“So Drake was scared of her?”
“With good reason. She’d made herself immortal by unnatural means, and she was very powerful. She held all of the cards.”
“Okay, so how does that have anything to do with me?”
“When Dad… um, David, the supposed pure soul—”
“What?” I sat forward. “You left that bit out—”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She hid her face, shaking her head. “I’m so terrible at telling stories.”
“So he’s the pure soul?”
“No.” She winced apologetically. “His mother knew about this prophecy and switched him and Jason at birth, so everyone thought David was pure and Jason was—”
“Oh my God! That makes so much sense.” I could see now why it was no big deal for him to have killed a pregnant woman in cold blood. I made a mental note to stay the hell away from him, and to rescue my son too.
“Anyway, in a moment of either desperation or poor judgement, Drake stepped in and fathered the next child to the soulless vessel, which was you.”
That hit me hard in the chest as I put it all together. “I was born soulless?”
“Yes, and they inserted Lily’s soul into you—”
“Where was Lily all this time?”
“In a tomb—dead—to be one day resurrected after Anandene was born.”
I felt like pieces of my past just moved across a big board and finally attached themselves to each other—pieces I didn’t know could be attached. “So my sister needed my soul, and she needed you… are you soulless too?”
“No.” She laughed. “When I was born, you used your power to bring a soul from the other side and place it in me—”
“But you were born soulless?”
“Mm-hm.” She nodded, the small smile portraying a disturbing lack of care. “And you bound my soul to another on earth, so I’d never have to fear the soul-takers. Well,” she added with a flick of her hair, “unless I’m not wearing my crux.”
Hundreds of words swam around in my head: crux, soul-takers, bind, but only one thought became a question. “Who did I bind it to?”
“Eric.”
My eyes widened. “And that’s how I know him?”
“No. You… you dated once—”
“What?”
“I didn’t know that when I fell for him, but yeah, you thought he was honorable enough for your daughter, so you bound us—made us soulmates—and that, plus my crux, is how my soul stays linked to this world.”
“And what about mine?’
“You had a crux—an object that bound it, so it wouldn’t return to its original host if it left you. And the plan was always to bring Lily back after Anandene was born, but Drake decided to leave his beloved sister dead so you could live.”
“Until Morgana killed me?”
“Yes, and your soul returned to Lily.”
“And… then how am I alive?” I touched my chest. “Am I soulless?” Is that why I couldn’t love David?
“No. Like I said, you have half a soul.”
“Half Lily’s soul?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Well, Lily, being the kind heart she is, gave it up for you. So you have the same soul you had before but less of it. And you don’t need a crux now because her soul is bound to her body and you are bound to her.”
“So she’s my soulmate?”
“She’s your twin soul. Your soulmate is…”
“Is?”
“Jason, technically. And my dad, because they’re also a twin soul: one soul split in two.”
“But David is all the bad—”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad.”
“Yes it does,” I insisted. “And it explains so much about him.”
“Aw, Mom, please—”
“No.” I stood up. “I’ve heard enough for one day.”
“Mom,” she called as I walked away.
“Ara?” David said, passing me at the front door. I shoved past him and got myself out of there as fast as I could, but he chased after me, calling my name.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” I spun around. “Why did he keep that from me?”
“Who?”
“Brett! He should have told me all that.”
“Told you what?”
Elora came up behind him at a run. “I kind of, sort of, maybe told her about how she came to exist.” She screwed her nose up, looking remarkably like me when she did.
David took a cautious step closer, holding his hand out like he’d grab me at first opportunity. “Ara. We need to talk about that in greater detail then. Don’t run—”
“I don’t need any more details.” I covered my ears. “I’m half a person and you’re all the impurity of Man—”
He glanced back angrily at our daughter, his features softening by the time he looked at me. He took one more step, his palm upturned. “Ara, that’s not the case. Look into my eyes—see the truth for yourself. Think about what you know of Jason—”
“That he hurt me. That he—”
“Yes, and he’s the pure one. Can’t you see it doesn’t work like that? He’s not entirely good and I’m not evil—”
“No, you’re both evil!”
“Neither of us is evil,” he insisted. “We’ve made poor choices in a world of death and blood, and we’ve grown from those choices.”
Elora pushed past David then and walked right up to me, not half as scared of me running as he was. “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told it that way, but that’s why I said we needed Dad—”
“So he could sugar-coat things?”
“No, so he could tell you the truth without you freaking out on us!” She laughed, putting her arm around me. “Come back inside. Hear him out. He raised me, Mom, at your side for twenty years. He never raised his voice at me, never raised a hand to me. He is not, nor has he ever been cruel and heartless.”
Before I could protest, I was being led back inside, with David trailing behind.
* * *
After two hours with David and Elora towering over me, trying to convince me that David wasn’t evil, I was finally set free. I left, feeling like they should have had a bright light shining in my face, but I did not leave with a changed opinion. David and his brother were evil. They went against nature themselves, being created purely for the sake of birthing evil back into the world. Nothing would ever change my mind now. I needed a plan. I needed to figure out how to get Harry out of here and away from them before it was too late—before he too was as tainted by David’s charms as Elora was. But I’d need help. I’d need Brett.
He sat down and listened while I told him what had happened, nodding as I spoke, putting nothing into the conversation but his time and his heart, and when I was done, tears streaming down my face, he reached across the table and took my hand.
“Can you see why I didn’t tell you any of this yet?”
“No!”
“You weren’t ready, kitten. You’re upset now and—”
“Of course I’m upset! I just found out I was married to the devil!”
“Look.” He sighed, casting his eyes downward for a moment. “I know you won’t believe me, but David isn’t evil—”
“Oh no.” I pushed my chair out and stood up. “They got to you too.”
“Ara, this is not a conspiracy—”
“Don’t!” I aimed a finger at him. “Just don’t say anything.”
He turned to watch me as I walked away, but as I grabbed my purse, reaching for the car keys, his hand stopped mine.
“You’re overreacting—”
“Overreacting?” I yelled. “To what? To finding out the man that I had children with is evil—all the evil of Man in one soul, to be exact. Or am I overreacting to the fact that his pure-souled brother tortured me! Or maybe to the fact that David murdered a pregnant woman—”
“He didn’t know she was pregnant,” Brett said dully.
“Yeah, right.�
� I turned away, snatching the car keys. “I have to go. Away from all of you.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” He stood between me and the door, appearing there faster than I’d learned to run yet, a great big hulk of a sentry that I knew I couldn’t fight even if I tried.
“You can’t hold me prisoner,” I demanded. “I’ll scream.”
“Ara, you need to stay until you can be reasoned with—”
“Reasoned with?” I started crying, the anger making me desperate, the desperation making me sob. “So unless I agree with your point of view—with theirs—I’m the bad guy?”
He softened a little.
“Please, Brett. If you cared for me at all—”
“Cared?” he said, stepping closer to take my arm. “Why do you say cared—”
“Because you obviously don’t now—not if you’re going to lock me up and stop me from saving my son.”
“Saving him?” he barked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
“He can’t be raised by that devil and his minion family—”
“Ara.” Brett laughed, stopping himself then in an obviously deliberate attempt. “Ara, you’ve blown this out of proportion. They really shouldn’t have told you this yet—”
“And how would time have changed it?”
“Because you would have been able to trust David—see that he’s not evil. That I’m not evil, nor am I under his spell.” He laughed again.
My eyes narrowed to take him in. “How can you laugh this off? How can you not hate him for the things he’s done—”
“Is that it?” he said. “You hate him and you’re looking for a reason to hurt him by taking his son—”
“My son!”
“His son, Ara! Harry is David’s son. You claim you’re not her. You claim you’re not his wife, and you’re just going to come into his life, decide for yourself, based on very little knowledge and no time spent with him, that he’s evil and doesn’t deserve to father his little boy.”
“I—”
“You don’t get to make those decisions! You are a child,” he yelled, “and you do not have the life experience to understand anything of this immortal world, let alone what’s best for Harry!”
My heart thumped so rapidly I couldn’t breathe, my ears ringing from the volume of his voice. I looked at Brett, about to tell him I hated him, when the door swung wide open and David shoved him hard, making him trip and fall onto the stairs.
“Do not yell at her like that!” he said firmly. “She’s scared and she doesn’t need you yelling at her.”
I took a step back, wondering if I should run.
Brett was still taking in the scene, trying to figure out how he ended up on the ground, when David stormed over to me and caged me in a forced embrace. I tried to fight him, but he pleaded with me not to; he didn’t trap me, not that he could if he tried, and he didn’t tell me not to fight him. He asked me, so softly and with so much kindness that I stopped and held my breath while this creep held onto me.
“I’m sorry, Ara.”
“What for?”
“You were right.” He pulled back, his green eyes so full of kindness that I almost believed for a second that he wasn’t evil. “I am a bad person. I have done evil things, but I’m human now.”
“And how does that change things?”
“The vampire… he didn’t have the compassion for living things that I do,” he explained. “Ask anyone that knows me. I’ve changed since I became human. I’m nothing of the cold man I once was.”
I looked at Brett. He nodded, getting himself onto his feet.
“I love differently. I laugh more. I…” He laughed. “I cry like a damn baby half the time.”
I smiled to myself.
“You are right to want to run from me. You have good instincts and you should never question them. But please just give me a chance to prove I’m not that guy anymore. Please get to know me—the human me—not the vampire that made all the mistakes in the past.”
That, I could relate to. Everyone judged me, expected things from me based on what they knew of Ara before. But no one ever gave me the chance to be the person I knew I was inside. I had to at least give David the chance to prove he was changed.
“People don’t hurt people, David,” I said, and he nodded, mouthing ‘I know’. “In my world—the one I’ve been ‘raised in’ since I woke, I never even heard such horrible stories as I’ve heard since I met you—”
“It’s traumatizing, I get that.”
“It’s horrific,” I said, my voice breaking. “How can I have been the sort of person that… that lived with that? What kind of person was I?”
“You were the kindest, sweetest person any of us knew,” he said.
Brett nodded, coming to stand beside him. “You had the most compassion, empathy, heart—”
“You changed us,” David added. “All of us.”
“So I wasn’t… I didn’t condone it?”
They both laughed as though that was ridiculous.
“Of course not, Ara,” David said. “And I guess…”—he looked at Brett—“we shouldn’t have expected you to know that about yourself. But no, you never condoned violence of any kind, but you did forgive me for the wrong choices I made in my past, because you understood where those choices had come from.”
“How could I have? How can there be any reason to do the things you’ve done?”
“Because people make mistakes—especially people that have no compassion for humans,” he explained. “You’ve been around vampires. You know how inhumane they can be.”
I nodded.
“I’m not that guy anymore. I wouldn’t make those choices now—”
“Really?” Everything vanished under a thick layer of tears.
“No.” David moved toward me but thought better of it, keeping his distance instead. “And I’d really like it if you gave me the chance to show you who I am—the human David that the old Ara always wanted.”
I’d heard that before—that she would’ve loved him more if he’d been human. I could understand that now. I could feel her inside of me, begging me to stay, begging me to see this new version of the man she loved. And I liked that he asked me. He didn’t tell me to stay. He didn’t demand it or threaten to trap me until I agreed. He asked me.
My arms and hands were shaking a bit, and as the adrenaline left them, I just felt cold and very weak. “Fine,” I said, walking past Brett to the stairs. “But I need to sleep now. You all need to go away.”
28
David
“Who the hell does she think she is?” I paced the room, raging like a wounded bull. “How could she even think of taking my son?”
“David, calm down,” Falcon said.
“No! She knows nothing about him. Nothing about me. What kind of a self-centered, spoiled little brat just goes ahead and makes those kinds of decisions!”
“She thought she’d be saving him—”
“From me? From the man who has raised him?”
“David, you can’t hold this against her. I only told you so you could be a bit more careful in the future—”
“And what? Tie a rope around Harry’s leg in case she just suddenly decides to take him?” I yelled. “How can I trust her now? How can I be sure she isn’t planning her escape while she makes us all think—”
“Just calm down. She’s not planning to take Harry—”
“You don’t know that!” My heart raced now with fear. I put my hands in my pockets to stop them shaking, wishing I’d heard her say that when I rushed in to save her earlier. The things I would have said. The things I would have done instead of talking her down. “I should’ve let her leave—”
“And she’d have taken Harry—”
“What’s going on?” Elora called over us. “Why are you yelling?”
“Ara planned to take Harry away after what you told her!” I shouted.
“So David’s freaking out,” Falcon added in his usual cal
m tone.
“And you don’t think that’s justified?” she said to him.
Falcon looked at me, and I presented my daughter in all her brilliance.
“You two know nothing about Ara.” He stood up. “She won’t take Harry. It was an impulsive thought in a heated moment—”
“But you would say that, wouldn’t you? Because you’re blinded by the curse,” I said.
“I am not blinded by anything. I—”
“Are you sure about that, Falcon?” Elora asked softly, trying not to be offensive while also attempting to ask what we’d all been curious to know. “You have made some odd decisions for her and—”
“I have my reasons.”
“Like what?” Elora got a bit snappy. “Like that you know her better than any of us? Or—”
“Lily had a vision.” He sighed heavily and took a step backward, sitting down on the arm of the couch again. “Which is why I agreed so readily to foster her—after originally being an advocate for her release back into David’s care.”
“What was the vision?” Elora sat down on the arm opposite him.
“It was while David was at Loslilian for Jason’s wedding. In the vision, Lily saw us take David to her. From there, he cared for her like I have—doing everything—but Harry was left in the wind a little. Ara needed so much just to get her looking human again and then even more of David when she had to learn to talk and walk and be a functioning person. He was her number one carer; he fathered her in a lot of ways, and from that, began to baby her. When she did finally start to understand this life and start pulling away to essentially ‘grow up’, he pulled back. As she began to explore the world and explore herself, he reined her in even more. Instead of letting her find out who she is, which was vital to her becoming herself again, he tried to tell her who she was. She fought against his restraints and they started screaming at each other all the time. She wasn’t so much a wife to him anymore but a willful teen. It destroyed the relationship between her and Harry, and she left. Lily couldn’t find one scenario in the future following where Ara ever came back to us.”
Elora slowly exhaled and I shut my eyes for moment, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Bound by Secrets Page 27
