Page 17

Chapter

Sixteen

M ia woke to find Jim already awake, his fingers tracing invisible patterns on her bare shoulder. The morning light caught the worry lines around his eyes, deeper than usual.

"You're thinking too loud," she mumbled into her pillow. "It's disturbing my sleep."

"Sorry, mo stór." But his hand didn't stop its nervous movement. "Just... today's going to be rough."

She turned to face him, studying his expression. "The blood oath removal?"

"Mm." He wouldn't meet her eyes. "Charlotte wasn't exaggerating. It's going to hurt."

"I'll be there." She caught his restless hand, bringing it to her lips. "You won't be alone this time."

"That's what I'm afraid of," he admitted quietly. "When the oath breaks, you'll see things. Feel things. Everything I couldn't tell you will come rushing out at once."

"Jim." She waited until he looked at her. "I've seen you at your worst. Time-slipping until you bled. Fighting through truth potions and blood magic. You think a few secrets will scare me off now?"

His smile was crooked, vulnerable. "You haven't seen Prague."

"With her?" The jealousy was back, sharp and immediate.

"It wasn't like that." He turned onto his side, facing her fully. "She saved my life, yes. Taught me to control the slips. But Mia..." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "I spent three months learning to navigate time itself, and all I could think about was using it to come home to you."

"Sweet talker." But she moved closer, tangling their legs together. "What else haven't you told me?"

"Can't." He touched his throat. "Literally can't until tonight. But after..." He hesitated. "After, you'll know everything. Every deal I made. Every future I saw. Every time I watched you die and couldn't prevent it."

The raw pain in his voice made her chest ache. "Jim?—"

"I need you to promise me something." His amber eyes were serious. "Whatever you see tonight, whatever you learn—remember that everything I did was to keep you safe. Even leaving. Especially leaving."

"I promise." She sealed it with a kiss, soft and sure. "Now stop brooding and make me coffee. We have a vampire hunter to deal with."

The day passed too quickly. By late afternoon, they were driving to Jasmine's vineyard, Jim's tension filling the car like a living thing. Mia kept one hand on his thigh, thumb stroking in soothing patterns.

"Stop the car," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"Please. Just for a minute."

She pulled over onto a scenic overlook, the vineyard spreading below them in neat rows. Jim got out, pacing to the edge where a low stone wall separated them from the drop.

"Jim?" She followed, worry gnawing at her.

"I can feel it starting." He gripped the wall, knuckles white. "The oath knows what's coming. It's fighting already."

She pressed against his back, arms wrapping around him. "What do you need?"

"Just... this." He covered her hands with his. "You. Before everything changes."

"Nothing's going to change." She pressed her face between his shoulder blades. "You're still going to steal my coffee and leave your sketches everywhere and say ridiculous things at inappropriate times."

"I don't leave sketches everywhere," he protested weakly.

"I found three in my sock drawer yesterday." She smiled against his back. "All of me sleeping. You're a creeper, Jim Miracles."

His laugh was shaky but real. "Guilty. You make beautiful art when you drool."

"I do not drool!"

He turned in her arms, some tension easing. "You do. It's adorable. You also talk in your sleep."

"Lies."

"Last night you told me very firmly that I couldn't have the last piece of pizza." His hands framed her face. "Then you tried to bite me."

"Sounds reasonable." She rose on her toes, pressing her forehead to his. "Better?"

"Always better with you." He breathed her in like he was memorizing her scent. "Whatever happens tonight?—"

"We'll handle it together." She pulled back to look at him. "That's what mates do."

His eyes widened. "Mates?"

Heat flooded her cheeks. "I mean—that's not—I didn't mean to?—"

He kissed her, deep and desperate and full of unspoken promises. When they broke apart, he pressed something into her hand. A small metal pendant on a leather cord—a Celtic trinity knot.

"Belonged to my mother," he said quietly. "Wore it for centuries. Want you to have it. Just... in case."

"Jim—"

"Please." His thumb traced her lower lip. "For luck."

She let him fasten it around her neck, the metal warm against her skin. "Now you have to come back to me. Can't keep your mother's necklace if you don't."

"Clever wolf." But his smile didn't reach his eyes.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, her hand in his.

Jasmine's wine cellar was already prepared when they arrived. Candles cast dancing shadows on stone walls, and intricate symbols were chalked on the floor. Bertram stood guard by the door while Beatrice nervously organized herbs on a side table.

Charlotte waited in the center, looking immaculate in black leather. "Finally. I was starting to think you'd run."

"He doesn't run," Mia said firmly, not releasing Jim's hand. "Not anymore."

"How touching." Charlotte's red eyes flicked between them. "This will work better if you're not attached at the hip."

"I'm staying with him."

"Actually," Jasmine intervened, "you'll need to be in the circle. The oath recognizes you as his anchor. Your presence will help ground him during the severing."

Charlotte's expression tightened. "That's not traditional protocol."

"Neither is forcing a blood oath on someone to begin with," Jasmine countered smoothly. "My cellar, my rules."

"Fine." Charlotte gestured to the chalked circle. "Both of you, then. But don't interfere once we begin."

Mia and Jim stepped into the circle together. The moment they crossed the chalk line, the air changed—thicker, charged with potential. Jim's hand tightened on hers.

"Ready?" Charlotte asked, producing a wickedly sharp ritual blade.

"No," Jim admitted. "Do it anyway."

Charlotte began to chant in a language Mia didn't recognize—ancient, guttural, with sounds that hurt to hear. The symbols on the floor began to glow, pulsing in rhythm with the words.

The moment the ritual circle activated, Jim's convulsions eased slightly. "The containment is holding," Charlotte said through gritted teeth, not breaking her chant. "The circle's buying us time, but we need to work fast. The oath is fighting back harder than expected."

Jim's hand spasmed in hers. "Mia?—"

"I'm here." She moved closer, free arm wrapping around his waist. "I've got you."

Charlotte sliced her own palm, blood welling dark in the candlelight. She pressed it to Jim's forehead, and he screamed.

Not just sound—it was pain given voice, echoing off stone walls. His body convulsed, but Mia held on, anchoring him as promised.

The air in the circle shattered like glass.

Suddenly, Mia wasn't just in the cellar. She was everywhere, everywhen, experiencing Jim's memories in a devastating rush.

Prague, 1897. Jim collapsed in an alley, temporal energy tearing him apart. Charlotte finding him, not the predator she'd expected but broken and desperate. "I can teach you control," she offered. "For a price."

"Anything," he gasped. "I have to get back to her."

"Her?" Charlotte's interest sharpened. "Love is dangerous for our kind, time-walker."

"Not love. Home."

The memory shifted.

Jim practicing in a stone room, slipping through hours, days, weeks. Each jump more controlled but taking pieces of him. Charlotte watching, teaching, demanding more.

"You're not aging normally," Charlotte observed during one session.

"The time stream keeps pulling you to different eras, but your body remains anchored to your original timeline.

You're not seven hundred years old, Jim.

You're a thirty-something wolf who's been dragged through seven centuries like a stone skipping across time. "

"Feels like seven hundred years," Jim had gasped, collapsing after another failed attempt to control the slips.

"That's the curse of it. You experience the time, but you don't live it linearly. Your body resets to your true age each time you return to your origin point. Otherwise you'd be dust by now."

"You're strong enough now," she said after three months. "Stay. Help me hunt. Together we could ? —"

"No." Jim stood, power rippling around him. "I'm going home."

"To her." Not a question. "The one you call out for when the temporal streams try to claim you. Mia."

"Always Mia."

Another shift. Darker now.

The blood oath ceremony. Jim on his knees, Charlotte standing over him with a blade that glowed with otherworldly fire.

"This oath binds you to silence about what you've learned. About what hunts in the shadows. About the war coming to your precious Wolf Valley."

"I agree." No hesitation. "If it keeps her safe, I agree to it all."

The memories came faster now, each one a knife to Mia's heart.

Jim seeing her death in a dozen timelines. Vampires draining her. Matthews snapping her neck. A corrupted pack turning on their alpha. Each future ending the same—Mia dead, Jim too late.

His desperate attempts to change things. Leaving clues. Warning people who forgot the conversations. The oath strangling him whenever he tried to speak directly.

Finally, the decision to leave. Standing outside her window, memorizing her sleeping face.

"I'll find a way," he whispered to the night. "I'll break fate itself if I have to. But you'll live, mo stór. Even if you hate me for it."

The memories shattered, throwing Mia back to the present. Jim was on his knees, blood streaming from his nose, eyes, ears. The blue lines of the temporal anchors blazed through his skin like living tattoos.

"Almost there," Charlotte said through gritted teeth. Her own face was pale with effort. "Hold him steady."

Mia dropped to her knees, gathering Jim against her. "I'm here. I see it all. I understand."

"Mia," he gasped. "I'm sorry. So sorry."