The Lycan King's Fated Mate

Chapter 8 - Elderhaven

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More Than A Year Later

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Clio

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The evening air is cool as I sit beside my brother’s grave, the fading light casting long shadows across the cemetery. I got off work late today, but I had to come here to talk to him and tell him about my day.

But I first cleaned the grave, like I always do, brushing away the fallen leaves and tidying up the headstone before sprucing the flowers—sunflowers. He was my sun so I always bring him sunflowers.

“Hey, Lio,” I begin in the gathering darkness, getting comfortable. “I started at PulsePoint today and my first day went well,” I tell him with a smile, knowing he would be proud, and we would go celebrate this weekend. He never missed special occasions in my life and he always found a way to make every occasion special, too.

At first, it was strange talking to him like this, even though we spoke to our mother and our grandparents like this often, but I guess I really believed that if we died, we would die together. It’s something we used to say as kids, but as we grew, Lio didn’t like it. He said if he died then, I would live on for the both of us, but I guess deep inside I still believed there was no one without the other.

I pause, remembering how I spent the first six months after his death. I was like a zombie, paralyzed by grief, unable to move forward. I couldn’t even leave my bed, let alone face the world outside. But eventually, I found the strength to get up.

However, it wasn’t to get up and continue with my life; it was to get up and follow my brother. I became suicidal. I spent all hours of the day contemplating ways to go but failing to carry through any of them.

That added to my frustration. I hated that even in my desperation, I was so weak, and I couldn’t end my misery. One morning, a call came through from the detective who was working on Lio’s case. He wanted to meet to tell me they were closing the case after the evidence pointed to creatures of the forest consuming my brother’s head.

I didn’t care to meet him. I didn’t care what he did with the case because I never believed they would find the head anyway. After all, it wasn’t wolves who killed my brother. But he insisted it was better we met and offered to come here.

He came, and we met. When I returned from our meeting, I drove past the cemetery. It was late, and I got off and came to my brother. It was the first time since his death that I had worked up the courage to come and when I got here, I fell apart all over. I cried until I fell asleep. It was the first time I slept since the whole thing happened too. I was awoken after midnight by Dame.

He took time off from work when the whole thing happened, but he eventually had to go back, and he was working the night shift that night. Dame is an air traffic controller, so he sometimes works the night shift. But when he first returned to work, he was worried about leaving me alone and he would call me every hour of the night to check up on me because he knew I didn’t sleep.

When he called, and I didn’t answer, he came home, and when he drove past the cemetery, he saw my car. In the morning, he spoke to me about how scared he was when he saw the car out there in the middle of the night. The cemetery is in the woods and it’s not a place where one wants to be at night. People have reported crazy things.

I didn’t care about that. In fact, it gave me an idea. What if the beasts were watching? If they were, then it meant they would eventually come out and take my head too, so I started coming every night, but I would get inside my car and answer Dame when he called.

Eventually, though, he caught on to me and he took time off from work again to make sure I didn’t come to the cemetery at night. We fought about it and I gave him hell because I was so hellbent on dying and I was mad at him for standing in my way. I didn’t believe that the pain would get better, but it eventually did. It still hurts. I don’t think it will ever stop, but I’m back at work and so is Dame and the days are getting brighter again.

Now when I come here, I don’t cry anymore; I laugh, I smile, things I never thought I’d be able to do. Dame and I even spent last weekend at Lio’s cabin. He loved that place and it played a big part in my healing journey.

Thinking of the weekend we spent at the cabin reminds me of another thing I want to talk to Lio about. At Lio’s funeral, I reconnected with someone I never thought I’d lay eyes on again. My childhood best friend, Amara.

She heard of Lio’s passing and came to the funeral. But because of how out of it I was, we couldn’t talk so a month later she came to visit again. We exchanged contacts, and we have been talking. She wants me to move and go start over where she’s staying—Mystic Vale in Elderhaven—and I have never heard of either place.

She tried to explain where they are. It’s overseas, and she says it’s beautiful, but when I tried to look it up, I couldn’t even find it. When she first brought up the idea, I declined it. But not because I couldn’t find it, but because I felt like I would be leaving my family behind. I know they are all gone, but I come to their graves and clean them and talk to them and I felt leaving would be turning my back on them.

Last month she came to revisit me and brought up the idea of relocating again. I shot it down and this time it was not just about my family's graves but Dame. By now, I have figured out that I can never reciprocate his love. Even my grief couldn’t bring me closer to him.

But leaving would break his heart. He’s been everything and more for me during the darkest time of my life, and I feel like I owe him. I told Amara that, but she said the best thing I could do then was let him go and she’s right, but I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to look him in the eye and tell him I’m leaving him.

But the night Amara and I spoke about it, I dreamed of Lio and in the dream, I was getting off a train and Lio was there to greet me. When I looked up at the sign, it said welcome to Mystic Vale. I told Amara about it, and she said Lio was trying to tell me I should go. I believed her—the dream felt so real too, and I think it finally gave me the courage because today I called Amara and agreed to move and in three days, she’s coming to get me.

Dame is working late and only coming home at 9 p.m. So, I decided to use the two hours before he gets home to make a small dinner for us and break the news to him. I have to let him go so he can find someone who will be all these things that I should be to him but cannot.

On that note, I tell Lio that I have to go and that I will see him tomorrow. I plan to come every day until I leave. I know he wants me to go. I feel it so strongly, but it still hurts and feels like I’m leaving him behind.

“I feel like I’m ready to try that living for both of us thing now, brother. Maybe this Elderhaven is the place," I say with a smile after getting to my feet before bidding him goodbye and heading to the car. I have to stop at the shops for some things I need.

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Eli

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I push my fork away, the clatter echoing in the silence that fills the room, and Malia looks up, her eyes wide with concern. She asks me what’s wrong and I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself, knowing she doesn’t want to hear my next words, but they spill out before I can stop them.

“I can’t do this anymore, Malia. I can’t live this life of hiding, pretending like everything is normal,” I confess, frustration lacing every word, and she places her fork down. I don’t miss the flicker of fear in her eyes as she speaks.

“Eli, we’re safe here," she says, and I know that, but that’s not enough. “I’m tired, Malia. Tired of lying awake at night, haunted by dreams, and fighting myself, trying to convince myself that what I feel is right is wrong.” My voice rises, frustration pouring out of me in waves despite trying to rein it in, and there’s a heavy silence that hangs between us for a moment. I know she’s not used to this life either and that she’s trying her best. I also know that I’m the reason she’s here, but I feel like I’m losing my mind—Both Orpheus, and I do.

We are currently in EmberCore, staying at a farm owned by Malia’s aunt and her husband. We moved here over a year ago after my father died. Orpheus and I were too late, and by the time we got to the room, he was already gone. The doctors had tried to do their best, but a piece of silver tore through his heart when the walls collapsed, and Atticus suffered a fatal wound.

The mine collapsed, trapping the workers underneath. Because he was a wolf, my father managed to escape, but then he re-entered when they couldn't find Malia's father. It turned out that when the mine supervisors called my father to work, it was because they couldn’t get hold of Malia’s father; not that he had told them wasn’t coming to work.

He ended up showing up two hours later, explaining that he had been involved in a car accident. However, he wasn't harmed and expressed his desire to work. My father was already there, and he ended up working too.

Sometime in the night, something went wrong, and the walls collapsed, burying everyone underground. I was devastated. It felt like the world had ended. I kept questioning my decision to let him work the notice. I had a bad feeling. It was the reason I wanted him to resign. I know he was stubborn about it, but he always listened to me and didn’t want me to be unhappy. If I had pushed a little harder, he would have stopped working there a long time ago.

I again blamed myself for the flight I had taken, thinking maybe I had chosen the wrong city. I couldn’t get a flight for my city at such a notice so I ended up taking one that went to a nearby city, hoping to take a train the rest of the way, but then the train idea failed.

I missed him by mere seconds. I was right there, and I missed him. I didn’t get the time to tell him I loved him and that I forgave him for keeping the truth from me about my brother and mother.

When the doctors left me alone with him, I was so desperate to communicate with him somehow. I tried to do the same thing I did with the wolf, desperate to see into his memories and find some kind of closure, but there was nothing.

I even told myself that maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing because of my grief. I felt hopeless, but then on the day of the funeral, it happened again. I was cupping Malia’s face and wiping her tears when suddenly all her memories, played before my eyes. When I told her after the funeral, we figured out that it only applied to the living. The wolf I held was dying, but he wasn’t dead yet. The others I went back for and couldn’t see were already dead and so was my father.

I grabbed a lot of heads after that to prove it, and I did. As long as someone is alive, I can see it in their memories. The newly discovered power multiplied my anger and fueled my burning need for answers.

So I went back to the hotel to find out about my brother, what he was there for, and where he came from because there were a lot of events happening at the hotel that weekend.

But when I got there, there was nothing—no trace of him ever being there. I couldn’t find any information about him. There was not even a record of him or the people who were there. My colleagues were not out on the slopes when the incident happened. They were at the bar, so they heard rumors and didn’t have much to tell me.

The more brick walls I hit, the more it started to feel like there was something behind the concealment of the whole thing, and when I told Malia about it, she said something that made my blood cold.

She said, What if the Lycan king found us? What if he found out about me and my brother died in my place because he resembled me? I mean, my father was also supposed to be off the night he was killed, but some crazy mix-up happened and he ended up working and dying. What if it was no accident? Plus, what are the chances of him and my brother dying the same night?

Then I thought back to the vision I saw through the man’s eyes. He bowed like he was talking to royalty and then a gut-wrenching realization hit me—Malia was right.

I stopped asking questions and left the hotel and on my way back, I finally went to pick up my luggage from the airport. That night, when I unpacked my things, I came across the black card that the man—the man I had almost forgotten about—gave me.

I thought back to what he said about me having power and not having a lot of time. When he first said that to me, I thought he mistook me for someone else, but then it turned out I did have power I had no idea about. That made everything even more scary, especially when I read the address on the card and it listed a city in Elderhaven. Elderhaven is where my father was from, the magical place where our kind is from.

I started fearing for my safety and Malia’s, so we ended up moving to this farm. I also burned the man’s card.

For over a year now I've been trying to lie low here, but it’s not working out. Six months ago, I dreamed about my brother. He didn’t say anything in the dream and when I asked who killed him, he disappeared and reappeared as a woman sitting on a throne with a crown on her head.

The woman had his face, and I thought it represented the person who killed him. I think she’s a princess or queen, and that’s what he’s trying to tell me. But I didn't know where to begin to look for her. There are so many royals in the world. So I tried to let it go, but four months ago the dream came back and it’s the same dream. Every time I ask the same question, and receive the same response. It got to a point where I felt haunted, so I prayed to the Gods and to him and my father to give me a sign of where I needed to go—any sign.

For a week, there was nothing, and the dream was gone, but then, last Monday, I was going through my father’s things. I took some of his belongings with me—the things that he cared about because I couldn’t take everything—but I never unpacked them. I was doing that when in one of his jackets that I kept, fell the man’s card—the card that I had burned when we were burning everything that we were not taking.

Malia said maybe I thought I threw it in the fire, but I know I did and even if I hadn’t, what was it doing in my father’s jacket? The night I found the card, the dream returned, and something told me that the card was the sign I asked for.

For the first time, I felt like I was awake in the dream and I told my brother that I would go to Elderhaven, and since then he hasn’t returned. The man said he could help me unlock my power, and I’m going to seek him out and ask him to. There’s a reason I was given these powers and there’s a reason that man was sent to me.

Malia doesn’t want to hear it. She says, What if it was a trap? What if he’s involved in Lio’s murder? What if he was meant to kill me? But I felt that man’s power. If he wanted to kill me, he would have never made a mistake. I want him to train me and when he’s done, I’m going to find the woman who murdered my brother and take her head as she took his. And then I’m going to be ready for whatever comes next. If the Gods wanted my father’s bloodline to parish, they wouldn’t have made a way for him to get away.

I stare out into the open fields of corn, the moonlight casting long shadows across the landscape, and just then, I hear the door behind me open and a moment later, I feel Malia’s hand on mine.

“What will you do against a princess or a queen and their armies? They will discover who you are before you can even get close to them, and you will be killed,” she says, tears trailing down her face and I want to tell her some clever plan, but I don’t have it. All I have is my heart telling me I have to go. I tell her that before adding that I was at that hotel for a reason and cannot rest until I feel I have fulfilled whatever role I was there to play.

“I love you, Eli, and I don’t want you to go. I’m scared, but I also don’t want to watch you suffer. I’d rather you go than suffer. May your Gods be with you, because I will never forgive you if you don’t come back to me.”