by S. J. West
“I thought I asked you to knock first?” Brand said putting a possessive arm across my shoulders.
“I forgot,” Malcolm shrugged, completely unapologetic about his unannounced appearance inside Brand’s home. “Besides, it wasn’t just me coming to visit.”
“I told him to bring me over,” Tara said. “He was trying to explain about angel DNA and completely lost me. I was hoping you could dumb it down for me some so I could understand.”
Since this was the first opportunity we had to tell Tara and Will about Allan’s findings and the first time we had a chance to tell Malcolm about Allan testing my mother as well, Brand and I sat them all down and explained what we knew and that we would be searching for my grandparents to see if they could shed some light on my mother’s family origins.
“Wow,” Tara said when we were finished. “After all these years, you’re gonna finally meet them? What’s your mom say about that?”
“I haven’t told her,” I admitted. “I’m not sure I will until after I meet them and see what kind of people they are. I’m sure she’s had her reasons for not contacting them after all this time. After I meet them, I might not want to see them again either. If that’s the case, I don’t see any reason to tell her.”
“Ok, so who wants to explain to me what that business between Malik and Izzi was all about?” Tara asked. “Who was she so scared of going to?”
I was glad Tara asked about Izzi. I didn’t feel comfortable asking since I was the reason she was being punished.
“Fairies have their own laws,” Brand explained. “If one of them breaks a law, they have to go before their leader, in this case Malik, and he decides their punishment. There is one particular uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean where all fairies who have committed unforgivable crimes are sent to. Izzi probably wouldn’t have survived very well or very long there. So Malik took her to another island where she could live the rest of her life out by herself.”
“She’ll die there?” I asked. I don’t know why, but I felt guilty over Izzi’s lonely fate. Intellectually, I knew it was a just sentence for trying to kill me, but emotionally I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her having to live out the rest of her days alone on some forgotten island.
Brand squeezed my hand knowing me well enough to realize how upset I would be by learning this new information. “It’s only what she deserves. She’s lucky he gave her the chance to go there. If she hadn’t provided us with the information we needed, she would have been sent to the others, and I can assure you that would have been a fate much worse.”
“Well, I think I need to go check on my son,” Malcolm announced, standing from his seat at the table. “Oh,” he said turning is attention to Brand, “before I forget. Have you had a talk with your daughter yet?”
“Why would I need to have a talk with her?” Brand asked completely clueless as to what Malcolm was talking about.
“Because of all the time she and Sebastian have been spending with one another,” Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“I’ve been a little busy,” Brand said defensively. “How long has this been going on?”
“Since your trip to London. I’ve told Sebastian how I feel about it but he won’t listen to me. Maybe if you can talk Abby into not seeing him anymore his feelings for her will cool off.”
“I’ll have a talk with her.”
“Good. The sooner we get this handled the better. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on Lilly.”
“I’ll be at school most of the day tomorrow,” I told him.
“Are you sure?” Brand asked me.
I loved his concern for my well being but school was important to me. The sooner I graduated the sooner we could be married. I was even considering summer school now to make things go a little quicker, and I never thought I’d have a good enough reason to willing give up my free summers.
“Yes, I feel like going,” I told him even though one more day of rest did sound awfully tempting. But I knew if I gave in to one more day, it could turn into two more days or even three. The sooner I got back into a normal schedule the better.
“Hey, you mind taking me back to my apartment?” Tara asked Malcolm standing from her chair.
“No problem.”
Malcolm put his hand on her shoulder. He winked at me before they both disappeared.
Will sat at the table completely silent. He’d been quiet through most of our discussion.
“Would you mind if I talked with Lilly alone?” He asked Brand.
“I’m not the one you should be asking,” Brand answered looking to me. I could tell he was worried about something, but he didn’t say anything else. I got the distinct impression he really didn’t want me talking to Will but was unwilling to say anything which would stop me from doing it.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Brand kissing him to help banish whatever it was he was worrying about. I stood from my seat. “Let’s go talk outside, Will.”
Will followed me out the French doors which lead to the back patio. We walked down to the lake shore in mutual silence. When we got close to the water’s edge, I stopped and turned to face him.
“What’s bothering you?” I asked him.
“Lilly,” he said coming to stand a little too close to me, making the conversation take on an intimate tone I wasn’t comfortable with, “have you thought about what I said to you in the hospital?”
“Thanks to you that’s all I’ve thought about,” I said irritably.
“Then you know it’s true.”
“No,” I said taking two involuntary steps back from Will. “I don’t know if it’s true or just your way to cast doubt on Brand’s love for me.”
“You know I love you for who you are,” he said. “At least with me you wouldn’t have to worry about becoming pregnant and dying because of it. Hell, I don’t even want you to have sex with him. How do you know you won’t end up pregnant even if you are on birth control? It’s not one hundred percent you know. There’s always a chance it could fail and you could end up being killed by one of those things growing inside you. How far have you two gone anyway? You always seem so close.”
I could feel my temper flare. “That’s none of your business, Will Allen. And you need to get the ideas you have about you and me out of your head! I thought you understood. I’m not in love with you anymore.”
“But…”
“No buts!” I couldn’t stop myself from yelling at him. He was making me crazy and confused with all his ideas. “If you can’t accept the fact that I love Brand, we can’t be friends anymore, Will. I can’t keep having this conversation with you. I love Brand. I don’t know how to make it any plainer.”
Will stepped closer to me putting his hands on my shoulders. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t willing to give up so quickly. “I know you think you love him and maybe you really do. But, you loved me at one time too. Just think about what I said, Lilly. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I need you to leave,” I said shaking his hands off my shoulders.
He stepped back from me. “Just think about it,” he implored before he vanished.
When I went back inside, Brand was leaned back against the dining table waiting for me, his arms crossed over his chest with a brooding expression on his beautiful, pale face.
“Mind me asking what he wanted to talk to you about?” he asked in a voice so low I had to strain to hear him.
I could tell he wanted to know about the conversation I’d just had with Will but at the same time he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. Apparently, his curiosity won out.
I closed the French doors behind me and leaned back against them shaking my head in disbelief.
“He’s still trying to convince me his love for me is more real than yours.”
“I see,” Brand sighed heavily. “Will does have one advantage over me. He could grow old with you. I can’t do that. You would have a more natural life with him than
with me. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to take his offer.”
“You always try to think about what would make me happy but what you don’t realize is you’re all I need for that to be true.”
“I feel like I’m cheating you out of a real life,” Brand confessed. “Most people get to plan to have a family and live a relatively normal existence with one another. I can’t give you either, only myself.”
“You’re all I want,” I told him.
“But will you be able to say that in twenty years? Or even ten? People’s feelings change, Lilly. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. What if you end up resenting me because of what I am?”
“You know how you told me I shouldn’t doubt your love for me?” I asked him. “Well I’m asking you to not doubt the love I feel for you either. You make me complete, Brand. I don’t know how else to say it. When we’re together, I feel like there’s nothing we can’t do. And who’s to say we can’t have children one day.” My words had the desired effect on him. “Remember, I’m part angel. Who knows what would happen if I actually did become pregnant? Maybe your curse doesn’t include me.”
“I can’t take that chance,” he said, firm in his resolve. “I refuse to even think about doing anything that would cause me to lose you like that.”
I didn’t want to push the subject. I knew how adamant he was about me not becoming pregnant and losing my life like Abby’s mother had. But, for me, the option of a child with Brand was still not out of the realm of possibilities. I’m not sure why it hadn’t occurred to me before now. I was part angel. It was possible Brand and I could conceive a child not burdened with the curse Abby had to live with.
We stood there quietly, looking at one another.
“Promise me you won’t ask me to take that kind of risk with your life, Lilly, please.”
I didn’t want to make a promise I might not be able to keep. I simply pulled him to me and hugged him tight.
“Don’t ever think I would leave you,” I told him instead. “I could never be happier with someone else. I wish you and everyone else could understand that.”
Brand’s arms tightened around me silently assuring me he would never willingly let me go.
Brand called the private investigator in New York after our talk. It was a short conversation since we didn’t know anything about my mother’s parents. All we had to go on was the little information I knew about my mother. I knew her birth date and her full name but that was it. It occurred to me that I really didn’t know my mother at all. I didn’t know where she had grown up, who her friends were when she was younger, nothing which would help us in our search for my grandparents. The woman I knew as my mother was a stranger to me.
“That’s odd,” Brand said closing his cell phone at the end of his conversation with the private investigator. “Larry did a quick search on your mother while we were on the phone. He said it was like she didn’t exist until a little bit before you were born. He’ll have to dig a little deeper than what he could do over the phone to find out what’s going on.”
“What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know, but Larry is good at what he does. He’ll find out what we need to know.”
I sat back on the couch with a disappointed sigh. I had hoped this part of our quest for the truth would be relatively easy. Brand came and sat down beside me.
“How long does he think it will take?”
“He wasn’t sure, but I offered him a sizable bonus to do it as fast as he can.”
Having done all he could about finding my grandparents, I could tell Brand’s thoughts were shifting to something else by the change of the expression on his face.
“What are you worried about?” I asked.
“Abby.”
I had meant to ask Brand about Malcolm’s reaction to a budding romance between their children.
“What’s wrong with her and Sebastian liking each other?”
“It could get complicated.”
“Mind elaborating on that some?”
“Our children are a lot like regular wolves; they mate for life once they find someone and decide to commit to them.”
“Is that such a bad thing? Since they live so long, I would think you would want her to find someone she could be happy with.”
“She’s tried it once before,” Brand’s mood quickly darkened. “I thought it would be good for her, but in the end it hurt her more than it helped.”
“What happened?”
“His name was Nathaniel. He was the son of a Watcher named Aidan. Aidan and I became friends after Abby and Nathaniel committed to one another. Aidan eventually decided abstaining from drinking human blood was just denying who he really was. He came to believe it was a futile act of contrition. I don’t think he ever truly believed we could be forgiven. After he killed his first victim, he became someone I didn’t recognize anymore. He was like a mad man afterwards. It seemed like he always had blood on his hands.”
“What did Nathaniel think about his father becoming a murderer?”
“Nathaniel was a good boy but the bond we have with our children is very strong. Eventually, Aidan wanted his son to join him on his hunts, but Nathaniel didn’t want to. He wanted to stay with Abby. It wasn’t hard for Aidan to make Nathaniel into the same kind of monster he was.”
“What did he do?”
“Since Abby and Nathaniel were mated, they slept in the same cell at night. Aidan released them one night after they had transformed and made sure they had a victim nearby to tempt them into a hunt.”
“Abby didn’t…”
“No. I was able to stop her before she tasted human blood, but I was too late to save Nathaniel.”
“So is that the person you were talking about when you first moved here? You said Abby had just broken up with someone she was trying to forget.”
“Do you remember everything I tell you?” Brand smiled wistfully at me.
“I try to.”
“Yes, that was the person I was referring to.”
“If you’re concerned about Sebastian doing the same thing, you don’t have anything to worry about. I know how much it means to Malcolm that his son doesn’t end up like him. If Malcolm loves anyone in this world, he loves his son.”
“I just worry about Abby,” Brand admitted. “I know how much pain she went through trying to forget Nathaniel. I don’t want to see her go through that again.”
“Wouldn’t you want her to find happiness though? You can’t protect her from everything, even though you want to. Sometimes you have to let the people you love make their own decisions. Besides, Abby is pretty independent. Even if you did forbid her from seeing Sebastian, do you think she would obey you?”
“No,” Brand sighed in resignation. “She would do what she wanted to anyway.”
“Then maybe you should just have a talk with her and tell her your concerns for her safety and happiness. I think she would respond to that a lot better.”
“You’re probably right.” Brand looked at me with an almost confused expression. “How did you know I was going to forbid her from seeing Sebastian?”
I shrugged. “It seemed like something you would try, even though you know in your heart it would be the wrong thing to do.”
“Sometimes I think you know me better than I do myself.”
“Maybe I’m coming into my wifely intuition early,” I teased, absently twirling the hair at the nape of Brand’s neck wondering what it would feel like to call him my husband. “What else is bothering you about Abby and Sebastian?”
“If they do decide to be together, I’ll be stuck with Malcolm for a very long time,” Brand grumbled. “I was hoping after we figured out what Lucifer wants with you he would be out of our lives.”
“You should give him a chance,” I said in defense of my friend. “Even after we solve everything, I would still want him in my life. Can you understand that?”
“If he wasn’t trying to take you away from me every chanc
e he got, I might be able to find a way to get along with him,” Brand said in his own defense. “But as things are, I can’t completely trust him, Lilly.”
It reminded me of Brand’s reaction to whatever Malcolm had said to him the night before Izzi attacked me. “Tell me what he said to you the other night.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
Brand took a deep breath like he was steeling himself against repeating Malcolm’s words to me. “He said that he still had four years to change your mind and that he had to believe you have some doubts about marrying me if you’re willing to wait that long.”
“You know that isn’t true don’t you?” I couldn’t believe Malcolm had said such things to Brand. I was definitely going to have a talk with him the first chance I got.
Brand was silent.
“Look at me,” I said to him, forcing him to look into my eyes. “I would marry you right now if that would prove to you and everyone else once and for all that you are all I want. I’m really thinking about just dragging you down to the justice of the peace this minute and putting an end to this foolishness today!”
Brand smiled. “No, we don’t have to change your plans just because of Malcolm and Will. But thank you for offering.” He drew me into his arms. “It means a lot to me. More than you can know.”
“Well, I would you know,” I said snuggling into him. “I would marry you today if that would make you happy.”
He tightened his arms around me. “No, I can wait.”
After a few minutes Brand asked, “Would you mind coming with me to talk with Abby? I might need your support to keep me focused.”
I stood up from the couch and reached out for his hand. “No time like the present. Let’s go talk to her.”
Brand’s talk with Abby went smoothly. She seemed to have been expecting it and was pleasantly surprised when Brand told her he just wanted her to be happy and careful before choosing Sebastian as a mate.
“I don’t suppose I could talk you into speaking with Malcolm on our behalf,” Abby said to me after her discussion with Brand. “If you can bring my father around, maybe you could get Malcolm off of Sebastian’s case.”