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Blaire had told her all about how after the Order discovered her blood carried magical affinities, they experimented on her until taking her to an abandoned temple beneath the academy not seen in centuries. They tried to sacrifice her to an ancient deity they’d read about in an old tome. What a joke. Lukas had to make the choice of turning her into a Vasirian or letting her die, but he didn’t do it, not wanting to steal her freedom of choice. Her own magic brought her back.
“Fine. I died, but I’m fine now,” she said, waving Lukas off with a kiss on his cheek. “The strange thing about it is something happened to me after that. When the magic brought me back, it healed all my old scars, too. Not only that, but I don’t bruise as severely as I did before, nor do they last as long.”
Lukas muttered, “Now you don’t look like I beat you up every time we have sex anymore.”
Charlotte’s face flushed, and Aiden and Seth started laughing.
“He’s not rough,” Blaire said, mistaking Charlotte’s flushed face and wide eyes as worry. “He doesn’t hurt me.”
“Oh, no… I…” She looked at Aiden and he smirked, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “Nothing wrong with a little roughness,” she mumbled.
“Wait. What?” Blaire said, leaning over. “Did you say what I think you just…” Her gaze moved to Aiden. He didn’t even try to hide the smug grin on his face. “I do not need to know more.”
Riley threw her hands over her ears, snapping out of her funk. “Nope!”
Aiden laughed and leaned down to whisper in Charlotte’s ear, “You know you enjoy every bit of it, Kitten.”
She rolled her lips in to avoid whimpering at the husky timbre of his voice.
Headmistress Velastra joined them, her hands coming together in a sharp clap that drew their attention. Charlotte was thankful for her clapping for once.
“As much as it pains me to share this news, your alleged father was not one of the rogues captured and taken to the dungeons below.”
“What? Where is he?” Aiden asked.
“I suspect he fled when you all were occupied with defending yourselves.”
Dominic sat forward, grabbing a blood packet from the cooler. “I’ve already contacted the clan about James. They will send word to their contacts throughout the US so there’s pressure to find him.”
“What if he leaves the country?” she asked.
“I doubt he’ll do that. If he’s in the position he claims to be in, he’s not going to abandon it when he can use those at his disposal to hide him. He’ll likely either remain in the area or return to Florida. We still need to determine if he’s your father or not.”
“That we do have the answer to.” A short woman wearing tactical gear with her blonde hair in a tight bun high on her head stepped forward. She held up papers, passing them to the headmistress. “We ran samples of the blood on the wall to determine that it is, in fact, human. While we didn’t have James’s blood to run against the samples, we did get a hit from a hospital in Florida. He had a car accident several years ago and needed a blood transfusion.”
“How did you know to check the hospital?”
The security guard looked down at Blaire. “One of the rogues we captured alive gave us his surname, and we ran it until we got a hit in Florida. Seeing the crash report, we took a chance on checking the hospital. Not sure why they kept his pre-transfusion samples after the first week, but…” She motioned to the papers the headmistress frowned at. “His DNA is a match for the blood on the wall.”
The headmistress sighed long and hard. “It would seem he is your father.”
Charlotte’s head jerked up at that. “How do you know?”
“The alleged father cannot be excluded as the biological father of the tested child. Based on the analysis of DNA loci listed above, the probability of paternity is 99.999-and so forth percent.” The headmistress looked up from the paper. “I know you may not wish to hear this, but James Robertson is your father.”
Charlotte slumped. She couldn’t help but wonder what drove her father to abandon his humanity to run with the worst of the worst in the Vasirian world. Why did he do it? Something had to have driven him to do the things he did. If he had the kind of money he claimed, what did he gain from aligning himself with gangs—human or not?
“Sometimes people are just bad,” Noah said, making her realize she must have said a part of her thoughts out loud. “James isn’t a good man.”
Dominic nodded. “Stressing yourself over the reasons he chose the path he did will get you nowhere. Sometimes people make choices because of some profound reason or trauma, but sometimes, sometimes people are just evil. I know it’s not what you want to hear because you’ve just learned he’s your father, but it’s not on you. His shortcomings aren’t your burden to bear.”
Aiden took her hand in his. “You’re not a product of your father. He might be your blood, but you obviously didn’t take after him.”
If she’d grown up with him, maybe her life would be different, and she wouldn’t be the person she grew up to be. Instead, she could thank her mothers for the life they gave her. They ensured she became someone not influenced by evil.
“We have to find him, though,” Dominic said. “To have a human roaming free like this with our secrets, with a hoard of rogues under his control, is unheard of. Money or not. I’m also concerned about his motives. Why is he involving himself in our world so deeply?”
“I think it has to do with the person who is supporting him,” Noah said.
