me. And now they were texting wanting to know if he was finished with me? What did that even mean?

  His warm hand covered mine and I looked up to see him
watching my freak out. He looked concerned and shook his head. “It’s not what you think. I did tell them and they’re really happy for me. For us. They wanted me to bring you to meet everyone tonight.”

  Everything stopped, especially when Mom’s breath caught and the glasses of sweet tea on the coffee table started to shake. Seth leaned back a bit, having his first taste of my mom’s powers. Tea sloshed on the table as Dad’s hand came up and cupped her cheek. “Baby, everything’s okay.”

  “Caleb,” she begged him for something that I didn’t understand. Maybe she didn’t either. “I didn’t understand what it meant until now. She’s his significant. That means he’s going to take her to—”

  “No,” Dad argued, and it was evident that he meant it. He looked over at Seth and I started to say something to get him to tame his look, but he went on before I could. “She won’t be going to the Watson’s with you, Seth. I know they’re your family and I know that it’s…customary for her to meet the man’s family, but with our history with them I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Seth’s jaw tightened. “They didn’t think it was a good idea for me to come here either, especially alone. They said it wasn’t safe for me, that you’d hold a grudge against them, even after all this time, might try to hurt me. But I had to come. I wasn’t going to let Ava suffer because of it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mom huffed. “I have a distinct suspicion that what you think happened in the past and what actually happened are two very different things.”

  Seth stood, taking his hand with him. I felt his absence in my blood like ice. “I didn’t have the best life. I’m not going to stand here and pretend that my family is all peaches and cream. They have their problems. We weren’t perfect by any means, but they were all I had. They took me in when no one else would and have kept me this whole time—”

  “They took you, Seth,” Mom told him. “Taking you and taking care of you are two different things. You and your mother were…kidnapped and experimented on.”

  He scoffed and moved away from me around the table. “Now this is just too much.” He looked at me, then at Mom before his eyes settled on me once more. “Ava, I know you don’t like my family, but you can’t expect me to believe that they—”

  “A lot of things happened before we were born,” I said softly.

  He shook his head, so Mom forged on. “Their powers were taken away.” It didn’t escape me how she left out the part where she had taken their powers. “But even before that, they practiced with potions and blood magic, alchemy, things they had no business messing with. Your Uncle Sikes was the worst of them. He started all this. He made himself a…significant.”

  “What?” Seth asked.

  “He forced an imprint on a human woman, in a sense faking a bond with a potion he gave her. You would never have known. She got the tattoo, they were significants, they healed each other with their touch and he was protective of her. But it was never quite right. When their powers were taken because of the things they were doing, as punishment, they didn’t accept that and move on. They did the opposite. They began to practice alchemy even more and…” she shrugged, “we didn’t know in time. By the time we found out, it was too late. We’ve tried to keep a watch on them over the years, but since they fled the compound, we didn’t even know where they’d gone to.”

  “Scattered,” Seth muttered, distracted. “We don’t live at the compound. It’s been abandoned for years. They use it to cellar wine for my cousin’s business.”

  He stared at the floor, looking so dejected and lost. I hated that I was part of the cause of this. “Seth,” I whispered.

  “I would know,” he argued with no one and gritted his teeth. “If my family was doing these unspeakable things you’re talking about, I would know. I’ve lived with them.”

  I caught a flash of a memory from Seth from when he was a child, something he was trying to remember. A room, a woman, his mother maybe, a table or bed, a bunch of people gathered around her, but when he saw that I saw it, too, he pushed it away and glared at me.

  “That doesn’t mean that it’s what you’re talking about!” he yelled, making me jump, my shoulders bunching. He sighed and swallowed. “I’m…I’m sorry. Do you have any idea how hard it was to come here tonight, knowing that you were all going to hate me for my name?” He laughed once with no humor. “And then be completely right?”

  “We don’t hate you,” Mom soothed and stood, but she made no move toward him. I just sat down and stared at my hands. My body ached for him, for his touch, his comfort. Our first day together and we were already fighting and yelling. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. I felt awful that my significant felt so alienated.

  I felt the drop of a warm tear on my hand before I even realized I was crying. I wiped it away and looked up to find Seth had done a complete one-eighty. Apparently, seeing that tear had done him in. With my family there watching, he didn’t care a lick. He came and knelt at my feet. His warm hand wrapped around the back of my calf while the other came and went straight to my cheek. I sucked in a short, quick, embarrassing breath when his skin hit mine. He on the other hand let out the tiniest of groans. His thumb swept under my eye twice and he watched his movements as he cleaned up every drop.

  “Ava,” he said my name under his breath, “this whole time I’ve selfishly been pouting about how this was affecting me and my family. I’m so sorry. This involves you and your family, too. No matter what happened in the past, that doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry I yelled at you.” He squinted, as if that caused him pain to think about. It was fascinating to watch. “Can we just move forward, please? We found each other.” He looked down and smiled before looked back up. “I found you. And I trust that more than I trust anything. So no matter what happens, this is meant to be. You’re mine now. So can we just start over and pretend that today never happened?”

  I found myself smiling, then I was biting my lip to contain the smile. And then he did the strangest thing. He took his thumb and tugged down, freeing my lip from my teeth.

  “You shouldn’t ever try to stop that smile,” he said softly, his own crooked smile coming through. His thumb moved against my cheek and I felt my eyelids flutter from the pleasure. When I opened my eyes again he looked ready to keel over. He crawled closer, which was almost impossible with mere inches between us. “Ava,” he whispered. His phone buzzed with another text and he remembered the one he’d gotten earlier. The look of awe vanished from his face and I cursed whoever it was who was texting him. He leaned back a little. “Ava, we really do need to talk before—”

  The back door slammed open, revealing several dark-haired men who rammed their way in before I could even think. Seth had stood and thrown me behind him on instinct, but then he realized who it was. “Uncle Gaston.”

  The tall, slender man stared at me over Seth’s shoulder like a prize and had the audacity to smile. “Seth, you’ve done marvelous. We’ll take it from here.”

  My heart stopped. Seth’s hand tightened on my wrist, but he didn’t turn around to look at me. He spoke to his uncle again. “Gaston,” Seth said calmly, which was doing nothing to make me feel better about things, “what are you doing here?”

  “It’s okay, Seth,” he soothed and smiled at him. “You did good, son.”

  “What do you…?” Seth peeked back at me, squinting, and then looked back at his uncle. “You thought I couldn’t handle this? You thought they’d hurt me? Gaston, I told you they wouldn’t. She’s my significant. The family feud between you has to stop.”

  “We’re here now. You don’t have to keep this up.” I felt my heart tug painfully at his words. Seth gripped my wrist tighter to keep me from running.

  “Gaston, what are you doing?” he growled in a voice I’d never heard from my significant’s lips.

  Gaston pulled a bottle from his inside jacket pocket and held it up in front of his face. He kissed it and then grinned as he tossed it toward his Visionary. She gasped and tr
ied to use her power to stop it, holding her hands out in front of her. But it didn’t work. She seemed surprised, her mouth parting and holding open in a silent scream as she awaited the fate of that bottle. Daddy gripped her arm and swung her behind him just as it smashed into his chest.

  Gaston growled, angry—either that it hadn’t hit her or that it wasn’t doing what he thought it was going to do. She screamed just as I did. Seth’s tight grip held steady on my arm to keep me safely behind him even as he barked at his uncle angrily, asking him what was going on.

  “It’s like I’ve always told you, Seth,” he told him calmly, but I wasn’t watching him. I was looking at my father as he watched a hole in his shirt eat away and then the skin under it started to turn black. He looked up to Gaston for an answer, who just stared blankly. He returned his gaze to Seth and sighed. “The Watsons led a hard life because of the people in this room. We were never meant to scrounge and beg like humans. Virtuoso are a powerful people with powerful blood in our veins.” He looked at my mother. “Did you really think we’d just lie down and accept your punishment?”

  Seth jerked and looked at my mother, but she kept her gaze on Gaston. Dad didn’t look good and I worried about him. There was so much going on, I didn’t know what I should be focusing on.

  Seth whispered, “Her? She attacked you at the palace that day?”

  “Seth, son,” Dad groaned, struggling to remain conscience as he bent to lean on the arm of the chair. Mom whimpered and could no longer keep up the pretenses of the strong leader in charge of things. She caved and rushed to lean down to him, never stopped touching him, but still kept looking back at Gaston as if he’d attack at any moment. I’d never seen my family so helpless. We were always the strong ones, the leaders, the ones all the other clans looked up to. And now the Watsons show up, supposedly with no powers at all, and are able to lay flat my family with one vial?