CHAPTER FOUR

“THE THOUGHT OF YOU CONSUMES ME LIKE AN UNCOMMITTED SIN.”

MAYA.

“What’s going on?” Yulian aksed

His eyes moved to me first, the way they always did.

"Nothing," I said, and I bent down and grabbed a dish towel off the hook on the cabinet and crouched down to press it to the small spill on the floor. "The drinks slipped. It's nothing."

"Are you okay?" He was already crossing the kitchen, crouching beside me, hand on my back. "Did you get hurt? Did something—"

"Yulian." I looked up at him and softened my voice. "I'm okay. I just slipped a little, it was nothing, the glasses didn't even break. Stop fussing."

His brows were still pulled together in that worried crease.

"I'm okay," I said again, softer this time, and the crease eased a little.

I straightened up and he straightened with me and I handed the damp towel off to the counter and started rearranging the glasses on the tray again, which was something to do. In my peripheral vision I saw Kayden shift, stepping slightly to the side, putting a bit of distance between himself and us, giving us space the way you did when you were suddenly very aware that you were the third person in a room.

I kept my eyes on the glasses.

And then Kayden's voice came from just behind Yulian's shoulder, and his tone had changed completely bright, casual, and curious.

"Yo, what's in the box?"

I looked up.

Yulian turned around and I noticed for the first time that he had set something just inside the kitchen doorway when he came in with  a brown box, medium sized, the kind of plain cardboard that didn't tell you anything about what was inside it. I hadn't even clocked it when he walked in. I had been too busy pretending I was fine.

Yulian looked at it and his expression shifted into something easy and proud. "Oh, that." He crossed to it and picked it up, tucking it under his arm. "That came just now, I got it from the door on my way in. The pack shaman sent it over. It's an orb."

"A what?" Kayden's eyebrows went up.

"An orb." Yulian set the box on the kitchen counter and started opening it, carefully folding back the cardboard flaps to reveal something nestled inside layers of dark cloth. "He sent it as a gift. Said it's for protection and purity, something about keeping the home's energy clean and the bond between mates strong." He glanced up with a small smile. "You know how Shaman Gregor gets. Very formal about these things."

I moved closer without meaning to. Through the layers of cloth I could see a soft glow — faint and bluish-white, pulsing slowly like a breath. Whatever was in there was the size of a large orange, rounded and smooth. Even from where I was standing there was something about it that made me want to look at it and also, for reasons I couldn't explain, made something at the back of my neck feel strange.

"Handle it with care," Yulian was saying, his voice careful as he began to ease the cloth wrapping back. "Gregor was very specific about that. Said it's..”

Kayden reached into the box.

"Kayden—"

He lifted the orb out with two fingers, holding it loosely, and then with a grin spreading across his face he did the thing ’ the absolute most stupidest thing’ where he let it slip from his fingers on purpose and drop toward the floor.

"—hey!" Yulian's voice and my voice came out at the exact same moment, both of us lunging forward

Kayden caught it. Clean. One hand, right before it would have hit the tile. He straightened up with the biggest grin on his face and held it up between two fingers like he was showing us something.

"Relax," he said, laughing now. "I got it. Chill."

I pressed my hand flat to my chest because my heart had genuinely stopped for a full second and was now restarting badly.

"That is not funny," I said.

"It's a little funny."

"It is absolutely not funny, Kayden, what if it had—"

"But it didn't." He was still grinning, turning the orb over in his palm now, looking at it. The faint glow caught the kitchen light and made the blue in it look brighter. "Besides, it's a gift. A good gift. If the shaman sent it to protect the house I'm pretty sure it's not going to shatter the first time someone fumbles it a little."

"That is not how any of this works," I said. "You don't know what that thing is or what it does and jokes like that are dangerous when you have no idea, "

"Oh, so now you want to have a full conversation with me?" He raised an eyebrow, and there was a glint in his eye that was specifically designed to be aggravating and it worked."Kayden, "

"I'm just noting the difference in word count compared to ten minutes ago—"

"Okay." Yulian stepped forward, plucked the orb carefully from Kayden's hand and set it back into the cloth in the box, wrapping it with a deliberateness that said he was choosing to be the adult in the room. "That's enough, both of you. The orb didn't break, everything is fine." He closed the box flaps and patted the top once. "And Kayden, don't do that again."

"Yeah, yeah."

"I mean it."

"I know, I know." Kayden held his hands up, the grin fading into something more cooperative. "My bad."

Yulian turned to me and I saw the smallest flicker of something in his face, just a brief question, there and gone and then he leaned in and pressed a light kiss to my lips. Brief and warm. Normal. My husband kissing me goodnight in our kitchen.

"Get some rest, yeah?" he said against my forehead. "You look tired."

"I will," I said.

He pulled back and picked up the bottle of wine from the counter  ‘the whole bottle’ and then tucked the box with the orb under his other arm. He looked at Kayden and jerked his head toward the hallway. "Come on. We've got three years of catching up to do and I just found where I put that whiskey you like."

Kayden smiled at that, a real one, different from the grins he had been throwing around the kitchen. This one was quieter and had something genuinely warm in it. The smile of someone who had missed his best friend even if he would never just say so.

He followed Yulian out of the kitchen.

At the doorway he paused and glanced back at me over his shoulder. Not long. Just a second.

Then he was gone.

I stood in the kitchen alone and listened to their footsteps move down the hallway and the low rumble of their voices starting up again, easy and familiar, settling into that rhythm that only people who had known each other since childhood could find.

I let out a breath that felt like it had been sitting in my chest since the moment I heard the front door open.

I was tired. I was genuinely, deeply, bone tired in a way that had nothing to do with what time it was and everything to do with the last two hours of my life. I turned off the kitchen light and left the tray where it was and I walked down the hall to our bedroom, and I closed the door behind me, and I got into bed without doing any of the things I normally did before bed and I pulled the covers up and I stared at the ceiling for about four minutes before my eyes gave up and closed.

—-------------------------------------------

The morning came in through the curtains the way it always did, slow, grey, too early and too bright at the same time. I was aware of it before I was fully awake, the light pressing against my eyelids, the sounds of the city starting up below.

I reached across the bed out of habit.

Yulian's side was cold.

Not unusual. He was an early riser on a good day and when Kayden was around they would probably be up at some hour that I did not consider a reasonable time for human beings to be conscious. I lay there for a moment just breathing, coming back to myself slowly, letting the night drain off.

Then I heard voices from the living room.

Both of them, it sounded like. Low and fast. Something about the tone of it made me sit up.

I wasn't alarmed exactly. It was more like something felt off. The way the air feels different right before a storm even when the sky still looks fine. I pushed the covers back and found my robe on the end of the bed and pulled it on and padded out of the room and down the hallway toward the sound.

I pushed the living room door open.

They were both in there. I instinctively went to hug Yulian, but the confusion and shock on both of their faces stopped me in my tracks. Why are they acting weird? “Uhmm is everything okay? Why are you guys looking at me like that” 

Kayden then speaks “Babe we need to tell you something-”

Wait.  Why on earth is Kayden calling me babe? and Yulian just stood there not even bothered by the fact that his best friend just called me babe, instead his expression seemed like what he was saying was normal. 

“Somehting happened last night... uhm we were both drunk, we had an argument and we mistakenly broke the orb that Shaman Gregor gave me— we lost consciousness and when we woke up I realise I was in Kayden’s body and he is in mine.”

Wait. Pause, was this some kind of prank they were trying to play on me because what the actual fuck was going on?

Yulian was in Kayden's body. And Kayden was in Yulian body?

“Look Kayden, if this is some sort of joke, I’m really not in the mood for this.” 

“I'm serious, I'm not Kayden, I’m Yulian. I just have his body.”

"It's me." Kayden's body was speaking in Yulian's voice and my head was spinning. "It's me, baby. It's Yulian. I don't know how to explain this any more plainly than just, look at me. Look at my eyes. You know me."

I looked.

And the thing was  god help me the thing was that I could see it. Something behind those eyes, familiar and specific and completely Yulian, in a face that was absolutely not his.

"This is insane," I said. My voice came out surprisingly steady for someone who was losing their mind.

"I agree," said the man in Kayden's body who was apparently my husband.

"Prove it," I heard myself say. "If you're Yulian, prove it."

He didn't hesitate.

"Your birthmark is on your left hip, not your right. You can't sleep without one pillow between your knees. The first time I told you I loved you, you laughed, not because you didn't feel it but because you were terrified and laughing is what you do when something scares you." He took a breath. "And the other thing, "

"Don't." Something in his eyes, Yulian's in Kayden's face  went very gentle.

"Your periods start late, usually around the 18th of each month. You always say you feel it there first, just under—"

I pressed my hand over his mouth and he stopped. That was way too much information.

My hand was on Kayden's face and Yulian was behind it.

I stood there and felt the warmth of the skin under my palm and the breath coming out of the nose above my fingers and the eyes looking back at me were completely and totally my husband and I felt the floor do something very unsteady beneath my feet.

I lowered my hand slowly.

"Yulian," I said, barely above a whisper. "Is that you in there?"

"Yes," he said quietly. "It's me."

I turned and looked at Yulian’s body.

"And you're?"

"Kayden," Kayden said from my husband's body. I turned back to Yulian.

Then back to Kayden.

Then I sat down on the armchair because my legs had made a decision without asking me.

I pressed both hands over my face.

"Fuck," I breathed into my palms.

"Yeah," said Kayden.

"How did this happen," I said, and it didn't even fully come out as a question, more like something falling out of my mouth on the way down. "Fuck, how did this happen? How do we fix it?"