Page 37

Chapter 36

Service before self

LENNOX

“ W hat’s happening?” The room around us disappears, but we haven’t stepped through a portal. Instead, the weight leaves my body and I feel like I’m being yanked through a tunnel at a ridiculously fast pace. It’s not like teleportation, which feels like being squeezed through a tube.

“We’re travelling through time,” Magdalene answers.

I turn my head to look at her and see a person-shaped blur that appears to be split apart into layers. I lift a hand, waving it in front of me and realize I look the same. “Whoa.”

“Cool, right?” Her voice sounds like it’s echoing in a chamber.

More like terrifying. My wolf is restless inside me, wanting to put all four paws back on solid ground.

Sparks ignite in the air in front of us and Magdalene says, “We’re almost there.”

It’s a good thing she knows how to navigate whatever this is because I don’t have a clue what’s going on. “Where are we going?” Then I remember we’re moving through time and ask, “When are we going?”

“I realized something tonight when we were discussing immortality with you and Charlie. Immortality is something magical beings are born with, but immortality and the physical self can be separated. Wolf shifters have been proving it for millennia. Almost without fail, when a wolf shifter’s mate is human, the wolf shifter will allow themselves to die after their mate dies, essentially separating the being from their immortality. But since things can be neither created nor destroyed in the natural order, where does the immortality go after an immortal being passes?”

“I don’t know. Where?”

“The most obvious answer is that their immortality jumps to the next being in need of it.” I’m not sure her reasoning is obvious, but I nod like I know what she’s talking about.

Suddenly the comfort of the spinning void is stripped away and I find myself hurtling through the air toward what looks like a mountainside with some kind of gathering. The scene is a blur rushing toward us at a pace that has me bracing for impact.

I’m slammed into the side of a rockface with enough force that a small shower of rocks rains down around me. Landing on my feet, I spin around and see there are many familiar faces.

“Lock!” I gasp, seeing my brother. Next to him stand Sarena and Rush.

They ignore me. In fact, despite there being a dozen people on the cliffside, no one seems to notice me.

I spot my twin holding his wife, Vanessa, in his arms, his gaze anguished as he stares desperately down at her. But Vanessa is alright, isn’t she? She survived; I know she did. I was in a room with her two hours ago.

“Keenan!” I shout, reaching for him, but my hand goes through him.

I stare at my fingers.

“They can’t hear or see you. We’re travellers to this timeline, but we won’t be able to interact with it beyond our task,” Magdalene explains, examining… herself. Or a woman who looks exactly like her. Past Magdalene? “I should have checked my hair before going out in public.” Her gaze strays across the scene and she asks, “Do you know where we are?”

“I think we’ve gone back in time to the night Vanessa died and was resurrected, but why are we here?” I look at my brother’s face, my twin, and I feel his gut-wrenching agony to my soul. I was relieved I missed this. Re-living it with him is brutal.

“Someone here needs the gift of immortality.” Magdalene points at Vanessa where she lay dying in Keenan’s arms. “I saved Vanessa by giving her your immortality, I just didn’t realize it until tonight.”

“If it saves her then of course I give her my immortality.” I never again want to see Keenan the way he is right now.

It isn’t Magdalene who answers, but Destiny, who must’ve followed us here. “Your wish is granted. You may proceed.” Her voice is eerie as it whispers around us on the breeze.

Magdalene takes my hand. “I don’t know how the spell works, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done it before, which means somewhere inside me I know how.” She looks at me. “Are you ready?”

My eyes are on Keenan and Vanessa as I nod. “I’m ready.”

Magdalene begins chanting beside me in sync with her past self, both of their lips moving at the same time.

A flash of light and the opening of a portal heralds the arrival of… “My God, is that…?”

“Lyra Guardian Witch,” Magdalene confirms. “Fallon’s mate and the witch who cast the original spell.”

Lyra’s fearful gaze touches the faces of those gathered on the mountainside, then flickers to Magdalene and me, widening in surprise. A slight smile curves her lips as she drifts past us.

“Can she see us?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Magdalene admits. “Magic is nebulous at the best of times.”

I want to talk to Lyra, to find out more about her; this woman who caused such damage to my family. I don’t blame her for cursing us as it was done in self-defense. At the time, Fallon was forcing her into an unwanted mating and her magic was the only thing she had to fight back with. It wasn’t her intent to cause as much damage as she did.

As Magdalene of the past speaks to Lyra, the Magdalene beside me explains, “She’s going to suspend the original spell so the past me can call forth Vanessa’s latent shifter blood, activating the shifter inside her. The missing piece was immortality, and that’s why we’re here.”

“What do I need to do?”

She squeezes my hand. “Hang on to me and I’ll do the work. This might get a little uncomfortable.”

“Whatever it takes, just save Vanessa.” I can no longer bear my brother’s pain and look away from him as the spark of life slips from his beloved.

Closing my eyes against it, I’m forced to hear his roar of pain as it shatters the night. The Magdalene beside me chants in unison with past Magdalene, then they break away from each other and I can only hear what the Magdalene beside me is saying, her words echoing through my head.

“Through ancient paths, this ageless soul did soar yet now he chooses to walk where earthbound hearts explore.

Eternal light, exchanged for fleeting grace, in mortal hands, time's sands find new embrace.

For what is endless life without the kiss, of time's sweet gift, of transient, fleeting bliss?

Immortal soul, into the natural order you go, returned into the breast of another, a deserving recipient, you shall flow.”

The noise around me fades and something bites into my scalp, like fingernails being raked over me. I strike out at my invisible enemy, but Magdalene squeezes my hand. “Don’t worry, it’s just Destiny rummaging around for your immortality.”

Destiny rummaging around inside me? Fuck that. But I don’t have long to contemplate the horrible thought when suddenly I feel as though I’m being lifted. No, not lifted, but like something inside me is departing, freeing itself from my physical body. Like a kind of heaviness floating away, leaving me light as air.

At first, I fear it’s my wolf leaving my body and I struggle against it, but he assures me he’s still nestled inside me, watching the proceedings with interest, but not fear.

Then I hear another voice, a precious voice. I’m with you, my love.

Charlie! How can she be with me when we’re in the past?

I’m a part of you now, which means I’m always with you. I’ll be waiting for you when you come home.

She fades into the background of my mind, leaving behind a reassuring warmth. I stop struggling and allow my immortality to flow from me.

I watch Magdalene who’s still chanting the same words over and over. Her blackened fingers entwined with mine, gripping me with crushing strength. When she turns her head to look at me, her eyes are black as pitch, no white to relieve them.

Finally, everything stops. The chanting, the cries of anguish from the spectator’s at Vanessa’s death, everything. All eyes are on Vanessa whose body has disintegrated into a pile of ash. My brother is on his knees gripping his head, moaning and rocking. Then the ash lifts off the ground in what appears to be a spiralling breeze, floating above Keenan’s head before igniting with an inner fire.

From beside me, Magdalene gasps and claps her hands. “Isn’t it wonderful? You were thinking of Charlie when you released your immortality. You infused it with your mate’s spirit before handing it over to Vanessa.”

“Uh huh.” I have no idea what’s happening.

She slaps my arm and grins. “You and Charlie turned Vanessa into a phoenix! You gave her the gift of rebirth through fire because your mate’s spirit is infused with fire. You and Charlie and Vanessa are all linked now.”

I’m awed by the scene before me. The depth of Keenan’s feelings for his mate, a mirror to my own feelings for Charlie. Tears of joy run unchecked down his face as his mate turns into a beautiful fiery phoenix who is now floating back to the ground where she’s greeted by her loved ones.

I startle as a hand curves over my shoulder. When I look, I see what appears to be a dust devil beside me. Destiny. “You’ve done what you came here to do. You must now leave this timeline before you cause damage.”

“Damage? What do you mean?” I ask, but the whirlwind is kicking up a small storm that encompasses the three of us. No one on the cliffside seems to notice as we leave the way we came.

Magdalene explains as we travel, “Travelling through time almost always has consequences. It’s difficult to keep the natural order in balance when fucking around with timelines. If a witch is going to do that sort of thing, she has to do it with surgical precision. We should be grateful to Destiny for allowing our trespass on her domain.”

Picking up on the subtext, I realize Destiny is still with us. “Destiny will have my gratitude until my dying day.”

“Which will now be a lot sooner than it would have otherwise been if you’d kept your immortality.” Destiny’s voice is loud in my ear as we land in the dusty library in Wolf-Haven castle. Books now litter the floor.

I turn to look at the blur in the air. “Still, you have my eternal gratitude. Immortality has no meaning to me if I can’t be with Charlie.”

“You are free to be with your mate now,” Destiny says. “The curse will no longer haunt you. I’ve made sure of it. Enjoy your mortal years.” With that she’s gone. I don’t know how I know since she’s not a corporeal presence, but the atmosphere in the room seems to lift, as though a heavy presence has gone away.

“What does she mean the curse will no longer haunt me?” I demand of Magdalene.

She shakes her head as though trying to reorient herself. “It means you’re dying.” At my scowl, she clarifies, “Slowly and in line with a human lifespan. Your wolf will still be able to heal you quite effectively, so you’ll die somewhere in the upper range of a human lifespan.”

Nope, still don’t understand. “So because I’m human and Charlie is human and we’re both going to live out a human lifespan, the curse no longer applies?”

“Sort of, but more like you’ve put the curse on hold for several decades. The curse is meant to separate the Wolven-North men from their mates. Death is a form of separation and both you and Charlie must die one day, meaning the curse will have its way at that time.”

She’s wrong, not even death will separate me from my mate. Once Charlie dies, I’ll follow close behind and we’ll continue to exist together in the afterlife.

I ask, “In the meantime, Charlie and I are free to live our lives without fear of the curse separating us?”

She nods. “I think that’s what Destiny is saying.”

“I need to find Charlie and tell her.” Charlie already knows, having seen most of what transpired in my head, but the desire to go to her is overwhelming.

“Say hi for me,” Magdalene says.

I pause at the door, looking back at her, taking in the bend to her shoulders, the weariness around her eyes. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me and my family.”

She smiles at me, the tiredness disappearing. “You deserve to be happy. Go find your mate.”