45. Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Grief is weird.

Caleb sat in the center of the medbay. The palace’s was fairly large with several beds and monitors, and it was fully staffed as well as equipped for our basic needs. Doctors and technicians bustled around him while he remained as still as the mountain, which was odd.

In the short time since Caleb had returned to me, he did not shout or bounce around as he once did. Pain was probably the reason, and it destroyed my soul that he was hurting so badly. But at the same time, his stillness separated this Caleb before me from my Caleb. I didn’t want such a distinction, and yet, it existed.

I caught a glimpse of Edith popping in on a monitor behind him, and I started. Apparently, she was expanding from Kalvoxrencol’s system. Seth had probably asked her to check on Caleb, or she was being nosy. It was hard to tell with Edith. She was an interesting person.

I wanted to wrap my arms around Caleb and ease the tension in his body, but I would get in the way of the technicians or the doctor if I did. We needed to know exactly what was going on with him so I could better take care of him. Nothing would happen to my mate ever again.

The doctor pressed a vial against Caleb’s neck, and he jumped, making me snarl. The woman offered her throat but continued to take blood from Caleb’s neck before covering the mark with a plaster. Instinct demanded I lick the injury clean, but I remained where I was. If Caleb was open to it, I would bathe the wound later.

My mate trembled when someone grabbed his tail, trying to unwind it. Tails were sensitive for drakcol, Caleb’s even more so, and I didn’t like the idea of anyone but me touching his. Caleb’s eyes turned glassy. I stalked forward, snarling at the technician, who yanked away, throat bared.

“Mate?” I asked.

He burrowed against my chest, nuzzling. I ran my fingers through his hair. I doubted he even knew why he was rubbing me, scent marking me. He was claiming his mate, which I was more than fine with. Everyone needed to know I belonged to him, and him alone.

“We need to scan his tail,” the doctor said in a calm voice.

I kissed the top of Caleb’s head. “I’m going to grab your tail.”

Tears dripped down his cheeks, and the sight shattered me. I was trying to care for him, but he was overstimulated. There were too many sights and sounds in here. I wished he didn’t have to do this, and I felt guilty for making him sit here, but I needed to know how to help him.

I unwound his tail as carefully as possible, kissing the brown-haired tip, and his breath sharpened. The technician ran a scanner over the appendage. When he was done, I stood, and Caleb wrapped his tail around my wrist, tugging me. I settled in between his legs and drew him into my arms.

The doctor raised an eyebrow at my position, but she didn’t remark or ask me to step aside. Caleb burrowed against my chest, and the examination continued with more scans and tests that made him cringe and me growl.

When they finished, the doctor told us, “We will have the results in a week or so.”

“Thank you,” I said. I cupped Caleb’s cheeks. “Let’s go back to our quarters.”

“I want to see the garden.”

“Come.” I led him out of the palace and to the terrace garden. The ever-present wind blew around us, ruffling Caleb’s hair. He jerked, then frowned, trapping the locks. “Perhaps you should cut your hair?”

“Yolkeltod had it long.”

“But it’s your hair now.” The straight brown strands were several shades darker with a red tint than Caleb’s original hair color. Had those curls been soft? Would they have wrapped around my fingers?

“It’s not,” Caleb snapped.

“What?”

Caleb yanked out of my grasp. “This is not my body.”

“It is,” I said, but my mind went back to his human form.

“It’s not. I’m not me. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

I reached out to him, and he drew back. Hurt, I asked, “Mate?”

Tears slid down his cheeks, and his wings hugged his shoulders while his tail curled around his ankle. The wind blew, and he barked, “I hate how everything feels and smells. I hate it all. I hate being touched.”

A shard of ice stabbed my soul. I’d done nothing but touch him. I hadn’t even asked. I’d assumed Caleb desired my touch as I did his. Permissions hadn’t come up, and they should have. Of course, they were different now that he had a body. We were different. Our relationship was different.

Guilt, strong and cold, swept through me, and on its tail was self-loathing. I was failing him again. Utterly and completely. I was longing for Caleb’s human body when he was struggling to exist.

“I want to go back,” he cried. “I can’t do this anymore, Fyn. I want to go back.”

“Caleb,” I whispered, unsure of what to say. I couldn’t desire that. Not ever.

He shook his head and started to run away, body stiff.

“Caleb!”

“Leave me alone, Zoltilvoxfyn,” he shouted, limping out of the garden.

I ran until my body screamed for me to stop. My back throbbed, my legs trembled, and my head pounded. I couldn’t believe I’d said those words. I sounded like an ungrateful, whiny bastard. I was given a second chance—a chance Yolkeltod had never gotten—and here I was complaining because my senses were driving me to the brink.

Sunshine probably thought I hated him. I didn’t. I loved him, desperately. He was the one thing I was completely sure of. I didn’t even know who I was, but I knew him and what he meant to me.

Fyn was everything.

But I wanted to go back. I wanted to be a ghost again. It was easier; it was what I knew. Though, at the thought, my stomach churned and my chest throbbed in a weird thrumming. To not be able to touch Fyn again, to not know how amazing he smelled or how warm he was against me would be torture. I couldn’t exist like that again.

Going back wasn’t an option, but the here and now was so hard. And I couldn’t help but wonder what if.

What if I’d been human? What would it have been like? What would we have been like? I could ask Seth, though he’d probably die from embarrassment if I asked what Kal’s dick felt like plowing him or what he tasted like.

Did it even matter? If I knew, it wouldn’t change anything. I was a drakcol now, not a human, though, at the same time, I wasn’t. I was neither and both.

God, everything was so damn confusing.

“Caleb,” a calm voice said, making me start.

Monty stood in front of me, expression peaceful. His long silvery white hair hung around his broad shoulders, and he was dressed casually in a high-collared black sleeveless shirt and black pants.

“Monty.” I scrubbed the tears off my cheeks. “Hello.”

“Did you and Zoltilvoxfyn fight?”

“No.” I shook my head, then nodded. “Yes. I don’t know.”

He gestured to the path, and I moved to his side. Monty walked at an even pace beside me. He was my height, which was on the taller side for drakcol. “How are you?”

I shrugged, freezing as the upper part of my spine twinged.

“I have no knowledge of what that human movement means.”

“I don’t know how I’m doing.” The damn wind blew, wrapping around me and stirring my hair. I yanked the strands back in place.

Monty paused. “May I?”

I cringed.

“I won’t touch you.” When I agreed, Monty grabbed my hair and tied it in a loose knot, securing it with a band.

“Thanks.”

“How long were you a spirit?” he asked.

“Uh,” I said, blinking at his blatant question. “Over twenty cycles.”

“I understand.”

“What?” I asked.

“You are overburdened with these new senses.”

“What?” I mean I was, but still, what?

Monty gestured to my tail, then my wings. “Your body is radiating terror and stress. Normally we do not hold our legs, nor do our wings hug our shoulders.”

“I couldn’t feel or smell anything as a ghost, and now…” I helplessly trailed off.

“It’s everything.”

I ran a hand down my silky shirt. “This is not my body. I have appendages I don’t know how to use. I’m gigantic. Everything is different.”

He started moving again toward the cathedral with the Crystal looming in the distance. “You are correct. That is not your body.”

For some reason, tears dripped from my eyes.

Monty didn’t react.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“You are allowed to mourn, Caleb. You died. You wandered. You lost Zoltilvoxfyn. And now you’re in a foreign body in a foreign world. Of course, you are experiencing some grief. It’s natural.”

Was that what I was doing? Grieving? I didn’t believe I’d even taken a moment after my death to be sad. I just moved forward (well, after a shit ton of anger). Now, all these years later, it rushed back to me. Rolling down the staircase. The sharp crack, then nothing. I’d hovered over my body as my brother screamed my name over and over again.

More tears slid down my cheeks as I sniffed.

Monty didn’t say anything as I wept and kept leading me to the massive cathedral before directing me inside. The Crystal thrummed with energy in the center. My lips curled in a silent snarl at the sight of it. That stupid fucking rock had thrown me into a body I didn’t know what to do with. It should have given Yolkeltod his body back. It should’ve saved him and not me.

I swallowed the sudden surge of emotion. I was alive; I was with Fyn, and I was so damn grateful. I couldn’t be happy, though, because that was so damn selfish. Tinlorray was suffering, Yolkeltod’s friends were pissed, and it was his body that I stole. How was any of this fair?

“Why?” I demanded.

“Why what, Caleb?”

“Why did the Crystal put me in this body? Why, Monty?”

He looked at the glowing rock that peacefully hummed. “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you the purest spiritual soul? Shouldn’t you know?”

Monty glanced at me. “I don’t have all the answers. But I don’t think there is a reason why. Not one we would understand, anyway. It was Yolkeltod’s time, and it wasn’t yours. He is dead, and you are not. It simply is, Caleb.”

I stared at him, heavily reminded of the conversation I had with Yolkeltod before he passed on. There were no answers. I asked, “What now?”

“You learn to live.” He rested a hand on my sternum, making me wince. “This is your body. Your mind. Your soul. You must find a way to live with it.”

“Perhaps I can ask the Crystal, and it will tell me what to do.”

His tail flicked. “It spoke to you?”

“It asked me why I was trying to reaffirm what hadn’t been made yet.”

His mouth fell open. “The Crystal spoke to you?”

“Doesn’t it talk to everyone?”

“No,” he said. “Never. We spiritual souls have an understanding of it, but it doesn’t speak to us or anyone.”

My heart throbbed. “Why me?”

“I don’t know, Caleb. I shall have to ask Seth if the Crystal spoke to him as well. You humans might be more in tune with the Crystal than we drakcol.”

“Can I touch it again?” I asked.

“No,” Monty said, swiveling in front of me. “Tradition dictates that you cannot until you reaffirm your bond with Zoltilvoxfyn. The two of you haven’t even forged the genetic link yet. You will have to wait.”

Even though I could go my whole life without hearing that otherworldly voice again, I needed direction. Something. Anything.

“I imagine the Ranks will desire to speak with you more than they already do,” Monty continued.

I really didn’t want to do that. Hopefully, Seth had also heard the Crystal so we could talk to them together if we had to at all. Kal was fairly vicious in his protection of Seth, and Fyn wasn’t far behind him regarding me.

My Fyn would keep me safe and away from anyone I didn’t want to speak to. Though we had just fought, and he might not be pleased with me at the moment. I couldn’t believe I’d run from him; I shouldn’t have, but… I couldn’t breathe.

Monty gestured to the door. “You should find Zoltilvoxfyn.”

Had he heard my thoughts? “H-how did you know?”

“A feeling. He needs you, Caleb. More than you know.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Try the truth.”

“I hurt him.”

“Then apologize and start again,” he said. “That’s what life is, Caleb—a series of choices, mistakes, and decisions. We always have a chance to start again. With every breath, our life starts anew.”

I needed to return to my Sunshine’s side, but at the same time, I felt so guilty. I hadn’t meant to pop off at him. The words had built in my gut until I exploded.

Tinlorray appeared in my thoughts. I hadn’t spoken to her since she and Seth had freed me from the locked ward. I’d tried, but she hadn’t responded. Maybe it would be better to see her in person? Yet how could I see her when I’d stolen her brother?

“Caleb?” Monty said, drawing me from my thoughts.

“I’ll talk to him,” I lied. I needed to see Tinlorray to make sure she was okay. I’d promised Yolkeltod, and it was literally the least I could do. I left Monty and slipped, rather easily, out of the palace and snuck into the city.