Free The Ballad of Aramei by J. A. Redmerski Page B

often connected, but some connections are stronger than others.” She walks over and stops in front of me, folding her hands together resting on her pelvis. “But now that you are a Black Beast, and female, your connection to Aramei is strengthened ten-fold.”
    I don’t know what to say because I’m too stunned by this information to understand it just yet. So, I just let Eva continue.
    “She is trying to tell you something,” she says. “What did you see?”
    “I-I…,” I move away from Eva, letting her hands fall away from my shoulders and I approach the bed again. “I saw Viktor Vargas…and I think—.” I gaze down at Aramei sleeping; a few strands of her silky hair move gently in time with her breath.
    “You think what?” Eva says from behind.
    I turn around to face her, but still all I really see is the scene with Viktor and Aramei still fading from my mind. “He was in love with her….”
     

Chapter 6
     
     
     
     
    I STAY WITH EVA and Aramei for several hours, but Aramei remains sleeping and I can’t seem to get inside her head again. I even tried waking her at one point, taking both of my hands and shaking her body gently back and forth but it’s like she’s in a coma.
    To think I could’ve been like this….
    I’m anxious to get back inside her mind, but it looks like what I saw is all that I’ll be seeing on this visit.
    “Aramei will not able to hold the connection for very long at a time,” Eva says while lighting a lantern on the other side of the room. The afternoon is quickly slipping away into the evening hours, and the cabin, shrouded by a thick forest, is becoming dark fast.
    I sit at the table overlooking the downstairs floor, watching servants come and go, dust and mop and stand quietly until they are called for by Eva for any number of duties. One brings up a plate of fresh fruit and vegetables with Ranch dressing and some other weird-smelling sauce that I really have no interest in. I’d like a Black Angus burger or a melted ham and cheese sandwich, but I don’t expect I’ll be getting anything like that around here.
    Before long, the area is bathed in orange light from the lanterns; the shifting shadows on the log walls slow and deliberate. Everyone here is so orderly, taking their time in every little thing they do as if to make sure they get it right the first time. They never speak. Never. When I think back on it, even when I saw Aramei in the cave so long ago, the servants didn’t speak then, either. At least not to one another. Just thinking about it makes me anxious. I could never live like they live, so submissive and disciplined and seemingly without any sense of self-determination or freedom.
    But even still, not anything nor anyone else can hold my thoughts more than Aramei, who still has not moved or whimpered or fluttered her eyes since I came out of her mind.
    I can’t believe I was even in her mind. Or rather, I do believe it. It’s hard to push extraordinary things like this away anymore. I am a werewolf, after all, and if that doesn’t help me believe that there are many strange things in this world that I didn’t know before, then nothing will. But regardless of believing it, some things are and probably always will be hard to understand. This is definitely one of them.
    As I begin to wonder when I’ll be able to leave, I hear a vehicle pulling up to the front of the cabin. And before I think to head downstairs and see who it is, the front door opens and Trajan is walking inside.
    Eva’s demeanor shifts back to that solid, quiet manner as she walks over to stand against the wall.
    Trajan’s footsteps coming up the stairs make me edgy.
    I take a deep breath and go to sit at the little table. When Trajan makes it onto the upstairs floor he doesn’t say anything to me at first. He walks right over to Aramei, leans over and brushes his strong fingers through her hair and then walks over to the nearest lantern, turning the little knob to raise the