by Aileen Erin
I don’t know what I’d do if I held Tessa’s lifeless body. If I watched her die.
No. I knew what I would do.
I would die.
“It’s been more than a thousand years, and I’m still not over the loss. I don’t think I ever will be. But you have hope.” He moved so fast, I didn’t see it. Suddenly he was squatting in front of me, with his hands gripping my shoulders. “You’re focusing on the fact that she’s gone, but not that she’s still out there. She is still out there. Do you think she’d be happy with what you’re doing to yourself? You’re thin. Weak. Fading. You couldn’t take anyone in a fight now.”
I shoved him away. I should’ve been able to move him, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t care. “There’s no one to fight, Van. No one to kill. Nothing I’ve tried works, and I—”
“There will be. There will be. You need faith.” He stood and held out a hand to me.
I stared at it for a second. If I took his hand, in an instant, Van could take me anywhere in the world.
I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to go anywhere.
“I might not have a family left, but I’ve built one.” Van dropped his hand to his side. “With Cosette. And now, with all of you. Family is strong for each other. So, this is me being strong for you. Take my hand. Leave with me. Trust that we’re all looking and that there are only so many people on this earth. We will find wherever Helen stashed your mate. And when we do…” He paused. “We will fight together.”
That sounded nice, but there was just one problem with it. “How will we find her? We haven’t—”
“I don’t know, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years, it’s that the impossible can happen. But you can’t do this.” He knelt in front of me again. “You need to live and be strong so that when we do find her, you’re there. Because we know for a fact that if you die, so will she. And her death will be your fault.”
His last two words were a dagger ripping me apart. I didn’t want that. I couldn’t…but what if it was a lie? “I’ve been thinking a lot about her, and maybe we’re not True Mates. What if she’s—”
“You are. You’re her True Mate. Everyone agreed that—”
“No one knows my bonds like I do—did. Maybe it was just a strong connection. Maybe it was her magic that made everyone think that. I’m just…I’m not sure that I was ever good for her.”
“Now, that’s something interesting.” Van’s voice was softer than the falling snow. “Keep going.”
“I never thought that I deserved her.” I’d relived our time together over and over again, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt about what I’d done. “I took away her choice. I bit her. And by doing that, I made her life worse. Dangerous. I put her in the position of being kidnapped, and I—”
“Right. Except I’ve spent time with her brother now. He’s fine, by the way. Worried about you, but he’s looking for his sister with us. His control is getting much better. And he’s told me a lot about Tessa. A lot.”
He thought he knew more than me? No way. He couldn’t—
“Quit your growling, wolf. Right now, Tessa is my prey. I’m hunting her. Not to harm her, but to find her. So, I’ve studied Tessa extensively. I’ve read her diaries. I lived with her parents for a month. I’ve seen every photo—watched every video—taken of her since her birth. I wanted to know how she’d react so that I’d know when I find the real Tessa.”
As much as I wanted to argue that I’d lived in her head and he couldn’t possibly know more about her than me, I wanted to hear the rest.
“You see, I didn’t know her before. I knew she was powerful. I’d fought beside her, so I knew that much. But she was more a coworker than a friend. I wanted a closer connection so that I could really help look for her.”
“And what did you find out?”
“I know how hard her life was before you. The visions isolated her. She was bullied. Aside from her brother, she was alone. Completely alone.”
I knew that. I’d seen it in her memories. She was always so thankful to have a life outside the visions that imprisoned her.
“And then she met you, and she wasn’t alone anymore. She gained the power to control her visions. She was free to have friends. Live her life.”
That was also true.
“And not only that, before you bit her, she was about to meet up with the coven there. The one ruled by Luciana. If you hadn’t bitten her, she wouldn’t have been strong enough—confident enough—to defeat the witch. By biting Tessa, you saved her life. You gave her the strength that she needed to take Luciana down.”
Now that was something I hadn’t thought about. She was going to visit the coven eventually. There was no way Luciana would’ve let her live.
Had biting Tessa really saved her?
“It’s time to come home, Dastien. It’s been too many months since you ran away. We need you back.”
“But what if—”
“You can only live your life by what you know to be true. Right now, we know that she’s alive. Hold on to that. Today, she’s been gone two hundred and fifty days. If she’s survived for nearly nine months, I have to believe that she will keep living until we find her. And we will. We just have to find the right place to look. I don’t know when or how, but we will find her. It’s only a matter of time. She can’t stay hidden forever. Nothing—nothing—can stay hidden forever. Not even with Helen’s magic.”
He was Lunar Court fey. Which meant he couldn’t lie.
He stood again. “Take my hand. Let me take you home.”
Van was right. I wasn’t doing any good here. “I can’t keep looking for her. When I…when I hit the dead ends, I lose control. It’s too much for me. The second of hope and the crash when I realize it was misplaced hope…it’s too much. I wish I were stronger. I wish I could be good enough for her, but I…” I was weak without her.
“The rest of us have hunting covered. We’re keeping the peace and defeating what needs defeating.”
Great. Fine. That didn’t make me feel like I was worthy of Tessa, but I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing and survive. “So what the hell am I going back for? What would I do? I can’t just sit around and wait. I’ll go crazy. And I can’t look for her when I have no hope left to spare. So—”
“Why don’t you go build your mate the house she wants? So that when you find her, you can take her home.”
It took a minute for his words to really sink in, and when they did, the strangling feeling around my heart eased up a little.
Build the house. Build our future. And build my hope that I would find her.
I could do that. Maybe I could do that.
Van reached out a hand to me, and this time I took it. I was ready to leave. And when the world went black, and I started tumbling and twisting, I barely felt it.
I had a purpose. That was more than I had an hour ago.
Chapter Twelve
DASTIEN
Six Hundred Twenty-Seven Days Missing
* * *
The house was done. It seemed to have taken us forever, but also it felt like it took no time at all. I’d built the whole house with Michael and Axel. None of us had any real construction skills, but we watched a ton of YouTube and hired help for important things. It’d been a ton of work—work that I’d made even harder eleven months ago, when I’d had a dream that Tessa was back. It’d been amazing and normal and we’d had a house full of kids.
When I woke up and she still wasn’t there, I cried. I’d thought the dream was real. I’d thought she was back. And that we were happy and healthy and had the biggest family.
But it was just a dream.
She was still gone, and I was lost and alone. Still. Always. Maybe forever.
The only thing that got me out of bed that day was the hope that one day the dream would be real. Which meant I was going to need a bigger house. A much, much bigger house.
Axel and Michael bitched about the added
work for a while, but they’d stuck with me through the whole process. We camped together on the land until there was enough house for us to camp inside of it. I didn’t expect them to stay with me every day, all day—especially when the living conditions weren’t great—but they did. They understood that I couldn’t face going back to my cabin. The scent of her was everywhere in there, and I knew that one second inside it would set off a new frenzy to find her. My wolf wouldn’t understand that there was nothing left for me to do but wait.
Someone would find Tessa. Eventually. That’s what Van had said, and he was older than Michael. Much older. He had to be right.
He would be right. Believing that was the only thing keeping me going.
The day we finished the first phase of building, I sent Michael and Axel to my cabin to find Tessa’s inspiration binder. Whenever we weren’t fighting or politicking, she liked to flip through magazines and rip out images that she wanted to replicate in our home. I had Axel photocopy them and make a new binder so that it wouldn’t have her scent, and we used her dreams to design every bedroom, bathroom, every single square foot of the house.
The day we laid the last of the tile in the kitchen, Michael bowed out. There was only decorating left, and he thought I could handle that with Axel. He’d gone back to campus to start figuring out what to do with the school, and Chris and Cosette took his place. They helped me and Axel buy all the furniture.
Having Chris around was nice, but every time I looked at him and his mate, I remembered what I lost.
I didn’t want to be bitter. I was doing better than I had been when Van found me on the mountain. Letting go of the hope that today would be the day someone would find her was the scariest part of being apart from her, but I did it to save my sanity.
I closed myself off from the world—from any news or information—because I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t be trusted to fight without losing the last of my control.
For a while, that made me feel like a coward. Like I was failing her. But I’d done everything—every fucking thing—that anyone could think of.
Van gave me a purpose that day on the mountain. A goal. But now that I reached it, what was left for me to do?
It’d been a year, nine months, one week, three days, a couple handfuls of hours with no sign of Tessa.
We’d officially been apart for longer than we’d been together.
Every time I realized that, there was this empty, gnawing feeling in my stomach. I tried to ignore it. I kept moving. I kept living. I kept building, but now that was done.
Now that was done.
As I paced through the hallways, in and out of rooms, I knew there was nothing else for me to do here. No more walls to paint. No more pictures to hang. No more rooms to decorate. I was going to need a new goal—a new purpose—very soon. I couldn’t be trusted to sit still for long.
My phone’s alarm started beeping, and I pulled it out of my pocket to turn it off.
Shit. It was already afternoon, and I’d done nothing but my usual morning workout. Which meant it was time to eat.
I tried to keep busy throughout the day, but that meant I tended to forget about food, and if I forgot, then Axel usually forgot. So, I’d set alarms throughout the day to remind us.
“I’m making sandwiches,” I yelled down the hall.
There was a thunk, and then Axel appeared. “Want help?”
“Sure.”
Axel had grown his hair out. He wore it in a man bun that I liked to make fun of, but having him around was comforting. At first, he’d stayed because he said he wasn’t fully in control of his wolf, but that wasn’t true anymore. He’d had control for a long time now. Yet he still stayed with me. I wasn’t sure who was taking care of whom now.
We made a quick lunch—a few sandwiches for each of us filled with meat and cheese—and chatted about nothing in particular. There was something soothing about Axel, and I understood why Tessa was so close with her brother. He was more easygoing than Chris, with a great sense of humor. He also liked to work out, which was good. He kept me going when I probably would’ve stayed wolf and faded. And now that I had some distance from everything that happened, I felt guilty for blaming him when Tessa was first taken. I was glad we saved his life.
I just wished it hadn’t cost me Tessa.
We were cleaning up when there was a knock on the door.
I looked at Axel. “You expecting anyone?”
“No.”
No one had called or texted to tell me they were stopping by, but that didn’t mean it was a threat. No one except our friends and Tessa’s parents knew this house existed.
I strode to the door and opened it.
Claudia and Lucas were on my porch? Claudia’s hair was in its usual braid. She was tucked against Lucas’s side as she stared at me, searching—like always—to see if I was okay.
“I’m fine,” I said before she could ask.
She gave me a nod, but I could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe me. And she shouldn’t. It was a lie.
I wasn’t fine, but I was alive. That would have to be good enough for her.
Once I returned, Claudia and Lucas stayed close by for the rest of the first year Tessa was gone. They checked on me a couple times a week, and the rest of the time, Claudia consulted with other witches on how to break fey magic. Every once in awhile, she’d ask to do a spell. Each time I tried not to get my hopes up, and then feel crushed when it didn’t work. I would’ve kept trying whatever she wanted to try, but one day Claudia told me she was leaving. She was tired of the rollercoaster, too. She’d quickly found someone to take care of the compound temporarily and she left and never came back.
Until today.
She looked good. Rested. Right before she left, she looked sick, and now, I know why she left. She’d been making herself sick trying to fix what no one could fix.
“I didn’t know you were back from Peru.” I opened the door wider. “Come in.”
Claudia stepped into the house. “Wow. This is amazing.”
Axel came out of the kitchen. “Hey, prima. You’re back?”
“For now.” Claudia went to hug her cousin. “You look good. The werewolf really puts muscle on you.”
Axel laughed, not able to deny that at all. He’d gained a ton of solid muscle, and he was happier than he had been in a while. He liked being a werewolf.
I let them chat and went back to cleaning up the kitchen. There just wasn’t a lot for me to say or talk about. I was terrible company, especially around happy people.
After a few minutes, I heard Claudia’s sneakers softly squeak along the floor.
I stopped scraping off the dishes and closed my eyes for a second. Claudia was going to ask me how I was doing, and I was going to have to answer her.
“How are you doing?” she asked, as expected.
She sounded worried, and I hated that.
Axel and Lucas were quietly whispering, and I did my best not to overhear. I put the last dish in the dishwasher and closed it, giving myself enough time to school my features.
I grabbed a towel to wipe my hands. “I’m getting by.” I didn’t want to tell her that I was going to start going crazy again. I’d built the house, but now what was I supposed to do?
“The furniture looks good.” Claudia turned back toward the living room. “God. Everything looks like a magazine.”
I looked around. Did it? I just got whatever Chris and Cosette said would look good and that matched the magazine pages that Tessa saved.
I took in the living room. The large u-shaped couch. The pillows and a blanket draped on one end. The painting Chris made of the woods behind St. Ailbe’s. The richly colored Persian carpet and the large leather pouf.
I’d hung Tessa’s print from her dorm room in the kitchen. The bright purple poster with the grinning Cheshire Cat used to make me sad, but now it made me hopeful that Tessa would smile when she came here and saw it.
Claudia was right. It did look nice.
<
br /> I’d been lost. Building this house—and then filling it—gave me a tangible thing to do when I was incapable of doing anything else.
It’d brought me peace. Every time I hammered in a nail or polished a piece of wood or painted a wall, I thought of Tessa. Of how she would love this. How I was doing it for her. How this wasn’t a waste of my time to build her this home because, at some point, she would come home.
She had to come home.
By the time I finished, she would be here.
But now it’s done, and she still wasn’t here.
“Dastien?” Claudia’s brows were furrowed as she stepped toward me.
I saw that Lucas and Axel were now standing beside her, and I knew I must’ve missed something. “Yes?”
“I asked how you were doing today.”
I threw the dish towel onto the counter. “The house is done,” I said because I wasn’t sure how I was doing anymore. I was getting by. Surviving. But I felt like half of myself was gone. Sometimes I would be angry. Other times I felt like tearing something apart. I spent weeks at a time as a wolf with Michael and Axel.
But I was alive. That was that.
I didn’t want to say any of that aloud. I didn’t want to offend them. They’d been patient and kind and tireless with helping me try to find Tessa before they’d called it quits. So, I changed the subject.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I motioned toward the fridge. “Or to eat. We just had sandwiches, and I could easily—”
“Dastien.” Claudia drew the word out. “I feel like you didn’t know we were coming. Are you ready to go?”
“Go?” I reached inside the fridge, grabbing a sparkling water for Claudia. She hadn’t said she was thirsty, but that’s what she usually liked. I turned to her, holding out the bottle. “You want me to go? To Peru? I was just thinking of traveling. I could maybe stop by there, but I think I’m just going to wander and—”
She didn’t take the bottle. “You’re scaring me. It’s not healthy for you to—”
I slammed it on the counter, and the plastic cracked. Water started fizzing out the side. I tossed it in the sink and grabbed some paper towels.
