Ascension: Sins of Eden Part 37

It was the only reason that he could have been sucked into some creepy dark tornado and ended up in a forest that looked a h.e.l.l of a lot like home.

Someone s.h.i.+fted softly beside him.

Abel tensed all over and didn't immediately look to see who was next to him.

His whole body was telling him who had woken up alongside him in the forest, and he was afraid his senses were wrong. That the womanly scent drifting through the air didn't belong to his mate. That he was going to roll over and find out that he was still horribly alone.

He couldn't block out her tremulous voice.

"Abel?"

He looked. He had to look.

Rylie was propped over him on one arm, her blond hair falling in a sheet that spilled over a bed of dried pine needles. The wide eyes that gazed at him were the luminous gold of a full moon in autumn.

She reached for him with slender fingers, and he caught her wrist.

There were bones under the smooth skin. She was solid and real. Not a ghost or his imagination.

He didn't trust his sense of touch, so he jerked her hand toward him, running his nose along the inside of her arm as he inhaled her scent.

Rylie giggled and twitched when he brushed against her elbow joint. She'd always been ticklish there.

It was really her.

Words left him, but he didn't need words.

He rolled them, pinning her to the ground underneath him so that he could feel the full length of her body against his, all softness and curves and those d.a.m.n bony knees that dug into his hip.

Abel fisted her hair in both hands and kissed her with all of the pent up grief and regrets that had chased him through the long hours without her, and she tasted just as alive as she smelled. She responded exactly how he expected her to respond. That little shocked intake of air, like she was still surprised and thrilled by every kiss. The way her fingers immediately moved to the scars on his cheek, touching him where he hurt the most.

"Don't tell me if I've gone crazy," Abel mumbled against her lips. "I don't wanna know." He kissed her again, longer and slower, and Rylie clung to him just as desperately.

He didn't know how long they held each other. Long enough that it started to get brighter. Long enough that the birds started moving back into the nearby trees, even though smart wildlife had a tendency to avoid Alpha werewolves.

Abel came up for air eventually, just so he could stare at her. Rylie looked embarra.s.sed by the scrutiny.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm better than fine. I feel great."

"I know about Abram and Seth." It came out of him before he could think better of saying it. Rylie's eyes widened, but he didn't let her talk. "I don't care. If you think that means that you can leave me or something, just because the kid's not mine, then I'm gonna tell you right now that I don't care, he's mine even if he isn't mine, and I'm not going to f.u.c.king let you go anywhere again, no matter what you-"

"Abel. Stop it." She caught his face in both of her hands. "I love you." She kissed him firmly.

"Yeah, you better," Abel said.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You're sure as h.e.l.l not."

"Good. Since we've got that settled." Another giggle escaped her. "I think there are ants crawling on me."

He let her sit up. She was wearing one of those white sundresses that drove him crazy, and there were, in fact, ants crawling down the back of it. He plucked them off.

Then he swept her off her feet into another hug, burying his face in her hair.

So much had happened since she died. He felt like he should tell her all about the demon armies, and the wolf spirits, and the end of the world. All of that felt like a distant nightmare now that he had Rylie in his arms while the forest swayed around them, though. He didn't really want to remember any of it.

"Abram's gay, by the way," he said instead.

Rylie pushed herself against his chest and looked at him. "What?"

"Yeah. He's with Levi."

"Levi?"

"He's still mine," Abel said stubbornly. "I'm gonna be his daddy the right way now, whatever it takes. We've got a second chance. We're going to do this right. If I can deal with Nash as my son-in-law, I'll figure out a way to deal with f.u.c.king Levi."

"Honey, the world just ended," Rylie said. "I think we've got bigger problems than who Abram is dating." A pause. "Ugh, but Levi? Really?"

At least they agreed on that.

"Speaking of the world ending," Abel said, eyeballing the forest around them. It didn't look like the end of the world. In fact, it looked like the first beautiful morning he'd seen in months.

"It was Elise." She giggled wetly, wiping her wrist over her eyes. "She's G.o.d now, Abel. She saved us. She saved all of us."

How could Rylie know that? She had been dead.

That sounded like bulls.h.i.+t to him anyway. Some demon couldn't become G.o.d.

But hey, if that's what Rylie wanted to believe, he was fine with it. He would have agreed with her if she told him that the trees were made with toothpicks and cotton b.a.l.l.s.

"Wait," he said. "What do you mean, she saved all of us?"

Rylie stepped up to the edge of the rocks, gazing down at the valley below with a huge grin.

"All of us," she said.

He stood over her shoulder to see what had her smiling.

The werewolf sanctuary was spread below them, just as it had been before the Breaking. It looked like spring. The waterfall was roaring with snowmelt, the lake strained at its banks, the fields were filled with flowers in full bloom. The cottages were all cute and perfect and intact, even some of the ones that had been seriously damaged in the winter that had followed all the ash fall.

And the streets were filled with pack.

They were going to be as happy to see Rylie alive as Abel was. Okay, not as happy-she was his mate, she was everything to him-but he still wanted to show off.

"Come on," he said, starting to drag her down the hill.

"Wait," Rylie said. "There's something I was waiting to tell you. I wish I hadn't waited, but I didn't know that I was going to get-well, you know. I thought I had more time. And now I realize, we just don't know, and... Anyway, I guess you should just feel this."

She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her navel.

There was motion underneath his palm. Something inside her belly was kicking.

Shocked, Abel jerked back.

His first thought was that Rylie had been infected by a demon or something. Like she was about to tell him that she had come back to life just to die again. Then he realized that there was a much more obvious, much less stupid reason for her stomach to move.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Abel said.

Rylie's smile was nervous. "Surprised?"

He wasn't surprised. He was f.u.c.king floored.

"This one's mine?" he asked. Seemed like a stupid question, considering he and Rylie had been together for ages, but he'd been pretty sure about Abram too.

"Yours," she said firmly.

He'd meant to take her down to the sanctuary immediately, to share the good news with everyone, but this news was too good to have to share.

A laugh erupted from him, and he picked her up in a hug, swinging her around and around. Rylie laughed, too. The sound filled the trees and made those birds fly away again and Abel didn't care about anything, because everything was perfect.

His baby. His mate.

They really were saved.

The last thing that Seth Wilder remembered was dying. He remembered every millimeter of his body becoming consumed by ichor, especially the instant that his lungs had begun to turn to stone and lost the ability to expand.

He also remembered Rylie's expression as she watched his every organ fail.

That was the last thing he remembered.

So he was kind of confused when he woke up in bed, at home in the werewolf sanctuary, with no sense of time pa.s.sing and no sensation of pain.

Seth opened his eyes.

He was resting on his side in bed. His arm was curled underneath the pillow under his head. The fitted sheet on his mattress was crisp and white, making it easy for them to bleach their linens when they got dirty, as they so often did in a sanctuary of werewolves.

The blue light of early morning streamed through the window. It was cracked so that he could smell fresh pine and hear the waterfall rus.h.i.+ng outside.

Sunrise was creeping up on him even though it had been dark when he died.

"Rylie," Seth said, pus.h.i.+ng himself upright. He was alone in the bedroom. And it wasn't actually his bedroom, for that matter. He was in one of the vacant guest cottages.

He lifted the sheets to look down at himself. He was wearing the outfit he had died in, but it was whole, undamaged. Just like the body underneath it. There was no cut in his s.h.i.+rt where Elise's sword had sliced through him and cut into his guts.

A cry outside the window had him on his feet in an instant. He flung the shutters open and looked outside.

The pack was streaming out of the other cottages onto the street. Pyper, Trevin, and Crystal were nearest-familiar faces that he felt exhilarated to see. He'd left the sanctuary never intending to see any of those faces again, but any thoughts he'd had about leaving suddenly seemed stupid.

Everyone looked to be celebrating outside. Pointing up at the pristine blue sky, the trees, the cottages. Hugging each other and crying. Lifting their hands as if in prayer. Spinning around in the streets.

Seth emerged from the front door of the cottage, blinking in the growing light. The sun peeked through a pair of trees on the ridge to s.h.i.+ne on the step where he stood.

Almost instantly, the street went silent.

He felt a momentary thrill of fear until he realized that everyone had gone quiet because they were looking at him.

The near-identical stunned expressions would have been kind of funny had they not been aimed at him.

Trevin managed to speak first. "Seth?"

And then the pack was surging forward to drag him into the street, and everyone was trying to touch him, hug him, patting him on the back.

Seth was overwhelmed. He tried to laugh, but he couldn't seem to get it out. "I think I missed something," he said, shaking hands with a werewolf named Michael, who had never shown any interest in him before.

"You were dead, man," Trevin said. "We had a funeral. We practically had a parade!"

"The amount of crying was embarra.s.sing." Crystal was sobbing as she said it, though she quickly scrubbed the tears off of her cheeks.

Seth definitely hadn't concocted those memories of dying, unless the entire pack had been taken by ma.s.s hysteria.

Elise really had killed him.

"Oh my G.o.d," Trevin said, looking over Seth's shoulder.

He turned. Rylie and Abel were coming down the trail from the mountain. Even though Seth's last memory was of Rylie, he still felt like he hadn't seen her in so long-not just weeks or months, but years. An entire lifetime.

She spotted him among the pack, and her jaw dropped.

Seth shoved his way free of the werewolves and met her halfway. Rylie tackled him. He engulfed her in his arms, holding her as tightly as he possibly could.

He remembered everything now. Not just dying, but being in a place beyond death, and having Rylie with him. He wasn't sure how to describe it. He just knew that she had died, too, and that they had both been given second chances. That it was a miracle for either of them to be there, right in that moment.

He also knew that it had something to do with Elise.

If he strained hard enough, he could almost remember sitting down for a lengthy conversation with Elise and that witch boyfriend of hers, James. Rylie might have been there, too. Seth couldn't remember where they had that conversation. He couldn't even remember when they would have had the conversation.

The harder he tried to remember that conversation, the faster it slipped away.

It didn't seem to matter.

"f.u.c.k, man," Abel said, and Seth grabbed his brother by the arm, dragging him toward them. They embraced tightly. His brother smelled awful, like he always did, but Seth was thrilled to deal with it.

All those old grudges between them were meaningless now. The fights that had divided them, and the resentment that had driven Seth away.

None of that mattered anymore. He was alive. He was safe.

He was home.