Page 37 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

A time unknown, but one of truth

Sitting on the ledge he’d made for his comfort and convenience, Weldir glared at the viewing disc before him.

The two environments, his and the one in the disc, were remarkably similar.

Both were bright with sunshine, both high in the air.

Weldir was situated near his special cave – at the top of this mountain.

He’d carved this flat area before his cave entrance out of wanting a place to have his thoughts.

To sit, like he wasn’t just a floating conscience.

Forests, hills, and meadows lay before both of them.

The longer Lindiwe flew, the more Weldir’s mood soured – when it was quite disgruntled to begin with.

Rather than having to spend even a moment in my presence, she chooses to fly across the world. Wasting time – she had plenty of it – and wasting energy, although she was a strong female. This vexes me deeply.

Orpheus was impossible to be near due to his volatile emotions.

If Lindiwe approached him, he’d attack to protect his home from her, while refusing to enter it himself.

He was... inconsolable. He didn’t know how to be, how to exist, nor did he know how to regulate his emotions, ease his thoughts, and grieve properly.

All of Lindiwe’s attempts to help had done more harm than good.

So she moved on, as she didn’t wish to torture him.

And rather than asking for Weldir’s aid, she fucking flew across the ocean again! This time, she found herself in Eyropea, and she’d been visiting their offspring on her own.

He hadn’t realised how much he valued those fleeting moments with her until she no longer required them. She’d found her own independence, and that annoyed him.

Only because it was done spitefully.

With his legs crossed, he placed his elbow on his knee and rested his jaw on his fist. Her anger is always stubbornly enduring. He didn’t think he’d done anything particularly wrong.

I told her the truth. It’s not my fault she misunderstood.

He was a god. She should have known he was outside the realm of reality.

Now she’s stolen my fun from me. Along with her very presence.

Granted, much had happened since then, and it actually hadn’t been all that long. What was it? Two months since she’d demanded to leave his realm?

He tried to recount how many sun cycles he’d witnessed, but he’d probably missed a few.

Even after all this time, I don’t understand her.

He wanted to. Fuck, he was trying to, but she made it needlessly difficult. When she was upset, she wanted to be left alone, and wouldn’t speak with him until she was ready.

Is this her way of punishing me? Weldir pondered that thought and then disregarded it. Lindiwe isn’t that kind of person.

She was a solitary creature, something crafted by their bond. He’d inadvertently made her this way. No. She is merely upset and is trying to handle it.

In the same way she moved through grief and loss. She’d leaned on him momentarily in Nathair’s death and then had receded into herself. Simply to heal her own heart through time and space, through distractions.

Did any of that matter to how Weldir was feeling? No. He grew more annoyed with each day he shouldn’t be able to feel the moving stretch of. He should be outside of time, and yet he was dwindling in it.

When she finally landed and turned into a human, Weldir tried, once again, to shorten the mental distance between them.

“Lindiwe, are you ready to discuss what–” Before he could finish, she darted her head to the side dismissively and approached the haunted one she’d seen.

Weldir’s mist pulled and pushed away from him in anger, like he’d seen her breaths sawing in and out of her expanding and collapsing chest. His realm rumbled, his emotions so strong they caused an earthquake to tremble through it.

I tire of waiting! His mind roared. I tire of these human games. Of her ire! Of her not giving him exactly what he craved: her desire.

He’d already waited for it, and just as he’d gotten it, in the midst of watching her ride him no less, she’d fucking stolen it. The only thing he’d found since the moment he’d been born that enthralled him.

Weldir looked down at his arms to see that all the souls he’d collected, and the many she and their offspring had brought him, had increased what was visible.

Over a third of him existed, to the point that he was aware his hands to his forearms, his feet to his calves, and his head to the top of his chest, were all visible.

He’d spread his mist far across Earth, and could expand it further should he choose.

Yet he hadn’t, simply because it would reduce his physical self. There would be less of it to share... with her.

Not that she wanted it.

So what if he couldn’t physically feel desire, arousal, pleasure? What difference did it make to her enjoyment of it? Her pleasure? So long as she felt it, that was all that mattered, right?

His tolerance regarding her rejection of her own pleasure was running its course.

He was done with it.

And he was done waiting for this unending ire of hers to fade.

Making a rather devious decision, Weldir transported himself from Tenebris to the void outside of it. Then he waited for his opportune moment.

He watched her turn from an owl into a human and then... a Phantom.

“You will speak to me, Lindiwe,” Weldir demanded, wanting to give her the opportunity to heal their wounded bond before he took control of it himself.

She didn’t answer him.

So, Weldir yanked her body from Earth and to his realm without her permission. He wrapped a tendril around her ankle, since she was tangible to him, and pulled her closer until their gazes could lock less than a foot apart.

Her glossy curls waved through the floating darkness as she gasped and looked around. She swayed her hand to swim backwards, but his tendril around her leg kept her to him.

“Enough of this,” Weldir demanded with a curt growl.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lindiwe asked in a surprised rasp before her face – her pretty, expressive face – shifted. Her lips thinned and she cast him one of her glares. “Send me back. Right now.”

Weldir yanked her closer. “No.” He darted his gaze down her body with a tsk. “We will resolve this, whether you’re ready or not.”

“I don’t have to.” She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “And you can’t make–”

Her anger faded, instead replaced by widened eyes as she looked down at her leg. She pulled and yanked, then her heart began to race.

“Why can’t I shift?” she whispered.

“I always wondered if I touched you while you were tangible to me, whether I could stop you from changing forms,” Weldir stated coldly. “It appears I was right.”

“L-let me go, Weldir.”

“No.” He let the word hang between them, harsh and heavy, and her eyes took on a rather anxious, frightened edge.

At him! Someone who had never gone out of his way to hurt her.

“My patience has run its course, Lindiwe. And I have been a very patient being for a long time.”

“Fine!” she yelled. “If you want an offspring, we can make one. But I want you to use your tendril, like before.”

“Offspring?” Weldir hummed with dark humour. “I couldn’t give a fuck about creating another right now. That isn’t the issue.”

She drew her brows in tight, obviously not expecting his response.

“What currently vexes me is your silence. You are... pulling away from me.”

She curled her hands into tight fists and twisted her head to the side. “I want time to process how I’m feeling.”

“You have had weeks .” His mist tightened against his form. “Surely that is ample time.”

For a human, at least.

“I’ve barely been able to focus with everything that’s happened.”

It sounded like an excuse to evade the discussion.

A growl rumbled from him. “I don’t understand what your problem is. I don’t see how my lack of physical perception has upset you. Why does it matter?”

Just his words sent her heart racing, and it throbbed in his mind from all around him. Cupping her hands against her stomach, she drew her shoulders inwards as she kept her gaze averted.

“It just does,” she answered in a small voice.

Weldir placed his hand around her knee and drew it upwards, trying to coax her like he usually could; the lithe muscles of her thighs were sensitive and easy to stimulate.

“But you found pleasure in it. You enjoyed it.”

She slapped his hand away with both of her own. “Because I am not entertainment!” she yelled, scrunching her face at him in anger. “Because my desire is not for your amusement. I don’t want to be leered at, pitied, like my arousal is a fucking joke!”

Weldir snapped his fangs, creating a sharp, clipping noise as he shot forward. “When have I ever led you to believe such a thing?”

“All of it was a lie! A performance that you took part in for my sake!”

“I did not lie, female!”

“I thought we were sharing something. It doesn’t matter that you told me and I misunderstood.

It was obvious that I didn’t know, and I’m so embarrassed by my own actions, by my behaviour because.

.. because I was trying to...” Her eyelids crinkled as liquid welled along her lash line.

She bit her bottom lip, unable to spit it out, then covered her face and shook her head in her palms. “Just... I don’t think I can do it with someone who can’t even feel it.

It makes me feel pathetic. Like I’m forcing you to do something you feel nothing for. ”

A deep, dark chuckle rumbled from him. “That is where you are very wrong.”

She lowered her hands to reveal her tear-stained cheeks. “But you said–”

Weldir curled his fingers under her chin and pulled her forward. Her neck stretched as he put them face to face until her nose was close to brushing his own.

“Entertainment? Amusement? My enjoyment of it isn’t that shallow. And forcing me?” Weldir tsked and dipped his head in a way that made it clear he’d drawn his gaze down her body. “In what way do you have control over anything I do? I do things because I want to.”