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“Not helping.”
“Right. Sorry,” Nero winced. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah. It’s not like we don’t have a million hours of driving ahead of us.”
“Why do you think she decided to go with the vamps? Why do you think she isn’t responding to your calls?”
Valentine sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s not like we’ve had this great life. We were all taken from our mothers … three different ones, by the way. And then we were taken to Italy. The council wanted to decide what to do with us. I really thought they were going to kill us.”
“Shit. How old were you?”
“Maybe five. Lil was only four … if that. I remember being very scared. I didn’t know what Half-Blood meant before that trip. My mom hadn’t exactly explained it to me, and it’s not like she cared what I was. I was her kid, and that was it. But after that night, I knew something was wrong with me.”
“There isnothingwrong with you,” he insisted with such force that he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.
“Well, maybe not to you, but the council was angry that we existed. Half-Bloods aren’t really common, and just like that, my father had three of us. It scared the council that he could create so many of us.”
“Why did he take you away from your mothers?”
“Because no one knew what we would grow up to be. The fact we were half vampires is this great risk of exposure. We straddle the world of vamps and the world of humans. We could make life very hard for the vamps, and that is the last thing they want.”
“Shifters are the same. We don’t really want humans to know we’re out there.”
“To be fair, if humans knew half the stuff that is real, they would never leave the house,” she said. “Or if they did, they would try to kidnap every one of us to do science experiments on us.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“You’d think the vamps would know that. That they would realize that we can’t tell anyone who we are because it puts us in serious danger. But no. They think we’re out to get them.”
“They’re a form of predator. The top of the food chain. Being in that spot might seem like it’s a walk in the park, but you always have this fear that one day, a bigger and badder monster will come for you.”
She turned in her seat to face him. “Is that what you fear? That one day, someone will come for you?”
He nodded slowly. “It’s been a fear of mine since I was a kid, and the alpha and his mate from the next town over were killed by a vampire.”
“Reece’s parents,” she said.
“Yeah. I was a kid when it happened. Reece and I were friends. I knew his parents because my dad and his dad got together to discuss alpha stuff all the time. We were thrown together a lot, so we became actual friends. Same with Atlas, the alpha’s son from Silvers.
“It was fun to hang out with them. Three wolves, three alpha heirs. We could shoot the shit about the future and the kinds of alphas we would want to be. We thought our dads were immortal. That we would be, too. So when the attack happened and Reece became a little boy alpha, things changed.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“All of a sudden, being an alpha wasn’t this great role. This big protection status that meant you couldn’t be hurt or feel pain. It was the opposite. And then, our little trio of alpha heirs became a duo. It was never the same. Obviously, I wouldn’t dare to compare what I went through with Reece, but it left an impression.” His jaw ticked with the memory of it.
“Of course it did,” she said softly. “How could it not? It changed the rules of life, and that is always terrible for a kid. For anyone, really.”
He grinned in a self-deprecating way at her. “Not as much as growing up half in the world and half not,” he said, somehow understanding her biggest regret. The one thing she couldn’t change about herself. “At least I was surrounded by other wolves and boys my age who had the same future as me.”
“I had my sisters.” Her words were so low that it wasn’t even a whisper.
However, Nero heard her with his shifter ears. Only that could explain what he did next. He reached over and took her hand in his and gave it a good squeeze. “They’re not just your sisters, huh? They’re your friends.”
“The bestest,” she sighed. “We were always together. And now that Ceecee has Reece and Lil is off her rocker and doing whatever it is she is doing, I don’t know …”
“You don’t know where you fit,” he finished for her.
She nodded slowly. “Something like that. I don’t know who I am if we’re not the Longborn sisters living on a razor’s edge. I always had Celestine to give the guidelines and Lilliane to complain about it with.”
