Chapter 40: Trust Issues

Chapter 40: Trust Issues
Nora's Point of View

The attack of the survivors pummeled the Balance Child with savage strength, but instead of hurting her, the power seemed to pass through her small form. She lay motionless amidst the chaos, her expression more sad than afraid.

"Violence cannot heal violence," she stated softly. "It only creates deeper wounds."

But I barely heard her words. I was looking at Kai, who was reeling from the weight of Marcus's full unleashed memories. Over our mate bond, I could feel echoes of what he was experiencing - the crushing guilt, the horror of knowing fully what Marcus had done to me.

And then, I was remembering too. Not only the night I'd died, but all the years that had led up to it. Every instance when Marcus had appeared loving while secretly collaborating with Elena to tear me down.

Marcus served me tea when I was sick, knowing it had wolfsbane in it.

Marcus held me when pack members had been cold towards me, never telling me he'd ordered them to be.

M Marcus having sex with me as he plans to kill me.

The betrayal cut deeper than the poison. I'd trusted him without reservation, had given him all I had, and he'd used that trust to betray me.

"Nora," Kai screamed out, grabbing for me despite his own pain. "I'm not him. You know I'm not him."

But to stand and look at Marcus's memories slide across Kai's face, I felt the old fear creeping up. How could I ever trust a man who carried the soul of my murderer? How could I ever hand over my heart to a man who knew all of Marcus's tricks that he had used in order to deceive me?

"I know," I told him, but my voice broke with uncertainty. "I know you're different."

"Do you?" Kai's gold eyes were brimming with pain that was both his and Marcus's. "Because right now, I can feel his thoughts mingling with mine. I can feel his justifications for what he did, and some of them almost make sense."

The admission hit me like a body blow. If Kai could be swayed by Marcus's twisted logic, how long before he started making the same choices?

Through the mate bond, I could feel Kai's growing desperation as he saw that I was drifting away. But the bond itself was the cause of part of the issue. Marcus had used our original mate bond to manipulate and control me. What if this new bond was another ploy? 

"Please, Nora," Kai said, moving towards me. "Don't let what he did destroy what we have."

"What have we got here?" The words escaped a little more difficult than I'd intended. "A trauma bond? A crisis-forged bond? How do I know it's real and not an act of cosmic trickery?"

Everywhere I looked, the Council district was erupting into full-blown war as survivors fought back against cosmic entities. All my mind could focus on was the man in front of me who wore the face of the one I loved and had the soul of the one who destroyed me.

"Because I would choose you," Kai said matter-of-factly. "Not because of fate or mate bonds or universal forces. Because when I see you, I want someone worth choosing every day."

"Marcus said all the same things."

"Marcus lied. I am not."

"How do I know?" The words spilled from me, all the fear and uncertainty I'd been suppressing. "How do I know my own mind if I was so completely wrong about him?"

Kai stood still for a long time, and I could feel him struggling with Marcus's memories and his own strong need to convince me.

"You can't," he said finally.

The unexpected response cut short my loop of incredulity. "What?"

"You can't know. You can't trust your instincts in the first place. You don't know that I won't harm you." Kai's voice was even considering the cosmic chaos that enveloped us. "But that is not what trust really is."

"So what is it?"

"Trust is choosing to be vulnerable anyway. It's choosing that the possibility of love is more than the threat of betrayal." Kai held out his hand to me. "It's not about guarantees, Nora. It's about hope."

I looked at the extended hand, torn between extending mine and not wanting to make the same mistake twice.

"What if you change?" I asked. "What if Marcus's grip tightens with each day?"

"Then you'll stand with me and battle it. The way I'd stand with you and battle the fear and uncertainty that Elena's betrayal engendered." Kai's face was open to the world, showing nothing. "We'll mend our own wounds instead of brushing them off."

I felt the sincerity of his emotions through the mate bond. But I'd felt Marcus's sincerity too, when I'd believed it was genuine.

"I don't know how," I admitted. "I don't know how to trust."

"Neither do I," Kai replied. "Marcus's horror cancels out every leaderly impulse I have, every protective impulse. But maybe that's okay. Maybe we muddle through it together."

The Balance Child's voice broke into our conversation as she addressed the angry things that ringed us.

"Enough," she said to them, and to my astonishment, everyone remained quiet. Not out of duty, but because her hopelessness was so huge it made violence useless. "This is the very reason why the cycle continues. Someone gets hurt, and so they hurt someone, who hurts others back."

She looked at me and Kai. "Breaking the cycle requires someone to choose to trust and not fear, even when the fear seems justified."

"Easier for you to say," I replied. "You weren't murdered by someone you loved."

"Wasn't I?" The face of the child turned infinitely sad. "I'm the product of Elena's transformation and yours. I have the memory of all the betrayals, the pain, the reasons never to trust again."

"How do you do that, then?" I queried. "How do you choose hope over fear?"

"Because the alternative is to become what hurt me." The child gestured toward the survivors standing beside us, twisted by millennia of anger and pain. "They were once victims too. But they let their wounds mold them, and now they can do nothing but hurt again."

I looked at the survivor leader, seeing in its twisted face what I would become if I let wariness and fear dictate me.

"I don't want to be that," I whispered.

"Then don't," Kai said harshly. "Choose something else. Choose us."

I looked again at his extended hand. Holding it wouldn't guarantee anything. He might still hurt me. I might hurt him. We might both make terrible mistakes.

Or the other option was becoming monsters like the survivors - so haunted by things that we'd had before, we couldn't make anything new.

I extended and took his hand.

The moment our fingers touched, power flowed between us that had nothing to do with cosmic energies or mate bonds. It was the humble, revolutionary act of choosing trust over fear.

"Together," I said.

"Together," he said.

But as our new connection stabilized, the Balance Child twitched and staggered.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Elena rushed to her daughter.

"The survivors' attack," the child breathed. "It did nothing to me, but it hurt something else. Walls between worlds are growing weaker than the Convergence Eclipse should allow."

Gashes were appearing in space itself in the Council area. Not purposeful portals to other universes that Elena had created, but random tears that were letting random fragments of broken-up universes ooze through.

"How much time?" I demanded.

"Minutes," the child replied. "Maybe less."

The leader of the survivors laughed with celestial joy. "If we cannot get our realities restored, then every reality will disintegrate. Ideal justice."

But as chaos erupted around us, something impossible happened.

Flaws in reality were coalescing into words.

Words which made all individuals - survivors, cosmic entities, and mortals - stiffen with raw horror.

"THE AUTHOR AWAKENS."