by Amanda Boone
The commander’s eyes circled and shifted from left to right, and even as he did this, Paran knew he was chasing his mind, wondering where it had gone.
Paran ended his lesson early, knowing that the men would have lost their focus after watching the commander challenge him. It was a difficult thing, holding the interest of a species that always believed themselves superior to those around them. How could he convince them that understanding the humans was the most important thing they could do?
Feeling exhausted from a morning of the metaphorical equivalent to beating at a stone wall, Paran retreated to his cottage, locking the doors. He detested the emptiness and the silence, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to seek out a person to fill it.
There was only one woman he could ever see himself with. A smile played at the edge of his lips as he summoned the image of her all those years ago in that bar with her stiff drink and her knowing smirk. She had made him feel like no other living creature could. Yet she had vanished without warning.
The energy of their bonde even told him she was somewhere in New England, alive and well. But as hard as he looked, he couldn’t find her. How could he expect to, with nothing other than a first name and a memory?That second pulse that beat inside him, that life line that was all he had left of her, continued to make his heart throb. She was the only future he could ever hope for.
He stopped as soon as he had stepped over his threshold. Something had happened. He clenched his jaw shut, frozen, waiting again. There it was again, not a dream or a momentary hallucination. It was her harnessing her energy for the first time in nearly a decade. She had called on that part of herself that she shared with him, producing a signal both precise and magnificently large. What a beautiful moment.
He had found her.
Chapter Three
Evelyn winced at herself in the mirror. Three sets of hands covered her face and hair. It was the song and dance of preparing for an appearance on CNN. They always settled around her, manipulating her hair and makeup to make her look more like a woman or less like one, older or younger, smarter or more emotional, whatever suited the topic at hand. Being herself was never enough. Always a little too dry, a little too old, a little too much of a hothead, a little too intimidating.
“Not too much of the pink stuff.”
The blond with the bun at the top of her head and the dark red lipstick ducked her head, her well-groomed eyebrows rising to the top of her forehead. “You mean blush?”
Evelyn’s hand flew up, her pride speaking for her. “I’m not interested in looking like a twenty-year-old that lost a fight with her makeup drawer.”
The woman winced. It was only as she dropped the brush and backed up that Evelyn realized she had insulted her.
An older woman was on her hair, catching all the stray strands with a flat iron and laying them down. “Get back here, Jess. We don’t have time for your feelings. Line her eyes.”
As Jess stepped in front of Evelyn, there was a knock on the door, followed by the sound of it being yanked open. “March? There’s a call for you.” The young woman, dressed all in black, jabbed a landline at her.
Evelyn nearly swatted it away. “No, thank you. I have to prepare.”
“It’s Boston Preparatory Academy.”
Evelyn froze. This was just what she needed. She had used her energy to manipulate him just the night before. When he was born, she had promised herself she would never make him her subject, but she couldn’t help herself. His questions were dangerous to the both of them. She just wanted him to be happy in his ignorance and not consume himself with finding the truth.
She was at her wit’s end and completely at a lost for how to stop it or change it or control it. The worst part was that she had felt him push back. That lost look in his wet eyes. She knew it well, because she had seen it in her own the first time she had used her powers. He now knew what he was capable of, so it was only a matter of time before she got a call exactly like this one.
She didn’t need an explanation. She knew she had to get home to her Pelyn. She caught a cab and then the train, and in two hours she was in Boston, staring at a bewildered headmistress with the sound of her son’s quick breathing in her right ear.
“Pelyn got into a fight with another student.” The woman cupped her hands over a stack of paperwork Evelyn knew could have been nothing other than Pelyn’s records, which would have shown no former signs of insubordination.
“I don’t understand.” Evelyn didn’t want to believe it.
The woman turned toward her son, nudging her head at him. “Go on and tell your side of the story.”
Evelyn watched his throat bobbed with a gulp. He looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. He was exhausted, out of anger, out of his spent powers.
She wanted to cry.
“Everyone deserves a turn on the swings.” It was an empty voice.
A chill ran up Evelyn’s spine.
The headmistress shifted nervously in her seat, her stray strand of hair quivering because she couldn’t figure out why the temperature had suddenly dropped ten degrees in her office. “Tell her what you did.”
Pelyn opened his mouth and shut it twice without letting a single word escape his lips. The problem was that he had no idea what he had done. Evelyn could just imagine the confusion running through his head. She had felt it herself not too long ago.
The headmistress set her jaw. “He gave another student a bloody nose.”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. She had no idea it could be that serious. Her son had surprised her with his strength. “P-Pelyn.” She knew she had to perform for this woman. “You have to apologize to him. You know violence is never the answer.”
Pelyn glanced at her for a short second before looking away. She could tell that he had already tried to defend himself before. He hadn’t touched the boy. He didn’t know what had happened and neither did Evelyn. She had no idea what his powers were, but the danger in exploring them kept her from delving deeper into that. But it had done him no good.
Evelyn wondered at how she could have run from this for so long without thinking that it would ever catch up with her.
Pelyn was so tired that he had fallen asleep by the time she was pulling up into her driveway. She cut the engine and hoisted him into her arms like he was the baby she always wished he could stay.
But when she struggled to open her front door and step over the threshold, she noticed something strange. She could feel him for the first time in nearly a decade. Evelyn’s heart dropped. Goosebumps sprouted on the surface of her skin.
She dropped Pelyn on the couch as gently as she could manage. Then shoved the stray lock of hair behind her ear. She scanned her small living room, the breakfast area, the messy kitchen. Things had been tampered with, picked up and put down, shifted ever so slightly.
Just take a deep breath.
But Evelyn was already hyperventilating, and she still couldn’t grab ahold of herself. Pelyn hadn’t moved since she had put him down, and she knew that as soon as he woke up, he would drown her in questions.
Oh God.
“Show yourself.” But a part of her knew he wasn’t there anymore. He would have gone to whatever hotel he had rented and stayed there, waiting it out for the perfect moment. She hated the anticipation. She hated that she missed him, and yet she wished he would stop existing and get out of her head and stop pulling her. And yet, something told her that wishing for that was like wishing for a miracle.
Chapter Four
Evelyn’s eyes flashed open the next morning to the sound of something rustling around in her backyard. It was a small movement, something any human would have missed.
She ripped the covers off her, sitting upright. “Paran,” she whispered. But then she froze. She knew it was him. After all, who else could it have been? But that was precisely what stopped her. It had been almost ten years. A thin tear streamed down her cheek as she thought this. He had searched for her for almost a decade. How romantic.
She swung her legs over the side of her bed and started dragging her feet. The sound had stopped, and when she finally made it to her back door, she saw him standing there. She let herself huff out a breath of disbelief.
Having heard her approach, he turned to face her, unleashing on her the full force of his essence. She stood her ground, feeling as if the longer she stood there, the deeper into the ground her feet sank. She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. “You shouldn’t be here.”
He glowered at her, his head tilted ever so slightly to the right. “After all these years…”
Evelyn had felt that accusation coming, and the last thing she wanted was to stick around to hear it at its full force. “Don’t give me that.”
He advanced on her, one, deliberate step. Her heart thudded at the sound of it. She could feel his pull, the resistance in her head slowly being overrun by a desire to pounce on him right then and there. She wanted him back, wanted to pretend the last decade hadn’t happened, wanted to pretend that she had been brave enough not to run.
But it wasn’t like she had done it for no reason. She had needed to protect Pelyn from his true self—lest it bring him a life of confusion, of alienation—even if that meant lying to him and keeping him from his father.
He had come so close that less than a foot of air separated them. He still smelled the same. His bushy eyebrows furrowed, his eyes flowing like an angry ocean. “I could strangle you.” He lifted his hand quickly, with volition, but he let it hang there, afraid to touch her, afraid of what would happen.
Evelyn’s first instinct was to swat it away, but she didn’t, frightened that if she let herself touch him, she might not know how to let go. “So why haven’t you?”
His face softened, seeming to melt before her eyes. “You’ve made me out to be a villain all these years.”
Evelyn swallowed the lump in her throat. “Because you were. You let me believe you were human. You did this to me.” She gestured at her belly, at her gut, the very essence of her being. Ever since that night, she had not been the same Evelyn. She had been transformed into a woman who would never be content on her own, who would always have to deny herself what she really wanted: him.
“Stop lying to yourself. You knew what I was. Your mind is too powerful for you to have missed it.”
“But I didn’t know what would happen!”
“I asked you to come away with me! I begged you not to deny our bonde.”
“How could you have expected me to believe you?”
“I know you felt it!” His hand curled into a fist as his voice echoed out into the cloudy morning.
Evelyn wiped the fallen dew off her forehead, ignoring the chill that had seeped into her bones.
“I didn’t do this to you. I’m just as much of a victim as you are.”
“I want to believe you.” Evelyn had always sensed her super human identity, but she had been able to suppress it. She could always trick herself into believing she was just as normal as anyone around her. But everything had changed when he had entered her life. How could she not blame him?
“So believe me.” He advanced on her again, taking her wrists in each of his hands.
Evelyn gasped, her body throbbing for him.
“I fell in love with you that night.”
Her chest swelled, her eyes filling with tears.
“You and I, we’re not like the others. You must have known that growing up. You must have felt different. And what are the odds…. Me, a Kaharan in bar, researching. You, a half-blood doing…whatever it is humans do in a bar alone…. What are the odds that we would bonde?”
It took everything in Evelyn to rip herself out of his grip. She believed him. How could she not? There was something essential, something true, about the words coming out of his mouth. It was undeniable that she felt it deep within herself. But she couldn’t let him change her life, not for a second time. “You shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t want to be found. You know that.”
He grabbed her by her shoulders, holding her close to him, glaring into her eyes. “I can’t let you leave me again. I won’t let you shun me for another ten years. We have something you never could have with another human. I don’t exist without you, nor you without me. I won’t let you deny this any longer. I don’t know how you have thus far.”
Evelyn’s heart thudded in her chest. Her first instinct was to dismiss every word that came out of his mouth, but she knew she couldn’t.
He spoke to a deep part of her that no one else could reach, a part of her she hadn’t even known had existed before she met him, a part of her that had been calling to him for a decade. Her eyes burned with the promise of tears, because she couldn’t deny herself any longer. She could feel her resolve failing her.
“Mom?”
Evelyn saw Paran’s eyes cloud with confusion. He looked right past her at Pelyn, who stood at the edge of their lawn, his right fist rubbing a sleepy eye.
Her eyes shifted to Pelyn and then to Paran and back again. They had the same thick, dark hair, the same bone structure, the same posture, and the same vibrant blues eyes, the ones that looked like God himself had plucked two sapphires from deep within the earth and had shoved them into their eye sockets.
She could see that one recognized himself in the other.
Chapter Four
“Evelyn?”
Paran’s voice cut like a knife.
She was almost afraid to look at him. “You have to understand.” But she was ashamed of herself.
He stepped in front of her and toward his son. He knelt down in front of him, his knees pressing int0 the dew-covered grass. The boy looked into his eyes with that same expression of bewilderment. This was the moment Evelyn had dreaded her entire life.
Pelyn pressed his hand to Paran’s face. His mouth twisted into a frown.
“I have a son?”
“Pelyn, go back inside.” Evelyn couldn’t stop herself from trying to undo all of this, but her evasion of his question was enough.
The boy didn’t move.
“You kept my son from me?” Paran stood, his body tense and trembling.
“I didn’t have a choice.” Evelyn fought a lost cause.
“Why?” His bark hung in the air, demanding an answer.
“I didn’t want him to know you.”
“That was not a choice for you to make.”
Evelyn prided herself on her precise control of everything and everyone around her. It was her coping mechanism, a delicate balance that kept her afloat. Now that very thing slipped from her fingertips. “Yes, it was!” She stood her ground, determined to lie to herself for just a little bit longer. “He was inside me! We had one night, and suddenly you think you own me? He’s made of my tissue, my blood, me. He’s mine to protect.” Her face flushed red.
“How could you do this?” His voice rose three octaves, his arms jutting out to either side of him.
Evelyn could see Pelyn moving out of the corner of her eye. Her arm flung out toward him, but he swerved from her grip.
“I never wanted him to know you.”
Pelyn stared at him as if to ask if he were his father, that mystery character, the ghost he chased.
“Step away from him!” Evelyn yelled, but the words went right over his head. He wasn’t listening to her. Neither of them were.
Paran took the boy’s head in both of his hands, an expression of wonder in his watery eyes. “How could you keep this from me?”
“He’s human, Paran. You have no place in his life.” Evelyn yanked Pelyn out of his grip.
Pelyn let out a yelp of surprise and tugged against her, attempting to pry her grip off him, finger by finger.
“You stole him from me!” Paran roared.
“Pelyn, we have to go back inside.” Evelyn gasped through her tears. But even then, she was pulling a boulder up her mountain.
“No!” He slammed at her arms with his fists.
“Evelyn, stop it!” Paran grabbed her elbow
.
She let Pelyn go just long enough to land a punch to Paran’s jaw. She sucked in a heavy breath, staggering backward as a sharp pain shot up her fist. “Shit!” she hissed. Her wet sobs hung in the air. She could hardly see what was right in front of her.
The terrain was blurry. The sun rose crimson out of her right eye, turning the sky blood red. A bird rushed across the horizon, its cry cutting the heavy air.
A bout of exhaustion overcame her, ten years of denying herself catching up with her. Son had met father, boy had met destiny, and there was nothing she could do about it. And yet she would not stop fighting, for it was her essential nature. “Get out! Get out!”
Paran swiped the blood away and grabbed Evelyn in the same movement. “Evelyn, calm yourself.”
“No!” She hardly realized that she was yanking Pelyn back and forth. He cried out to her, out to the both of them.
“Mom, let me go!”
“He’s my son! Human! My son!”
“You can’t keep him from himself!” Paran’s voice had a sickened husk about it.
“Stop it! Mom, you’re hurting me!” Pelyn’s screech tugged at her nerves.
Paran went for both of them, but he only had two hands and not nearly enough force.
She didn’t know how to stop, how to undo what she had already done.
“Mom!” Pelyn’s voice gained a strange base.
She felt something seize her mind from the inside out, reach inside her and touch her. She froze, as time seemed to have stopped, and with it, the world around her. She caught Paran’s eyes first, but they reflected exactly what she felt.
This wasn’t his doing.
He stepped away from her with the kind of slow movement that suggested he was wading through water. She followed his gaze to Pelyn, who had stepped several paces back. He stood with his hands outstretched in front of him, his fingers webbed out as far as they would go, his eyes bloodshot, a thin stream of blood seeping from his nose.
Pelyn, stop it. It was a weak thought at first, but then it grew until she was zipping across the lawn toward him. “Pelyn!” The scream ripped her throat apart. “You’re hurting yourself! You have to stop!”
