Chapter 10

10

I mpossible. My eyes were playing tricks on me, conjuring the face of the woman who’d been the center of every dream, every fantasy, for the past ten years. Only, in my dreams, she was frozen at twenty years old, with raven curls down to her waist and a teasing smile forever tugging at her full red lips. The woman who stared back at me now was older, her dark hair cropped short in the back with a mass of wild curls tumbling over her forehead. Faint lines creeped from the corners of her eyes, and her perfect mouth tilted downward.

Somehow she was even more beautiful than I remembered.

Unless…she is an apparition? Heart pounding, I lifted my hand, grazing the freckled brown skin of her cheek. It was soft and supple beneath my fingertips; warm. Ghosts weren’t warm. Her lips parted at my touch, and my entire body trembled at the throaty lilt of her voice whispering my name.

“Jack?”

I swallowed, willing my tongue to unglue itself, but my body refused to work the way it was supposed to.

“Jack!” Her eyes widened as she glanced over my shoulder. “Behind you!”

I blinked, unable to tear my gaze away from her face. “Mari?—”

She swore and grabbed my arm, dragging me into the room with her and slamming the door shut just as the shadow giant’s clawed hand raked across it. I barely even noticed while I stumbled barefoot onto the grass. The room’s simulated sunshine danced along her petite figure, strong and curvy beneath her short red cloak, and her amber eyes blazed with a mix of emotions I had the sudden desperate need to untangle.

“You.” The word slipped through her lips with a raspy edge, and she lifted her hand. My heart stuttered as I yearned forward, the draw of her touch overwhelming my senses.

Her palm met the side of my face, sending me reeling backward, and her lip curled in a snarl as she clenched the offending hand at her side. “What the hell are you doing here?” she growled. “And why do you look like a half-crazed bushman?”

I could only gape back at her. She hit me. She… she was really here. I touched my face, gingerly feeling the tender flesh—it was sore. My mouth stretched into a grin, laughter bubbling up inside my chest. My face hurt, and I wasn’t alone.

“Mariana? Are you okay?”

“Oh my gods, is that Jack as in THE Jack? More importantly, are we not worried about that giant shadow monster thing coming through the door? Because that kind of feels like a priority. No offense.”

Male voices jumbled together, and I reluctantly shifted my gaze to assess the other two. The larger (and from what I could tell, older) one stared back at me with a guarded expression, tattooed muscles bulging when he crossed his arms over his massive chest and looked me over in much the same way as I was doing to him. His dark brown hair was cropped short, and thick stubble covered the lower half of his face. It was his eyes, however, that drew my attention—they were the telltale amber of a werewolf and brimming with a wary protectiveness.

The jittery young man beside him couldn’t have been more different. Clean shaven with wavy black hair that looked to have been styled before the wind had its way with it and blue eyes that sparkled with a mix of fear and excitement. Where the werewolf was dressed in flannel and loose-fitting pants, this younger man was wearing fitted black slacks, a tailored blue shirt, and suspenders.

“We’re safe in here,” I assured them. “Gregar never leaves the foyer, and the others don’t come out until the sun goes down.”

“The others?” the younger man squeaked, eyes darting about, but I was already turning back to Mariana, whose scowl had begun to waver. When I reached for her hand, however, she jerked back with a glare. “How did you even get up here? I thought you were living on the outside now.”

Her werewolf companion shifted to stand behind her, and the slighter one’s anxious expression morphed into one of concern. He moved to stand beside her, and a growl rumbled through my chest when his hand rested on her shoulder. Like it belonged there.

The sight of it was enough to snap me from my daze, Mariana’s words finally sinking in. “The outside?” I glanced around the room in confusion. It was a lot like being outside, with its blue-sky walls stretched a good quarter mile apart and its tall, wildflower-speckled grass waving in an enchanted breeze. A thick copse of trees filled the back half of the room, with a bubbling creek winding its way between their trunks and heading off toward the eastern wall. My little cabin, built mostly of logs and moss, rested just before the tree line. “I suppose you could call it that, although not all of the rooms in the castle are like this. Some of them are more traditional.” Others I hadn’t even seen.

The slighter companion rolled his eyes. “She means outside the forest’s barrier, in the world of humans. Not just outside .”

I frowned, distracted by Mariana’s reddening face and clenching fists. “Why would I be living there?”

“Because you left!” she shouted, surging forward and shoving her palms against my chest. I landed hard on my ass, too surprised to react properly, and Mariana stood over me, all five feet three inches of her shaking with fury. “After all that talk about us being destined for each other, fucking mates ”—her mouth twisted in disgust—“you couldn’t even be bothered to call it off in person. You arrogant, selfish coward .”

Irritation flickered beneath the shock of Mariana’s actions, the anger behind her confusing words finally registering. “Look. I understand why you’d be upset?—”

“Ha!”

Mariana’s outburst was punctuated by the flashing of claws when her hands began to shift forms. I kept a wary eye on the razor-sharp appendages while I continued, determined not to be caught unaware again. “I shouldn’t have come up without telling you, especially not the night before our bonding ceremony, but I’d been drinking and Noah was so excited, I just…” I shrugged, the consequences of that night’s rash decisions making me slump forward. It all seemed so ridiculously stupid now. “I wanted to surprise you with a treasure from the legendary Sky Castle. The ultimate bonding gift. Instead, I ended up getting trapped in this gods-forsaken place and missing our ceremony altogether.”

Shame burned the back of my neck, regret curdling in my gut. If only I hadn’t acted so rashly. If I’d only waited and talked to her first. Made a fucking plan instead of running off half-cocked under the drunken influence of stag night. “You’re right. I was arrogant and selfish, and nothing I could say makes up for what I put you through.” Looking up, I forced myself to meet her gaze and accept whatever form of punishment her anger chose to mete out. I would take it with a smile on my face if it meant there was any hope of holding her once the fire burned out.

Only, to my surprise, it already had.

Mariana’s eyes glinted with a sheen of tears that she hastily blinked away, the claws retracting from her fingertips as she lifted her hand to her mouth. “I don’t… I don’t understand,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Are you saying you’ve been up here this entire time? For… for ten years ?”

“Ten years, two months, and fifteen days,” I corrected, “but who’s counting?”

Her face paled. “Fucking hell…”

She swayed to the side, and I reached to steady her, but her eyes widened and she pressed herself into her slim companion’s side. The rejection stung, but not nearly as much as the sight of her tucked beneath his arm while he pulled her close. The urge to rip the appendage off his pathetically skinny body entirely had me clenching my hands into fists while my fangs bit into my lower lip.

The werewolf hovering just behind the pair let out a low warning growl.

Mariana, on the other hand, was seemingly oblivious to the effect her and the dark-haired stranger’s proximity was having on my sanity. “But there was a note, in your room,” she said, staring at me as if I were some kind of puzzle she couldn’t solve. “You said we were making a mistake. That there was too much world to explore outside the barrier, we were too young…” She swallowed. “You… you said you were leaving me.”

The hell?

“Leave you?” I huffed an incredulous laugh. “Mariana, I don’t know anything about this… this note you’re talking about, or what strange miracle brought you up here after all these years, but I assure you, not a day has gone by since I found myself trapped up here that I haven’t dreamed of seeing you again. Being with you is all I’ve ever wanted. You are all I’ve ever wanted."