With Everything I Am

  She was even trying to find ways to sort it in her brain. Telling herself seeing him in dreams for years meant they were supposed to be together just like he said they were. That maybe she was his queen. That maybe he was her handsome wolf.

  But the logical side of her brain which was fighting the battle of its life against Callum’s captivating pull told her there were no such things as secret sects with kings and queens and wars.

  He was just a madman who kidnapped her, maybe murdered men while doing it (even bad men, but still) and he intended to make her his “mate” without her getting a word in edgewise.

  Therefore, long after she heard his breathing even the second night, she made good her escape.

  It scared her silly, trying to creep around silently getting prepared and out the backdoor but she did it.

  Even with four pairs of thick socks on, walking in his boots was clumsy and time-consuming, it was freezing and the snow was only gently falling, which meant she had to waste precious time covering her tracks.

  But even though she remembered the cave being only a short, maybe twenty minute walk away from the cabin, it took her what felt like hours to get there.

  She didn’t light a fire because she had no idea how but also because she didn’t want him to see it.

  Instead, she carefully unbundled her medicine and food, wrapped herself in the woolly blanket she brought (and she was still chilled to the bone within minutes) and stayed awake until dawn touched the sky.

  She fell into an exhausted sleep while considering her next step.

  Then she sensed him.

  Instantly awake and alert, she jumped up but his large form was filling the mouth of the cave before she even got the blanket off her shoulders.

  She stared at him.

  That was impossible. When she’d sensed him, he hadn’t been close.

  How did he get there so fast? He couldn’t sense her and no one could move that fast. He had to know about the cave.

  “You knew about the cave,” she whispered.

  “Quiet,” his voice was even and calm.

  She squared her shoulders, faced off with him and told him courageously, “I don’t want to go back.”

  “Quiet!” he roared, his voice not even or calm in the slightest.

  Sonia went still.

  Callum strode forward, snatched up her medicine, wrapped her in the blanket, picked her up in his arms and strode angrily from the cave.

  So much for her escape attempt. She only managed to stay away a few hours.

  Seriously, she was in trouble.

  And she was in even more trouble because she didn’t know whether to be frightened out of her mind that he found her or… elated.

  They were nearing the cabin and she knew instantly there were people inside.

  So shocked at this, forgetting to hide her gift, she whispered, “Callum, there are people –”

  “Quiet.”

  “But –”

  His arms grew so tight they almost, but not quite, hurt.

  She thought it prudent to be quiet so she did.

  He walked right in the porch door through to the cabin’s backdoor and straight into the cabin.

  There were four people there. All tall. All looking a lot like Callum, three even had sky blue eyes but one had green. One was a woman.

  They were all staring at Callum and Sonia with knowing, amused expressions on their faces.

  Callum ignored them and tossed Sonia on the bed.

  Sonia bounced then settled and looked up at Callum’s handsome but enraged face, not knowing what to do or if she’d live long enough to do it.

  Callum’s voice was back to even and calm when he stated, “So yesterday was a lie.”

  Knowing this voice heralded the scary roar if she said the wrong thing, Sonia decided not to speak at all.

  And anyway, they had an audience.

  Were they going to do this in front of an audience?

  “Answer me,” Callum demanded.

  Apparently they were going to do this in front of an audience.

  “Um…” Sonia muttered.

  “Answer me!”

  There it was, the roar.

  Okay, maybe he was a murdering, kidnapping madman and there was a better way to play it. She just didn’t know what that was and she was so angry, she didn’t care.

  She threw off the blanket and got to her knees, shouting, “You kidnapped me!”

  “I told you, Sonia –”

  “I know what you told me!” she interrupted on a shriek. “That I’m your mate, your queen, yadda, yadda, yadda. Do I get a say in this?” she demanded.

  “No you bloody well don’t!” he shouted back.

  “Well, that’s unacceptable!” she yelled. “It’s even insane!”

  “I take you down the mountain, I put you in your house, I take away your guard, you’ll be kidnapped and killed within days,” he clipped.

  “Seriously,” she muttered scornfully.

  “Seriously,” he shot back.

  “I –” she started.

  “Do you forget what happened three nights ago?” he demanded.

  “Of course not!” she snapped.

  “The threat is real,” he informed her.

  “Only if you didn’t set it up to make me think it was real,” she shot back.

  His whole body jerked before he thundered, “Why in fucking hell would I do that?”

  “To make me go along with your crazy plan!” she answered.

  Callum growled, his head twisted to the side and he bit out, “I should have seized her, taken her to a castle and bedded her. This would have been finished within hours, not fucking days and not with this ridiculous garbage. But no, I listened to you.”

  “Don’t drag me into this,” the green-eyed man said, grinning ear-to-ear like their show was enormously amusing.

  “Sonia, darlin’,” one of the blue-eyed men was speaking to her and she moved her gaze to his, “what Callum says is true. You’re his queen and you’re under threat.”

  “You would say that,” Sonia returned. “He’s brainwashed you. I hate to be the one to tell you this but you’re a member of his cult.”

  All of them, including Callum, stared at her like she’d lost her mind.

  She didn’t know much about brainwashing but they said brutal interventions were often the way to go when someone was addicted to something, even the charisma of another person so she forged ahead.

  Anyway, she was already screwed. She had nothing to lose.

  “I don’t blame you,” she went on. “He can be pretty charming and charismatic. Still, he’s not a well man.”

  The newcomers all burst out laughing.

  Callum scowled at her a moment before dropping his head back and saying to the ceiling, “Bloody hell.”

  “Sonia,” the woman called and Sonia looked at her. “Sweetheart, I’m Regan, Callum’s mother.”

  Sonia’s mouth dropped open at this news.

  She looked like Callum, for certain. But she had to be his sister, not his mother. In fact, she looked even younger than he was.

  “What?” Sonia breathed.

  Regan came forward. “Let me show you something, sweetheart,” she said softly.

  She had a big, designer, leather handbag over her shoulder and from it she pulled a framed photo. When Regan got close to her, she turned the photo to face Sonia. It was a picture of her mother and father’s wedding day.

  Standing by her mother was a tall, dignified man who looked like every man in this room, but most especially Callum. Standing by her father was the woman standing in front of her.

  “Holy cow,” she whispered then she looked at the woman who, from the day her parents were married decades ago, to that very day in the cabin, appeared not to have aged a moment and announced the obvious, “Photos can be altered.”

  “I’d known Cherise Mayfair Arlington for what seems forever,” Regan declared. “She was a dear friend.”

  Oh no. This
wasn’t fair.

  “Don’t –” Sonia warned.

  “She liked pink and dressed you up in it as often as she could,” Regan went on and Sonia’s heart slid up her throat when she heard these words.

  “Don’t –” Sonia repeated but that one word sounded choked.

  Regan interrupted her, “Lassiter liked blue and he detested pink –”

  Sonia cut her off. “This isn’t even nice.”

  It wasn’t nice, them using her parents against her.

  Though what Regan said was true. Her father was always trying to talk her mother out of dressing her in pink and he was always buying clothes for her that were blue. It was a silly little argument that they bickered about good-naturedly the entire, albeit heartbreakingly short, life she’d led with them in it.

  No one could know that from doing research on her.

  Sonia had even forgotten it.

  “You haven’t aged a day from that picture,” Sonia accused.

  Regan took in a breath and replied, “Our people age slowly.”

  She could say that again.

  Regan moved slightly closer and pressed emotionally deeper. “Every Sunday, Lassiter made you pancakes in the shapes of stars.”

  Sonia’s heart clutched.

  Now, really. How did she know that?

  No one could know that.

  Except her father and mother and both of them were dead.

  Sonia scuttled back on the bed, whispering, “Stop it.”

  Regan’s voice grew sad and fond when she said, “Cherise told me your favorite book was The Giving Tree.”

  “Stop.”

  “She said she read it to you night after night.”

  “Stop.”

  “It was the only book you wanted to hear.”

  Sonia felt the edge of the bed and halted, staring at the woman.

  Her eyes had gone tawny.

  And it hit her, belatedly, that that wasn’t natural, eyes that changed like that. No one’s eyes did that. It was one thing for the hue to change, say, if you were wearing a certain color. But for the color to change completely? To that attractive but inexplicable shade which was not from nature or any nature that Sonia knew?

  And it wasn’t natural for dream men to come alive.

  That didn’t happen. To anyone.

  Ever.

  Her gaze slid through the ensemble – all inordinately tall, all dark, all gorgeous, all with clear, intelligent eyes. Just like Waring last night.

  Just like Callum.

  Holy cow.

  These people weren’t like her people.

  These people were of a different culture. They belonged to a secret sect of society who lived alongside humans.

  Her gaze moved to Callum who was watching her closely, the anger gone from his face replaced with something profoundly gentle.

  “I know this is hard for you to take in but Callum and you have been linked through eternity, even before you both existed, even before you were cells in a womb,” Regan continued softly. “You’re destined for each other, connected to each other. It’s the way of our people. You’re lifemates and, Sonia, that’s a beautiful thing. Your mother and father were good friends to our people. They accepted us. They would have been so happy you were to be among us. So very happy. I promise you that, sweetheart.”

  As Regan spoke, Sonia never took her eyes from Callum.

  “I dreamed of you,” she whispered and watched as his body grew visibly taut. “Since I was a teenager, I dreamed of you.”

  The others started moving away but neither she nor Callum moved a muscle.

  Finally, he said softly, “You know me.”

  “In my dreams, you’ve been coming to me for twenty years.”

  “You know me,” he repeated.

  Sonia nodded a jerky, frightened nod. “When I woke up the other day, I thought it was another dream.”

  Vaguely she heard the backdoor close.

  “Do you understand you’re mine?” he asked.

  It was then that she did.

  It sang through her soul. It made her feel whole again after being fragmented since a Christmas Eve thirty-one years ago.

  No, it made her feel truly whole like she’d never felt in her life.

  And, at the same exact time, it scared her senseless.

  She swallowed.

  Then she nodded again.

  “You understand you’re my queen?”

  “I’m scared,” she admitted freely. She had no idea why but she was scared. Of him, of the fact that his crazy stories were real, she was under threat, she belonged to him, his people were at war and she was their queen.

  How did one even go about being a queen?

  “I’ll take care of you,” he replied gently.

  She gazed at him long moments before nodding again.

  His body relaxed.

  Then, his eyes golden and shimmering, he said quietly, “Come to your wolf, baby doll.”

  On trembling limbs which were moving of their own accord, she scooted off the bed, rounded it and slowly walked to him.

  When she was in reaching distance he snatched her roughly in his arms and held her close. She trembled in his embrace, terrified at the overwhelming uncertainty of her future.

  He sensed it and promised again, “I’ll take care of you.”

  She nodded, her cheek sliding against his chest.

  He rubbed his temple against the top of her head then held her tight until the tremors slid away.

  Finally, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded again, not making her lie audible.

  He tipped her face to his with a fist under her chin.

  “I have to do something. I’ll be back in a short while. My family will take care of you while I’m gone.”

  Sonia nodded again.

  He bent his neck and placed his temple against hers.

  “We’ll have a beautiful life, you and me. I’ll see to it.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  He squeezed her tight then he let her go.

  Then he was gone.

  She stared into the space he’d just occupied, her mind blank.

  From afar, she heard his deep voice say, “Let’s run,” and then she heard the answering, amused, “Fuck, yeah.”

  And she thought, because he was different maybe she could even tell him she was different. He above all would understand. He would never make her feel weird.

  Then her mind filled with memories of hundreds of dreams of her handsome wolf.

  Her “lifemate”.

  Her destiny.

  And those dreams…

  Her dreams...

  In some magical way, those dreams foretold her future of a beautiful, strong man who would hold her and tease her and accept her and make her feel loved.

  She closed her eyes as gladness washed over her.

  Then she realized in an unwelcome intrusion on her unbound joy that she had to use the bathroom.

  She was finished and had a hand on the handle of the bathroom door when she heard the murmuring voices, voices that were talking outside.

  She stilled at what she heard and listened.

  “…Callum nuts?” an incredulous man asked.

  “Caleb,” Regan replied.

  “No, seriously, Regan, is he nuts?” Caleb repeated.

  “You can never know who you’ll be attracted to.”

  “A monk would be attracted to Sonia, she’s fucking seriously pretty,” Caleb returned and, understanding these words (and hoping she did not), Sonia’s body went solid. “Not to mention, she’s pretty freaking funny,” Caleb finished.

  “You know your brother’s tastes don’t tend to stray down Sonia’s way.”

  “Even so, it’s nuts. Did you see her?”

  “I saw her.”

  “Ryon said Callum seemed impatient for the mating, wanted to get it over with so he could get on with taking down the rebellion,” Caleb went on and Sonia’s briefly buoyant heart lurched befor
e Caleb mumbled, “Fuck me.”

  “Caleb –”

  “It was me, I wouldn’t be shitty I was forced to spend a week with that woman in a remote cabin explaining the ways of our culture to her. It was me and I was alone with her in a remote cabin, I’d draw it out so long, it’d take a year.”

  “Well, it isn’t you,” Regan retorted firmly.

  “No, it isn’t and a damned shame it isn’t.” He paused and went on sharply, “Not for me, Regan, for her. Woman like that? She deserves a man who wants her not the mate the oracles foretold would be his queen.”

  Oh dear lord, Sonia thought as her lurching heart turned to stone.

  “Perhaps he’ll grow an attraction to her,” Regan suggested.

  “Oh, he’ll do his duty to his people, Mac made sure of that,” Caleb clipped. “The oracles said it was Sonia, Callum will mate with Sonia. The end. Every one of us expects to find the other half to our soul. Not Cal. Duty first, heart second.” There was a pause and then the kicker as a finish, “Maybe, if he’s lucky, as a human, she’ll understand his need to fuck around on her with his kind.”

  Sonia sucked in breath.

  “Caleb!” Regan snapped. “You don’t know he’ll do that. She’s his mate and –”

  “It’s Callum we’re talking about, isn’t it?” Caleb returned sarcastically.

  Sonia rested her forehead on the bathroom door.

  “I’m not talking about this anymore,” Regan replied. “I’m going to go and get to know my soon-to-be daughter-in-law.”

  “I’m gonna run,” Caleb returned irately.

  “You do that, you need it,” Regan retorted.

  Sonia turned her back to the door and slid down it until her bottom hit the floor. Then she rested her temple on her knee as she wound her arms around her calves.

  Evidently, the cosmos wasn’t done with her.

  So it gave her the handsome, charismatic king of a secret sect of eye-color-changing, slow-aging people as her destined mate.

  But it also made it so that king didn’t want her.

  And, apparently, he was a philanderer (even his brother said so!).

  Somewhere in her heart at every moment she missed her mother and father.

  It was only times like these when that slightly dulled ache grew and blossomed and twisted and reminded her how truly alone she was in the world.

  Not that she often found, and lost, her dream man in the span of minutes.