Reborn (Shadow Beast Shifter, #3)(31)

When the pain grew greater than I could manage, screams burst up from my chest and out of my mouth, going on for hours, days, weeks. A pain beyond pain. A broken mind and body. Lines of light shattered through and around me as that shield across my memories was torn to pieces. And the pain went on.

Sobbing.

Screaming.

Lost. Alone.

Shadow… Shadow… Shadow.

Where was Shadow?

My soul raged, in a way I had never felt before, eclipsing even the near complete destruction of the pain in my body. Shadow Beast. He was not my enemy, or the being who had stolen my memories.

He was my… everything.

Flames raged with me now as my power tore free from its cage, filling the sphere and coating my entire body. With this, the pain faded, and eventually, my screams stopped and I was finally at peace.

A gentle touch on my shoulder shook me from the darkness, and as Gaster said my name, I jerked up in a rush, my head pounding like a jackhammer as more memories were freed.

“You made it through,” Gaster said, continuing to keep his voice low, “and your memories will return as soon as your brain heals.”

As a shifter, my brain injury should have healed up in seconds, but, apparently, whatever had been done to me went much deeper than usual. It took at least ten minutes for the pounding to stop, and as I finally lifted my head and looked around, the destruction I saw hit me on a level that only in this moment I could truly understand.

“My library.” I gasped, and then I was sobbing, my hands coming up to cover my eyes as I tried to suck in deep breaths. When I looked up to Gaster, his expression was as broken as I felt. “I missed you,” I rasped. “I forgot you.”

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me, holding on with about ten times the strength you’d expect him to have. “I missed you too, Mera. But we’ll figure out how to fix it.”

The memories continued to return, mostly in jagged images, and I had to work through them slowly because the rush was overwhelming.

“We were in the Shadow Realm,” I murmured, “and we’d just defeated Ixana, Shadow’s mate, who was the one to start the entire series of events two thousand years ago…” My words died off as I found the final key to my story. The final betrayer.

“It was Dannie,” I whispered. “Dannie is Shadow’s mom, and a goddess born of the Nexus. She tried to save us. She ate a powerful stone from Faerie so that Ixana couldn’t use it, but the power corrupted her. Changed her. It turned her into this phoenix-goddess hybrid obsessed with keeping the balance. To her, that meant I needed to go back to the shifters and be the alpha-mate.”

The more I spoke about it, the clearer the memories grew. I quickly repeated everything to Sam so she was following along as well.

“A goddess,” she gasped. “A goddess who’ll still be determined to keep this balance? What are we going to do?”

I knew what I needed to do. What I needed, period. My pack. My real one.

The flutter in my chest burst to life, but this time, there was no fear or confusion that followed. Dr. Google had been wrong; it was no heart attack. I was feeling my bond with Angel. And the itching on my palm in the exact same spot I used to have a purplish mark, was for Midnight, my bonded mist. I’d been feeling my pack, who were missing out there somewhere in the system of worlds.

“Where’re Shadow, Angel, Simone, and Midnight?” I asked in a rush. Simone had been in the library, so her memory had likely been spared, but the rest of them had been in the Shadow Realm with me. I scrambled to my feet. “Gaster, please, you have to tell me where they are.”

He opened his hands, his face wreathed in devastation. “The only one whose whereabouts I know for sure is Inky. He’s clearly been guarding that hallway from Earth to the Shadow Realm the entire time.”

Like he’d called him, the mist zoomed down, and this time, when I saw him, the feeling of being followed by an ominous cloud of scary was gone. It was my Inky.

It wrapped around me, and I hugged it as close as I could. There was no real substance, but it felt like we made contact. “Inky, buddy.” I sobbed. “Oh, gods, how did I forget you? Do you remember everything? Spark once if you do.”

Pulling away from me, it swelled up larger and sparked twice.

“Okay, dammit.” Even the mists were affected. Freaking Dannie and her overachieving. “But you clearly knew I wasn’t a threat because you let me through the doorway.”

He sparked once.

It was starting to make sense now. “Inky and Midnight are connected to Shadow and me, so they were lost in the spell, just the same as we were.”

I’d been feeling a sense of dread since I’d woken up in Torin’s bed, and while some of it had to do with that slimy bastard, so much more of it was because of Dannie. Because of what she had done to me and all of my pack.

“I have to find Shadow.”

It was a need filling me up until I might burst from it.

Gaster shook his head. “That’s not a good idea, Mera. He destroyed the library and all of the doors from here. The master is a true beast, and… what if you’re also destroyed in his anger?”

These were the parts of my story Gaster didn’t know because he hadn’t been there.

“Shadow will not destroy me,” I said with confidence. “Firstly, I’m stronger than you think. I was born of the Nexus… a similar being to Dannie. I’m a match for Shadow.”