by A. K. Morgen
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“It’s not right,” I said again, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“I know.” He gave me a weak half-smile. “It never is.”
Ugh.
I didn’t know what else to say to him, so I rested my head against his chest instead of arguing further. The wolves weren’t safe, and that hurt. It hurt more that Dace could willingly put them in danger, that he risked their lives to keep me safe.
There weren’t any words to make me feel better about that.
“Are you ready to go back inside?” Dace asked, resting his chin atop my head.
“I guess so,” I said, the snow no longer as magical as it seemed ten minutes ago. Reprieves were in short supply these days.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” he murmured, wrapping his arm firmly around me to help me back into the house.
“Don’t be sorry, Dace.” I laid my head on his shoulder. “I wanted this. You know I did.”
“Do you still?” he asked, his voice quiet.
A little piece of my heart shattered at how uncertain he sounded. At how uncertain he felt. There were a million things I wasn’t sure of, but how I felt about him wasn’t one of them. Maybe I’d been destined to love him and couldn’t have fought it if I tried, but I did love him.
I didn’t regret that, even if I probably should have.
“Always,” I promised him, reaching up to press my palm to his cheek. His skin was cold beneath my hand, but heat still pulsed everywhere we touched skin to skin. “I’ll never stop wanting you.”
He looked down at me, his green eyes swirling with emotion. “I love you, Arionna.”
“I know,” I whispered.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? He loved me.
Too much, maybe.
“Get your fill of the snow?” Dad asked when Dace and I strolled back into the kitchen. He stood at the sink, scrubbing paint from his hands.
“She got cold.” Dace helped settle me back into my chair at the table before moving into the kitchen proper. He started rifling through cabinets, pulling out mugs, cocoa mix, and various other ingredients. “Did you know her eyes actually gleam when she sees snow?”
“They always have,” Dad said, chuckling. “I think it’s a southern thing.”
“You’re a Southerner too.” I hated when they talked about me like I wasn’t in the room. And they knew that, which is exactly why they took so much pleasure in doing it.
Men were downright irritating.
“Yeah, but I’m old,” Dad said. “You get excited over coffee and eight full hours of sleep when you hit my age.”
I rolled my eyes at his exaggeration. He wasn’t old. “Weren’t you the one who built snowmen with me when I was little? One year, you started before I even woke up.”
Dad grinned, unabashed. “Someone had to do it. You were a terrible snowman builder. They were lumpy when you got there first. Total abominations.” He shuddered in mock horror.
Dace chuckled when I spluttered indignantly.
My snowmen were never lumpy!
“Do you want a cup?” Dace asked, holding out a mug of cocoa toward Dad.
“No thanks.” Dad ceded use of the sink to Dace in exchange for a hand towel. “If I don’t do some writing today, I’ll never get the manuscript revisions done for you to look over.”
“Having any luck with it?” Dace asked, adjusting the water temperature.
“A little. I think you’ll like the additions.”
“Can’t wait.” Dace smiled.
“I want to see them too,” I said. They spent hours discussing Dad’s book, but I’d yet to see it. How was that fair?
“When it’s done,” Dad promised.
I huffed.
You’re cute when you’re irritated, Dace said, mixing cocoa into a mug of hot water. He gave it a quick stir, then sprinkled cinnamon on top.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
He headed my way with a steaming mug in his hands and an amused smirk on his face.
“You’ll be okay?” Dad asked while I glared at Dace.
I turned in his direction. “I’ll be fine, Dad. Go. Write.” I made a shooing gesture with my hand.
He hesitated, clearly torn between writing and keeping a close eye on me.
“I won’t let her leave my sight,” Dace promised.
Dad glanced over at Dace, then nodded. “All right, then. I’ll be in the study if she needs me.”
I ground my teeth in frustration. “I’m right here, you know.”
Dad dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Indeed, you are, and we’re both grateful for it. Love you, Ari.”
He disappeared before I could say anything further.
I huffed and turned my icy gaze on Dace, only to find him watching me. The soft, wanting expression on his face made my stomach flutter. Irritation bled away in the blink of an eye.
“You’re beautiful,” he said simply.
“No fair,” I whispered, my frustrated argument blowing away like so much dust.
“What’s not fair?”
“You distracting me from being angry.” I reached for his hand.
“You were angry?” He placed his hand in mine, his emerald eyes gleaming with lighthearted mischief. “By all means, let’s hear it.” He made a show of looking serious, straightening up in his chair and clearing his throat.
“I lost the moment,” I said.
“That’s good.” He lifted our interlaced hands to his lips and brushed a light kiss across my knuckles. “Because I never promised to play fair.”
“You never do anyway,” I grumbled.
Wasn’t I supposed to warm you up?
Dace….
He completely ignored my warning, staring at me instead with one brow raised and a cocky smirk on his face. His desire brushed across me like a caress. He called a memory to the forefront of his mind, one of me settled on his lap on the couch, my head thrown back as he watched me writhe above him.
Heat rushed through me in waves before settling low in my belly at the memory.
I hadn’t forgotten that day, but my memory of that moment was different. His eyes glowed in my memory, everything he felt for me shining like beacons from those emerald depths as he marked me as his partner, his lover… his mate.
So beautiful, he thought.
“So perfect,” he said, sliding his hand from mine to cup my cheek.
I groaned aloud at his low, silky whisper.
He brushed his lips across mine, his touch featherlight.
Geri rumbled, pushing his way into my mind more fully than he had in days. Images went skittering through me so quickly I could barely keep up.
Dace and I curled up together in front of a roaring fire.
Dace leaning over me as I stared up at him with wide, trusting eyes.
The two of us laying together inside a cave while snow swirled like an obscuring blanket tossed over the world outside.
Geri showed me a hundred similar images from different lifetimes, and each ended the same way. With Dace moving over me, kissing me in a thousand different places, touching me in a million different ways. Each touch, each kiss, was given with words of love on his lips and desire burning in his eyes. And each one sent another wave of heat rolling through me.
Geri sat in the corner of my head reserved for him, his eyes glowing exactly like Dace’s did in my memory. Love and pride poured from him.
The spaces reserved for Freki, those places deep down where she still resided even if she could no longer come forward, fluttered and shifted as Geri’s picture show radiated through me with the force of an atomic bomb. She might have been little more than a ghost living in the deepest recesses of our shared soul, but she felt her mate, too. And she wanted him as much as I wanted Dace.
A faint whine burbled up from her, no more than a gentle exhalation on the wind.
Geri heard it. He tossed his head back and howle
d his desire for Freki and me.
Dace…. I swayed against him, my entire body aching with need as the sound of Geri’s mating cry fanned the flames higher. Please.
I lifted my hand to plead with Dace to touch me. To really kiss me. To please, for the love of all that’s holy, ease the burn. I needed him in ways I couldn’t even begin to describe. Since the moment I met him, I’d wanted him. I’d needed him. But this was different. With the exception of his massage last night, he’d given me nothing but chaste kisses in weeks―and they weren’t enough. Not with all those memories bouncing around in my head. Not with his thoughts, his desires, and his emotions swirling through me alongside my own, alongside Geri’s, and alongside Freki’s.
If he didn’t touch me soon, I really would explode.
“I can’t,” he groaned, pulling away. “We can’t. You aren’t fully healed yet.”
Geri stopped howling as if he’d forgotten that damning fact.
Freki settled again, disappearing into her half of my soul with a single flutter.
“Please.”
Being with Dace was killing me slowly. Every day for weeks, he’d been right there beside me, but he hadn’t touched me. Not like I needed him to. He treated me like porcelain, as if I would shatter in his arms if he kissed me like I knew he wanted to, or touched me like I wanted him to. If feeling his guilt was hard, having him here, feeling the depth of his desire, and not being able to really kiss him was impossible.
“No,” he said.
Defeat hurt.
I dropped my head to rest it against the table when Geri retreated. The cool wood didn’t help me. I was still on fire. I still ached. I still felt like I might explode.
Arionna, please.
“When I’m healed?” I asked.
“When you’re healed.”
That day couldn’t get here fast enough. I’d already died a virgin once, thank you very much.
Dace and Geri growled.
I ignored them both.
“Don’t do that,” Dace said.
“Do what?”
“Be angry with me for trying to take care of you.”
“I’m not angry. I’m sexually frustrated.” I turned my head to look at him. “You’re torturing me.”
He smiled crookedly. “Trust me, love, if anyone’s doing the torturing, it’s you.”
I rolled my eyes and went back to ignoring him.
“I’d hate to cancel our plans because you’re angry with me.”
His words might as well have been a carrot dangling before my face.
I sat up in my chair.
“Sitting around watching television doesn’t constitute plans,” I pointed out, praying the little thread in his mind meant he had something else in store. If I had to spend another day sitting right beside him without touching him… well, there would be hell to pay.
“That’s not what I was referring to.”
I perked up further.
His smile broadened. He reached for my hand again before pressing another kiss to my palm. “I planned to take you out today to celebrate your return to freedom,” he said, arching a brow at me over my hand, “unless you’d rather be angry with me instead.”
“Really?” I narrowed my eyes, suspicious. He was really going to take me somewhere without me begging? I’d have to see it to believe it.
“Give me a little credit, please.”
“You don’t even like it when I get out of bed,” I pointed out.
He ignored that fact. “I told you I would try to relax, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Okay, then. Where are we going?”
“To the school.” He leaned back in his chair, my hand still wrapped in his. “It’s a surprise, so no questions.”
I started to ask anyway.
Please? I’ve already promised to take you out.
A whisper of panic flowed through our bond. He still didn’t want to let me out of the house. The thought alone had him on the verge of a panic attack, but he was going to take me out anyway. Because he promised to try.
My heart melted all over again.
“No questions,” I agreed.
He sighed, his tone colored with relief.
I slid my hand from his to drink my cocoa.
hen we arrived on campus, trucks, cars, and SUVs were crammed into the parking lot from one end to the other. Dace navigated the chaotic slush in search of a parking spot while groups of people shouted back and forth. Everyone was dressed as warmly as I was.
“What are we doing here?” I asked. I hadn’t even made it through my first week of school at ASU-Beebe before being forced to withdraw for the semester because of Hati, but the campus definitely hadn’t been so busy then. Even though classes were canceled, it appeared as if every student enrolled decided to make the trek here today.
“We,” Dace said, pulling into one of the few remaining spaces and turning the Jeep off, “are here for the Snowlympics.”
“The Snowlympics?” I turned in my seat to look at him.
“The Snowlympics,” he repeated, grinning.
“What the heck are the Snowlympics?” I didn’t know much about sports, but I’d never heard of such an event.
Dace hopped out and came around to open my door before answering. “Every year we get snow, the college hosts its own version of the Olympics. Snow-vaulting, sled races, competitive snow sculpting, dodge ball, distance snowball throws… freeze tag.”
“Freeze tag?” I laughed aloud. How the heck did freeze tag become an official Snowlympic sport?
Dace chuckled as he lifted me from the Jeep, then set me on my feet. He twined his arms around my waist. “Don’t knock freeze tag. I’m good at it.”
“You participate in the Snowlympics?”
“Is it that hard to imagine?”
I steadied myself against him with a palm on his chest. The last thing I wanted to do was fall on my face with half the student body watching. Especially with everyone already on edge over my attack. Knowing my luck, if I fell, they’d load up and head toward the woods with hunting rifles, torches, and pitchforks.
“Well, yeah,” I said, forcing my mind away from my fears. “You don’t look like the Snowlympics type.” Not that Dace was out of shape or anything. Far from it, actually. The boy was made of smooth, contoured muscle designed to drive me crazy. But I couldn’t picture him playing something as juvenile as freeze tag. He was too much of a control freak for such games.
He threw his head back and laughed again. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said.
Several students turned in our direction. Their eyes widened when they caught sight of me standing carefully beside Dace’s Jeep.
Crap.
I hated when people stared at me. In my limited experience, being the topic of hushed conversation was never a good thing. Between fainting at my first public outing, screaming at a professor, and being attacked by Hati, they probably thought I was a total freak of nature.
Dace sobered, pulling me into a tight hug when my nervousness trickled through to him. They’re curious. Most of them haven’t seen you since….
Not even in his thoughts could he finish that sentence.
I sighed, my breath steaming before me, and shifted my gaze away from the students gawking openly in our direction.
Dace looked down at me, his attempt at a smile twisting into a sad caricature. Guilt flickered in his eyes again, muting the emerald color to a soft green.
“Let’s go watch some Snowlympics,” I said with false cheer, reaching up to touch the scar above his eyebrow. That scar fascinated me, though I wasn’t sure why. In all of the hazy memories of our past lives Geri and Freki unlocked inside of me, the scar was present. I still didn’t remember how he got it though.
“I don’t remember either,” Dace murmured, letting me go long enough to reach into the back of the Jeep and grab the blankets. He wrapped one around me before pulling me into his side and locking his arm tightly around my waist.
<
br /> “Does it bother you?” I asked him.
We started off in the direction everyone else headed. We walked slowly while I prayed my legs wouldn’t decide to collapse beneath me. I couldn’t freaking wait until the muscles decided to work all the time again, instead of most of the time. Having my legs weaken with no warning mid-step was not pleasant.
“The scar?” Dace asked, guiding me around a patch of solid ice and onto the sidewalk. Like most of the parking lot, the snow atop the sidewalk had turned to slush.
How many people were here for this tradition?
Dace nudged me.
“Oh. Not remembering everything about who we are, or who we were,” I said.
“Sometimes.” He lowered his voice, speaking so only I heard him. “And sometimes I think not remembering everything is a blessing. Watching them attack you―” He broke off with an abrupt shake of his head. “I don’t want to remember lifetimes of that.”
Geri gave a low whine of agreement. He remembered those lifetimes more vividly than Dace and I did, but even Geri had lost so many of the little details along the way. It made me wonder why Odin sent us back like this. Why create us to do this monumental thing, then not let us remember that we were even supposed to do it?
“Ancient gods work in mysterious ways, I guess,” I said to Dace, knowing I wouldn’t get any closer to an answer than I had in the last few weeks. I doubted I would ever know the answer to that question.
We were fading, Ronan said, and he was right. So much of our lives were lost in the deepest recesses of our minds, places not even his animal’s talent pierced. And so much else disappeared along the way, eroded by millennia of life, death, and fading magic. Key pieces―answers we needed and questions we didn’t even know we should ask―lay out of our reach, locked in vaults we no longer knew how to open.
The world marched on, but Dace, Ronan, and I were stuck in that uncomfortable place between past and present. The one where destiny dangled over our heads for reasons we didn’t understand. For reasons we might not ever understand.
If not remembering was kindness, I failed to see how.
“Yeah, they do,” Dace agreed as we started around the side of the administration building.
I came to a complete stop, looking around in wide-eyed amazement. The quad looked like a sports stadium. A makeshift field ran down the middle, with pole vault standards at one end. Lines were painted into the snow in school colors all around the field, and the snow on the far side of the vaults was pushed together in a giant pit. Students and others from town crowded onto metal bleachers on each side in a sea of multicolored coats and blankets. Big tins sat all along the edges of the field, with fires burning hot in each one, and huge bonfires roared behind the bleachers.
