Chapter 476: Guiding Question
"Why do you suppose alyko don’t experience mate bonds?" Neoma asked Maggie while they were sitting upstairs in the pack house under the skylight of the new renovation.
Sage was lying on his stomach on the floor reading a book when his feet stopped swinging in the air at the question. But he didn’t look up at the females who were talking.
"What makes you think that they don’t?" Maggie asked.
Neoma frowned. "That’s what everyone says. It’s a fact, isn’t it?"
"Well I don’t know if we can call it a fact," she replied. "Our Luna is alyko."
Neoma smiled. "She is special."
"She is, that’s definitely true. You know what I wonder?" Maggie asked, glancing down at Sage on the floor. "I wonder if August didn’t set off a kind of chain reaction with her presence."
"What do you mean?" Neoma asked.
Sage turned over on his side and leaned on his arm to look at Maggie. He was interested in what Maggie meant as well. She was on to something.
"Well, take the other alyko transporting back here from Zagan’s containment for example. And you returning to your old pack. That miraculous event happened after August arrived. It obviously was due to her presence. You all would have never been able to transport yourselves like that, and to think of how much dispersed energy was required to be concentrated enough to send all of you—every single one of you—to different places. It would be something just to have that happen to one individual. And yet it happened without August’s knowledge as if it were simply a reflex."
"Okay," Neoma said, pulling up her legs to tuck into her chest as she listened.
"After that happened, we have all noticed increased power... even Sage and I who weren’t moved off the island have experienced it. Isn’t that right, Sage?" She asked.
Sage nodded and sat up, setting his book to the side.
"You should have seen the way Sage shattered the holding cells that the rest of us were in with just the palm of his hand," she smiled at the pup. "Shattered isn’t even the word... dissolved. It was beautiful. Do you think you could have done that before?"
Sage shook his head.
"And I was able to make a portal to come back here," Neoma said softly with her eyes unfocused. She was back in that river again, the memory bright and vivid. "I was never able to do anything like that before."
Maggie hummed next to her.
"But mate bonds?" Neoma frowned, eyes focusing again and darting to where Maggie was sitting.
"You know, I never thought it sounded right to begin with," Maggie replied, "the idea that all alyko would be kept from a blessing like that. There are lycans who never find a mate and are happy without one," she shrugged. "A bond like that isn’t required to feel strongly for someone and to have them as your life partner. But to claim that no alyko would experience one... well honestly that’s just silly. And it sounds like a claim that was meant to keep us further separated from our lycan family."
Sage nodded and laid back down with his book, swinging his legs in the air once again.
"What makes you ask?" Maggie lifted a glass of water to her lips with the slightest hint of a smile, but Neoma didn’t notice. She was gazing into the air, lost in thought.
"I was just wondering," she sighed.
"You sigh like someone who is in love," Maggie smiled.
Neoma chuckled in surprise. "What? No."
"Are you sure?" Maggie asked.
There was an unmistakable warm glow in the Veiled around Neoma’s heart, but she didn’t point it out. It was an odd thing when those around you could see so much more than what you cared to reveal, and she didn’t want to make the girl self-conscious of it.
Neoma groaned. "I don’t know," she whispered, glancing back up at Maggie. "He’s already had a mate anyway. I wasn’t asking for me."
"What happened to his mate?" Maggie frowned.
"She was young... I don’t think she was even aware that Lucas was her mate," Neoma’s eyes went wide when she said his name aloud and she covered her face in her hands with a groan.
Maggie chuckled and patted her arm. "It’s okay, dear."
Neoma stayed hidden in her hands, trying to will the heat in her cheeks away. Why was she even discussing this at all? It was embarrassing. Why was she thinking of Lucas this way anyway when he had already lost a mate?
"Lucas," Maggie hummed. "That was a tragedy. I remember it. His female was so young."
"You knew about it?" Neoma asked, reappearing from behind her hands.
"Of course. I was close to Derek and Genevieve, Graeme and Greta’s parents. It was a heartbreaking loss for the pack. And Lucas felt it significantly more than the rest of us of course."
Neoma nodded somberly. She couldn’t even imagine going through the pain of something like that.
"There have been instances..." Maggie started and paused, wondering if she should say what was in her mind or not. She didn’t want to give Neoma false hope if it wasn’t as Maggie suspected.
Neoma’s brows knitted together as she watched Maggie hesitate.
"There have been instances, particularly when a mate is lost young like that... when the pair haven’t marked each other or mated... when the survivor is blessed with another," she said carefully.
"Another?" Neoma repeated, not immediately understanding.
"Another mate. You see, it’s like there is a... loose cord that was never tied. That beautiful unfulfilled desire and impulse to tie yourself to a mate is still there, very much alive after the first mate has passed. And if there is another who comes along, whose desire matches yours..." Maggie lifted her hands with a smile, as if the rest was obvious.
"What about destiny... the Goddess? That sounds like chance," Neoma said.
"Is chance not also destiny? Can we parse the two? We know this world is not black and white, Neoma. It is riddled with complexities that, even as alyko—even as fae—are far greater than what we could ever hope to understand. That is why sometimes it is wiser to follow your intuition than it is to attempt tidy boxes of logic. We simply cannot have all of the answers."
"I agree," Sage’s sweet voice rose from the floor. He felt the gazes of the females on him, and he closed his book and stood.
"There is a question that is bothering you," he said, walking over to where Neoma was staring at him in surprise. Sage did not waste his words. He did not speak often. He smiled and placed a hand on her shoulder. "There is a reason for that question. The question itself is guiding you."
Maggie’s eyes sparkled with delight as she watched the dawning of a revelation arrive in Neoma’s heart. If Neoma was looking for an answer to that guiding question Sage was referring to, it appeared she just received it.
