After listening to it for a moment, she scooted closer to him. Chitahs purring seemed to have a soothing effect on people. To Christian, it was a chain saw in his ears.
Carol hugged her knees. “Are all Chitahs tall like you?”
“Most.”
“And have the same eyes?”
“Some. There are a lot of variations in color, but usually yellow to golden brown.”
“What about your kids?”
“I have none.”
“Why not?”
Claude’s brows drew together. “You ask too many questions.”
“I’m not tired. What else is there to do?” She stared into the tall flames. “You got any brothers or sisters?”
Keystone members didn’t probe into each other’s personal lives, but Christian couldn’t help but listen in, wondering if he might learn a little more about the mysterious Claude Valentine. Claude was a good tracker and a courageous fighter, but he was too amiable. How could a guy like that have no family or options other than Keystone?
Claude looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening. Viktor was asleep, and Blue had wandered off to bury the trash. “I had a sister, but she didn’t look like me.”
“Why not?”
“She was a human.”
Carol frowned. “How? I mean…” She grasped for words.
“Chitahs have human DNA far back in our ancestry. Nature selects our babies to be born either a Chitah or a human. If they’re human, we give them away.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because the Breed world is too dangerous for a human.” Claude tapped her nose with his finger. “You above all should know this. When we give our children to the human world, we offer them a chance to live a normal life. They would always be vulnerable in our world, and it’s a parent’s greatest sacrifice.”
“So you gave your sister away?”
Claude shifted on his rock. “No.”
Carol rested her chin on her arms. “What did she look like?”
Christian’s shoulders sagged. He was kind of hoping the lass would have asked about Claude’s parents. Why would they have kept a human child? It was especially dangerous in olden times. Not just because of all the diseases, but it was commonplace for immortals to threaten the lives of mortal children in order to get what they wanted from a Chitah.
Claude cleared his throat. “Yvette had beautiful brown hair and matching eyes. She was not much taller than you are now. In fact, that’s how I first learned to do hair. Yvette couldn’t leave the house, and she always wanted to have her hair styled like all the pretty ladies she saw from the window.”
“Why couldn’t she leave?”
He snapped a small twig between his fingers. “Yvette was special. She had what people today call Down syndrome. In my time, they called it something much worse.”
“But I thought…” Carol’s mouth hung agape, and Christian could tell she was carefully choosing her words. “I thought if you were Breed, you couldn’t have children with anything… different.”
“That’s very true, and they’re the exception. Anyhow, Yvette wasn’t Breed. Humans in those times put mentally challenged children into asylums with lunatics, sometimes by force. What a terrible fate for those innocent children to be locked away with madmen and murderers. My parents wanted to protect her, so they kept her at home. Had she not been born that way, they could have given her up for adoption, but Yvette had no chance at a normal life. Humans would have put her away, and none of us would accept that fate. My father consulted a Relic who specialized in Chitah disorders to find out how it could have happened. The Relic said it was very rare, but it was likely they could have more children with the same condition. I didn’t care. Yvette was my little sister, and I guarded her with my life.” He absently touched the stubble growing along his jaw and chin. “She loved to laugh and brought us so much joy. Children like Yvette are nothing but pure love.” His smile faded just as quickly as it had appeared. “It angered me that she couldn’t be a part of the world.”
“I know how she feels.” Carol glanced at the twins, who were sleeping. “I wish I had a brother or sister.”
Claude gazed at the fire. “I didn’t deserve such a gentle and loving sister, but I was a devoted big brother. I protected her for as long as I could and gave her all the love and laughter that the world never would. She should have had a better life, but she was just born in the wrong time.”
Christian thought back to his own blind sister. He wasn’t lucky enough to have known her more than a short time before he left Ireland, and it saddened him to think of what Cassie’s fate might have been. She’d loved her big brothers, and they had all left her behind in search of adventure and money.
