Page 36 of Keeper of All

When Ekon nodded, indicating he was done, Mao put the pages back on the bed, well away from where Ekon was sitting. “Did you find out what you needed to know?” Mao reached out, resting his hand on Ekon’s knee feeling a sudden wave of anger.

“I don't remember any of that,” Ekon said, nodding at the papers. “There’re no notes at all about my original family. The notes say I was found scavenging for food in some bins at the back of a gas station.” When he looked up, his eyes were bleak. “Does that mean I wasn't even wanted in the first place?”

Mao wasn't going to get into that conversation because while he’d give anything to make his mate feel better, he wasn’t going to fill him with false hope. “Something unrelated could’ve happened to your parents,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a total lie. Mao knew that sort of thing happened, especially with shifters. “Did the file say where you were taken from, or more specifically, where you were found?”

“Some random little town was mentioned—a name I’ve never heard of before.”

“What is it? I could search for it.” Mao wasn’t going to read the file without Ekon’s permission, but he reached for his phone with his free hand.

Ekon was already shaking his head. “It doesn't matter, because clearly I didn't have a life there as an infant—no one who cared.” He clasped his hands in his lap, and Mao noticed his knuckles were going white. “You know, after the other assassins found their mates and found their files, they at least had some idea of what happened when they were young—how they were found, who they were taken from.

“Me, yeah, no such luck because,”—Ekon’s haunted gaze met Mao’s—“apparently, I was just a piece of garbage that somebody picked up because they thought it'd be useful to stick needles in me, and it says… failed experiment.”

Ekon’s voice caught, and that door Mao felt before disappeared, allowing the pain to come through. “How can I be a failed experiment? I’m here, living and breathing!”

Scrambling across the short distance between them, Mayo wrapped his arms around his mate. “You've got no way of knowing, and neither does the person who took you… I refuse to believe you weren’t cared for, and I don't want you thinking about yourself like that either. And you aren’t a failed experiment,” he said fiercely. “I won’t have you thinking like that about yourself.”

Ekon’s shoulders rose and fell. “They wrote that for a damn reason. Why? Why did they say I failed, and why did he keep my file like this?” he demanded in utter frustration. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Basically, it’s all the file says. It lists the animals I was injected with, with just a comment at the end that says ‘failed.’ Yet they listed the tests they did on me during the assassin training, and the date and name of the center where I started my assassin life. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Is that it, nothing else written in there?” Mao mentally winced. Knowing his mate’s life was reduced to a list of experiments, which were successful despite what the file says. Thank the Fates, but… it didn’t seem right, and it didn’t indicate why Ekon had always felt different from his fellow assassins. Was the ‘failed experiment’ why?

“There was only one other thing I noticed,” said Ekon wearily, resting his head on Mao’s neck. “Apparently the last DNA they tested on me came from a fae. Do you think that’s why the eternal fae kept my record separate? Did the ‘failed’ comment have something to do with him? If so, do you think there is a part of him in me, and has been all along?”

“I wish I knew.” Tightening his arms around his mate, Mao dropped a kiss in Ekon’s hair. So many fucking questions and still so many unanswered.

Chapter Nineteen

Ekon

The humidity was killer. Ekon had never felt so lethargic in his life. Heat like they had in Paraguay clearly wasn’t something his body liked. He had even considered for a minute he could be pregnant, but his animals assured him he wasn’t.

Something to be thankful for when he didn’t like the idea of a child growing inside him when he didn’t know what it would do to the growing baby.

He walked a little farther into the garden that smelled like a little bit of heaven with all the blooms and herbs growing, clutching the first journal under his arm. They had set it aside a week ago, and as time went on the harder it was becoming to find the energy to look deeper when he was struggling with the initial discovery.

Fae blood, but whose? Why had it taken so long to manifest itself?

Ekon wasn’t sure where the driving force that had brought him this far had disappeared to. Was it his mating to Mao? Had that taken away the urgency? The need to know who or what had changed him. Only had it changed, or was it just the dragging heat sapping his energy?

His mate was right, the more he—they—searched, the more questions came without answers. Because of this, Mao had gone out this morning with his mom to see if they could locate Featherman—when Ekon has asked what his name was everyone had given him blank looks—and see if he would come to Ekon. Ideas of trampling around the forest weren’t high on his list of things he wanted to do with his waning energy.

Snakes. Place was probably full of them.

He shuddered and eyed the ground warily, looking for anything slithering around, then he spotted a bench sitting under a large tree and he ambled to it and sat down when it looked safe.

He breathed out in relief at the blessed shade. The heat had his clothes sticking to him, and if not for the fact the house always had someone inside he’d have gone around in just his boxer briefs. It was taking a bit of getting used to being—how had Mao put it?—mothered. It was a pleasant feeling to be so accepted with no limits. It didn’t make up for his past, nothing could. Yet it felt like the Fates had stepped in and given him what was sadly lacking.

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand before he used the hem of his T-shirt to tug the journal from under his arm and place it in his lap.

He took a deep, muggy breath and, using his T-shirt he opened the journal and looked at the elegant script that wasn’t English, possibly a fae language. It didn’t matter when his brain could interpret with no effort. Freaky, but whatever worked.

They came like the thieves they were in the darkness and shrouded themselves in powerful magic. It didn’t wake my own as it knew it wouldn’t harm us. Then it was too late, they took what they wanted and left me for dead. Their mistake when they are witless fools. I hunted them easily through the human realm and found where they hide their atrocities against all kind.

Ekon felt the throb of an open wound in the center of his being as he read on. Was it his pain? He didn’t think so.

There seems to be no purpose to their madness, or one I can see. The crude documents they leave detail experiments and their failure. So many deaths, and I carry each soul now as their protector in the afterlife. It has become my purpose as I watch and wait for the child who is me.

“Is that why you kept my file hidden in this journal? Am I your child? Did you know I wasn’t a failure?” he asked aloud.