AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Six
“So the book doesn’t like men. You know you have a lot of men on your team,” Evan pointed out as we walked down the hallway toward the apartment that was our first destination.
“Huh. I guess I never thought about it. I work with a bunch of vamps. They’re pretty much all dudes.” Vampirism was a gene that almost exclusively affected the Y chromosome. As with all things “gender,” it’s complicated, so there were a couple of female vamps out there, but I hadn’t met them. “It was pretty much the academics and Liv.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. I had a friend go bad once,” Evan said. “She got bitten by this bug that infects a part of your brain that affects moral choices, and she tried to murder me. But not before she slept with Lee. Everyone sleeps with Lee.”
“There’s a bug that takes away your morality?”
“It was another plane. Great baked goods, shitty insects,” Evan replied. “I was fourteen, and she was the only friend I’d had in a long time. It hurt to lose her.”
“Did you have to kill her?”
“No. Trent did it for me.” Evan’s boots barely made a sound despite the fact that we were walking on hardwood floors. “He was a good foster dad, you know. You should be proud to be his wife.”
“I am.” More and more every second. “I’m glad he took care of you.”
“He took care of us and never let us forget who our parents were,” Evan said. “He would tell us stories every night. He even told us about Fen’s granddad, your real dad. I sometimes think those were his favorite stories. I know Lee loved them.”
Probably because they were about him, about the him he’d been before. When my real father, Lee Owens, had died, he’d chosen to come back to earth and been reborn as Rhys’s twin. “That doesn’t surprise me. My dad had some adventures. How do you feel about Lee being a latent vampire?”
Evan sighed. “I’m relieved that when he dies he’ll get another shot. You don’t understand how much we all worry about Lee. He’s a reckless asshole. I can’t tell you how many times I thought he would die. Fen can run wild, but he has the power to back it up. Fen often had to run into danger because Lee got mouthy with some crazy, powerful creature who was about to take his head off. And I was the only girl. So I was the only sane one.”
I could totally understand her position. “I’m sorry. You should have had a woman to help guide you. I know Sarah Day would have helped you if she could. I would have had I been here.”
“Well, I wish you had because Trent trying to explain menstruation to me was all kinds of confusing,” Evan admitted. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to die or not. He said a lot of stuff about transformation, so I was worried I might turn into something, and not something good since he’d told the boys they should be careful around me during that time.”
I snorted. “He grew up in a weird wolf cult. I don’t think he got a lot of education on biology. I’m certain he never thought he would be raising a girl on his own.”
“Well, he kind of wasn’t. Sasha was off on a mission when it all went down,” Evan explained. “When he came back, he found out I’d had my first period and he bought this book and sat down with me. In the beginning, some people thought I shouldn’t go with my brothers because I was a companion and Sasha was a warrior. They thought I didn’t hear, but I’m pretty good at listening in. Even the academics thought it would be ill-advised to leave me with Sasha. They wanted to take me to Faery and leave me with my grandmother. Trent wouldn’t allow it. Sasha wouldn’t leave me behind either. He’s always been so gentle with me. Well, until he makes me practice fighting or archery, and then he’s a harsh taskmaster. I think about that big vampire and how he sat patiently and read a book about my changing body and tried his hardest to explain things to me, and I know that even without my mom and dads I had this great gift of family.”
“He had a daughter, you know,” I said, thinking of everything Sasha had lost.
She nodded. “Natasha. We follow her on social media. She’s in college. She seems happy. I’ll show Sasha and he smiles, but I know there’s an ache inside him. I wish he could find a companion he could love. I worry he’s going to spend an eternity looking for his wife. He’s sure we come across the same souls again and again. I would say he’s overly romantic, but I know Lee’s your father down deep.”
“Do you remember that time?” My father had resurfaced for a couple of days after a spell had gone wrong. He’d proven that version of him was in the body of Lee Donovan-Quinn. Evan had been so young at the time.
She shook her head. “No. Not at all. I was four or five, I think. But Rhys remembers. Lee knows it deep down. I think Fenrir and I have been together before. Sometimes I think I was supposed to be a wolf and something got screwed up. Or Fen was supposed to be a vampire.”
“His biological father is a vampire,” I pointed out. “Have you thought about that?”
Her head shook. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll always be a wolf first, and I’ll always be a companion. Someone pointed out that Fenrir will outlive me by at least a hundred years. I’ll get old and die and he’ll still be in his prime.”
“Or you can take your father’s blood,” I countered. I rather thought I was being used as a sounding board for a conversation she needed to have with her mom. I was okay with that. “I know he sent some with you. I thought he was being careful, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
She stopped, turning to me in the middle of the hall. “Am I wrong to try to hold on to him? Am I going to be the reason he’s miserable one day? If I walked away from him, would he be able to find a she-wolf and be happy?”
I turned to her, needing her to feel the full power of my will in this. “I have been on this plane for one day, Evan, and I already know that my son cannot be happy without you.”
“Papa said it’s young love and it always feels like this.”
I was going to have a talk with Dev Quinn. I got that he didn’t like the idea of his precious little girl in a serious relationship. I understood that in his mind she was still the five-year-old baby he’d left behind, but they were going to make a huge mistake if they tried to come between Fen and Evan. The last thing I needed was a Romeo and Juliet situation. Trent and I had talked about this earlier today, and he’d heard Fen’s call. “Your papa isn’t a wolf. We mate for life, and it doesn’t matter when we find our true mates. Honestly, it doesn’t happen for all wolves, but for those who find their mate, it’s a connection we can’t deny. Trent’s soul speaks to mine. He can calm me with a touch. Like you can with Fenrir. I know it seems like the world is against you, and if that’s too much, then that’s too bad because this is fate, and I don’t think there’s a way around it.”
Her green eyes shone with unshed tears, but her lips curved up. “I told myself if you didn’t hesitate, I can stand up to my papa.”
“You could always stand up to him.” I’d already seen her strength. “You don’t need anyone’s permission to stand up for yourself or for your relationship. I will stand with you when it comes to the wolves but, sweet girl, you need to be practical and take your father’s blood.”
“But the very act of taking it points out that I’m not a proper mate for Fen.”
