Fated Truth (The True Witch Saga) (20 page)

Gavin had stayed in th
e car letting Jaxx and I have some semblance of privacy while he dropped his shit in my lap. He had stayed put until Jaxx had left me there. Now he was pulling me into his arms and lifting me to his chest. He carried my limp sobbing form to the Lexus and put me in the passenger seat. He buckled my belt then ran around to the driver’s seat and started the car. He pulled a U turn and headed back the way we came from. “Listen to me, Ella. People make mistakes. He must have thought that you couldn’t forgive this.”

“Doesn’t he know me at all, Gavin? I could forgive him almost anything. This shit happened before us. He didn’t even know me. Or even that I existed yet.”

Gavin continued to talk as he sped down the barren highway. “The bonds of the destined are unbreakable. You can hurt them. Stretch them taught, but they can’t be broken, but he has grown up in a True witch’s world. What he has done isn’t done. You have to understand that. It is the most taboo thing that you can do. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I do know what it is like to be tempted. She was a means to an end for him. That’s all.”

“I understand that
, but he left. He just left me there. Why would he leave if it wasn’t over?”

“That
is what you are not understanding, you can’t be away from one another. Even though you went through the mating rights and consummated. Loudly I might add. He can’t stay away or you and he will weaken. You will eventually die if you are not together.”

“There
is so much that I don’t understand about this world, Gavin. So much that I need to be taught. That I need to learn.”

“I know, Ella
. You will. You have me for that. You will have me always. Forever.”

“He told me forever also,” I
sobbed, finally letting the hurt out.

“You have to forgive him for misleading you. For thinking that you couldn’t get past what he stupidly did. He
is a male. No matter the species. We make mistakes and think that we can’t come back from them. When all we have to do is trust in those who love us. They will always see us through. That’s what he needs to realize about you. Give him a day tops. He will find you,” Gavin insisted. “You know she meant nothing to him. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Will you see him when he comes?”

“Dunno,
” I mumbled into the window I had my head jammed against.

“You will have to eventually. I have never
seen a destined pair with such a strong bond. He was scared, Ella. Forgive him his weakness.”

“I already have. I just didn’t think he would ever leave.”

We sped through the dark night in silence. Gavin held my hand squeezing it every once in a while, as if to give me comfort. To let me know that I would never be alone again, Jaxx or no Jaxx.

“Where are we going?” I ask
ed after we drove for a while.

“We are going to get my bike. Stowe our shit and get the fuck ou
tta dodge before any more trouble finds you. You have had enough. You need to time to rest and rebuild yourself.”

“Yes,
” I whispered in the positive to his plan. “But where are we heading after we get to your bike?”

“I own a hunting lodge that no one
knows about. It’s around a couple of hundred miles from here. It’s my home away from our father’s clan. No one knows about it, no one but you now.”

I nod
ded my head. All I wanted to do was sleep, to forget this night.

“Sleep if you want
, Ella. I won’t tell Seb if you drool on his seats,” he chuckled and tried to get a reaction out of me.

I didn’t respond, but
I appreciated the effort. I loved him for it, but I want to keep the numb feeling that had once again taken over. I didn’t want to feel yet. I didn’t know what I was going to do when Jaxx did come to find me. I knew that I had already forgiven him for fucking someone else before he was with me. There was really nothing to forgive on that. The archaic beliefs of our people weren’t mine. What I was going to have trouble forgiving him for was leaving. Not staying and trying to fix this shit.

I eventually start
ed to drift. I glanced over at Gavin thumping his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove, barreled down the road was more like it. I felt darkness taking me. I wanted it. I craved the oblivion it offered, the emptiness where the hurt didn’t wait to wrap itself around me, to strangle the remaining life out of me. My last thought was that he’d left.
He left me. He said forever. He
lied
.

Chapter Fifteen

The Void

It had
been four days. Four days since Gavin and I had arrived at his home. Four days of not moving and growing ever weaker. Four days since
he
left me. Four days without his smile, his touch, his embrace, his forever. I knew I was dying, but I couldn’t seem to care. Gavin was growing continuously worried. I just couldn’t seem to find it in me to reassure him, not when I couldn’t even reassure myself that I wanted to go on.

Gavin’s home
was beautiful. All redwood and exposed beams. The room he gave me was gorgeous. It was decorated in different shades of blue ranging from the lightest blue of the sky to the darkest blue of midnight.

I kne
w I was depressed. I was supposed to be using this time to train, but I couldn’t even move from the bed anymore. Gavin said it was because I was too young for my body and soul to deal with that much torture. That was exactly what it was. Physically I was disappearing into myself. My spirit was sucked dry the minute he disappeared into the moonlight. The moment he walked away from me like I was trash. He was done. And now so am I. Literally.

Gavin had
been raging. So much anger and despair and I didn’t know how to help him. My heart, what was left of it, was being twisted dry. To see someone you love in so much pain. I guess I knew what he was feeling. I couldn’t watch him fade.

He made a c
all to my father’s clan that morning, asking for help. To say that they were astonished to find out that Gavin had a twin was an understatement. They would be arriving tomorrow, but even I know that it will be too late by then. I will have moved on.

Gavin even tried reaching out to Seb
, but he was off the grid. Much like Jaxx, just thinking his name made me shudder. I lived in a constant void of pain. I begged Gavin repeatedly to end me, but he wouldn’t . I knew that he wouldn’t when I asked, but it was at a moment when the pain became too much. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take anymore now, but i held out for him, hoping he would come back to me, so that I might get a chance to say goodbye. To tell him that he left me for the wrong reasons. He had no reason to leave. My love was eternal.

“You have to fight
, Ella. You can’t let yourself wither away like this,” Gavin begged. “Even like this, when you are withered and weak, you are still beautiful. Twisted Beautiful.”

Gavin
was speaking to me again. He did it quite often, but I couldn’t answer him, even when he raged at me. I was locked deep inside a void, a void so dark that even the smallest hint of the light left inside me had been snuffed out like a weak candle.

My room has so many holes in the walls. Gavi
n’s rages were getting worse. He prayed by my bedside most nights, days, mornings, and minutes. He was hoping and begging for something that would never happen.

Destined Mates were not supposed
to be separated.
He
knew this. He
knew
this. He had left me to die. I realized that now, but I still loved him more than my own life. I forgave him for everything.

I could
hear Gavin on the phone.

“She’
s fading Celian. Her skin has turned grey, her hair is falling out by the hand full, she has lost so much weight that she is a husk of who she once was, and her eyes. My Goddess I think she is blind. They are almost completely true white now. There is barely a whisper of the former vibrant jade that they once were.”

I listened hard, but h
e was quiet for a moment, listening to whoever was on the phone. Celian, he’d said.

“No I can’t get her to speak. I don’t think she can. She has been silent since we have been here.”

Pause.

“Is the
clan still coming?” Gavin waited for an answer in silence.

I could
hear him pacing the wood floors.

“What
do you mean something has happened and you can’t make the trip?”

Pause.

“No I can’t bring her there! If I move her she might die!”

Silence and more pacing.

“Yes four days. I think at first it was voluntary. Now she can’t move. Let alone tell me anything that she
’s experiencing.”

More silence.

“She isn’t one of your fucking science experiments to come and study old man! She is your Goddess damned grandchild!”

I could
actually hear yelling from the other end of the line.

“Please. Help us,” Gavin begged
.

And suddenly I could hear the person on the phone.

“You are weak. Just like your father. If you are begging for the life of someone you just met, then you have no place in this clan. Your mother’s line must have been defective to create such parasitic offspring.” My supposed grandfather hung up.

I hear
d Gavin throw his phone across the room and start to sob. My heart broke a little more. It wasn’t like my stoic brother to beg anyone. I needed to help him somehow. With the last of my reserve I concentrated on the person he was just speaking to. I focused my mind’s eye on them. I felt someone, or something. I needed to do something to help Gavin. And that meant I had to help myself.

I could
hear faint thoughts coming from someone that was not Gavin. The person was scared and so very dark. He had the darkest soul that I had ever encountered. The thoughts I could hear inside his head were getting stronger. I could now hear them as clearly as if they were my own.
Am I developing yet another one of my gifts?
I thought. I wondered if I spoke through the strange connection, if he would hear me.

“I can feel you. I can hear your thoughts
,” I said through the strange connection I had formed.

The person I
was speaking to inside their head was startled. I could feel their physical responses also.

“You’
re wrong about my brother and about me. I can see your soul. I can read your thoughts. Feel your fear. You are who is weak. Always have been, haven’t you?”

“Who
is this? What gives you the right to steal into my head?” He finally deignedto respond to me.

“M
y blood is my right. I can see now what truly happened to my father. Why my mother had to separate us. Your hatred and jealousy knows no bounds. You wanted her for your own and she spurned you. You sick fuck!” With that I disconnected from his wretched mind. I felt sick and dirty. I wanted to rip my nails through my mind and wipe away all I had seen. Sick fuck was putting it mildly.

He
’d had my father, his only son and heir, tortured, trying to find from him answers that he didn’t know. Even after my mother and father had true mated, he still wanted my mother, but my mother didn’t tell my father of her plans. She left in the dead of the night and ran with me. The old man wanted to drown me at my birth. His hatred toward all females knew no bounds. When he couldn’t get the answers he was seeking from his son, he killed him, making it look like an accident. Then he tried to twist Gavin, tried to make my brother into a monster just like him. He didn’t succeed though. For that I was glad. I’d caught something that had to do with Jaxx also, but I didn’t have enough strength to search his mind further.

A thought occurred to me. If I could
talk to that foul soul through my mind I wondered if I could reach my brother also. I concentrated on him, trying to push through his barriers. They were strong, stronger than his grandfathers were. “Gavin,” I whispered in his mind.

I hear
d running. Then he was beside me. He was kneeling at the side of my bed. “Ella?”

I force
d my body to move and shifted my head toward him. “Help me,” I whispered to his mind. The link was weak because of the strength I’d used to connect with our grandfather.

“Ella,” he said
out loud, again. “I have tried. Please tell me what I can do.”

“Take
my hand. Share yourself with me,” I urged.

“I wish I could
, but it doesn’t work like that. You can only heal yourself with Jaxx.”

I
t hurt to hear his name spoken. “Please. Have to try. We are soul twins. Blood. Stronger than most anything.” I could feel the connection to him fading as was I.