Forever in the Past and Forever in the Future

Chapter 18

I wait as patiently as I can for Lenora to finish giving Kas a hug. She finally lets her go and kisses her on the cheek.

"I mean it. No more scaring me," she wags her finger

at Kas.

"I promise, Lenora. No more scaring you," Kas smiles back with a nod before turning to me. She takes her hand out of mine and brushes her fingers on the side of my face.

"All I want to do is pull you into my lap and hold you all night, Baby, but I need you to tell us about your vision before you forget. Can you do that?"

"Yeah b-but," she looks at me with watery eyes, "Can you tell me if James is okay? Was that real or part of my vision?"

"It was real, Kas. Don't worry, he'll recover. We can take you to the hospital wing to see him tomorrow. Okay?" Lenora squeezes her hand in reassurance.

Kas nods, looking at her hands for a moment. She collects herself so she can concentrate. When she's ready, she takes a ragged breath and tells us about what she saw.

"I think I saw some of the people who kidnapped me. There was a woman that looked just like Lenora, but maybe she was a little older? Or something about her seemed old, even though she looked young. She knew my name. She called me lokaste. There was also a woman with dreadlocks and red eyes. She mind linked me, but it wasn't a real mind link. I could actually see her words in my mind."

Kas squeezes her eyes closed for a minute, then opens her eyes and looks at the nightstand. She grabs her journal and pen and scribbles something down on a page.

'Essai dynatós. Empistéfsou ta énstiktá sou.'

"That's what I saw," Lenora and I trade a confused look. Kas has never remembered this much detail from a vision before, and this message in a foreign language is pretty specific. She only knows the little bit of Spanish that Marco has taught her.

"Looks like Greek. I will see if Musu can translate it," Lenora takes a picture of the page with her phone and sends it to Musu. "So then, um, I think I had a vision inside my vision?" a confused look crosses Kas's face, "but I-I'm pretty sure it was the past. Not the future, like it usually is. It seems like it was a past life, but not one I already knew about. I was fighting alongside the woman with red eyes in an intense war. We knew each other, and she sacrificed herself for me, Bronx. She threw herself at charging werewolves. I could feel her connection disappear when-," her voice trails off. She looks like if she tries to finish, it might make her cry.

Kas absentmindedly rubs the heel of her hand over her sternum while she talks. Her eyes aren't really fixed on any one point in the room.

"Connection? Like a mate bond?" I ask as gently as possible, but in reality, I'm feeling a tinge of jealousy that Kas could have had a different mate. Even if it was in a different lifetime.

"No, not like a mate bond. It was more like something connected our essences to each other," her voice is soft, "She said something else in that language, but I understood it in English."

"So, she was someone special to you? What did she say?" Lenora asks, smoothing Kas's partially dry hair. "Yeah, I think she was important to me. She told me she would always be there for me and when she died, it hurt so bad. It made me have this huge burst of energy come out of my body. I felt like a bomb was exploding out of me. And when I looked around, everything was...well, it was all gone. As far as I could see, everyone and everything was destroyed. Burned and flattened. I think it was because of the energy that came out of me. I don't know. I-I just don't know."

She finally looks me in the eye. The floodgates are about to burst. She held it together long enough to tell us about her vision, but now she needs my support. I pull her into my lap and lean my head on top of hers. As soon as I fold my arms around her, she begins to bawl. Between her sobs, she says she didn't mean to hurt James. She doesn't want to hurt anyone. We all know that. It was an accident, but we can figure out how it happened later.

This isn't the Kas who has become stronger every day since she came to Blood River. She isn't the Luna and leader that everyone loves and respects. Right now, she is a scared nineteen-year-old girl, who grew up not being able to trust anyone around her. She was lonely, scared, and trying to hide from the world. It's the deep dark part of her we all wish never existed. I know it will never go away completely. It will always be a part of who she is, but if there is anything I can do to keep it at bay, I will do it. If it wasn't for our mate bond, how would she handle a situation like this? I don't know and I don't even want to think about it.

I hear Lenora's cell phone ding. She looks down at it and frowns.

"Is that Musu?"

"Yeah. Those words are Greek. It means 'You are strong. Trust your instincts'," she says with a knit brow as she looks at me rocking my sobbing little

mate.

I shrug my shoulders, and she shrugs back. Lenora gives Kas one last sympathetic look before kissing the top of her head and kissing my forehead.

"If you need me, just send a mind link. I'll be back in a heartbeat."

"Thanks, Leni," I mouth the words and watch her

leave.

I turn my attention back to Kas, thinking about the translation. Clearly, someone else has as much faith in her as I do. I just have to figure out who this mystery red eyed woman is.

Once Kas has calmed down, she pulls away from me slightly and gives me a pleading look.

"What's wrong, Baby?" I caress her face, hoping I can fix whatever's wrong.

"Bronx, what if the red-eyed woman is a prisoner, too? What if she wasn't allowed to talk to me, so she had to send that message in my head?"

"Well, typically prisoners aren't allowed to be around other prisoners, unless they have developed Stockholm Syndrome. Then the captors would want them to convince the newer prisoner to stay and become a sympathiser too."

She looks at me with a little shock on her face.

"H-how do you know that?"

"Ahh, don't worry about it," I brush off her question. I don't need her to know that Milo and Reggie deal with those sorts of sorts of things all the time in their covert ops division of MasonCo. 1

"Well, we need to find out who she is, Bronx. If she needs help, we need to help her," Kas pleads.

"Okay, we can regroup with everyone tomorrow and see what we can do with the information we have. Don't get your hopes up, Kas. We don't have much to go on, but we will try our best. I promise," I nod at her with a smile.

She gives a small sigh, but she understands my position.

"Now, how about you get a nap before dinner? When you wake up, you can decide if you want to go downstairs or eat up here. You had a pretty big burst of energy right before you woke up. There is no way you're not worn out. I really want you to take it easy and not push yourself. And before you argue, everyone will understand if you don't go downstairs tonight. The whole pack loves you and wants you to take care of yourself. Alright?"

"Okay. Bronx, do you think Delilah is going to hate me?" she frowns as she wraps her arms around my arm and leans against it.

"Delilah could never hate you, Kas. You know that. I do think we will need to give James and Marco some time off, though. Lenora said Marco is pretty shaken up and you know how Marco is, he has nerves of steel."

She nods again. I can feel her sorrow and guilt. I really just want to sit here for the rest of the day and hold her, but I have a couple things to take care of. Specifically, the carpet just outside the bedroom door. "Baby, I have to get the maintenance staff to come up and take care of the carpet. I'm not going anywhere. I will be right out in the living room. If you need me, just yell. Okay? I really don't want you to go out there until the carpet has been removed though. It's pretty

gross."

"More gross than raw rabbits?" she smiles, trying to lighten up the mood a little. 1

I chuckle, "Yeah, Baby. More gross than raw rabbits."