Heart of Stone - Book 1: Fighting Fate

Chewing on her thoughts, Gwen looked away and put the car back into gear and pressed down on the accelerator. The gravel crunched under the tires as they crawled along the single lane once more.

Aubree waited, sucking air into her lungs. She opened the window to let in some fresh air. It felt like the space around her was shrinking, the walls and the frame pressing into her like a compactor, crushing her, breaking her down. The fresh air opened the space up a bit, blowing loose strands of hair from her face as she inhaled the smell of the woods around them.

This was crazy. Everything was beyond insane—it was absurd! Stone couldn’t be Gwen’s father. He had to be only a few years older than her. And Aubree couldn’t be the reincarnation of his soulmate. It was impossible!

When Gwen finally spoke, Aubree couldn’t believe her ears.

“Age and time are about as meaningless to us as the distance between stars and galaxies in the universe. No one knows exactly how far away they are, nor can they even remotely conceive the distance that separates us from them. So what may seem as old to you is meaningless to us.”

Aubree forced more air into her lungs as she listened to Gwen’s words and trying to wrap her head around them. She didn’t sound like the Gwen she knew. Gwen didn’t talk like this.

Gwen continued, keeping her eyes on the road. “We live until we are killed, and the only way to kill us is by decapitation or ripping our limbs off one by one—a slower, more brutal death.”

She paused, chewing on her bottom lip as her eyes continued to focus on the road ahead.

Aubree stared at her, too stunned to say anything. Only two thoughts continued to circulate around her head over and over. Holy shit, and what the fuck?

“My mother died about a hundred years ago—before the first World War,” Gwen said. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Papa has never been the same since.”

Aubree continued to gape at her, her head still swirling. A new thought tugged on her mind, making her wince, but she didn’t trust her voice to utter the question. Could she accept whatever answer Gwen gave her? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know and was afraid to ask.

Gwen heaved a sigh, as if giving in and deciding to let whatever thoughts that had been filling her mind come pouring out. “So, if you must know, my twin brother, Gavin, and I are about three hundred years old. Our birth names are actually from the tales of King Arthur because my mom loved to read. You might catch Papa calling me Guinevere and Gavin Gawain because those are our real names. We only adopted Gwen and Gavin after my mother’s death to try and fit in more with humans. Times change so fast now, we grapple to keep up with the advances in technology.”

She took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. “If my brother, Arthur, was still alive, he’d be four hundred now. My mother would have been...” she trailed off. “Mamaw would have been around six hundred if she was still alive. Papa is about eight hundred.”

Aubree felt like she’d been punched in the gut and the wind knocked out of her. Her eyes widened as she gasped for air.

This wasn’t possible.

He wasn’t just old. Stone was ancient!

She hung her head in her hands. This was too much for her to handle. This had to be a joke. Some sick, twisted joke, but why? Why would Gwen tell her this? It couldn’t be true.

Betrayal and fear ensnared her heart and she whimpered as she curled up in her seat. It was too much for her to bear. Her heart couldn’t handle anymore. She had just gotten engaged, been dragged through Hell in the grips of a vampire, had her heart ripped to shreds when she kissed Stone, and now she was being fed outlandish claims that somehow involved her and threw her life upside-down.

She tried to push Gwen away, to block her words out, but Gwen’s words continued to pour over her.

“You’re, what, twenty-four? Twenty-five?” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “You’re still a pup, not even mature enough to shift.”

“Pup?” Aubree managed to choke out.

“Don’t freak out on me now. This is the truth,” Gwen said. “This is what Papa should have told you on the terrace, but I understand why he didn’t, so I can’t blame him.”

Aubree squeezed her eyes shut to block out her words. She couldn’t take any more. Why was Gwen doing this to her? Why wouldn’t she stop?

Gwen took a deep breath, gathering courage into her lungs. “We are a rare breed of lycanthropes, or lycans for short. Similar to your tales of werewolves and such but... stronger, faster, and nearly immortal, but not quite. We’re like a step down from gods. Our species originated thousands of years ago—”

“Stop. Please, stop,” Aubree said, finally finding her voice as she shook her head. “Do you hear yourself?”

“I’m only telling you what you need to know,” Gwen said. Her eyes pleaded with her as her voice softened. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but you have to understand how important soulmates are to lycans, and why it puts your life in so much danger.”

Gwen’s gaze turned from Aubree to the road again. “Our purpose is to protect humans from vampires. As a result, vampires have been trying to eliminate our species by targeting and killing lycan mates, usually females because they are slightly weaker than their male counterparts. We can only reproduce offspring with our mates, and no one else. Our reproductive cycles are dependent on full lunar eclipses. We cannot go into heat any other time. Our pregnancies—”

“Please, stop,” Aubree begged again, clutching her head.

“But this is important, Aubree,” Gwen insisted. “Soulmates are more important than simply reproduction and maintenance of our species. They are the fulfillment of our souls. The Goddess gave us this wonderful gift—”

“Seriously,” Aubree said. “You lost me when you told me Stone was your father. Just stop talking right now, okay?”

Swallowing, Gwen closed her mouth and focused her attention on the road.

Squeezing her eyes shut again, Aubree turned away from Gwen and tried to focus on her breathing. She couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs. She willed her heart to slow its frenzied pace. It ached thinking about Stone and Gwen in this new light. If any of what she’d been told today was true, then they’d all been keeping secrets from her since she first met them. She wasn’t ready to hear them all now, if ever.

How was any of it possible? How could Stone, an eight-hundred-year-old lycan, be her soulmate? How could she be the reincarnation of his former wife?

Everything was too unbelievable and she didn’t know how she was supposed to wrap her head around it.

Time dragged on. Even after Gwen pulled onto a paved road, Aubree kept to herself, refusing to even look at Gwen. She watched as the clock on the dashboard changed to six, then seven.

Eventually, she began to relax as her heart rate slowed to a normal pace, but she couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling she had now.

Gwen and Stone weren’t human. Not only were they not human, but they were somewhat immortal, a kind of werewolf that was beyond her own imagination and the world as she knew it. Not only that, but she was somehow linked to them and because of that, vampires were after her.

She wanted to go back home. Go back to the life she knew, the life she loved, the life that was simple and free. Curl up on her bed with Whiskey and hold her puppy tightly to her chest.

This would change everything now.

Stone was her soulmate. As much as she wanted to deny that and didn’t know what exactly that entailed, she knew she felt something towards him. Just thinking about him, a bittersweet twang plucked at her heart.

She wanted to hate him. Wanted to scream in his face, punch him in the nose, and stab him in the heart for all the pain and confusion he was putting her through.

He ruined her life.

She was so happy with Dan before he showed up. Everything made sense then. Everything was as it should be. She graduated from college, got a job, moved in with her boyfriend, got engaged, and should be on the road to her happily ever after.

Now, she had vampires looking for her, werewolves protecting her, an eight-hundred-year-old claiming to be her soulmate, and nothing making sense anymore.

She was at a fork in the road now. To the left was the life she knew, the life she had dreamed to live, but now a sense of darkness and danger shrouded it. To the right was a mystery, and just as frightening as the left.

No matter which path she took, there would be danger to her life.

She buried her face in her hands as she screamed in silence.