With Everything I Am(39)

Standing by her mother was a tall, dignified man who looked like every man in this room, but most especially Callum. Standing by her father was the woman standing in front of her.

“Holy cow,” she whispered then she looked at the woman who, from the day her parents were married decades ago, to that very day in the cabin, appeared not to have aged a moment and announced the obvious, “Photos can be altered.”

“I’d known Cherise Mayfair Arlington for what seems forever,” Regan declared. “She was a dear friend.”

Oh no. This wasn’t fair.

“Don’t –” Sonia warned.

“She liked pink and dressed you up in it as often as she could,” Regan went on and Sonia’s heart slid up her throat when she heard these words.

“Don’t –” Sonia repeated but that one word sounded choked.

Regan interrupted her, “Lassiter liked blue and he detested pink –”

Sonia cut her off. “This isn’t even nice.”

It wasn’t nice, them using her parents against her.

Though what Regan said was true. Her father was always trying to talk her mother out of dressing her in pink and he was always buying clothes for her that were blue. It was a silly little argument that they bickered about good-naturedly the entire, albeit heartbreakingly short, life she’d led with them in it.

No one could know that from doing research on her.

Sonia had even forgotten it.

“You haven’t aged a day from that picture,” Sonia accused.

Regan took in a breath and replied, “Our people age slowly.”

She could say that again.

Regan moved slightly closer and pressed emotionally deeper. “Every Sunday, Lassiter made you pancakes in the shapes of stars.”

Sonia’s heart clutched.

Now, really. How did she know that?

No one could know that.

Except her father and mother and both of them were dead.

Sonia scuttled back on the bed, whispering, “Stop it.”

Regan’s voice grew sad and fond when she said, “Cherise told me your favorite book was The Giving Tree.”

“Stop.”

“She said she read it to you night after night.”

“Stop.”

“It was the only book you wanted to hear.”

Sonia felt the edge of the bed and halted, staring at the woman.

Her eyes had gone tawny.

And it hit her, belatedly, that that wasn’t natural, eyes that changed like that. No one’s eyes did that. It was one thing for the hue to change, say, if you were wearing a certain color. But for the color to change completely? To that attractive but inexplicable shade which was not from nature or any nature that Sonia knew?

And it wasn’t natural for dream men to come alive.

That didn’t happen. To anyone.

Ever.

Her gaze slid through the ensemble – all inordinately tall, all dark, all gorgeous, all with clear, intelligent eyes. Just like Waring last night.

Just like Callum.

Holy cow.

These people weren’t like her people.

These people were of a different culture. They belonged to a secret sect of society who lived alongside humans.

Her gaze moved to Callum who was watching her closely, the anger gone from his face replaced with something profoundly gentle.

“I know this is hard for you to take in but Callum and you have been linked through eternity, even before you both existed, even before you were cells in a womb,” Regan continued softly. “You’re destined for each other, connected to each other. It’s the way of our people. You’re lifemates and, Sonia, that’s a beautiful thing. Your mother and father were good friends to our people. They accepted us. They would have been so happy you were to be among us. So very happy. I promise you that, sweetheart.”

As Regan spoke, Sonia never took her eyes from Callum.

“I dreamed of you,” she whispered and watched as his body grew visibly taut. “Since I was a teenager, I dreamed of you.”

The others started moving away but neither she nor Callum moved a muscle.

Finally, he said softly, “You know me.”

“In my dreams, you’ve been coming to me for twenty years.”

“You know me,” he repeated.

Sonia nodded a jerky, frightened nod. “When I woke up the other day, I thought it was another dream.”

Vaguely she heard the backdoor close.

“Do you understand you’re mine?” he asked.

It was then that she did.

It sang through her soul. It made her feel whole again after being fragmented since a Christmas Eve thirty-one years ago.

No, it made her feel truly whole like she’d never felt in her life.

And, at the same exact time, it scared her senseless.

She swallowed.

Then she nodded again.

“You understand you’re my queen?”