Fade (23 page)

He whined. The self-loathing sound caused goose bumps to pebble my skin. And then he fled back into his corner as quickly as he’d leapt out of it.

“Fuck,” Dace swore savagely, breathing hard. He stepped around the table and stopped, seemingly scared to touch me. “Arionna, love, are you okay?”

I wanted to assure him I was fine, but I couldn’t form the words. My head still hurt, but more importantly, I still felt the wolf’s emotions, like the crack existing between mine and Dace’s minds had reshaped itself to include him now that he’d broken through for once.

His thoughts trickled into me, and I understood what Dace meant about the wolf not being the same as him. He wasn’t the same. Not exactly. He was part of Dace, but he was his own entity too. His own consciousness. His own mind. His own desires. He and Dace belonged to one another, but not. They were supposed to be the same—maybe—supposed to be whole, but for some reason they weren’t. The truth flowed through the newly expanded crack.

Dace’s horror and panic knotted tightly with a matching horror and panic from the wolf. He knew he’d hurt me, and he was sorry. Tears welled in my eyes, their joint emotions overwhelming me.

“Arionna, please.” Dace hovered in front of me, his panic coming through loud and clear. “Please, talk to me.”

“I’m … .” The words stuck. I cleared my throat then tried again, “I’m fine.”

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine,” I said more firmly than before. I rose to a sitting position. The movement sent shards of pain lancing out from where my head hit the table, causing me to wince.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Dace said, squatting down until his eyes were level with mine. Remorse and guilt burned in gorgeous green just as clearly as the emotions whispered through my mind.

“I’m fine, Dace.” I lifted my hand toward him and then thought better of touching him. I let my hand fall. “He didn’t mean to hurt me—”

Dace growled, his eyes hardening.

“I can feel him.” Wonder coursed through me at that. I truly felt him. Like with Dace’s connection to Kalei’s pack, there weren’t words, or even images. But the wolf’s thoughts were there all the same.

Dace looked at me, and I saw he didn’t know what I meant, what I was talking about. He couldn’t feel it.

“What he’s thinking. It’s here,” I said, touching my forehead. “All of it.” I couldn’t keep the awe out of my voice.

“You know what he’s thinking?” The words were hesitant, uncertain. Hopeful.

“Yes.” I nodded. The movement hurt less than it had a moment ago. Nothing seriously damaged then, thank God. More important than that, however, a picture emerged like puzzle pieces snapping securely into place. The little pieces fit together in ways more impossible than anything else that’d happened lately, but that didn’t seem to matter much. They fit.

“Dace, do wolves really mate for life like you said?” I had to be sure.

“Yes.” He frowned, looking worried that maybe the wolf had done some serious damage to my brain.

“I think …” I cleared my throat. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” A silly question given what we’d discussed before, but I had to hear his answer anyway.

“Yes,” he said, still frowning at me like I’d lost my mind or had been knocked senseless when I hit the table. His thoughts echoed his concern.

I didn’t think I imagined the connection though. No, I
knew
I didn’t. The sense of certainty I felt overwhelmed me. “I do, too. I always have. It’s never made much sense”—he opened his mouth, but I rushed on before he protested—”that souls are created and then judged after one short life. How can you send the average person to heaven or hell for all eternity after one life? That’s like grounding a newborn for pulling your hair. It doesn’t make sense.”

He stared at me, his mouth still open and his eyes narrowing. “What are you saying?”

“I think that maybe …” I struggled to say the words, knowing how they would sound, and what he would think once they were out there. “That maybe you were right about who I was before. I think, well, I think the wolf and I were mates in a past life.”

I did sound crazy, but I knew I was right and for a million different reasons. That instant shock of recognition when I first saw Dace across the quad. His desire to protect me from the very beginning. My willingness to accept what he told me about things that shouldn’t rightly be possible. How much more he struggled to control the wolf when he touched me. My desire to rip out Ronan’s throat. Buka’s instant acceptance of me, her statement that I smelled like kin, that I smelled familiar. Perhaps even why the tame wolf showed up at my mom’s funeral weeks ago.

“No.” Dace shook his head, his face falling into a hard mask. “No.”

He rose to his feet then paced away from me.

“Why not?” I asked quietly. “Why can’t it be possible?”

“It just can’t,” he snapped, his hands clenched at his sides.

“It can,” I argued, climbing from the table and walking toward him. I stopped a few paces behind him. “Do you know what the wolf is thinking right now, Dace?”

He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough. He still didn’t know what the wolf thought. I did.

“I hear him,” I whispered.

“No.” He swung around to face me, his expression livid, furious. He closed the distance between us in two short steps, but didn’t touch me. “No,” he said again.

I wanted to touch him, to comfort him as his emotions filtered into my mind. I clenched my hands at my sides instead. I didn’t think the wolf would hurt me. Actually, I knew he would make every effort not to hurt me. But touching Dace right now was not a good idea because I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that with his hands on me or mine on him.

“I’m right,” I whispered, meeting his furious gaze. “You know I am.”

“No, you aren’t,” he whispered back, more sad than angry. “You can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because …” He did touch me then, stroking one finger down my cheek. “You can’t belong to him.” The fear in his eyes and in his mind broke my heart into little pieces.

I understood what he meant, what he thought. If I belonged to the wolf, I couldn’t belong to him. I wasn’t so sure it worked that way though. In fact, I was certain it didn’t. Whatever Dace said about the wolf being different, whatever he believed about what it wanted from him, he and the wolf were the same, or they were supposed to be. The truth of that reality pulsed brightly in the wolf’s thoughts.

They were two sides of the same soul, or person. Separated somehow and distinct because of that separation, but they belonged together as much as I belonged to both of them. Dace couldn’t accept that though because he wasn’t ready to face what that would mean for him.

He’d spent his entire life scared to let out the wolf, scared the animal would take control. That it would hurt someone. And then I burst into his life and ripped all of that apart with no explanation either of us could find. We may have felt as though we’d known one another our entire lives, but we hadn’t. Having your entire life suddenly reorder itself wasn’t easy. I was a walking, talking testament to that fact, and if he accepted he and the wolf were one and the same, everything he’d always believed would crumble. He’d have to let the wolf out of its cage.

And that possibility truly terrified him.

The town passed in blurs on the way home, trees little more than dark spots in obscuring shadow. Dace did not speak, driving instead in complete silence. I didn’t know what to say to pull him out of himself, to get him talking. He felt responsible for the lovely bump on my head. He wasn’t at fault, but telling him that would get me nowhere. I’d already tried once, and he’d merely glared. He didn’t trust the wolf, and nothing I said would change his mind.

I decided to try a different approach to the whole talking thing. “What is Gage?”

“Nephil,” he said, his voice remote.

“Nephil?” The word was sharper than I intended. “You mean he’s an angel?”

Dace glanced in my direction, his eyes dark, distracted. “Not exactly. Fallen angels mated with humans a millennia ago, birthing the Nephilim race. Gage is one of those offspring, two thousand years or so removed.”

“Well, that explains it then.” I felt faint.

Nephilim. The descendant of an angel. Unbelievable.

“Explains what?” Dace asked after a minute, less distracted by his own thoughts now.

“Why he’s so light,” I said. “He radiates goodness. I suppose all of the other myths are true too? Vampires? Elves? Faeries?”

“Virtually every creature of myth has some basis in reality. No vampires though. Those are a lot of myth combined with some of the horrible things ordinary people have done throughout the centuries.” He stopped the Jeep in front of the house.

Dad hadn’t made it home yet, thank goodness. I didn’t want to have to lie to him if he asked where I’d gone, but telling him I’d gone to converse with wolves in the woods probably wasn’t the best idea. He still worried about me, and Dani’s death was bound to make his concern worse. No need to add to that, especially not by telling him where I’d been all evening.

“What about werewolves? Are they real?” I turned around in the seat and faced Dace.

“In a way.” He turned off the Jeep and leaned his head back against his seat, his eyes closed. “Werewolves are descendants of shifters, I suppose you could say. Not reincarnations, but direct descendants. The gene or blood or whatever it is that allows the ability is weakened. It’s strongest during the full moon. Some of them are capable of shifting during that period, some aren’t.”

Maybe that’s what I was? I decided not to even go there. “And fairies?”

“Nymphs, satyrs and their relations. The creatures of nature are all real, and all but gone now. Too much destruction,” he said, sounding as if the loss of nature wounded him as much as the loss of its protectors did.

I hesitated to bring up the question I wanted to ask. He’d avoided it the last time I mentioned it, and that made me even more curious. I suspected Dace didn’t do anything without reason.

“And Ronan?” I barely whispered Ronan’s name, shuddering at the memory of him invading my mind. I still didn’t understand how he did it, and I didn’t want to. If I never saw him again, it would be too soon.

“Ronan.” Dace’s lip curled in distaste, but surprisingly, he did answer me. “I don’t know what he is.”

“He’s not human. Or not fully human,” I amended when Dace growled.

“No, he’s not. But whatever he is, I can’t get a fix on him. All I know is that the wolf is more out of control when he’s around, like it is with you. When we felt him prowling through your mind”—he snarled, his grip on the steering wheel tightening as he did so—”we wanted to kill him for that.”

Yeah, me too. “He scares me.”

“He should,” Dace said after a minute. “He’s dangerous. Do me a favor?” He unclenched his hands and turned toward me, meeting my gaze for the first time since the picnic table incident. “Stay away from him. Please?”

“How do you do that?” I grumbled, breathless.

“Do what?” His brow furrowed.

“Put so much meaning into that single word, like your entire world hinges upon my agreement,” I said, truly mystified. He made it so, so hard to say no to him when he did that.

“Because it does,” he said, staring at me so intently I couldn’t doubt his sincerity.

Oh. Well, then. I shook my head, my eyes wide.

“I’ll stay away from him.” I had no trouble making that promise. I’d have happily stayed far away even if Dace didn’t make refusing impossible.

“Thank you.” He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Now, please go inside and lock the doors.”

“Will you stay?” I knew he wouldn’t, but I had to ask.

“No, I have to go back and make sure no one is out hunting yet. I may be the only one able to hold them off, though Edwards went to try.”

“Edwards?” My jaw slackened. “You mean Professor Edwards? He’s a
shifter
?”

“He isn’t.” Dace grinned, no doubt amused by the screeching quality of that last word. “His wife is though.”

“His wife?” My mouth hung wide open. I’d assumed the shifters were all young. It hadn’t crossed my mind that they might not be, or that they might be married and have families.

“Does that surprise you?”

“I guess so,” I admitted, my cheeks heating. “I don’t know why though. Everything that’s happened since I got here … .” Fate, Chelle had said. Every day, doubting her explanation got a little bit more difficult.

“It gets easier,” he said.

“I hope so,” I grumbled as I pulled open the door to the Jeep and jumped down to the ground. “Will I see you on campus tomorrow?”

Dace shook his head. “Classes will be cancelled until after … I’ll see you soon though.” He smiled at me, seeming sad and hopeful at once. “As soon as I can.”

I nodded and closed the door behind me, the reminder of why classes would be cancelled taking center stage in my thoughts. I climbed the steps to the front door, dug the key from my pocket, then stepped into the house. Only when the door closed behind me did I hear Dace start the Jeep and drive away.

I walked into the living room and sank down onto the couch I’d vacated what seemed like days ago. In reality, it’d only been a few hours, but so much changed since. The world kept on changing, taking me with it. I really did feel like a stranger, not at all the same person I was before Mom died. The part of me that thought I should flee into the night felt like the only side left, and not even that part sat in the driver’s seat. The old me kicked back in the passenger seat and dispassionately pointed out the obvious.