Page 1 of Unforgivable Fate

CHAPTER ONE

It was the end of an era. The moving boxes piled high in the small apartment were proof of that. The walls and shelves were bare and soon the rest of the room would be too. Only the larger items like the furniture and television remained, along with the area rug that she and her sister, Maya, had picked out together after they’d agreed to move into the little two bedroom space above the bakery because what they’d needed most at that point in their lives was one another and a fresh start.

Now, Nova DeLuca sat cross-legged on the faded rug and felt oddly bereft at the idea of the little apartment empty and deserted after all the years she had called it home.

It seemed, to her anyway, that the space was as much a part of her family as any of the living, breathing members were. It was filled with so many of their memories, both good and bad. It had been a fixture of her world, a safe place where she always knew she was welcome, even after she had moved out to give Maya some privacy after she’d bonded with her mate, Zander Leery.

Nova had moved back to Crescent Pack land over two years ago. The pack that her family had led for generations had always been as much a part of her as her wolf, even when she wasn’t living in Crescent territory. Maya may have needed to get away from the pack and everything that it represented after the pain and loss that they had suffered there but Nova had only left to be with her sister, to look out for her and take care of her. Going back to the pack had felt like the most natural thing in the world to her once she knew that Maya was happy and would never be alone again.

But now even her sister was leaving the apartment behind and the change was making Nova uneasy.

Logically she knew that Maya’s family with Zander had outgrown the small space. Their niece was a pre-teen now and though Violet still split time between her aunts and uncles, she needed her own space and room to grow. So did baby Carmen, who was getting bigger every day. And, even if Maya hadn’t admitted it yet, Nova knew just from the change in her body chemistry and the hormones her wolf had picked up on, that her sister was pregnant again.

There was no way this apartment could hold three children so she didn’t blame Maya for moving out and moving on with her life but it still left a little hole in Nova’s heart to think of it just sitting here empty.

She couldn’t help but wish that her visions would show her this apartment’s future. She yearned to see a time when it was filled with family and love and happiness again. But of course that wasn’t how her visions worked, when they even worked at all lately.

No matter how hard she tried, her gift had all but deserted her over the past few months.

Nova was a Seer. She had been born with the gift of foresight. The ability had been a part of her for as long as she could remember. It was a rare gift in the packs these days, a coveted ability, and though the responsibility that came with her gift was tremendous she had always loved that she was the one that people turned to for answers. Being a Seer was what she was born to be, who she was born to be, and without it she didn’t know what would happen to her.

She could still feel the magic inside of her that allowed her to glimpse visions of the future. She even caught snippets of other people’s lives still. People from the pack, even strangers passing through Noir on their way to somewhere else. People who were completely oblivious to the secrets that this little town and the people in it held. But her own future had always been a blank canvas to her and lately, more and more, she found it impossible to reach forward and pull a scene from the future of anyone she loved. Everything connected to her family seemed to be a blur with dark spots blotting out the important bits and she didn’t know why.

She could feel that things were changing but she couldn’t see it and she didn’t like not knowing why.

It worried her that she could no longer see the visions that had once been so clear. The ones that had shown her Maya and Zander smiling at one another as baby Carmen learned to walk. The ones that had shown her that her older brother Leo and his mate, Darius, would become parents themselves in the most unexpected of ways. The ones of her sister, Luna, and her Moirae Pack Alpha mate, Michael, crying as their twins graduated high school. Even the ones where Zander’s sister, Zoey, and her mate, Rafe, Michael’s brother, threw a surprise party for their niece, Violet, when she turned sixteen. All of those futures that she had seen snippets of in the past were gone now, mere memories of a possibility that she was no longer sure would come to pass.

It scared her. Terrified her even. It chilled her to the bone to think that her visions no longer showed her big, happy, extended family because maybe they didn’t have a future that looked like that anymore.

She had reason to worry too, because it had happened before, back when she’d been a child. She had told anyone who would listen about her vision of Luna as a Pack Alpha’s mate. She had changed everything for all of them with that one vision and her inability to keep it to herself. Not long after, she had stopped seeing her parents in her visions of the future.

She hadn’t put it together at first, certainly not in time to change it. It was only after that crazed psychopath, Maddox Clary, had murdered them that Nova realized why her visions of them had gone away.

Their futures had been wiped out. Erased from fate’s board. All possibilities and paths gone because they were no longer alive to make the choices that would lead them to one outcome or another.

But she refused to believe that the same thing was happening now. It couldn’t be. Because nothing on this planet could tear her family apart, not after everything they had been through together. Other than an apocalypse she couldn’t figure out what could possibly have the power to wipe all of their futures from her mind and though the world might be shit most days she didn’t think an actual apocalypse was upon them.

So, there had to be another explanation for her sudden lack of vision when it came to her loved ones… but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Nova?” Her brother-in-law’s concerned voice pulled her out of her head and brought her back to the moment. She found him standing over her with a worried look on his face. He raised an eyebrow, “You zoned out. Did you have a vision?”

“No.” She sighed, reaching up to take the toddler he was holding. “No visions today.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” Zander watched as his two-year-old daughter tugged at Nova’s curls. “Maya’s always saying how distracting your visions can be for you. Maybe if they let up a little you can live in the moment for a change instead of always looking ahead.”

Nova snorted, “Be impulsive you mean.”

His grin was captivating when he shrugged, “Worked out for me.”

Nova rolled her eyes as he went back to lugging boxes down the stairs. She held Carmen close, cuddling her precious niece even as she attempted to put Nova’s hair in her mouth. She smiled as she unwound the tiny hands from her locs and sat Carmen in her lap, trying to distract her with the light-up alphabet set they’d been playing with earlier. With the baby smacking the buttons and the recorded voice speaking the letters for her, Nova sighed and tried not to think about just how well things had worked out for Zander and Maya.

Zander Leery hadn’t exactly lived a charmed life before coming to Noir, that was for sure. In and out of foster care, he’d been on his own most of his life. When he’d learned his older sister had been killed in a car accident and that she’d left her daughter, Violet, in his care, he’d impulsively decided to track down his estranged younger sister, Zoey. He’d come here, to this apartment, thinking it was where he would find his sister but instead he’d found Maya and a future full of love, happiness and family. His impulsiveness had led him to his fated mate so of course it had worked out for him.

“He has a point.” Nova looked up as Maya came out of the kitchen with two bottles of water and offered her one. “It’s not the one he thinks he’s making but still…”

“Thanks.” Nova took the water but only put it beside her on the rug, out of reach of Carmen’s grabby little hands. “What point is that?”

“Come on.” Maya perched on the edge of a chair a few feet away and watched her daughter play, “Don’t tell me it hasn’t occurred to you that maybe these blackouts in your visions are because your fated mate is finally coming into the picture.”

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