Page 28 of Unforeseen Mate

Hayden sat on the end of the bed, watching her sleep. He had a decision to make and little time remaining in which to make it. Either he claimed her as his mate, or he allowed her to die. There was no in between, and in his mind, there was no choice.

CHAPTER 12

FALLON

Fallon felt as though she was swimming in a thick foggy soup. She was treading the liquid smoke, barely able to keep her head above water. Something kept grabbing at her legs, trying to catch an ankle and drag her to the bottom and drown her. Above her was a wolf-like figure with fur tipped in flames. Hayden. His name—her dream lover and rescuer—was Hayden and he was a hellhound. A creature even cryptozoologists had determined was nothing more than a myth.

But she knew better. She’d been seeing both creature and man in her dreams for months and then when she’d been kidnapped as part of a plan to force her friend Nora to kill someone, he’d rescued her. But being rescued felt a little bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. She was still dealing with things far beyond her control. She could recall every bounce of the boat as they’d fled Lundy Island and made their way to Swansea and finally to Anchorage.

They’d taken a helicopter from Anchorage to some place in the Alaska Range. She hated helicopters, but she’d been too out of it to make her feelings known. When she’d tried to raise an objection, Hayden had put his hand on her and that had calmedher. She’d noticed an ethereal glow around the rims of his eyes when he was angry or passionate.

Running down the dock on Lundy Island had been surreal. It too had felt like thickened fog—a substance that combined fog and gelatin. It was like walking in a corridor surrounded by a spongy cloudy substance. But they had been safe. It was only when they’d emerged that someone had been able to put a bullet in her. After that things had become a bit hazy.

Fallon had slept on and off for some time—how long she was not exactly sure, but she knew that Hayden had never left her. He might not have been within arm’s reach, but all she had to do was struggle or reach for him and he was there. There was a rightness about it that made it seem like they’d been together for a much longer time.

Dragons. There had been dragons, but then Hayden was a hellhound and there were all kinds of creatures able to shift from human to beast and back again at will. Even her best friend Nora was some kind of shifter. Hayden had called Nora a clouded leopard. Fallon thought she’d like to look them up to see what they looked like. Or perhaps she should just ask Nora to shift for her. Fallon wondered at the protocol around something like that. Did one just ask a friend to shift for her?

Something like a hand grasped her ankle and tried to pull her under. Hayden growled, grasped her waist and pulled her free. If he could have done that all along, why had he waited so long? He brought her up to eye level, watching her with an ambient glow in his eyes. He was every bit as ethereal and otherworldly as the dragon-shifter known as Abraham Strode had been.

Fallon was certain it said something about her that she didn’t mind that her dream lover existed in reality. In fact, that was rather nice. It should have bothered her that he was not entirely normal either, but it didn’t. She was fine with him being supernatural and not quite belonging to the real worldas she had once defined it. After all, part of her work was reconciling legend and myth with actual paleontological findings and evidence.

The part of her job she enjoyed the most was comparing natural to supernatural and finding where they converged. She was pretty sure a hellhound and a dragon-shifter qualified as supernatural. In order to do the work she did, and to be as good at it as she was, she had to be able to suspend her belief in only things she could put her hands on. ‘Believe in the rock,’ was something paleontologists were told over and over again. But if you couldn’t even see outside the rock, how could you imagine what waited to be discovered?

Besides, she was a great believer in the universe or powers that be or gods or whatever you wanted to call them speaking to her through a deck of cards. Granted, tarot decks were different from poker decks, but she held both in great fascination and esteem. And the messages she received from spirits via tarot had come true all too many times.

Others might not believe in dragon-shifters or hellhounds, but she’d seen both; seen both in action and knew them to be real.

“Come back to me, Fallon,” Hayden entreated her as he stood leaning against a stone kitchen island, a bottle of an expensive microbrew in his hand. “You have a choice to make. I cannot save you if you will not consent to join with me.”

“Join with you?” she asked, realizing that they were both naked. She could accept that her clothes seemed to disappear in dreams, but now it seemed they were disappearing in real life as well.

He nodded and set the bottle on the island. “We are destined to be together. It may make no sense to you and it will not be easy for you, but if you choose to live with me as my mate, I can save you. Those from the other side want to take you from me.”

“So, my choices are you or hell?”

Hayden looked confused, then angry, then resigned. “No. Your choice is between me and heaven.”

“So, heaven actually exists?”

“It does, but it’s not nearly as much fun as I am.”

Fallon smiled. Hayden was rather engaging when he wanted to be. He could also be exasperating, demanding and annoying. The idea of being with him had great appeal, but she also knew it would be much harder than simply letting go of this life and drifting to heaven.

“Can’t you join me in heaven?”

Hayden shook his head. “Hellhound. My destination for eternity is in the name of our kind, although what most humans perceive as Hell is what we call the Underworld; it’s not as awful as you might think. Generally, hellhounds are cast either into one of the two upper levels. Only occasionally are we damned to the realm reserved for those who are truly violent. I don’t think any hellhound has ever been sent to the lowest level of the Underworld.”

“Which is?”

“Treachery. There is no greater sin than to betray those who trust you. Better to kill them outright than allow them to die from your treachery.”

“That’s rather Old Testament.”

He smiled. “That’s why it’s old—it’s been around longer. You need to decide, Fallon. The choice is yours, but you will be bound by it for eternity. If you choose me, you will cast your fate with mine.”

“And if I choose heaven, I don’t get you.”

“And you die. You cease to exist on the mortal plane. You will ascend and be able to see those you once loved, but never touch them or share their presence until their time on Earth is done.”

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