~~~Valerie~~~
Stephanie and I sat in silence for a long time while I thought over everything that she had said. I didn’t know if I believed her or not. As she told the story, she sounded sincere and more than a little worried about those people from the parallel universe. If, like her, I believed they existed and believed they had suffered through a plague, I guess I would be worried about them as well.
Finally, I turned to her and asked something she apparently hadn’t expected me to ask. “How do they feel about this?”
“Excuse me? Who are you referring to?” she replied with a puzzled expression on her face.
“Those people in that other world. If what you say is true, then they’ve been suffering horribly these last ten years or so. Why would any one of them want to attempt to mate so quickly after losing a beloved mate?”
She looked at me for a long time. She looked so long that I grew annoyed and snapped out a, “What?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the first woman we’ve talked to who’s asked about them. The first female to wonder about their feelings in all of this.”
I didn’t know how to respond to her words, so I said, “The others probably haven’t asked because they don’t believe you. They aren’t worried about people who they don’t think are real. Even those that agreed to go most likely didn’t believe you until they got there.”
“Does that mean you believe?” She sounded relieved at the idea that she might have finally stumbled upon someone who was willing to accept the unfathomable and be ready to help a world on the brink of extinction.
“Not even a little,” I said, hating to darken the hopeful look in her eyes. “But for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s all true. I want to know what they think about us coming to their world to find mates among their people. I can’t see them worrying about repopulating their world in the midst of so much loss.”
“Most aren’t. We only have four men and three women from their world agreeing to be a part of this experiment at the moment.” She pulled out seven sheets of paper and handed them to me.
The picture and bio on the top sheet were of a young male with dark blond hair and a tribal tattoo running across the base of his neck. I didn’t read any of the information running down the side of the page, just flipped to the next page, which was a lovely olive-skinned woman with a long braid of light brown hair going down her back. Her eyes were sad, and I quickly moved on before her expression made me believe that another world was real.
The third photo stopped me. I couldn’t take my eyes from the man’s brooding image. From just the head shot, I saw that his eyes were a dark hazel and his hair was light brown and shoulder length. He looked thirty-five or forty. He had a straight-line scar on his right cheek and a hint of a tattoo peeking from his left collar.
While I studied the page, I forgot Stephanie was in the room. His name was Jackson Luther Nichols. He was six-foot-one, weighed roughly two hundred and twenty pounds, and was a wolf shifter. The sheet labeled him as an American Red Wolf, but that obviously meant they had compared him to one of our breeds. There was a picture of his wolf form, though not one of him changing into the form. The eyes of the man and the eyes of the wolf were eerily similar. The paper stated that he lived in an area of Valeterra—I wasn’t sure if that was the name of the country he lived in or the world—that would be our Tennessee/Alabama area, which was pretty much where I lived.
Apparently, I spent too much time looking at his photo, because Stephanie had to clear her throat a few times to get my attention. She didn’t look irritated with me, only curious.
Reluctantly, I handed the stack of papers back to her with Jackson’s on top and without looking at the rest. She studied the top sheet for a bit before stuffing it into the files and all of it into her briefcase and turning back to me.
“Those seven are all from the area of Valeterra that is parallel to the United States. They are all alphas, making them the leaders of the remains of their individual clans. There are hundreds of alphas without mates all across Valeterra. Most refuse to participate in the experiment. We hope that if a few of the ones who volunteered do find mates in the next five to ten years or so, the others might join them.”
“Did all of those people,” I asked, pointing toward her briefcase, though I was only curious about one of them, “lose a mate to the sickness?”
“No. Most of the current volunteers lost their mates before the disease, which is why they were more willing to volunteer than the others were. One volunteer has been without his mate for over fifty years, and one has never had one. None of them have children.”
I didn’t ask about the one that had held my attention. I’d burned that man’s face into my brain. I was sure he wasn’t the volunteer who had never had a mate. He had a look about him that said he was well-versed in the art of lovemaking. The knowledge of which made me want to drag him to my bed.
“I don’t know,” I finally said, attempting to shake the man from my thoughts. “I need proof. I need something tangible to convince me that there truly is another dimension and that I should move to it—God, that sounds crazy coming from my mouth. If, with proof, I choose to do such an outrageous thing, what do I tell my family? I assume that I can’t say where I’m going. That they can never visit me. Will I be stuck there forever?”
“We will make up something to tell your family. No, you can never come back. Your sister might have the same immunities and DNA that you do. If she does, then, of course, you can tell her if she is willing to go to Valeterra as well. Our intel on her states that she doesn’t have any children and isn’t married either, is this correct?”
“Yes. My sister was married, but when she couldn’t have children, her husband left her for someone else. The two of them tried everything to conceive but couldn’t. I never married, so when she got a divorce, we moved in together, and she opened her deli right next to my store. That’ll be my deciding factor. If you can bring me proof and if my sister has the option of going, I’ll think about going. I’ll miss my parents, but they’re happy with each other and their RV. I almost never see them so it won’t be such a shock to be without them.”
“Thank you, Ms. Stutts,” she said, rising and gathering her things. “You’ve given us more than anyone else has. I’ll see what I can get you in the way of proof. I have a video on my laptop I could show you of a shifter changing, but no one else has believed it’s real, and I doubt you would either.”
“I wouldn’t. Professional filmmakers can do too much with CG these days. I might believe a live feed, but not something you’ve previously filmed.”
After showing her to the door, I sat and stared out my office window until Gail knocked on my door with lunch. How was I going to keep something like that a secret from her of all people? She gave me a quizzical look, and when I didn’t say anything, she asked what the woman had wanted. I told her the line I had come up with earlier about the woman wanting my store to carry her books. Gail didn’t believe me one bit, but I didn’t change my story no matter how much she prodded.