Prologue

Ebenezer had lived a long, long life. In his lifetime, he"d come across quite a few people who"d wanted to hurt him, starting with his mother"s people, the fae, who didn"t want to let an abomination like him survive.

But survive he had. Every. Single. Time. At the beginning, it"d been just to spite them, and then later to honor the sacrifices of his mother and her friends, who"d protected him with their lives.

Many people had tried to capture him, use him, tame him, control him...and none had succeeded. And now, centuries into his life, some pathetic little witch had poisoned him with a dark magic concoction and thought it"d be enough to break him. As if.

He was more than capable of fighting off some dark magic on his own, but when the Otherworlders had shown up to help, he hadn"t minded too much. He"d been glad to see them, even if he didn"t know them personally.

It"d been his mother"s friend, Tharion, who"d visited him centuries ago to make sure Eben was okay, and told him all about Otherworld. Of course, then Tharion had erased his own memories of the encounter because he"d still been trying to protect Eben. Eben remembered though, and it was only that knowledge that had kept him going after he"d watched his mate die a few centuries ago.

Eben knew his mate would return to the human realm again, whether it was decades or centuries later, and he would wait.

Eben would wait as long as it took, and this time, he wouldn"t let his mate slip from his grasp.