It was him.
Zakkai.
My Quandary Blood mate.
“You had better be right about this,” I muttered to the white-haired male standing in the place Aflora had just stood thirty minutes ago. Before Zakkai took her. Before I betrayed her in the worst way possible.
“How many times must you live the same history to believe my method?” Tadmir asked, his black eyes flickering with a millennium of secrets. “This is the only way. Even Kyros agrees, and he rarely agrees with anything.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” I admitted, pressing my palm to my heart.
“Sacrifices rarely do,” he replied softly. “But the outcome will prove our pain worthwhile. Trust me, Shadow.”
“The last time I trusted someone, I bit an Earth Fae, fell in love with her, and watched her destroy the world in seven different ways,” I said, recalling each version of our lifetimes together.
They all linked back to that pivotal moment in Kols’s suite when Aflora threatened to break the bonds. I’d been living the same reality over and over again, several different ways, all of them ending in war no matter what I did to avoid it.
So this time I gave Zakkai what he wanted—our mate.
Which had been the plan all along.
He was the reason I’d bitten Aflora, after all. He’d warned me she would be beautiful, that I would crave her, but that she wasn’t mine to take.
Yet I did this time.
Because she bit me and I couldn’t help but claim her in return.
I’d expected him to try to kill me after I told him, but instead, he’d shrugged and said it only empowered her more. Which was why I’d guided Zeph down a similar path, providing him with the opportunity to finish the bond with Aflora.
I knew the Council would convene to tell Kols the truth on our first break day—as they’d done every time during the last seven iterations of this sequence.
But unlike before, I hadn’t voiced discontent with Aflora and Zeph going to the village. However, I hadn’t counted on Zakkai’s interference—an error that had almost destroyed everything.
Only, it led to Zeph taking Aflora to the Human Realm and finishing the bond.
That left Kols, who, unfortunately, never took the opportunity to finish the mating before his duty to the source.
Thus leaving Aflora with only two of her anchors and a sadistic third mate.
“I hope it’s enough,” I whispered to myself. “I hope we can pull her back.”
“It’s never been just about her, Shadow,” Tadmir replied. “That’s the piece you’ve failed to see—her fate is tied to Zakkai. To win this war, and to ensure the future we both desire, she needs to convince him to take the appropriate path. That’s the key.”
“And there’s no going back this time,” I added.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Not without risking your memories and hers, and then we’ll be right back where we started when I first approached you about fate.”
That seemed so long ago now.
And yet…
“Has that happened before?” I asked him, curious just how many times he’d used his Paradox Fae abilities to yank us through the circle of time. The purple sword on his hip glinted at me, as if in agreement with my thought process.
“You’ll never know,” he replied, but by the gleam in his gaze, I suspected it had happened at least once.
Which explained my inexplicable connection to Aflora.
Our souls had linked many times before, just as she’d bonded Kols and Zeph to varying degrees. I’d witnessed some, but perhaps not all.