Ascension - Book Eight - Man x Man

Chapter 30

My questions are left unanswered as the car collects us from the half way house, a sort of home for at risk youth. When I'd first met the young girl, she's struck me as someone of privilege given her clothes and her phone, yet she'd proven once again that one must look beyond appearances. 

"Thank you." I tell her, eyeing the shivering lycan beside me. She looks back from the front seat, uncomfortable being in the small vehicle, it was likely she'd never ridden in a car much as I hadn't. Most people in this time rode by tram or walked, using the clunky individually driven vehicles had many reasons for causing people to question their mortality. 

Carefully, I reach over to place my hand on Verando's shoulder. "We're going to get you some help."

The way he braces causes me to crumble just a bit on the inside. I'm not sure if he worried if I'd strike him or was uncomfortable with the idea of being touched. I could empathize with both as I retract my hand. "I'm a lot warmer than you, if you want to come over here."

Wrinkling his nose, he shrugs closer to the door, untrusting. "How did you know about Marisol? How did you know my name?"

Pulling my lips into a thin line, I consider this. How much could I reveal? How much were we already damaging the past? I knew better than to suggest his father sending me. "Would you believe me if I told you it would be very dangerous for me to reveal that?"

With a scoff, he shuts his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not interested in men so I suggest you keep your 'warmth and danger' over there."

The tangled gray hair entices me to brush it from his scuffed face, yet I keep my hands firmly clasped in my lap. I'd battered him suffiently tackling him to the ground and chasing him over creation, he wasn't in the best shape when he arrived here. Despite his state of withdrawal, he did his best to put on a face and appear to be full capable of dispatching me, I admired that bravery. 

If nothing else, seeing him like this made me even more desperate to get back to my version of this man.

Our home isn't quite set up to house two werewolves but it's the safest place we could think of for the two beings that would determine our future. My warlord chews on his thumb, anxious as the new faces wander in and out of the front door in a frenzy to set up the two guest rooms on the first floor. As long as the two were here, he would not be sleeping.

 I step through the doorway, thanking one of the men carrying in the bars they would install over the windows to prevent escape. 

"Just until we figure out how to send them back," Lotta reassures him, but I'm fully aware that their presence in our home wasn't what was bothering him. Footprints tracking in dirt, people touching things, he'd be cleaning for the next week if I didn't find a way to distract him. 

"Whatever room you put.. me.. or the younger version of myself in.. lock it up tight. Windows, doors, seams, nothing that can be picked from the inside." He mutters to a passing technician. Tiberius has arranged for a medic to arrive in short order and assure that these two crucial beings were in good enough health to return to their time. 

Landon was still attempting to flesh out a scope of what could happen if current selves intertwined with past selves. This had not been done before, predicting the consequences seemed to be on a nearly infinite scale from nothing to the end of time as we knew it. 

I cross my arms lightly over my chest, followed by the young girl who'd tranquilized us, while I wasn't sure what provoked me to ask her to come with us it felt wrong to leave her on her own.

She raises her eyebrows when she sees my husband, doing the mental math. 

"It's complicated," I tell her.