"Awe, shucks, I didn't know you cared so much," Wyatt said as he reached for a hug.

I made a face and promptly tossed him into the bathroom to clean off the gunk from the Divine Collosuem.

"And don't you dare leave my bathroom a mess!" I shouted through the door.

I pulled out my phone from my spacial ring. I needed to order some clothing for the giant oaf. With the power of money, anything was possible. By the time Wyatt was done showering away blood and dirt, his new clothing would arrive.

He was taller than Graham, which was helpful to some degree. Over the years, I'd gifted clothing to my Dad and male friends. Wyatt would need the works in time, but he only needed the basics for now. I tapped the screen and paid a little too much for expedited shipping.

Darius started making noise, and I set my phone down to check on the boy.

I picked him up and kissed his chubby cheeks. The slight weight and baby scent were as comforting as Mr. Brutus. He protested my snuggles, and I set him down on the floor to watch him run off, giggling.

I glanced at the clock. It turned out that only a handful of hours had passed since I was sucked into my dreams. I had gone through several different types of hells in a short span of time. But to Darius, it was a typical morning. He woke up and needed to go potty but didn't have time for me.

I yelped at the sudden realization that Wyatt was in our only bathroom. I ran after my long-gone brother, but I was too late.

The bathroom door was wide open. Wyatt, half naked with a towel wrapped around him, was holding Darius.

I covered my eyes, but it was too late. I saw just about everything, and I mean nearly everything.

During our trek in the Divine Colosseum, I watched Wyatt efficiently dispatch his opponents. And now I knew why. Every inch of this man was sinewy muscle. In my glimpse, I saw scars that littered his flesh, and some were huge. They showcased the suffering he had gone through in our time apart.

I kept my eyes down and watched as water dripped off Wyatt to pool at his feet.

It was strangely quiet, though, so I peeked. Wyatt and Darius stared at each other. Darius seemed as stunned as I was at the number of muscles Wyatt maintained. He was poking Wyatt and pointing at him in awe.

"Your kid?" Wyatt said.

"No! My sister!" Darius shouted, jabbing his fingers into Wyatt's cheek.

"My little brother," I said. My phone beeped, and I read the text that said Wyatt's clothing had finally arrived. How perfectly timed that was.

I took Darius from Wyatt and left the little tyke in the bathroom to do his business.

Then, I went to the front door and led Wyatt to the second unused bedroom.

"This room can be yours. Let me know if this size works. I'll order more." I said. I was eager to get started on breakfast, so I promptly scurried to leave.

Wyatt let out a low whistle, and I turned to look at him. He was admiring the room.

"This is a step up, little sister. You must be rich now." He said.

The words little sister had an inflection that made my cheeks burn red. "I just said all that to get you out of that mess," I said, crossing my arms.

"Right." He said, slowly drawing out that one word.

I could hear the giant monkey boy laughing through the door I slammed.

Breakfast was a spread that I took great pains to slap together. Wyatt and Darius weren't picky eaters, but they were voracious. So I pulled pancakes, waffles, French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, and scones out of my space. For drinks, there was orange juice, water, and coffee. Coffee was also the only thing I made fresh. My preference for coffee was to have it with sugar and cream. So I had both out in these cute pink servers.

Wyatt approached the table as I was putting Darius in his high chair. I took half a second to eye his fit. I was relieved that everything seemed to work and noted the sizes so I could buy him some more clothes.

"You're an even faster cook than before." He said with a shit-eating grin.

I rolled my eyes. Wyatt knew about my space. He'd been sneakily reading my brain for years by this point, and let's face it, I'm not exactly subtle.

Wyatt went for the coffee. The man filled his cup only to dump it down his gullet with surprising speed. I ignored that to plate for Darius. Without thinking about it, I made a plate for Wyatt after I finished doing that.

He took and thankfully stopped drinking all the coffee, leaving me enough to have my first cup.

Breakfast was strangely silent as everyone focused on their food. This was good because I needed to gather myself. This world was ending soon, and I was nowhere near ready for it. With Wyatt, we would be.

Images of Wyatt's brutal execution of violence flashed in my mind, and I gulped. Yeah, we would need this man to get through the end times.

After breakfast, Wyatt claimed he needed to sleep before the information swap. I couldn't deny that he looked like death warmed over. The full belly must have tipped him over into lethargy.

While Wyatt rested, I made sure to maintain Darius' regular routine. This meant we did some school work, had our play date, and ate snacks together.

After I put Darius down for a nap, Wyatt emerged. He looked refreshed and hungry for lunch.

"Let's get out of here so we can talk," I said.

I then set up the baby monitor because the best place to talk was the locket world. A while ago, I tested the baby monitor for such an occasion. I don't know how it crossed dimensions, but it worked. I could stay a whole day per day by myself. Of course, now, with a guest, it continued ticking down to the slashed rate.

Wyatt and I finally entered my farming world. He marveled at it, and I took the time to briefly describe how it worked.

Then I dumped everything on him. Well, I left out the shameful moments after my departure with the pomegrante. I graced upon the backstory of why I was in this world and how Mordecai had dumped me in it.

"I'm sorry for pretending not to know who you were in the second timeline," Wyatt said when it was his turn to speak up about what he'd been up to.

I blinked, recalling how I had confronted him rather violently for some kind of reaction, but Wyatt had given me nothing.

"How were you able to play it off so well?" I said. I was still dazed at how I had started to believe I was wrong about everything. "I started to doubt if it was really you. And why would you do that?"

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"You're incredibly naive for one related to Aphra," Wyatt said with a bitter smile. "You don't hide your emotions very well, and you're blunt to the point of the offense. At least in that latter regard, you resemble her."

I bristled, not liking the way the conversation was going.

"I admire that, but to survive among our relatives and those like us, you must be cold and controlled." He said.

"The only cold relatives I've seen are my directly related ones," I said with a snort. My grandmother was kind and caring, but she was distant. My brother was a rock that oozed salt instead of love. My ancestral relatives were the hotheaded fuses that were always messing up my life.

"You can only be that expressive when you have power in our world," Wyatt said. He had long dropped his smiling act, and I saw his true face again. His expression was severe, and the light in his eyes had turned grim. "They can afford it because no one can truly challenge them."

"So you learned to be this way because of your siblings?" I said. It hadn't left my mind that he was the youngest. I can't imagine what that must have been like.

Wyatt's lips thinned, and he opened his mouth, but I held up a hand to stop him. I narrowed my eyes at him. "You just distracted me from what I wanted to know, " I said.

A huge grin split his face, and I considered that his admission. My lips quirked into a smile as he said, "Not really. I was getting to it. I made a deal with Aphra."

The levity in the air dropped, and with it, my smile. "You did what?" I said through numb lips.

Aphra said this before, but I didn't believe it. As much as I made fun of Wyatt, he was smarter than that. He had to know what making a deal with our relative would create.

"This was when you left the timeline after saving me. That world was falling apart. Aphra came to me thanks to my making a wish at the World Tree. She said that if I wanted to escape that world and meet you again, I would need to make a deal." He said.

"What was the deal?" My voice was barely above that of a whisper.

"The next time I saw you, I couldn't tell you I knew who you were. I had to pretend it was the first time we met." He said.

Wyatt's words hit me like a dump truck. My eyes became blurry and shaky. Wyatt, not knowing who I was played a massive part in my doubts. I was questioning my sanity and wondering if I got everything wrong because of that.

The shock was giving way to a build-up of resentment and bitterness. Aphra, Mordecai, or whatever that deity wanted to be called did that purposefully. Was it to drive me mad or to push me towards whatever plans the Gods seemed to have regarding me? Whatever the purpose, I was one pawn in this tactical board game.

Wait, the words pawn and board game reminded me of something. A memory tickled my brain, and I thought of that game box all those years ago. Lucia and Lucas didn't know why they had it, but I appeared. When I opened it, I saw a pawn with my name placed on a board that looked like my home.

That was too on the nose, even for Mordecai. Mordecai best messed with me by rubbing my face in it, though. I shouldn't put it past him to tell me exactly what he was doing with that bit of fuckery.

"Wendy?" Wyatt's voice drew my attention to him.

"I'm Dolyn now," I said. It was a habit, and the past ten years as Dolyn had me saying that. I still didn't like the name Dolyn.

"Is that a real name?" He said with a smile.

"According to Mordecai, aka Aphra, yes," I said with a shrug. "He just used the last five letters of my actual name to come up with that."

I needed to change the conversation. Undoubtedly, Mordecai was watching, and it would be better to move along to something else I wanted to know.

"The board game Effaced..." I said. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with that, but if everything was on the table, I wanted to know about it.

"That was my doing. Aphra gave it to me so that I could track you down," Wyatt said.

Okay, it was time to move on to the question I was burning to ask. I bit my lip. "Did Lucia ever remember me?" I said, unwilling to meet Wyatt's eyes as I asked him this.

"She knew she was forgetting something but could not recover her memory of you. That didn't make her feelings less real." Wyatt said. He added the last part as my face crumpled.

It didn't make them invalid, but the spell wiped out every piece of me in that world. I knew then without asking what that meant for the rest of the world and the timeline. My family's magic erased everything it created, meaning my forest, home, and conduit were gone. No one could remember me. Wyatt would be the exception because he was like me and had God's blood. But everything else would be reset.

"Your baby?" I said. In the third timeline, she was pregnant, and I was excited to become the winter mother to her baby.

His expression cracked, as did his voice when he said, "Both died in childbirth," Wyatt said, and I could feel the grief rock through the both of us at that. "I should have known better. I did everything I could to prevent pregnancy. There was no way she could carry a child of mine. She later admitted to secretly messing our contraception."

My heart felt like it was being squeezed as I met Wyatt's grieving eyes. I reached out to squeeze his shoulder. It sucked that the two of us were all that was left of our group of friends. It was fate, though, wasn't it? Our bloodline interfered with their world, and the consequence was that everyone lost what was important. Our bloodline was corrupted and too dangerous for that world. I flinched when I realized that my thoughts were likely transmitted to Wyatt as I touched him.

His warm hand covered mine, and he squeezed it. "It's true. Our power isn't pure. There's also a curse on those in our bloodline regarding love. Aphra's line especially."

I pulled away and covered my abdomen with those words. Maybe that was why everyone in our family was single.

We tactfully didn't bring up Adam. Well, I didn't at all, and Wyatt started to, but I told him I'd feed him to the sharks if he did. He wanted to explain his side of what happened. Still, I just wanted to bury it forever and forget that painful moment that ruined everything.

I was still piecing myself together, and the last thing I needed was more reminders of Adam.

We slipped out of the locket world and back to the hotel suite. Darius was still asleep.

I needed to prepare Wyatt for what was to come to this world. He was above the moon with how advanced technology was. He still had complaints because he'd been to better worlds. He fell in love with how this world does video games. Once upon a time, I bought a headset allowing virtual reality. It made the zombie experience fully immersive. I was delaying playing the game but knew I needed it to train.

Wyatt had heard of zombies, but when I told him this world would be infested with them, he became obsessed with playing the game Brains. Like me, he wanted to be able to prepare in some way. The best way to do so was with the game my friends created.

Wyatt booted up the game in the living room with wide eyes. "This is Adam's voice." He said.

The game's opening credits had a voiceover of the character Atlas. I hadn't played the game before, so I didn't know that. I did know that Graham had become a famous voice actor because of the character Atlas.

"No, it's not," I said, looking away from him.

"It is," Wyatt said, shocked, and I could feel his burning inquiry upon my face.

I ran away to get started on lunch.

I could try to sell that Graham sounded different enough from Adam, but only I was fooled. Anyone who knew Adam could read between the clear lines. Atlas's voice, character design, and attitude were based on Adam.

"Why are you okay with staying in this world anyway?" I said when Wyatt entered the kitchen.

Wyatt crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway as he watched me. He said nothing, and I could feel my defensiveness rise. I seem to find myself in the company of people who can look through me too much.

"It will fall apart and become overrun with flesh-eating monsters," I said as I started chopping vegetables and fruit for a snacking platter.

Wyatt said nothing as I babbled. He just stared at me as I unraveled.

"I'm sorry." His firm voice stopped my rambling in its tracks. "You shouldn't have been left alone with this burden. You can't do this alone."

I turned around to stare at him. His face was grave, and his gaze warm. This was the true face of Wyatt. Not the one that wore a mask for the world but the true him staring at me.

"Let me support you." He said as he stepped forward. He lowered the fruit knife that I had accidentally brandished into the air.

Mordecai's words about family floated into my mind. He was right in many regards. For better or worse, a family was there to protect against outside attacks. It was vital to ensure the bloodline continued. Only by securing the success of the family could it go on. Wyatt was right, as well. I was alone in this big world, and I trusted no one right now. How could I? Anytime I found my footing, it was ripped away. I had to start new each time, and the hits kept coming.

For all his bravado, I trusted Wyatt. Even if he had made a pesky deal with Mordecai, that was over. And he was family. The only family that had been there for me repeatedly. Wyatt was more my brother than my actual blood, one Augustus.

"I'm sorry," I said. I spun around to set the knife down on the cutting board. "It's been over a decade since we've seen each other. I don't know how to trust anymore." My abilities gave me some security, but after the false premonition of Adam, I've seen nothing solid since.

My ability had turned its back on me, and I had done the same. No wonder I couldn't save my father. I bit my lip, then returned to meet Wyatt's eyes. I need to be stronger, and I have to face the music. No more avoiding his eyes. Wyatt and Darius were all I had in any world.

"Losing Adam broke something in me. I don't want to talk about the ending. It's old history." I said quickly because Wyatt had opened his mouth.

"I don't know how much time I have left in this world. Mordecai said it was time-limited, and the zombies would come before I leave. I'll have to make a deal with him to stay longer to care for Darius…but if I fail, will you please do so in my stead?"

"As if he were you." He said, and I almost fell to the floor with relief.

I missed the feeling of safety and security from knowing someone had my back. Life hadn't been kind for the past almost two years.