He thought about it for a second. "You're asking if I would still try to rescue Braden even if I knew what would happen to me?"
She nodded.
"I would. He's my nephew. I would try even if I knew I would die from the effort."
Faith took his head in his hands. "And that's why you'll always be the most heroic man I've ever met."
Theo wished he could live in that moment forever as he stared at Faith, nothing but glowing admiration coming from her eyes but something caught his attention he had not seen before. Both of the demons stared straight at them. One of them seemed to narrow his eyes as if he considered them thoughtfully. Cullen shouted his instructions and in the next second, Theo saw himself hit the floor after being burned.
His own cheek stung but not with the same pain as the first time. Why did the demons watch them?
"Theo?"
He nodded. "I see them too and I have no answers." But now he knew he needed some.
Chapter Six
Faith hoped she did a good job of hiding her extraordinary distress at watching the 'other' Theo suffer so greatly. Even though the scene she observed was a terrible ordeal, she had been able to see the lightness in his eyes and the prevailing innocence of his demeanor. He'd been through trauma with the destruction of the pack and the deceit from his father and still it had been that one moment--when the acid had burned its way into his body and started destroying him from the inside out--that had made him the man he was today.
She held her Theo's hand tightly as they walked through the burning hall, close on the heels of Tristan, who carried Braden, and Cullen, holding Theo from the past on his back. Now that they were away from the demons, the heat and smoke were once again almost too intense to tolerate. Inexplicably, her wolf was nowhere to be found, so she had no choice but to endure the choking heat.
"Can you communicate with your wolf?"
He shook his head. "Not at all but I couldn't when I was with the demon earlier tonight either. I hate to say I'm getting used to being ignored."
"I hope they're okay." She'd hate to think that the poor thing was in pain or trouble and she didn't know.
"If you're okay, they're okay. Try not to worry."
Faith hacked as she inhaled a lungful of black smoke. When she could speak, she had to shout over the roar of the flames that was becoming increasingly loud. "Where are we going now?"
"No idea. I never saw this part. The next thing I remember is waking up several days later looking slightly worse than I do in our present time and feeling like I wished I had died. There was this sense I couldn't get rid of, the best I can call it is wrongness, and the idea that I was more alone than I'd ever been before."
She nodded. "I have to assume we'll be sent home once we've seen what we have to see."
Part of the ceiling crumbled in front of them and they both leapt to avoid tripping over it. "I have no idea when or if this will end. This has never happened to me before."
"When you visit with the demons, how do you get sent back?"
"It's not exactly a visit, Faith, they don't have me over for tea and then I leave after dinner. The thing is living inside of me and periodically it invades my human mind."
She rolled her eyes. "We are running through the middle of a burning building chasing your half-dead body and you want to discuss my word choice? Hell. Answer the damn question."
"First time as far as I can tell, I was away for an hour, around the same amount of time the second time, and very short the third time it happened because you brought me back but I don't think this is the same circumstance. I have no memory of any of this; it's not trapped in my mind. I think we're back in time."
As they reached the outside of the building, cold air assaulted her senses. She'd just gotten through her first winter in Maine but spring had found it's way onto the island and her blood had started to thin. Wearing nothing but her nightie, she did not feel equipped to handle the onslaught of nearly frozen air. Once again, she missed her furry coat.
Theo's arms came around her and she was grateful until she realized he only wore the pants she'd brought him in the woods. He must be much colder than she was. Out of the flames and away from the danger she found herself unable to look away from the hard lines of his sculpted chest in the moonlight. Reaching out, she touched him and felt his heart jump beneath her fingertips. It was a powerful feeling to know she affected him that much with merely her touch.
With her thumb and forefinger, she stroked over his nipple and his eyes got wide. Faith was barely aware of the commotion the pack created around her as they tried to help Theo, Tristan, and Cullen. This was completely the wrong time but she couldn't control the primal need that filled her in his presence.
"I don't know how you can even look at me let alone touch me."
Faith scoffed and stroked the fire ravaged side of his face. He flinched and attempted to pull away but she grabbed the back of his neck to stop him. "Why, because you're scarred? I hardly notice. Does it hurt you?"
His eyes were hard. "Only every day."
"Have you ever tried to put something on it to soften up the skin, make the good portion around it feel better, less tight? Vitamin E?"
"I'm a wolf-shifter, we heal without the use of any of that stuff."
Faith dug deep to find her patience. This man could say the most infuriating things. So why was it she found him so damn sexy he made the skin on her toes tingle?
He's our mate.
Yes, but at the moment I'm trying to figure out if I like him as a person in addition to whatever plans the fates have for us.
Theo is the most self-sacrificing, bravest man we've ever known.
In that, Faith would not argue. She didn't know if she could make the same promise to sacrifice her health--both physical and emotional--again if she knew what the outcome would be ahead of time.
"Look Theo, when we get back from here," she interrupted him as he opened his mouth knowing what his argument would be. "Okay, if we get out of here, then I'm going to start to rub some creams on your face in the morning and at night and we'll see if we can't make it feel better."
Theo rolled his eyes but nodded at the idea. As she watched, his eyes got wide. "Oh boy, I think we'd better move." Theo motioned to the left. The pack had dispersed to other places and Cullen and Summer argued in front of the burning building. Although their voices were raised, the sexual tension between them filled the area around them.
Theo grabbed her hand and they walked quickly through the woods in the direction where they heard the voices of the rest of the pack. "I can't help feeling like we interrupted a private moment."
"I won't tell if you won't but I think you're right. I think if we'd stayed a few more minutes, we would have witnessed their mating."
Faith shook her head to clear the images from it. She didn't need to picture Cullen and Summer doing anything anywhere near mating.
Theo's eyes sparkled in the moonlight. "I'm trying not to think about it too."
"The mating is one of those things I know next to nothing about." Theo raised an eyebrow. "I don't mean the sex aspect of it. That I know about."
"How much do you know about the sex bit?" Had she imagined that his voice just lowered two octaves? She rolled her eyes. Men, they were so predictable.
"Were you under the impression that I had lived almost forty years out in the human world and I was still a virgin?"
She'd asked the question but was shocked at the silence that followed her sarcasm. Finally, he spoke. "I was under the impression that sex without one's mate was really bad for most of us. It's one of the inclinations to find your mate as soon as possible."
Faith had never heard that but at least her two failed relationships made a little more sense now. "That clears a few things up."
"So it wasn't any good with anyone else." Theo's face was impassive but his tone still felt scalding.
"You don't even want to mate with me, what do you care?" Really, she'd had about enough.
Theo grabbed her by her shoulders and swung her around until she faced him. The intensity of his expression grabbed her. "How can you think I don't want to mate with you? I'm sparing you the horror that I would be to live with. Once we mate, that's it. If something happens to me, you won't be able to resist the urge to kill yourself. You'll have to follow me to wherever it is that we go. What if I lose my mind like my father and kill you? Then you'll be stuck in eternity with the man who took your life."
"Theo, look at me." Faith pulled out of his arms and grabbed his face with both of her hands. "I spent most of my life thinking I was insane. When I left here, and was put out there," she pointed towards the ocean that led off the island and onto the mainland of Maine and the rest of the world. "I was an odd little girl who kept rambling about wolves and magic. The social workers in the first orphanage they put me in thought I was delusional and recommended putting me in an insane asylum. Fortunately, that didn't happen, but the people who ran the orphanage beat any thoughts they considered 'inappropriate' from my head. I'm not some weak ninny who is going to fall apart at the first sign of trouble. I've been gifted with some kind of power to bring you back from the demons. I think whether we like it or not we are made for one another."
"So do you like it or hate it that you're stuck with me?"
Faith sighed. "At the moment, I want to ring your neck but when you're not acting a fool, I like you a great deal. You're strong, brave, and compassionate. What's not to like?"
Theo glanced left and right. "Something feel 'off' to you?"
"You mean other than this whole situation? No." Freezing, she would have preferred to be indoors but other than that, she felt pretty normal.
Her would-be mate nodded his head but his eyes were still far away. "I want the names of all the people who beat you, Faith."
"They'd be in their sixties and seventies, Theo, and they don't age like us."
He turned his head to look her straight in the eyes. "I don't care."
Just then, as if they were swept up by a giant gust of wind, Faith found herself shoved up against Theo and floating in the air. "What the hell?"
Theo's strong arms came around her. "I have no idea but I've got you, wherever we're going, we're going together."
Two seconds later, they landed with a hard thump on a wooden floor. Faith lay still for a moment wondering if she was stunned or just unable to move. Theo jumped to his feet; his eyes scanned the room around them. Finding her balance, Faith forced herself to sit up. She rubbed her head and noted that her elbow throbbed. Oh well, all in all she'd only suffered minor injury from whatever had just happened to them.
"I know this place too."
Faith nodded, not surprised. This strange journey seemed to be a distorted trip down Theo's memory lane. He was seeing things he'd seen before and also things he'd missed. She had no idea who guided them but she hoped they knew what they were doing.
Looking around, she gasped. She knew where they were too. It was the main hotel, where the humans came to vacation not knowing they were being secretly scouted out to see if they were really missing wolf-shifters who just didn't know it. Ashlee had originally come up with the idea when she'd first mated Tristan, years before Faith came to Westervelt. As a pack they had sent out a magical inclination for the pack's mates to come to the hotel and surgical center. It had seemed like a good excuse as Ashlee and Summer's father had been, before he was killed by Kendrick's minions, a sought after plastic surgeon. They were currently standing in one of the recovery rooms.
A slight noise, like the movement of a chair being pushed backwards, caught her attention and she whirled around. Tristan and Ashlee sat by the king-sized bed in front of them. The sheets were a deep mahogany, which meant that they'd landed in the room she always thought of as the Bordeaux room. Almost everything in it, with the exception of the beige carpet, was painted in that shade. It could be a little overwhelming.
"I don't think he's going to make it through the night, my love." Ashlee sounded more forlorn than Faith had ever heard her. "This is beyond my skills or powers."
"What about the Aunts? Did they know anything?" Tristan's voice sounded more like a hiss. Faith didn't have to guess who lay in the bed even though she couldn't see his face. It was clearly Theo and they were in the room he'd recovered in immediately after his attack.
"They didn't. I know nothing about the demons nor how to treat someone from an attack. Maybe Cullen will know."
"Maybe I will string Cullen up by his fingernails. That man keeps too many secrets. It might have been nice to know that these creatures existed somewhere in the universe before they took our son."
Ashlee closed her eyes for a moment and Theo grasped Faith's arm. "I don't want to witness this." His voice was a whisper as if they could be heard when Faith suspected that like the burning building those around them would not be aware of their presence here either.
"It's okay, sweetheart." She rubbed his arm with her hand. "We know you don't die."
"Theo is going to die because he saved Braden." Tristan stood up and stormed to the window. "I'm going to lose my brother tonight. Someone will pay for this." Tristan's voice was all wolf and if Faith had been actually present at the time she would have been scared to death. To her recollection, she'd never heard their Alpha sound like that.
Faith turned her attention to Theo, his face an unreadable mask. "Just in case you ever wanted to know how Tristan would feel if you died, here is your answer."
"It's been hard being away from them. We were all together...basically alone...for years and years until Ashlee came and fate started moving in our direction again."
Tristan moved from the window toward the door. "Cullen and Summer have arrived. I can see from their body language that something has changed." He sighed. "Do you think they've mated?"
Nodding, Ashlee looked at her hands. "I don't want to think about my sister mating. Go ahead and run the meeting. Find out what's happening. I'll stay here and try to help Theo as best I can."
Tristan nodded and stalked to the door. "Maybe Cullen will have a solution for saving him." He paused and turned around. "I love you."
Faith's heart pounded. She couldn't get over their ease together. Tristan always presented such a strong front. He was in charge, everyone respected him, and Ashlee stood by his side, most of the time silent and supportive. But in a situation like this one, even with Theo's death on the line, they seemed so complete with one another. Would she and Theo ever share that kind of easiness? Was it just time spent together or was there more to it?
On the bed, Theo started to spasm. Faith stared intently, wondering how this would end. She knew Theo was alive and well next to her thereby making it impossible for him to die where he lay. Yet, as she stood and watched, she felt her heart contract inside of her chest. Something was going terribly wrong. Whirling around she reached out to grab Theo's arm and found nothing but air instead. Theo had disappeared.
Ashlee stood over Theo's dying body, her eyes closed she chanted some magical words Faith did not understand. Rolling her eyes, Faith stormed forward. She never had time for magic and it certainly wasn't working now. The fact that Theo had vanished was a very bad sign. Was it possible to change history? Had they somehow done something so that this time he would die?
She didn't need to hear her wolf's voice--still missing--to know it was vitally important to her future that he live. She could already feel his connection to her very soul. Inside of her, an ache started to fill her chest cavity. Dear heavens, was it already too late?
Kneeling down next to the bed, she wished she could shove Ashlee away. Quickly, she placed her hands, palms down, on top of Theo's body, writhing on the bed. She closed her eyes. The white light that had consumed the room when she'd called him back from the demons appeared. This time she wasn't afraid. Her gifts had been made for Theo--she would not be afraid to use them.
Warmth filled her body and still she didn't open her eyes. Theo needed as much help
as he could get. A hand gripped her arm and she jerked backwards.
Ashlee's eyes were huge. "Who are you and what are you doing?" Faith had no doubt that Ashlee would kill her in that moment if she wasn't careful. She was the mate to the Alpha of their pack. Until she determined Faith wasn't a threat she would treat her like one.
"You can see me?" Maybe it wasn't the most coherent answer to Ashlee's question but it made sense in Faith's brain. Quickly, she scanned the room. The Theo from her time period had not reappeared, which meant the Theo on the bed needed more help.
"You appeared out of nowhere after that white light started. Now answer my question, who are you and what are you doing to him?"
Faith cleared her throat. "My name is Faith Anderson. You don't know me yet but you will, a few months from now. I don't want to give you too many specifics because of the whole changing the future possibility but I'm a member of your pack and his," she motioned to Theo. "Mate. I'm trying to save his life if you'll let me get back to it."
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm not sure, exactly." This was getting increasingly frustrating with every second that passed. "Theo and I got sucked back into the past but no one can see us except now you and now he's vanished which makes me think that if you don't let me complete what I'm doing, he'll be dead." The thought made her stomach turn and she prayed she wouldn't be sick.
"How do I know you're telling the truth? There are a lot of strange things going on right now."
"In the not too distant future, you and I are friends. No one smells a lie more acutely than you. You once told me it makes your nose itch. Is it doing that now?"
"No." Ashlee narrowed her eyes. "All right, I'm going to believe you, Faith, please continue."
Faith closed her eyes again and tried to find her focus. Surprisingly it came fast. A surge or warmth escaped her body and flowed into Theo's. On the bed, she heard him take a deep breath. Opening her eyes, she saw Ashlee had tears in her eyes.
"You definitely just saved his life."
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