*Lucas*
“Where is it? The thing didn’t just disappear on its own.” I muttered under my breath, crouching down on my hands and knees. I crawled around the base of the statue looking for the orb.
Cara and her guides assured us no one had been here in decades.
It had to be here.
Orbs didn’t just get up and walk away.
“Co on!” I growled and slamd my fists into the ground.
“It’s no use, Lucas. The orb isn’t here. The entire trip, it was for nothing.” Sasha’s voice was so soft and defeated.
“We can’t give up, Sasha. Then this trip really would be for nothing.” I continued to look around but I was starting to think she was right. There was no sign of the orb and no sign that anyone had been there.
“Lucas.”
Sighing, I got to my feet and slowly turned around. “Maybe it was never here.”
“Lucas!”
I whipped around toward Sasha, shadows closing in around her. She was being ripped away, disappearing right before my eyes.
“NO! Not again!” I launched myself across the room, holding a hand out to grab her.
Sasha reached for , panic and terror in her eyes. I wasn’t going to lose her again. I wasn’t going to let her go through all of that....
“Lucas,” she gasped.
My hand reached into the shadows for her and then, she was gone. The shadows were gone too.
“NO!” I yelled, my wolf howled in my head. I dropped to my knees, shaking my head over and over again. “No. No. No!”
How could I let her slip away? I was so close to her.... I promised myself I wasn’t going to take my eyes off of her, and then I got obsessed with finding that stupid orb.
This couldn’t be happening.
The image of that look in her eyes–desperate, panicked, terrified, enveloped my mind. She was counting on , and I let her down.
My chest tightened, and I felt like a vice gripped my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Gasping and sputtering, I tried to draw in a steady breath but I couldn’t. My vision blurred and my head beca distant and fuzzy.
Still, the mory of Sasha’s terror blazed in my mind like a strobe light.
I felt myself falling into nothing, an endless, black void.
***
“Sasha!” I sat bolt upright and reached into the air, grabbing at nothing.
Panting hard, my eyes shot around the room wildly. This wasn’t the temple. Where was I?
Imdiately, I recognized my desk and my dresser. I was back in my room in the Dark Realm.
The last thing I rembered was being in the Old Temple in the Light Realm and Sasha vanished.
For a mont, panic flooded .
“No, no, it’s okay,” I told myself. “She’ll be back. She always cos back after a day. I just need to get through this.”
Yawning, I sat up in bed.
“What are you talking about, baby?” A soft delicate hand touched my shoulder.
I froze and turned my head to see who the hell was in my bed with . I knew right away it wasn’t Sasha because of her voice.
Quinn sat up next to . Her hair was ruffled and she was naked under the sheet she had tucked around her torso.
“What the hell are you doing here!?”
I jumped off the bed. Realizing I was naked, I grabbed the nearest pair of boxers and threw them on.
“Get out, get out now!”
Quinn frowned, tears brimming her eyes.
“Lucas, what is going on? Why are you yelling at ?”
I glared at her. “You know very well what’s wrong. We broke up. You shouldn’t be here. Why are you here?”
“Broke up?” Quinn gasped. “What are you talking about? We just celebrated our anniversary last night.”
She reached for her neck and touched a golden chain with a bird pendant on it. Had I given that to her in this reality?
I put my hands on the sides of my head and shook it. What was going on? Every ti Sasha vanished things were strange for a day, but nothing like this had ever happened.
This wasn’t reliving so day that Quinn and I shared when we were together. It was a completely different life.
Sighing, I forced myself to calm down. I just needed to get through the day. Sasha would co back and everything would go back to normal.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well I guess... bad dreams.”
Quinn sniffled and hugged her knees to her chest. “You really scared , you know. I know you’re not really the commitnt type, but after two years, I thought we were passed all that.”
“Two years....”
“Who is Sasha, by the way?” Quinn swallowed her tears and her eyes glowed with jealousy.
“Who?” I had to play dumb. In this reality, Sasha probably didn’t exist, just like before.
“You called out to her a lot in your sleep. And then you freak out at . Should I be worried?”
I sighed heavily. As much as I wanted to shove Quinn out the door and tell her it was over all over again, I didn’t want to spend this day dealing with her drama. It would go a lot faster if I could just go to work and forget about ti. All I cared about was getting through the day and getting Sasha back.
“Look, I’ve got to get to work. We can talk about this tonight, I promise.”
Quinn got off the bed, still wrapped in the sheet, and headed into the bathroom. She slamd the door.
I winced. Oh yeah, this was fun. Dammit! I wish we’d found that second orb.
I got dressed and headed to the kitchen for breakfast.
“Yo, you and Quinn having a little lover’s quarrel?” Brady asked, grinning at .
“What?”
“I heard the two of you snipping at each other. You know, if you don’t take care of her, she’ll make your life a living hell.”
I scoffed and laughed humorlessly at his unintentional irony. “You have no idea.”
“You should be nicer to her. Treat a woman right, and she’ll love you all her life. Isn’t that right, baby?” Brady winked at Phoebe, who sat across from him at the kitchen table.
She was enjoying a large breakfast, but Brady appeared to be abstaining.
“I don’t know how the two of you do it. Last night it was all kisses, passion, and eternal bliss. This morning... bicker, bicker, bicker,” Phoebe said.
I cringed, thinking about what they might have heard the night before. I also didn’t like thinking about treating Quinn, or any woman other than Sasha, as the one I wanted to spend my life with.
I knew it wasn’t , not really, but that didn’t help.
Ironically, the constant ups and downs were why I broke up with Quinn in the first place. I never loved her enough to work through things or try to sort through our differences.
“If that’s all, I’m going to take my coffee and get to work.” I grabbed a mug and poured fresh coffee into it.
“Oh, I’m sure we will have more for you later.”
Brady and Phoebe giggled, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes.
Sohow, it comforted to know that in so realities, not everything changed.
Ignoring the two of them, I headed off to the work site. It was all I could do. If I stayed at ho, I’d obsess all day long.
There was a part of that wanted to run around looking for Sasha like I did last ti, but in all reality, I wouldn’t find her again.
In this reality, my work site was still the library. I went into my trailer office and looked over the plans, trying to get myself up to speed so no one would think I was off.
“Mr. Black, we’re just about to break ground. We need your final approval before we turn on the machines.”
A man wearing a “foreman” badge stuck his head in.
“I’ll be right there.”
The workers had set up a periter where they planned to break ground. I did a quick sweep over it and gave them approval.
The jackhamrs ca on, thundering and chattering as they dug into the hardened earth.
I stepped back and looked at the blueprints again.
Was this the sa reality I’d fallen into before? It didn’t feel like it. In that one, Quinn and I weren’t together, and I’d already stopped work at the library.
How many realities were there? Were they even real, or was it sothing created by magic to temporarily fill the ti gap while Sasha was missing?
“Sir!”
“Mr. Black! You’ve got to take a look at this.”
The jackhamrs stopped and everyone started to shout at . I groaned and rolled up the blueprints, handing them off to a male intern standing nearby.
This was too similar to how things started the last ti I dug up the library.
“What did you find?” I crossed the periter line and joined my workers at the hole they dug. Just underneath, I saw the outer wall of the temple. Last ti, the wall crumbled and....
“Everyone, get back!” I ordered.
We jumped out of the way, just in ti for the wall to give and the level ground we’d been standing on got sucked into the void.
“What the hell is going on?” the foreman shouted.
“Walk it off, everyone. This is a minor setback. I want you to tape off this area and call it for the day. Don’t let anyone on that topsoil until we get an archeological team here. I doubt the topsoil is stable.”
They quickly jumped to action at my orders.
Once the area was sealed off, I sent the workers ho. I called up the archeological team and reported the instance to King Xander, just like I was supposed to.
By the ti I got ho, I was just as exhausted as I had been the first ti I experienced this. Only tonight, I was even more worn out because I knew Quinn would be waiting for for an explanation I didn’t have.
I checked my watch for the ti and sighed with relief. Good, any second now, Sasha would return and our tiline and reality would be corrected.
I stopped outside the door and took a deep breath.
Three.
Two.
One.
Pushing the door open, I went inside. My relief faded instantly when I saw Quinn, pissed, standing in the living room.
“You’re late!”
I looked at my watch again, creasing my brow. I’d tid it all perfectly. Why hadn’t Sasha co back? Why was I still in this “wrong” world?
My heart sank. Did this an, Sasha wasn’t coming back?
Was she gone... for good?
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