Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  David frowned then, and as the same idea he obviously had sunk in to my head, my mouth dropped. “Is she the traitor?”

  His hand came slowly up to his chin. “It’s possible.”

  I took a few steps back and let out a long, quiet breath, almost seeing it come past my lips in the color of disbelief.

  “Look, we don’t know for sure,” David said. “I mean, what motive would she have for getting you on the throne, for saving you? All of it.”

  “Because, like you said, maybe this was never about the child. Maybe all this”—I motioned around the room—“is for some other reason. Sleight of hand.”

  “Yeah, but what reason?” Jason said.

  “I don’t know. But we need to flush it out,” David added.

  “How?” I said.

  They both scratched their cheekbones.

  “Is the child even possible?” I placed a flat hand across my belly.

  “I don’t know,” David said, looking at my hand. “Are you pregnant yet?”

  “No.” I let my hand fall away. “I mean, I haven’t had my period, but that’s probably the stress.”

  David half smiled. “Maybe. Have you taken a pregnancy test?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should do that.”

  “And what then?” I asked. “What if I am pregnant? What do we tell our people? You’re dead! They’ll demand to know whose baby it is.”

  “Tell them it’s mine,” Jason piped up.

  We both looked at him.

  “Ara and I can just pretend to be together.”

  David ran a hand over his hair. “Okay, that’s actually a good idea, but she’s not pregnant, Jason. I can smell her. She smells exactly the same as she always does.”

  Jason nodded. “So, why not tell them she is anyway? Tell them it doesn’t change her body like it does a human. None of them would know. None of them were around when Lilith had children, right?”

  “Except Arthur,” I said.

  “No. He wasn’t. He was alive, but he never came to Loslilian,” Jason said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we talked about it—talked about Lilith having children. He said he never saw the miracle occur but was told stories of this childbearing vampire.”

  “Okay, but why would we lie and tell them I’m pregnant?”

  “It would make Jason the king by right of heir,” David said. “It would ease the distress of the people.”

  “Yeah, but when I go to swear my oath, David and I can switch places,” Jason said.

  I looked up at David with a smile. “Yes. You could become official.”

  His eyes narrowed as if this idea suited him. “Come to think of it, feigning pregnancy would flush out Morgaine’s true motive as well—if she has one.”

  “Yeah, especially if she doesn’t really believe in this prophecy child,” I said, shrugging. “And who knows, if she is the traitor, it might change her allegiance.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “But on the bright side, Ara,” David said, reaching across to pull me into him. “With Jason here, I can come back more often, and no one will question the scent.”

  “Oh yeah.” Everything brightened, like the sun just shone down through the roof. “I didn’t think of that.”

  He kissed my forehead. “It was one of my very first thoughts.”

  I snuggled into him and squeezed his ribs tight. “Will you stay tonight?”

  “I can’t.” He shook his head against the top of mine. “When I got the call, I was in the middle of something.”

  “What?”

  He looked at Jason, sighing.

  “Really?” Jason said.

  David nodded.

  “You need to tell her,” Jason demanded.

  “Tell me what?”

  David’s jaw squared willfully. “I’m not ready to tell you, Ara.”

  “Please tell me. Or at least tell me what it’s about.”

  “Your family,” Jason said. “Your bloodline.”

  I stepped back a little so I could look at David without angling my neck. “What about it?”

  He expelled the hesitation through his open mouth in a hard breath. “I couldn’t get your father’s DNA. I wanted to test it against yours, so I took some of Sam’s.”

  “And?”

  “And… I gave it to a friend of mine who works in human medicine. She ran a DNA scan. I wanted her to run some other tests, but she couldn’t get permission for those kinds of investigations—”

  “What kinds?”

  “I wanted to know not only if Sam was biologically related to you through your father, but if he had odd cells, maybe proving if he was a half-blood or even of Lilithian descent.”

  “What, like my dad might be Lilithian and not know it?”

  “Perhaps. If Amara was his mother, then he would be Lilithian, surely. We just don’t know how it works; we don’t know why only females are born to Lilithians, but I wanted to find out. She couldn’t do those tests, but she did check the DNA.”

  “And?”

  “And there is a distant ancestral connection.” He paused.

  I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that your father is not your father, Ara,” Jason said.

  My heart sunk; David grabbed my arm.

  “But he is related to your bloodline, just, perhaps not the Lilithian bloodline,” David said. “Maybe he was your real father’s cousin or uncle or something. I don’t know. That wasn’t discussed but, my love?” He sat beside me where I fell onto Jason’s bed. “One fact was certain: Greg Thompson is not your real father.”

  My hands shook, my eyes tearing to blindness. “Then my namesake—his mother. Was she…”

  “I think Greg may have been adopted by Amara, and it’s possible she’s not the same Amara I saved.”

  I nodded, biting my lip.

  David delicately wrapped me up in his arms. “I’m sorry, Ara. I didn’t want to tell you this.”

  I nodded, wiping my face. “I… we both kind of knew it was a possibility. It’s just… I have no one now, David. My mom, who wasn’t really my mom, is dead, and now I don’t have a dad either.”

  “You still have a dad, Ara.” He cradled my face against his quiet heart. “That man loves you and would give his own life for you. He is your dad whether that relation is biological or not.”

  I sat up from him and looked at Jason for a second, who seemed as though he was fighting some great internal battle not to push David aside and hold me. “So, you need to trace his family tree in order to find mine, right? If we were distantly related.”

  David stiffened. “When I say distant, I mean, quite possibly centuries of distance.”

  I swallowed hard. “So… are you ever going to find out who my family is, or are you just giving up now?”

  “I’m not giving up, Ara.” He shook his head. “But I need to change tactic. And I had an idea this morning: I remembered a book in Arthur’s study back home, and the name Greg came up, but the book was ancient. The only reason I even thought of it—connected it to you—was because it also mentioned something about grapevines.”

  “Grapevines?”

  “Yeah.” He coughed out a short, sarcastic laugh. “It was a novel written by a very old vampire. The story followed a man named Greg. I don’t recall the surname, but—”

  “Thompson,” Jason said out of the blue. We looked up at him; he wandered over and sat beside me. “I remember it. It was Thompson.”

  “Well, so… what does that mean? Was it a prophecy or just some fictional story written by my dad, who is actually a vampire?”

  David laughed. “Your dad’s not a vampire, Ara. He ages. I’ve seen it and I’ve heard his heartbeat, even read his mind. I can’t read vampire minds, you know that.”

  “Well, maybe he’s another breed?”

  “I doubt it, but I’m looking into it. And this book, I don’t remember the story”—David looked at Jason; Jason
shrugged as if to say he didn’t either—“but I’m going in to Elysium to get it. I want to find out how many similarities there are.”

  “Do you think, if this was Arthur’s book, maybe he knows something?”

  David shook his head. “The book was of very little significance, Ara. I only thought of it because I was thinking about us and remembered when you first mentioned grapevines. It was an unassuming, unimportant thought that flittered past in a memory, and something just clicked. It probably has no relevance at all.”

  I nodded. “Will you tell me? Like, if you find anything, will you tell me?”

  He looked at Jason. “I will. I promise.”

  I wrapped my arms around him again. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now”—he stood up and pulled me into another hug—“I have to go. I need to sneak into Elysium at sunset.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s when the guards change over. It’s the easiest time to get in.”

  “Oh. Okay. Why don’t you take Quaid and Ryder with you? I’m really worried Arthur might be right about Drake trying to get his hands on a Pure Created, but Mike won’t listen.”

  David nodded, cupping a hand over my head and placing a soft kiss on my hair. “Okay. I’ll go sneak down to the barracks and see what the deal is.”

  I squeezed him tighter. “Thanks, David.”

  He squeezed back. “You take care, okay? I’ll hopefully have word back about this book before tomorrow.”

  I nodded against his chest. “Okay.”

  Jason stepped up, and David broke away from our embrace to hug his brother. “I’m glad you’re alive, bro,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Jason patted David’s back. “Me too. And don’t worry, I’ll watch over her for you.”

  David nodded, studying me and then Jason carefully. “The bind… it is broken now, right?”

  I smiled. “Yeah. It is.”

  “Okay. Just…”

  “It’s fine, brother.” Jason reached across and clapped David on the shoulder. “I won’t touch her. I swear.”

  He nodded, satisfied, and leaned in to kiss my cheek softly before disappearing into thin air, leaving only a wispy breeze and the billowing curtain.

  “Good thing this isn’t Australia,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’d have a hard time getting in and out if there were fly screens on all the windows.”

  Jason laughed loudly.

  “So, what were you thinking before?” I asked, remembering back to when David demanded he share his thoughts.

  “Oh, um.” He looked at me, half smiling, kind of surprised as well. “I can’t believe you picked up on that.”

  “I pick up on everything,” I said, and sat down on his bed.

  “Well.” He sat down, too. “David said Arthur’s notes differed to Morgaine’s deciphering of the prophecy—that he didn’t seem to have scribed any possibility of a child that can cure vampirism.”

  “So?”

  “So, why does he want a child with you, on the premise that he wants to be free, if he doesn’t believe the prophecy?”

  All the blood drained from my face.

  “Precisely,” Jason said, grinning. “Wanna know something else?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “David had a flash of an image in his mind while we were talking; it was mostly just scribble, but I saw the dagger in there.”

  “What, a picture of it, or the actual dagger?”

  “Just a picture done in charcoal. He knows what he’s looking for but hasn’t found it, and his not being here has something to do with it, so does his eagerness to be crowned.”

  “Wow, and you got all that from one thought?”

  “Thoughts happen very quickly, Ara. Once a neuron in your brain fires up, it sends other signals, like knocking over a line of dominoes, until the thought becomes whole. I simply grab that first thought at the flick of that switch, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me. By the time you realize you’re thinking something you don’t want to share, I’ve already seen it.”

  “Okay, so you think he wants to be sworn in as king for some greater purpose?”

  “Yes. And I want to know what it is.”

  “Maybe just to finally be king.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t that. I felt it—saw the look on his face. He thought it was a great idea but not for that reason. Enough of a great idea that he’s going along with you and me pretending to be together.”

  “What, didn’t he like that idea?”

  Jason nearly laughed. “No. I think I caught a flash of him slowly rolling my entrails out through my anus.”

  “Jason!” I slapped his chest. “That is really gross.”

  “Sorry.” He laughed. He wasn’t sorry. “But he’s going along with it. So he either really wants to flush out the traitor by lie of a pregnancy, or really wants to be crowned.”

  “Come to think of it, he agreed to us in a pretend romance awfully quick for the David I know, and that was before the idea of crowning came up.”

  “Maybe he thinks you’re already pregnant and knows he’ll be forced to return if that truth comes out,” he said through a yawn, covering his mouth.

  I nodded and looked down at my belly. “Surely he’d have said that if he thought I was pregnant.”

  Jason shrugged. “Who knows? Personally, I’m beat, Ara. I’ve been on a plane all night, unable to sleep, followed by a two-hour run here. I need to hit the hay.” He jerked his thumb to his bed.

  “Okay.” I stood up and headed for his door. “I’ll see you at dinner?”

  “Yeah. I look forward to it.” He leaned his cheek against his door while I stood in the hall. “Maybe we’ll announce our plans to be a couple.”

  I shook my head. “No way. Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think Mike would take it too well, Jase. I’m pretty sure he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

  Jason’s shoulders lifted with his single breath of humor. “Well, I don’t really give a damn about him, Ara. We have limited time until Drake comes along and reveals his true plan. By then, we need to have flushed out the traitors and have some kind of defense prepared.”

  I reached across and touched his left arm, imagining his Mark beneath the sleeve of his shirt. “I’m glad you’re here. I hate to think how things would’ve turned out if you’d not come back.”

  “Arthur’s been watching out for you, Ara. He probably suspects Morgaine already—probably knows exactly what’s going on.”

  “I hope so.” It felt kind of scary to know I’d been left here alone with traitors in the mix, possibly people I was close with.

  “It’s always the people you’re close with, Ara, they’re the ones you really have to watch.”

  I frowned up at him, rolling my eyes when I realized he’d just read my mind. “Will you stop that?”

  “Sorry.” He grinned. “G’night, Ara.”

  “Night, Jase.”

  * * *

  Our new guest didn’t end up joining us for dinner, but despite his absence, Mike was super quiet and everyone else was charged with excitement, except Arthur, who was clearly sulking.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Margret said. “It’s the law. The queen must take a king within her first six months and produce an heir within a year.”

  “Those laws are outdated, Margret,” Mike said, practically spitting. “She’s too young to have a baby, and without this blood of Knight, there’s no hope of the prophecy child, so what’s the point?”

  “To have an heir to the throne.”

  “You can have one. Just not yet,” Mike finished.

  “Have you considered a child with Arthur?” Walter asked. Arthur dropped his fork onto the table and folded his napkin. “He’s a firstborn, perhaps you should try. The worst that can happen is that the child be powerless.”

  “Yes, but that would make Arthur the regent king,” Margret said, and
everyone on the table broke into mutters among themselves.

  I looked at Arthur; he looked away.

  “Well, Jason has returned,” Gray Sideburns said. “Was it not rumored he and our queen were once in love?”

  “No,” I said, smiling at the almost audible sound of Mike’s blood boiling.

  “Perhaps we should switch focus, forget this prophecy. I knew nothing of it until recently and I care nothing for it now. I care for our freedom, and it seems”—the woman motioned around our table of varying but united breeds—“that Her Majesty has already achieved this much. She should focus on finding a king and bearing an heir.”

  “Here, here.” Mutuality united the table with rapping knuckles.

  “Drake plans to attack in a month,” Mike said. “We should focus on a battle plan or a way to kill him.”

  “That’s your job, young man,” said Margret, waving her hand as if he was a fly. “Ours is to worry what the queen and the people do.”

  “Yes,” said another snooty old woman with almost purple hair. “Let us do our part, and you can take care of yours.”

  I blocked out the other conversations around the table and leaned in to Mike. “Did you speak to your informant about Quaid and Ryder going to Elysium?”

  He nodded. “He took my side. We wait.”

  “Oh.” I looked down. “Did he mention anything else?”

  “No, why?”

  I sat back in my chair. So he hadn’t told Mike that Jason and I were planning to feign a relationship and a pregnancy. I wondered why. Maybe he really was opposed to it and was using it to distract Jason and me from something else. But what?

  “Morg?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know it makes sense, right?” I said.

  “What does?”

  “Me being with Jason.”

  She studied me carefully, her eyes sharp.

  “We could crown him King,” I said suggestively, hoping she ‘got’ me. “And, who knows, maybe I’ll fall pregnant straight away.”

  She looked at Mike. I could feel his burning gaze in my neck. They weren’t getting it.

  “I mean,” I continued, half aware that several people had stopped talking and were listening. “He looks just like my dead husband. Maybe I could just imagine it’s him. Maybe I’ll come to love him one day.”