by Niles, Abby
“It’s the Drall, Brit. I’m all jacked up now.”
“Hmm.” Brit gave a deep sigh. “Yeah, well, I can’t help you there, buddy. All I know is I’m glad I don’t have to worry with this shit. Watching you and Liam has made me thankful for my sentence.” There was a slight pause, then a yelled “Liam! Phone!”
Aidan rolled his eyes. Brit would gladly pass the buck to the one person Aidan really shouldn’t be baring his soul to.
A second later, Liam came on the line. “Yeah?”
“Hey.”
There was another pause before Liam said, “Didn’t think I’d hear your voice until you returned.”
“I just wanted to check in on you.”
“Bullshit. I told you not to do it.”
Aidan scowled. “You know what? Never mind. I shouldn’t have called.”
He should’ve hung up as soon as Brit had called Liam’s name. The man lived to say “I told you so” nowadays, and that was the last thing Aidan needed to hear right now. What he needed was a friend.
He went to disconnect when he heard Liam ask, “What’s got you freaked out?”
Inhaling deeply, he brought the phone back to his ear. “You actually going to listen and keep your judgmental assholiness out of it?”
“Yeah. Yeah. What’s going on?”
“She got hurt, Liam.”
Silence stretched on the other line. “You okay?”
Liam got it. Aidan breathed a sigh of relief. Someone understood what he was going through.
“I’ve never felt so helpless. It scared me. Made me realize how easily I can lose her for good, and how much I want to be Fewsed to her, and her to me.” He realized what he was saying, and exhaled a harsh breath. “Damn, Liam. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. I’m sorry.”
“I’m better than Brit though, that’s for sure. He’s so detached from the shifter ways that he’s more human than shifter now. Listen, death is something I’ve been thinking a lot about since that meeting with the doc. We both know what will happen to me when Ava dies.”
Aidan was surprised by how easily Liam was sharing his thoughts. Normally, he went into a cruel, snarling monster when conversations like this arose. “That therapist is helping, isn’t he?”
“Trevor is teaching me to talk instead of keeping it all bottled up inside. He’s also teaching me to accept my future and live day to day. It isn’t easy, but I’m working on it. Ava will not be a part of my future. We won’t be in Anavrin together. When she dies, a part of me will also. That is what I have to look forward to.” Liam paused then cleared his throat. “I can’t tell you what to do, but before you let something like the doc getting a boo-boo push you into something you can’t take back, remember that right now you are free of her. Once you mark her, your destiny is sealed.”
“Do you regret bonding to Ava?”
“Every day of my life, Aidan, and you know how much I love her, so that’s really saying something. If I’d known what I had to look forward to, I would have fought like hell, like you are doing. Keep fighting, man. Save yourself.”
“Aidan, who are you talking to?”
He spun around to find Jaylin stepping out onto the deck, tying the sash to her robe. When her eyes landed on the phone, they rounded. “Are you kidding me? There’s a phone here?”
“Um. Liam. I’ve got to go.”
“Yeah, I hear her. Good luck. Oh, and Aidan?”
“Yeah?”
“Save. Yourself.”
The phone clicked dead in his ear.
Jaylin limped toward him, hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a phone here?”
The limp grabbed his attention and he stared at the vicious red streaks on her leg. Even with the added shifter DNA, she was human. Fragile. Easily wounded, killed. One day she’d die.
Liam had reminded him why he couldn’t bond to her. What the consequences would be if he did so. But that didn’t stop the need or the hope that she’d one day change her mind.
“Did you hear—”
“Why won’t you bond to me?”
She stopped mid-sentence, brows drawing together. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“You know why. We’ve been over this.”
“Humor me,” he said without a trace of humor in his own voice.
“Death, Aidan.”
“And you want to marry a human because of this, correct?”
“Y-yes.”
“And what if you die before your human mate? You’ll have a choice, won’t you? Anavrin or Heaven. Which will you choose?”
“Why are you asking me this?” she asked, hugging her arms around herself.
“Which will you choose, Jaylin?”
She swallowed. “H-Heaven.”
“So you can be with him for all eternity?”
She opened, then closed, her mouth. Finally, she sighed. “It’s not the same.”
“How so? It seems to me you’re making the commitment to be with someone forever.”
“By marrying a human, I’m not condemned to a life alone just for loving someone.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Exactly. You could love again. Remarry. Have children with another man. Kind of a sticky situation, isn’t it? What if you die and he remarries. And upon his death, he goes to Heaven…to be with her? Have you thought about that?” He stepped closer to her, grabbing her upper arms. “Our bond guarantees only one great love, Jaylin. Not one or two or even six like some of the humans on this planet. One. Ours is the perfect match. The one we were made for, the one that makes us complete.”
She jerked from his hold and stepped away from him. “You’re only acting like this because of the sting.”
Deflection, and she used the one kind he couldn’t stand. He slashed his hand through the air. “Don’t start throwing your shrink shit around now. I’m being serious.”
“So am I! Had I not gotten hurt, this wouldn’t even be a topic of conversation. Because you couldn’t do anything to help me, you’ve now realized how easily I can—and might—die. It’s got you scared, all angst up. Am I getting warm, Aidan?”
His body trembled. Before he said something he’d regret, he spun around and stalked off, hating the fact that she knew him better than he knew himself. Knew every feeling he’d ever feel before he’d even experienced it.
Hated how she used it to put him in his place.
…
Jaylin sat at the kitchen counter, sipping lemonade. The pain in her leg had lessened to a dull ache. Aiden had been gone for over three hours. She’d caught sight of him a few times stalking through the woods in both human and shifter form. She’d left him alone, knowing he needed time to work out his feelings.
Besides, she wasn’t ready to face him yet. His words had stuck with her, making her question the sanity of marrying any creature, man or shifter.
What if her husband remarried after she died? What were the rules?
Having two mates in Anavrin was impossible. The ramifications of a human husband falling in love again and remarrying had never occurred to her, but it should have. She’d been so focused on why she didn’t want to bond to a shifter that she’d failed to think about why she shouldn’t marry a human.
Did he have to choose between the women he’d loved in life? Was she supposed to share him? Would she even be aware that she was? And if he died first and she remarried, would she be faced with the same decisions?
It seemed so complicated, and for the first time, Anavrin seemed so easy.
One love. One life. One eternity.
The only major flaw with the Fewshon was the actual death of the mate.
And that was still a huge problem. Afterlife aside, she wanted to live this life, the only one given to her, to its fullest, and by bonding to Aidan, he could ruin that. Unfortunately, she was beginning to worry that if she didn’t bond to him, her life may be ruined anyway.
Rafael walked into the kitchen, wearing a pale blue tank top, kh
aki cargo shorts, and flip-flops. He stopped when he saw her. “Sorry to intrude. I was just coming in to start dinner.”
“Don’t let me stop you. Your cooking is excellent.”
Smiling, he started opening cabinets and drawing out spices and oils. “I’m glad you think so.”
As he reached for a bag of flour, the tank top shifted and revealed the edge of a bruise on the top of one of his shoulders. Her eyes narrowed. Another movement and she got a glimpse of a complete purplish circle about the size of a thumbprint: the mark of a bonded male. There would be a matching one on his other shoulder.
“Rafael, can I ask you something?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please, with the question I’m about to ask, call me Jaylin.”
He stopped rummaging in the cabinets and looked at her, brows knitted together. “Okay, Miss Jaylin, what would you like to know?”
Inhaling, she tried to find the courage to verbalize her worries. She ended up just forcing the words out of her mouth. “Are you not afraid of your mate dying?”
Rafael was silent for a moment. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. “Of course I was.”
Was? Jaylin blinked. It wasn’t possible he’d lost his mate. Looking at him, he didn’t seem like any Wydow patient she’d ever advised, or even like her mother, for that matter. He looked…happy. Content.
“I—I don’t understand.”
“My Willa died three years ago.”
She opened her mouth, realized she had nothing to say, then closed it. Rafael took mercy on her and said, “Which parent did you lose?”
Startled, she glanced up at him. “What makes you think I lost a parent?”
“You don’t think I haven’t gotten that look before? My own daughters don’t understand. Think I’m lying when I say I’m happy. They worry because they believe I’m holding on to a ghost, not living my life. I can assure you I have lived since Willa’s death, and will continue to do so until it’s my time to join her.”
“Doesn’t the limitation of the Fewshon make you angry, though? You were left behind with this bond that makes you incapable of loving again. All you have to keep you warm is a promise of one day seeing her again, which could be twenty years from now.”
“Or it could be tomorrow.” Rafael sighed and sat on the stool beside her. “Why is it easier for our human other halves to accept our bond than women made of our own genes?”
“Humans have no clue what they are in for. The male explains what the bond is and it’s romanticized, glorified into this wonderful thing it isn’t. Half shifters have lived it, witnessed what the true bond does.”
“Do you really think you know what it is?”
“Of course I do. I’ve spent years counseling Wydow patients. I’ve watched my mother for the last twenty years. The effects are crippling.”
“And what of the years she had with your father? Were those crippling?”
She blinked at him. “That’s an unfair question. You know as well as I do those were the happiest years of her life. That’s not the point. What happened to her after he died is. A part of my mother died the day my father did, and she has never been able to get it back.”
“You see what you want to see.”
“I see the truth, Rafael. My mom changed, and not in a good way. All my patients changed. They were left alone with no hope of ever finding companionship again.”
“That is a very dark way of looking at it.”
“How else am I supposed to see it with everything I’ve witnessed? I had a young woman who bonded to her mate and he died the next day. They failed to breed. I counseled her for three years and finally our Dea took mercy on her and sent her to be with her mate. But what if she lived another fifty years? Fifty years that she would’ve pined for death, never remarrying, never having children. She would’ve been alone.”
“That would’ve been a very sad circumstance indeed, but those fifty years are five minutes compared to the time she’ll spend with her mate in Anavrin, together, forever.”
Jaylin swallowed, his words unnerving. Her mother had said something eerily similar, had always insisted that Jaylin had a skewed opinion that was nowhere close to the reality. Even though her mother had claimed she was happy, Jaylin had never seen it. All she’d seen was the fun-loving, happy mom who had turned into a woman who got on all fours and scrubbed the kitchen floor with a toothbrush. “My mother cleans…compulsively.”
Rafael nodded, a sad smile tilting his lips. “Before Willa died, I’d never run a day in my life.”
“You’re a shifter, of course you’ve run.”
“I meant on a treadmill in human form. Honestly, I’d always considered it a form of torture. Afterward, I couldn’t stop. I run twenty-five miles every day. Being a shifter, I can do that in about two hours.”
“But why?”
“We’ve lost our mates. We need something to focus on.”
She pointed at him. “You just made my point.”
He closed his hand around her finger and lowered it. “I’m not finished. Yes, the bond changes us. I may run now, but I also cook, spend time with my family, read, and get to stay in a tropical paradise just soaking up the sun. I smile. I laugh. And I do still love. It will never be the love I have for my Willa, she is part of my soul. But when I look at my grandchildren, my children, I still feel that squeeze in my heart. I’m not the living dead. I’m very much alive, and I’m sure your mother is the same. She’s found her thing. She cleans when she misses your father, but in twenty years, I know it’s not the only thing she’s done.”
“It feels like it. It scares me how focused, frantic even, she is during those times.”
“Look past that, Miss Jaylin. See everything else she does. Actually see your mother as she is, not what you’re focusing on.”
Could she? It was hard to even come up with something about her mother that didn’t revolve around frantic cleaning. “She plays canasta with her two sisters every Friday night.” Jaylin frowned. “They are also Wydowed. They use one another for companionship, which isn’t very healthy in my opinion.”
“Again you’re looking for things to prove your point of view. Things that might not be there. Does your mother have a good time?”
“I guess so. They do go through three bottles of wine on Friday nights. I see it as them drinking their sorrows away together. Though, now that I mention it, I did drop in to check on them one night.” Despite herself, she smiled. “All three of them were plastered, rolling on the floor laughing on a Twister mat. My mom had just taken both of her sisters to the ground by trying to get her left foot on a green circle.”
Her mom had been so full of life that night. Jaylin had been thrilled and stayed, wanting to spend time with this lively woman. When Jaylin woke the next morning, she found her mom obsessively polishing the already immaculate silverware, and the fun they’d shared the night before had been erased. How many other times had her mother smiled and laughed over the years that had been wiped clean from Jaylin’s memory all because of the compulsive cleaning?
She was beginning to think a lot.
“Now love, Miss Jaylin. Tell me how does your mother love?”
“She loves me. I know that.”
“But you feel she can’t grow an attachment to something else because of losing your father. Who has she come to love in the years since he passed?”
“Easy. Those three cats she got a few years ago. The first one showed up on her doorstep and she took it in; within the next three months she’d acquired two more. She’s become the crazy cat lady. She sings to them, and actually uses baby talk when she speaks to them.”
“But does she loves them?”
“They’re animals. It’s not the same as human companionship.”
“But if you believe what you really believe, she wouldn’t be capable of loving anything. She’d be dead inside. Seems to me your mom still has an abundance of love to give. And what of hope, Miss Jaylin? Looking forward
to the future? What does your mother dream of?”
Jaylin’s throat constricted and she forced herself to swallow. “Grandchildren,” she whispered. “She wants grandchildren. She volunteers at the elementary school, saying if I wasn’t going to give her grandkids then she’d go get her some.”
The smiles her mom would give as she retold some of the antics of the young children. The wistfulness in her eyes. Jaylin gasped, tears blurring her vision as she cupped her hands over her mouth. “My mom is alive. W-why couldn’t I see it? Why did I only see the bad?”
Rafael squeezed her knee. “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. It’s hard to wrap the mind around something we don’t understand. My sons have an easier time with acceptance because of the Drall. My daughters are another story.”
Jaylin wished she could see her mother now with this new insight. Would she see her differently or still see the woman who seemed to grieve for her mate twenty years later? “What was it like after your wife died?”
“The days and months after she died were the most horrible of my life. She was by my side every day for thirty wonderful years, and then one day she wasn’t. Walking around the house, the silence was suffocating. I missed her smiles, her laughs. I missed talking to her, holding her. I did feel dead. Was barely able to get out of bed in the mornings.”
“And now?”
“I still miss her. But the grief has leveled off. I’m no longer drowning in it. The Fewshon is filled with peace. I know I’ll hold her in my arms again one day.”
“Do you look forward to death?”
“Not in the way you’re asking, no. When it is my time, it will be my time. Until then, I will live the life given to me here. She’d want it no other way.”
He patted her hand, then went back to preparing dinner, marking the end of the conversation. She stared at his back. Everything he’d said went against everything she’d ever believed.
She was an expert in her field, and yet, she was now discovering, she knew absolutely nothing.
…
Jaylin curled her feet up under her on the cushy wicker chair in the living room, making sure to not put pressure on the site of her sting. She stared out across the beach, her chin propped in her hand. Today had been a day of eye-openers, which was ironic since she had always believed she was an eyes-wide-open sort of person.