AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Davido spread his hands wide. “It’s odd, after all this time, that I find it hard to begin. But, I knew your mother well. Her name was Inez and she was an elegant, black-haired, green-eyed woman, the most beautiful vampire I’d ever beheld and you are very much in her mold. She was loving and had the sweetest temperament.
“When she became pregnant, I’d never seen a woman so devoted to a child before it was ever born. She talked to you all the time and rarely had her hands away from her swollen belly. But, for reasons I’ll never understand, she didn’t survive your birth. She had a rare, untreatable condition in our world.” He lifted shimmering blue eyes. “These things you need to know, how much you were loved.”
The ridges of Davido’s forehead were in tense tight rolls. Tears trickled down his cheeks. “And there’s no other way to tell you the rest, except that I’m your father.”
Stone had heard about the phenomenon of ‘spinning rooms’, but until this moment he’d never experienced one before. He felt Rosamunde slam into him and grab him around the waist. He fell backwards with her onto her sofa. He tried to right himself, but couldn’t. The room shifted about like it was moving on heavy seas.
He covered his face with his hands and wondered who was firing a gun in the room then realized it was his heart beating against his eardrums.
Davido the Wise was his father?
What. The. Fuck.
He’d always wanted to know where he’d come from, who his birth parents were, why they’d given him up. These were natural questions. But knowing that Davido was his father, whom he’d always considered to be an excellent friend and mentor, made no sense.
When he could open his eyes and all the objects in the room finally remained in place, he realized he was leaning hard against Rosamunde’s arm, keeping her pinned to the back of the couch.
“I’m sorry. I must be hurting you.” He moved so that she could slide out from under him. Her dress was slightly askew and she had to tug the bodice back in place.
He shifted to sit forward on the couch which put him directly opposite Davido and a little more eye-to-eye. “So I’m vampire and troll, then?”
“Yes. But you’re something else as well. You’re part elf.”
“Elf?”
“Yes. It’s not generally known that I’m both elf and troll.”
Rosamunde interjected. “I didn’t know that. I always thought you were pure troll.”
He shifted his gaze toward her, his lips curving slightly. “Mostly, I am.”
Stone knew something else was in play here and he wanted the whole picture. “Then all your children are elven.”
“Yes. But not an elf like you, Stone. And that’s the rub, that’s why after Inez died, and I saw what you were, I gave you to a wonderful troll family to be raised.”
Vojalie took a step forward, drawing Stone’s attention to her. “You were the reason Davido and I met and the reason I persuaded him to find adoptive parents for you.”
“You talked him into giving me up?”
“Let me explain. Please. Will you permit me to do that?”
He knew and trusted Vojalie, but she’d all but stated she was the reason he hadn’t grown up knowing his birth father. Anger swelled as it always did. He was too quick-tempered, so for once he worked at tamping it all down. “Yes. Please go on.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Stone, I’d had a horrific vision of you and of Davido, that if you’d stayed with him when you were born, you would both have been slain early in your life. You wouldn’t have made it through your childhood.”
“Why?” But even as he asked the question, the pieces began fitting together. Kaden came sharply to mind and how familiar he’d been with Vojalie to the point Stone had told him to back off. Kaden. The elf-lord. Davido. Part elf. “Holy fuck.”
Davido inclined his head. “You never lacked for intelligence.”
A long string of invectives left Stone’s mouth. “Sweet Goddess, this can’t be happening.”
Rosamunde shook her head. “What am I missing?”
But Davido didn’t answer her. Instead, he kept staring at Stone.
Stone grimaced. “Prove to me right now that everything I’m thinking is true. Show me. Now, old man. Or by the Goddess, I’ll pick you up and throw you against the wall.” He wanted no mistakes in understanding, not tonight. And he needed ‘his father’ to know how serious he was.
He wanted the whole truth.
