Let’s Talk One True Mate (One True Mate Companion, Vol. 1)

7-Harlan and Eventine ♦♦

Timber sat down, straddling a log to face Burton.

“Just after the bears chased off Khain, the little dragen baby, Kendra, was born, and what a shitshow that was for two reasons.” Timber ticked the points off on his fingers. “First—Leilani traveled through time to get a peek at Jaggar and when he saw her, his beast got excited, but the rest of us got nervous, since none of us had ever seen the beast, and the Citlali were scared of it.”

Burton nodded along, his expression contemplative.

“Second—Conri was helping Remington with Heather’s labor and he stuck her with a needle. Kendra—keep in mind that she was literally still cooking in her mama’s belly—well, she decided he hurt her mom, and he was gonna get it as soon as she came out. Just fry his ass like a chicken nugget.”

Burton chuckled. “She’s a firecracker.”

“She’s a lit match in a bomb factory, but everything worked out. Graeme took her to a fire world to be born while Conri ran for his life. Shortly after, our team found Leilani at the Roosevelt Asylum hopped up on sedatives and antipsychotic drugs. She’d been there since she was a child and every time she used her power, they assumed she was having a psychotic episode or something, and they’d pump her with enough drugs to knock out an elephant. The strange thing was, we’d had officers out there before, looking for her, but she had no records and the staff didn’t recognize her description. We’ve got an ongoing investigation into the situation but it keeps leading nowhere. Graeme says it’s likely there was repeated time travel involved. We can send you the reports.”

Canyon looked at Burton, eyebrow raised, his phone at the ready. Burton nodded. Canyon tapped his screen a few times and Burton’s phone dinged.

“They got Leilani out of there, and moved her into Trent’s room, with Ella taking care of her, and Remington managing a gradual weaning off the drugs. She was circling the drain for a while and no one could figure out why—come to find out, all that time travel must’ve zapped her eyeballs because she went blind and she was hanging out in the meadow with Eventine instead of in her body.”

“Mm,” Burton said, his expression troubled.

“Eventine, from the meadow, was able to get into Leilani’s body when Leilani wasn’t in it… and that’s how Harlan almost got murdered.”

Straight-up mauled.

Timber nodded. “I would call it a mauling. Harlan kissed Leilani, thinking she was Eventine, and Jaggar saw it and hulked out into the beast. He mauled Harlan, and ran off, heading north. Harlan ‘bout lost his shit, thinking Eventine was somehow alive, but in Leilani’s body. Conri told him that Abigail White was a foxen witch who could get Eventine a new body, and the reason we didn’t know this is because she could do disappeary shit and hide from us with magic. By this time, Seb had already figured that out. We weren’t so sure—” Timber motioned to himself and Canyon. “—We’d read Seb’s investigative conclusions but they seemed farfetched—but then Harlan cleared that shit up for us real quick. He broke into White’s store and tore the place up, forcing her to do something, and she made three notes poof into existence out of nowhere.”

Canyon held out his phone, showing images of the notes. Timber read them out loud.

“Note 1—Hello children. I can’t help you. Even if I could, I’m really quite booked till summer. Those bearen are some superstitious fools but they’ve got plenty of cash and they never get handsy.”

“Note 2—Seriously. I can’t put her in a coma patient’s body. It doesn’t work like that. That is not a natural process and therefore, only chaos can arrange it.”

“Note 3—What about her own body? You have a time traveler, do you not? All you need is her body at the moment of death, an antidote to the poison, and the halfling can do the rest.”

Burton rubbed his chin, staring at the images of the notes, his expression conflicted. “She’s responsible for us having Eventine back.”

Timber shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Leilani would have taken you back in time no matter what. She already knew Eventine. They’d already been time-traveling together.”

Burton looked at him with eyes narrowed, like he hadn’t considered that before.

“Abigail White said go back in time, Harlan said no way, Wade put it to a vote, but then you and Leilani did it anyway, and no one else even knew till it was done.”

Burton was nodding, his brow furrowed. “I’m not clear on the time traveling that Eventine and Leilani have done. Eventine says we lose-uh-lost the war against Khain in the future?” He looked at Timber for confirmation.

“She says we did, once, yeah. She watched it from the meadow, then figured out a way to go to Leilani in the Roosevelt Asylum. She helped Leilani escape and lead her to the KSRT officers who were still alive, and they worked out a plan for Leilani to time-travel back in time in a way that would destroy that old timeline and give us all another chance. She says last time, Bruin was killed and the bearen were all marked by Khain, so things are already different.”

“Only B3 was marked.”

“Right, only him.”

Burton sighed heavily. “And Eventine is here with us. That’s different.”

“Right—could you give us a recap of how it went—the time travel?” They’d already asked Burton about it once, but he’d been out of it at the time.

“I have a hard time thinking about it,” Burton said, his voice cracking slightly. “I… I remember walking into Trevor’s house without a thought in my head. I knew I was on a mission, but I didn’t know what the mission was, or who’d set me on it. I went to Trent’s room. Leilani didn’t react when I went in the room, but when I reached the bed, she opened her eyes and took my hand… I felt like… like I was yanked around a little bit, and then I was in the past, in my office, staring at my dying Evie and my past self. I picked Evie up, said a few words to myself, took Leilani’s hand again, and just like that we were back in the present.” Burton’s eyes were on the ground. “Evie drank dragen blood and lived,” he said quietly.

Timber nodded. “And what about that day in the past?”

Burton clasped his hands, sitting quietly, his eyes almost closed. “Strangely, I can remember that like it was yesterday. I’ve spent 30 years trying to forget. If I could cut the memory out of my head I would.”

Burton lapsed into silence. Timber met Canyon’s eyes over his head.

“I thought I was moonstruck, you know—out of my right mind and separated from the instincts of my wolf,” Burton said quietly. “Because… because…” He looked up at both of them, eyes pleading for them to understand. Timber moved a little closer to him, and so did Canyon, coming in next to the log and going down on one knee. Burton seemed to take some comfort from them. He took a deep breath and spoke. “It started like a normal day, except for one thing. Eventine had left the house before I woke up. She’d gone to the courthouse and married Harlan without telling me, because I was aggressively trying to keep her from her mating day.”

Burton stared at the ground, then looked up, speaking in a rush. “The first calls came in while I was still home. I drove straight to the station and found two female officers unconscious in the parking lot. I carried them into the duty room, but there were more dead and dying in there. That was the first time I thought of Eventine, and I knew right away what had happened. I was told a horrible fate would strike the shiften on the day she mated… I just wasn’t told… why.”

Burton stared far off, his expression full of pain and long-suffering.

“We opened up the civil defense building and pulled out the emergency cots and moved our females in there. We called for ambulances, something we’d never done before, but the bears didn’t even show up. They were already dealing with their own females dying, and they were calling us for help. Eventine and Harlan arrived. Eventine seemed okay at first. She sent Harlan to SFD to commandeer an ambulance. The moment he left the room, she collapsed into my arms, slurring, saying, ‘Burton was right,’ over and over again.”

Timber and Canyon were quiet as Burton continued on, staring off into the distance.

“I carried her to my office and laid her down on the couch. The phone was ringing off the hook and I pulled the cord out of the wall… then wind blew inside the closed room, and Leilani stepped out of nowhere with a male. Suddenly I was looking at myself, but 30 years older and I could clearly see the 30 years had not been good ones. He locked eyes with me and said, ‘She dies, but we’re trying to save her,’ and then he picked Eventine up and took Leilani’s hand and they just left—disappeared into nowhere.”

Burton looked down at his hands and sighed. “I stared at the couch for a long time, then I lay down on it and took a nap. It might have only been five or ten minutes, but when I woke up, I decided I’d gone moonstruck, and that was okay, but I’d hidden Eventine’s body, and that wasn’t. It went on for years—for decades. I lied to Harlan, saying I’d had her body cremated. I checked under the couch in my office constantly. I roamed the tunnels and challenged the felen —Wade had to come save me more than once. I searched the entire station, top to bottom, several times, then decided I was moving her body in my sleep. I used to check the chest freezer at home compulsively. I know you boys remember that.”

Canyon and Timber looked at one another. They did remember that. It’d been the first thing Burton did every morning and the last thing he did each night.

“I expected to find her body any time I walked into a room, every time I turned a corner.”

“Whoa,” Timber whispered. “No wonder you were so out of it.”

Burton only stared at the ground.

Canyon stood and pulled a Yoohoo chocolate drink out of a cargo pocket, holding it in front of Burton. Burton took it and held it in his hand, eyes still lowered.

Timber gave Canyon a thumbs up, then changed the subject, fast.

“Oh damn, I just thought of something. Check this out. So right around the time Leilani poofed you back in time, both Troy and Track shifted for the first time, at the same time. They took a nap together, and Track woke up as a pup, and Troy woke up as a dude. It was wild, man.”

Then Ella slammed Troy against the wall a few times.

Timber laughed and nodded. “Can’t blame her though. She didn’t know what he looked like as a man, so of course when she found this naked stranger with Track, she whooped ass first and asked questions later.”

Burton met Timber’s eyes and gave a weak grin.