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The door shook again, and then suddenly, someone slammed it open. My heart pounded against my rib cage, my breath ragged. I wasn’t ready for this, but I needed to protect my pack. I couldn’t protect Hellana’s baby, but I could do this.
A growl rumbled through the house. “It’s fucking cold out there.”
At the sound of Thayer’s voice, I let out a sigh of relief. They were home. Finally.
“We’re home,” Gaian announced. “And we brought company.”
Breath catching, I stared at Darius with wide eyes. Had they really, truly found my father? If the rumors were true, it had been years, decades that he had been bound to that mountain with no food or water. How had he survived?
Before I could stop myself, I sprinted down the stairs, nearly tripping over my own two feet. When I made it to the landing, I scanned the living room until my eyes landed on a middle-aged man with glimmering eyes and a smile that seemed so familiar, but I had no recollection of it.
He smiled at me. “Hi, Sina.”
87
the war
calder
“Wow,”Sina’s father said to Sina, staring her up and down in the pack house living room.
They had barely said two words to each other in the past fifteen minutes, just trying to get over the sheer fact that they were actually meeting for the first time.
While I felt like a fucking joke, unable to move and meeting Sina’s father the first time, I found myself sitting in the living room—thanks to Thayer’s help—watching Sina interact with him. There was no doubt that they were related—their bright and glimmering eyes were a straight giveaway.
“I can’t believe it’s actually you,” Sina said.
Thayer crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I can. You both don’t know when to shut the hell up.”
Sina cut her gaze to him, as if to tellhimto shut up, but she ended up smiling at him. He growled but then caught himself smiling back at her. I could only imagine how hard it must’ve been for him in particular to leave Sina this past week.
“Shut up,” Sina said playfully, then turned back to her father. “I have so many questions.”
“So do I.” He glanced from Gaian and Thayer to Darius and me, then back to his daughter. “I never had a chance to meet you. I was taken away from your mother just before she was about to give birth, and I was bound to the ice. How is she?”
“Mom …” Sina trailed off. “I think she’s alive. I saw her in a vision, I believe?”
“Ahh, yes. The Paragon vision. It’s similar to the mind link that all wolves have with their packmates, except we can visually see other Paragons that we’ve met before, no matter which family they belong to.”
“So, why couldn’t you see her?” Sina asked.
“As I was telling Gaian and Thayer, my power has”—he gulped—“dwindled.”
“Dwindled how?” she asked, brows furrowed, leaning against the chair I sat upright on. Almost instinctively, she grabbed my hand, intertwined her fingers with mine, and set them in her lap. “Not completely, right?”
After staring at us in silence for a long few moments, her father pressed his lips together and shook his head. “No, not completely.” He turned toward me. “Gaian told me that you were in an accident and became paralyzed.”
I moved my fingers a mere millimeter against Sina’s, barely able to feel her touch, and gritted my teeth. “It wasn’t an accident. I was poisoned by a liquid that can paralyze any species. He gave me too much of it, and now, I’m like this for good.”
Sina’s father gulped again. “It’s called Transfixel. They used it on me over twenty years ago, but it wasn’t as powerful. That’s how they were able to capture me and bind me. They took away most of my power.”
“Is there any way you can … help him?” Sina asked.
“Sina,” I said, feeling so fucking bad about myself.
I knew she hadn’t meant to make me feel this way, but that was how I took it.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said to me. “I had to deal with those same feelings all alone for years. Once you get rid of them, you’ll become stronger mentally. Don’t feel like anything I do is because I pity you.” He turned back toward Sina. “But, yes, I can help him.”
