Dark Haven Found (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance Book 49)

by I. T. Lucas

  “What do you mean? Everlasting love? Who can guarantee that? And how will they know whether we have that magical bond or not?”

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Come on, Leon.” She rolled her eyes. “I get it that you can’t talk about the genetic experiments or your life in the military. But your personal life is nobody’s business, and no one can tell you who to love.”

  “Says the girl who joined a free-love cult, where committing to a single person was considered a crime.”

  He'd got her there. “True, but you kept harping on about how I need to have a life outside of Safe Haven’s unnatural rules. From what you are telling me, your village isn’t any better.”

  46

  Leon

  Leon stifled a groan. Why the hell had Bowen mentioned the village? And then he had gone and added that it was their family compound?

  He was so obsessed with trying not to lie that he was digging a deeper hole for himself than if he had. The incomplete truths and the misconceptions that he was leading Anastasia to were going to bite him in the ass almost as badly as complete lies.

  The only advantage of that strategy would be the ability to claim that he hadn’t actually lied, and that meant a lot to him.

  Except, how was he going to explain why she couldn’t join the village yet? Or ever, if she didn’t transition?

  Couldn’t the Fates smile upon him and start Anastasia’s transition already?

  “So what’s the story? How is the bond determined if a marriage ceremony is not it?”

  She wasn’t going to let it go.

  “We will know once it’s there.”

  “And it isn’t there yet?”

  He cast her a sidelong glance. “Only last night you thought that I was a monster and couldn’t wait to get away from me. Then this morning, you were still unsure what to do. Then you had a little more time to think about it and decided that you love me, my fangs and all. Fast forward a few hours, and you are talking about an unbreakable life-long commitment. Don’t you think that you are rushing things?”

  If she was already an immortal, the answer to that would have been no. But until she transitioned, he couldn’t know whether they were fated mates, and human rules still applied. Anastasia could change her mind or get mad over something, decide that she didn’t love him after all, and leave.

  Slumping in her seat, she huffed out a breath. “You are right. The whole X-Men thing got me carried away. I just thought that it would be so cool to live in a village with other freaks like me.”

  “You are not a freak, and neither are we.”

  “I meant freaks as in different. We are not like most people, and that places us on the fringes of society. I joined Safe Haven because the people there were just messed up enough for me to fit in. I’ve never felt as if I belonged anywhere else.”

  He reached for her hand. “I love you, and I have a good feeling about us. I just don’t want to rush things. You are still very young, Anastasia, and you might change your mind about me or about wanting to move in with me, and you might even decide that you want to go back to school.”

  She snorted. “You make it sound as if I’m a mercurial young girl who can’t make up her mind, while you are ancient. You’re only a few years older than me.”

  If she only knew.

  “I feel ancient.”

  Her eyes softening, she gave his hand a little squeeze. “You’ve been through a lot. That’s why it feels that way. I wish you could share it with me, so I could lighten your burden.”

  “You’ve been through a lot as well.” He lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckles. “We have a belief in the village. Those who have suffered a lot or sacrificed greatly for others are rewarded with a truelove mate. You qualify for sure.” He smiled. “But I’m not sure that I do. Luckily for me, it’s enough that one of us qualifies.”

  “That’s so sad.” A tear slid down her cheek.

  “Sad? Why?”

  “Because it’s a pretty belief meant to comfort those who have suffered. The truth is that suffering is random, and no one gets rewarded for it. Those who sacrifice their lives for others just die, they don’t go to heaven, and the wicked ones don’t go to hell because neither place exists.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “I just do. There is nothing after death.”

  “You, of all people, should know better.”

  “Why? Because I heard people talking in my head?”

  “Isn’t that even more unbelievable than an immortal soul?”

  “No, it’s not. There could be a logical explanation for it, like some waves or energy fields science has not discovered yet. But heaven and hell are a myth. No one has come back from either to tell about what they saw.”

  That was true. Nathalie claimed that the ghosts she communicated with were in the in-between state, and no medium he’d ever heard of had mentioned a ghost telling her about either heaven or hell. The most anyone ever talked about was the bright light tempting them to cross over.

  “You might be right about heaven and hell being a myth, but you are wrong about there being nothing after death. We have a woman in the village who communicates with ghosts, and what she was told was verified. Another guy remembers his previous incarnations, and that was verified as well. I know for sure that the soul goes on.”

  Anastasia shook her head. “Then why didn’t my mother come to visit me in my dreams? Or talk to me in my head while I was falling asleep? Do you know how much I wished for that? Or how many nights I prayed for it?”

  A light went on in Leon’s head. “That’s why you heard the voices. Unintentionally, you opened yourself up and became a conduit.”

  “A conduit for what?”

  “We still need to figure that out.”

  47

  Kian

  When Kian arrived at his office in the morning, he found William waiting for him by the door.

  “If you are here so early in the morning, I guess the translation has checked out.” Kian opened the door and let the guy in ahead of him.

  “I don’t have the language figured out yet, but I compared the email translation to what I asked him to translate into his language, and it matched up.” William pulled out a chair, sat down, and put his laptop on the conference table. “I can show you.” He flipped it open.

  “What was in the email?” Kian walked over to the fridge and pulled out two Perrier bottles.

  He handed one to William and sat down next to him.

  William chuckled. “Emmett is scared shitless of his leader. The first half of the email was him groveling and apologizing for leaving, and the second half was a description of the wonders Peter could do for them, starting with activating their Dormants to fathering immortal children with lifespans even longer than that of the pure-bloods.”

  “Was it as difficult to understand as he claimed?” Kian twisted the cap off the Perrier and took a sip.

  “The sentence structure is convoluted, and the language is very formal. I don’t know if it’s like that only when addressing a superior, or if that’s how they talk to each other. Also, some of the words didn’t have an English translation and he had to put a phrase in parenthesis to explain them.”

  “So it’s a valid language in your opinion? Or could he have invented it?”

  William pushed his glasses up his nose. “It’s possible that he invented it, but not for our benefit. He would have needed a long time to come up with the vocabulary, the grammar rules, etc. But then Tolkien invented fifteen different languages for his novels, two of them fully functional. If Emmett has as good of an ear for languages as we do, then building a new one shouldn’t have been too difficult for him.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Kian let out a frustrated groan. “I hate not knowing for sure. Yesterday, Turner, Onegus, and I got all worked up over the possibility of many more communities like Emmett’s scattered throughout the planet. I would hate to waste resources on searching for somethin
g that doesn’t exist. But on the other hand, I can’t ignore it either.”

  “Why not? If they exist, they didn’t cause any trouble over the last century. Just let them be.”

  “We don’t know that. We also don’t know why they came. Perhaps they are just a scouting party, and the rest of them are waiting for the signal to invade and colonize Earth.”

  “They’ve been scouting for over a century? I don’t think so. But even if they have been, how can we stop them?”

  “We can’t. But we can at least alert the governments of the main superpowers. Perhaps the threat of an alien invasion will finally unite humanity.”

  One corner of William’s lips lifted in a lopsided smile. “In that case, maybe we should alert them even if it’s not true.”

  “Right.” Kian raked his fingers through his hair. “That’s just what I need while nearly the entire clan is gathering to celebrate Sari and David’s wedding and my bi-millennial birthday.”

  “You can worry about Emmett and his people after the celebrations are over and everyone goes home. Nothing is going to happen over the next two weeks, and even if it does, there is nothing you can do about it anyway. It’s not like we can prevent an alien invasion.” William chuckled. “Seriously, Kian, I don’t think one is coming. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

  “I know. It’s because of the damn vision Syssi had with the Krall directing Odus onto shuttles. Imagine an invading army of indestructible cyborgs who were given instructions to kill. That’s the stuff of nightmares.”

  Leaning over, William put a hand on Kian’s shoulder. “Don’t do that to yourself. If not for Turner asking for Guardians to get the girl out of the cult, we wouldn’t have known of Emmett or his supposed people’s existence. If I were you, I would forget the whole thing and focus on the upcoming celebrations.”

  “I can’t do that. At the very least, I need to find out whether they exist or not, and I sincerely hope that they don’t.”

  “Where would we even start looking for them?”

  “Beijing, obviously. I’ll get Emmett to tell us the last known location of their compound, and we can follow the breadcrumbs from there, provided that they left any.”

  “And if they didn’t?”

  “Then we close this investigation and hope for the best.”

  48

  Leon

  Leaning against the dresser, a cup of tea in hand, Leon watched Anastasia sleeping.

  Her beautiful pink lips were parted, her reddish-blond hair tousled, and her makeup was smeared, but she was still a sight to behold. Regrettably, none of it was his doing. Last night, she’d fallen asleep in the car on the way back from their date, and she’d been so tired that he’d had to carry her to bed, help her undress, and tuck her in.

  He wondered if she’d heard any voices before falling asleep, but he didn’t want to wake her just to ask her.

  His woman liked to sleep late, and he was an early riser. She was argumentative, while he preferred to avoid conflict. She was well-educated, and he was not. She was fearful, while he was quite fearless, except when it came to her.

  After all the successful transitions of adult Dormants, Leon wasn’t really anxious about Anastasia not making it. He was anxious about her not entering transition at all. Not that there was a reason to panic yet. It had taken Mey nearly three weeks until she started transitioning, but maybe it had to do with her being a descendant of Emmett’s people, and not the gods.

  Bowen had spoken with Onegus last night, and apparently the new hypothesis was that a Kra-ell pure-blood or a hybrid had encountered a female Dormant who was descended from the gods, and that’s how Mey and Jin got their immortal genes. Emmett claimed that the Kra-ell females didn’t take human lovers, only the males did. Since the immortality gene was only transmitted through the mothers, Mey and Jin couldn’t have gotten the godly genes from the Kra-ell.

  It was quite a shock to discover that Syssi had somehow foreseen them. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the Krall in her Perfect Match scenarios were so similar to Emmett’s people, and their name was nearly identical.

  But what if it was the other way around?

  What if Emmett had visited the imaginary Krall in one of Perfect Match virtual studios? He could have used it as a basis for the story he invented. Or he might have a mental problem, which they had already suspected, and he’d assimilated the Perfect Match experience as if it had been his reality.

  It made perfect sense. The one big difference was the location. He remembered Bowen telling him that Syssi’s scenarios took place in Greenland, while Emmett had made the Kra-ell base in China. Perhaps his custom-tailored experience moved the scenario to the East because it was one of the things he’d put in his questionnaire.

  In either case, he needed to call Kian and tell him his suspicions. Most likely, Kian or Turner had already thought of the possibility, but he would be remiss if he didn’t call.

  Putting the tea down on the dresser, he quietly opened the door and then closed it behind him.

  “I’m going for a walk,” he told Bowen and Margaret.

  “Is everything alright?” Bowen asked.

  “Yeah. I have an idea that I want to run by the boss. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Bowen nodded.

  Margaret smiled. “Have a nice walk, and please convey my thanks to your boss for letting me stay here.” She cast a quick look at Bowen. “And for giving Bowen time off to be with me. That’s very kind of him.”

  “I will.” Leon opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, placing the call as he walked down the stairs.

  “Leon,” Kian answered in his usual gruff voice that sounded like he was annoyed by the call. “Is Anastasia transitioning?”

  “Not yet. That’s not why I’m calling. I was thinking about the coincidence of Emmett’s people calling themselves the Kra-ell, and how it’s almost identical to Syssi’s imaginary Krall. What if it’s not a coincidence at all?”

  “It isn’t. Syssi must have been given the information in a vision and only thought that she’d made it up.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What if Emmett visited one of the Perfect Match virtual studios, chose the Krall experience, and later used it as a basis for his fantasy?”

  “Fuck! Why didn’t I think of that? It makes so much more sense than the story Emmett told us. I’m surprised that it didn’t occur to William or Turner either. He must have been so immersed in the experience that he thinks of it as a real memory. You are a smart guy, Leon. Thank you.”

  49

  Anastasia

  Ana felt like small needles were poking her eyeballs from the inside. Leon must have opened the curtains, and the sun was shining right in her face. Turning to her side, she put her back to the window. It helped with the glare, but it was still too bright in the room to sleep.

  Where was the damn blindfold when she needed it?

  “Leon?” she groaned. “Can you get me one of the scarves?”

  He wasn’t in the room with her, she knew that, but since he claimed to have superhuman hearing, he should be able to hear her from the living room.

  When there was no answer and Leon didn’t open the door, she grabbed a pillow and put it over her head. It blocked the light, but she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs and tossed it aside.

  Uttering another groan, Ana flopped onto her back and threw her forearm over her eyes. Evidently, she could forget about going back to sleep.

  And where the heck was Leon?

  Maybe he was making her breakfast?

  At the thought, her stomach revolted, and as bile rose in her throat, she stumbled out of bed and rushed to the bathroom.

  Leaning over the toilet, she threw up last night’s dinner and probably lunch as well because it just wouldn’t stop. When nothing more came out, she was still dry heaving.

  With an effort, Ana lifted up by bracing on the vanity and opened the cold water faucet to wash out her mouth and spl
ash some on her hot face.

  After brushing her teeth, she felt a little better, but the woozy feeling refused to abate. What was wrong with her?

  She couldn’t be pregnant, not with the contraceptive shot she’d gotten only three months ago…

  Damn.

  The thing was supposed to be good for twelve to fourteen weeks, and Ana should have gotten another one by now. Shirley never let anyone miss the shot. She kept a journal and knew precisely when it was time for a new one. The nurse would have dragged Ana into her office by the hair if she hadn’t shown up for her scheduled shot.

  Perhaps she’d left just as she’d been supposed to get it?

  Back in the bedroom, Ana checked the calendar application on her phone and calculated the weeks. She should have gotten a new shot ten days ago. Shirley must have made a mistake when she’d written down Ana’s schedule. Still, the thing was supposed to last up to fourteen weeks. There was no way she could have gotten pregnant so quickly.

  Except, what if Leon’s manipulated genetics made him more virile than a normal man?

  As the door opened and Leon walked into the room as if nothing had happened, Ana cast him a baleful glare. “Did you forget to tell me something about your abnormal genetics?”

  Frowning, he sniffed and then looked at her with concern in his eyes. “Are you okay? It smells of puke in here.”

  It should have felt embarrassing that he could smell it, but that was the last thing Ana cared about. “Yes. Now answer my question.”

  “You need to be more specific.”

  “Are you super virile?”

  He chuckled. “That’s not one of my superpowers. Why?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Connect the dots, Leon. I just threw up and then asked you whether you were super virile.”

  His forehead furrowed. “You think that you are pregnant?”