A few tears dropped from her eyes as she bit her lip and nodded.
“How?”
“I healed Noelle, and now she feels what I feel. And I healed you…”
He looked away, embarrassment rising within him. “The whole time?”
“Uh-huh.”
He thought about all his dreams about Syney, most of which didn’t involve much clothes or talking. He had acted in ways he never would have if he she were actually there with him; he’d been more aggressive and forceful. He thought of the last time and stopped. “You said you…knew everything.”
She nodded. “Helen told me about Cass.”
He let out a breath. “I didn’t want you to know.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
He looked at her for a few moments. “Because even if I come back, we can’t do this. I thought that if I broke your heart, you’d move on hating me.”
Tears fell down her cheeks. “I did. Mission accomplished.”
“I’m sorry. I had to think quickly, and it was all I could come up with.”
She wiped her cheeks. “Just don’t go over the border right away. I think my plan may work with the Shifter.”
“I’ll try, but I have antsy wolves who want a fight at this point.”
“How is Fern?” she asked in a mocking tone.
Hunter looked away and shook his head. “Is Noelle all right?”
“What?”
“You said you had to heal her.”
Syney sighed. “A Shifter tried to stab me, and she jumped in the way.”
His eyes widened. “In the palace?”
Her annoyance fell quickly, replaced by guilt. “Um, no. We were coming back from the Human Realm,” she said quietly.
He rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. With Gabe?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t believe you talked Reed into that. He’s still your Protector, right? You didn’t scare him off or kill him?”
“Yes, he’s still my Protector, and it wasn’t that hard,” she said. “He’s becoming more like you every day. He finally gets the fact that I don’t listen very well and just rolls with it.”
Hunter laughed. “I really miss you.” He looked away, feeling his own tears coming. He wasn’t about to cry in front of her. He looked back at her when she stayed silent. She was staring at him, her eyes sad. He cleared his throat. “Have I missed much?”
She sighed and looked away. “I have to go.” She looked around. “I don’t…really know how to get out of here.”
“I guess one of us has to wake up.”
She nodded. “OK, wake up then.”
Hunter rolled his eyes and sat back down. “I haven’t slept in four days. Sorry. I’m not giving it up.”
After a moment Syney sighed and sat back down next to him. “Gabe and Noelle are all over each other, finally. I was going to lock them in a room if they didn’t get it on.”
He shook his head. “She’s too good for him.”
“He agrees,” she said with a laugh. “Helen and Leaf stopped seeing each other, though.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “She became a priestess and didn’t want to disobey her vows. She’s heartbroken, though. And he’s much more stoic now.”
“Usually means he’s pissed off. Leaf retreats into himself instead of exploding.”
“Makes sense. Cass came back, but you already know that. You sent her, right?” she asked, crossing her legs under her.
He nodded. “Don’t give her such a hard time, OK? She had plenty of punishment for any wrongdoings out here.”
Syney rolled her eyes. “I’m trying. Plus Gabe told me she was actually the one who healed me when I was attacked.”
Hunter looked away from her and grimaced.
“And you knew! Gabe, I get—he’s all secrets—but you’re the one who’s supposed to be honest with me!”
He shrugged. “It happened right before the whole thing with Raine. I guess it slipped my mind.”
“Ugh! Well, anyway, now that I know, I’m trying to be nicer to her.”
“What about Mellisandrianna?”
“What about her?”
“Is she still trying to kill you?”
“Yup, nothing new.” She looked away, obviously hiding something.
Hunter sighed and looked at the fire. There had to be a reason she didn’t want to be here with him, and he had a feeling he knew what it was; he just didn’t want to be right. He had two options: He could just leave it and make small talk about the Village or come out with it. She was right; he had promised to always be honest with her, and he shouldn’t stop now. “So what’s his name?”
He didn’t have to look at her to know she was biting her lip. “Adam.”
He nodded and finally looked at her. “He’s a good guy?”
She nodded. “Too good for me.”
He shook his head. “No one’s good enough for you,” he said. “Does he know about us?”
“Yes. We don’t have secrets.”
“That’s good.”
They silently stared at the fire for a while before Syney intertwined her fingers with his. “This was better when it was just a fantasy,” he said quietly.
She nodded, tears coming to her eyes again. “I’m sorry for telling you it was real. I just had to.”
He squeezed her hand. “It’s OK.”
She sighed and moved to kneel in front of him. “But this is still just a dream.”
“Syney,” he said, before she leaned forward and kissed him. He should have pulled back and told her how unfair they were being, using this connection this way, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead he put his hands into her hair and lay back, pulling her with him.
When he woke up, he moved his neck around, causing several popping sounds. He felt like hell, with creaks and stiffness everywhere, but at the same time he’d never felt as satisfied. He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell had just gone on in his mind. He remembered it all, but it still felt like a dream and nothing more. He stood up and walked over to the fire, where several guards were gathered. He noticed one, a young woman, who had received a letter that night from the Village. He walked over to her and gave her a small smile. “You got a letter today, right?”
She nodded. “From my mother. She worries too much.”
“So does mine. Don’t worry,” he said kindly. “Did she mention anything about an attack on the seated queen by chance?”
She nodded. “She said it was all over the Village. A Shifter tried to stab her while she was out of the Village. It’s crazy.”
Hunter nodded and looked into the fire. “Absolutely insane.” And so was he. It was all real. Syney was real and in his head. He closed his eyes and wondered whether he could summon a dream if he wanted. Usually he dreamed of her sporadically, but it would be useful to be able to do it whenever he wanted. Not that he would abuse it or anything. It was more of a faster way of communicating, he told himself. And he almost believed it…almost.
Wes always tried to shift after they brought dinner. He knew they’d leave him alone then, and he wanted privacy. He coiled up under the chair he usually occupied and relaxed into his snakeskin. He’d shifted only for a few minutes when he felt the vibration of someone in the room. He untucked his head and darted his thin pink tongue in and out of his mouth. There was definitely someone in the room, but it didn’t smell like the wolf. He stayed low as he changed back and slowly looked over the table. He found himself staring into the blue eyes of Cass. He quickly grabbed the pants he had folded and placed on the chair and pulled them on before standing up.
“I didn’t think they’d actually let let you in,” he said, feeling more uncomfortable than he’d assumed he would Cass slowly smiled at him. “Syney came and brought me. She said you two had an agreement.”
He looked away. “She’s not like I thought.”
She lightly hit his arm. “I told you that.”
He moved his hand to the plac
e where she had just touched. It still tingled. He had genuinely wanted to talk to Cass when he had asked the day before, but now that she was here, he wasn’t sure what to say; he was more excited to see her than he’d ever been to see most of his own family.
“I wanted to thank you…for letting me go,” Cass said with a small smile. “I know I would have been a pretty big bargaining chip.”
Wes shrugged. “I’m not so sure. My father might have given you back out of annoyance with you.”
Cass laughed and leaned against the table. “So that’s why you let me go.”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
“And here I thought it was because you liked me.”
Wes’s chest tightened as he inhaled her sweet smell.
“I was…I was just kidding,” she said, looking away, her cheeks turning pink.
Wes looked at her and felt his heart quicken. He knew he shouldn’t feel this way about her, but he couldn’t help it. He was confused about so many things. He’d been raised to hate the Magic Users. He’d been bred to kill the Chosen One. And now he was pretty sure he was in love with Cass, and the woman he had tried to kill was sparing his life. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what his father would say to him. He’d probably tell him he was being weak, thinking about betraying everything he’d been taught. But then again what if what he’d been raised with had been wrong? Truth is in the eye of the beholder. What can be truth for one person could be wrong for the next. He knew his father didn’t want to fight. Once, when he was young, he had overheard his father talking to his older brother. He was giving the future king his stories. King Lional had never been very personable with Wes, but he’d been overly so with his first son, Marcus. He had told Marcus that he was tired of the war and wished that it would end. But he also wanted the great Shifter race to be brought back to its glory, which meant winning the war. Thinking about it now, after Syney’s actions and his growing feelings for Cass, he couldn’t help wonder if a peaceful end would be the best thing. He had meant his comments to the Lycin Commander but wondered now just how different the other races were than he’d thought. Cass seemed like every Shifter girl he’d given the time of day to, which wasn’t many considering most females were more annoying to him than Cass was.
He opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t think of what to actually say. And then he remembered what Syney had said: Sometimes it’s better to show someone who you are instead of telling them. So he opted for just showing Cass. He took a deep breath and slipped his hand onto her cheek, bringing her lips to his own. She seemed surprised at first but quickly put her hands on his chest and kissed him back. She slid her hands up to the back of his neck and pulled him even closer. He didn’t want to treat her like some easy girl, like the ones who were always all over Marcus before he had died, so he kept his hands on her face and only moved them to her hips after a while. It was Cass who pushed him back, staring up at him with her crystal-blue eyes while she wetted her lips and ran her hands down his bare chest, stopping at the waistband of his pants.
He shook his head and tried to catch his breath.
She leaned into him. “I’ll never see you after tonight. This is it. And I want to share something with you, something special.”
“Syney is going to let me go. She’s going to make it look like an escape.”
She smiled at him. “Thank the goddesses.”
“So you don’t have to do this. Just stay with me for however long we have,” he said, running his fingers along her hair.
She kissed him. “I want to do this,” she said slowly.
He stared at her for a moment before kissing her hard. She responded by moaning into his mouth, and he was lost.
It wasn’t until after she left that he realized he had just committed an act punishable by death in his home. He didn’t think his father would be as gracious as Syney, however—a thought that pained him. He needed to do something big with his new chance at life, he decided. Syney said she wanted to end the war, and there were things he could do to help, the first being to watch out for the wolves so close to the border. If they moved any closer to the Shifter kingdom, he knew his father would attack them, whether or not the wolves went over the border. He needed to get back out there as soon as he could.
He was thinking of angles to get at his father when the door opened again, and Commander Lycin entered. He walked over to Wes, followed closely by another man, a Vampire, judging by the smell.
“Is your venom poisonous?” the wolf asked him.
“Not to Lycins.” Wes looked at the other man. “Or Vampires. But it would knock both of you out for a while.”
Leaf nodded. “This is Gabriel. He’s going to get you out of the Village.”
“It would be easiest if you shifted,” the Vampire said.
“And you’ll need to bite the two wolves by the door,” Leaf said.
Wes looked back and forth between them. It seemed like the beginning of a bad joke. A Shifter, a Vampire, and a Lycin meet in a prison cell. “Where will you take me?”
“Bolchin probably. I don’t want to be gone too long, and I definitely don’t want to be seen with you,” Gabriel said.
Wes nodded. “Can you tell Syney…thank you? And that I’ll try to help if I can?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get the Shifters to help for years, and all I needed to do was get one alone in a room with a doe-eyed Magic User for a half hour.”
Wes lunged at him, but Gabriel quickly stepped away.
“Enough!”
They both looked at the wolf.
“Let’s do this now,” Leaf said.
Wes was out of the Village an hour later and in Bolchin soon after that, thanks to the Vampire’s speed. Once there, Wes shifted and looked at Gabriel. “Thank you.”
“Listen, there are some wolves on the border.”
“I know.”
Gabriel looked away for a moment. “Try not to kill them.”
Wes nodded and headed into the dark Bolchin night. He needed to find some clothes and start back to Shifter territory. He also needed to talk to his father and try anything he could to reason with him. Above all, he needed for tonight not to be the last time he saw Cass.
Syney sat down on the stairs that led up to the restricted section of the library. Cass had been putting off getting her in for weeks, and Syney was getting frustrated. With everything going on, she needed to know which powers all the races possessed and, on a more personal note, which race could remove curses. It had become a personal goal for Syney, especially since she had been paired with Adam. She’d never thought having kids, a family even, was a big deal, but when you have no other family, when they’re all forcefully taken from you, starting over becomes all you want to do. Lately Syney had started to miss so much of her old life. Everything had been so much easier, not to mention safer. She missed her parents and Jess. They’d all been so close. There always had been someone she could turn to who seemed to know exactly what to say. Sure, she had people here in the Village, but for the past couple of weeks, they all had something else on their minds. Gabe had been out of the Village more than in, and when he was there, Noelle was practically attached to him. And when he wasn’t there, Noelle was quiet and stayed away from Syney as much as possible, letting Syney’s second assistant take the brunt of the work. Syney was pretty sure it was because of their newfound connection. She wouldn’t want anyone to have to feel what she did, let alone her best friend.
Adam, unlike the other two, was always around. He even had moved into Syney’s room, which had made her happy for about an hour. That was until he decided that every spare moment they had should be used to practice magic. Syney agreed that experimenting with her magic was important but not every second of every day. She was newly engaged and just wanted to spend some quality alone time with her fiancé. Not that she could open up to Adam about what was really bothering her. Talking to her fiancé about her shared dreams with her ex-boyfriend was
n’t a conversation she wanted to have. Unfortunately that didn’t leave anyone else.
Looking at the door to the library, Syney sighed. Both Reed and Poppy were standing guard. They had increased the Protectors to two at a time since the Shifter had “escaped.” Syney knew she had nothing to fear since she had helped let him out a few weeks ago, but she played along with the whole scare. Two guards had been punished, being dismissed from their guardship and banished from the palace, for having been on duty when the Shifter had escaped. Syney felt horrible when she found out, even going to Leaf and begging him to let her take some of the heat. But Leaf had calmed her down. He told her that the guards were older men who had taken the assignment, knowing what would happen. She still felt bad but couldn’t do much about it now. Just another thing she didn’t have anyone to talk to about.
Syney finally stood; obviously Cass was standing her up, again. She wondered what kind of excuse she would get this time just as the young princess walked quickly into the room. She wasn’t dressed in the usual large dresses she seemed to prefer but a cotton skirt and blouse, which was more similar to something Syney would wear.
“Sorry, sorry. I know, I was supposed to be here a half hour ago. But at least I’m here, right?” Cass said hurriedly as she walked past Syney and up the stairs to the restricted section. She put her hand on the doorknob and whispered something before opening the door. She took a seat quickly at the table in the middle of the room, her legs jumping up and down under the table.
Syney gave her an odd look as she walked into the small window-lined room. There were several bookshelves, much like in the rest of the library, but the books here seemed much older, the pages more faded and the bindings harder leather. One shelf to the side seemed set apart from the rest. Syney was drawn to it for some reason, even reaching out her hand to run her fingers along the bindings. But the second she got within inches of the books, something zapped up her arm. As she rubbed it, everything from her elbow down tingled painfully. “What the hell was that?”
Deviation: Altera Realm Trilogy Book 2 Page 25