“There’s no escaping the curse, lass. When we’re like this we have the power to send the spirits where they need to be and the ability to protect each other. We also maintain all of our memories in this form, but when we’re born again we lose all of that,” Liam said, sounding exhausted and making her wonder just how many times he’d been through this.

“The curse follows us each and every time we try to end it. We start attracting attention from spirits the moment that we’re born when we’re at our most vulnerable. We have no way to protect ourselves or any memories to help guide us,” Liam said, sending Tristan what could only be described as a look of regret.

“That’s why when we decide to attempt to break the curse that we make sure that at least one of us can stand in as our protector,” Liam explained softly, looking at Tristan for another moment before he forced himself to look away.

“We do it this way to keep each other safe and so that we’re not completely f**ked by this curse,” Declean said while looking at Tristan until he also forced himself to look away.

“It helps to know that we’re not alone and that we’re not crazy,” Quinn quietly added.

As she tried her best to digest everything they were telling her, something occurred to her and made her wonder why Tristan had pushed her away all these years if he knew that she was, supposedly, his soul mate. If the whole point of him being born was to break a curse with her, then why did he-

“He didn’t know what ye were to him, lass,” Shayne said, answering her question before she had a chance to finish thinking of it.

“Why not?”

She watched as Shayne leveled a glare on Tristan. “Because the stubborn bastard broke his promise,” he bit out angrily.

“Oh, and what promise was that?” Tristan asked, sounding every bit as pissed as Shayne.

“The one where ye promised to finally let her go.”

Chapter 33

“Stop!” Marty screamed and she’d probably be on his back trying to drag him off of Shayne if one of his “brothers” hadn’t stopped her.

“Calm down!” one of them demanded as he tried to drag Tristan away from Shayne, but Tristan wasn’t having that. Not after all the bullshit he’d gone through.

“Fuck off,” Tristan bit out, ignoring the agonizing pain shooting up and down his useless arm as he tightened his hold around Shayne’s neck with his good hand and slammed the bastard as hard as he could against the floor. He couldn’t kill the bastard, something that he regretted at the moment, but he could hurt Shayne and for now that would have to be enough.

“Calm the f**k down, lad!” Shayne snapped, moving to grab Tristan by the shoulders and shove him away only to curse and disappear so that he wouldn’t hurt him. It should comfort him that Shayne cared enough about him not to hurt him even when he was bashing his head into the floor, but it didn’t.

Far from it.

“You f**king ass**le!” Tristan roared, struggling to get to his feet and nearly falling back on his ass when the pain in his shoulder and head become too much to handle, but he pushed through it.

It didn’t matter that he most likely had a concussion and that his arm was seriously f**ked up, the only thing that mattered was that the one person that he’d trusted completely had f**ked him over. Shayne had lied to him, kept things from him and had put Marty in danger.

“Lad, if ye’d just calm down I could explain everything,” Shayne said as he materialized across the room.

“You f**king lied to me!” Tristan shouted, going after Shayne.

“I didn’t lie to ye, lad!” Shayne said, suddenly disappearing just as Tristan reached him only to reappear on the other side of the room.

“Bullshit!” he snapped, shifting directions and going after Shayne, shoving anyone dumb enough to get in his way aside.

“That’s kind of harsh, don’t ye think, lad?” Shayne said, once again disappearing from sight just as Tristan was about to reach him. He reappeared across the room, forcing Tristan to chase after him.

“You lied to me, kept shit away from me and kept me away from Marty!” Tristan snapped, ignoring the pain in his arm as he went after his one time best friend. He was too focused on killing the bastard to care that Shayne could keep this up all day or realize that he probably had another five minutes of this before the pain became too much and knocked him on his ass.

“I did what I thought was best,” Shayne said, ducking out of reach before disappearing, this time just as Tristan swung at the bastard. The move sent him stumbling and had him biting back a groan as the pain intensified, but it wasn’t enough to stop him.

Nothing short of murder would be able to stop him this time.

“Tristan?” Marty said, trying to get his attention, but he barely heard or saw her as he continued to go after Shayne. At this point he was barely aware of anything else but Shayne.

“Tristan?” she tried again.

“Not now,” he said absently, zeroing in on the bastard holding up his hands up in surrender.

“Lad, yer hurt. Why don’t we just sit down and talk this through?” Shayne calmly suggested as he disappeared only to reappear near the television and out of Tristan’s reach.

“You mean the talk that we should have had the night that you appeared in my bedroom?” Tristan bit out.

“Ye were a child then, lad. It wasn’t something that I could talk to ye about.”

“Bullshit!”

“It’s not bullshit, lad! Ye had enough problems and ye didn’t need to know that-“

“That I wasn’t a f**king freak? Or that there was a reason why I was given such a f**ked up existence?”

“Well,-“

“You could have cleared up everything! Instead you left me wondering what the hell was wrong with me! You made me think that I was doing Marty a favor by shoving her away! You-“

“Ye,” Liam said coldly as he stepped in front of him and cut him off, “did that all on yer own.”

“Fuck you,” Tristan snapped, moving to step around Liam and go after Shayne, but Liam wasn’t having it.

When Tristan shifted to the side, so did Liam, blocking him. “Yer the one that made Shayne promise not to help,” Liam said evenly, taking Tristan by surprise.

“What the hell are you talking-“ he started to demand only to get another surprise when Marty cut him off.

“Would someone mind giving me a hand with this guy?”

Expecting to find one of the men holding Marty back so that she wouldn’t do something foolish like try to get in the middle of this, he looked back only to discover that all of his “brothers” were standing directly behind him and looking just as confused as he felt. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see when Finn and Quinn shifted to the side so that they could look back, but it definitely wasn’t his wife being chased around the couch by a na**d elderly man.

*-*-*-*

“Tristan?” she said, trying to remain calm as she gave the very grumpy and very na**d elderly man in front of her what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

Apparently he took her smile as an invitation. With his gaze locked on her, he moved towards her. Well, it was more like a shuffle, leaving Marty to wonder if physical limitations followed people into their deaths or if this man was just used to moving like that and didn’t give it a second thought.