"Mila?" I called out, unsure as to whether my eyes were betraying me or not.
The girl froze as she spotted me. She instantly backed away from the cottage door, avoiding my gaze. "Hey."
"What are you doing here?" I asked, glancing back between her and McKenna's door.
"I wanted to ask the Healer something."
"Cool, come inside with me. I'm here to see her too."
"Uh no, I'm actually busy." She kept avoiding my gaze as she slowly backed away.
"I can get-"
"Alright, bye." She raised a limp hand as if unsure how to bid someone goodbye. I was amused by the cringe that crossed her features before she sprinted off, hiding her face behind her golden locks.
"I guess I'll just go in by myself." I shook my head, knocking on the door.
McKenna greeted me with a warm, perfect smile. "You've come to visit me again. Where is your mate?" She asked, scanning beyond my shoulder. It was like she was expecting Alexei to jump up from behind me.
"He's still in bed, resting before his shift starts on the Borders."
"Come in." Her grin didn't falter. She opened her door, "Jamison is still here too. He hasn't woken up yet. Not even a peep yesterday or the day before."
It had already been a total of three days since Jamison succumbed to a deep sleep. There were still no signs that he would be waking up soon. If there was, the Healer wasn't aware considering this was unprecedented. "I just came by with some soup for the both of you. I thought it would be good in case he woke up today. He'd be hungry. Alexei made it and planned to come by to drop it off, but I let him sleep in."
"Smells delicious. Your mate knows how to cook." She accepted the plastic bag, taking it to the kitchen. I spotted Jamison sleeping on an inflatable mattress. McKenna had covered him to the shoulders with a colourful quilt, decorated with buttons of all sorts of shades and sizes. The sight made a smile bloom across my lips.
"He really looks like he's just sleeping."
"Yeah, he does." McKenna took in the sleeping Enforcer. "That poor girl that's always checking up on him is getting anxious. I've tried to invite her inside a few times, but she keeps rejecting. Poor girl must be in tears every night. I don't know how I'd cope if my mate was in Jamison's state."
"Mate?" I asked, confused.
"Yeah, the pretty girl with the blonde hair. She was just here before you arrived."
"Are you talking about Mila?"
"Mila? Is that her name? I'd have to remember that so I can invite her inside."
"Oh, I don't think-." I paused. I didn't know if they were mates or not. This was the first time I've ever heard Mila and Jamison being linked in any way.
Maybe Mila lingering around McKenna's place was not so much of a coincidence. The girl kept her cards close to her heart.
"-I don't know." I finished. I wasn't going to put my foot in my mouth with this situation.
McKenna beamed wide, "Well whatever the hell is going on with them, I hope it's beautiful. They both deserve something good."
***
I hesitated at the top of the stairs of Alexei's home.
There was a foreign vehicle parked in front.
Before I could think further, the door opened, exposing a shirtless Alexei with ruffled bed hair. "Solnishko." I was surprised to see him, considering he was supposed to be on patrol.
"There's a car-"
"Is this her?" A guttural, taut voice came from behind Alexei.
"Babushka, please." Alexei spoke. Apology flashed across his gaze as the door widened a fraction. A short woman appeared behind him, peering up at me with knowing, brown eyes.
For a second, I stumbled over my words, uncertain of what to utter.
Alexei did not help matters either. He simply let the old woman come forward.
Up close, she gave off an aura of absolute authority. Although she was two heads shorter than I was, she regarded me like I was a miniscule Lego piece. Alexei had her aura. It was the only reason I hadn't completely shrivelled into dust beneath her intense scrutiny.
Alexei grandmother had donned herself in a blue and purple floral dress that covered her toes. She added a long cardigan that hung loosely from her dainty shoulders and her inky black hair with strands of silver, cascading down her back in slight waves.
There was a refined, particular beauty she possessed, and she wielded it like a weapon.
"You must be my grandson's mate."
"I'm Penelope Rivers."
She just stared at me.
Alexei gently nudged her to the side and pulled me inside. "She came unexpectedly. I didn't think she would come this quickly."
"It's ok." I told him just as Babushka sought my gaze. She waved her hand to the living room. I gulped and joined her.
***
It was official. That last few hours had been difficult and undeniably awkward.
Alexei's Babushka was not going to make this easy on me.
Although Alexei had left here only minutes ago to grab ingredients for lunch, it felt like an entire decade had passed.
Babushka took another long sip of her steaming tea, keeping me within direct eye contact.
"Alexei speaks very highly of you." I began, cupping my mug in my palms as the hot jasmine tea inside warmed my skin.
"Of course he would." She agreed, taking another steady sip of her hot concoction.
"I sense that you don't like me." I caught her gaze.
Her eyes widened a fraction, but she waved off her response with a nonchalant hand, "Dislike and being unfamiliar are not the same thing."
"Both are making you distance yourself from me." I replied.
"My grandson knows what pleases me. He'll do anything to seek my approval."
"He has only spoke of you with love." I affirmed.
For the first time today, her lips curled up, "He's a good grandson."
"He is." I agreed.
"You know, he had once been paired with a girl back in Russia." She met my gaze over the rim of her mug. The steam caressed the tip of her nose. "But I knew he wouldn't want to be stuck with her. It was a shame really. She was a pretty thing with impeccable manners. If my grandson wanted something ordinary, he would still probably be in St Petersburg, married to the girl and living a comfortable life."
I kept her gaze, although each word that passed her lips sliced through me. Alexei never mentioned being serious about a girl before. I didn't know what she meant by 'paired' but that sounded a lot like an arrangement of some sort.
If the matter was so important, I was confident enough to know that Alexei would tell me. I didn't see the need to dig further into his past without speaking to him first.
"You seem very secure with your relationship with my grandson." She said.
This time, I chuckled in disbelief. "I feel secure. Comfortable."
Babushka placed her steaming mug of coffee down and clasped her hands in her lap. "I told him about you."
I could only stare at her in confusion. I had no idea what she meant considering this was the first time I was meeting her face to face. She studied my expression, gleaning my thoughts. Briefly, I had forgotten that she was an Oracle of the Alexei's birth Pack. She knew things beyond my understanding.
"Have you had visions about me?" I asked, wary.
She kept her expression flat but offered a single nod. "Three visions." She clarified.
I blinked, completely caught off-guard by her answer.
"And I shared every single one with him the moment they came to me."
"What did you see?" At this point, I was sitting on the edge of the lounge seat, enraptured by the knowing cadence in her voice. It was unsettling that she knew pieces of me, potentially very private pieces of me that I didn't show the world.
"I will not tell you as they have not yet come to past."
"So, you've seen my future?"
"Yes."
"And Alexei knows about this?"
"Every single one."
"Why?"
"The Fates told me you were to be the girl that would possess his heart. The first vision I had of you; I had a strong impression to share it with Alexei. Shadows had already stained his soul. I thought I was going to lose him to the darkness. He was in a really bad place. I'm sure you know about my Anastasia. Alexei was too young to take the burden alone that fell upon his shoulders when Anastasia gave in to her wolf. I was losing my Solnishko. I was worried that I would lose more than just my daughter. I couldn't lose my grandson too."
I listened to her words, drawn in by the sudden glimmer in her eyes. "I'm truly sorry about your daughter."
Her chin trembled but she held her emotions in. "Thank you. Anastasia loved all her children. That's why she had no choice but to leave. She wouldn't have been able to live with herself if she knew she hurt one of her babies."
"She has all my respect."
The strength and courage that would have taken Anastasia to leave her babies in order to keep them safe from her touched me in a way that softened my heart and stole my words. I knew in my soul that she would have struggled with the decision internally on a daily basis. She would've fought with everything in her to be able to with her children and see them reach adulthood.
I knew Anastasia would do anything for her children.
Even if that meant leaving if she was the one presenting the danger to her children.
"I was going to leave with her. Protect her. Keep her safe. Keep my baby safe just like she was doing but Lev stopped me. If you knew Lev, he was a man who obeyed no one but he would crawl if my Anastasia demanded. He was one the best Enforcers of our Pack, a right hand man to the Alpha himself. When my Ana saw him for the first time, she recognised her mate in him. She didn't need the moon to tell her. They mated young and had Alexei not long after their bond."
"Anastasia always had struggled with her wolf. She never could change into her wolf on demand properly. The Healer said she was unstable and advised that it would be better if she kept her wolf leashed."
I felt the ache in my chest, resounding with her story so deeply. Just as I had learnt, I knew Anastasia may have suffered the same consequences I did when I decided to stifle my animal. If I had learnt long ago to trust my wolf and give her the freedom she needed, I wouldn't have struggled so much. I couldn't comprehend how difficult it would have been for Anastasia to fight each day unceasingly all the while, not knowing what was happening to her body.
"For years she didn't let her wolf out and I saw that she went to war with her emotions every day, but she never said a single thing, so I assumed she was dealing with it. She only admitted to her struggle when she knew she would soon be lost to her wolf. It was the last time I held my daughter as she sobbed into my arms. I didn't know how bad it was until she admitted that she couldn't control her wolf. Neither of us could understand why her wolf suddenly turned on her. The fight between her human and animal took too much of a toll on her, she couldn't hold off much longer. She protected her babies by leaving. Lev couldn't leave her alone, so he followed her to keep her safe. He asked me to care of the children. He reasoned that I should be the one to stay. I was the Oracle of the Pack and at the time, I couldn't risk leaving the Pack. I would've left but I couldn't leave my Ana's children alone. They didn't have their mama or papa, but they had me."
"Alexei became the head of the house too soon but the boy never complained. Even until this day, he has never spoken about how life had been unfair to him and his sisters. It wasn't long until we got news that Anastasia had succumbed to her wolf. It was probably the first time I saw Alexei cry. I knew his heart still held hope that Anastasia and Lev would return. That day, his eyes lost that shard of hope. When we heard that Lev had turned Rogue, I lost my Solnishko."
I closed my eyes, not wanting to imagine any version of Alexei in pain. The mere thought paralysed me.
"He went to hunt them down because Lev had held him to a vow that he would seek them out and stop them if things became out of hand."
And they did.
"So my boy took responsibility and stopped Lev and Anastasia from wreaking chaos to the Packs they encountered. The Alpha had sent out Enforcers to stop them, but no one was able to get close to them. They had forgotten that Lev had been the best Enforcer in the Pack and that Anastasia was very clever in evading attacks. Alexei was the only one who could get close enough to stop them because he was their clone. He learnt all his skills from them."
It hurt hearing the things Alexei endured.
"There was no choice he had. The only way he could stop them was to end them. When he returned home, he could barely look me in the face. I already knew what he had done. All I felt was relief that he was safe. I loathed that his journey in life was not easy. He was changing and it scared me. I thought I couldn't save him."
My heart couldn't take anymore. I wanted to find Alexei and crush him to my chest and slap away every foe and nightmare that dared come his way. I wanted to be his shield, his army, and his safe place.
"Those visions I had of you, I shared them with him to bring him hope, that he would find his nebesa in his own time."
"Nebesa?" I repeated, trying to emulate the way she had pronounced the word. I was confident I had butchered it anyway when her lips quirked.
Babushka nodded, "Heaven. I told him he would find it soon, he just needed to hold on a little longer."
"I don't know what to say." I whispered, glancing down at my palms.
"He waited a long time for you." She whispered, her tone matching mine.
"It doesn't make sense." I shook my head, "When I met Alexei, he gave me no indication that he knew who I was."
"My visions didn't reveal your face, or anything really that distinguished how you would look, smell or sound like. It was more a vision of the feelings I felt when I stood in a long field. I knew someone was there with me, but it was the emotions I felt being in that person's presence that moved me. Each time Alexei gone through something difficult, he always asked me to share that feeling in the vision. It never failed to soothe his wounds."
"I think I get it."
"When he was younger, he asked me what that feeling was. When I gave him a vision, he always soaked it up as if he was drawing strength from a well of endless happiness. I'd been too stunned to reply in that moment but when I contemplated the emotion, I realised I was silly. The answer had been obvious."
I didn't know how but I completely understood what she meant. "It was love."
"That's how I knew the visions were something special and precious to him. It didn't quite feel like maternal or familial love. There was passion there, desire and more. I always felt like I was overstepping each time I felt that sense of love, but I was relieved that that was the type of love my Alexei would receive in this life."
I swallowed hard as my own emotions choked me.
Babushka stared at me across the coffee table, her eyes steady as she spoke. "Do you love my grandson? Do you love him despite all the things I've spoken about? Are you worthy to be loved by my Solnishko?"
Without missing a beat, I gave her my answer on a silver platter. "I love him beyond words."
Babushka seemed surprised by my confession, but she nodded, softening in posture as she listened.
"Every piece of me loves Alexei. Few people have accepted me in life, and I've grown used to it, but Alexei makes me want things I thought I could only dream about. He's accepted me, even my fucked up parts that I don't want anyone to know. His hugs feel like my own personal haven and when he holds me, that's when I feel how much he cares for me with his heartbeat playing softly against my ear. He's everything and probably more than I deserve or am worthy of, but I don't think I'll ever let anyone have him. He's mine. I'll make sure that when the day comes when his spirit departs from this place, he'll know what nebesa is. How can I not be so completely in love with Alexei when he makes me feel like the way I do?"
Babushka blinked. Her eyes looked suspiciously wet, but I could have imagined it because the next time she looked at me, her eyes were as dry as the Sahara Desert. Her gaze shifted over my shoulder. A wide smile took over her face. "Alexei, how long have you been standing there?"
I froze, unprepared for Alexei's sudden appearance.
I heard his steps approach us. He swooped in, planting a kiss on Babushka's forehead. I took sight of the two plastic bags in his hand, rustling as he moved. I dived for it, taking it from his hands. "I'll unpack these!"
"Wait, Solnishko." He called but I was already in the kitchen, fishing out the ingredients he purchased onto the island.
I heard Babushka speaking to him in low whispers. I tried to listen in but two seconds later, I knew that I shouldn't. So I continued to unpack the items while my heart raced a fast pace in my chest.