Embrace of the Sandman by Ellis Leigh

Author:Ellis Leigh [Leigh, Ellis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781954702400
Publisher: Kinship Press

Chapter 11

The Message

Corbin and Beast spent the afternoon and evening at the cabin. Neither spoke about what had happened at the river, though the energy between them seemed off. It felt oddly weighty and filled with worry. Their laughter became less easy and frequent, and their conversations didn’t flow as smoothly. They also drank more dark whiskey than a normal, not-almost-dying afternoon required. The two men were shaken, for sure. Not that I could blame them. It wasn’t every day a specter of death tried to take your perfectly good soul just to piss off another specter of death. At least, not in their reality.

“The couch pulls out,” Corbin said, completely distracting me from the trees I had been peering at since before the sun had set. “It’s no trouble.”

My mate came through the door and onto the deck, his stride long and sure. His feet bare. He carried a plate of steaks and a set of tongs, heading directly for the grill he seemed to love presiding over. Beast came through the same door a minute later with a couple of jars of spices and two beers.

“Thanks, brother. I appreciate the hospitality.”

The two men chatted while Corbin cooked, exchanging words and jokes and seeming to all the world to be totally over what had happened at the river. To have finally shaken off the fear of almost dying. But I knew Corbin, knew the set of his shoulders and every possible tone of his voice. I knew the gravity of what he’d experienced weighed on him. I could feel the tension radiating from his body all the way across the deck. That man wasn’t over anything. Still.

“My mate would have loved it here,” Corbin said, practically out of the blue. I hadn’t been paying as much attention to his words until that point, had been focused on his body language and listening for cracks in his armor. Hearing him speak about me to someone else caught my attention.

“Margaret, right?” Beast asked, moving to lean on the railing as he watched Corbin nod. “Anyone ever call her Peggy?”

I growled, the sound not piercing the veil between the worlds, as Corbin began to laugh.

“People did, but she would tear them apart over it. She hated that nickname.”

“You don’t talk about her too much.”

Corbin’s grin faded, his smile slowly disappearing as his brow furrowed. “It never gets easier, you know? If I talk about her, that pain comes right back, just as hot and hard as the day she died. I’m able to hide from it better now, but it doesn’t disappear.”

If I still would have had a heart, it would have shattered right there on the deck. My poor mate. I took a single step forward, raising my arm as if to reach for him. Needing to soothe the tension I felt from him. “Corbin—”

“I can’t imagine losing Calla,” Beast said, his eyes going unfocused as he stared off into the woods. His words making me stop and realize that I had no way to interact with them.

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