The Gamma’s Second Chance (Crescent Lake #3)

39. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

HAVEN

A warm breeze carrying the scent of jasmine and vanilla… soft grass underneath my hands and my cheek… the rippling of water and the rustling of fabric in the wind…

I sit up, curling my legs and resting my hand on my belly as I blink myself awake. A moonless sky with endless, uncountable stars stretches above me, and in front of me is a circular, open-air building held up by white columns, with gauzy, sheer fabric hanging between them and blocking the view of the building’s interior.

It’s Selene’s temple in her realm on the moon.

I inhale sharply, and Wesley sits ramrod straight, jerking himself from a deep sleep, his hand on my stomach immediately and his deep chocolate brown eyes worried as he scans my body. “Haven? Is everything okay? Is it the baby? It’s too early, isn’t it?” He frowns at the white dress I’m wearing, then lifts his eyes to our surroundings, his frown deepening. “This is unexpected.”

He rises to his feet, then helps me to mine, keeping my hand enclosed in his and his other hand on the small of my back. He stares at the temple, his jaw set, before his eyes meet mine, softening as he gazes down at me. “Shall we see what your mom wants?”

I grimace and nod, following him with reluctance as we tread through the soft green grass towards my mother’s temple. Everything is the same as the first two times she brought me here—the lush flora, the vibrant colors, the perfect temperature of the air. The only thing changed is the temple. It seems… bigger. Grander.

Wesley brushes aside the wispy fabric, and we enter the temple together, our eyes scanning the circular building. Just as before, the paintings on each column to my left all show Asteria—Selene’s first daughter and my sister—as she aged. Twenty-one columns and twenty-one paintings, one for each year of her life.

But the columns to my right extend beyond the twenty-one that were there before. And where I expect there to be only four more, since I am now twenty-five, Selene has added multiple for each year since my twenty-first birthday.

Around the temple I walk, staring at the depictions of myself from special moments over the last almost five years, my fingers tracing areas of them and an involuntary smile forming on my face.

There is the night we took over the pack, when I ran across the lakeshore with the pups, with Wesley in his lycan form watching from the tree line, and the night Wesley proposed to me in the courtyard at the theater. There is our wedding ceremony, where we stood on the shore and read our vows to each other, both written as letters to our pen pal. I stop in front of the most recent one, the one next to Asteria’s last portrait, and tears spring to my eyes unbidden. It’s Wes and me, him holding my tiny baby bump between his hands as he kneels in front of me and kisses it, like he’s done countless times since the day I told him I was pregnant.

Wesley wraps his arms around me from behind and buries his nose in my hair as a giant, heaving sob shakes my body. Once again, I am overwhelmed by the images before me. The love and detail put into each contradict the character of Selene I’ve painted in my mind. It doesn’t erase the pain or the years of neglect, but it’s clear she cares about me and watches me.

The violent storm of mixed emotions within me explodes outwards with my tears, bursting to life within the temple as floating, swirling, dancing streams of silvery starlight. I gasp and follow the path as it travels through the building, dancing around Selene, where she now stands in the center of the temple. It dances and circles higher, escaping through the ceiling and the breaks between the fabric and the columns. Selene watches it, her silvery hair swaying in the breeze along with the swaths of white fabric draping her graceful figure.

“Is that my aura?” I ask, my voice tight with my tears, and Wesley nods, his chin brushing against my wild red curls and waves. “Does it always look like that?”

His hand reaches down to stroke my bump, and the baby inside kicks against him, making Wesley chuckle. “Since your pregnancy, yes.”

“The baby strengthens it,” Selene says.

“But what is it?” I ask, turning my attention to her as she strolls towards us.

“It’s what your gamma said. It’s an identifier, and it protects you.”

I frown. “Nolan didn’t say that. He talked about how it feels to him, but he didn’t say anything about…” I trail off as Selene raises a brow at me, waiting for me to connect the dots. “Oh.” I nod. “You mean Cassandra.”

“Nolan’s mate. Yes,” she says, folding her hands in front of her stomach. “I brought you here to talk to you about them, actually.”

I bristle, my jaw ticking at the realization that she didn’t call us here to see me but rather to talk to us about someone else. I paint on an expression of neutrality, however, and lift my chin, standing tall even though I feel smaller than ever. “About what?”

“Their bond.”

I frown, and Wesley cocks his head to the side above me. “What bond? They’re chosen mates.”

Selene nods. “They chose each other. That is true. But they are not chosen mates.”

“Are those not the same things?” Wesley asks.

“Not for them.”

My nostrils flare, and a noise, almost a growl, vibrates in my chest. “Are you going to keep being cryptic, or are you going to tell us what you mean?”

Wesley winces behind me and squeezes me a little, kissing my temple and sending a river of love into me, his body tense at my scolding of his deity. But I don’t care. I don’t want to be here, and unless she starts saying what she means to say, I’m leaving. I don’t have time to listen to her skirt around the truth.

Selene stares at me, something akin to hurt flashing in her eyes. She glances down at her hands, then crosses the temple towards the portrait of Wesley and me on our wedding day as she continues speaking. “I don’t always get it right when I match souls.” She reaches for the painting with a soft, sad smile. “Most of the time I do. However, even I am not perfect. Nolan was supposed to humble Kimberly, but as the years went on and she grew older, I saw that he wouldn’t be enough to change her. When Cassandra was born, I already knew Kimberly would reject Nolan, so I gave him a second chance bond with Cassandra.”

“Why not just remove his bond with Kimberly and make Cassandra his first and only mate?” I ask.

She glances at me over her shoulder. “Of all the things I am able to do, that is not one of them. As with all things, there must be a balance.”

I shake my head at her, confusion filling me. “But they didn’t feel a second chance bond on Cassandra’s birthday, and Cassandra told me about her reading—‘No bond of fate draws her soul to another.’”

“That is true. I knew Nolan would never truly accept another mate bond. He’d constantly be questioning if the feelings between him and his mate were genuine or only because of the bond.”

“He said something similar to me recently,” Wesley says, nodding his agreement with her statement.

“I also knew if Cassandra completed her mate bond with a fated mate, she’d be bound to my island, like all true oracles are, and that would leave you without your gamma. So, I manipulated their bond.”

I flinch back and blink at her. “How?”

“I… locked it up, I guess you could say.”

“Locked it up?” Wesley asks.

“That’s the best way I can describe it, yes. It was there in their souls, lying dormant until they marked each other. They had to choose each other to bring it to life.”

“So even though it was there, it wasn’t drawing them to each other?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around what she’s saying and receive some clarity.

She shakes her head. “Not in the traditional way. Not in the way you two felt your bond, or Nolan felt his bond with Kimberly.”

“What if they hadn’t chosen each other? Or what if they’d never met?” I blurt out, anger, pain, and sadness flooding through me. I think of my bond with Wesley, of how beautiful and intense and special it is, and I can’t imagine never feeling that. The thought of another couple’s bond being hidden from them has me on the verge of tears again, my heart aching with emptiness and agony.

Selene’s eyes glisten, as if she feels the same sense of loss at that thought. “Then it would have remained dormant.”

I take in a shuddering breath, and Wesley sways us side to side, his arms tightening around me. “It’s okay, Sugar Plum. They found each other. They chose each other.”

I pinch my lips together and nod. He’s right. That’s what matters. Despite the odds stacked against them, Nolan and Cassandra found each other and chose each other.

“Why are you telling us this?” I ask. “Why not tell them?”

“Nolan has no desire to speak with me,” Selene says, giving a half-hearted shrug. My gut response is to tell her I don’t either, but I stop myself, because that would be a lie. “And I didn’t want to interrupt their joy. But they will have questions.”

I tighten my jaw and swallow against the tightness in my throat that’s been there since I saw the new portraits she painted. “We’ll pass along the information,” Wesley says, responding to her for both of us. Then he unfolds me from his arms and takes my hand in his, turning towards the exit of the temple. “We will take our leave now.”

Water pools in my eyes, my tongue heavy as well as my feet, my body unsure of if it wants to leave or stay and ask the burning question in the forefront of my mind. Wesley makes it a few steps away from me, but I’m frozen in place, staring at Selene. She studies the paintings, seemingly unaware of my eyes on her, but I know it’s an act.

“Why haven’t you visited me?” I say, the words rushing out of my mouth before I can change my mind.

Her eyes close and she winces, but she doesn’t turn towards me.

“I’ve had questions. We have had questions. You gave me these gifts, these powers, even after I said I wanted none, and you just what—expected me to know what they’re for and how to use them?!” She slowly faces me, and hot tears stream down my cheeks, my hands trembling at my sides, and my aura bursting from me like a volcano. “All this time, you could have called me here to see me and speak with me, but you didn’t. Not until you had a message for me to deliver to someone else!”

Wesley rushes back to my side and embraces me again, cupping the back of my head in his hand. I squeeze him tight, my breaths heavy and shaking. He’s the only one who knows the true frustration and pain I feel at having been ignored by Selene all these years. He strokes my back, and I melt into his touch, his presence and his loving caresses easing a bit of the burden in my soul.

“You could have visited me too,” she whispers, watching us with matching hurt and sadness pooling in her eyes.

My hands curl against Wesley’s back, scratching his skin. “But I didn’t know that!”

She sighs and drops her hand from a painting of us and Cav. “You set your boundaries with me, Haven. I was respecting them.”

“Boundaries?” I sputter, leaning away from Wesley. “What boundaries?”

“You didn’t want a relationship. You told me you didn’t think of me as anything other than the woman who gave birth to you. I overstepped when I offered you immortality, and I didn’t want to do that again. All my best intentions end up hurting you.”

“You were a stranger to me,” I remind her. “And yes, at that time, I was hurt and reeling from everything I’d learned about myself and this world. But…”

I trail off and glance up at Wesley before gazing around the temple. It’s a beautiful representation of the love she holds for me and for Asteria. I could point out to her the irony of how she once again hurt me more by ignoring me, but I wasn’t kind to her either. I shut myself off from her, and I hurt her too. And all yelling at her and holding a grudge against her will do is continue the cycle.

Entwining our fingers together, I walk over to my mom with Wesley at my side, and I take her hand, too, gazing up into her eyes. “Would you like to meet your grandchild?” I ask, hovering our clasped hands over my rounded belly.

A tear falls from her eye, and she nods, lowering her hand to my stomach. The baby rolls around at her touch, and she smiles wide, placing her other hand on me as well. “Such a strong little one,” she says, laughing as the baby kicks against her hand.

“Like their mom,” Wesley says, smiling down at me.

“They will be a fine leader for Crescent Lake, a wonderful friend to their beta, a role model to their siblings, and a confidant for Savannah,” my mom says. “This little one will have so much love,” she adds, gazing at Wesley and me with shining eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur through the pain in my throat and my heart. “Thank you for respecting my boundaries. It hurts that you didn’t visit me. Especially now that I know you could have and didn’t. But I don’t want us to be strangers anymore.”

Her lip trembles, and she nods before pulling me into a hug. Her silvery hair is soft under my hands as I return her embrace, and a small sob escapes me as she fades away beneath my touch and Wesley and I disappear from her realm and head back to our own.