Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Everest walked into the living area dressed in jeans and a shirt but with his feet bare. Cadel had expected him to be in pajamas or track pants. "Are we going out?"

Everest had already ordered dinner to be delivered.

"In a manner."

The hair on Cadel's arms bristled. "What's going on?"

"You spoke to Kaine? When are Jacob and Orion arriving?" Everest sat on the arm of the sofa, staring down at him.

"They were already on their way, but you knew that. You assumed Kaine would send someone when we crossed the border."

"The Shadow Board will be delivering our dinner. They will take me to commence negotiations with Gerrit as he is king, and I am a pain in their ass."

"I'm sure many people feel that way about you."

Everest put his hand over his heart. "Stop, you flatter me."

"Seriously…"

"Yes, seriously, we're getting taken. I'd prefer it if you weren't injured in the process, so don't fight too hard."

"I thought you were joking when you said your plan was to be taken. What was with the need to follow Hackman?"

"It would have been nice to know where we're going and give Jacob a heads up."

Cadel shook his head. "I cannot let you be kidnapped."

"We will both put up a fight, but I need you to be taken with me. They will want you. A nice strong lion…"

Cadel's eyes widened as fear threatened to bubble up and break free. "No. I do not want to be bound."

Everest shrugged as if it didn't bother him. "It won't go that far."

"You can't possibly know that." He didn't care how many lives Everest had lived. People were unpredictable…weren't they? Or had Cadel not lived and seen enough to notice the patterns?

"They will not want to jeopardize negotiations. Your job is to keep me alive." He sounded so composed and sure of himself.

"Or they'll kill me and keep you to add to their collection," Cadel grumbled.

Everest's gaze flicked across the room as though he were watching a hundred mice dart around. "Statistically improbable from all my interactions with shifter binders and political negotiations."

Cadel jumped off the sofa and grabbed Everest's shoulders. "Look at me."

Everest blinked and focused on him. "This is the plan."

He watched a drop of red trail over Everest's top lip, then wiped it off with his thumb. "This is not part of the plan. And I can't protect you from your own mind."

Everest muttered a curse, then wiped his own nose. "You asked a question, and I went looking for answers. I'm right. I know I'm right. We get taken. We meet Olier. Then Jacob and Orion help us escape. All of us."

"That is the shittiest plan I've heard of." And he didn't want to be a part of it, but he was in too deep to climb out.

"It's an undercover operation. Did you not do them?"

"No."

"Well, I have in this life and others." Everest touched his nose and checked his fingers. "It's fine. I'll be fine."

"Don't lie. How will I tell when you're not fine? When it's too late to do anything but watch you die?"

Everest shrugged. "I guess my brain will swell, or a blood vessel will rupture. In both cases, I'll lose consciousness."

"And then what?"

"And then I'll die."

Cadel stepped back. "I don't want to be taking your egg back to your father."

"He's not my father, not by blood. He's not even technically my brother."

"You're splitting hairs."

Everest grinned. "I'm giving you detailed answers. I'm not sure if I have days or weeks. What I do know is that I don't want the Shadow Board to see this weakness. So, on top of keeping me alive, you need to keep me in the present."

Cadel walked over to the kitchen and grabbed Everest a bottle of water. The easiest way to stay grounded when dealing with magic was with food and water. "How easy is it for you to slip into the past?"

"Without looking too closely, I seem to have less control over which doors open and when."

"That makes no sense." He opened the bottle and handed it to Everest.

"In my mind, my life is a corridor. There are doors for each life. When I first started, it was easy for me to choose which lives to look at." Everest took a sip. "A few weeks ago, random doors began opening. When I slept, I re-lived lives that I had not examined. Until then, I thought I had a year or more. I thought I'd make twenty-one. But with each complication, I'm losing time. I'm running out of time…which is odd considering I have always had all the time in the world. I've never worried about things being incomplete before."

"That's because you spent so much time setting this up. Are you sure that when you're reborn, your mind will reset?"

"Not one hundred percent. But close to it because when we hatch, we do not have all our memories. We are a clean slate."

"You don't normally have all your memories either. You fucked with your mind."

"Trust me, I am very aware of that fact. And if I had twenty or more years before needing to act, I could have gone through all the books again, read all my notes again, but there is so much in the memories that have been useful. I've learned things…" Everest's eyes did that thing again.

Cadel grabbed Everest's biceps.

Everest gasped as if surfacing from beneath water. It took a couple of seconds for his eyes to focus.

Cadel wasn't sure he kept the fear, for both of them, off his face. He couldn't do it. He didn't know how to keep Everest in the present. Which meant he couldn't keep him safe. And Everest needed to be functioning to make this plan work. "We need to solve this problem before dinner arrives and we get taken. Have you thought about talking to a mind reader?"

This time, Cadel didn't let go of Everest. Everest had said once before the touch grounded him. Perhaps that was another reason he seduced his bodyguards. They were the people who were closest to him, and he could use them to stay in the present with sex .

At the moment, he was the only person Everest had.

"Anyone I spoke to would have told one of my brothers. I only had access to Coven mind readers, and getting past them to be allowed in the field was no easy feat."

"But now your brothers know, so perhaps it is time to ask some questions if only to prolong…to prolong the inevitable." He didn't want to believe Everest's death was a forgone conclusion. The world would be a much duller place without him. Maybe some stories were exaggerated or were things Everest wanted people to think about him, but it didn't matter because everything Cadel had learned about him made him want to know more. He enjoyed this job.

He liked spending time with his charge. It wasn't a chore, and Everest didn't treat him or any of his bodyguards like they were replaceable help the way some people did.

"I don't want to prolong this. I want to complete this." Everest's voice was firm, his gaze unblinking.

"You won't be able to complete it if you are unconscious and trapped in the past." Cadel released Everest's arm.

"Then you'd better make sure it doesn't happen." Everest's eyebrows lifted indicating that was the obvious solution.

"I'm not a witch. I'm a lion and an ex-cop. I know how to shoot things and chase people. I don't know how to deal with this."

"I'm not asking you to deal with it. I'm asking you to focus on me. You need to keep me in the present. Your touch grounds me. Keep me engaged; give me something to do besides think."

"And when you sleep?"

"So far, I have been waking up without trouble."

Cadel crossed his arms. "That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be." Everest took a drink and stood. He paced over to the window and peered out. "I don't want to die. But I understood the risks, and I want the payoff. I can gamble with my life?—"

"You are gambling with mine by getting us taken."

Everest spun and pointed. "And what would you have me do? Send a team of agents to sniff out where Hackman is staying? Go door-to-door for a phoenix? The only reason the important Board members are here with their pets is because everything is coming unstuck. And the only reason everything is coming unstuck is because I set up the fall last time, and I pushed my brothers to play their roles. Now I must play mine."

"And what is Olier's role? He has been with them for over two centuries. Perhaps he doesn't want to leave. Perhaps he is a willing pet."

Everest nodded. "Or perhaps the Board mistreated him. When your pet will live again, it doesn't matter how brutally you use them."

"Can they bind shifter children?" Cadel noticed the way Everest gripped the water bottle a little tighter. "I shouldn't have asked, sorry."

Everest tilted his head slightly. "Yes, however, there isn't much magic to take. But it was a way of claiming a shifter back in the day. That research I have already done, but I worry about rummaging through it in case I take a detour and end up…"

Cadel closed the distance and wrapped his hand around Everest's and the bottle of water. "Then don't look. Tell me you don't know."

Everest gave him a small smile. "But I do know."

"Pretend you don't. Pretend you are just the prince of a tiny European country."

"I'm not sure how to be him anymore. I don't know who I am. No, that's not true. I have been mostly the same for a long-time. Even though the place and the situation changes, I'm supposed to know the answers or find them out." His lips turned down. "I don't always like the answers."

Cadel pulled him close, ignoring the way Everest stiffened. "Then maybe you need to stop looking for answers and start living. How can you have lived thousands of times and not know how to do that? Don't answer."

Everest rested his head on Cadel's shoulder, his body melting against him. "Because there's always a greater purpose. Why live a thousand times if not to serve something bigger?"

"At some point, even the most dedicated soldier needs to retire. They have to step back and say this fight is not theirs or admit they are too wounded to go on. You can't live every life for someone else or some forgotten greater ideal."

"It's not forgotten. It's always been about finding peace between shifters, witches, and humans. About passing knowledge on."

At some point the phoenixes had failed or forgotten what they were doing. "And yet humans have forgotten we exist."

"They will remember soon enough. There is too much technology these days. We are on borrowed time."

While Cadel acknowledged Everest was right, he didn't want to give the idea space. "I don't want to be around for the great paranormal coming out."

"We will manage it."

"You can't even stay in the present. How can you deal with the future?"

"Oh, I'm very much in the present right now." Everest looped one hand around Cadel's neck and pressed more firmly against him. "Do you know what would make me feel a lot more grounded?"

"Food?" That wasn't the answer from the flicker of heat in Everest's dark eyes or the hard length of his dick now rubbing against Cadel's thigh. He rolled his eyes. "You are impossible."

"I'm a thousand lives trying to exist in one mind. Of course I'm impossible."