Page 11 of Her Eternal Mate

I had to go to the bay and see if the ship was sunk for good. I needed to confirm that there weren’t any more vampires. This obsession wouldn’t let me rest.

It wasn’t just obsession. That was the thing. It was intuition as well. The reason why I hadn’t been able to rest for the past week was not just because I was suffering from PTSD. Sure, I was suffering from it, which made a much more plausible explanation for my recent behavior, but that did not account for the whole of my behavior.

The real reason was that I could feel it in my gut that something was afoot. It was either the vampires or something else. My sixth sense could anticipate something happening. When I told this to Vincent, he laughed and said, “You know, you worry too much, Lexie. There’s nothing out there.”

And when I discussed this with Will, he said, “You and I have been through such tumultuousness that it feels strange to experience the calm after a storm. We’re so used to the calm before the storm that it’s uncanny for either of us to feel that nothing is wrong. Trust me, there’s nothing wrong whatsoever.

I got the same response from anyone I talked to in the pack. Even then, Will sent out scouts in the area around the commune to check and see if there was something or someone out there. But there was nothing.

That’s why I needed to go back and see for myself. And this is exactly why I couldn’t bring Will with me.

I traveled in my wolf form lightly and swiftly for hours until I reached the bay where I’d sunk the ship. The wreckage of the drowned ship was still there on the bottom of the ocean floor. I shifted into my human form and stood there at the end of the shore, looking into the water.

I had been there for no less than a minute when I noticed a shuffling sound coming from behind me. This was what my intuition had warned me about. The vampires were back. I turned around, fists raised, to confront whoever was standing there behind me, regretting the fact that I’d come here alone.

There was a shadow lurking behind the trees. It walked closer to me, growing taller and broader.

“Who are you? Reveal yourself!” I yelled from afar, stepping back. My feet got submerged in the high tide water as I stepped even further back.

And then, the moon shone on the silhouette of the man who had appeared from behind the thicket of trees, revealing that it was none other than Will.

“Will? How? What are you doing here?” I asked, completely perplexed.

***

We sat side by side at the edge of the shore, our feet in the water, looking out into the sea.

“When I sensed blackness coming from my bond, I got worried. I thought that maybe you had died. But then, it occurred to me that perhaps you were trying to be secretive. Or it could have been that you were far away. The latter was true. You were quite far for me to track you, but I still managed to do it by imploring the essence of our bond. I’ve gotten quite good at it, wouldn’t you think?” Will said.

“Considering that you tracked me across hundreds of miles, I’d say that you’re probably the foremost expert in tracking your mate down,” I said, feeling a little bit resigned and ashamed. I hadn’t wanted Will to wake up and discover that I was gone. I’d wanted for him to sleep through the night and never even notice that I was gone.

“I didn’t actually track you all the way. When the bond continued showing me pitch-black darkness, I thought, ‘What would Alexis do? Where would she go?’ And the first thing that came to my mind was this. You’d been saying that you thought there was something here all week. I should have listened then. I am sorry,” Will said.

“Even though I’ve looked at this wreckage, I still feel like there’s something lurking around,” I confessed my deepest emotions to him. “Don’t you feel the same?”

“I’ll tell you how I felt,” Will said calmly, putting his arm around my shoulders. “And this is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time. I just didn’t want to prematurely reveal it before it was a fully formed thought.”

“What is it?” I asked apprehensively.

“You know the entire story about me coming to America from Germany,” Will said.

“Of course. I’ve heard it from you dozens of times,” I said.

“Well, what if I told you that there was more to the story that I’ve never ever told anyone before?”

“Tell me.” I needed to hear this especially if it was related to how I was feeling right now. “And be sincere with me. You’ve always told me the truth. Tell me the truth now too.”

“Always. I promise,” Will said, then began. “Have you ever thought about why I had to move from Germany to America? It wasn’t something I’d just planned without giving it any thought. I could have moved to England or France, or even Sweden without any difficulty. After the war ended, all of those places where the Allied Forces had strongholds somewhat thrived, didn’t they? Look at those places now. They’re doing as well as America, if not more. And they were closer to Germany. So why, then, did I move all the to the other end of the world?”

“Why did you do it?” I asked. Now that I thought about it, why had he done that? It made much more sense to move anywhere closer. Even Iceland would have been closer than America.

“Other than Pearl Harbor, America was untouched by the war. There were no military establishments such as the ones that we’d seen in Germany and the rest of Europe. What I mean to say is there were no signs of war in America. Not a single sign. America had many other troubles back in those days, such as racism and the great political divide, but wherever I looked, I never saw any signs of battles. No bullet-riddled buildings, no military bunkers, nothing like that,” Will said.

“And what about everywhere else, like France and England?” I asked.

“All of those places were still recovering from the war. Signs of destruction, military outposts, people suffering from post-war poverty, injured soldiers, torn structures—everything reminded me of the war. We didn’t really call it PTSD back in the day, but that was what I felt when I kept seeing sign after sign of the war. I knew that I had to leave and escape somewhere that wasn’t touched by the war. Somewhere where I could keep my pack safe far, far away. I discovered that when I came to America, my PTSD started going away slowly, all because I’d changed the location and taken us somewhere safer.”

“I understand.”