“It’s more like it’s old news. I can attribute our past as fate, or maybe our future, so then it’s our destiny.”
“You know, you three are way too cryptic. It drives me nuts, like just say what you mean and mean what you say.”
“That’s because you’ve been hurt.”
“Get this, I figured that shit out myself,” she growls, but it’s not full of malice; regardless, she gets a reassuring cuddle again. And I feel a small easing of the anxiety that’s been eating me alive.
“Don’t freak out on me,” I urge, purposely loosening my hold around her, not letting it fall away but also giving her the chance to run if she needs.
“Now I am worried,” she says as she twists to face me.
I blow out a steadying breath and start. “What do you know of the patient zero for ADV?”
“He murdered his pack.”
“Everyone knows that,” I agree with her. “But what do you know about that Alpha?”
“He got ADV after a critical life event involving his pack and an Omega around him. In layman’s terms, he dropped into a state of critical stress, his DNA seems to have already been infected by a virus or infection but either way his cells responded to the influx of a certain chemical compound only Alphas possess. The combination of the stress and whatever he was infected with altered his genetic makeup. In a very short amount of time, he became an anomaly because a chemical overload of something continued to feed the DNA mid trans-mutating. Which resulted on a cellular level of antibodies releasing. Coupled with environmental abnormalities, he effectively and unwittingly spawned a virus.”
I shake my head, stunned, and impressed at her insight. It’s not that I didn’t know she knew, but the way she explains it, I’ve never heard anyone else do it so efficiently or eloquently.
She pulls a face at me, letting me know she’s a bit miffed at my reaction.
“Past all that, Heidi. I’m talking about are you aware of who he was as a person before he became known as ‘the Alpha’?”
“No clue actually. All I have to go on is the history that is handed down through our family, but also, I’ve read the case-notes and all the research my grandfather kept on anything to do with the patient. A lot of it is his initial hypothesis and information gathering.”
“Well, I can fill you in on the details,” I offer quietly.
“How? Are you going to tell me you’re immortal. And you’re a man child now, able to tell me all the things I don’t know because you were there?” She scoffs and it’s light-hearted, almost playful until she catches another look on my face, and then she looks horrified. “Ram?”
“Your family are famous for finding the disease and the cure, and mine are equally famous but nearly forgotten. The only thing people remember is what happened.”
She shakes her head; she’s already putting it together. I see the moment it all falls into place, and Heidi bites her lip in realisation.
“It’s okay, Heidi, I promise you it’s all okay. This goes back to before you and me, but our paths were always going to cross. From the day my grandfather watched the love of his life die in a terrible accident, we started down different paths, but we were always going to find each other.”
“I never knew, Ram. I never knew,” she says, her voice breaking as her usual sweet crisp scent morphs into one changed by sadness.
My hand is cupping her face before she can say another word. “So yeah, I have to say I believe in destiny and fate, considering you’re the granddaughter of the man who discovered the medical reason why my grandfather killed his whole pack.”
Heidi’s brown eyes shimmer with unshed emotion. “You must hate me.”
“Far from it,” I say back before I shimmy over and pull her into my arms. “Sweetheart, I don’t think I could ever hate you. Can I tell you what my Mom used to say to me, Dare, and Kai every night growing up.”
Heidi nods her head.
“She would tuck us into our bed before sitting in the middle of us and her story would always start the same. She’d say since her mom had told her this fairytale ever since she was a little girl which meant it had to be true. Mom’s voice would change, and she’d get quietly animated retelling us a story about three brothers, all princes born in secrecy, that would help a princess ravage a beast that was threatening to destroy the very heart of society. The brothers would recognise her because they were princes who had a magical ability to feel them, but because all the gods wanted them to be together they made a special crown for the princess to wear. Mom said it was a special crown because the princess was such a beautiful, strong girl.”
“She’s a great storyteller,” Heidi says, her eyes wide and there’s still a healthy amount of scepticism in her tone. But that’s Heidi to a tee.
“Every night Kai would say it had to be a crown made of gold and diamonds because that’s what princesses want. Darius said it would be a crown of thorns because that would look way cooler and I had no clue, because I was still caught up thinking we had magic powers. The others didn’t catch on for a long time that Mom was talking about us, but she used to always tell me being the oldest meant sometimes I’d know things before my brothers did.”
“God, they would have hated that.”
“They didn’t know that for a long time.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
