.

~
Prologue
~

There was a pattern that doctors found when they'd studied the correlation between people who did and didn't have birthmarks, soulmates, and memory recovery. It didn't happen often, but it happened enough that there were three rules:

.

1) Your birthmark marks the location of a fatal wound inflicted by the hand of another.
2) If you run into the person who effectively ended your most recent past life, you will recover the memories
of said life and your death.
3) For your souls to make amends, in this life you will be mates.

.

And unfortunately, this was not the kind of soulmate you could escape from.

On multiple past occasions where soulmates were too overwhelmed and hurt by their previous lives to forgive their attackers, they'd done their best to walk away. They'd moved halfway across the country, quit their job and cut all communication, and if the memories were too vivid, sometimes they would try to kill themselves.

But the world worked in cruel ways.

They'd move halfway across the country only to have to move back and find themselves right next to their soulmate. A new job would put them in the same area as—if not direct contact with—their soulmate. The gun would freeze up and wouldn't fire, the pills they'd taken were immediately rejected by their body or their metabolism would spike to filter the drugs.

There was no escaping fate.

And when Lucy learned about birthmarks and soulmates, she prayed she would never meet hers.