Free Everlasting (Night Watchmen, #1) by Candace Knoebel

that a Defect thing? Am I nothing? I know the thought is ridiculous. No Defect could do that…could clear an auditorium of light.
    “Well?” Jaxen asks, staring at Mack like he has better things to do, better places to be. I don’t know why the tone offends me.
    “Have you ever heard of the Everlasting gene?” Mack asks quietly, thoughtfully. He looks between Jaxen and me like he’s on the precipice of something groundbreaking, something earth shattering, something I think I don’t want to be a part of.
    Confusion grows thick between us on the couch.
    “No,” Jaxen says flatly, answering for us both.
    Mack tilts his brow up at me. I’m still stuck on the word everlasting. He leans forward with a hint of a smile on his lips. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. It’s a myth amongst our people. Kind of like Bigfoot, only this myth is kept a tightly guarded secret.”
    “Bigfoot,” Jaxen drags out. He leans forward too, meeting Mack’s intent gaze. “Are you messing with me right now? Is this some sort of field test I didn’t know about?”
    Mack chuckles once, the sound carrying a slight bitter note. “I wish I was messing with you.” He exhales loudly and leans back again. “The truth is, the myth is not really a myth. The Everlasting will, at some point, exist. Just as our Coven’s genes have warped to produce Defects, at some point, they will warp to produce an Everlasting, one who possess the power of both. It has been foreseen by the Divine Cecilia.”
    I know I should have questions. Maybe I should even be bursting at the seams with what he’s possibly implying, but not a single part of me moves. I don’t even blink or breathe. It’s like every word pouring past his lips is spoken in a language I can’t comprehend. Words like ‘everlasting’ and ‘foreseen’ and ‘myth’…none of these words apply to me. None of them can be about me.
    “Okay, not to offend you, Mack, but you’ve lost me. You lost me at Bigfoot,” Jaxen says. He stops, looks over at me, and turns back to Mack. “And it seems you’ve lost her too.”
    “Roll up your sleeve,” Mack says. I look up from my lap. He’s looking at me. He wants me to do it. I start to roll one up when he adds, “The arm that burned during the Culling. Roll that one up.”
    I switch arms and roll the sleeve up. A small pinkish birthmark in the shape of an awkward heart sits just below the crook of my elbow. Jaxen tenses beside me. I gasp the moment I realize what it is. An affinity mark. I look up at Mack. “Does this mean…”
    “That you have a partner? I don’t know. The quartz didn’t work properly after you cracked it.” He smoothes a hand through his hair, trying to form it into some kind of cohesion. “But if what I suspect is true, that you do carry the Everlasting gene, then that mark has nothing to do with a partner.”
    “What are you talking about?” Jaxen asks, this time sounding interested.
    “Before the proclamation, marks were given during Samhain as a means of branding them to the Coven, as a symbol of power and faith. That all changed after the dark days, when the Darkyn Coven rose up against us and so many of our Witches abandoned our Coven in the fight against Hunters. Those Witches cut their marks off. They disowned us…disgraced our kind.
    “So when Mourdyn was brought down, the Divine decided to use that very mark as the link that would bind the Hunter to his Witch, ensuring they had to remain close and intact in order to use their magic. They used it as a reminder that we must stick together in order to be strong. As a reminder of what nearly destroyed us.”
    I think I know where he’s going with this, but I’m not sure it’s a road I want to follow.
    “If she is who I think she is, based off of what I saw in that quartz, then that mark reverts back to the way things were before the affinity bond, when marks were symbols of power and not chains linking us to another. She,” he says, looking over