Essence of Quinn Parts 3 & 4 (MxM)

Living On Borrowed Time

They stayed like that for a little while, arms around each other. Calista’s cheek against Quinn’s chest, his nose buried in her still-damp hair. Both reluctant to be the one to finally let go, it seemed.

Calista finally broke the silence.

“How did you do this?” she murmured.

Quinn frowned.

“Do what?”

Calista moved her arms from around him, resting a hand on his chest. Her claws traced the grucifix emblem on his uniform jacket absentmindedly, and she sighed.

“When you and Air bonded. The guilt.” She pulled back and looked up at him. “This feels like I’m betraying Aalto.”

Her words stole his breath, and the warmth of her pressed against him twisted into another embrace he could never forget. The memory of the last time he’d seen Ashtoreth alive. The morning Quinn had abandoned his family to go off on some insignificant calling, unknowingly leaving them to face their deaths alone.

The familiar bitter anger surfaced, burning like bile in his throat. He shouldn’t have left them that day. Rearranging fate yet again, and for what?

One stranger’s soul saved. Three precious ones extinguished.

He blinked, eyes stinging, and Calista pressed herself closer.

Ashtoreth had been around the same height as Calista, though softer. Fuller in her curves.

He’d held her that final morning. Hesitating. Given her a slow kiss goodbye, much to the embarrassment of their kits. He’d carried the promises of what they’d do on his return in his heart and his mind. Branded in his soul.

It had been the last time in centuries that he’d felt whole.

Until Quinn had finally stopped denying his and Air’s connection.

When he’d finally allowed himself to think of his future as anything other than a betrayal of Ashtoreth’s memory? That was when he’d begun to truly live again.

Quinn stepped back from Calista, arms dropping to his sides. He met her eyes. Slid his gaze away, then back again.

“You are betraying him,” he said. Calista’s eyes widened. She’d clearly been expecting something else from him. It was like she didn’t know him at all. “At least, that’s what it will always feel like. You just have to learn to live with that.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, brows drawn together as she processed his words.

“How do I do that?” she whispered.

Quinn sighed. Shrugged his shoulders. Wholly unprepared for any of this fucking heart-to-heart he found himself trapped in.

“You have to choose,” Quinn said, voice low. His gaze slid away, then back again. “Do you take the chance at life, and take the peace and the happiness where you can get it?”

Calista’s eyes never left his, and he felt exposed. Voicing these long-buried thoughts was like being skinned alive. “Or do you just carry on existing?”

He scowled, jaw clenched. This was a wound he hadn’t wanted to pick at, but Calista was the only one he could go there with. He ran a hand down his face, as if that could hide him from the raw truths. “You promised yourself to Aalto when you bonded. Your body. Your heart. Your soul.”

The words caught in his throat, and suddenly it wasn’t Calista he saw, but Ashtoreth. He closed his eyes, picturing the way she’d looked up at him. Heat and devotion in her turquoise eyes. Her soul and his had been so deeply entwined that he’d thought nothing could ever separate them.