by Am Hudson
“Can I ask you not to ask?” I asked, mainly just to see his response. In truth, I’d made a decision as we lay in bed talking this morning that went against everything my real father asked of me. On the other hand, keeping it secret went against everything I promised my husband. And unfortunately for Drake, my marriage meant more to me than the concerns of a man that had me tortured.
“I will respect your privacy, Ara—if you want me to,” he said to his feet in a clear yet somewhat weighted voice. “But I’m worried. I can sense something in you and I—”
“Drake came to see me early this morning.”
He stopped walking.
“I talked with him in the forest for a while,” I added.
I could tell he was steaming, and also deeply concerned about the fact that I’d been gone and he didn’t even know. He tried not to show it, but it shone through in the look on his face and the way he swallowed something so hard that his Adam’s apple shifted. “What did you talk about?”
“You were right,” I said. “He did spell that bracelet to watch us.”
“He told you that?”
“He asked me to carry a talisman so that he could keep an eye on us. And he told me that Safia has most likely planted one so she can keep an eye on us, too.”
David’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “He spoke to you about the witch?”
I nodded. “It’s true—that she’s Anandene’s mother, and… he asked me not to tell you any of this. Especially not near the house, because if Safia hears any of this… she’ll take me.”
“Okay.” He took my hand and led me to our rock, wrapping his arms around my waist as he leaned against it, and held me along the length of his body. “So we’ll just stay out here and talk. What else did he tell you?”
I slid my thumbnail into my mouth and bowed it over my front teeth. I just didn’t know how to say it—how to bring the words from the painful circle in my chest to the surface and tell him.
“My love.” He cupped my head gently in both hands, angling it up, pushing my thumbnail away from my teeth. “Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head like a child without a tongue to speak.
“Okay, did he hurt your feelings?”
A surge of emotion stung the corners of my eyes. I blinked a few times so I wouldn’t cry, but the tears edged their way in anyway. “Drake met Rose once—right after she met Jason.”
“Rose met Jason.” I felt his hands clam up and I was sure I heard his stomach drop. “Did they…”
“No,” I said weakly. “Drake stopped it.”
“Why would he do that?” His voice pitched really high. “He had what he wanted right there. Why—”
“He’s on our side, David—all along, he’s been working to stop Anandene being born.”
David’s brow took on that deep crinkle of confusion. “He told you that?”
I nodded timidly, keeping my eyes away from David’s. “He was worried Jason might meet up with Rose again one day, so he made sure she fell pregnant.”
“He chose your father?” David asked. “Or did he have someone rape her?”
“You really don’t think very highly of him, do you?” I said, smiling up at him.
He smiled back. “Sorry. I don’t. But is that what happened? He—”
“No. He slept with her himself.”
I left it up to his clever mind to make the connections.
He did, a little bit faster than I expected.
He didn’t looked shocked, though—or angry, or disgusted. He just said softly, “That explains the resemblance.”
“You think?”
“You don’t?” He brushed his thumb along the corner of my eye. “His eyes and your eyes are a very different kind of blue to your da—” It sunk in. “To Lord Eden’s.”
I closed my lashes over them.
“How do you feel about it—about him being your father?”
“I’m not sure,” I confessed. “It’s still so new.”
“You must feel something.”
“I guess… I kinda feel relieved—to know my real dad. And I also feel… I mean, he’s not as bad as I always thought. I kinda like him.” I looked down at my hands, thinking back to the day at the castle when Drake taught me how to use my Cerulean Light. “It’s nice having someone that’s just like me, you know—that can help me understand more about what I am.”
David leaned down and kissed my head, his lips staying against my skin.
“And he confirmed it for me—” I looked up at him, “—that he killed the children to give the blood to Safia.”
“That still doesn’t make it okay.” His lips stiffened around a clenched jaw.
“No, and I will wish every day for the rest of my life that he hadn’t, but… I understand why he chose them.”
“Ara.” David let go of me and took a very deliberate few steps away from me. “How could you say that?!”
“I’m sorry, David. I was born with the gift of empathy and I can’t help it.” I showed him my hands as though they were the source of the problem. “I can’t help but understand why people do things and, from that, I can’t help but forgive them.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“David, please,” I begged, my eyes brimming with tears. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Just stop!” he said firmly.
I snapped my mouth shut, biting my lip.
“Don’t ever apologise for your empathy, Ara.” He appeared in front of me, taking both my hands. “It is the most amazing and beautiful thing about you.”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” I whispered to the ground. “I know you hate it.”
He cupped my chin and pushed it upward until I moved my eyes onto him. “My love, it’s easy for you to forgive. But not so for me. And I’m sorry if I sometimes accuse you of being overly trusting or forgiving, when, the truth is, I need to be more like you.” He leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose. “So please forgive my ignorance and just remind me each time that the problem is not in you; it’s in me. You have every right to forgive Drake and to want to love him as your father.”
“Father,” I said the word to myself. “God, that sounds so weird.”
“But not at all peculiar,” he said, looking up as a flock of birds left the wiry branches on the island and coloured the grey sky. “I almost feel like I should have seen it all along.”
“A lot of stuff does make sense now—if you take into account that he was working against Safia all this time, while pretending to work with her. He must have had so many lies going all at once.”
“And all for what? To stop Anandene being born?”
“And to protect me. And also…” I wasn’t sure I should tell him this; he promised me so long ago that he would find me a sister in his search for my real family. How would it destroy him to know he killed the only one I had? Even if she was a horrid little bitch.
“Also?”
“Lilith never had a daughter named Morgana…”
His mind started shifting puzzle pieces around before I even had to say anything. But he didn’t quite catch on.
“Drake and Anandene had a daughter—”
“Morgana.” He covered his face with one hand and moved away from me, letting go of my waist at the very last second.
“Yes.”
He faced the tree line then and folded slightly forward. “Ara. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I appeared behind him, my hand on his shoulder blade. “After what she did, if you hadn’t, I might have killed her myself.”
“No.” He faced me again. “You wouldn’t.”
“Okay, you’re right. I wouldn’t.” I tried to smile. “But you can’t take back what’s done, and I don’t want you to hate yourself for the rest of our lives.”
“I won’t have to.” He rocked his jaw, taking a deep breath in what looked like preparation. “Do you know how long it takes to burn a body?”
I screwed my nose up. “Ew. No.”
“A lot longer than one evening—to burn it completely, that is.”
“And?”
“And I knew that—knew there would be no way to burn Morgana on bonfires around the manor.”
“What are you saying?” My heart raced with the first ray of hope I’d felt in a long time.
“I cut off her head, Ara, but… I didn’t burn her.”
“She…”
“She can be restored,” he said with a nod. “I hope.”
“You hope?” I raised my voice a little. “Can she or can’t she?”
“If she’s like you, yes. But she was born of Drake and… wait…” His eyes drifted as his mind ticked. “So she inherited her witchcraft from Anandene. Not Lord Callon?”
“Yes. He was just her uncle, but he raised her from birth until early childhood to protect her from an assassin, hired by those that hated Anandene.”
“Did Morgana know—that her father was—”
“No.”
He exhaled, moving at human pace over to the rock, then he leaned his butt against it and rested his head in his hands. “If we can’t put her back together, then I am responsible for taking your only sister away—”
“Then let’s just hope we can mend her. Then again, for your sake, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
He looked up, grinning. “She’s going to be pretty pissed if she wakes up.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Things might change, though, when she learns that she has a sister.” He reached over as I walked toward him, and stroked my cheek.
“Can you still love me, though—knowing I’m a direct descendant of Drake?”
“Somehow…?” He waited until I prompted him onward. “I think I love you even more. And I can definitely see where you inherited your dark side.”
I laughed, then stopped suddenly. “By the way, he was the one that told your mother to switch you and Jase at birth.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hm.” I nodded. “Cheeky, right?”
David’s attention faded away to deep thought. “He was working against Safia even back then?”
“Since roughly twelve years after Anandene died—when he fell in love with someone else.” I cupped his hand against my face and rolled my cheek into it. “We’re going to be okay, you know?”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’m going to ask Lilith if she knows how to kill Safia, and if she doesn’t, Drake is going to lock himself and Safia away in a tomb—for the rest of time.”
David dropped his hand from my face. “And you’ll never see him again?”
I shrugged. “As long as we’re safe, and the baby, and… Jason.”
He angled his chin to the sky and nodded. “I don’t even want to think about what she’ll do to him if she finds out the baby is soulless.”
“Me either.” I cringed. “Imagine how awful it would be for him to know he… if she made him…”
“Don’t say it.” He put his finger to my lip. “It’s enough to make a man gouge his own eyes out and cut off his own dick.”
“Gross!”
“I would,” he stated, looking right at me with those heartbreaker eyes. “If someone made me do that with my own niece, I’d cut off my dick to stop it happening.”
“And so would Jason,” I said knowingly; David nodded.
“Then let’s go home.” I bent my knees slightly and grabbed his hand. “And we’ll talk strategies with Lord Eden and Drake, and find a way to end this war, once and for all.”
David squeezed my hand, stopping me as I went to walk away. “Ara?”
“Mm?”
He pulled me back to his arms and buried his nose in my hair, breathing me in deep. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Not keeping secrets from me.”
I kissed his chest through the thin black shirt. “I made a promise, remember?”
“Yes,” he said in that deep, milky voice. “But more importantly, you kept it.”
Chapter Eight
The vague, carefree version of David stayed behind on the porch, leaning against the post with his arms folded, while I ran toward the approaching car like an excitable little girl. It stopped a few meters out from the house and Jase jumped out, half-tripping on the doorframe and tangling in the seatbelt.
I leaped forward and threw my arms around his neck, his steady vampire frame catching me without so much as a step backward to counterbalance, and his arms came down around my ribs in a strong embrace.
“I thought I’d forget that,” he whispered into the top of my head. “I thought I’d forget how you smell, but I didn’t.”
I pulled back a bit and smiled up at him. “Don’t let David hear you say that.”
“David did hear him say it,” David said flatly, walking toward us.
“Bro.” Jason reached one arm out to David, keeping the other around me. “Believe it or not, I actually missed ya.”
David laughed once as he wrapped both arms around his brother’s neck, and Jase pulled me in again, my nose ending up right in David’s armpit. But he smelled good. They both did.
We all looked up then as another car came down the bumpy trail, and my eyes widened at David’s, a huge smile spreading across my face. It felt like Christmas, getting all these people I loved back in one day.
I jogged over to the car and stood back as Mike hopped out, closing the door softly in the silence of the forest. I felt David and Jason watching on, probably analysing my every move, as I walked slowly and calmly into Mike’s arms and lay my ear to his chest, linking my hands behind his back. His arms went around me in the same way, as if it hurt the both of us to hug this way after we never thought we’d see each other again.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” I said into his big, warm chest. He felt so solid and so real and so like home that I had to blink to hold back the tears.
“I was compelled to, Ar,” he said, angling his head down to look at me.
“I’m sorry.” I touched his arm where the promise of his Blood Oath Marked him. “I wish you’d never taken that stupid oath.”
“I don’t.” He hugged me tight again with one arm. “You will always matter to me, Ara. If I hadn’t believed that back then, I would never have made the Oath.”
“But the boys—you left them behind—”
“And they’re safe,” he assured me, a smile warming his caramel eyes. “Mum and Dad are taking them to Queensland for a week or two—to Sea World.”
“Really?” My face lit up.
Mike nodded, his face lit in much the same way.
“Oh, Mike, they’ll have so much fun!”
“I know. My only disappointment is that I won’t get to see them enjoy it, but my olds’ll send some pics.”
I grinned. In just a few short weeks being back in Oz, Mike sounded so much more Australian than I ever remembered he did. “Did you tell Mum and Dad what you are now—why you needed to come back here?”
“Not yet. I just told ’em I hadda come back here and sort Em out.”
“Em? Why Em?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“We’ll talk later.” His eyes drifted down my body then and he cupped his giant hand around the base of my bump, way too close to my personal zone for comfort. “Look at this belly.”
I moved his hand up a little. “I know, right? She’s grown.”
“Yeah, if I actually look, and squint my eyes, you kind of even look pregnant now.”
I smiled. “Two minutes back and you’re already teasing me.”
“What are friends for? Now.” He looked up, scanning the grounds, until he spotted what he was looking for. “You two! Get over here and give me a man-hug.”
“I thought I told you to stay away,” David said with a huge smile, his arms crossed.
“Then you shouldn’a told me the truth, mate.”
David just laughed.
While they took a moment
catching up and man-hugging, which involved a series of very painful sounding back pats, I stood with my arms folded and waited as another two cars drove up. Lord Eden was in the first, but I couldn’t make out who was in the second.
I walked forward a few steps, trying to see through the tinted windshield, and as a tree shadowed the glare of the sun I caught a single flash of blonde hair.
“Em!” I yelled. “You didn’t tell me Em was coming!”
“Didn’t know,” David called across the cars.
Jason came to stand beside me as Em’s car took a slight turn and parked behind Jason’s and Mike’s cars, blocking them from leaving. But it wasn’t Emily that hopped out first. His dark hair had grown and was tied into a ponytail that actually looked kind of hot, and his bright white teeth caught the sun and beamed it back at us like he was some superstar on a catwalk.
“Miss me?”
“Quaid!” I walked over and gave him a big hug; he rocked us from side to side, growling like a monster.
“I never realised how much I’d actually grown to like you until you were no longer around,” he said. “I kinda missed you, Queeny.”
He moved back as Em stepped in to hug me.
“Things just weren’t the same without you.” She slid her skinny arms around my neck and her soft blonde hair tickled my face as we hugged.
“Where’s Blade?” I looked at the car, but he wasn’t in it.
“He stayed back with Falcon—to make sure things didn’t get out of hand,” Quaid said, cutting Emily off.
“Uh, they kind of already have gotten out of hand,” I said, letting go of Em. “Do they know we’re planning an attack?”
“No one’s spoken to them in two weeks,” Quaid said. “Em and I left before it all went to hell—came looking for you.”
“We’ve been staying at your house.”
“Really?” I brushed my hair off my face as the lemony wind tickled my nose with it. “I didn’t even know anyone was there.”
“Blade was supposed to come,” she said. “But at the last minute he stayed to help Falcon.”
“Is Falcon okay?” I asked, trying to hide my concern. “I mean, when you left, was he—”
“He was fine.” She touched the top of my arm reassuringly.
“He’s dead worried about you, though,” Quaid added. “Sorta drove us all nuts by the end.”
