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His hand lashed upward without thinking. Nails extended into monstrous claws, and they lashed toward Jay lightning quick—
"Jay's your son!" Rosalie screamed.
That was the only thing she could have said to stop the monster inside Dominick. He stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around to look at her, disbelief etched into the very bones of his being.
In Rosalie's eyes, he saw the truth. The truth, the real truth, she'd held back all these years. The terror that if she held back now, she would lose her one and only son.
Dominick's son.
For a long moment, he couldn't say anything. He looked back and forth between Jay and Rosalie, searching for the truth, trying to make it magically manifest without his prompting. Rage still simmered in his gut, but now it was laced with confusion. Hesitation.
But he didn't withdraw his claws—not entirely. They hung an inch from Jay's terrified face. He should have recognized those fiery, amber eyes as his own from the very beginning. His nose reached a delicate point, as Dominick's mother’s had.
As soon as he looked closely at Jay's face, he knew it to be true. But still, he needed confirmation from Rosalie.
"Is it true?" Dominick demanded, throwing his head back in Rosalie's direction. "Answer me!"
"Yes!" she cried out. "Jay is yours. I ... I was pregnant when I left you."
"Explain," he spat out, his voice cold and unwavering. "Why would you leave if you knew? Why would you do such a thing?"
Rosalie sunk her head in shame. "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "I didn't know until after I left. Maybe things would have been different if I'd known the truth then, but I didn't, I swear! After I left you, I found out, and I couldn't bring myself to go back to you, not right away, not after how we left things. I promise I never meant to keep Jay from you this long, not at first." She paused and glanced around nervously before continuing. "But then, as time went on, and Jay began to grow, it became harder and harder for me to even think about telling you the truth."
Dominick pulled away finally, retracting his claws as he stepped back from Rosalie and Jay. He let out a deep sigh as conflicting emotions rushed through him—anger and confusion mixed with love for the son he'd never known about until now.
Dominick's heart ached as he heard Rosalie's story, but he forced himself to stay strong and composed. He wanted to blame Rosalie for running away from him, for keeping Jay from him for this long, but could he?
His anger had been replaced by a deep sadness as he processed what Rosalie had done—but also what she had been through—all these years. Mother to a half-human, half-vampire child, all on her own, for ten years. Did everyone know she had a child or had she kept Jay a secret this long?
No, Rosalie wouldn't have completely denied Jay his position as her son. That would be cruelty uncharacteristic of her. But they had taken up a story specifically to lie to Dominick when they came to his castle.
Yet, if she was so intent on keeping Jay a secret from him, why would she have brought him here at all?
Granted, no one expected the curse to trap them in this palace together. But surely, she had some goal in mind ...
"You've kept Jay a secret from me for ten years." Dominick's words came out steady, calculated, as he turned away from the boy to face Rosalie again.
"I'm so sorry, Dom, I—"
"But," he interrupted, "why would you risk bringing him here, knowing there was a chance I would find him? It's pure luck that you've kept him a secret for this long, though I give Jay credit for being able to keep up his end of the secret, too. But why risk it?"
Rosalie's mouth opened and closed, then she looked away, clearly flustered. "Because I ... I intended to tell you the truth. Jay has been waiting his whole life to meet his father, and I wanted to finally give him that opportunity."
Something broke in Dominick then, and he glanced back at Jay. "Jay ... you didn't even know? You didn't know that I'm your father?"
Jay was shivering uncontrollably from terror and anxiety, but Dominick was able to differentiate the movement when he shook his head to indicate that no, he didn't know, either.
His whole life, he'd gone without a father. Dominick thought back to the made-up tale Jay had told him when they first met. Did Dominick not pick it up as a lie because Jay thought it was true until now? The idea sickened and saddened Dominick at the same time, knowing that this poor child had been told a lie his whole life. That he'd gone years without a father, despite Dominick being alive, well, and capable of caring for him.
"I didn't know if you ... if you would want a child, either," Rosalie blabbered on, tears running down her cheeks. "You've always voiced disinterest in children, Dom, in having a family. You never cared about the future because you believed it to be infinite. I was scared—terrified, even. Can you blame me for that? Can you, Dom?"
"Yes," he hissed, but as soon as the word came out, angry and illogical, he knew it was a lie. He could blame her ... but did he really want to?
Everything she said was true.
Now Dominick fought with the urge to try and wrap Rosalie in his arms. To try and embrace Jay. He held back because after everything he'd done, everything he'd said, everything he'd put them through ... he knew he had no right to.
Had Dominick known about Jay, would he have wanted a child? Would he have gone back on everything he'd believed in for the sake of starting a family?
