The Fated Mate

Blackwood Coffeehouse that afternoon, with Katie pulling her along as usual, Lena's resolve crumbled. He was there again. Same corner table. Same dark, his presence filled the room once again, like t

had echoed in her mind since that first bizarre night. "Have we met before?" she asked, before she could bite it back. Adrian's lips curved, Not a mocking smile, but something else, something knowing. "Not in this life." Lena blinked "What do you mean?" she asked, hardly aware of puzzlement lacing her voice. "We've never met." He leaned back in his chair, his eyes black as coal, "I mean exactly what I said. Not in this life. That doesn't mean we have not met before." These words struck Lena, she would swear that she had felt the weight of them. They were created to raise from their rest something deep and long dormant. "I don't understand," she breathed, cold running down her back in rills. "What do you mean, 'before"? Adrian didn't say anything for a second. His eyes turned aside, as if he weighed his next words. Seconds drawn out between them stretched like hours. And then his eyes came back to hers, more somber, more knowing. "You've been seeing things, Lena," he said, still edged. "Dreams. Visions. They're not just dreams. Not just your imagination running wild." Lena's heart skipped. "What are you saying?" she asked. "I'm talking of memories," Adrian continued, in a smooth and low voice. "About things you must have experienced some other time. In a life which ended before this one began." Lena stared at him, raising her eyebrows. "Memories? Of what? Adrian paused; his eyes had fallen to his hands a second before rising to hers. "Of me. Of us. We have met before, Lena. We just don't remember it yet." She was shocked but remained calm, as she leaned forward, looking straight into his eyes. Something in them keeps telling her she knows him somehow as if beyond the bounds of logic and reason. "I don't know you," she said, but at that moment, it sounded wrong, the denial of a fact known already. He tilted his head to one side and regarded her. "Perhaps you do not know me now. But you have known me before, in another time, in another place." Lena felt a strange emptiness and a longing she couldn't understand, leaving her mind in turmoil. "This is crazy," she whispered . Adrian sighs. "It is not crazy. It's just forgotten." There was a brief silence between them, She began to connect everything together. Her dreams, the painting, the strange nagging every time she beheld him, all were related,