Page 3 of Eternal Light (Fated in the Stars #5)

“Indeed. Let’s apply some pressure on both ends. Can you locate this Adept?”

“For sure. His signature is bold—beautiful, even. It’ll be easy to find him the next time he uses it.”

He’d told himself it was the babies. That all the changes unraveling inside him—the wildness, the sense of something burning under his skin—were just part of becoming a father.

But then he’d stood before Nimue and he’d felt it. Magic. Glowing, alive, pouring through him like a river.

Addictive and dangerous.

The MRI explosion had shown him what happened when he didn’t control it.

He couldn’t let that happen again—not with Nix in the blast radius.

There’s a hard pull in his chest—his bond with Nix reacting to the words—and Grayson has all of ten seconds to realize that Withers is talking about tracking him through his access to The Plain.

Grayson lets the magic he’s been unwittingly pulling for defense stutter as he takes a defensive step back in the flower bed—and falls.

Instead of hitting the cool earth, it’s as if he’s falling backward through his mind, yanked along invisible threads, following his bonds until—

He slams back into his body with a violent jerk.

When his eyes snap open, it’s to see his pack surrounding him in the nest, Nix’s face wet with tears.

“He’s back. Thank you, Nimue. Yes…I’ll have him call you later. Bye.” Finn sounds strained as he hangs up the phone, before promptly punching Grayson in the arm.

“Ow! What the fuck, Finn?”

The punch is immediately followed by Finn flopping backward into the nest like his strings have been cut.

With a small cry, Nix throws himself into Grayson’s arms.

“Gray. Fuck, pretty. Are you alright?” Gideon runs a cool hand through Grayson’s hair as if reassuring himself that Grayson is real and solid.

“Where were you?” Rowan asks, his face pale.

“I wasn’t here?”

His question is met with a flurry of shaking heads.

“You were…sort of. Let me start from the beginning, yeah?” Jay offers with a small smile, pulling a pale Leo into his side.

“I’m okay, Leo. Honestly.”

“Yeah, well, don’t do that again.”

He huffs. “I didn’t do it now.” Not on purpose, anyway.

“Nix woke up suddenly, like he’d had a bad dream.” Jay nods at their omega, who has his hands tucked under Grayson’s shirt. He presses closer, their babies resting against Grayson’s belly, his snotty nose buried in Grayson’s scent gland. The burnt vanilla scent making Grayson’s nose tingle.

“I think I have them when you have them, Gray.”

“I’m sorry. I think when I sleep, I can’t control the flow…They’re not all scary, though?”

Nix shudders. “This was definitely scary. Carnell was in a tiny swimsuit.”

No lie. That was terrifying.

Grayson doesn’t like the idea that Nix was there with him, and Grayson hadn’t even known. He needs to understand how this works, so he can make sure that if he ever runs into Withers again, Nix isn’t collateral damage.

There’s a chorus of ew ’s, but Jay continues. “Nix had a bad dream, and he woke me up because you were here… and also not here.”

Grayson is dumbfounded. How can he be here and not here?

“What he means is that you were incorporeal,” Finn says, sitting back up, a bit more color in his face.

“Incorporeal? Like a ghost?”

“It was scary,” Luca whispers. “What did it feel like when you were all Casper-like?”

That’s a really good question. He hadn’t done anything on purpose or with planning.

Grayson yearns for the day when he can, because seeing the scared looks on his family’s faces is not on his list of fun things.

It hadn’t felt any different than he usually did until he’d put his hand through that hedge.

“We couldn’t get your attention when you phased out. We couldn’t feel you at all.” Finn punches him in the arm again.

“Ow, why are you hitting me? You’re a fucking doctor, you’re supposed to heal me!”

“I have to be able to touch you first, asshole. I could see you, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help. It scared me, Grayson—badly.”

Doctors can only heal what they can see and touch. “Oh. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, you know…”

“In the end only Nimue could help, although I’m not sure it wasn’t a coincidence. Did you feel Nix pulling on the bond?”

“I think so. I was…” He hesitates because it sounds fantastical, but what hasn’t been lately?

“Take your time,” Leo nudges his leg gently with his toe.

“I was asleep, then I was…I thought I was dreaming. But I was outside this big house…more of a weird castle, really…pool is custom…gorgeous stone…”

“Are you selling us this place or what?” Rowan interrupts.

“Sorry.” Grayson smiles and closes his eyes to better remember. “Nix was right, Carnell was there, drinking tea and eating a fucking scone. Swimming laps.”

Nix shudders in his arms at his shared memory of Carnell in his swimsuit.

He lets the memory of the hot sun and the feel of the cool earth under his feet bring more of the details back.

“After that, he called out to this skinny guy. Aleksander Withers, he called him. He looked like a walking corpse and smelled about the same. I’d seen him before, though.” Opening his eyes, his gaze locks with Gideon’s, whose jaw is clenched harder than ever.

“They couldn’t see you, though?” Nix asks.

“No, I was standing behind them in the bushes, but I think, like you said, I wasn’t there either. Withers said that their contact at the Guild had told him our pack had registered a new magic Apprentice.”

Jay growls at the thought of a mole inside the institution that is supposed to govern vulnerable young magic users.

“They couldn’t get any information on me, though, because of the magical protections in place. But they think that means there are two of us. Carnell thinks a second magic user is working for our pack.”

“Two? Like an Apprentice? And you?” Nix asks incredulously. “Are magic users so common that we’re just toting two over state lines? That Carnell is worth that kind of the effort? Fucking megalomaniac idiot.”

“Withers saw me at the first safe house.” Grayson bites back the part where the Arcanas had found him attractive—no need to risk Nix storming off into the city, nose to the ground, chasing down the few scraps of information he’s managed to gather. Because that’s what this is, right?

“But why would he think there are two of you? It makes no sense,” Rowan says.

Grayson hates this part. “Ugh… he said he could tell I was strong, or some shit.” Grayson is well aware of his strengths and talents, and while he’s no braggart, he is a confident and successful person. But this? This makes his cheeks flush.

“Understatement,” Luca mutters. “So if you’re strong, you can’t be an Apprentice, is the logic?”

“Nimue calls what you did Traveling,” Finn says in response. “She doesn’t know of anyone in North America who can do it. She thinks there is one in Germany, but she’ll get back to me.”

Gideon hands him a bottle of water and a piece of chocolate—it’s exactly what Grayson needs. It always is.

“Then what? You came back to us like you’d had a shock.”

“Oh yeah, so they were monologue-ing. Or I guess dialoguing? Lots of ass-kissing by Withers, and he said there is a spell in place that if they break it, it means Carnell will be a sitting duck.”

“You mean we haven’t been able to find him because he’s using a spell to hide his whereabouts?” Jay growls.

He is no doubt mad because they’d been here two weeks with no glimpses of their nemesis in the wild.

Someone like Carnell never goes under the radar.

Not in the news, not in the public eye, and most certainly not by the authorities.

Most especially not to the people Lauren Arnell Costas knows.

Men like Carnell live like kings and enjoy the public spectacle that wealth and connections bring.

But Carnell had gone off the radar, and now they know why.

They all remember the last time a spell had been used to hide someone, and there was not a happy face in the room.

“Did they say anything else about it?” Finn says, the notes app open on his phone again. “Were you lucky enough to hear what his next moves are?”

“He’s looking for us. He knew we were at the Archive, and the hospital, and…the golf club. He knew you were there, Jay.”

“Why hasn’t he come here, then? Surely if he could find us there, he could find us here?” Rowan growls.

“I don’t know, but Carnell asked him if he could find me…just me.” Grayson squeezes Nix harder. “And he said yes.”

Withers was entirely too confident that he could locate Grayson again—on The Plain, and then in reality.

That idea alone was enough to have the family showered and dressed in short order.

Determined not to be sitting around with their thumbs up their asses (thank you, Gideon, for that visual).

For the second time in as many weeks, they set about packing everything eight people had managed to spread out around their temporary den in just a few days.

In a flurry, Gideon had quickly assigned tasks while Finn contacted Nimue to see if she would help them fortify yet another safe house.

There had also been a call to Lauren. Grayson was glad he wasn’t the one on the other end of the receiver when Gideon clenched his jaw and slid the glass doors closed to the lanai, phone to his ear.

His heart twinged, though, when he caught a glimpse of Leo’s frown, thoughts of his mother flickering across his face.

Gideon was no doubt begging—demanding—her help in finding them another sanctuary on short notice, since the luxury Island Estates house was far from ideal as a defensible location.

The pack had never cared for excessive space, especially after hunkering down in a single room for a week not that long ago.

They would gladly do it again for even a fraction of added security.

Now, they just had to wait until she could mobilize her contacts on this end.

In the meantime, Nimue insisted that Grayson meet the Head of Novices at the Guild’s headquarters, sooner rather than later, despite the mole in their ranks.