Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,69

arrived, Faer—a slender, lavender-haired man who looked very much like Alisa—was warm in greeting us. He didn’t mention the way he’d almost destroyed one of my village and slaughtered three hundred people just to send a message. Maybe he thought he didn’t have to.

For my part, I neglected to mention the fight as well, or the way we’d routed his guards… with his sister’s help.

Lake had cautioned me that Alisa might be something of a sore spot for Faer.

Faer insisted that we needed to come to his ball the next day.

That night, I dreamt of my father, but when I sat up from the dream, he was sitting on the edge of my bed.

I rubbed my arm across my face. “What is it, Jorden?”

I’d been having a strangely nice dream, remembering my father taking me into the forest to cut down trees, but then I scrambled out of bed to get away from him. That memory belonged to the father who had raised me—and died trying to protect me—not to Jorden.

“Leave my memories alone,” I warned him.

“I just wanted us to have some nice memories together,” he said, sounding wounded. “After all, you’re about to leave me, aren’t you?”

“I have to go back to my own world. Help my friends.”

Jorden hesitated. “I know. When you leave…” He smiled, before he admitted, “I do too.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. I’d been asleep and I was still foggy-brained, and that was not a good time to deal with my father. Or any Fae.

“My spirit is attached to that ring,” he nodded at the ring I still wore on my finger, and I twisted it absently, “and to you, Tyson.”

I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to destroy the last of my father’s ghost, and yet… what choice did I have?

“Is there another way?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “And I wouldn’t ask you to stay for my sake. But I do want some… memories.”

“I understand,” I said. “But that’s not how you make them. We have to have our own.”

“I’m dead, Tyson,” he said, with a laugh. “How am I going to make memories with you?”

“Come on,” I said, throwing on my jacket.

The two of us traveled through Faer’s dark castle and into the garden which was shadowed by statues and to me, deeply creepy.

As we walked, I asked him, “Do you think my mother could still be alive?”

I explained my theory about the sleep spell, and he said, “I doubt it, Tyson.”

My heart fell a little, but he added, “What could be the harm in digging her up and checking, though? I hope for your sake, you can have her back.”

I pulled down one ripe red apple from a tree, then a second, and tossed one to him. It went right through his outstretched, ghostly hand, and I told him, “You are terrible at catch.”

“I’m a ghost,” he said, and then laughed. “Is catch something fathers and sons play in your world?”

“Yep,” I said. “I used to watch Penn and his father play sometimes.”

His face grew sober. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around to raise you, Tyson.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m glad my life worked out the way it has. Most days, anyway.”

I had a weird life, that was for sure, but it was pretty amazing too.

“I wish there was a way you didn’t have to die when I leave,” I admitted.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Different Fae believe different things about the afterlife, but for me… I believe that we all end up in the same place in the end. Everyone. Fae, human, shifter. One big free-for-all.”

“That’s a nice thought.”

“I don’t want to see you for two hundred years,” he said, then frowned at my grin. “Wait, how long do mortals live? It’s even shorter than that?”

“Eighty years seems pretty typical, give or take a decade.”

Jorden looked scandalized. “That’s barely enough time to live.”

“We make do,” I said. Because we had to.

“A hundred years, at least,” Jorden said, as if he could negotiate me into accepting a longer lifetime.

“A hundred years,” I agreed.

The two of us wandering through the garden’s twisting paths, surrounded by fragrant night-blooming flowers that shone silver and white under the moonlight, and the statutes. His feet didn’t dent the grass.

“Tell me about how you met my mom,” I said. “Walking through the garden like this in the middle of the night, listening to your stories… that’s something I’m never going to forget. Father.”

The word felt awkward in my mouth, but the way Jorden’s eyes brightened made it