Page 11 of Veiled By Smoke (The Nature Hunters Academy #5)

“You’re not mine anymore. You haven’t been for a very long time.

But that isn’t what shreds my heart. What threatens to tear me apart is the fact that I’m still yours.

The moment the memories returned, all of those emotions and feelings flooded me.

They hit me like a hurricane, pounding on me relentlessly with a ferocity that I fear will shatter my soul and any connection we might still have. ” ~ Kimba

K imba landed in front of the caves with a sweep of her tail, shifting in a shimmer of iridescent light as her claws touched stone.

She barely paused to smooth a wrinkle from her tunic—she wasn’t here to look pretty for Osiris, and she doubted he’d notice anyway.

Not with the way he brooded, pacing just inside the mouth of the cave, arms crossed, jaw clenched so hard she half-expected to hear a crack.

He didn’t acknowledge her entrance. Typical. Kimba set her shoulders and strode in, her expression as unyielding as her heart felt bruised.

“None of the children got eaten?” Osiris asked, his tone dry, and annoyed.

“If you mean Shelly–”

“Did I say Shelly?” he snapped.

If she had hackles, they’d have been standing on end at his tone.

It made her feel completely guilt-free at taunting him. “I’m assuming all of your chores are complete. Which means you are hiding or sulking,” she said, voice cool as a mountain stream. “Or is this just another bout of existential angst?”

His eyes, dark as the void between stars, flicked to hers. “I told you I was no servant. I was not humoring you. And I’m considering the options. Both have merit.”

She scoffed. “I’ll add ‘procrastinating’ to the list, then.”

Osiris paced another circuit, his movements sharp, restless, like an animal caught in a snare.

“I can’t remember everything,” he said suddenly, low and raw.

“There are flashes–your face, your laughter, the way you used to look at me like I was the only soul in creation. Then nothing. Just . . . fire, chains, and the endless weight of the dead. I know I lost myself. I know I lost you. But,” he broke off, hands fisting at his sides. “What do you want from me, Kimba?”

She stepped closer, refusing to let him pull away physically or emotionally.

“I want honesty. I want to know what you want, Osiris. Because I can’t do this half-life any longer.

My soul is your soul. It always has been, even when you forgot.

Even when you let the darkness take you.

” She let out a harsh breath as she shored up her defenses to prepare herself to reveal what she considered to be weakness.

Kimba didn’t want to show him any vulnerability or weakness but that’s what soul bonded did.

“Because I’ve asked for honesty, then I will honor you with the same.

When you left, and I realized you weren’t coming back, I lost it.

My sanity was slipping away, and it was hurting other soul bonded.

So, Serpheron used his magic to give me the ability to shift and brought me into the dragon realm.

Their magic shielded me from the pain of losing you.

I had to give up my purpose because, without you, I couldn’t function.

Now, all these centuries later, the pain has returned, but I know that I have the strength to at least fight for what light is left in this world.

It will end me to do so. It will be my final act as the fifth elemental royal, but it will be worth it.

It is not what I want, but I will do it nonetheless. So, I ask again, what do you want?”

At first he seemed taken aback by her admission, but then his face contorted into the mask of indifference she’d come to be acquainted with.

He snorted, lips curling into something like a sneer.

“What do I want? I want peace. I want to be free of this . . . ache. I want to not care. I spent centuries without needing anyone, Kimba. I made myself that way. And you,” his gaze burned into hers, fierce and wounded, “now here you are, the only one who has ever broken through. The only one who has ever made me want more. You may be okay with needing me, but I sure as hell don’t want to need anyone.

My strength and power come from my own will. ”

Kimba’s laugh was brittle, sharp. “You want peace? Then you should have stayed in the darkness. You can’t have peace and a mate, Osiris.

You can’t have peace and purpose. You have to choose.

Because while you sit here licking your wounds, the world burns and the bond that could save it, save us , weakens with every minute you refuse to accept who you are. ”

He moved toward her, something predatory and desperate in the way he closed the distance. “And what about you, Queen? You say you want me, but you walked away, too. You left me to the underworld. You let me forget.”

She bristled, chin lifting. “Don’t you dare lay your mistakes at my feet. I would have torn the world apart to save you. But you locked me out, Osiris. You locked yourself away.”

He was close now, their bodies nearly touching, the air between them charged and electric. “So what, Kimba? You want me to say it? To admit that I need you? That I miss you? That the only reason I chased after Shelly was because she was a pale echo of what my soul was screaming for?”

She felt the words like a punch, and she was wounded and vindicated all at once. “I want you to stop running from me. From us. I want you to accept that you are my mate, and I am yours. Because if you don’t, if we keep going like this, we’re both lost. And the world goes with us.”

He stared at her, breathing hard, the muscles in his jaw working as if he was swallowing every stubborn, prideful word he wanted to throw in her face.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted, voice rough. “I don’t know how to be who you need.”

Her eyes shimmered, not with tears, but with fury and longing. “Then learn. Or let me go. But stop standing in the doorway of your own damn fate.”

Kimba turned, every muscle taut with anger, betrayal, and a love that refused to die, even when it should have. She didn’t look back as she strode from the cave, but her words hung in the air, sharp, impossible, and true.

“Decide, Osiris. Before there’s nothing left for either of us to save.”

She shifted mid-stride, letting the dragon take her, and launched herself into the sky, leaving her mate, and her heart, behind in the cold, echoing silence.

O siris stood in the cave’s mouth, watching the horizon where Kimba had vanished, feeling the echo of her pain thrumming through his bones.

The bond between them ached—raw, incomplete, louder now than it had been in centuries.

He cursed himself for missing her, for needing her, for not knowing how to reach for her again.

The air changed, growing thick, resonant, as if the world itself were drawing a breath.

Light and shadow twisted, and then she came—Mother Gaia, the beginning and the end.

She was a silhouette of a woman, every form of nature swirling around her like a cloak—petals, vines, sunlight, rain, feathers, and stone.

She was the first memory of comfort, the last word before silence.

“Osiris,” she said, and her voice was the rumble of mountains and the hush of the forest floor.

He collapsed to his knees beneath the weight of her presence, all pride stripped away.

He tried to summon his old bravado, but it slid off him like water on stone. “Why have you come?” he managed, his voice cracked and hollow. “To remind me of what I’ve destroyed?”

“Not destroyed,” Gaia whispered, kneeling so her swirling form was nearly eye-level. “Forgotten. Let me help you remember.”

She reached for him, and the world spun out from under his feet.

He wasn’t the king of the underworld. He was young, wild, whole—his soul blazing in harmony with Kimba’s.

He felt her hand in his, the bond between them as natural as breathing.

There was a time when he had known his place in the world, when he and Kimba had danced in the heart of the elemental circle, the axis around which everything turned.

“Remember,” Gaia said, and the word was a key in a rusted lock. “The fifth element—the soul—was not simply another power. It was the keeper. The cleanser. The one that brought balance, held the lines, kept every piece of the world where it belonged.”

He remembered the feeling: how light poured through him when he’d stood with Kimba, how they had reached into places where the darkness had begun to take root—old battlefields, grieving villages, the underbelly of cities.

Together, they had swept the shadows away, restoring what was broken.

Only the soul bonded could cleanse corruption so deeply, only they could knit the world back together when it began to fracture.

He saw himself, Kimba’s fingers laced in his, standing at the boundary between life and death. There had been two realms then, and the division was clear. Souls passed peacefully to their rightful rest, the darkness kept at bay by the power they shared.

Mother Gaia’s voice grew sharper, edged with grief.

“When you fell, Osiris—when you let the darkness seep in and forgot who you were, what you were for—the boundaries split. The underworld fractured, not by design, but by the loss of your purpose. Seven levels now, each a distortion, each a failure to keep evil contained and the innocent shielded. The undeserving suffer. The worthy are lost.”

He gasped at the vision: places of torment layered atop one another, the walls between them thin and ragged, shadows bleeding through, souls trapped where they did not belong.

“You were the axis,” Gaia murmured, her hand cool against his cheek, “the center that held everything in its rightful place. Without you and Kimba, the world cannot be whole. Only the soul bonded can heal what’s broken, cleanse what’s been consumed, restore what’s been lost.”

She let him feel it—what it was to be half a soul, adrift, powerless.

The ache of it was worse than any torment in hell.

He saw the future, if he refused to choose: a world crumbling, darkness seeping into every crack, no gatekeeper to hold it back.

Kimba’s light flickered in the distance, unreachable, and the bond between them was a wound that would never close.

“Do you see, now?” Gaia’s voice was fierce, wild as a storm. “You were never meant to rule alone. The fifth element is the sum of all—life and death, hope and despair, the last defense against what waits in the dark. It is not a crown. It is a responsibility, a bond, and a promise.”

Osiris shuddered, feeling the truth of it down to his bones. He remembered the feeling of Kimba beside him, the power they’d shared, the way the world had fit together when they were whole. The ache of her absence was a chasm, a hollowness he could not fill with pride or darkness or power.

“How do I return?” he asked, voice rough with longing and shame. “How do I become what I was?”

Mother Gaia smiled, sad and bright as dawn.

“You do not return. You move forward. You choose. You reach for her. Love is not a reward. It is a gift. One that you choose to exchange with one another. You let the bond heal you, and through you, heal the world. You remember who you were—not a king, but a keeper. Not a ruler, but a soul.”

She rose, dissolving into wind and petals, her words curling around him like roots, like hope.

“Only together can you cleanse the darkness. Only together can you make the world whole.”

And as she faded, Osiris felt the first stirrings of the fifth element within him—a light, fragile and fierce, calling for its other half.

He pressed a trembling hand to his heart, and for the first time in centuries, he knew what it was to want—not power, not dominion, but wholeness. The world needed him. Kimba needed him. And, finally, painfully, he needed her, too.

He let hope burn, small and stubborn, in the shadowed hollow of his soul.