The Games Jack Plays

How many lifetimes have I been following this lad? It seems like it has been only a couple hundred years, but I know it's been much longer, and it also depends on if you count the years in the realm or the human world.

Wherever he goes, I follow.

When the humans start to question why he never ages, he returns to the realm. Time moves differently in the realm, for every day that passes in the realm is ten years in the human world. He'll return to the realm for a month before going back to the humans, so by then it'll have been about three hundred years. Every time he returns, he engages himself in a very human sport, one they call hockey. Putting on skates and chasing a puck with a stick on a lake of ice, making captain every time.

At first, I wondered why he would play that game every time he returned. Then I figured it out. I figured out why when I first started monitoring him, I couldn't find him in our realm when he returned.

I've traveled the forests, the cliffs, the mountains, the deserts, the plains. But never the burning depths where the dark elves live or the frozen barrens of ice elves. After the fourth time he returned to the realms, I decided to travel to the winter realm, and there he was.

He's an ice elf.

That's why he goes back to playing this game, one that can be so violent. I think it may be the attraction the ice and cold. But in time, the humans have made up new games and even arts that involve the ice and cold. And yet, he still comes back to this one.

Whether he knows of my presence or not, he has never acknowledged me. Even after I started to follow him more consistently to the ice realm when he should have been long dead, but he still doesn't age past the normal elf age. The normal elf lives to be six hundred in elf years. With that discovery, I started to suspect him to have deity lineage. And elves born to gods have to be reported, and Jack is not one of them. Not in the recorded history at least. Elves born to gods, like myself, are ever living. The more depleted the gene, the less of a chance there is at immortality. Less of a chance to come into a power like a god.

His mysteriousness has me very intrigued. I have found that with each and every little thing I learn about him, the need to know more about him grows stronger. And it is because of him, I have grown to like this game he plays. The violence is even exhilarating, and he seems to thrive off it, exciting him every time. Dark elves usually like that, but I ruled that out a long time ago when he remained young like me and my brothers. In all the years, I have never seen him travel to the fiery pits of the underworld. With each passing year, I grow more infatuated with him, but the dark energy that radiates off him should scare me away. It doesn't, though. With every time we return to the realm, I am eager for when we return to the human world.

All thirteen of my brothers think I'm crazy for continuing to monitor him instead of staying in the forest and protecting it like my mother would like me to. They think someone from the light realm should monitor him instead, but I was given this assignment a long time ago, and I plan on honoring it until I can figure him out and see my assignment to its completion.

And honestly, I find my human form more appealing than my elf form, I look too much like the goddess I was born to when I'm in the realms. That is why my father, a forest elf, has two of my brothers flanked by me at almost all times. Lythorin and Talarin. Those two are the only ones that I share a mother with. The others were all offspring with other elves before he met my mother, Mother Nature, Gaia.

The crowd around me cheers as another puck makes it to the net of the opposing team, pulling my wandering mind back to the game in front of me. My gaze finds Jack instantly as he skates across the rink, his back facing me with a fist in the air telling me that he was the one who made the goal, his jersey reading BOREAS above the number one. A grin twists to the right corner of my mouth, of course he made the goal. In a matter of seconds, an opposing team member throws one of Jack's teammates against the wall. Shouting in his face about being on his tail.

Jack stops in the middle of the rink and lowers his fist and straightens his back, I can barely make out the ridges of his back muscles before he eerily turns in the direction of the fight. I've never seen him get involved in a fight that wasn't aimed at him, but in the way his jaw ticks and his dark blue eyes turn almost black, it looks like he might just get involved. Then his dark blue gaze flicks up to the crowd, searching, then they lock with my green eyes. An inkling of a feeling to reach out to my brother's hand courses through me, but suddenly washes away.

I'm alone.

Shit. My stomach drops to the floor, taking my gut with it. This is not how I intended on starting this lifetime. I'm pretty sure my skin has gone visibly pale as Jack holds my gaze. His mouth, one I have dream countless times about kissing, twists into an unsettling grin. Suddenly, my limbs start to shake without warning as the anxiety I have worked so hard to burry tries to grip me like a vise. Shaking is not very warrior like, not for me.

In a swift motion, he jerks his hand in the direction towards the fight, never taking his eyes off me. It's the kind of movement that only an elf would catch, so quick and subtle. The guy from the opposing team backs off instantly, skating backwards and slipping on the seemingly wet ice, his helmeted head hitting the ice with an audible crack. The crowd cringes as the sound echoes through the arena like a tidal wave.

Every nerve inside me screams to run, that Jack is far more dangerous than I have anticipated.

Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.

But I'm frozen, my brain and soul eating up his strange form of acknowledgement, my body in an excited frenzy and hungry for his touch. If I ignored that he was looking at me, I would have heard the girls sitting behind me squealing at the thought that he was looking at them. But he's not, he's looking at me.

The rest of the game goes by very quickly as I don't pay any attention to the clock and how they play, my eyes are only focused on him. With each chance he gets, his dark blue gaze finds my green one, each acknowledgement is a zap of untethered energy to the heart. This hunger for him is much stronger this lifetime, whereas the others I had just simply ignored it.

What is different?

What is happening?

What is his angle?

If Lythorin and Talarin were here, I'm sure they would have an idea. But this is the first time in a long time that I have gone to one of Jack's games without them.

Would Jack have chanced looking directly at me if my brothers where here with me?

As soon as the game ends, my hand reaches for the brown leather bag I left sitting at my feet during the game and throw it over my shoulder, rushing through the crowd to get out of the chilly arena as quickly as possible. Not even the speed and stealth of an elf could get me away from him this time. There were so many people at the game this time, and it was only the second game since we left the realms.

Anxiety crawls through me, clawing at the barrier, wanting to break free and unleash its power. As my boots finally reach the sidewalk next to the busy street, I can feel his eyes on me. I need to get to my apartment and tell my brothers what just happened.

Dark, seductive energy zaps through my left arm as a tight grip is wrapped around my left wrist. "Wait," a masculine voice says.

The scent of winter and ash, one I have grown to familiarize myself with and later grown to like, fills my nose like a fresh baked apple pie. Sweet and ever intoxicating, I could drown myself in it and not need to come back up for air. It strikes home for me, bringing an endless stream of comfort.

My stomach drops again, rooting my boot covered feet to the sidewalk. I've heard him talk before, but hearing him talk to me has every muscle in my body tense, asking for a release that only he could give me. Slowly, I turn to face him. My gaze wanders up and up, realizing just how much taller he is than me. I have always blamed my mother for how small I am compared to Lythorin and Talarin, they were blessed with our father's height.

My green gaze examines Jack as they wander up, noticing the all black attire he is wearing and how tightly they fit around his muscles. His honey colored skin looks freshly tanned against all the black, unlike the normal pale complexion of an ice elf. His brown hair is a fluffy sweaty mess from the helmet he had been wearing during the game only minutes ago. Then my gaze falls on his dark blue eyes, an endless sea of emotions.

The realization that I'm alone dawns on me again and I try to pull my wrist free, but his grip only tightens more.

"Why," it comes out as a whisper but an emotion flashes across his eyes, telling me that he heard me.

He presses his lips together before parting them. "You've been following me, Nymph." the word comes out casual and aggressive at the same time, striking me in the heart.

Anger rages through me like and uncontrollable fire with the insult and I rip my wrist free of his grip. "Call me a Nymph again, and you'll lose your hand." I warn as my gaze narrows on him.

My threat seems to only amuse him as he arches a brow and brings the hand he had on my wrist to his belly with a laugh. Does he think I'm joking? I've sliced off a man's penis before for jerking it at me thinking he could have a piece of me, I don't take too kindly to insults.

His laughing fit dies when he notices that my gaze only narrows more. "Oh, you're not kidding." he swings a hand behind him and scratches the back of his neck.

For a flash of a moment, he almost looks human. Cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment. If it weren't for the point on this inside of his rounded ear, I would have passed him for a human.

His jaw ticks again as he presses his lips in a thin line. "You've been following me." he states again, like I didn't hear him the first time.

My head bobs slowly, confirming what we both know. "I have my reasons." my words are soft and careful.

He arches his right brow, not buying my answer. "For seven hundred and fifty six years?" he's counting elf years.

My lips part, he's known the whole time. Am I really not as stealthy as I think I am? I step in closer to him, unsheathing a blade I had hidden in the sleeve of my black leather jacket, one that was given to me by my grandmother, and placing it to his abdomen. Her mark carved into the widest part of the blade, a bow and arrow in resemblance to the moon and sun.

He doesn't even flinch when my blade puts a tiny hole in his black leather jacket. "I've been aware of your presence the whole time, Ever."

Shit. He knows my name. "It's Eve, Jack." I glare at him, making a point that I know his name too.

His mouth twists at both corners of his mouth, revealing his straight pearly whites. "I know, I know a lot about you."

All signs of anxiety goes up in smoke when rage courses through my veins again. How can he possibly know a lot about me? We've never conversed and I have been around for a very long time. My wrist twitches to move the blade to his chest, but it doesn't move from his abdomen. The same dark energy zaps through my arm again. How is he doing that?

"I know that blade bares the mark of Artemis, your grandmother. I know your mother is Gaia, the goddess of nature, which would make you a nymph by technicality." there is that word again. My gaze bores into his as my right ear twitches with my rising rage. "I know your father is the forest elf known as Eryndor Greene. I know the two guys you always have by you are your brothers. What I don't know, is why you have been following me." his neck cranes downward as his gaze narrows at me, his dark blue eyes growing even darker, almost black.

My throat tightens as I try to gulp down the anxiety that threatens to start a flame again. "You're not on the list of deity offspring." if he can point out the obvious like it somehow makes him look like he knows all, then I can too.

He scuffs, looking up to the sky like the gods and goddesses are calling to him, then his dark gaze lands back to me. "Sweetheart, I've been around since before they started keeping track. Who sent you? Boreas?"

Boreas? I shake my head, "The forest elf general, I was told to monitor you. Are you related to Boreas?" information, this is good. I am finally starting to get somewhere.

He presses his lips together while looking around us like there might be prying ears, his messy brown hair that I've been wanting to run my fingers through so badly just to see if it's as soft as it looks sways in the chilly breeze of the midfall night in Russia. Then with a great hesitancy, he nods. He's afraid of something, but what?

I've never seen him so worried about revealing anything about himself when he's not in the ice realm. It seems as though all the ice elves know him. They don't question his agelessness, his dark energy, why he only returns to the realms for thirty days, why he doesn't look like them. The ice elves respect him, and I've known better than to ask any of them questions about him.

He knows my mother? But she doesn't associate with any of the ice elves, she claims they taint the beauty of her creations. My mother has to sit in council with the other gods and goddesses, and sometimes their offspring are allowed to sit in with them. I've been to a couple, but I've never seen Jack at them.

"Do you have a phone?" his words brings my focus back to him actually standing in front of me, his hand still on my wrist. "If you are following me, then you are probably being followed. I recommend you don't stay alone. The fact that I'm talking to you is putting us both at risk." he lets go of my wrist, leaving the ghost of dark energy tingling up my arm.

Right, because this lifetime has evolved enough to create phones as a form of communication. Talarin scouted about two elf days before we were to come back and grabbed phones for Lythorin and me with his return.

Rolling my eyes, my hand reaches for the phone in my back pocket. He snatches my phone before I can open it and seems to open it with ease, quickly putting his contact information in my phone. Jack hands back my phone with the same urgency.

"Call me if you ever find yourself alone. You're now officially on the same list as me." his cold expression left no room for argument as he turns and walks away, not sparing me another glance.

What the fuck just happened?