Kaleb
Lexa isn’t in bed, and I haven’t slept this long and this hard in a very long time. Those are the first thoughts that come to mind when I squint into the sunlight pouring through the windows on the far side of the room, alerting me that a new day has dawned and all wolfish abilities are now gone again, stripped away.
I draw my hand across the sheets, settling it against my chest instead, willing myself to move from a bed that smells like us knowing damn well what happened last night is the beginning of the end.
I find Lexa within seconds, her body casting a long shadow over the foyer as she speaks in low tones to Silas, who shouldn’t be here. Both turn when I come into view, lumbering down the stairs while actively buttoning a shirt I found in the armoire in the room I’ve always used when I stay, which is rare.
Silas wastes no time. “A conversation needs to be had,” he states, stepping past Lexa into the light of the foyer.
I hold out my hand at the base of the stairs, but Lexa whirls, her eyes wide as she glances between us.
“Lexa, there’s food in the kitchen. Just take this hallway to the left, and you’ll find it at the very end.”
Lexa narrows her eyes at Silas, but the mention of food has her feet moving before her mind has a chance to catch up. She holds my gaze, however, for the few seconds she remains in view. I feel it still–that pull. The one thing I prayed I’d never experience. The one thing I’d now give anything to feel forever.
Silas yanks me down an opposite hallway, and I allow him to do it. A door snaps shut behind us. His study comes into view, hazy golden sunlight piercing the gaps between thick, blue velvet curtains.
“Tell me you didn’t mark her!” he shouts, locking the door. “Kaleb, please.”
I roll my jaw before turning to him. “While you were gone on business,” I seeth, “Your king lifted his wards on the shifters last night. I wasn’t allowed to return to the Glade. That’s why we’re here.”
“I’m not asking why you’re here! Why does she have a mark on her neck? Your mark, too, right? You’ve got to be–”
“We’re mates.”
“You can’t possibly be in your right mind,” he shouts, his face going splotchy with fury. “Kaleb you can’t just–”
“I haven’t imprinted on her or taken her as mine without cause. This wasn’t in my control.”
“What the fuck are you trying to say?”
“She’s my mate. My fated mate.”
He blinks once, then twice, shaking his head like the damning truth can’t find a place to settle in his mind. He turns from me, bracing his hands on the back of a settee before bowing his head in surrender. “You’re sure?”
“You think I would have done it if I hadn’t been able to stop myself?”
“You know what comes next, right? After the final game in the Trials? You know what her finale will be? Or have you forgotten what you were forced to do in order to win?” Vitriol and panic lace through each word. I feel it settle in my bones.
“My pack has a Luna now. When she wins, and she will win, your precious resistance can charge and take over like you’re planning. You should be jumping for joy–”
“I didn’t plan on this,” he says weakly, bitterly, his eyes meeting mine. Blue, like the ocean. The color passed down by the mother we share yet I’ve never met.
“There’s nothing I can do about it now, and you know that. If anything you’ve ever said about the resistance is true–if your special guest’s plans work–it won’t come to that point.”
“We’re talking about your life right now, Kaleb.”
“She is my life now.” The words leave my lips before my mind has a chance to process them. They came from somewhere deep, somewhere foreign, but feel natural on my tongue when I double down, stepping into his immediate space. “Lexa is my mate. Whether I like it, or she likes it, or it’s easy or fucking impossible…. Maybe I knew that day.” The column of Silas’s throat bobs as he shakes his head, lips parting to cut off me, but I raise a hand. “I knew during her round of the Culling. Watching her fight for her life. That’s when I knew, but I couldn’t voice, couldn’t let myself believe it because you’re right, Silas. I will have her until that last Trial. I have until then to find a way to stop this, but if I can’t, and it comes down to the very end, you will–”
“No,” he cuts in, but I push ahead.
“You will finish this. Your resistance will finish this. You will get her home–” Silas shakes his head. I grip his shirt until my knuckles turn white. “You will get her home and bring every last shifter in the Glade with you when that time comes. You will return her to Eastonia.”
“I can’t–”
“You will,” I rasp and clasp his hand. “For me, you will.”
“This was never part of our deal.”
“Our deal was that I’d step in as a trainer, a sponsor, so you could move forward with your resistance. I have, and I’m asking for what’s owed to me. You will protect her if I can’t.”
“Do you love her, Kaleb?” His grip tightens around mine.
I don’t know how to answer that. Maybe in another life, another time, I could say yes. That the threads of our existence have always been wound together, and I have searched for her in every lifetime, always coming up short, and now, in the worst life of all, she’s here–either to save me or be my downfall. A lesson learned. A gift for every torment.
I can’t think about it now, not with so much at stake.
“Swear on my life that you’ll get her back to her family and ensure my pack goes with her.”
“It’s impossible.”
“So is your guest,” I remark, and squeeze his fingers. “Yet, he’s here, isn’t he? Your prophet?”
His eyes narrow, but he holds his tongue.
“She will go home. I will ensure she wins.”
“Even if it comes down to her life or yours?” he asks.
“What would you have done for Chessie?”
The blood drains from his face. He finally lowers his gaze to our joined hands. “You have my word.”
I let go before another word is said and turn, unlocking the door and leaving it open on my way out.
“Does she know?”
I close my eyes as Silas’s voice reaches me when I breach the doorframe.
The floorboards beneath him creak as he turns in my direction, but I remain fixed in place.
“Does she know how this ends? Does she know how it ended for you?”
“No, and it doesn’t matter.”
“You marked her, Kaleb.”
“I was out of mind.” I look at him over my shoulder. “You can’t imagine what it feels like. Having the full brunt of what makes me a wolf hit me in an instant.” I slowly turn. “I am not like most halflings. You’ve known that from the beginning. The king has known that from the beginning, which is why my family–my father and my sister–are dead. It was punishment. I am a shifter, Silas. Last night–if that’s all I get with her, it will have been a blessing.”
“And will it be a blessing for her when you–”
“I owe it to her and her family to get her home alive, and if I spill blood in order to do so, so be it. You just swore you’d protect her. You owe me this.”
“You have to put her back in those games with your mark on your neck, Kaleb, for fuck’s sake! You can’t. You can’t continue to sponsor her. You can’t handle this anymore.”
“You don’t get to say that–”
“You’re deranged if you think you can stand back and watch your mate fight for her life through two more Trials!” he shouts, his eyes wild with a sudden, unfiltered emotion I’ve never seen from him. It’s dark, empty, and comes from a place so desperate I can taste it on my tongue. Doom. Dread. An utterly all-encompassing kind of grief.
“Was she your mate?” I ask, already knowing the answer. No. It can’t be.
Silas just stares at me, unable to even speak. I fight the smirk threatening to spread across my lips. It’s misplaced–this anger at him. At his kind. Not all fae are like the king. More fae struggle under the kings rule than they prosper… even the High Lords and their royal guards who’re now turning in defiance.
That’s why these games were called forth, isn’t it? That bitter undercurrent of distrust plaguing Panthara? A distraction from the real issues plaguing not only my people but Silas’s?
“I have to return to the Glade to clean up the mess there. We’ll speak again soon.”
“I’m not staying in Pantharas long,” he says quickly, his voice low. “I only came back because I have what my guest asked for.”
“Why not just call him the Architect?”
Silas blinks, tilting his head in confusion. “Why would I do that?”
“That’s what he told me to call him when I met him here, in your house, in the same room where he helped you pack Chessie’s body to be returned to Eastonia because somehow he has the ability.”
“Oh,” Silas murmurs, turning his face out of view. A prickle of suspicion races through me while I watch him fumble with a few of the open books on his desk. “I suppose I know him by another name.”
“He asked for a layout of not only the castle but the caverns beneath the arena. I gave them to him.”
Silas only nods, his eyes wide but unseening as he strokes a page in a book.
“Who is he?”
“A friend, I suppose. Someone that wants the same thing I do.”
The throne. Not to sit on, but to dismantle it.
“Be wary of who you trust, Silas.”
Silas takes a deep breath, and I turn, once again, to leave, but he says, “Leave her here when you go back to Glade. Just for a few hours, until you’ve settled things.”
“Why?”
“That’s what the king wants her to see–the chaos. The heart break. He wants to plant the seeds of delusion now because the next games will be the maze, Kaleb. It’s confirmed. Clean up his mess first, and then come fetch your mate. I’ll feed her. She’ll be fine here.”
“Don’t drag her into this. Leave her out of this plot.”
“I will, just as long as you know that this… the end of this will crush her, whether the two of you fall in love or not.”
I close the door behind me, blocking out his voice.
I find Lexa in the kitchen, which is otherwise empty and sunny. She’s already rifled through his cabinets but came up short of anything to eat right away. As I come into the room, she turns to me, her eyes wide with sudden hope, and it fucking kills me.
“Hey,” I murmur, bracing my hands on the work table between us–modern and sleek in comparison to the kitchens in the Glade. Cold marble chills my skin.
“Hey,” she replies quietly, rounding the counter in my direction, but stops short, and a gaping distance stretches between us.
I meet her eyes. Blue, like the ocean beyond the reach of Pantharas. Dark, turbulent, and dappled with stars.
“I, uhm,” she says, then looks down at her hands, unable to finish whatever string of words she wants to say, and it doesn’t matter. She shouldn’t be the one trying to close the distance, the one reaching for something I think we both know is impossible.
Yet, I say, “You’re my mate even if we can’t feel it right now. Not feeling it means nothing to me. You’re my mate, Lexa.”
“Is this smart?” she asks weakly, looking up at me.
“Not in the slightest.”
“Should we reject each other?” Her voice wobbles, a hint of panic hanging from her lips. It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Me neither,” she says in a whisper, and that heat–that otherworldly pull–yeah, it’s there, just beneath the haze of magic keeping us in chains. It’s been there the entire time. “Now what?”