Redefined Love Affair: Web of Hearts and Souls #10 (See Book 4)

Copyright © 2010 Jamie Magee

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

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EDGE SERIES READING ORDER

Alphas Rise

Dark Lure

Sacred Betrayal 

Risen Lovers

Fall of Kings

Queens Rise

Stolen Son

Disloyal Souls

Aftermath

COMBINED WEB OF HEARTS AND SOULS READING ORDER:

Insight

Embody

Image

Whispers of the Damned

Witness

Vital

Vindicate

Synergy

Enflame

Redefined

Rivulet

Imperial

Blakeshire

Derive

Emanate

Exaltation*

Disavow

The Witches

Revolt

Scorched Souls

*If you are a fan of Adult Paranormal Edge can be read with the Web of Hearts, before of after Exaltation--the stories share the same characters.

INSIGHT READING ORDER:

Insight

Embody

Image

Vital

Vindicate

Enflame

Rivulet

Imperial

Blakeshire (Drake's Story)

Emanate

Exaltation

Disavow

SEE READING ORDER:

Whispers of the Damned 

Witness of a Broken Heart

Synergy of Souls

Redefined Love Affair 

Derive (Aden's Beginning)

A Lovers Revolt 

Scorched Souls

CONTEMPORARY NOVELS

Deploy

Disengaged

Impulsion

Friction

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter One

It’s not supposed to feel like this. I mean, all your life you struggle for independence, to be able to make your own decisions, to break free from the restrictions and guidelines of your parents, and the moment you get just that, you don’t want it. You want to hear your mom tell you what step to take next. You want to look into her eyes and see approval, direction. You want to feel that protection.

What I feel now is the last thing I dreamed I would feel each time Draven and I’d plotted our escape as we grew up side by side. I wanted my parents. I wanted to know that they were safe. That whatever I’d gotten myself into could be undone. That somewhere in the midst of a past I can’t remember and a future I could not comprehend, I would find myself.

Draven and I’d been alone in his guest room for almost half an hour now. We hadn’t said much. He had continued to sway me side to side, humming slightly. Every once in a while I would feel his body tense and glance up at him to see his jaw locked and his eyes closed tightly. For no reason, out of nowhere he squeezed his arms around me so tight that I couldn’t breathe.

Are you okay? I asked as I gasped under the pressure.

Instantly, he let his arms fall loose as he moved to the bed and sat down, burying his face in his hands.

No, you’re not, I mumbled as I sat down next to him.

I saw him dare to smile as his hands fell. I can’t hide anything from you, he murmured.

Right, so tell me what’s going on inside your head, I whispered as I gently wrapped my arm around him.

He moved his head slowly from side to side. I just keep seeing me pull that light from you…I keep seeing what you went through in the realm with Aden.

My stomach sank instantly as I felt the guilt for a memory that had remained dormant in my mind, the time that Aden and I’d innocently fallen asleep side-by-side years ago. The fight that Draven and Aden had because of it. That realm, all the lingering insinuations that this family had given about Aden and me knowing each other before this life, seemed to add salt to the wounds that I’d forgotten were open.

Listen to me, I said as I turned his face so he would look at me. We’re here now. Landen and Willow got you through that. I know they will get you through whatever hunger happens to surface again… My thoughts cascaded over the memory of them giving him all of that glowing energy. For all you know, that craving is forever gone now.

I know, he whispered as he stole a gentle kiss from my lips. I just see what happened before, how I lost control, how once I lost it I couldn't get it back. I was a prisoner in this body, watching it destroy the one thing that gives me reason to fight this curse… His angry eyes poured over me. It was too much - the fear in your eyes, fear of me.

My eyes glassed over as I felt the emotions of that last fight, how I pushed him, how dangerous that was.

It was my fault. Madison told me not to let you turn anger into passion, to make you mad and teach you that you could be mad and still have control…I don’t think she was wrong. I just think I pushed too hard in a place and time that I shouldn’t have.

He looked away from me. If you hadn’t pushed me there, I never would have believed that it would’ve been possible. He hung his head as his long fingers massaged his eyes. I still don’t think it’s possible to do on my own…if it weren’t for Landen and Willow, the energy they pushed into me, we wouldn’t be sitting here.

And if it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t be. Everything we do comes right back to us. Karma is the law in every dimension. We can debate this for hours, but by you helping them, you helped yourself; therefore, you did find a way to stop, to stare the biggest fear you had in the eye and find a win.

His eyes rose to meet mine as he smiled weakly. You’re too good, Charlie. I just told you that your parents are missing, and in the middle of that you are still worried about me, about us.

"Because us is me. We are one in the same. I know together we’ll figure this out."

And I know...that if something happens to me, Aden will protect you, he said in a placid tone laced with jealousy as he looked away from me.

Stop it.

As a familiar disdain filled his eyes, he grumbled, Stop what?

That memory is mine again - that fight, what the three of us went through a few years ago. I hear and feel every mean word we said to each other. I’m not going to let you take something that we have gotten over, something that only happened because I was jet-lagged from my flight, and hide behind it, assume that it doesn’t matter what happens to you, that your brother will be there to pick up the pieces.

I’d rather him pick them up than Silas, he said as he leaned back on his arms and prepared to watch me unravel in my anger.

Nobody is picking up anything because you are not going anywhere. Do you hear me! I said louder than I needed to as I pushed him back before pinning his arms above his head. I don’t care what wall is knocked down in Aden’s head, I don’t care if someone takes my memory. This is now. This is forever. Stop pushing me away. I don’t deserve it!

His eyes were hungry - not for a light, but for a promise that I was his, that no matter what we went through, my heart - which was thundering in my chest - belonged to him. As if he could hear it racing, he placed his hand there.

It’s yours, I whispered. Always has been. My voice trailed off for no reason.

I felt light-headed, on the verge of fainting. As a cold sweat washed over me, I leaned back and slowly crawled off him. As I stood, I swayed. It felt like I was being washed away...vanishing.

Charlie? Draven said as he sat up.

My mind started to fire random images at me. I glanced to the window, to the fields of flowers I could see framed there. My vision flashed like a camera. Everything turned white every other instant, and that fading feeling kept washing over me.

Voices, sounds from a past I knew and a past I didn’t know echoed around me. I raised my hands to my ears, trying to stop it. I squinted my eyes closed, thinking I could stop the flashing visions, but that just made them clearer.

I saw a place like Chara but it was clearly not that land. The air was regal, yet simple. All of nature was vibrant and seemed to pulse with the vibration of the universe.

There was a home, a beautiful, eccentric home that rested near several more. It was mine, but it couldn’t be; it just couldn’t be. I saw my parents there. My mother was not some uptight businesswoman, but an advocate like my father.

I saw an entire life with them in that place, one that held more time than my youth would have supplied. My mind was at war. I kept trying to push myself back to the life that was real, to the childhood I did have.

I focused on the apartment in New York, but I found it furnished far differently than my mother had ever had it decorated. I focused on her office, but there was another man behind her desk. The bookshelf with all my photos and her trinkets now held images of someone else’s family.

Frantically, my mind rushed to my home in Salem. It was there, but it was far more secluded than I had left it. A large brick wall was around the property. Each room had white sheets covering the furniture.

I could hear Draven saying my name, his hand rushing over my skin as my knees buckled. Slowly, we fell beside the bed.

Tell me you’re real, I breathed, terrified that his memory would vanish next, that the life I had with him would wash away in this psychotic break I was having.

Look at me! he demanded as if he had said it a thousand times before.

I focused on the emerald green-laced-with-black eyes that had always been my strength. I heard his voice whisper eternal promises to me and I grasped each word as if it were a lifeline.

My mind jerked me backward, forcing my eyes closed once again as I heard my mother’s voice whisper to me across a distant wind. I saw a different side of her, someone that would come into my room hours after I’d fallen asleep and caress my hair, my back, as I dreamed. When I spoke random words in my sleep, she would smile and tears would glass over her eyes.

You are precious, my little one. Your blood is regal, and you will prevail, she would whisper to me.

I started to breathe rapidly in and out. Tell me you’re real, I said to Draven, trying to ensure that my lifeline to reality was still there.

I felt him squeeze my arms, my wrists, and my waist. When his hands reached for my thighs, my soul seized, anchored by the vibrant touch of his passionate embrace.

For no reason, he hissed and tensed. My eyes flew open. A cold sweat was across his brow. One glance to my skin told me that I was glowing, that the glow was reaching for him, that a part of him, his essence - which was dimmer, ashy - was reaching for that light. At some points on our skin, the essence of each of us was winding together.

Draven was tense, hard as a rock, only breathing through a locked jaw - which sounded more like a fierce growl.

Don’t let me go, I pleaded weakly, thinking that my life was being erased before my eyes.

From pure exhaustion, my eyes fell closed and my neck went limp. I felt Draven turn me in his lap as he wrapped his legs and arms around me as tightly as he could.

My head fell back against his shoulder.

Right here, Charlie...right here.

His lips kissed my neck. I felt him holding back, putting a wall up, doing his best to hold on to me and not cross a dangerous line. His embrace was so strong that it was trembling.

His lips moved up my neck, leaving a warm, humming sensation as a trail. Just under my ear, he whispered, I’ve got you.

My mind jerked me back again. My house in Salem was there again. My mother had a few less lines around her eyes. So did Nana and Madison’s parents. They were sitting in a circle in the den of my house with Evan, with the ghost of Draven’s mom and my father. Candles were glowing in the room as they all closed their eyes and a sphere of energy formed between them. In that energy, they were watching the lives of people I didn’t know - at least not all of them. Landen and Willow’s images were there, along with others and ours. Others that I was sure I knew but had not met would often flash into view. It was like they were watching the universe move warriors into place.

They aged in that circle, telling me this was done more than once. I even saw Kara and her husband sitting with them at some point. I heard the discussions on whether or not the path they had chosen was correct. They all adamantly agreed that not only should we remain in the dark, but that they had to play their role in not pushing thoughts into our minds, that we had to find our own way.

I saw my mother sealing the house. I saw her leave an envelope on the kitchen table with my name on it. A key was lying across it, and in an instant I could see what it went to: a safe in the floor of our basement.

I saw my father appear, put his hand in hers, and a light surround them. The vision didn’t stop. I saw them running through darkness. I could feel the dead all around them. They charged through a dark, mystic forest, and right before they reached what could only be a waterfall, I heard a boy scream, Charlie!

Both of my parents stopped and looked back at this boy, who looked so much like my father. My mother hugged him tighter than she had ever hugged me. My father squeezed his shoulder, then all at once that waterfall, the light around it, reached out and absorbed my parents.

I screamed through gritted teeth, feeling that fading wave wash over me. I didn’t feel the closing of one chapter of my life. I felt the beginning of a new book...my life had been redefined.

Before I could grieve or find anger for this supernatural light that had taken my parents, that home—the one that looked like it belonged in Chara but surely didn’t - came into view. My mind was trying to tell me that they were home, that they had honored my plea and set me free to live in the one place they would not have let their worst enemy reside in.

My chest was rising and falling deeply, but the rapid speed was faltering. Draven had leaned my head back and was staring into me, watching my hell. Hopefully, he understood it far better than I did. I was exhausted and confused.

I was so close to sleep and it scared me. I feared falling asleep and waking up in a new world, a world where I could not go home to my mom and sister, where I could not hear my father’s music guiding me.

Draven’s legs and arms loosened from around me. I reached to clutch his legs in a firm protest that he couldn’t let me go, that he was my anchor, the one and only anchor to my sanity.

Shh, he whispered in that hypnotic voice of his. I’m going to get that key.

No, I moaned as I tried to focus so I could do it myself, so I could see it all myself.

He adjusted one of my hands around his wrist and the other one against my stomach. Play me a song.

No guitar, I muttered.

Pretend. Play in your mind, he said just before he kissed my temple.

I didn’t move.

Play, he said, moving his wrist.

I started to move my fingers against his skin to a song my father had taught me to play.

Beautiful. That sounds beautiful. Keep playing for me, Charlie, he said as his hands slowly moved across my thighs. When he grew still, I knew he was seeing, that he had left to chase the visions that had assaulted my mind.

Safely in his embrace, my heart began to beat slower. The shock was wearing off. Fear was trying to settle, but I didn’t have time to be afraid. I kept trying to hold on to memories.

I could see it all both ways, I really could. I could see the life of seclusion that was lived by my family, and I could see a life that was lived center stage for the world to see. My parents as the famed musician and the powerful executive.

Something was telling me that the memory of my parents had been erased from the world I grew up in; that was my gut feeling. Nothing was robbing my memories again. They were showing me that they had gone…home.

Kara. I kept trying to see Kara in my mind. I heard conversations that I wasn’t around to hear in the recent past: Kara and Mom preparing to part for a short time, the two of them planning on making it seem sudden, rushed even, like they had no choice, no time.

Why? Why would they do that to me? Why would they not let me say goodbye the right way? I should be furious. If I was, then at least that anger would help me find a way to change this - but I was numb, numb with shock. I had to figure out how true this was, how real this was. If I knew where Kara was, I would move to her right now, but conveniently she was traveling to some unknown place with her husband.

Just as my breath came back to a slow rise and fall as I finished playing that phantom song against Draven’s skin, I felt him move. His arms went around my waist, pulling me against his firm body as he leaned his head toward my neck and slowly kissed the soft skin there before whispering, I’ve got you.

I held his arms against me, squinting my eyes closed, seeing flashes of that mental break in my mind.

This dimension is making me lose my mind. We have to get out of here.

He sat something down next to us then raised his hands to my heart. This is home. Right here inside you is home.

I felt a sharp pain in my chest as he said that. As if he could sense it, he pressed harder against my skin as his legs drew upward, surrounding me with his body.

None of that can be real. It’s Bianca. She is messing with my head again.

It was real.

I swallowed the tears that were encasing my throat. You just saw Nana. Within this hour, you saw her talking to the police at my house. This is not real.

I went there. The brick wall around your home is in place, and everything is covered - the house was sealed. I took the note and got what she left in the safe, then moved to my house. It’s late there. Nana was asleep, sound asleep. I went to wake her and ask her what the hell was going on, then Mom appeared.

Hearing the crack in his voice, I leaned back to look into his eyes.

I heard her voice in my mind. She told me not to ask questions that they could not answer, that they had fought hard to untwist our past and lead us to today. She said we had to see our way to the end, that we would know and understand our path when we needed to, that they could not and would not explain what they knew, for their words had been sealed.

Sealed by who?

Creator. I don’t know what that means, but I heard that and I saw an astounding respect in her eyes.

This isn’t real. None of this is real.

You’re in shock. It’s okay; it’s just shock. We have been through a lot in the last seventy-two hours.

A lot? My entire life was just erased, I bit out.

Not for you, not for us, but for those that would search for us.

My family does not have the power to cover up something like this, to create something like this. Neither does yours. It’s not real...it’s just not.

His eyes filled with an unstated wonder as I saw him reflecting the images of that eccentric home that my mind had opened up for me.

I don’t know what heaven you fell from, but I’m glad that you are in the hell of my arms right now. I’m going to keep you safe, Charlie.

This is heaven, I said as I reached my hand for his face. My skin was cool against the heat of his.

He furrowed his brow in disbelief as he slowly moved closer to my lips. Very carefully, he let his frame mine. I felt my soul reach for his, my essence. He must have felt it, too, because a cool sweat came to his skin as he pulled away and hissed through his teeth, They have amped you up for sure.

What does that mean? I asked as I tried to turn in his arms, but he held me forward, my arms in place. It was obvious that he knew I wanted to touch him that I wanted to feel his skin against mine. I needed an escape. I needed to feel my heaven.

You’re glowing.

And you are in control.

Let’s keep it that way, he said as he pulled in a deep breath.

He reached for whatever he had set beside us in a vain attempt to distract me from his failing composure. I didn’t look away until I felt the weight of it in my lap. When I glanced down, I noticed the smell of cedar for the first time and saw a wooden block in my lap. I thought it was a box at first, but there was no way to open it. On the outside, there were carvings and four rings, and divided by a line were surrounding spears. Triangles were behind and around this image, and words were written across the side of it, words I could not read: ‘multa ceciderunt ut altius surgeren.’

That was the only thing in the safe. I checked for hidden doors, asked Mom if there was anything else. She said this would make us invincible.

A wooden block?

He shrugged as he let his head fall back on the bed, squinted his eyes closed, and breathed in deeply.

I leaned away, wanting to give him space, but his arms clutched me against him. I reached beside him for the letter with my name on it. When I opened it, there were seven very thin sheets of paper in it, so thin that you could see right through them.

She said the story is unwritten, that when we move forward words will come, Draven muttered as he stared at me from beneath hooded eyes. He was exhausted, too.

Seven pages...must mean it’s a short story. I guess humor was my only defense right now.

He smirked. After what we just saw our parents do across our childhood, I have a feeling that is no ordinary paper.

The paper was short, barely as long as my hand, and it had an odd texture to it that I could not place.

Seeing your dad and my mom sitting in some kind of meditation was the one thing that was telling me that this was not real.

I heard a laugh deep within his chest as he rushed his hand across my skin. Agreed. But then again, they have been married to ghosts for some time now.

"I don’t get the charade. I mean, for the world, sure, but for us? That is so wrong."

We’ll figure it out, he said, moving his hand more slowly against my skin now. He trusted himself, which made me feel safe.

A knock at the door made us both jump, but we caught our breath when we heard Madison and Aden bickering on the other side of the door.

Come in, Draven said with a husky voice, not bothering to move the way either of us were positioned.

Madison charged through the door. Where’s that ring? she bit out harshly before she figured out that we were entangled on the floor, looking like we had just been to hell and back.

Why? I asked weakly as she fell to her knees in front of us.

She shook her head no once, telling me it didn’t matter. It didn’t take any effort for me to ‘see’ her. She had just watched Drake arrive for dinner and was having a wicked panic attack - but like always,