“What now?” Tate asked, a sinking despair dragging me down with him. “We can call in some favors, see if we can reach Alora?”
“No. As much as it pains me to admit, he’s right. If she wanted us there, she’d answer the phone.”
“So… we just wait?” Tate groaned, his shoulders sagging. “I hate waiting. Just put a silver bullet through my heart already.”
I understood the sentiment. Waiting for the woman I loved to contact me — to tell me she was okay — to explain why she left like that. It was like the worst kind of torture.
Not even the hunters could hurt me the way Jack Billings was right now.
Chapter thirty-four
Jack
Thevoicesaroundmehad risen to a crescendo. I could barely make out one over the other, not that I was even listening anymore. I’d checked out about thirty minutes ago, pulling a leg up into my chair as I stared off to the side.
A hand slid onto mine, and my mom squeezed with a reassuring smile.
“Okay?” she mouthed, shooting a look at my arguing dads. Even my godparents, Tristen and Mizuki, had joined in the fight over my disastrous love life.
My mom nudged her head toward the side, signaling me to go to the kitchen with her.
In the kitchen, Darren stood at the sink, washing the dishes as he was prone to do in the face of conflict. I gave him a weak smile before I found one of the island chairs, leaning forward so my head hung over the counter.
“Don’t mind them,” my mom explained as she opened the fridge. “They’re being overprotective.”
I snorted, watching her pull out orange juice and tequila. “Little early for that, isn’t it?”
Darren sat two clean cups on the counter in front of me. Mom thanked him and sat the bottles on the counter.
“Not when you’ve had your heart broken.”
“It’s not — I’m not…” I sighed and then grabbed the tequila taking a swig of it out of the bottle. I grimaced, groaning as I laid my head down on the counter. “How could I be so stupid? How did I not know?”
“Oh, honey.” My mom smoothed a hand down my back, brushing my hair away from my face. “There’s no way you could have known. Did he talk about Kle—?”
I glared.
She pressed her lips together. “You know what I mean.”
I sighed and leaned on my hand. “No, he’s not a big talker in the first place. And it just… never came up. Tate, his human servant, mentioned some vampires hating on the council, but I never got around to asking him more about it.” I flushed, rubbing my hands down my pants.
My mom chuckled. “I get it. You were busy falling in love. Hard to think about work stuff when you’re in their presence.” She glanced back toward the dining room with a dreamy smile. “Believe me I know.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I shifted in my seat, staring into the dining-room door. “They don’t want me to go back. They want to—” I sucked in a harsh breath. “They won’t really kill him, will they?”
“No,” my mom rushed to say. “No, honey, they’re just feeling overprotective. They don’t have any reason to kill him.”
Darren snorted.
“Dating their daughter wouldn’t exactly hold up as a valid reason to the other council members,” my mom pointed out to him.
For some reason, that information made me feel better and worse. After hearing that the vampire I’d been falling for — sleeping with — was the fledgling of the one vampire I hated most in the world, the reason behind all my nightmares and trauma, it was a lot to swallow.
A rational part of me knew that it wasn’t Kyren’s fault. He didn’t know who I was, what his sire did to me. I almost smiled at the thought of how he reacted when he’d only thought someone had attacked me. If he’d been there when Kleon’s minions had grabbed me as a kid, I feared they wouldn’t have gotten off as easily as a quick death.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was them again.
I wanted to talk to them, and yet… I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to face them when I didn’t know how I felt about this. Even if I did accept that Kleon was Kyren’s sire, that he wasn’t the same person who would do the same thing to me, how did I know that Kyren wouldn’t hate me when he found out?
