It wasn’t the fact I’d fainted that surprised me the most, but the fact I wasn’t sprawled out on the floor with a big knot on my head. It had taken me a second to realize that I was on the couch with my head propped on the armrest as he looked down at me in exasperation.
He hadn’t let me bust my ass.
“You done?” he asked, sounding bored.
“Fainting?”
The Defender gave me a face that said “duh.”
“I hope so.”
He sighed as he glanced at the sliver of couch at my hip, and I scooted over an inch before he slid onto the spot. His hip pressed against most of my stomach as he focused down on me. “I might as well take a seat because I can tell you’re going to have at least a hundred questions.”
He wasn’t wrong there, but I didn’t appreciate how well he thought he knew me already.
“Go ahead.”
I tried to put my thoughts and questions together so that I wouldn’t talk more than I needed to. I didn’t need to sound like a crazy person. I could handle this conversation. Once I was ready, I kept my voice steady, though the rest of me felt anything but, and said, not sounding like I was insane, “So you’re telling me that my great-grandmother was this… Atraxian person, and that’s why she had these… premonitions my grandpa knew about.”
“Not ‘Atraxian person.’ Atraxian. From Atraxia.”
He was correcting me about a planet in another solar system.
I wanted to laugh hysterically, I really did, but all right. I could keep my shit together for a minute. I could wander down this road with an open mind. “From a planet called… Atraxia?”
He gave me another expression like being from another fucking planet was a normal thing and he had no idea why I was struggling to comprehend what he was implying.
I pressed my lips together and clung to my sanity. “How do you know about it?”
He almost looked disappointed. “Really? You haven’t put it together?”
He had a point, so I told him the truth. “This doesn’t feel real, and I want to hear you say it.”
He blinked. “I know about this ‘place’ because my family is from there too. Only our line isn’t as diluted as yours is,” he answered.
Open mind, Gracie. Open mind.
I wasn’t dreaming. If this was a dream, he would probably be shirtless. And so would I.
If this was a dream, my lungs wouldn’t feel like I had a hippo sitting on my chest.
This was real. It 100 percent was.
“Okay. I see.” I didn’t. Not really. “How… do you know about my great-grandmother? That she… was that?”
“Because my grandmother knew her.”
He had agrandma?I had to keep my shit together.He wouldn’t be lying to me. Why would he?Rational, practical, open-minded.That could be me. Rational, practical, open-minded, and maybe a little bit of this Atraxian thing.
Oh God.
My heart was beating like crazy, but I could go along with this story. Stories were great. I read them all the time. “So her… family… was from the same place as yours? As you? And The Primordial? And The Centurion?” The fact that I was saying these words out loud was blowing my fucking mind.
“I told you they’re my brother and sister.”
I made this terrible sound in my throat of pure disbelief that hurt like fucking hell, and it wasn’t rational at all when I squeaked, “So you’re telling me that I’m a little bit of an alien?”
Alexander rolled his eyes. “That’s a simple term for it.”
