Not all of us were so fortunate to have their darker selves located outside their bodies.
One version of me could have shrugged off his lie—and was it even really a lie when he had simply omitted a piece of information?—and who knows, we might be bumping uglies by now.
Bumping uglies…
That might have cut Iav off but I would have been plunged into an even worse scenario.
I would be tied to Vai for the rest of my life.
My situation would have been both improved and made worse in a single fell swoop.
With no external dark Shadow, I had only myself to blame.
I couldn’t escape myself, no matter how hard I tried.
Would I have reacted any differently if I knew sleeping with Vai would have had that result?
It was a big deal to me and I wasn’t about to let go of it any time soon.
I splashed water over my face and headed out the door.
I missed a step.
Vai was there to greet me.
He smiled but it was distant.
No doubt thoughts about me had been haunting him as much as he had mine.
“I thought I would escort you to the Surgery,” he said.
He extended an elbow to me and, as giddy as I was inside, I played it down so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
I took it and a smile curled my cheek.
I tried to stop myself from doing it but it was no good.
The damn thing insisted on curling itself into a dimple and, glancing across at Vai, I noticed he had a similar curl around his cheek too.
“I checked the scanners but they can’t detect Iav at this distance,” Vai said. “But the sensors can’t reach as far as you can.”
The same as our shared bond.
I’d felt Vai every minute of the journey to the Surgery and I couldn’t help but prod and probe at that ball of light in my chest.
The more I prodded at him, the less he seemed to react to me.
He just floated there like a sun in the depth of space, unaffected by anything outside his sphere of gravity.
I turned my head to peer at the shiny white wall of the hallway and sensed a twin ball of light in the distance.
Iav was some way off.
Was he still in the minefield? I wondered.
It was hard to tell, but yes, I thought so.
There was no hint he was moving toward us, no sign he had even discovered the truth of our escape.
It felt good to imagine him approaching those empty vessels.
I imagined he would scream and gnash his teeth and blast them to hell in his overwhelming rage.
“He’s not close,” I said.
“Good.”
He placed a hand on my arm that clutched his elbow close.
It sent pin prickles across the surface of my skin and over my entire body.
“What does it feel like to be… Severed from your fated mate?” I said.
His eyes tightened and drifted to one side, considering his response carefully.
“I would say not to worry about it. Focus on the knowledge you will soon be free from Iav and he’ll never bother you again.”
I smiled and tried to take some comfort in his words, but it was no good.
He would make a terrible poker player.
His thoughts and feelings were painted so clearly on his face that they might as well have been written in ink.
It’s the most horrible thing imaginable, his expression said.
There was no point in sugar coating it, as much as he might try to.
“Will it be painful?”
Even I was aware of how small my voice sounded.
“I’ve… never had it done,” he said.
“But you know people who have.”
He nodded and was quiet as we marched down the hallway.
Finally, he said:
“Yes, it’s painful. But with it comes a great deal of relief. If you want to silence that throbbing ball of light in your chest, there’s no better way to do it.”
He opened his mouth to continue speaking but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Except to consummate with me.
That was the best way to sever the bond with Iav.
But then I would feel Vai full force and I wasn’t sure that was a whole lot better.
Vai came to a stop and turned to face a sheer wall.
I didn’t know why we had stopped here of all places.
The ship sat down and I felt the solid thumps of the landing struts as they locked into place.
I turned to Vai but he didn’t say a word.
A shard of light formed in the side of the ship and I hopped on the spot, suddenly taken aback.
The shard was a gap in the ramp as it eased down and lowered to the ground below.
The sky was waxy purple, the sunlight on the horizon a dull pink.
The trees were in bloom and the building consisted of half a dozen interlocked buildings, forming a large semi-circle around us.
I might have mistaken it for a European castle if it wasn’t for the strange statues that ran along the edge of the path that led up to it.
Large statues stood frozen like guardian angels, each a different breed of alien warrior, faces curled in the midst of battle.
Or maybe they were fallen demons.
Vai moved first and took us down the ramp to the cobbled street below.
Vai
The last thing I wanted to do was step off my ship.
In fact, the very last thing I wanted to do was let her go.
And I was about to do both.
The process of severing the bond between a fated mate was a notoriously painful and tortured event.
I had witnessed what it had done directly to M’rora when my uncle came back from his own failed attempt to find his fated mate.
He located her, rescued her, and managed to escape to safety.
Then, unable to take the pressure any longer, his fated mate opted for the surgical procedure.
Unable to convince her otherwise, my uncle underwent the Severing, even though, like all M’rora, it was the very last thing he
