“I guess my soul just knew you belonged to me,” Dane whispered back.
“Fine,” Grey huffed. He turned his glare on Baer. “But I’m not answering any questions about whether someone is your soul mate or not.”
Baer nodded. “Yeah, it’s probably better that I don’t know.”
Dane looked at Baer and Grey, chewing on his bottom lip. Grey brought up a good point. The odds of finding a person’s one soul mate was…well, they were really fucking bad. He and Clay had been stupidly lucky to find each other, and then even luckier that they’d been willing to fight for each other. What were the chances Grey or Baer would be that lucky?
Clay’s arm tightened around Dane’s shoulders, pulling him tighter against Clay’s chest. He dipped his head and pressed his forehead to his temple. The love pouring off this man made it easier to breathe. The swell of sadness retreated, and Dane found himself reveling in the reassurance he was receiving from Clay.
Maybe he could do something about this for the Circle with the help of his new healing powers. If the goddesses could call all the members of the Circle to the plantation house, maybe he could find some spell or charm or…something to call their mates here. Just a little something to tip the odds in their favor.
Clay brushed a kiss across his cheekbone before straightening in the seat to look at his two brothers. “Finding our mates is one thing I believe will help us turn this war in our favor, but we need to do more.” Clay paused, and his brows gathered over his nose while his full lips turned down in a frown. Dane frowned as well at the feeling of deep worry and pain that came from his lover.
“What are you thinking?” Baer asked when the silence stretched for several seconds so that only the crackling of the wood and the song of the crickets could be heard. Beyond the patio, lightning bugs rose up from the grass, breaking up the growing darkness with their call for mates.
“We’re coming up short every time we face the pestilents,” Clay said. His voice was hard. He shifted, pulling his arm from around Dane to rest his forearms on his knees. “Before we got our powers, found out who we are, we ran. That’s normal. But we’ve got our powers now and we’re still running. If it hadn’t been for Dane, Baer would be dead now. We’re not winning often enough against them.”
“We’ve managed to kill a number of them. The car chase from Savannah and the group at the dilapidated barn,” Grey pointed out.
“Yes, but how many of them are there?”
Baer snorted. “Yeah, if there were only six of them like there are only six Circle members, this would be over already.”
“And if they hadn’t figured it out before, they have to realize that we’re all gathering here, close to Savannah.” Grey shifted in his chair, placing his left ankle on his right knee. “That means the last three Weavers are in even greater danger as they get closer to the plantation house. We don’t know who they are or when they’re arriving. We can’t protect them. If one or more of them dies…”
Grey didn’t need to finish the sentence. Clay and Jo had been clear in their explanation of who the Weavers were. They all had to wait for the dead Weaver’s soul to be reborn and for the person to make the trek to the plantation house. That could be another twenty to thirty years. Maybe not a long time since they were all supposedly immortal, but it gave the pestilents a lot of shots to take out the remaining Circle members.
“The pestilents are going to become more aggressive, more brazen in their attacks as time goes by,” Baer said. “Three of us already have our powers. They can’t risk more of the Weavers making it to the plantation.”
“Staying alive and keeping our heads down while we wait for the rest of the Weavers to show up isn’t going to be enough anymore.”
Baer leaned forward and winced slightly when he put pressure on the area of the healed wound. Something in Dane itched to cross the distance between them and try to heal Baer further, but Baer smiled at him and shook his head as if he could guess what he was thinking. “What are you suggesting?” he asked when he turned his attention to Clay.
“We need to take the fight to them. Undermine them. Scatter them to the wind a bit. It’ll buy us some breathing room, hopefully allowing the remaining Weavers to reach us safely.”
Dane’s heart skipped a beat at Clay’s words. His brain was well-versed in how dangerous Clay’s life, all the lives of the Weavers, was. He knew the future held bloody battles and the high risk of death, but Dane’s heart was screaming in denial all the same. He’d lost Katie and his son. He couldn’t lose Clay. Not when they’d just found each other. In the binding ceremony, the aunts had used words like immortality and forever. Shared power. How could he lose Clay so soon?