Did Luca mean to imply that we had a romantic relationship? I can’t come up with any other explanation, but it seems so . . . unlikely. If that is what he meant, then just how involved were we? Are we talking one date at the pizza joint? A couple of stolen kisses? Or . . .
I gulp. Is it possible that I am not the inexperienced virgin I thought I was?
I scrutinize Luca’s tall frame as I follow him up the stairs and into my bedroom.
Knowing that he has memories of me, when I don’t remember a thing, bothers me. I want him to tell me everything. At the same time, I don’t know how much I should believe. I worry this is nothing but another game to him, and that I am about to open myself to more humiliation.
That is a gamble I have to take. Above all, I need answers.
“Explain,” I tell him the instant I shut the door behind me, sealing us inside my room.
“I don’t know what else to say.” He sits down on the edge of my bed with a sigh. “You don’t remember any of it.”
“You can start by telling me what you meant downstairs.”
He grins. “Is there another way of putting it that would make it more clear to you?”
“Tell me,” I demand between clenched teeth.
He stares at me for a beat, as if contemplating what he should say.
Will I get lies or honesty? Sincerity or more twisted games?
“Luca,” I snap. “I deserve to know the truth.”
“You do,” he agrees. “I just . . . wanted this to be different.”
His tone softens and his demeanor shifts. He looks sad and defeated, but I refuse to let my guard down. He has already proven himself capable of fooling me. I won’t let him do it again.
“Different how?” I ask cautiously.
“I wanted you to remember,” he says. “Not for me to have to tell you.”
“Apparently, that’s not going to happen.”
“You’re right,” he mutters. He drops his chin to his chest, and his shoulders move as he breathes in and out. Then he glances up with a small smile. “You were fifteen that summer. My family visited every year and stayed at our house by the lake. We had known each other for a long time—ever since you and your dad moved here when you were six. But that summer . . . it was different.”
“How so?”
“You always had a crush on me. Ever since we were kids. I knew it. I don’t think you suspected that I had figured it out though.” He’s teasing me again.
“Get to the point,” I demand.
“Just setting the scene, Savvy,” he tells me smoothly. “See, you’re nearly three years younger than me. You were still just a kid when I discovered girls. I never thought of you as anything more than a friend. Until that summer.”
“And?”
“And what?” He smirks.
“Luca, just tell me,” I plead.
“You were my girlfriend.” His lips curve into an infuriating grin. “Now that I think about it, we never did break up. Technically, I think you’re still my girlfriend.”
I gape at him.
I don’t see the point in lying to me about something like this, but I have a difficult time believing that he is telling the truth. His explanation is just so . . . unexpected.
“No.” I shake my head at him.
“Yes.” He nods once.
“You must remember wrong.” I wring my hands as I pace the floor in front of him. “How could I forget something like that?”
He smiles smugly. “I know you think I’m unforgettable, but I assure you that magic can achieve the unthinkable. Even make you forget me.”
I pause long enough to direct a glare at him. “That’s not funny.”
“I agree. It’s a goddamn travesty,” he mutters.
I stop pacing and whip around to face him. “Can you be serious for five minutes? This is a lot for me to process. I still haven’t decided if I believe you, and your sarcasm isn’t helping.”
“Why is this so hard for you to believe?”
One humorless laugh is my response.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to interpret attitude,” he tells me drily.
“You like playing games,” I accuse. “How do I know this isn’t all part of your master plan to . . .”
“What, Sav?” He stares at me. “What would I possibly have to gain by lying to you?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s just . . . hard to take you seriously sometimes.”
“How is anyone supposed to act when it comes to something like this?” He peers at me—no blinking, no flinching, no reaction of any kind. “I remember an entire relationship that you have no memory of. Now you tell me that you doubt it ever existed because you think this is all a game. Trust me, Sav. When I say this whole thing monumentally sucks, I mean it.”
A pang of sympathy zings through me as I read the sincerity written all over his face. I may hate myself later for being so gullible, but I decide that I believe him. About everything.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I’m just trying to come to terms with all of this. I didn’t think about how you may have been affected.”
He sighs. “Now you understand why I wanted you to remember.”
I nod glumly as I start toward the bed. He moves over to make room for me to sit beside him. We’re both silent for a few moments, each lost in our own thoughts.
We were . . . together. I don’t know how serious our relationship was, and I’m okay with not knowing all the details. For now. Some things are best navigated with baby steps.
“There’s more,” Luca eventually says.
I lower my head with a sigh. “Of course there is.”
“I told you we didn’t break up, and that’s true, but . . .”
I turn to look at him and wait. The tortured sound of his voice already has my stomach twisted into knots.
“My family left at the end of that summer, like we always did,” he starts slowly. “We were good, you and me. We had a plan. There was Christmas yet, and endless summers . . .”
“You never came back.” I piece some of the mystery together. “Why?”
“It wasn’t by choice,” Luca says. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t—not with the position my family had in our world and my new role in it. My father returned briefly a year later to tie up loose ends, and decided the best thing for you, at that time, was to wipe your memories of us. Specifically, of me.”
“I was a ‘loose end?’” I spit his choice of words back at him.
“I wasn’t . . .” Luca sighs. “I didn’t mean you. Just . . . everything about our lives here.”
“I assume I didn’t go into this memory-erasing thing willingly?”
“No. My father would have blindsided you, same as he did me.” Luca holds my gaze intently as if pleading with me to understand something I can’t begin to comprehend. “I didn’t know what he had arranged until it was too late.”
“Why wait three years to tell me?” I wonder.
“He insisted you would be safe hidden here, amongst the humans, if you forgot your connection to our family,” Luca explains. “No one in the shifter world knew you were here, and no one would know until you turned eighteen.”
“That’s when you came back,” I recall.
“Yes. I came back the night of your birthday.” He grins. “It took some magical influence, but you eventually remembered who I was. As expected, you weren’t happy with me.”
“Apparently, I had good reason,” I mutter under my breath.
“I know, and I’m sorry.” His hand flinches as if he intends to touch me in some way. He pulls up short, and I’m left wondering.
Is he a gentle caress kind of guy? A fingers through the hair guy? A hugger?
The answers to those questions are not something I want to be told. I want to remember.
“You said I remembered you on my birthday,” I point out as an idea forms. “How? Is it something we can repeat now?”
Luca gives me a small smile. “You want to remember?”
/>
“I need to,” I tell him.
“Unfortunately, magic is the only—” He stops and looks at the ceiling as if remembering something. “The necklace.”
“What necklace?”
“Magic is the only thing that can weaken the spell. It’s like fighting fire with fire,” he explains. “There are no natural sources of magic in the mortal realm, but enchanted objects can be used here.”
“Such as a necklace?”
Luca nods. “You remembered everything on your birthday because you were immersed in magic for several hours. I suspected the memories would be temporary and you would lose them again once you came home, so I returned your necklace to you. The magic in it helped. You did remember.”
“So what happened?”
“When I came back again a few days later, the necklace was gone along with your memories,” he tells me glumly. “I don’t know where it is now.”
“You think this necklace could give me my memories back?” I wonder.
“I don’t know.” Luca shrugs. “It’s worth a shot.”
I don’t have much jewelry, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. Everything I own is held in a small porcelain container that I think once belonged to my mother, and stored under a mound of socks in a drawer.
I jump up, find the container, and dump the contents on top of the dresser.
“What does it look like?” I pick up a ball of gold and silver chains twisted around each other and pull an earring from the jumbled mess.
Luca comes to a stand behind me, and peers over my shoulder. I breathe through my mouth so I don’t have to smell him. Not that he smells bad. Quite the opposite, actually. He smells so good I struggle to concentrate on the task.
Look for the necklace. Don’t think about how close he is to touching me, or how my skin flames in anticipation. Don’t lean back. Don’t make contact. Don’t give in to the desire no matter how much I want to.
Focus. Necklace.
I’m looking for a necklace.
His voice is nearly a whisper in my ear. “It’s not in there.”
“How can we be sure? I don’t even know what it looks like.” I spin around hastily.
I’m not prepared for our sudden nearness. He is standing closer than I thought, and we are now face to . . . neck. Right where he must have splashed some cologne yesterday. The scent is barely noticeable now, but it’s there.
I lean against my dresser with a gulp. There is nowhere else for me to go. I’m not so sure I want to.
God, he smells so good.
He pulls the wolf fang pendant out from under his shirt and shows it to me. “It looks like this. The magic in this enables me to shift in the mortal realm with ease.”
“You keep saying ‘the mortal realm’ like it’s not the only realm,” I point out.
Luca grins. “You noticed that, huh?”
“One of many things floating around in my head.” I can’t tell him about most of them, because they’re far too embarrassing to admit. Instead, I pause to gather a little composure before I ask the first of several questions I have. “Luca, is there another realm out there I should know about?”
He steps back like he knows exactly what he has done to me, and he has determined now is not the time to tease me, or my hormones. “We call it the Imperial Kingdom,” he answers. “It’s another realm full of fairies, and magic, and every shifter breed ever created living under the rule of a King.”
I blink a few times as I absorb all the information unloaded on me in that one sentence. I don’t even know where to begin with the new questions popping in my head.
“One thing at a time, Sav,” Luca suggests before I start firing away. “That necklace could be the key to your memories. We need to find it.”
I nod absentmindedly, wondering if it is possible to spontaneously combust from an overload of impossible-to-believe information. Then I remember the other pressing question I had before he dropped the “another realm” bomb. I’m almost afraid to ask, but I have to know.
“This necklace we’re supposed to be looking for, with the wolf fang,” I start slowly. “Where did it come from?”
“The kingdom,” Luca answers, distracted by a particular book on the shelf. He picks it up to fan through the worn pages. “Just how many times have you read Wuthering Heights anyway?”
I ignore his question since mine is far more important—not that I can accurately answer his question anyway. “Why would I have one of those necklaces?”
Luca stares at me. He doesn’t move.
“You said it was my necklace,” I remind him. “You said you returned it to me that night, but I don’t remember ever having it.”
Luca clears his throat, and I dread the response he is working up the courage to tell me.
“It wasn’t yours originally,” he explains carefully. “It was your mother’s. You inherited it when she died.”
“Half of this is my mom’s.” I thrust a cluster of jewelry under his nose. “She never had a wolf fang necklace.”
“She did,” Luca insists. “You found it three years ago, hidden with some of her other belongings.”
“No,” I scoff. “I never—”
“I planned to tell you what I was that summer,” Luca cuts me off. “I made a deal with myself that when you found your mother’s necklace, I would tell you everything. We left before you found it, and that was my excuse for not telling you what you should have known from the very beginning.”
I watch him and wait. My stomach hollows with the suspicion that Luca is on the verge of telling me something huge. Something I am not prepared to hear.
“When we didn’t come back, you tossed your mother’s necklace into Silver Lake,” Luca continues. “I don’t know why, but I assume it was because you were that angry. I stumbled upon it later, where it had washed up on the beach. I returned it to you on your birthday.”
Tossing a necklace into a lake in a fit of rage? I could actually see myself doing that. But the rest of his explanation doesn’t make any sense to me.
“But why would my mother have one of those necklaces?” I demand. “That doesn’t—”
The blood drains from my face as I gape at Luca. The answer to my own question hits me suddenly and unexpectedly. I can only hope I have it all wrong.
“Luca?” I swallow. “Why did she have a necklace like yours?”
His hesitation serves as an answer, and I know my instincts are correct, regardless of how ridiculous the words sound coming out of my mouth.
“My mom was a shifter.”
Chapter 15
“What about my dad?” I screech. “Is he . . .”
“No.” Luca shakes his head. “Your dad is mortal. He’s not a shifter.”
I relax a tiny bit, as if the confirmation that one of my parents is human makes the rest of this okay. But my mother . . .
Holy shit.
“What does that make me?”
“A half shifter-half human?” Luca shrugs.
“That’s a thing?” My voice is high-pitched enough to make dogs cringe, but I can’t bring it down. Not after this news.
Luca walks toward me, slowly, like he expects me to jump out of the broken window. “There are others like you. Rogue shifters have children with humans in the mortal realm all the time. That’s their choice, to live here amongst them.”
“Them? You mean . . . humans?” I laugh maniacally.
“Yes.” Luca inches closer. “You’re not completely human, Sav. You’re one of us. You can shift. You need to shift.”
I interrupt my impending nervous breakdown long enough to ask, “Why?”
“For your safety,” he says. “Because any shifter being hunted by shifters needs to be able to protect itself.”
I slide to the floor, pull my knees up, and rest my forehead on them. Breath in. Breath out.
“You should have already shifted.” Luca drops to his knees in front of me. “We all do on our eighteenth birthday. Even halves are supposed to have
their first shift then, but you didn’t. You almost did, but we ran out of time.”
I look up to squint at Luca. “What?”
“That’s why I came back when I did, on your birthday. I tried to get you to shift that night, but . . .” He trails off with an uneasy grimace.
“At this point, there is nothing you can tell me that will freak me out more than I already am.”
I probably shouldn’t say that, but it’s too late. The words are already out, daring him to prove me wrong.
“You were attacked by another shifter,” he says. “You were under the influence of dark magic and hallucinating. Because of that, you never managed to shift.”
“Whatever you say.” I toss my head back with a groan.
“Sav . . .” He places a hand on my knee. “You should accept who you are.”
I snort.
“It’s something to be proud of,” he adds.
“You’ve known what you are since . . . what? Birth?” I wait for him to nod. “How many of your shifter friends went eighteen years before they learned what they were? My guess is none.”
“I was raised in the Kingdom,” Luca reasons. “You were not. You don’t know our history and traditions, but you can learn that stuff. There is a school—”
I laugh humorlessly. “You actually teach classes on how to be a shifter?”
“The Academy is a rite of passage for wolf shifters,” he continues softly, unfazed by my attitude. “That’s where I have been for the past three years. You can—”
“Don’t.” I shove him aside and push to an abrupt stand. “I’ve heard enough. I have to get ready for work.”
Luca jumps to his feet. “Work?”
“I start at ten.” I grab a shirt and a pair of booty shorts from the stack of clean clothes on top of the dresser that I never got around to putting away. As I start toward the bathroom, I mutter, “Must shower before Jill wakes up.”
“Sav?” Luca watches me warily. “Maybe you should call off. Just for the day. Take some time to absorb all of this.”
“Can’t.” I shake my head. “I need the money.”
Luca opens his mouth like he has something else to add. Whatever it is, he keeps it to himself.
I shut the door behind me, relieved to finally be alone. I go through the motions, the same as every other morning, but my mind is elsewhere. So much information in a short amount of time has fried my brain, and I have a difficult time sorting through all of it.
Shifter Crown: Valley of Truth and Denial (The Shifter Crown Series Book 1) Page 12
