Love Beyond Lies

  Love Beyond Lies

  Outsiders #8

  Rebecca Royce

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Love Beyond Lies (Outsiders #8)

  Copyright @ 2019 by Rebecca Royce

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947672-09-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-947672-85-7

  Cover art by Original Syn

  Content Editing: Heather Long

  Proofread Editing: Jennifer at Bookends Editing

  Formatting: Ripley Proserpina

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Rebecca Royce

  www.rebeccaroyce.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other books by Rebecca Royce…

  Foreword

  Dearest Reader,

  Thank you so much for reading Love Beyond Lies (Outsiders 8). I’ve been writing the Outsiders for a decade. These characters are so real to me. The first book in this series, Love Beyond Time, was the first book I ever wrote. This journey through their love stories just amazes me. I can’t believe we’re almost to the end…

  I appreciate the time you’ve taken with me getting these books out. They’re complex love stories and sometimes they just take as long as they take. This is truly a labor of love for me and I am grateful to each and every one of you.

  Biggest Hugs,

  Rebecca Royce

  I am dedicating this story to Natalie Rom. Thank you for checking in periodically to make sure I am writing them. I swear I am. They’re just bossy characters and we fight a lot. Hugs!

  One

  Colin

  Colin stared at the ground, holding his phone toward the sky. It didn’t matter what cellular data plan he had, this small town that he couldn’t find a name for was in a cellular hole and he wasn’t going to be able to reach anyone. Since he didn’t have a connection to his soul mate, he couldn’t telepathically speak to anyone yet. They had to bond to open up his telepathic abilities. He still had to call using human mechanisms. But Eden’s vision had been very clear. He had to go the very edge of West Texas, so close to the edge it practically wasn’t Texas anymore. Somewhere around there he would find Gia, his missing soul mate. It was so many miles he couldn’t even contemplate how many he’d have to search. Yep, the vision was clear—clear as mud.

  But then again Eden didn’t control these things, the ancestors did, and with the war having really gotten started, she had a lot of visions coming all the time. Gabriel had popped him over here and then popped back out to get back to whatever city the demons were currently burning down.

  So much shit, so little time.

  Finding Gia was the most important thing for Colin to concentrate on at the present time. All the soul mates had to get together or they didn’t stand a chance in hell, literally, to beat back the demon Sebastian and his much more evil parents. Kal and Isabelle. Jason and Charma. Gabriel and Loraine. Samuel and Eden. Christophe and Ruby. Drew and Marina. Zane and Raquel. Leonardo was trying, and currently failing, to fix things with Alexa, which left just Colin and his missing love, Gia.

  Why was the woman so hard to find and why—the bigger question really—hadn’t she come back to him when her memories of their past lives returned? That was the part that really bothered Colin and kept him up at night. Did she just not want to see him? If she knew she was an Outsider—and he knew she did—then she had to understand how important every single second of this battle was. Yet, she stayed away. Did she want to be chased? In none of their past lives had she played emotional games as awful as this. Was she completely altered?

  He rubbed at his eyes and quit moving. Yep, there on the ground was the thing he had most dreaded about walking around in the western part of Texas. There was a frickin’ rattlesnake.

  And it was moving its tail around in a way that even as the city slicker he tended to be, told him that the slithering giver of pain was not happy to see him either. The last thing he needed was to be taken down by that evil creature—and Colin knew evil creatures—which the snake qualified as being.

  Was it possible that snake was possessed?

  He took a step back. If it struck him, it could kill him. He was in this human body—with powers for sure, but human nonetheless as long as he lived on earth. That snake could cause a serious amount of damage. He didn’t have an anti-venom—what was the word, he didn’t know it—heck he’d just go with—stuff on him, and Jason, the Outsider’s resident Healer, wasn’t around to fix him should that thing strike.

  He bent forward from the waist. “Here’s the thing.” Yes, he was talking to a snake. That was actually happening. “Between you and that direction is where I need to be. The vision was very clear. Gabriel was to drop me and then I’d walk due west. You’re in my way. If I try to get around you then I just think you’re going to follow or strike me. I don’t know snakes. You’re a problem for me.”

  The rattlesnake seemed completely uninterested in his statement. It warned him, shaking the end of its rattle in pure venomous rage. Colin didn’t run from demons but he wouldn’t be above running for his life it that was what he had to do to get around this snake.

  He could just see it now. He’d die from a snakebite, end up back with his ancestors, and explain their whole epic battle had ended because he got bit in the leg.

  “Why don’t you just turn invisible? Maybe if it can’t see you, it won’t know.”

  He shook his head. The sound of Sebastian’s evil bitch mother speaking in his ear wasn’t new. She wasn’t really there. Hadn’t ever been, really. When Colin was a little boy, the demon had managed to lock him in a basement and torture him for almost a week.

  The demon had taken many forms, including its own mother. Now, when Colin was stressed, his brain went a little wonky. In any case, he couldn’t go invisible to get around the snake. Unfortunately, only humans, Outsiders, and demons were affected by his invisibility. Animals, reptiles, birds… they could always see him just fine. He’d discovered that fact when he’d tried to get around a guard dog to rob a bank.

  Colin sighed. His misspent youth.

  “It is not real,” a voice he’d been dying to hear called out from behind some trees. “An illusion to keep out strangers and unwanteds.” Gia snapped her fingers and the snake vanished. “I don’t remember you being such a coward, Colin.”

  Well, there she was. His soul mate. In the flesh. Beautiful, buxom, curves to spare and with the brightest red hair he’d ever seen. It fell down her back in long waves. She’d just insulted him and it didn’t faze him at al
l. They’d always had a… difficult love. Others went gooey-eyed. Gia and he tended to holler at each other.

  Most of the time, he was equal parts pissed at her as he was in love.

  “I’m surprised that you remember me at all.” With the snake gone he strode forward. “I was thinking maybe there was something wrong with your memory.”

  She turned her back on him before calling over her shoulder. “Come along, Colin. You’re here. I suppose we need to have this conversation. I wondered when you’d show up.”

  He hurried to catch up with her. By the universe, he loved this woman. His heart pounded against his ribs. She smelled like baby powder and it did things to his groin. He adjusted his pants. After decades of nothing much happening down there, he was instantly hard and it hurt like a bitch. “When I’d show up? I was where I was supposed to be. Where the hell have you been?”

  She twirled her hand in the air. “For a while I was up there in Maine waiting. But you didn’t show. I got bored. I left. I came here.”

  Now, that didn’t seem right at all. “You got bored?”

  She nodded, opening the door to the dingiest cabin he’d ever seen. The door was practically off the hinge, hanging on by a nail or two, and the stairs groaned like they might break any second. Colin wasn’t a small guy. Both he and his twin Christophe stood well over six feet tall, but he wasn’t so large that he could break things just by stepping on them.

  He followed her into the house and she shut the door behind him. Gia’s eyes were wide when she looked at him. “Colin, you should not be here.”

  There was no furniture save one small bed beside a table. “Nice to see you, too, Gia. How has life been?”

  She looked away, turning her back on him and it was everything he could do not to reach out and grab her. Still, he kept his hands to himself. He’d known her soul for so long he couldn’t even remember not having her in his life—he loved her to the point of distraction. He’d killed for her, died for her, gotten on his knees and begged the universe to be fairer to her. And after all this time apart—decades of time not seeing each other—she couldn’t even look at him? What in the hell was going on?

  She straightened her back and put her hands on her hips before she turned around. “Listen to me very carefully. I know that isn’t your strongest suit. Turn around and leave.”

  A waft of her powers moved through him. She was trying an actual power play? Was she kidding? “Your vocal powers of persuasion don’t work on me. They never have. Try that again and you’re going to piss me off.”

  “Then draw upon lifetimes of knowing me and get the hell out of here while you still can.”

  He blinked. This stranger, who somehow was also not, stared at him with huge eyes and a trembling chin. “Gia, why are you afraid? We’re out in the middle of nowhere. I’d never hurt you. The real battle is happening everywhere else but not here. What has you spooked?”

  “N-nothing.” She walked away from him to the window. “Go home, Colin. I don’t know this lifetime. I don’t want to battle. I don’t wish to participate. Leave.”

  He froze inside. That had been this story of his lifetime. Soon after their birth, he and his twin been sent off into the universe to be hidden from the demon and his dark hordes. His brother, Christophe, had landed in France at the home of a wealthy, old-moneyed, intellectual family. They’d adopted him and raised him as their own. It had been years before he’d realized he wasn’t human the same way they were.

  Colin, by contrast, landed in an orphanage in Arizona where he’d gotten lost in the system for a long time. It was like he hadn’t existed at all. He was an unregistered baby the state didn’t have the resources, or ability, to account for. Eventually, when the paperwork got sorted out, he’d been sent to live with probably the meanest families in Arizona over and over. The world was entirely made up off assholes and child abusers. It was like he’d attracted them.

  Christophe had forgotten him but somehow, even though they’d been babies, Colin had never forgotten Christophe. He’d learned about the Outsiders from the ancestors when he’d been about nine. They didn’t talk to him often but when they did he paid attention.

  Knowledge about Gia came later. He’d been searching for her ever since.

  And now he’d found his soul mate and she didn’t want him.

  “Listen to me, I don’t know what’s going on here. It was always you and me against the world. Against the universe. You don’t want in this time? Well, that’s too damned bad. We already have enough shit to contend with. Leonardo and Alexa are fighting on opposite sides of the battle. They pretty much hate each other. Or, he did hate her and now he doesn’t and she hated him before and now even more.”

  Gia blinked rapidly. “Leonardo and Alexa? They hate each other?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty fucked up. Sebastian was causing havoc and now he’s trying to help because he doesn’t want to lose to his father. Speaking of which, we’re all apparently related to the demons. Made by the same magic. This whole thing stems from the big bad man and some fucked-up games he’s been playing. You don’t get to say no. You don’t want me? Fine. I won’t force myself on you. I get it. I’m not a catch in this life if I ever was. I’m the guy everyone rejects. But you’re coming with me and you’re participating because we need help. These humans don’t even realize what’s happening, and once they do, it’ll be too late anyway.”

  She looked down at the ground. “Colin, if I could explain this better, I would. I…”

  The cabin shook and she groaned. “He found me. Two weeks I stayed here and everything was fine. And now he’s found me. I told you to leave.”

  Okay, this was strange and he’d seen a lot of strange lately. “Gia? Want to explain?”

  “No.” She rounded on him, nearly falling over as the cabin shook even more. On instinct bred from years of battling at her side, he grabbed her and pulled her to him. She sucked in her breath, but didn’t fight him when he yanked her tighter, keeping her safe in his arms.

  The cabin stilled and Gia let out a sound that was something between a sigh and a sob. “What is it? Tell me. What made the cabin shake?”

  She pulled back to look at him. “You’ve only recently gotten your memories back, but I’ve had mine my whole life. I looked for you for a long time. Then I decided that you’d find me when the time was right. In the meantime, I screwed up. Big time. Twice.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She pulled out of his embrace. “We have to run. We can talk about it later. We don’t have the powers in these human bodies to do what needs to be done. It shouldn’t be here and neither should we.”

  Gia tugged on his arm and she let him. She was frightened and there was little in this world he couldn’t fix if he understood the problem. But, she wasn’t going to tell him what it was until she was ready. All he could do was follow her and do his best to keep her safe up until she was ready.

  She jolted to a stop and he took a second to stare at what had halted her from fleeing out the door. Colin stared at the monster in front of the entrance to the broken-down cabin. It took him a moment to really understand what he looked at. Although it wore crumply black clothes in its quest to appear human, the creature in front of him was something quite different.

  “This isn’t possible.”

  Gia turned to him. “It is. Somehow. Has been for the last five years.”

  Colin shook his head. “I killed him. In our last life.”

  The shadow creature cocked his head to the side. “I told you then, Outsider, and I’ll tell you now; there is no killing me. I am as immortal as the creatures you all hopelessly battle. I am forever. And Gia’s soul belongs to me.”

  Colin yanked his soul mate back. They had much to work through amongst the two of them. He didn’t know her favorite color or how she took her eggs, not in this life. But he knew her. They’d been born for each other and stood together to take on this task. They’d promised to put themselves between evil and the rest of
the universe together.

  He’d vanquished this thing. It should not be here. It was from another time, another dimension.

  “Colin. Do you see now why you have to go?” Her voice shook. “This is my fault. I drew it to me, again.”

  He held her against his side. A foolish man would try to put Gia behind him, to block her from danger. He was too smart for that. She’d always been his greatest ally. And if this thing was still around then he’d failed her, badly. No wonder she stayed away.

  Another Time

  “Baby,” he called after her, running to catch up. Colin’s love for Gia never wavered, even when she made him want to throw something. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to play with this much magic. You don’t know what you’re going to draw to you.”

  Her powers were more addictive than the rest of the Outsiders’. They kept that information to themselves, but the more she used her abilities, the more she wanted to, and the more she drew unwanted attention.

  His love turned around. “Colin.” She placed her hands on his chest. “Don’t be a downer. We’re going to spend our entire lives in this place fighting and fighting and fighting. I want to have one night of fun. Don’t you want to have one night of fun? Aren’t I worth one night of fun?”

  Her words just killed him. Yes, of course she was worth one night of fun and they were young. He could remember some of their previous existences. What was coming was not going to be a picnic. Maybe she was right. Maybe they should let loose when they could.

  Leonardo and Kal would have to deal. He didn’t answer to them anyway. Drew and Marina were missing in action. Why couldn’t they spend some time just being young for once? And why did he always have to know he was living these multiple lives? Some of them got to exist in the present.