Page 29 of Mate Me

Chapter8

Caius

Adozen yards away, the portal I’d created spun in mesmerizing swirls. From Tartarus’s side it was a brilliant, blinding light, but from this side it was a gaping abyss. The polarity was striking, but I wasn’t paying near as much attention to it as I was the woman trying her damnedest to ignore me.

I’d upset her, that much was clear. I wasn’t bothered by her refusal. On the contrary, I expected nothing less from the guardian. The fact she was my mate was just a cosmic sort of irony. It was as though the universe truly didn’t want me reunited with my soul.

Reagan had said she lived a half-life. I had lived one for five thousand years. Perhaps that was our destiny. Primordials were creators, but we had no control over the fates.

Fire danced in her golden-brown eyes, and I wanted little more than to taste her full lips, but I didn’t need a glaistig to tell me that my kiss would be unwanted. For now.

“You’re staring,” Styx said, speaking Sumerian. The world no longer spoke the language, and she felt safe having the conversation without keeping her voice down.

“I’m aware.”

Ever since we’d arrived on scene, her family swarmed the portal along with two dozen onlookers. Black magic oozed from it, stopping a few feet away, except for the thin trail that led to me. I kept my eyes on it, not expecting Tartarus to cling to me in such a way.

She sighed. “I don’t want to be that asshole, but one of us needs to say it before you make a decision that is going to affect us all. How do you know she’s actually your mate?”

I’d been waiting for her to ask that very question from the moment we’d left Reagan’s house.

“I just do, Styx. How do we know to breathe? Or to fuck, for that matter?”

Styx groaned. “Not the same, Caius. I mean how are you sure it’s not just because she’s the guardian? What if you only think she’s your mate because she literally has your soul trapped inside her?”

My hands fisted at the reminder, but I kept my temper in check. “I can feel the difference. Yes, she has my soul. I can feel it pulling at me, but the desire tohaveher, to take her,to keep her and give her everything is just as strong, if not stronger. They’re separate.”

I’d once felt the overwhelming desire to destroy anything and everything. Betrayal blinded me. It morphed over time to only wanting revenge on those that damned me. All of it became an afterthought, faded into the background. I just wanted her.

“So you’ve chosen, then?” she asked carefully. “You’re going to mate with her, regardless of your soul or what she wants.”

“That’s not what I said.” The truth was, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Reagan was my mate, and I wouldn’t let her die.

“Well you better figure it out, Caius. If you catch feelings for her, it’s going to be that much harder to, well, you know.”

“Kill her? That’s out of the question.”

“Never say never.”

“Enough,” I growled quietly. “She will not die. The woman I’ve been dreaming about? It’s her. The moment we walked through that door, everything hit me. It’s one thing to recognize a mate bond, and it’s another to realize she’s also the one you’ve seen every time you close your eyes at night.” I wondered if Reagan ever dreamed of me too, and the thought suddenly consumed me.

“Oh, shit,” Styx said, turning to look at Reagan through a new lens. “I see it now. She fits the description. The color of her eyes. I didn’t pay attention, of course, coming here to kill a guardian and all. Now I understand. You already caught feelings. Damn Caius, I didn’t think your life could get any more complicated.”

I sighed. “You and me, both.”

We watched as her cousin walked toward the portal. Around it, dead trees were blown back and frozen in a blackened state. Like the plant life somehow knew to fear the realm of death and tried to get away, only to be caught in its magic’s snare. Water spilled over the cracked stones where a fountain once stood. Every part of it was stained black, despite never being alive.

“Nog! No!” Reagan yelled at the boy, not that it stopped him. He paused a couple feet away, looking at the trail of magic that led to me. I could see the wheels turning in his head.

He touched the death magic with a single finger and a crack echoed through the plaza. The boy flew backwards a few feet, his body twisting, morphing mid-air. Nog hit the ground and yelped as he collapsed in a pile of clothes.

“Nog!” Reagan and Clara yelled simultaneously. I started moving toward her, the distraught tone of her voice instigating a primal instinct to protect her.

She ran to the pile in a panic. She wasn’t the only one. Most of her family had moved in that direction as the fabric started to shuffle around, something moving beneath it.

A black snout shoved its way out of the neck hole of the boy’s shirt, followed by a head.

“What in the—” the witch started, her jaw dropping.

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