Reclaimed (Shadow Beast Shifters, #2)(89)

Her words were too much for me to truly comprehend. I would need a few hundred years, and some serious alcoholic beverages, before I could touch that statement.

She paused briefly. “I am truly sorry I destroyed the first vessel, Mera, but I promise, your energy is still as pure and beautiful as the first time I held it in my hands.”

This was a lot. It was more than a lot, it was near unbelievable, but it also made sense. It explained away all my stupid shit, and the reason I could call and control the creatures. I was apparently a Mother of Creatures, like this spectacular woman before me, and I supposed I knew now why my hair was the color it was. Like a sunset. Exactly like Dannie’s phoenix, and my fire touched wolf.

Like the mists.

Midnight drifted down and wrapped around me, comforting. Do not fear your power. We are creation, but we are also more than that. Sentient in a way the pure mists are not. You have nothing to fear.

“This is why the mists bonded to Shadow and me,” I said softly. “Both of us are partly the same as they are.”

Dannie beamed. “You always were clever, my girl. It’s also why Shadow could create shifters. Because he’s born of my energy. We are all connected, but not related,” she added with a sharp smile at me.

It was a fine line, I was honest enough to admit that, but hopefully Dannie was right. There was no literal blood or direct energy connection between Shadow and me. Therefore, no need to scrape all the sex we’d had from my brain, and that actually made me feel a lot better.

It also explained why Shadow and I fit together. We were a match, an even bigger match than the one I had with Torin, and that gave me this stupid sense of hope I had no right to have.

Was there actually a future where Shadow and I could truly be together?





44





I had to look away or I was going to jump the beast, and now was not the time. Not after being near-floored by all the truth bombs dropped on me today.

“Do you understand, Darkor?” Dannie asked her son. Her expression one of a mother desperate to connect with the child who had been out of her reach for an eternity. A son she had spent thousands of years trying to save.

“I go by ‘Shadow’ now,” he told her, less bite in his words than before. “And I do understand. I’m not sure I’m happy about it, but I’m old enough now to see the sacrifice you’ve made. And I might actually owe you…” He looked at me but didn’t finish the sentence. I was desperate to know if it was about me, but there was no way to ask and not sound completely narcissistic.

Dannie stepped closer to him, and it was almost painful how awkward they were. It must have hit them at the same time that this was their chance for healing. He wrapped his arms around her, and it was the sort of hug that usually destroyed me on the rare occasions he handed them out.

His hugs were A-game material.

“Two questions,” he said when they pulled apart. “How come you couldn’t break the spell on the door, being as powerful as you are?”

Dannie didn’t like this, her brow furrowing as a dark expression crossed her features. “I was weakened when I had you, Shadow. My power is yours now, and I’m nothing more than a figurehead, still here trying to keep the balance.”

I sensed that she hadn’t expected to lose part of herself to a child.

She reached up and touched his cheek. “I don’t regret any of it, I promise. But I definitely don’t command the power I used to.”

He thought on this, his expression unreadable.

“What’s your second question?” she pushed.

This time, there was a chink in his armor. “If you were on Earth for years, why did you never try to find me? I thought the entire aim was to get me home. To see me again.”

He’d missed his mother, and fuck, if that vulnerability didn’t make him seem—for a moment in time—like someone much less jaded and alphahole-ish.

She swallowed roughly. “I’m weakened in the human realm, away from the Nexus. It’s why Mera’s much stronger than me. She doesn’t have my limitations, in either land.”

Shadow focused on me, looking for a moment longer than was polite. “She is extraordinary.”

Slaying me as always. “She is sitting right here,” I added, forcing normalcy to return. I didn’t want to think about being a mist-born creature of power. I just wanted to be Mera. Me. That was enough.

They both just smiled at me and I wondered how the fuck I’d ever missed the similarities between them. “How exactly do royals have children?”

The question was out before I thought about the intricacies of it. Was I about to get the Shadow Realm’s equivalent of the birds and bees talk?

Dannie’s grin was knowing. “It’s a joining of body and power. It requires you to exist in the head of your mate, and it’s intense to the degree that many can’t handle. Pleasure beyond what you can imagine, but it’s also how I lost energy to give to Shadow. So be aware of this.”

That part didn’t bother me as much as the thought of allowing anyone to exist in my head. My messy, messy head.

“What is our next step then?” Angel asked. She’d been quiet, taking in all the new information. There was nothing she loved more than discovering new facts about the worlds. She took her role as the quiet observer very seriously, cataloguing it all away, her super-brain never forgetting a thing.