TRISTAN
I don’t flinch. I don’t do anything to appear like the liar that I am. “No. What would I not tell you?”
Her face falls. Shit. Did I just give myself away? I’ve been able to keep her safe for all this time, and now she’s asking questions. I should just tell her. But I can’t. Not yet. My alpha gave me an order and I have to obey. Unless it conflicts with keeping my familiar safe, there’s nothing I can do but to follow commands.
“Nothing. I’ve just been having flashes. I was hoping it was memories coming back. But I can’t be sure.”
Flashes are good. That means she is getting them back. We haven’t said or done anything to alert her to her past, wanting her to figure it out on her own. When the time was right.
I shrug. “What are the flashes of? Maybe I can help you?”
She exhales a slow breath. “Well, the first one—and this isn’t the first time it’s happened, either—I was pulling my laundry from the dryer and thought I should have some baby clothes in there to put away.”
Sorrow pierces my gut. This is not what I want her to remember first. But having Kanon was the best thing that’s ever happened to her. I knew Keasia as a child. We always got along great. When the time came that she and I came of age to find our partner, the bond with us clicked into place. Our years of friendship since childhood made our bond extremely strong from the beginning. Which is why she’s such a powerful witch. She healed me as she was on the brink of death without ever touching me.
Everyone always thought it was fitting that the children of the leaders were destined to be bonded. As if us spending every waking second together had nothing to do with that. My parents are the alphas of our pack. Her mother is the leader of our coven. So naturally they had us together all the time. Which didn’t seem to bother Kay, and it certainly didn’t bother me.
That fight, what happened to her and Kanon, and what she’s been through since with her recovery, is something I don’t want to talk about. But I know it’s something that we will have to broach eventually.
Gods above, she’s having glimpses of her past that involve her son. How can the Gods be so cruel? Show her using her magic or playing with me as children. Anything but her being a mother. Not yet. She’s not ready.
I bite my tongue to keep my face from showing everything I’m feeling. “The other ones?” I ask. Regretting the question as soon as it exits my mouth. Not acknowledging it is just as bad as lying, but at this point I can say I didn’t tell her it was false, which may save me some ass kicking later. Maybe.
“I saw me.” She meets my eyes. “I was pregnant, ready to go into labor at any second. I had a pretty teal dress on and my hair was done up with flowers.”
The knife in my gut twists. How do I tell her this is a lie? I guess I just don’t? “The doctors said your mind will produce images to help you cope with having nothing there.” The truth, but a lie as well. They said when the memories come back, if they do at all, she won’t realize they are memories until we confirm them. I can’t. Not yet, anyway. I’m her familiar, yes. My duty is to her, yes. But I’m also a wolf. I have an alpha. My alpha, who happens to be my father, ordered me to keep it from her as long as possible or until she starts to show her powers are coming back, which the leader of the coven blocked until she is well enough to handle them.
Once she’s gained what was lost, the spell will fade and she can access them all. Until then, she would need the coven leader to remove it, and she won’t. As I’ve said, she’s powerful. If she gets access to her magic without an inkling of how to use them, she could cause serious damage to herself or others.
Her recovery is almost complete; she’s walking and running on her own without the aid of a crutch or cane. Now we just need the memories to work their way in.
“I know. I remember that. I just get this feeling that there’s more going on that I’m being kept from.” She throws her hands up in the air in exasperation while huffing out a deep breath. “I hate being in the dark. Especially when it pertains to me.”
Her pain is my own. I feel it deep within my heart. I reach over and place a hand on hers. “I’m so sorry, Kay. Truly I am.” It hits me then. I need to help her along in this. “I have a place I want to take you. We used to go there all the time. But it’s kind of far from here, so we haven’t been since your accident.”
I’m going to regret this, but I don’t care anymore. She’s mine. I need to help her. The Diner isn’t going to bring it all back at once. Especially the human side, but I’m willing to do anything to try. It’s been long enough.
Her eyes light up at my words. “Really? Did I like it?”
I grin, loving the excitement I just brought her. “Did you ever. It’s one of your favorites. I’m sure Doris will be delighted to see you again.”
She shrugs off the name as if it means nothing. I’m sure it doesn’t. I haven’t even told her my full name. She calls me Tris because when she woke up and couldn’t remember me, that is the name I gave her. Not that Tristan is bad, but I just didn’t want the name to trigger memories. Hallie isn’t even her friend. Well, she wasn’t before coming here three years ago. Hallie is a wolf like me. She doesn’t hasn’t formed a familiar bond yet, though. She’s been looking, but hasn’t found one to bond with. She’s running out of time, too. She has to find one by the end of the year or she will revert to a wolf and never be human again. That’s only ever happened to two others in our history.
Currently Hallie is out with a group of witches as their backup. Hallie has met and spent time with every witch in our coven. She has yet to meet one she bonds with. She doesn’t believe her witch is in our coven. It makes me sad for her. How will she be able to meet other witches when our Alpha has her going out with only our coven?
“So are you ready?” I ask Keasia.
“Yup. Let’s go.” She gets up and heads to the door. She hasn’t tried driving yet, and I’m worried about letting her. Like we have since I took her home from the hospital, I drive her to our destination. The Diner is in Vermont. It’s almost four hours away, depending on traffic, which is why we have yet to go. But I need to see if coming here will help her.
The ride there seems to go by fast. As we have since we were children, Keasia and I talk about anything and everything. She told me about her run today. It’s the first time she’s gone there alone, and I’m glad she got out and did that. Even if it makes something in my chest constrict to think of her alone and vulnerable out there. I push the protective instincts of my wolf down. I don’t want to lose her as a friend because she doesn’t understand my need to protect her. My wolf will just have to suck it up.
I tell her about my time in Florida. I really do go to these places. Not for work as she thinks, but for coven business, which is kind of like work in a way. I went to Tampa. It’s a city and extremely busy. Not to mention it's hot and humid. However, it’s a pretty state, from what I saw. I’d never live there, though; I love the changing weather in New England more. It’s getting cold up here now. It’s October, almost Halloween. The leaves have mostly fallen off the trees, and the crispness in the air is refreshing.
This season is my favorite. As a pup, I would run through the piles of leaves my parents stacked for me. I had a giggling Keasia on my heels, and we always wound up buried beneath a giant pile for hours.
“I remember,” I start, “we had to have been seven, or eight at the oldest. We snuck out of the house, your idea,” I add as she gives me a look that suggests I’m a bad influence. She grins at me. “We wanted to see the parade, but we were forbidden.”
“Why?”
Because you’d just gotten your magic and you were extremely unpredictable. Though I want to say this, I don’t. “We had failed a test and were grounded. The only thing that we both wanted was to go to the parade, so we were given the same punishment.” I was only tasked with keeping an eye on Kay. No one said I couldn’t go to the parade. Which is the exact argument I gave when our parents caught us there.
The parade is something that we always went to. It signified the start of our holiday season, which ends on Halloween, or Samhain, as we call it. The witches and familiars in our community have them every year, and we used to do magic at them, but soon the humans got attracted to it, and our magic had kind of turned into what they believed to be party tricks. We cast small spells to make fireworks and images in the sky. All of which can be explained away by technology these days.
“Anyway, we ended up hiding in this pile of leaves. Turned out, you disliked things crawling on you. You thought I was tickling you, and whacked me in the arm. But you realized rather quickly that you were being tickled on the wrong side. You screamed so loud, and stood up, shaking off what was on you, and blowing our cover. Just so happens that you did that right as our parents were walking by.”
I glance over at Keasia. She has a kind of glazed look in her eyes. She’s smiling, though. So that’s got to be good, right?