Scion

by Kelly Oram

  “Grace,” Ethan hissed.

  “Everything.” She fixed him with a glare so cold he didn’t argue again. “First, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Grace St. Claire.” The name caused a few whispers, so she nodded. “Yes, that Grace St. Claire. My father is the President of the United States. Yes, I am human, and as you can clearly see, I know all about the supernatural world.”

  She waited a moment, but no one said anything. She had them all hanging on her every word. “I don’t want this to cause you any alarm. I have known the truth for over five months now, and I promise I’ve handled it just fine. I’ve kept your secret and have had to do so at great personal sacrifice. I don’t have all the answers, but if you will hear me out and be fair to Ethan and Russ, I’ll tell you my story and share what few details I do have.”

  It took a long time for everyone to process the impossibility of what they were seeing, and to respond. Eventually Councilor Mason rose to his feet and gestured to the empty chairs in front of us. “Of course, Miss St. Claire. Please, have a seat. I am Robert Mason, head of this council. I think I can safely speak for us all when I say that we would greatly appreciate anything you are willing to share with us.”

  “Thank you.” Grace pulled out one of the chairs. She took a seat and then looked back at us. “You guys?”

  Caleb and the girls joined her immediately, but neither Ethan nor I moved.

  “We’ll stand,” we said simultaneously to all the questioning looks.

  “Sit down!” Grace ordered. The command was so shocking that we sat. Grace waited until we were situated, and then let out a long breath. “I’ve known Ethan and the Laytons for a long time, but I never knew the supernatural existed until Andrew De La Cote found me. We met in the hospital one evening while I was waiting for my father to pick me up. Andrew asked me out, but I’m pretty skittish with strangers because of who my dad is, so I said no thank you. He got very forward with me and scared me, but my dad showed up with his security team before anything happened.”

  “And Andrew just let you go?” Councilor Sena asked. “A human? Even after you’d captured his attention?”

  Grace shrugged. “He had no choice.”

  I thought she was going to tell them she was resistant to his charm and was about to interrupt, but then she glared at Ethan, and I figured he was voicing the same concern in her head. I tried not to smile. I didn’t want to know what she was saying back to him.

  “Andrew knew who my father was,” Grace continued when she was finished mentally chewing Ethan out. “He’d already recognized me. Then my dad showed up with his whole team of people. Andrew knew if he tried to use his charms on either of us, it would have caused a scene. It wasn’t until the following night while my dad was out at some dinner meeting that Andrew broke into my room and attacked me.”

  Now, I did smirk. Councilor Sena wasn’t happy with this news. She didn’t like to hear that her buddy Andrew had done something against the rules.

  “Andrew was going to turn me into a vampire and claim me as a mate. Luckily for me, my friends Ethan, Cynthia, and Cynthia’s brother, Caleb, found me before he could succeed. They saved me from Andrew, but they had to expose themselves to me in order to do it. It didn’t matter, though. I’d already figured out what Andrew was.”

  Everyone stared at Grace with various different expressions—surprise, curiosity, skepticism, fear, and even pride. Councilor Mason looked particularly wary. “After all that, you were able to simply accept the existence of the supernatural?”

  Grace shook her head. “It wasn’t easy. The first few days, all of us were sure I was headed straight for a mental hospital, but my friends never gave up on me. They stayed with me through all of it and helped me see that not all supernaturals were like Andrew.”

  She grinned at Cynthia and me, then surprised Ethan by taking his hand and squeezing it as she gave him a shy smile. “You forced me to be strong.”

  I snickered at the shock on Ethan’s face and the freaking blush rising in his cheeks. Cynthia elbowed me really hard in the ribs, sending me a glare that promised a world of hurt if I dared interrupt our friends’ moment. Apparently she was on Team Ethan, too. Grinning, I lifted my hands in surrender.

  “So what happened next?” Councilor Torres asked.

  Grace and Ethan both startled at the interruption, but recovered quickly. Ethan glared at me when I made kissy faces at him. He shot a worried glance at Grace, but she hadn’t seen me. She was busy answering the question. “Things with my friends got better, but my problem with Andrew got worse. He got Stefan involved with my father’s campaign and then had Elizabeth use her vampire charm to seduce my father.”

  “They wouldn’t dare!” Councilor Sena gasped. “We never use our charms on humans that way, and we especially never involve ourselves in human politics.”

  Grace sat up stick straight and glared at Councilor Sena. “I still have the pictures to prove it. Andrew got Elizabeth to sleep with my father and took pictures of them so that he could blackmail me into being his girlfriend. He showed me the pictures the night my father was elected. He said that I belonged to him now and if I said anything to anyone or refused him, he would destroy my father. He was obsessed.”

  Councilor Sena slumped back in her seat. “He wasn’t himself,” she whispered, visibly shaken. “Fixations aren’t something a vampire can control. It wasn’t his fault.”

  Grace nodded calmly. “I understand that. But that didn’t make what he did okay. It only made him more dangerous. Ethan and Russ knew something was wrong when they saw Andrew kiss me and announce us as a couple on live TV. They knew how scared I was of Andrew. They were the ones who’d explained to me what a fixation was. They took turns watching me around the clock after that. They even snuck into my house at night and camped out on my bedroom floor without my father knowing. But eventually, Andrew got to me.”

  Grace’s voice trailed off, and she became pale as a ghost. The council gave her a minute to collect herself, and then the werewolf councilor spoke. “Would you mind explaining what happened the night you were kidnapped? Would you tell us how the Layton boy died?”

  There was a gasp, and then Ethan and Caleb both cursed under their breaths. Cynthia shot to her feet, her chair falling over behind her. “What is he talking about?” she asked the five of us. “What happened to Preston?”

  “Cyn, wait,” Caleb tried to comfort her, but she pushed him away and shot eye lasers at both Ethan and me. “Did Andrew kill Preston?”

  Cynthia’s entire body started to tremble. She was very close to losing control and shifting forms. I stood and tried to calm Cynthia down, but with my hands cuffed I couldn’t do much more than take her hand in mine. “Keep it together, Cyn,” I warned.

  Werewolves never have great holds on their tempers to begin with, and Cynthia’s emotions were through the roof. Growling, she knocked me back into the wall. Curse her stupid awesome werewolf strength. Because I was cuffed, I couldn’t brace my fall the right way, and after slamming into the wall, I crashed to the floor. The bumps and bruises I got pissed me off. I shouldn’t have still been freaking handcuffed.

  Something inside me cracked. Wishing I could blow my handcuffs to smithereens, I let out a scream of frustration and something dark rose up from somewhere deep inside me. I’d tapped into that demon magic I’d used this morning.

  With a single thought, my restraints clicked open and fell to the floor at my feet. I ignored the gasps in the room and grabbed Cynthia again. The darkness inside me gave me the strength to not only pull her away from Caleb, who was having a difficult time trying to subdue her, but also pin her back against the wall and hold her there. The restraint made her crazy. “Calm down, Cynthia! The council will freak if you shift.”

  “You knew!” she spat at me. “You knew Andrew did it all this time, and you never told us!”

  She struggled again, but she couldn’t escape me. “We killed him, Cyn. Gracie killed him, and Ethan and I took care of t
he rest of them. Everyone involved in Preston’s murder is dead.”

  After losing one last struggle, Cynthia stopped fighting and collapsed against me. I pulled her into my chest as she started to sob. “Why?” she cried. “Why did he take my brother?”

  “It was my fault,” Grace blurted. She ran to her best friend, bursting into tears that matched the fierceness of Cynthia’s sobs. I handed Cynthia over and let the two of them fall into a heap on the floor together. “It was all my fault. I’m so sorry, Cyn. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  It took Grace a full two minutes before she could gain enough control of herself to speak. “It was my fault,” she said again. “I was so mad at you. Preston came over to try to get me to forgive you. He was there because he loved you, and he wanted me to be your friend again.”

  “Grace, you had every right to be mad at me,” Cynthia said in a tiny voice. She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “That wasn’t your fault.”

  Grace shook her head insistently. “I knew what happened wasn’t your fault. I was being stubborn. Preston shouldn’t have had to come and plea your case. It was also my fault that he was there alone. I was so sick of Ethan and Russ babysitting me that I made them leave. When Andrew showed up with his entire coven, Preston didn’t have anyone to help him.”

  Ethan crouched down next to the girls and took Grace’s hand in his. “That doesn’t mean it was your fault. Russ and I knew the dangers, and we still left you alone. Preston knew the dangers, too, when he agreed to come sit with you for a while.”

  “I can’t believe Andrew would kill the future alpha of the D.C. pack,” Councilor Sena said. “Not even suffering from a fixation.”

  This set Grace off crying again. “I don’t think he would have,” she sobbed, “if Preston and I hadn’t been kissing when he showed up.”

  There was a loud thump in an otherwise silent room. It was the sound of my freaking jaw hitting the floor.

  “Kissing?” Ethan gasped.

  “You and Preston?” Cynthia added.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one hammered by this.

  “Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming.” Clara sounded more amused than surprised.

  Grace shrugged her shoulders and tried to wipe some of the tears off her swollen face. “His apology was really convincing.”

  My jaw hit the ground again.

  “We’d just decided we were going to ask Mr. Layton if we could start dating.”

  “A future alpha and a human?” the werewolf councilor asked skeptically.

  Grace met his gaze. “Preston didn’t think he’d say yes, either; that’s why he never told me how he felt about me before that night. He wasn’t even going to bother asking, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mr. Layton was intrigued by the idea of a human who’d accepted the truth. I was a novelty. Something the pack could have bragged about. I was pretty sure I could talk him into letting us go out. I convinced Preston we had a shot, and one thing led to another.”

  Grace’s cheeks turned pink for a brief second before she went pale again. “I don’t know how long Andrew watched us, but he—”

  “How long he watched you?” Ethan blurted incredulously. “How long were you guys going at it?”

  “We were just kissing!” Grace cried. “Andrew was so mad. He—he just snapped. He was insane with jealousy. I knew he was going to kill Preston. I tried to talk him out of it. I even promised I’d go with him without a fight, but he didn’t care.”

  Grace’s words became more and more jumbled as she slipped into the nightmare of that night. “Andrew held me there and made me watch while they ripped Preston apart with their bare hands,” she whispered. Her eyes filled with tears again. “He told me I had to see so that I would always remember who I belonged to. He said I needed to learn the consequences of betraying him. He—he made them take their time.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt sicker in my whole life. All the nightmares she’d had since we brought her home made so much sense. I couldn’t believe she’d been keeping that in all this time. “It was my fault,” she whispered again.

  “No, Grace,” Ethan and I both said. I let Ethan finish our thought. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Ethan couldn’t hold Grace with his hands cuffed, but he still stole her from Cynthia. He pulled her to her feet and rested his forehead against hers. I could see Grace’s surprise, but it only took her a second before she closed her eyes and clung to his hands as she leaned against him. She soaked in his strength for a moment before shaking her head slightly. “It was,” she croaked. “If I hadn’t kissed him, Andrew wouldn’t have… Preston is dead because of me.”

  Grace was pulled away from Ethan before he was ready to let her go. If it hadn’t been Cynthia who’d done it, and Ethan wasn’t one hundred percent sure she’d bite him if he tried to hit her, he’d have done exactly that.

  Cynthia took Grace by the shoulders and forced her to make eye contact. “You listen to me, Grace. That was not your fault. I know how much Preston liked you. I’m sure he’d never been happier in his whole life than when you kissed him. He wouldn’t blame you. He probably wouldn’t even want to change it if it meant saving his life. Andrew was the monster. It was his fault. Not yours, and not Preston’s.” She turned to Ethan and me then and added, “And it wasn’t yours for leaving her.” She turned back to Grace and kissed her forehead as she wrapped her arms around her best friend. “It was Andrew’s fault, and no one else’s.”

  The room fell silent, and as I watched Cynthia and Grace hold each other, a strong pair of hands clamped around my arms. Duncan grimaced when I frowned at him, and he nodded toward the table of council members. All of them were eyeing me suspiciously. “What?” I snapped.

  “How did you do that?” the witch councilor, Constance Van Lederhosen or something equally ridiculous, asked.

  I didn’t even know what she was talking about until Councilor Mason came around the table and picked up the cuffs that used to be around my wrists. I’d forgotten all about them.

  The regular magic of the enchanted cuffs was no match for demon magic. But no way in heck was I bringing up the demon magic thing to the council. I gave them my best blank look. “What do you mean? You saw what happened. They just fell off. Must be broken. You should probably fire your inventory guy. You’re lucky I’m not a lunatic.”

  Councilor Mason examined the cuffs with a puzzled expression. “The enchantment is completely gone.” His voice was accusing. “How did you do it? What kind of power did you use to break an unbreakable spell?”

  I couldn’t get nervous. The Seer could read emotions, and I was sure he was trying his best to figure me out. Thinking back to what Michael said this morning about how I wasn’t even supposed to be able to feel demon magic, I hoped that was true for every warlock. “What power? Did you feel me use any power? Have I even stirred the air since I walked in this room? You guys didn’t even know I was involved with this case. I turned myself in.”

  Mason’s sneer melted away. His hostility was gone, but he still eyed me warily.

  “You keep trying to turn me into a villain, but all I’ve ever done is try to help the people I care about. I am not my father.”

  “He’s right, Robert,” Councilor Sena, of all people, said. “We’ve talked about this before. We cannot keep letting our prejudice against Alexander cloud our judgment in this boy’s case.”

  I nearly fell over in a dead faint when the lady vamp gave me a tentative smile.

  Someone sighed, and when I looked back at Councilor Mason he had his hand over his face, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Clearly you boys were within your rights to defend yourselves against the De La Cote coven.” He cast a glance at Grace and Cynthia, who were still clinging to one another. “Unless anyone has any objections, this council will acquit you of the crimes accused.”

  I didn’t believe it. It was too good to be true, and I’m not that lucky. No way were they just going to let us walk. Not when we had a human girl that w
as okay with the truth and looked exactly like the Chosen One. No freaking way.

  I followed Councilor Mason’s eyes around the room, and no one objected the acquittal. Not even Councilor Sena. “Very well,” Mason said. He didn’t have a gavel, but the effect was there anyway.

  Ethan took Grace’s hand, and I grabbed Cynthia while Caleb pushed Clara toward the door. Before we could escape the room, Councilor Mason had another question. “May I ask how long Grace was missing?”

  “Just about two weeks,” Ethan said slowly. Apparently he was as skeptical as I was.

  “And may I ask what her father believes happened? Does he also know of the supernatural?”

  Grace stood up straight and composed herself as best she could. “My father has no idea the supernatural world exists. We’ve been very careful.”

  “He didn’t question your two-week disappearance?”

  “I told him the truth—that Andrew kidnapped me. I said I was safe now and for him to trust me, and not to involve the police. Don’t you read the news? The official cover story was that I took off on vacation with a friend to escape the pressure of the election.”

  Councilor Mason wasn’t convinced yet. “You asked your father not to involve the police, and he was okay with that?”

  “Why do you think I didn’t delete the pictures Andrew took? My father didn’t remember being with Elizabeth, of course, so I told him he got drunk. I explained how Andrew was blackmailing me into being his girlfriend. I also pointed out that if he wanted to go to the cops, then I would have to tell the entire truth about what happened with Andrew and why he kidnapped me.”

  Grace’s voice turned hard to match Councilor Mason’s. Her courage made me proud. “Trust me; Dad was shaken up. He doesn’t want those pictures being released to anyone. Not even the police. Information has a way of leaking to the public, no matter how confidential it is. Those pictures would destroy him. He’s pissed at me for not telling him what happened to Andrew, but he’s keeping his mouth shut. He’ll take it to the grave.”