Page 27 of A Story of Mates and Temptation

“We loved you once,” she tells me. “And you loved us. You built temples and statues. You prayed to us, and we blessed you with everything you asked for. If you could not conceive a child, we found a way to bring children who had no parents to those. If their crops failed to grow, we wove them fresh fish in the rivers and animals to hunt so they would not starve. When the water from the mountains was tainted with poison, we broke a new waterfall into the mountain with clear water to fix this. When you were sick with illnesses, no one thought you would survive. We kept you alive. We saved your children. We granted your kind long lives of high health. And we did so as a gift because we enjoyed the joy on your faces and in your hearts…and then you did this to us.”

“I didn’t,” I remind her, my heart hurting for them. They were our deities, and we betrayed them. “I wouldn’t ever have done that to you, and not many would. We are not evil. I am here, still debating helping you when you hurt my friend.”

“A mistake in anger.”

“Look into my mind,” I challenge. “You’ve been there often enough now and see what your mistake did and cost. She was innocent.”

“What I see in your mind is love.” She exhales sharply. “And that makes you very, very risky to make any sort of deals with, Story Dehana.”

“Why?” I tempt fate by asking.

“Because your mate is dead.”

She shoves into my mind, forcing me to see the truth, and it kills me. I see Ziven—his body dying, absorbing too much power until his heart stops. I scream as time stops, and he dies right in front of me, and I can’t move as I watch dragons, one by one, tearing him apart, only to use magic like shadows to fix him. Mark him. My heart plummets into my stomach. I reach for him, desperate—only to grasp at nothing but thin air. I stumble back, breath hitching, before I realise—I am still in this room with the books. I dig my feet in and stop. “That isn’t true.”

“It is. I will not lie to you. You cannot lie to me.” I swear there is empathy in her voice, and I hate it. Ziven can’t be dead…I would know it. Magic, no matter what, couldn’t hide that from me. But I felt him go, felt the bond empty out into nothing, and then he was back, and we can’t talk in our minds. We… Was that why? Not this place…but what he did to save me and his people. He took too much power from the shadow dragons, and they tookhis life for it. “The time is coming for the war, and when the war is over, the dragon’s magic will fade. His body will not survive it—neither will his soul. He has nothing tethered to this world anymore, and he took the power and the deal, knowing he would die and only get these moments with you.”

“No.” I shake my head, wanting to step back, but I can’t. My feet feel rooted into the stone. And I know—I know—she’s not lying. I can feel she’s not lying.

“You have a choice. A choice that has been foreseen for thousands of years.” Her voice snaps me back from the feeling taking over my body. A desperate feeling.

“What choice?”

She continues. “You have two futures. One—the war that never truly began and was won from the start. The war stops when you make the deal to turn the vampyres back into fae, one by one. It would drain us of our power, what is left. But we would make it to be free. It would cost you everything.” Everything. My everything is him, and that is too high a cost to lose. I won’t lose him. “And the other future is this.” She brushes into my mind like a storm, and I don’t fight her. I am in a warm library, painted black with silver bookcases and glass moons, hundreds of them, hanging from the ceiling high above me. The library is multi-levelled and rich with books, setting my soul on fire just thinking about reading them all. It’s bigger than the mansion’s library, and I just want to stare and stare. A laugh from a boy jolts my head up, and I see him, wrapped up in Ziven’s arms, and they are both laughing. The boy has red hair and bright silver eyes as he looks down with a moon marking on his neck.

“Mum!” he calls out, waving wildly. “Mama!”

I raise my hand and wave, feeling someone else holding my other hand as Ziven’s eyes search for me. I look down and see a little girl—she’s older than the boy, maybe ten, maybe a little older. Her hair is also the brightest red, but black streaks run through the front, braided back neatly in a way my mum used to do for me. “You said there was a new book, something found deep in the South that you read a week ago and thought of me. Mama, are you okay?”

“What’s your name?” I breathe out, and I barely get to touch her face with my fingertips before she begins to fade away. I take in how she looks—the perfect mixture of Ziven and me. She looks like the boy I saw in the other vision with Emyr but something is different about her, strange. The name Mama rings over and over in my head as I open my eyes, and I stare at my fingertips. “No!” The girl, my future daughter, is gone. Not that she ever existed, but she isn’t here. I am suddenly right in front of the book, my fingers reaching out, hovering just above it.

“That is the second future.” It almost warns.

“I can’t have children, and you must lie. This is cruel.” I shake my head.

“You carry a child right now.” She brushes off my concern and reveals something impossible. I can barely move, barely take in her words as my hand drifts down to my stomach. It’s all I ever wanted—a child. A child with Ziven.

“Promise me,” I whisper. “On everything that makes you a deity, that you’re not lying to me, because I already know you can be cruel.”

“I vow it on my power and my sisters existence. I sense the life inside you. New, innocent and real. I want to be free, and I wantmy sister free.” A warm breeze blows around me. “Make your choice. You can ask me to turn the vampyres back with my sister or ask us to save King Ziven.”

“If I ask you to save Ziven, I’m condemning millions to death, and I am his queen now. Their blood would be on my hands,” I whisper, staring at the book, my mouth drying. “I can’t make this choice like this, not without something more.”

“What if I told you there’s another way?” she coaxes me. “But…there will be a price for power. I will give you something to win the war.”

My hand tightens over my stomach. Not me, but her. A warning of what the price will be. “You’re telling me you’ll take the child from me?”

“Not take,” she corrects. “Send on a divine path when they come of age.”

I double-check. “A path that is without danger?”

“No life will be without danger. She will be god-touched.”

I take another step closer to the book, tasting its power in the air. “And what does that mean?”

“You will see—if you choose Ziven.” She waits, her voice steady in my mind. One word. One choice. Vampyre or Ziven. “What is your choice?”

As selfish as it is, as desperate as it is, I would choose him over the world a million times. Because there isn’t a world without him for me. I have tried everything. Everything for a life with him, and if it makes me a monster to choose him, then it does. I love him and he has already chosen me and given his life for a chance to save me. I will always be his, and he is mine. “Ziven.”

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