mythean arcana 06 - master of fate (4 page)

He had pulled on a flannel shirt and now stood at the counter, his back to her. His clothed torso only drew her eyes to his short, dark hair and the heavy thighs encased in jeans. He was
hot.
For gods’ sake, he looked like a hot lumberjack. An honest-to-gods, wood-chopping, flannel-wearing, musclebound lumberjack. She’d never even known lumberjacks existed until her new friend Vivienne had shown her pictures of the hot woodchoppers on the Internet. Lumbersexuals, they’d been called, particularly if they kept their beards neatly trimmed and their flannel shirts tight. 

Did this one have a beard? If only she could see his face. She wasn’t sure if the lumbersexuals actually chopped wood or if they just posed for pictures, but she thought they were hot. This one actually chopped wood and he surpassed even the ones she’d seen online, despite the fact that she couldn’t see his face.

He reached for a spoon and she caught sight of his arm up close. The flannel was rolled back from his forearm. Muscles moved under skin. But not just any skin. His arms were tattooed with a winding design. She squinted.

Thorns. They were vines with thorns, all drawn in exquisite detail. Beautiful but strange.

Mouse stood on the counter, staring up at his face as he poured coffee into a mug. The rich smell wrapped around Aurora.

“Coffee?” he asked without turning. His deep voice made her shiver. She shook her head.
Get in the game, idiot.

Mouse turned to stare hard at her, then back at the man’s face. Aurora’s insides tightened. 

She really was not handling this well.

“Sure,” she said, desperate for him to turn around so she could see what he looked like.

He filled another mug, then turned to her and held it out.

She felt as though something hit her hard in the chest.

Shite.
It was Felix.
Her
Felix.

Suddenly she didn’t want coffee anymore. She didn’t know what she wanted. Words that normally came so quickly to her—flippant, easy words—died in her mouth.

His eyes were grim as they took her in. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him. Life had changed him. Not only was he far taller, his face was older. Harsher. 

He looked like he’d stopped physically aging in his mid-thirties, though she’d last seen him when he’d been only twenty-one. The slight softness of youth had been replaced by the planes and angles that came with age. He didn’t have the beard she’d wondered about, but he did have several days’ worth of dark stubble that matched his dark, wavy hair. Why had she expected him to look the same?
Stupid.

There was no softness of youth about him now. Sharp cheekbones gave way to a square jaw and strong nose. The only softness in his face was his lips, which were full and looked way too kissable. But it wasn’t his face that looked old. It was his eyes.

The many years he’d lived were reflected within their silver depths. They were the same vibrant gray, but they lacked the inner light she remembered. Weariness had taken its place.

What had happened to the man she’d thought she might love? Despite it all, or perhaps because of it, he was too damned handsome. So handsome she felt as though she were looking into the sun.

“Felix,” she said, unable to reach for the cup of coffee.

“Aurora.” He set the cup on the counter as he looked her over. “They dinna tell me it would be you.”

Had they even told him she was alive? Did he know what had become of her?

Likely not. There’d be no reason for the university to alert him to her freedom. Almost no one even knew she’d been imprisoned, and no one knew they’d almost loved each other. The university must have just told him that a soulceress was coming to fix the problem on the glacier. He’d probably been expecting Esha.

“They didn’t tell me it would be you,” she repeated his words. 

What was he doing so close to the city that had meant something to them both? Even if they’d told her who it would be, she had a feeling she’d still have no idea what to say or do. He was so different. Even during the worst of her adventures, during which she’d consorted with the roughest Mytheans, she’d never seen such a hard man. 

He was half wulver and half timewalker—a deadly combination. 

The half of his soul possessed by the spirit of the wolf was ferocious and loyal. Though he couldn’t turn fully into a wolf as his full-blood kin could, he had all their other qualities of strength, determination, and viciousness in defense of those they loved. His timewalker half could travel back in time, but only in limited amounts, lest he risk madness. Too many trips would scramble a timewalker’s mind. Great gifts came at a great price.

The combination of his mixed species, his tattoos, and the hardness reflected in his gaze was startling. He looked as though his body and mind were hewn from stone. That, and the shock of it all, struck her dumb.

CHAPTER THREE

Felix shifted on his feet, the coffee forgotten. If making it had been a distraction, it was no longer working. Now that he was face to face with Aurora, nothing could take his attention away from her. It was like seeing a ghost. 

A ghost who reached into his chest and twisted his heart in its cage of bones.

It was true what he’d told her—he hadn’t known to expect
her.
He’d been utterly convinced he would never see her again. That she was lost to him forever.

When the university had told him that a soulceress would be coming to fix the problem up on the glacier, he’d assumed it would be Esha, whom he’d met a year ago. There weren’t a lot of soulceresses around anymore, just like there weren’t a lot of his own kind.

But as soon as she’d aetherwalked to the hill near his cabin, he’d known it was Aurora. She’d smelled the same. After all these years and all the distance between them, he’d recognized her. How could he not? She was the only woman—girl—he’d ever loved. 

His mate.

When she’d appeared, he’d ignored her at first. He’d had to. He’d lost any ability to speak. He’d thought she was dead. He’d searched for her every day for a hundred years, desperate to find her. Thirty-six thousand, five hundred and twenty-five days.

Tonight, when he’d finally turned to see her standing in the snow behind him, it had hit him in the gut like a sonic boom.

She was here. Alive. The same, yet different. For one, her Scottish accent had been replaced with one that was vaguely American and more modern. She might look nearly identical to the woman he remembered, though with a slightly fuller figure, but her eyes were different. The gold that had so entranced him years ago held the same shadows that he saw in his own gaze whenever he looked in the mirror.

She might not have died when she’d disappeared three hundred years ago, but something bad had happened to her. It was the kind of bad that left a mark, as it had on him. It made his fists clench and his mind rage to punish whoever had hurt her.

His gazed traced her form, drifting over the smooth golden skin that he’d never forgotten. She was covered from her neck to her toes, but her face and hands looked perfect. The black of her pants and coat only served to emphasize her golden glow. It had been the first thing to strike him about her. She was golden all over—hair, skin, eyes. She could pass among mortals, but barely. He knew she didn’t know who her father was, but he had a feeling she’d inherited the otherworldly trait from him, as her mother hadn’t had it.

Avera was long dead now, but he was grateful as hell that her daughter wasn’t. Not that he knew what the hell to do with her. The easy words that he’d once commanded had died centuries ago. They’d both been quick-witted and fast to speak back then. 

Now, they were both silent. Awkwardly so. He’d long ago pasted his broken pieces back together, though they no longer created the same perfect shape they once had. Her silence, and the heaviness in her gaze, suggested that she might have tried the same.

Were they both broken?

His mind jerked to a halt.
Not
broken. He tried not to think like that anymore. It did him no good and he wouldn’t think of her that way either.

Whatever had happened to her, he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her. But he couldn’t. He could no longer even touch her, not after the decades of torture that had proven that touch equaled pain.

What evil twist of fate had given him back his mate, yet made him unable to touch her?

Aurora stared at him, more silent than he’d ever known her. He had no idea how much time had passed—likely a ridiculous amount. A glance at the clock showed it was six p.m.

“It’s no’ too late to head up to the glacier to have a look,” he said. He’d first caught sight of the now glowing soulceress city a week ago. Currently, the glow was only visible at night. But it was getting worse. Whatever caused it was growing stronger.

“Sure,” Aurora said. “We can’t aetherwalk? We used to be able to.”

He shook his head, keeping his mind far away from how they’d once been. “Not any longer. I tried before, but whatever magic is going wrong at the city repels aetherwalking now.” 

“That’s odd.”

He nodded and led the way through the living room toward the front door. Aurora’s soft footsteps sounded behind him and her familiar—Mouse, he remembered—ran ahead of him. The sleek black cat darted from couch to chair to table, sniffing at each. When he reached the door, he grabbed his jacket. He didn’t usually feel the cold, but speeding across the glacier on a snowmobile in November would make even the hottest-blooded Mythean shiver.

The snow crunched under their feet as they approached his small barn. He pulled the wide door open and flicked on the light. The warm yellow glow spilled over the two snowmobiles parked inside. Their sleek white bodies were designed to blend in with the glacier. They were powerful machines—not the ones rented out at resorts and bought by families who lived in the mountains. He’d modified them to tow large cargos and still be able to speed across the glacier.

“Ever ridden one of these?” he asked.

“No. I’ve never driven anything.” Avid interest colored her voice and he turned to look at her. Her eyes gleamed as her gaze raced over the plastic and metal contraptions. “What are they?”

What are they?
Even if she hadn’t ridden one, she should at least recognize them. They were everywhere in TV and movies. “A snowmobile.”

She walked to the closest one and ran her hand along one of the handles. Her gaze was keen, taking in all the details. So she liked vehicles. But she’d never driven anything before? Where the hell
had
she been?

“You’ll ride with me,” he said, a vaguely sick feeling fighting with an anticipation he hadn’t felt in centuries. He could touch her again. It was bittersweet. It’d hurt like hell and possibly make him nauseous, but still, part of him itched to touch her. She was more beautiful than ever, her short frame even curvier than it had been. He stifled a shudder and couldn’t decide if it was anticipatory or despairing.

“I can’t drive my own?” Her golden gaze met his and he forced himself not to look away.

“Better no’, if you have no’ driven anything before.”

“I really think I can do it.” She looked so excited, and he so dreaded having to touch her, that he caved. She was immortal, after all. She’d be okay.

“Fine.” He showed her the controls, carefully avoiding touching her hands as she reached out to test them. “Think you got it?”

“Yeah.”

He strode to the shelves on the other side of the barn and pulled down a fluffy contraption the size of a bed pillow. When he returned to the snowmobile, he strapped it to the front of the seat.

“For Mouse,” he said, pointing to the hole in the plush, egg-shaped harness. He’d always liked her familiar.

“What? I’m supposed to put her in there?”

Mouse poked it with a paw.

“Aye. It’s cold on the glacier and this thing goes fast. She’ll ride along in there.”

Mouse looked up at him with big yellow eyes, then jumped up on the snowmobile and wiggled her way into the egg. She turned and sat up straight so that her face peered out the hole in the front. He clipped the harness on the outside of the egg so it tightened a bit on her.

“Should be good now,” he said.

“Holy shit.” Aurora looked at him with appraising eyes. “That thing is cool. Do you just have it lying around for familiars who need to ride on your machines?”

He swallowed and looked away, pushing down the sad memories. “I built it for my dog.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.” He began fiddling with the controls on his own machine. He missed Joe, who’d passed a couple of years ago. He’d found the little mutt behind a trash bin in Reykjavik and brought him back here. Joe had been a good dog for fourteen years—the first companion he’d had in three hundred, ever since his life had gone to shit and he’d left the university. 

“Ready?” he asked Aurora, ignoring the sympathy in her eyes.

“Yes.”

Thankfully she didn’t say anything more about Joe. He felt her eyes on him as he drove her machine out of the barn. She said she could drive it, and she’d always been damned capable, but he didn’t yet trust her ability to reverse or navigate in small spaces like the barn.