“James was supposed to bring you back. Make you his mate. And the two of you would have lived here happily ever after. But that didn’t happen, did it? James returned without his mate, and the Elders frown on that sort of thing.” She was staring at the mantle again as if I were no longer in the room.

I felt a chill that wouldn’t be warmed by the tea. “Ever,” I said, trying to break her out of her trance-like state. “What did the Elders do to James?”

Her eyes returned to mine. “James and his father don’t live in Judaculla anymore.”

“What?” I asked, gripping my cup. I’d left everything behind to come here… and it had all been for nothing? A new determination set in as I began making plans to leave Judaculla. Hopefully, James and his father had moved somewhere in my own world. “Where are they?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Ever said. “Their house was burned to the ground. They’re what we call Fringers, outsiders who live on the edge of town. The last time I saw James was in the dead of night. He was scrounging for scraps to build a shelter. I helped him load a wheelbarrow full of wood, blankets, and food, then got him out of here as fast as possible.”

“What a kind and caring friend you are,” I said acidly. “Why didn’t you take them in?”

“Don’t you think I wanted to?” Ever snapped. “I would do anything for James and Tobias.”

Tobias. I’d never met James’s father, but I wasn’t about to give Ever the satisfaction of knowing that. I was silent as she continued.

“I had to get James away before he was caught. You don’t get it. He went against the Law of Judaculla. He didn’t do the one thing he was born to do—bring his mate back home. That hasn’t happened in decades. On top of that, he stayed in your world for far too long. He was the last one back. And when he did return, he came back alone. To say the Elders are pissed is putting it lightly. They’ll kill James and Tobias if they ever come inside Judaculla.”

“So he’s out? That’s it? It doesn’t even matter that he came back?”

“Not when his child might have been the one to break the curse. They see what James did as a wasted opportunity. They view him as a traitor. Worse than that really.”

“So they wouldn’t allow James to stay in Woodvine, but they’ll happily see him starve to death here?”

“No one leaves Judaculla,” Ever said.

“No one but you,” I corrected.