50. Talisman

**XANDER**

I stared at her in apparent confusion, too shocked to constitute an intelligent question as I faintly muttered, “What do you mean…”
“I don’t know,” Maeve said, quickly catching up on my unuttered question. “Initially I thought that it must have been a dream, maybe a fragment of my imagination due to weakness of my brain…but the information she shared was too accurate to be unreal. The village, the magic…the similarities.” Her voice trailed off like she was adrift in her dreams and still unconvinced of the things she countered while she was passed out.
I held her shoulders and jerked slightly, forcing her gaze back on mine. “Maeve, I don’t understand a word you are saying! What happened when you passed out?”
“It was dark, at first,” she narrated, divesting into her memory with utmost concentration. “I had no sense of time or identity at all. It was scary, Xander. But as I slowly started to remember the little things about myself, I was suddenly transported to another place…another century to be precise.” Her eyes widened with unknown terrors as I pulled her body against mine. “According to Ametrine, it was her realm - her world. The village where her family was murdered and they were forced to flee.”
Tragedy never failed to disappoint the shifters, no matter how resilient we were over the centuries. The resurface of Ametrine and invading into my mate’s mind was hanging over my head like a massive sword, and I vowed that I would not stop until I put an end to it. But for that, I needed information. Especially the ones Maeve has encountered.
“The realm she preserved hundred of years ago?” I asked.
“Yes. She called it her ‘privilege and penance’ into one.”
*Shit*.
I did not need to hear more than the merest trick of a witch’s habit to know how real and threatening it was. Witches, as I have learned, were creatures of habit like us. And they carried their tragedy in their hearts.
Long before, I have heard my mother once say that witches often created the most beautiful or tragic moments in their superficial realm. It was the realm for the dead and of the dead, and the only way a living being could enter was either through magic or death. And not just any magic, but a powerful one. By any chance, if the magic turned weak, the person did not survive.
“Fates!” I gasped, almost unable to breathe that I could have lost her. “That’s why it happened. Your entire body went cold and numb, as if you were…gone. She almost took you.”
I found my self-control wearing thin at the bubbling rage rising within my chest. But when Maeve’s soft hands pressed against my chest, the anger somewhat settled. “She’s just got inside my head, that’s it,” she assured. “The rest, I believe, was magic. She told me that because I have the ancient magic of a psychic in my veins and when coupled with the werewolf venom, she was able to pull me for a fraction of time.”
I shook my head vehemently and disapproved of that theory. “No. It’s not possible.”
“What?”
“Every witch would need a strong talisman to perform a magic you described to be able to pull someone into their version of reality,” I explained. “In Ametrine’s case, it was her village. Maybe the werewolf venom did weaken you, but she could not have gotten a hold of you without a talisman.”
Maeve’s forehead creased with confusion and the slightest worry. “I don’t have a talisman or anything akin to that. Are you absolutely sure about it?”
“My knowledge of witchcraft is limited,” I agreed with a slow nod. “But there are some fundamental things I am quite aware of. The power of the witches is not what it used to be a hundred years ago, but fundamental things are seldom altered.”
She nodded, pressing my forehead as I slowly took her hand and kissed the back. Even the merest of her touch calmed the wolf in me and helped me think rationally. Back in my mind, I knew I have to outlearn about Ametrine before she would start more trouble than I could ever stop.
“The particular talisman is the last of my worry,” I mumbled more to myself.
“What are you saying?”
When I looked at Maeve, her serene face regained some of her natural colors and was no longer the ghostly pale I feared. A loose wayward hair framed the side as I gently tucked it behind. “If that ancient witch was desperate enough to drag you with her, it means she is willing to cross any line it takes.” I looked into her, keeping the tightest possible control over my tone so my beloved mate could understand that I meant every word, that this was no inflated promise I was making. “I am not losing you, Maeve. Not at least to a hundred years old, half-dead immortal witch. So if I have to cross the lines to keep you safe, I will.”
Maeve simply smiled but did not seem to be at a loss of words. It was her eyes that shone with bright possibilities I hardly understood.
“Why are you smiling, woman?” I asked with a subtle frowning, as my wolf failed to read her.
Maeve threw her arms around my neck and rested her dark head against the chest. I swore I could hear my heart racing with her proximity. And for an ethereal moment, I envisioned my entire life in that frame of a second. “I am smiling because that’s all I can do right now. And also because I have a crazy shifter werewolf as a man in my life. The beast I am in love with.” Her head snapped up, resting the chin against her chest. “I trust you, Xan. I trust you to keep me safe from everything evil that we know of,” she breathed with such conviction I swelled with love and pride from within.
“I will,” I promised and sealed with a kiss on her forehead. *I have to*.
“Fates!” I sighed tiredly. “Are we really going to have an ironic love life?”
“Why?”
“The Goddess led me to you after an eternity and in such a way that I didn't even know that you were my mate.” I recalled how I warred with the wolf inside my head every moment of every day as I fought against the notion of a human mate. The smell, the voice, the pain…everything about her made me restless. And when I had accepted my fate, a new danger lurked around our happiness. “The very night I marked you, you passed out and scared the living daylights out of me. If these isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is.”
Maeve reached out to caress my face with the gentlest of touches. “Have you ever wondered if your life would have been easier if you had a wolf for a mate, not a human?”
“I did and I could perfectly imagine how that life would have been.”
“Really?” She asked softly.
My answering nod was small but firm. “Yes. I would have been the alpha, as always, and the she-wolf would have been the Luna of my pack. And that’s it. Life would not have been half as beautiful as fulfilling like the way I feel when I am holding you. Like now.” My hands wound tighter around her. “I would have led a normal shifter life, just without the eternal bliss.”
She laughed softly, shaking her head. “You clearly love me too damn much.”
“You have made it impossible not to love you,” I confessed. “Even though I am pretty sure you have made me question my sanity more times than I can count, but I’d still choose you. I’d choose you a thousand times over, Maeve.”
Yes, I could have weathered any storm as long as she would let me hold her the way I was holding her now.
The silence that ensued between us as a pure rapture. In my arms, I held the woman who was mine in every sense of the way and the perfect mate for my wolf. Maeve might not have been the one who could turn, but she was the only one my wolf agreed to.
It was my mate’s soft voice that cut through the quietness of the room. “I have heard from others that the power of marking was a strong one—I just did not know how much until all that I could remember about my life was you. There was silence and darkness, and I think it was only your love that tethered me to reality.”
The forever we were destined to live was not going to be an easy one. We would have to brave the odds and win the wars to come, but when has love ever been easy?
“I hope so, my love,” I told her. “My wolf would rather die than let anything happen to you. And now that I have claimed you, marked you and made you mine, we have a forever to go on.”
Maeve imprisoned my gaze and spilled her earnest words, “You are not the only one who marked me, Xander. I marked you too.” As if to accentuate, her palms pressed tighter on my chest once again. “And I chose you. Our souls are that of beasts of the dark. But right now, we need some answers to survive if we are to survive the threats against us.”
“I have only one name on my mind…” I was about to say before she beat me to it.
“Esmeralda.”