Corrine had not moved, but her eyes had filled with tears, and Gabe had to fight the urge to go to her. “You know me, Gabe. You know me better than anyone in this realm, the Fae realm, or any that exist beyond them. There are always decisions that need to be made, and consequences that must be lived with. When a seer is faced with a vision of the future, and cannot see how it comes about, but they know that they must do everything within their power to change it, then they are forced to make decisions that will not only affect their life, but the lives of the people who mean the most to them. And you do, Gabe. You mean so much to me. I couldn’t bear the thought of watching you die. As hard as it is to hear, if I had to make that choice all over again, I would have made the same one. It was made in an attempt to change the future and save your life, and I will not apologize for that. I am so sorry for hurting you, for not telling you sooner, but I am not sorry for trying to save you. You may not believe that of me right now, hell, you may never believe that of me, but it is the truth.”
Gabe’s heart began to bleed at the pain in her voice, but he could not bring himself to go to her.
Corrine turned to face Braxas, and Gabe saw the man visibly tense. In all of his loss and rage at what he felt as an injustice toward himself, Gabe had staunchly refused to acknowledge what Braxas must have felt when he turned his back on Corrine and walked away. Braxas was suffering, too.
Corrine took a deep shuddering breath. “I owe you an apology as well, Braxas. I felt the connection to you the moment we met, but I had no idea how to handle it. Erica was being held captive, we were about to go to war, threat after threat was coming at us, and I could not acknowledge our bond when I was hiding the one I shared with Gabe. I just couldn’t do it.”
Braxas’s jaw tightened before he nodded and then seemed to relax. Obviously, for Braxas, just hearing Corrine acknowledge their bond was enough for him to move past the pain of her having to deny it. Gabe was envious of his ability to do that, but wasn’t sure he could be that magnanimous.
Corrine turned back toward him, and Gabe steeled himself against the pain he saw radiating in her eyes. “I have not missed the fact that you have referred to your love for me in the past tense, Gabe. I am not sure if it is worse hearing it that way now, or knowing that you have never declared those feelings for me when you could have done so in the present tense. In the coming days, we will need to talk about what the future holds for this realm, the Fae realm, and the discovery that the Dark Fae still live. But for now, and before I can no longer do this in the present tense,” Gabe knew what was coming and his entire being was torn in two—one half wanting to beg and plead for her to say the words, and the other half wanting them never to be spoken. “I love you, Gabe Errikson.”
With those words still hanging in the air, Corrine stepped around him and walked out of the room, carrying herself with the grace and poise he had come to expect from her, leaving his heart to simply crack right down the center. His body filled with the visceral pain of heartache, and he did what all wolves did when they are hurt. He threw back his head and howled his grief to the world.
Chapter Three
Braxas wanted to rip out his own heart and roar up to the heavens along with the wolf, but he kept his cool. That was what his kind did after all. Cougars kept their emotions in check. They planned, they calculated, and sometimes, if it was strategically sensible, they even fucking stepped aside. He could only imagine the pain that Gabe was feeling, living with and loving Corrine all of these years under a veil of deceit, but hearing his mate tell Gabe she loved him, sliced Braxas open with jealousy and a pain he never even fathomed existed.
He knew that his own connection with Corrine had been instant and without a doubt, strong. It had also been completely reciprocated, yet he lacked the history with her that Gabe already had. Now he worried that she would forgo having two mates, and choose Gabe over him as Gabe would have forsaken anyone else for her. If she wanted Braxas, he’d stay and fight for her, to the death if need be, but if she truly did not, he’d respect her wishes and let her go.
“She won’t, you know,” he heard Gabe say behind him.
Braxas hadn’t even realized he had walked to the window on the other side of the room, so lost in his own mental anguish. He turned around to face Gabe. “She won’t what?”
“I know what you were thinking just now, Braxas,” Gabe said, the pain still clearly evident in both his face and tone. “She will not choose me over you. I know Corrine. Despite everything, or maybe even because of it, I still know the way she thinks, and she’d sooner choose neither than have to pick between us.”
I know Corrine. There was that same painful stab again. Of course, Gabe knew her. She said it herself that he knew her better than anyone else. Despite the pain that Braxas felt, he also knew deep down that he could not separate them.
“I’m glad to see that you still want her then,” Braxas admitted. “She seemed terrified that your love for her was in the past tense. I don’t think she would ever recover from your rejection.”
“Of course I still want her!” Gabe bellowed. “I hate what she did. I want to throw her over my knee and spank that pretty ass of hers until she loses the ability to sit down for a week. I want to tie her to my bed and make her squirm for hours, begging me to let her come.”
Braxas swallowed hard picturing that scenario and found his dick straining painfully inside his borrowed shorts. He wanted to watch Gabe do it. He pictured Corrine’s shapely red ass in the air and then his vision of her morphed into her lying spread eagled on the bed as Gabe brought her to the brink. He saw himself crawling in between her legs and devouring her sweet—
Gabe’s laughter suddenly snapped him out of his reverie. It must have been clear as day to Gabe what his words had just done to him. And instead of jealousy this time, he felt a split second of camaraderie with Gabe. Braxas turned to face the window again and cleared his throat.
“Part of the reason I wanted to maim you,” Gabe began hesitantly, “was because I saw the way that she looked at you when you walked into the room. She has been looking at me the same way for years.” Braxas turned back around to face him as Gabe paused and dipped his head. “I asked you to put yourself in my shoes, and now I am putting myself in yours. You’re the picture of coolness, and yet I know you’re being torn up on the inside. It’s like I can feel it now in my gut.”
Braxas gave a slight nod. “I want her to be happy,” he replied, his voice suddenly hoarse.
“You really are an unselfish bastard, aren’t you? Kinda takes the fun out of ripping you to shreds.”
Braxas snorted. “As if you could.”
Gabe smiled, his face taking on a predatory cast. “Is that a challenge, cat?”
“Indeed.” Braxas returned the same bloodthirsty grin. “As if I’d pass up the opportunity to go a round or two with another Alpha.” No matter how worthy of opponents any of his pack members were, especially his tough as nails Beta, Katrina, they could all easily fall like dominoes under an Alpha’s dominance. He was sure that Gabe could truly understand that. “But first, there is a matter of politics you and I need to address.”
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “We have other matters to attend to now.”
“That’s precisely what I am referring to,” Braxas continued. “I am assuming since you are alluding to the fact that Corrine will want us both as mates, and since both of us want her happiness above all else…” He let the sentence trail off as he gestured with his hand between them.
“If the fates have deemed us both worthy to be her mates then it must be so,” Gabe acknowledged. “You were referring to what happens now with our packs?”
Braxas nodded. “You and I are both Alphas to very large and powerful packs. The logistics of running both packs and territories are something we can work out, but us joining forces in such a way will be perceived as a threat to some.”
“This has to do with the conversation we had prior to you coming to our aid?”
&nbs
p; “Yes.”
Before Gabe had called Braxas for assistance with defeating the False King, Braxas had informed him of the rumors he had heard circulating near his neck of the woods. Rogue shifters, hungry for power, had been recruiting and growing in numbers exponentially. Without a True Alpha to lead them, they were reckless, and therefore extremely dangerous. Alone, Braxas and Gabe’s packs were revered, but together they’d be frightening, most likely ending up with a giant target on their backs. Smaller packs may be persuaded through fear to join with the Rogues.
“Damn it,” Gabe spat. Braxas knew he understood what he’d been getting at. “Corrine would be right fuck in the center of yet another battle.”
“She said something about saving you, Gabe. She must have foreseen this battle, and the outcome for you must not have been a good one.”
Gabe looked pensive for a moment before he spoke. “But she hadn’t seen you,” he said, and then he began to pace. “Corrine said she knew you were her mate when she first saw you at the house before the battle. The fates must not have revealed you to her before then, so that’s why she only blocked me. And then she sought me out for protection. It all makes sense now.”
“Great. Now fucking explain it to me.”
He stopped pacing and went over to stand in front of Braxas. “I’ve come to understand a little about how her visions work. She usually lets them play out to determine the best path to take, especially since futures can shift so easily with a single course of action. She messed with it this time. The Goddess must have tried to warn her about this threat, and one or more scenarios showed me dead. She panicked and interfered, altering things so much so that it may have even prevented her from meeting you sooner.”
“She must realize that now, only adding to her guilt.” Something else she said suddenly occurred to Braxas. “Now we are armed with knowledge and we’ll start investigating this new threat as soon as possible, but first we need to figure out how to make this work … for all our sakes. She said something about there being side effects for the three of us. We need to—what is it?”
Braxas stopped talking. Gabe’s face was suddenly devoid of all color, causing a panicked feeling to bloom inside his own chest.
“Fuck!” Gabe yelled. “I was so angry, so hurt, and so fucking busy focusing on myself that I forgot the other part of the message.”
“What message?”
Gabe quickly explained about what happened to Donovan and Jason after Kheelan had poisoned them. How they were trapped in a Shadow Realm and that Corrine’s sister, Ilyra, helped save them. She then passed along a message to her sister. The message was that her fate was bound to her mates and that her time was growing short.”
Braxas felt his own golden skin go pale at that thought. He and Gabe tabled their conversation for now and bolted for Corrine’s room together. He had only just found her, and an actual feeling of hope for his future with her began to blossom inside of him. There was no way he was about to lose her now.
He was toe to toe with Gabe as they threw open her door, bellowing Corrine’s name.
“Where the hell is she?” Braxas roared when they found her room empty.
Several of Gabe’s pack members rushed into the room, probably thinking they needed to break up another fight.
“Where is Corrine?” Gabe demanded, his Alpha at the surface.
“She said she was going for a walk,” Roderick, one of Gabe’s pack members, answered. And then he told them the direction she was heading: the clearing out by the old hunting lodge.
“I know where she went,” Gabe stated. Braxas did, too. They did, after all, bring an entire army to that very location. “Go find April or Erica,” he ordered Roderick. “We will need to cross the Veil.”
When the pack cleared the room, Braxas grabbed Gabe’s arm to stop him from leaving. “When we find her,” Braxas began, “the three of us are going to have a long talk.”
“Agreed.”
“But first,” Braxas let go of Gabe’s arm and smiled slyly at the man, “I think we need to deliver that punishment you talked about earlier.”
Gabe returned his smile, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Let’s go get our woman.”
Chapter Four
Corrine kept on glancing back over her shoulder as she ran through the woods. She did not think that it would take Gabe and Braxas long to figure out she had slipped out of the house. She needed to find a way to fix this, and the only person she could think of that would have any knowledge of the old magics or would know someone who might was Ishaya. Corrine had gone directly to the clearing and opened the portal to the Veil.
She squealed when she came face to face with a sword tip as she opened her eyes on the other side. She had forgotten that Erica’s guards now protected this side of the gate.
“Oh Lady Corrine, my apologies,” the young man in the royal uniform said as he held out his other hand towards her. “Here, let me help you.”
“Thank you,” she replied, taking his hand and stepping down from the stone steps.
“If you are here to see Queen Eyrica, I’m afraid she’s still in the human realm.”
“No, I am not looking for the Queen.” Corrine stopped walking for a moment when she realized she had no idea how to find Ishaya, but perhaps this guard did, she thought. “I’m actually looking for Ishaya. Do you know how to find him?” She knew the forest folk kept their dens magically hidden, but some guards were now privy to a way to at least contact them.
The guard nodded. “If you walk down that path to the right until you reach the meadow, you can call out for him and he will come if he wishes to see you.” He pointed to a well-worn path between two huge trees.
“Thank you.” She smiled at him and was charmed at the blush that swept across the young Fae’s face.
Corrine followed the path the guard had instructed her to, taking a deep breath of the forest air. She’d forgotten how entrancing and beautiful it was here, and it suddenly felt like forever since she’d basked in the heady magic of their realm. When they’d crossed over to join the battle with Alefric, the entire experience was a frightening and hectic rush. Corrine had never fought in such a battle.
She nearly gasped when she finally arrived at the meadow. It was awash in the bright colored twinkling of the starburst flowers. The bloom had been her mother’s favorite, and it reminded her of spending hours with her sister as children, collecting the sweet smelling blossoms as a surprise to take home.
When she stepped into the field, a warm, soft breeze swept past her, and she could feel the spell within it. She whispered, “Ishaya,” and waited as her inquiry was carried away through the wind.
Not five minutes later, the large man appeared at the edge of the field. Corrine walked to meet him.
“Lady Corrine,” he said in surprise, “how nice to see you. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Hello, Ishaya,” she answered. “I truly am in need of help, and you were the only person who I thought might have the knowledge to assist me. I need to undo a spell that has origins in dark magic.”
“I see,” he began hesitantly. He then offered her his arm to accompany him. “Let’s go to my home and you can tell me more about this spell.”
****
The outside of the forest folk’s home was so disguised against the hillside that Corrine doubted she would have noticed it had she walked right past by herself, but the inside was reminiscent of the small cottage she’d grown up in. It had almost brought tears to her eyes when happy childhood memories rushed up to greet her.
“I just came back from the marketplace with fresh fruit cakes.” Ishaya wordlessly placed the delicious treats on the table and politely ignored the rumbling of her stomach. She forgot the last time she had eaten. “Would you like some tea?”
“Oh yes, please.” She sat in the enormous chair made to fit the man before her. In fact, everything in his home was scaled to his size, making Corrine feel rather like Alice in Wonderland after she had shru
nk. “I haven’t had Fae fruit cakes in such a long time. I managed to take some tea with me when I escaped, but the water is different in the human realm. The tea just never seemed to taste quite right.”
Ishaya placed the kettle on the stove and then turned back to her with a sympathetic look. “You had to give up much when you fled our realm to escape Alefric.” He spoke softly as he set the table. “I wish you would have sought our help. The forest folk would have aided you had we known.”
“My visions were so confusing, and my window for escape was small. I just knew that I had to flee.”
“Your Goddess did not offer you aid when you called to her?” he asked, sounding dumbfounded.
“Well, she doesn’t exactly—wait, what do you mean your Goddess?”
The large man just looked at her and sighed rather loudly.
“It is shocking how little of your own history the Light Fae have retained over the centuries. I know that some of your kind were at least aware of the existence of the Dark Fae and as was intended, believed them to be long gone, but it seems that none of your kind even know the heritage, or that we forest folk are a part of it. For you and I do not owe our heritage to the same Goddess, although they are sisters. I believe we are bound to secrecy no more though, given these last events. Perhaps, we will once again be able to live as one people. Would you like to hear the tale of how the Fae realm was created?”
Corrine was speechless as she stared back at him. She wondered if her people could have actually forgotten their history. It was no wonder that some of the other races in the realm often remarked on the arrogance of the Fae, but she hadn’t really thought about all of the reasons why until that very moment or that it extended to those who wished to live peacefully. Were they so sure of their own superiority that they had disregarded where they’d come from? The revelation that the Dark Fae were not indeed simply a myth told to frighten young ones to behave, but that there could be another Goddess in their realm was almost too much to believe.
Bound to Their Faete Page 2
