Severed

by Evangeline Anderson

  I felt a second stab in my heart as another part of our bond collapsed. This one was so strong I stumbled to my knees.

  “Baby—are you okay?” Drace knelt by me at once.

  “Ma 'frela, are you well?” Lucian was on my other side.

  Both of them looked terribly concerned—maybe even remorseful. But I realized that though I could see the emotions on their faces, I could no longer feel them inside me. The place where they had been connected to me felt numb—like an amputated limb. It simply wasn’t there anymore.

  It’s done—it’s really done. We’re separated and we’ll never be together again.

  The realization was too much. I shrugged off both their hands and curled into a ball. I could feel the tears threatening, stinging and hot, just behind my eyes. But I couldn’t let them come out. If I started crying now I would never stop—I’d just be a basket case who cried the rest of her life.

  Home, I thought miserably. I just want to go home and forget any of this ever happened.

  Which gave me an idea…a way to cope. Maybe the only way that would keep me from going crazy with grief…

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Rylee

  “You’re sure this is what you want?” Lucian asked me for maybe the tenth time. He and Drace were standing on either side of me, just as they always had. But this time I felt no love or protection coming from them—our bond was gone…gone forever.

  No, don’t think like that! You’ll go crazy if you think like that. Just keep it together, Rylee—keep it together for a little while longer.

  “I’m sure,” I said, lifting my chin. “If you think the two of you can work together just one more time?”

  “For you, baby—anything,” Drace said hoarsely.

  “No,” I said, looking at him sadly. “Not quite anything.”

  He flushed and looked away. “I’m sorry—it was for the best,” he muttered.

  “Tell that to my heart,” I said and looked up at Lucian. “You’re sure you can take all of it away? Every last memory from right before I got sucked up in the mirror until now?”

  “If that is what you really desire, ma 'frela. If you really want to forget us completely.”

  “I do,” I said steadily. “I’m barely holding it together here. If I let myself start crying I’ll go crazy. I need to forget you two—forget everything we did together…everything we meant to each other. The…the love we shared.” I choked on the words and almost couldn’t go on. “It’s…it’s the only way to keep my sanity,” I finished in a wavering voice.

  “Are you nearly finished with your farewell rituals?” called the squeaky voice of the head Commercian—or the head Blue Centipede Guy, as I called him in my head.

  “Almost,” I said. “You have that thing tuned to my apartment?”

  “We’ll be depositing you right back in front of the mirror you were first transported through,” the Commercian—Char’noth I think his name was—said.

  “Good, that’s good.” I took a deep breath and looked up at my guys for the last time. “All right,” I said. “Wipe me. I don’t want to remember any of this. Ever.”

  “We will do a very thorough job—just as we did on your former paramour,” Lucian promised. He looked up at Drace. “Are you ready bond-m—” He broke off abruptly.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.” Drace acted like he didn’t notice the slip but I was pretty sure he had. They positioned themselves on either side of me, each with a hand on the side of my head, just as they had done when they erased Phillip’s memory what seemed like a million years ago.

  “I’m sorry,” Drace said to me one last time. I had the feeling he was regretting using the Claw to sever himself from Lucian so quickly, without really thinking about it first. But of course, it was too late now. “I love you, baby,” he added in a low voice. “I always will. I’ll never forget you.”

  “Nor I. I love you as well, ma 'frela,” Lucian said.

  “And I love both of you,” I said, feeling the tears prick behind my eyes. “But our love wasn’t enough, was it?” They started to answer but I shook my head. "No please—put me out of my misery. Help me forget. Now.”

  “As you wish,” Lucian said and then I felt a thick, gray mist blanketing my mind. A numbing mist, that made the pain go away—that banished the sharp ache which was all that was left in the place where we had once had a beautiful three-part bond. I wanted the mist to cover me completely, to erase everything, to leave nothing behind.

  I closed my eyes and let myself fall into it. Closed my eyes and forgot.

  * * * * *

  I woke up with a splitting headache and the feeling that there was something important I had to remember. But what? I sat up in my bed and ran a hand over my tangled hair. What was wrong with me? I felt so strange.

  I’d had a dream—I vaguely recollected. A really strange dream about someone tucking me into bed and kissing me goodnight. No…two someones. Huge men…one green and one blue? But that didn’t make any sense.

  The moment the image began to form in my head, it was obscured. A thick gray mist seemed to cover it, hiding any details of my dream that I might have remembered.

  Well, dreams were fleeting. I shrugged and swung my legs over the side of the bed, groaning as the sudden motion jostled my head. It felt like my skull was stuffed with glass shards and cotton and I had the worst headache. Seriously, an up-all-night-drinking-morning-after hangover kind of headache. What had I been doing last night?

  I frowned as I tried to remember but all I could come up with was a vague idea that I might have seen my gay clients—the ones who were fighting over their pet French Bulldog-labradootle mix. That didn’t seem quite right, but it was the best I could come up with. I couldn’t recall anything else except the idea that there had been a divorce—a nasty one that hurt everyone involved. But was it my clients’ divorce I was thinking of…or someone else? I didn’t know and trying to remember made my head hurt even worse.

  It’ll be okay, I told myself uneasily as I clutched the side of my head and shuffled to the bathroom to take some ibuprofen. I just had a bad night. I’ll feel better after a shower.

  Only I didn’t. The headache persisted, a throbbing, debilitating ache which made me want to crawl back into bed. The eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen I took didn’t even touch it.

  This is awful! It’s like a migraine, I thought, wrapping a towel around me and hobbling back to the bed like an old woman. What’s wrong with me? I never get migraines.

  Only it seemed like I had one now and it was in no hurry to go away. Groaning and clutching my head, I sat back down on the side of the bed. God, it hurt so much—what was I going to do?

  I’ll go back to bed, I told myself. At least I don’t have to call in sick—I work for myself now. I can take a sick day without worrying someone might fire me for it. I’ll just go back to sleep but first I’ll call and cancel my appointments.

  This involved a lot more effort than I wanted to expend at the moment. First I had to find my phone—which was missing from its usual spot by the night table. The phone turned up lying on the floor on the living room which was just damn weird. How had it gotten there? Had I gotten up in the middle of the night and dropped it by accident? But why hadn’t I picked it up? It made no sense.

  After finally locating the phone, I found that it was dead—completely dead. Which was so unlike me—I always keep my phone charged in case of emergencies.

  I plugged it up to the charger and resurrected it only to find that I had something like fifty voicemails and tons of unanswered texts from friends, family and clients. Most of them were variations of, “Where are you? I can’t reach you and I’m getting worried.” My Aunt Celia had called me ten times at least, each call more concerned than the last.

  There was also a message from an old friend who knew my ex, Phillip. She wanted to know if I had been watching the news—somehow Phillip had turned up naked and disoriented in a town in Australia and now he was apparently try
ing to get back home. The story had been picked up by a prominent Internet blog and had gone viral.

  I frowned. Well, that was bizarre and even stranger was the way it messed with my head. I had some kind of idea about Phillip—a feeling that I might know something about his bizarre disappearance and reappearance, naked down-under. But the moment I tried to access my memory, the fog came rolling back and my headache got worse.

  I gave up and went back to my other messages and texts.

  “What in the world?” I muttered, scrolling through the contents of my phone. “What happened? How did I get all this mess in one night?”

  Then I looked at the date on my phone. It hadn’t been just one night. Somehow I’d been gone for days and days. But how? And why?

  A memory tried to surface again—me between two huge men. One of them with blue skin and one with olive green. They—

  But the moment the memory started to come back, the fog rolled over my brain again. I couldn’t remember—I had lost over a week of my life and I couldn’t remember where I had been or what I had been doing or who I had been doing it with. I only knew my head ached so badly I couldn’t stand it.

  Lying on my side on the bed, I put one hand to my throbbing temple and closed my eyes. Something had happened to me…something bad. But I couldn’t remember what it was. All I knew was that I hurt and I couldn’t seem to stop hurting…

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Lucian

  “Rylee’s in pain.” Drace’s face over the viewscreen was grim. “I can feel it. I shouldn’t be able to—especially not at this distance and after we severed our bond—but I do. She’s hurting.”

  It was the first time my former bond-mate had contacted me since I’d dropped him off near his home by the K’drin jungle over a solar week ago. The call was a surprise—I’d never expected him to speak to me again.

  He had been silent and taciturn on our trip back from Earth to Denaris, saying barely three words to me. I’d thought about trying to explain myself again—about how everything he’d seen was a big mistake. But what was the point? Our bond was broken and I was fairly certain there was no way to restore it, even if we had wanted to—which Drace most definitely did not. So, really, there was nothing to say except goodbye.

  I came back home and spent the next week feeling completely shredded, refusing to see or speak to anyone. Hylorn and my mother both came to try and cheer me up but I sent them away without even opening the door of my domicile. I couldn’t help it—I wasn’t fit to be seen. The loss of my bond-mate and the female we both loved was a pain so great I was nearly incoherent with grief. For the first time, I understood how people felt when a loved one died. Because, for all intents and purposes, both Rylee and Drace were dead to me now.

  But now, here was my former bond-mate, back from the dead, confronting me with this startling claim.

  “Can you feel it?” he asked me abruptly. “Can you feel her pain too or is it only me?”

  “I don’t feel any pain,” I said slowly. “But…I do have dreams. I keep seeing her curled up on the sleeping platform, clutching her head. I keep telling myself they’re only dreams but…” I trailed off uncertainly.

  “Goddess above,” Drace muttered angrily. “Are there any side effects to that damn memory-wipe we did on her? Anything that can go wrong?”

  “Not if it’s done properly,” I said bristling. “By a bonded pair of males.”

  “But we weren’t bonded when we did it,” he pointed out.

  “No…but it did work,” I said, frowning.

  “Did it?” he demanded. “How do you know we didn’t abandon the female we both love—loved anyway, in your case—to a lifetime of debilitating fucking pain? Can you promise me we didn’t?”

  I pursed my lips, ignoring his insult. “I’ve never heard of such an outcome before. But Rylee is human, a Pure One and a La-ti-zal. It’s possible that her body reacted differently to the wipe than anyone else from the Twelve Peoples would have.”

  “We have to get to her. We have to check and make sure she’s all right,” Drace growled. “I’m going anyway. I don’t care if you come or not.”

  “Of course I’m going,” I said coldly. “You said it yourself—she’s the woman we both love. Just because we don’t…don’t care for each other anymore is no reason I would stop caring for her.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” he snarled. “But fine, you go in your ship, I’ll go in mine.”

  “That will take too long,” I objected, ignoring his dig. “What if there really is a problem and I need you to help me help Rylee?”

  “And how do you think I can help you if the problem has to do with the mind-wipe?” he demanded. “Our bond is severed.”

  “Yes it is—you saw to that yourself,” I said sharply. “As to how you can help—I don’t have any fucking idea. But we started this together, it seems logical it will take both of us to remedy whatever is wrong with Rylee.”

  As always, when I swore, Drace seemed taken aback.

  “Fine,” he said at last. “Pick me up where you dropped me off. We’ll go together.”

  “On my way,” I said and cut the connection. It was time to pay a visit to the AMI and have the Commercians zero in on Rylee so we could find out what, if anything, was going on.

  * * * * *

  Drace

  Lucian picked me up and I swear we didn’t share five fucking words between us on the trip back to Earth. There was nothing to say, I told myself. What was I going to do—ask him how his new bond-mate was working out?

  I knew that my former bond-mate had already psy-bonded himself to Hylorn because Lucian’s mother had called to tell me—with poorly concealed glee—that they were already an item. She went on and fucking on about how the two of them were attending society balls every night with the female she had picked out for them. Apparently the three of them were the toast of the town. The cream of Fang Clan society and the envy of everyone everywhere.

  Fucking asshole.

  And all the while I sat at home in my bachelor’s lair and kept to myself, as lonely and miserable as I had been before. No, actually more lonely and miserable because now I knew what I was missing. Hearing about how Lucian had moved on only made me hate and resent him even more.

  That bastard, I thought while his mother was prattling on and on about how well he was doing and how happy he was. He never cared about Rylee or me in the first place. If he had, there’s no way he could move on so quickly. At last, I wound up hanging up on her—I couldn’t stand to hear anymore of his golden boy exploits. They made me sick. Sick with longing for Lucian and Rylee both, even while I hated him and missed her. Sick because I couldn’t stand to let them go—at least, not in my mind.

  I told myself to get over it. That the pain I felt was due to the psychic trauma of severing our bond so abruptly, that I would move on eventually, just as Lucian already had. But would I really?

  It sure as hell didn’t feel like it.

  When we got to the AMI and docked with the Commercian’s station, which was camouflaged among the space junk in low Earth orbit, we got a surprise. There was another ship also docked with them.

  “What’s this?” I muttered to Lucian. “I thought they only saw one client at a time?”

  He shrugged. “You know the Commercians—always eager to make more profit.”

  We went through the airlock and found the Commercians already busy with two customers—an Earth female with long, silky brown hair and a huge Braxian male with blue skin and curving black horns. He had the black-on-black eyes of his kind and they didn’t look friendly when he turned to us.

  “Are these the ones?” he asked Char’noth, the head Commercian as he pointed to us.

  “Yes, my Lord Grav, these are the males who purchased the La-ti-zal female called Ry-lee,” Char’noth piped up, pointing several arms at us.

  “Who the fuck are you and what do you want with Rylee?” I growled, taking a step towards him. Braxians were some of the most
feared of the Twelve Peoples—they could unleash a berserker rage that was seriously insane in its intensity. But if this bastard wanted to mess with Rylee, he’d find out I could get more than a little berserk myself.

  Beside me, Lucian also stepped up, fangs bared, which surprised me a little, since he was already practically life-bonded to Hylorn and the female his mother had picked for them. I told myself he was probably just feeling responsible for Rylee because of the way he used to care for her.

  “Who the fuck am I?” The Braxian growled, his black-on-black eyes narrowing to slits. “I’m Gravex N’gol, here by order of the new Goddess-Empress, Sundalla the 1000th to find out what’s going on with the Commercians’ little business. And what I want with Rylee Hale is to find out what you two fuck-ups did to her that left her lookin’ like that.”

  He stabbed a finger at the AMI lightscreen. I stepped forward and saw that it was showing Rylee—but not the happy, laughing, vibrant Rylee Lucian and I had known. She was curled on her side, her hands pressed to the sides of her head with tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

  She was in terrible pain. I felt just a tingle of it, the kind of feeling you might get in a limb that’s had extensive nerve damage and isn’t expected to recover full function.

  “Gods,” Lucian whispered in a stricken voice. “This is what I dreamed! I can’t believe it’s true.”

  “Believe it, asshole,” Grav snarled. “The poor little thing is suffering and you two fucks have something to do with it! She’s a friend of my mate, Leah.” He nodded at the brown haired Earth female who had a worried look on her face. “And she’s pretty damn upset by this. I want to know what you did to her and I want to know right fuckin’ now!”

  “We wiped her memory of us after we severed our bond with her,” Lucian said, answering for both of us. “It’s a talent the males of my Clan have, to erase bad or painful memories. But I’ve never seen anyone have these kinds of effects from it before.”