10. Caliel

10

Caliel

As Bree rose and headed for the cafeteria, I curled up within her mind—and brooded.

I felt peculiarly disconnected, as though the call I had heeded in the dream continued into our current reality. At the time, I had told myself I had wanted to follow it. But now, I admitted I'd had little choice.

It had hooked into my soul and compelled me.

My chaotic thoughts circled away, and back again. Who was that young man? If it were not for the fact that we had actually seen him in Drosfi, I could write him off as a figment of Bree's admittedly vivid imagination.

There was no proof that the man we had met in the dream bore any resemblance to the real thing. But the dream had been so peculiar—not your typical misfirings of Bree's overheated mind. Sex had been part of it, but the entire luring thing was inexplicable.

Especially as it had worked. His power to control me had been impressive.

A dream. It had only been a dream. And I had bigger worries.

With all the excitement of the eruption and saving the Matriarch and her family, I had not had much time to think about it. This partnership with Bree was still so new. And if I were honest, it fulfilled something deep within me.

Perhaps that was the problem. Because since we had begun working as a team, I had experienced a subtle shift. Fighting her had given me a purpose, a single-minded goal that had kept me sane in an insane situation.

Not only sane, but intact .

But in order to form the new partnership, I had to drop the barriers holding me together. And now, it was as though bits of me were leaking away. Becoming part of Bree, rather than of me.

That it felt right did not change what was happening. How long would it be before I would cease to exist at all?

Perhaps it was time to ask myself if it mattered.

My body was long gone, and my soul injected into a woman that now meant a lot to me. Yet I could never be more than a mental specter to her. All signs pointed to her having a future with the ex-Dragon. And that young man in her dream…

Regardless, Victor, the eruption, rescuing the Matriarch—what they had all proven to me was that I could never truly protect her.

And maybe that was what the dream had been all about. Proving that I was truly helpless. That despite our new partnership, I was still merely a puppet.

That when she spoke, I would have to listen.

Only now, it was not an involuntary thing. Because she had become something so much more than a body that housed my spirit.

And when she called, I would always come.