Luke laughed. “No, it’s necessary. You’ll find most werewolf families living in national parks. Anyway,” he said, looking at my mum. “You were saying?”
“Your dad had a younger brother,” Mum said, reaching across the table and grabbing my hand. “When they were ten and eight, they took a walk from Goathland down to Beck Hole waterfall. Roger was so excited by the place he went running through the water, tripped, and hit his head on a rock. Unfortunately, he died.”
I sat in silence for a few minutes trying to wrap my head around this. I’d never once heard about Dad having a brother. I thought he was an only child.
“I don’t know what to say. How come I never knew about this?”
“Your dad found it too hard to talk about. He kept all his pain and all his memories locked away in his mind and forced himself to pretend it never happened. He blamed himself for Roger’s death. Said he should have been watching him closer.”
“It was a terrible accident,” I said. My heart was breaking all over again at the thought of Dad carrying guilt like that around with him for his entire life. “If it was going to happen, it was going to happen.”
“Unfortunately, your father didn’t see it like that.”
In that moment, I wished I could have eased his pain in his final moments for him. Reassured him about any doubts or guilt he carried that he had no need to. That he could slip into eternal peace free from all worries.
“Was the potion hidden behind the waterfall inside a rock by any chance?” Luke asked.
Mum’s face paled. “Yes…why?”
“It’s not there anymore,” Luke said. “But don’t worry, I know where it is.”
“What? What do you mean? You stole it? How did you even find it?” Mum said, standing up so fast her chair fell backwards.
“Calm down, Mum,” I said, standing up. “Let him explain.”
“This better be good,” Mum said.
I coaxed her back down. She picked her chair up and sat down on it, glaring at Luke.
“I came across it not long after you’d put it there,” Luke said. “I could smell it from ten miles away. It has a very distinctive aroma to it, and I knew whoever had gone to the trouble of hiding it there had done so for an important reason. I decided to take it and keep it for safe keeping. Whoever it belonged to would cross my path one day and here we are.”
“That’s a very risky game you played there,” Mum said, narrowing her eyes at him. “That could have really backfired.”
Luke shook his head. “I made sure our paths crossed,” he said, looking at me.
“What do you mean? How did you know it was anything to do with me?” I asked him, totally confused.
“Because you have the same smell as whatever is in that bottle. It’s highly unique.”
“When did you know it was me?”
“Instantly. I’d caught your scent way before that. As soon as I smelled this at the waterfall, I had to find out what it was.”
My head felt like it was going to explode. “Take me to get it,” I said. “Now.”
He held his hands up. “Ok, it’s back at mine.”
I stood up and rushed to the back door. “I mean it. Now.”
He sighed, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Yes, Ma’am.”
I ran outside to see that thankfully, he’d brought the BMW which meant a slightly faster drive back to his than if he’d brought the Audi. I didn’t even wait for him to do his whole chivalrous routine. The car had keyless entry so the instant I knew he was within distance, I wrenched the door open and jumped in the passenger seat.
“You’re mad, aren’t you?” he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“You think?”
“Nothing was going to happen to it, Cat. It’s perfectly safe and has been for all these years.”
“You didn’t know that when you took it. You had no idea we were going to meet some day.”
“Yes, I did.”
“How?”
He shifted the car into gear and drove down the street. “I just did.”
“Tell me.”
“I have nothing to tell you, Cat. I got myself a job with your dad to ensure our paths would cross and some day you’d get the bottle back, whatever it was for.”
A niggle in my gut told me he was partly telling the truth but not fully. “There’s something more there, isn’t there?”
His eyes flickered for a second, confirming my suspicions.
“Luke, tell me. Please.”
“Now is not the time. Trust me.”
“So there is something else?”
He sighed. “Yes, there is.”
“You have to tell me now.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I will tell you one day but not today.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve got enough going on right now without anything else thrown into the mix.”
“And you get to decide that for me, do you? What I can and can’t deal with?”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Cat. You’re taking it out of context.”
My frustration reaching boiling point, I couldn’t help but blow off some steam. “Am I? Am I really? Let’s put things into perspective, shall we? My entire life I’ve been lied to and hidden away from some supernatural world where my own kind want to kill me, my….whatever the hell Marcus is, wants to drink me dry, and my best friend is some troll like bodyguard. I even killed my own Dad, Luke, so what on earth could you tell me that is going to add to more stress?”
He pursed his lips and kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
“Luke, hello?”
“I’m doing this for your own good,” he said, his voice clipped.
“Oh, give it a rest. Just tell me.”
“No, Caitlyn. That’s the end of it.”
“Luke, I swear to God if you don’t tell me—”
“We’re soulmates,” he yelled. “Your smell is distinctive because you’re my soulmate.”
I froze. My heart stopped. My mind went blank. Soulmates? What? I flopped back in my seat feeling rather flummoxed. What was I supposed to do with that piece of information? Where did Marcus fit into all this exactly?
After a few minutes, I said, “You should have kept that to yourself.”
I held my breath as I waited for his reaction. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then laughed. “You are something else.”
“Thank you. I aim to please.”
We turned off the main road and onto the track that led down to his house. The closer we came, the more my heart pounded. My life was locked up in a bottle in his home, had been all this time. I’d been around it so many times and never known any different.
He pulled up and switched the car off. I flung my seatbelt off and kicked the door open with my foot, sprinting towards his front door. I burst through the unlocked door and ran into the living room. Of course, I had no idea where he had put it or anything but all this nervous energy flitting around inside me made me need to do something.
“It’s not in there,” he said, heading upstairs.
I followed him upstairs, almost wanting to shout at him for not hurrying. He was waltzing around like he was taking a Sunday stroll.
He turned into one of the spare bedrooms, a draft of cold air rushing out when he opened the door. I expected to see a bed and furniture but instead I saw heaps of boxes, as if he were still moving in.
“This is all my parent’s stuff,” he said. “I can’t put it in the loft. I find it soothing sometimes to go through it.”
He picked his way through the dusty clutter to a bookshelf on the back wall. I made an attempt to follow him but a bunch of pictures peeking out the top of the box to my right caught my attention. I picked up a handful of them, musing at the children’s smiling faces in various scenes from days on the beach to being on a set of swings.
“Don’t,” Luke said.
I looked up to see him coming back towards me, his face ashen grey and his hands
reaching out for the photos.
“Awww, are you worried about me seeing your baby photos?” I said, teasing him.
“They’re just very precious,” he said, trying to take them from me.
I moved them out of his way and took a step back. “I’m being careful with them.”
He licked his lips and put his hands on his hips. “I’d just really rather you didn’t.”
I shuffled my way through the pictures and found a really cute one of a little boy with brown hair sat on an older man’s shoulders.
“Oh look. Is this Meredith as a little boy?” I said, laughing.
“Cat, give me the pictures.”
I turned my back to him and kept looking through them. As I uncovered the next one, I froze. My heart somersaulted over and over again. staring back at me were Mirabelle and the man from my dream, the werewolf. The picture was old, the corners dog eared and a slight yellow tinge to it, but there was no mistaking them.
“Luke,” I said, turning around shaking. The other pictures fell from my hand, cascading all around my feet as they landed on the floor. “Why do you have a picture of Marcus’ mum?”
He looked at the floor, shuffling his feet. “They’re my parents.”
I looked up at him. “What?” I shook my head. “That’s not possible. You said your mum was a witch.”
“She is. She’s also a vampire.”
I tried to wrap my head around this, but I couldn’t quite fathom it all for a good minute or more. “But that means Marcus is your half-brother.”
Luke pulled his lips into a thin line. “I know.”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I hope you enjoyed Cat’s story so far. If you did, I would be eternally grateful if you could leave a review to let others know how much you enjoyed it. Even one sentence is fine. Thank you so much!
You can preorder the next instalment here: www.books2read.com/eternaltiescjl
If you want to follow me and keep up to date with all my latest goings on, visit www.cjlauthor.com and sign up for my newsletter, join my facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/lollipoplounge or look me up in the places below:
www.facebook.com/CJLaurenceAuthor
www.instagram.com/cjlauthor
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/c-j-laurence
I love hearing from my readers and will always reply to you!
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR:
Want & Need by Limitless Publishing
Cowboys & Horses
Retribution
Craving: Loyalty by Crave Publishing
Craving: One Night by Crave Publishing
Unleashing Demons
Craving: Forbidden by Crave Publishing
Unleashing Vampires
The Red Riding Hoods – The Grimm Sisters Book 1
Gamechanger
Angel of the Crypt
The Twisted Tale of Saffron Schmidt
Love, Lies and Immortal Ties
COMING SOON:
Love, Lies and Eternal Ties
Guardians of the Temple
Snow White – The Grimm Sisters Book 2
Love, Lies and Blood Ties: A young adult paranormal romance (Love, Lies and Ties Book 2) Page 21
