Rion gives me a pointed look, but it’s Kael’s words that slice through me.
“He says he’s not your biological father.”
“What?” My chest tightens as the blood running through my veins turns cold. I feel like I’m floating.
“Tell her,” Kael bites, refusing to look away from me as he sends his command to my father.
“Untie me and I will,” he retorts, his lip curled with promise that when he’s released, I’ll be his target.
Refusing to give him the satisfaction of getting under my skin, I turn to Kael instead. “You tell me.”
He sighs, wiping a bloody hand down his face as he rocks back on his heels. “You were a form of financial aid left on his doorstep.”
The wind is knocked from my lungs as I sway on my feet, disbelief clawing at me as I turn my attention to the man in question, despite every bone in my body wanting to run for the exit.
“Is that true?” My eyes lock with my father’s, but the truth is clear. That was never his title. It explains so much, yet nothing all at once. Rage burns deep inside of me as I whip my gaze back to Kael. “How long have you known?”
The vampire’s chin drops to his chest and no answer comes. The silence is drowned out by the whooshing of my heartbeat in my ears, fueled by a rage inside of me that I can’t control or understand.
I’m mad at my father for existing. I’m angry atKael for keeping something so important from me. I don’t know which is worse.
I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t speak.
Defeated, I turn for the exit, my name quickly falling from my father’s lips as I leave without a word, doing what I seem to do best.
Run.
THIRTY-ONE
ELODIE
Desperation gets the better of me as I stumble up the steep steps, frantic and disoriented, scraping my shins, but I don’t stop, not even when I’m outside and the mid-morning air whips my hair around my face. I keep moving.
One foot in front of the other.
That’s all I have to do, that’s all it’s going to take to put some much needed distance between the disaster down there and me. I’m no stranger to running from danger, but as I storm toward The Vale, too scared to look back over my shoulder, the familiar numbness that blankets me in its icky embrace doesn’t come. Not even when I silently beg for it.
Instead, my muscles ache with tension, refusing to let me hide from the truth. Despair creeps intoanger, and when my cell phone vibrates in my pocket, signaling an incoming call, it takes everything inside of me to ignore it.
I’m used to silence so deafening it threatens to make my ears bleed, but instead, every part of me feels like it’s screaming, although, no sound parts my lips.
I reach the edge of The Vale without realizing it, every second passing me in a blur as my phone vibrates again. Frustrated, I tug the device from my pocket to see an incoming call from Kael. I scoff.
Fuck him.
My emotions have the better of me right now. I’m not going to see reason, so there’s no use in talking to him. Or the others, for that matter.
Rion didn’t bring him here, not if my father has been here since the day I made a run for it. It would have been Kael or Thorne.
Am I mad that it’s clear they’ve been torturing him? No. I feel nothing about that at all.
Am I enraged that he’s here when I thought I was free from him? No. It’s instinctive for me to feel scared, but his presence doesn’t quite floor me like it once did.
Am I frustrated that they’ve been keeping his location a secret? No. I was blissfully in my out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality, and that doesn’t change now.
What’s got under my skin is the truth Kael exposed.
He’s not your father.
