Undeniably Chosen

by Shelly Crane

  He quickly looked back to me, apologizing.

  Dad stood there, stunned. Then he lowered his head a little and sighed. He must have realized that Seth was right; you don’t challenge a Virtuoso man’s right to his significant, but Dad wasn’t happy about it.

  “And has she given you permission?”

  “Dad, stop,” I hissed. “Now you’re just reaching. Of course I’ve given him permission.”

  “How could you have if you don’t even remember these dreams?”

  “My mind is his.”

  “I didn’t mean for her to forget,” Seth said loudly over us. “It’s not supposed to be that way.”

  “What—”

  “The other times I went into someone’s mind, they remembered. I could come and go as I pleased and they would remember the next day, but with you, it was different.” He swallowed. “With you, I just went the first night to try to talk to you after the kidnapping attempt. I thought maybe if we met that way that it would be better, easier, but you didn’t remember anything that had happened. You only remembered that we bonded at the coffee shop. The next morning, I went to see you and you didn’t remember the dream—that’s never happened before. And then the next night, I felt this amazing pull in my chest to go see you again. So I went to your dream. I can feel it when people go to sleep. That’s how an echoling knows that he can go to someone. And when I got there, you remembered our dream from the previous night, but not the day we’d had, nothing from your real life. It was as if you got a reset of some kind and no one I had ever visited ever got that before. So every night, I’ve gone to you. I tried not to go some nights, but the pull in chest…it won’t let me stay away. And every night, you don’t remember your real life in your subconscious, and every day, you don’t remember that I came to your dream. But it’s all real. So the dream you and me came up and with a plan, to go to my family and tell them that your father asked me to spy for them, that you and I had been fighting, that your family had betrayed me, that it just wasn’t working out and I had changed my mind about everything.”

  “What good would that do?” Dad asked gruffly, but he had calmed down quite a bit.

  “Your daughter’s genius plan was so I could get back in my family’s good graces. Because she felt like my family might try something at the summit.” I heard gasps around me. “We thought maybe that was why my ability kept pulling me back to her and she couldn’t remember it all, her subconscious was separate. None of it made sense, but it had to be for a reason. And the Visionary kept talking about how abilities were for a purpose,” he said harder and it escaped no one’s notice, I’m sure, how he called her ‘the Visionary’. “So I had to believe it, I had to trust this thing between us. But my family believed me.” He smiled at me proudly. “Your plan worked like a charm, but they didn’t have anything planned for the summit like we thought. They just wanted me to pull a reverse on you guys. They said I should spy on you instead.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “They even gave me a new phone in case you were tracking my old one.” He scoffed a laugh.

  “They just have new phones lying around?” Drake asked.

  “A family that is always running from people they think are trying to kill them?” Seth raised his eyebrow. “Yeah.”

  “He’s lying,” someone said. “His family could be about to attack the summit any minute.”

  “Why would he warn us if that were true?” I said loudly.

  “But he—”

  “I want all thoughts that Seth is trying to sabotage us to cease.” I could barely talk I was breathing so hard. Seth sighed and rubbed my arm, trying to calm me, trying to fill me with what he could. “If you don’t trust him, fine. Trust me. I’m telling you that what he’s saying happened.”

  “You don’t remember,” someone argued.

  “I remember bits and pieces.”

  “He could be feeding you those memories, making you feel like you’re remembering.”

  I scoffed. “Wow, you guys really want to hate him.” I turned away from Seth, feeling the pressure in my chest slam into me, but I had to look them in the eyes. “Why?” I cried. “Were you all just waiting for a reason to turn on…him.” I blinked as my eyes began to blur.

  Bright lights and spots shined and moved in my vision. Seth’s arms wrapped around me tighter from behind. I blinked more rapidly and couldn’t believe my eyes as a small bird flew down the high ceiling lights. It looked like he had a halo of lights around him as he descended and landed on the ground in front of me.

  “Do you see that?” I whispered, but knew I sounded delirious. “It’s just like the ones from the palace.”

  “What’s that, little bird?” Seth asked, his cheek pressed to mine, his voice almost echoed around me as he said it.

  Little bird, little bird, little bird…

  Everything snapped into place. I gasped and felt Seth’s echoing inhalation breath in my ear. The pressure in my chest was gone and so was the bird that no one else had seen but me. I felt a little crazy but I also felt sane for the first time today. I turned to Seth and gave him a little smile.

  “Little bird…because of the robins from the palace?”

  He huffed a small laugh and nodded. “You remember?”

  “No, just…I can’t really explain it. You take me there in my dreams, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes. The rooftop is your favorite place. You told me.”

  I looked down so I wouldn’t cry. “It is. I can’t wait to take you there for real.”

  He sighed through his nose and brought my face back up with his finger. “Do you know how many times you’ve said those exact words to me?”

  “No,” I gripped the wrist holding my face, “I don’t.”

  “Champion,” Jordan interrupted and crossed his arms. He looked at me and sighed before looking back at Dad. “What do you want us to do?”

  Dad looked at me and we locked eyes. I honestly had no idea what he was going to do. There was no proof I could give them. I couldn’t show them a vision above my head like Mom could. I couldn’t prove anything Seth was saying. Mom couldn’t get a vision from Seth because he had her blood…

  I gasped, turned to Seth, and locked eyes with him as I reached into his front pocket to get his phone. He gulped, his lips parting with a little breath that blew across my hair. I could have asked him for the phone, I guess, but this felt like an emergency, and girls acted in an emergency. We didn’t dawdle and worry about things like...reaching in boys pockets and how that made our heart crazy. There wasn’t time for that.

  He had no idea what was up, given by the bunched brow when I turned, but he said nothing. My family may not be ready to trust me completely, but my significant did. And okay, I was still in college, I had done nothing to prove myself to my family. Granted I had never been given any opportunity to prove myself, but still. Why would they blindly follow me and say, okay, we’ll trust the enemy’s son because you say so. I got it, but it still stung.

  We had to fight at every turn and I wondered if they would ever truly trust him. If every time something came up with the Watsons, because something always came up with the Watsons, if they would turn to him and wonder if he had something to do with it. I refused to live that way.

  I held the phone out in front of me as I went to Mom. She and Dad watched me solemnly, but Mom clicked before Dad did. She met me halfway and gripped the phone with me, understanding exactly what I wanted from her.

  She couldn’t get a vision from Seth because he had her blood, but he’d gotten the phone from the Watsons today. Maybe she could get a vision from the object that—

  I sucked in a breath that burned my lungs. I heard Dad tell Seth I was okay as I fell into the vision with Mom.

  Seth was at a table in a kitchen with several other Watson members. There was about fifteen of them piled into that small kitchen. Someone—a small woman—was cooking something on the stove. It smelled like beef stew.

  “—if you were to go and do that, then
we’d have our in.”

  “I could,” Seth agreed and leaned back in his chair. He looked comfortable, but also uncomfortable. He looked like he belonged there, like he grew up, like he’d sat in that chair all his life, but I could tell he wasn’t normal. He acted differently with them than he did with me. “Like I said, I’m over it.”

  A man smiled at him and kicked Seth’s boot under the table. “Glad to see you’ve got your wits about you, boy.”

  The woman at the stove brought Seth a glass of something and a bowl of the stew. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Mmhmm,” she hummed back politely, but it was like he said. She didn’t even look at him. It was like she had to give him the bowl and that was that. I found I was right when she started serving up everyone in the room. They all thanked her and she all gave them the customary ‘mmhmm’.

  They were civil. Who knew?

  I stared at the woman who adopted Seth, who he wanted so badly to love him like a mother, but didn’t. I wanted to meet her, for the sake of nothing else but knowing my significant’s mother, but that would never happen. It pained me to know that.

  A knock on the door startled me, but whoever it was didn’t wait to be let in. Seth’s Uncle Gaston came in and I gasped, covering my mouth, forgetting that this was a memory and they couldn’t see or hear me. And Harper came in right behind him. A little growly breath left my throat without my permission as I saw her make her way right to Seth. Her lips curled into a victorious smile at seeing him. Like, see, I won after all.

  If I had been there in real life, I couldn’t have promised anyone that I wouldn’t have ripped her hair out in that moment. Though it would have been a lady-like-ripping-out-of-her-hair, of course, but it would have been done.

  “Seth,” Gaston said and smiled, showing teeth and everything. “I’m so happy to see you back here, son.”

  “Me, too,” Seth answered and swallowed his stew.

  “We’ve got big plans. Now that you’re on board, just like we always planned, we can do so much with you on the inside.”

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly and took a drink. “I can just keep pretending that I’m happy there and be on the inside, listening, waiting, watching. They’ll never suspect a thing.”

  Harper came while Seth spoke and got behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders. My heart beat painfully. How far was Seth’s pretending going to go? But I saw Seth tense and his eyes dull. His family talked around him, not paying him any real attention as they plotted and planned. Harper leaned in and put her mouth on his ear. I stopped breathing as she said, “I knew you’d come back to me.”

  He leaned forward so fast, his stew bowl spilled on the table and his glass sloshed a little. Everyone looked. He looked back at her over his shoulder.

  “Get off me, Harper.”

  She pressed her lips angrily together. “So, you don’t want to ditch that little girl and force the bond with me like your Daddy said?” She looked over at him with a glare before looking back at Seth.

  “I am ditching the little girl eventually. But I never said I was taking you in her place.” Harper’s mouth opened in a silent gasp. “I don’t want anyone that’s going to chase me around. No thanks,” he said softly. “I’ll find someone to take her place, but for now, I’m stuck with her until we finish this. The plan is to keep using her.”

  She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. “And what’s first? The summit?”

  Seth eyed her. “How do you know about the summit?”

  “You’re not the only spy,” she sneered.

  Seth gulped before he turned to face his family. “So? What do you wanna do? The summit is here, in this town, so are you going to do something about it?”

  “No,” Gaston said quickly and held his hand out as someone started to argue. “The Summit is a small fish. There are hardly any families here. There would only be the Jacobsons and one other to hold guard and be witnesses. If we went after the council, we’d want to go to London and take them all out,” he growled and slammed his fist on the table, knocking over the salt shaker. “No, we don’t go after the summit and tip them off. That would just make them cautious and know that we want them all dead. Right now, they think our beef is just with the Jacobsons and it can stay that way. The reunification is in six months. That’s plenty of time to plan a glorious attack. For now, we wait.”

  “So what do you want me to do right now?”

  “Go to the summit,” he said harshly. “Be a loving significant, and make them believe it so they don’t deunify you and Ava.”

  Seth paled a little. “Deunify?”

  “Rival clans can’t mate. But a bond between them has never happened before. I can’t imagine that they’d do that to their precious Visionary’s daughter, but it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve tortured their Visionary. Now go.” Seth got up to leave without looking back, but his uncle wasn’t done. “And Seth?” Seth stopped and slowly looked over his shoulder. “Don’t fail us again.”

  Seth left in a hurry all the way to his truck and finally breathed when he got inside. He beat his fist on the steering wheel after he cranked it and sighed harshly. “Ah, Ave. What have we gotten ourselves into?”

  Mom yanked us out of the vision and I felt the arms around me for the first time; around my middle and around my shoulders near my neck. Dad’s arms were around Mom, too.

  I sagged, leaning my head to the side, seeking him, so relieved when he pressed his cheek to mine. I covered his hands with mine. Okay, so the vision worked, he’d gone to his family, I could see how my cousins seeing that could misconstrue that he had flipped his loyalties, but now there was still no way to convince everyone. Mom had seen the vision, but…it still wasn’t clear cut. It still looked kind of like Seth had switched sides, didn’t it? And even then, it was Mom’s word against everyone else’s…

  I looked up to see that she had projected the vision. Blue ribbons swirled around us and I was grateful that no explanation was to be had, but also the vision was a little damning. Could they interpret it for what it was or was this lynch mob about to get a whole lot more hairy?

  I began to shake a little, cold and so ready for this to be over. I felt Seth turning me into his chest, pressing me and soothing me with his arms, his hand going to the back of my neck. I looked up at him and knew that he knew that I saw it all. I wish I could remember, I wish I could remember how we had talked in our dreams, how we planned it all, how our plan was working.

  “Me, too,” he whispered.

  I looked over at my parents, the blue ribbons finally dissipating and crackling away into nothing. Dad and Mom were looking at each other. I knew they were talking, deciding Seth’s fate. I looked over at my family and saw some of them talking, chatting and tittering amongst themselves, like they actually deserved to have a say in the life of my significant. Uncle Kyle’s and Bish’s families just waited, watching. Ember caught my eye and tried for a smile. I tried to smile back, but knew I failed.

  Seth took my chin in his fingers and turned me to look at him. “Baby, they had to.”

  I felt my eyebrows scrunch and looked at him with nothing but disbelief. “What…these are the people who just tried to send you away…and you’re defending them?”

  He smiled sadly and moved his thumb on my chin. “They were protecting you. Don’t you see that? They may have been lynching me, but they don’t care about me. Yet. But they love you, Ava. And so do I, and they were protecting the thing that I love.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I closed it, feeling sad and so much all at once bubble in my gut. How could he possibly be so…

  “You’re so…” I tried, but Mom cut me off.

  “Amazing.” We both looked over to find her with a tear hanging on her lashes. “When we didn’t find you that day at the compound, I’ve always felt guilty. Ashlyn said that it was supposed to be that way and we’d see you again, but I don’t know that I actually believed her. Until right. This. Moment.” Her chest shook on
ce and I couldn’t believe that Mom felt so strongly about this. I’d always known she felt guilty about that day, but she was showing her entire clan this. “For you two to take this upon yourselves, for Seth to risk his life by going in and pretending with his family to make sure that they weren’t planning anything for the summit…” She shook her head and then came to us. I moved back just in time before she gripped him tightly to her. Seth looked more than stunned, but recovered quickly as he rubbed her back. “Thank you. I’m completely blind when it comes to your family and we always worry.” She leaned back. “We bring in an extra family to do security, but really that just adds more people to get hurt if they decide to do something.”

  Seth nodded, uncomfortable with the attention he was getting as everyone’s eyes were on him. “I just, uh, realized that my family…” He shook his head and looked at the floor. “I wanted to believe that there was something worth saving there with them, but there isn’t.”

  What happened? What changed to make him change his mind? He looked at me and I could see the sadness in his mind.

  “They shunned me and said I wasn’t welcome back, after Harper went back. And told them about our conversation. Said I was a traitor, all because I found my soulmate and didn’t want to kill her.”

  Mom covered her mouth as I stared in complete awe. It took me a second to move and take his hand. “Seth,” I sighed in agony for him.

  He’d lost the only family he’d known. They turned on him, and then the family that should have embraced him fully as their own was accusing him of being a traitor, after they’d already ambushed him once. I felt a tear slide down my cheek. He smiled and shook his head as he moved right up against me and wiped it away with his thumb.

  “Sweetheart, I told you. Your family had to protect you.”

  “From my own significant?” I said loudly, feeling so hurt and ashamed of my family and just sad and…confused. I swung my gaze over to my family. They at least had to the good graces to look embarrassed and some of them even looked guilty as they watched the scene play out. I looked back at him. I got it. I did. They were protecting me, but now it was my turn to protect him. No one else was. Literally everyone in the world but me had turned their back on him. A sob punched my chest at that thought.