Glamoured (Shadow Beast Shifters Book 6)

Other me looked like she was thinking hard thoughts, so I pushed for more information. “How could a being of light and darkness tilt so far into the dark that they’d be willing to destroy worlds and their family?”

“We still don’t know why,” she said, “but the assumption was that the balance faltered for a moment, which happens at times, but in this instance Dalmia’s world was at the end of the sliding scale. And once the darkness took hold, it refused to give up.”

“How do we stop it from happening again?”

Other me shook her head. “The Origins are lost now. Most of them have been gone so long, and are so weakened, they could never return to what once was. Proof of this is how your line was cut on Faerie. At our peak of power, it would be impossible to destroy us in that way. Any who tried would explode the second they touched our cord to the Orig—”

She was cut off as a low humming energy washed over us. I was shot back against the wall of the sphere. Power zipped around the space, akin to a thousand dazzling crystals.

It took almost a minute for the kinetic energy to die down, and when it did, a familiar set of silver eyes came into view. The rest of him was covered in crystals, but I’d know my mate anywhere.

“Len!” I gasped.

He headed straight for me, his ghostly energy wrapping around me. Pain welled in my spirit, and I wanted to cry at the knowledge that he must have died to make it here.

Died and followed the golden line too.

He came for me.

“Storm,” he breathed, and maybe it was that we were both dead-ish, but I could feel him as solidly as I had when we were alive. The crystals cut against me in hard lines, and I relished in the sensation of feeling.

“Winter,” I sobbed back, no tears falling due to a lack of physical body. “What have you done?”

“You’re my life,” he said simply. “Where you go, I go. No exceptions.”

A hysterical laugh escaped me. “You are too fucking good to me, but everything is not as we thought. I’m not the descendent of the Great Queen.”

He paused, confusion tinting the small slivers of skin I could see around his eyes.

“She is the Great Queen.”

He finally turned to the other me, showing no visible reaction to the fact that I was hardcore twinning. “Explain,” he shot back.

“How did you know that version wasn’t me?” I asked before she could answer him.

“We’re bonded,” he said, without removing his shrewd gaze from her. “That’s a memory, with slivers of your power but none of your soul.”

I sank against him, my body molding to the crystals surrounding him.

“She is a memory,” I confirmed. Len’s arms wrapped around me, so tightly that if I’d been alive I’d be bleeding over his stone suit. “A memory I sent here, to the origin of magic and worlds, in case I returned to Faerie without my memories.”

“Explain,” Len bit out once more, and this time there was less patience in his voice. Even in soul form, his power filled the space, swelling in its intensity.

“Young god,” she said, “you have elevated in the power vacuum I created within Faerie. It makes sense that you would be chosen as a mate for us. It was my weakening and your burgeoning strength that allowed us to meet. For you to finally find me on your Great Walk. Earth could only hide my energy for so long when one is as strong as you.”

Len looked down at me, his eyebrows drawn together, and I nodded. “Yeah, it’s a fucking weird story, but I believe what she’s saying. I was the Great Queen, an Origin god of Faerie, until I had to walk away to save it.”

This got a reaction. Origin god meant more to Len than it had to me. “There’s a lot of backstory,” I continued, “but we don’t have time. We have to return to Faerie and attempt once more to save it.”

I didn’t care what it took, we would be returning. They made a mistake in allowing an Origin god to find a true mate, because damn the fucking worlds if I lost him. I was no hero when it came to my family. I’d save my daughter and pack and Faerie, but the rest of the worlds were on their own. This god thought like a shifter now too.

“We do need to hurry,” other me said, even though she was apparently fond of monologuing. “Here’s the basic points of it all. I removed myself to Earth to ensure the darkness didn’t have the power to keep spreading. All the remaining Origin gods hid on Earth too, and in doing so we created a space in the power balance. That is how new gods were born. It was all working until you found me.” Her voice broke. “We were together for two incredible months, and I told myself to walk away every single day, but I couldn’t. I’d been alone for so long, having no idea that there was such a perfect love out there. A love only possible due to my weaker state, but weirdly, when I was with you, I felt as strong as ever.”

“As if I contained the power you’d lost?” he mused.

The memory paused, before nodding. “Yes, that’s a possibility.”

Len’s voice grew harder. “What happened when I decided to complete the true mate bond, by heading home and calling you to me?”

Her voice shook. “It was the chance I’d been waiting for, so I encouraged you to return, knowing I’d have to do the hardest thing in my long life.”

My chest hurt so badly I wondered if I was dying again. Could a soul die multiple times?

“Wouldn’t it have been safer to keep your memories at least, so you knew not to return?” I choked out.

“Safer, yes,” she said with a sad laugh, “but it turned out I wasn’t strong enough to stay away. When the call came for me to return, I was mere seconds from letting myself fade into the abyss to find Faerie. It kept almost happening, and I knew that the only chance I had was to block off my Faerie side.”

She waved her ghostly hand between us. “The glamour I created was designed as a rebirth. We shed our Great Queen energy—and her memories—and turned ourselves into a shifter. A fascinating supernatural race I’d spent a little time with. I figured being with other magical beings would hide whatever quirks the glamour released.”

“Two things didn’t work though,” Len replied gruffly, his super brain putting it together faster than I had. “You couldn’t remove the mark I gave her, and you couldn’t completely remove the memories of our time together.”

She shook her head. “With the power I had, I should have been able to do both, but… maybe I didn’t want to remove everything. Maybe I needed to keep some of you. So, I decided it was easier to create a story to explain away most of the memories Samantha was left with.”

“You didn’t know I was pregnant,” I choked out, as pain and regret rippled through me.

Her face crumpled, and the fact that this “memory” kept exhibiting emotions told me I’d placed more than just memories here. I’d placed a small part of myself. “A child was an impossibility I never considered,” other me said. “But clearly that was another quirk of the imbalance we created. Had I known about Tabitha, there’s a chance my choices would have been different. Something we’ll never know now. What is done is done, and we must repair the worlds to save our daughter.”

The absolute fucking insanity of this conversation wasn’t lost on me, but when shit like this happened, you had to roll with the punches. At this point I was pretty much a fight champion, taking shots like a boss.

“What do we need to do to come back to life and repair Faerie?” Len asked.

He must have so many questions, having missed much of the first conversation, but in true warrior fashion, was already focused on the most pressing issue at hand: how to save our daughter and the worlds.

Neither of you are dead,” she said. “You can’t be dead and be here in the Origin. Which means you can use the golden line of power to return to your bodies, stronger than ever.” She focused directly on me. “Samantha, you will never be Sammia again. We are gone now, and you are shaped by the life you have experienced since the loss of power. Even if all of your memories return, they’ll be fuzzy, as if they happened to someone else.”

“Will I be able to truly bond with Len?” I asked, unsure what this meant for us.

A single nod. “Absolutely. If you can figure out how to restore your line and stop the darkness seeping into Faerie, you’ll have the chance at something I never did.”

She paused briefly, as if composing herself, before she said, “Happiness.”

Gods, it was all I’d ever wanted. This elusive “happiness.”

I tilted my head to find Len’s eyes on me. “Together we’ll find peace and happiness,” I told him. “I’ll accept nothing less.”

“Agreed,” he rumbled.

Turning back to the memory, I said, “First thing is to restore the Great Queen’s line, and then my power and memories will return. After that, I believe the way to destroy the darkness is together as a pack. There’s a reason the new gods and the old gods are coming together once more.”

“Stronger together,” Len agreed. “We will do what the Origin gods could not.”

The memory nodded and flickered briefly. “Wait,” I called. “How do we return?”

She flickered again. “The same way you got here. Through a rebirth, along the golden line of Faerie.”

It was painful to watch her flicker strongly, until she started to fade before my eyes. This was a goodbye to the me who was also not me. As she’d said, I was no longer Sammia, no longer the Great Queen of Faerie.

“Wait, how did you have a shifter mate?” Len asked suddenly when she was almost gone.

Her laughter echoed around us. “We didn’t. I created the false bond as part of the spell. I wanted to have a strong mate and blend in with the shifters. But that was never to be. A true mate will always best any magic. Even from an Origin. Now take our world back.”

When she was gone for good, I felt lighter and sadder at the same time. The memory version of me had finished her task and was released into the great energy of the Origin.

Gone forever.

“Winter,” I said softly, since he was still staring at the spot she’d been. “You okay?”

Despite the crystals covering his face, hiding most of his expression, I saw his lips twitch. “Never been better. Got my girl back, she’s an Origin god, and we need to save the worlds again. Just an average day for our pack.”

“Was an Origin god,” I told him. “You heard the memory. One, we’re weaker now. Two, I’m no longer Sammia.”

His lips definitely twitched before he smiled. “Once you break the final glamour, you’ll understand that even weakened you’re still one of the most powerful being in the worlds. If anyone says otherwise, we can fry their asses.”

A snort of laughter escaped me. “Great, we’ve already gone mad with power, and we’ve only had it for three minutes.”

He surprised the shit out of me when he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. There was a rough texture of crystals, and while I couldn’t taste him, I could feel the slide of our mouths together, and the surge of our energy that followed. “I lost you,” he whispered against my mouth. “Again. I almost brought Faerie down in my rage, again, but thankfully I was reminded that we don’t die easily. The hope that you were waiting for me somewhere kept me moving forward, and saved the damn worlds.”

“I’d end the worlds for you too,” I told him, having already figured out who I was now. “And since I might eventually have the power to do just that, we better hope nothing ever happens to you or Tabby.” Or our other friends.

Speaking of, it was time to figure out how to leave our little bubble of almost dead and head back into the real world.

We had some shit to deal with.