Reborn (Shadow Beast Shifters Book 3)

When Gaster left to find ingredients for his spell, I spent my time pacing, stressing, and filling Sam in on the information she’d missed.

“The Shadow Beast?” she whisper-screamed, before shutting her mouth with a snap. She shook her head. “It’s too insane to even think about. I don’t understand how you lived this life, and it was all taken from you.”

“Gaster was very light on the details when it came to that,” I said, thinking hard enough to hurt myself, “and I’m guessing it’s due to the fact that he wasn’t there for a lot of the big shit that happened. I bet he doesn’t want to give me any false information.”

“Hence why this memory reversal is important enough to risk death, right?”

She seemed unsure. I couldn’t blame her, but like our goblin friend, she didn’t try to talk me out of it. We were all adults capable of making our own decisions, and it was nice that I didn’t have to explain my reasoning to them. They got it. And I sensed that both of them would have made the same decision.

By the time Gaster returned, Sam and I had salvaged twenty books, the mostly undamaged tomes which appeared to be about one of the great fae wars, were stacked neatly nearby. “Oh, thank you,” Gaster cried, hurrying up, his arms full of parchment and jars. “It’s beyond devastating what we’ve lost here. Priceless knowledge from ten worlds and thousands of years.”

No lie, that almost made me throw up. Shadow Beast had a lot to answer for, even if he hadn’t been quite in his right mind when it had happened.

“Now, are you sure?” Gaster checked one last time as he started to spread out his items on the ground.

“I’m ready,” I said with conviction.

I really was because the alternative was walking away from this world without all of the answers I’d sought and returning to Torin and Torma. Hard freaking pass, people.

“I’m going to need you to lie in this circle,” Gaster said, and I realized that in mere seconds, he’d managed to trace out a very complex-looking circle of images and symbols in white chalk. “This is called a spell sphere,” he explained, “and it will protect you and us from whatever”—he cleared his throat—“might emerge in the destruction of this bind on your memories.”

Ominous, but not surprising. Gaster didn’t strike me as a being prone to hysterics, and there was no hiding the genuine worry in his voice as he spoke about this procedure. The spell sphere was an excellent choice.

Sam reached out and grabbed my hand as I moved past. “You’ve got this,” she whispered. “I know whatever is thrown your way, you’ll catch it and throw it back even harder.”

I returned her squeeze. “Thank you.”

Our eyes met, and while she looked worried, the worry was considerably less than the unwavering confidence in her gaze. She thought I could do this, and I was determined to prove her right.

When I was ready, I stretched out in the circle, finding it the perfect size for me. A tingle of power zapped over my skin, fast, like electricity. Gaster continued to sketch images around me, and as he closed in the final sections of the spell sphere, the energy settled across me.

“The sphere is complete,” Gaster said, his voice muffled, like a literal barrier existed between us. “Brace yourself, Mera Callahan.”

I closed my eyes and held on for dear life, digging my fingers into the ground. There was little traction, but I still felt like it was an anchor, keeping me in place. Gaster started to chant, the words growing in volume until they echoed throughout the library.

The chant entered my brain, spinning and building in power and volume. Eventually, when my head felt like it might explode and I was on the brink of screaming, Gaster’s final word chimed over me like a chord.

A chord that grew deeper, my body vibrating with it, as if every one of my cells was bouncing and picking up speed. My body left the ground, the spell sphere the only thing preventing me from drifting off completely.

“Hold on, Mera!” Sam shouted as the shaking got worse. “You’re almost finished.”

Trusting that she knew something I didn’t, I closed my eyes tighter and stopped fearing the unknown. I gave myself into the spell and allowed it to do its job. The vibration increased until my brain was a jumble. I couldn’t remember who I was, where I was, or why I was even there. But I definitely remembered how to scream.

When the pain grew greater than I could manage, screams burst up from my chest and out of my mouth, going on for hours, days, weeks. A pain beyond pain. A broken mind and body. Lines of light shattered through and around me as that shield across my memories was torn to pieces. And the pain went on.

Sobbing.

Screaming.

Lost. Alone.

Shadow… Shadow… Shadow.

Where was Shadow?

My soul raged, in a way I had never felt before, eclipsing even the near complete destruction of the pain in my body. Shadow Beast. He was not my enemy, or the being who had stolen my memories.

He was my… everything.

Flames raged with me now as my power tore free from its cage, filling the sphere and coating my entire body. With this, the pain faded, and eventually, my screams stopped and I was finally at peace.

A gentle touch on my shoulder shook me from the darkness, and as Gaster said my name, I jerked up in a rush, my head pounding like a jackhammer as more memories were freed.

“You made it through,” Gaster said, continuing to keep his voice low, “and your memories will return as soon as your brain heals.”

As a shifter, my brain injury should have healed up in seconds, but, apparently, whatever had been done to me went much deeper than usual. It took at least ten minutes for the pounding to stop, and as I finally lifted my head and looked around, the destruction I saw hit me on a level that only in this moment I could truly understand.

“My library.” I gasped, and then I was sobbing, my hands coming up to cover my eyes as I tried to suck in deep breaths. When I looked up to Gaster, his expression was as broken as I felt. “I missed you,” I rasped. “I forgot you.”

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me, holding on with about ten times the strength you’d expect him to have. “I missed you too, Mera. But we’ll figure out how to fix it.”

The memories continued to return, mostly in jagged images, and I had to work through them slowly because the rush was overwhelming.

“We were in the Shadow Realm,” I murmured, “and we’d just defeated Ixana, Shadow’s mate, who was the one to start the entire series of events two thousand years ago…” My words died off as I found the final key to my story. The final betrayer.

“It was Dannie,” I whispered. “Dannie is Shadow’s mom, and a goddess born of the Nexus. She tried to save us. She ate a powerful stone from Faerie so that Ixana couldn’t use it, but the power corrupted her. Changed her. It turned her into this phoenix-goddess hybrid obsessed with keeping the balance. To her, that meant I needed to go back to the shifters and be the alpha-mate.”

The more I spoke about it, the clearer the memories grew. I quickly repeated everything to Sam so she was following along as well.

“A goddess,” she gasped. “A goddess who’ll still be determined to keep this balance? What are we going to do?”

I knew what I needed to do. What I needed, period. My pack. My real one.

The flutter in my chest burst to life, but this time, there was no fear or confusion that followed. Dr. Google had been wrong; it was no heart attack. I was feeling my bond with Angel. And the itching on my palm in the exact same spot I used to have a purplish mark, was for Midnight, my bonded mist. I’d been feeling my pack, who were missing out there somewhere in the system of worlds.

“Where’re Shadow, Angel, Simone, and Midnight?” I asked in a rush. Simone had been in the library, so her memory had likely been spared, but the rest of them had been in the Shadow Realm with me. I scrambled to my feet. “Gaster, please, you have to tell me where they are.”

He opened his hands, his face wreathed in devastation. “The only one whose whereabouts I know for sure is Inky. He’s clearly been guarding that hallway from Earth to the Shadow Realm the entire time.”

Like he’d called him, the mist zoomed down, and this time, when I saw him, the feeling of being followed by an ominous cloud of scary was gone. It was my Inky.

It wrapped around me, and I hugged it as close as I could. There was no real substance, but it felt like we made contact. “Inky, buddy.” I sobbed. “Oh, gods, how did I forget you? Do you remember everything? Spark once if you do.”

Pulling away from me, it swelled up larger and sparked twice.

“Okay, dammit.” Even the mists were affected. Freaking Dannie and her overachieving. “But you clearly knew I wasn’t a threat because you let me through the doorway.”

He sparked once.

It was starting to make sense now. “Inky and Midnight are connected to Shadow and me, so they were lost in the spell, just the same as we were.”

I’d been feeling a sense of dread since I’d woken up in Torin’s bed, and while some of it had to do with that slimy bastard, so much more of it was because of Dannie. Because of what she had done to me and all of my pack.

“I have to find Shadow.”

It was a need filling me up until I might burst from it.

Gaster shook his head. “That’s not a good idea, Mera. He destroyed the library and all of the doors from here. The master is a true beast, and… what if you’re also destroyed in his anger?”

These were the parts of my story Gaster didn’t know because he hadn’t been there.

“Shadow will not destroy me,” I said with confidence. “Firstly, I’m stronger than you think. I was born of the Nexus… a similar being to Dannie. I’m a match for Shadow.”

In more ways than one. Every touch and kiss—our first kiss—burned like a bright light of memory in my mind. Every single moment that had been stolen from me.

“And secondly, I believe he left the hallway to Earth unbroken for a very specific reason, whether he realized it or not. I am the one being who can bring him back.”

Gaster held my gaze, but he didn’t argue. He nodded, like it all made sense.

“You are the key,” he said. “Thank the gods you didn’t fall into life back in Torma.”

That was when the real truth of what had happened hit me hard. I had all the context now, the memories, the history. “How could Dannie do this?” I whispered, trying to hold tears back. “She knew what my pack did to me. She fucking knew. And she sent me back to them. Back to Torin. If I hadn’t trusted my instincts…”

I trailed off at the horror of what might have happened to me if I’d listened to Jaxson and all the others. I would have fallen into bed with the alpha and never known what had been stolen from me.

“The sunburst stone is no ordinary faerie stone,” Gaster told me, reaching out to take my hand in his. “Very few could have survived being close to it, let alone taking it into their essence. Corruption was really the only ending for Dannie’s story, and I fear that as the stone has time to really root itself into her power, her views on the ‘balance’ will only grow worse.”

In a way, Dannie was a victim here as well, but unless she was willing to repent her ways, she was also the enemy. An enemy I needed my pack to deal with.

“Will you help me track the beast down now?”

“Yes,” Gaster said. “Your points are very valid, and I think the thing he raged about losing was you. You’re the one who can bring him back to us.”

“Damn right,” I said.

I’d lost a lot in my life, and what Dannie had done to me topped all of that, but I’d been given a second chance. A chance I would not waste.

For starters, no more pretending I wasn’t in love with the Shadow Beast.

Desperately, desperately in love.

A beast I had forgotten in my head but never in my heart. I knew now that Shadow was the main reason Torin had always felt like a spoiled, selfish, weak, petulant brat.

Shadow Beast was anything but weak.

He was worthy beyond all others, and it was time that I tracked him down… and made that bastard repair my library.

Right after he fucked me silly.

No lie, my heart and my vagina fluttered at the very thought.