Eleazar turned from their daughter. “The bishop, is it? This can’t be good.” Sighing, he returned to his chair and crossed his arms. “Let’s hear it, Larissa.”
“Well, I’m sure, since you are such a kind and understanding male, you will see no reason to object. Dane’s assumptions have been proven. The woman mentioned in his mother’s diaries was in fact his birth mother. He wants to try and find her.”
His expression was blank. Adriel looked at him, and Larissa sensed them speaking with their minds. He gave the other woman a sharp look and rolled his eyes. Sighing, he turned to Larissa. “That would be permissible so long as he does not tell her where he has been staying or offer to bring her back. Cybil’s existence will also have to be
dealt with.
”
“What do you mean
dealt with
?” She scowled. “You aren’t doing anything to that child. It will destroy Dane. And what about my brother? I’m afraid if he loses Cybil on top of everything else he has lost, it will push him over the edge.”
“Relax, my love. I merely meant he would not be able to tell the truth about her. I hate to advocate dishonesty, but I’m afraid in this situation there isn’t much choice.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh. I’m sure he could lie.”
“Well, then I see no harm in letting him search for her. He will eventually have to start considering a future for himself away from the farm.”
“Do you intend to make the boy leave?” Adriel asked.
“Of course not, but I assume he will someday want a family of his own. He isn’t like us. His future is elsewhere.”
There was a soft knock on the door. They all turned. Dane stepped in, his mother’s book clutched to his chest. “Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all,” Eleazar said. “Larissa was just telling me about your plans to find your—”
“About that,” Dane interrupted. Her husband scowled, not one who usually had his words interrupted. “There’s no need.” They all looked at him curiously, and he said, “She’s dead. Shocking, I know. Imagine that, me discovering I have a whole other mom, and in the next instant I learn she died while giving birth to my sister. What are the odds?”
Larissa’s heart ached. His sarcasm was clearly a disguise for his hurt. She wished he had never discovered those books if nothing good was intended to come out of them. “What about your birth father?” she asked. The others nodded encouragingly. There wasn’t a male or female on the farm who didn’t wish for some sort of good fortune to find Dane.
He shrugged. “I got a name. I don’t know if I want to even bother looking anymore. If he’s alive, that means he didn’t love me enough to keep me when my birth mom died. He’s barely mentioned. I don’t think he was with her long. My real mom just mentions him visiting Daphne from time to time. She didn’t care for him very much, said he made Daphne behave in ways that she normally wouldn’t.”
“You could still try to find out if he’s alive,” Adriel suggested. “That doesn’t mean you must introduce yourself. Perhaps it will bring you closure in some way. What was his name?”
“He may not even be a citizen. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t around all that much. It’s some weird foreign name. Cerberus Maddox VI.”
With that name, all of the breath seemed to suck out of the room. The only one unaffected by Dane’s statement was Mariah, but even she stilled at the tension.
“What did you say?” Adriel rasped, her normally rosy cheeks now colorless.
“I may have it wrong,” Dane said, his gaze jumping from each one of them.
“Is it mentioned there in that book?” Eleazar asked in a quiet but tense voice.
Dane pulled his mother’s journal protectively behind his back. “Yeah. Why? What’s wrong with that name? Was he like some serial killer or something?”
“Or something,” Adriel muttered. She quickly turned to Eleazar. “What does this mean, Eleazar? If Cer is his father…”
Larissa took Adriel’s hand. “It’s all right. I’m sure everything is fine. Perhaps it is a coincidence.”
Her husband turned. “Larissa’s right. It is entirely unlikely that Cer was able to free himself after we left.”
The normally calm and confident Adriel panicked. “The world changed, Eleazar. People build things. They dig. What if someone found his grave and he broke free—”
“
Grave?
” Dane interrupted. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”
Larissa held up her hand asking him to wait. “Could that happen?”
Eleazar looked unsure. “I suppose it’s possible—”
Adriel shot to her feet. “I need to leave.”
They all stood. “Now wait just a moment, Adriel. If it is him he’s been free for some time. Dane is eighteen. If he intended to do you harm, he would have found you by now.”
She wasn’t listening to the bishop. “
Where the bloody hell is my bonnet?
”
Larissa’s jaw dropped as the other woman suddenly burst into tears. Eleazar quickly went to comfort her, and she pounded her small fist at his chest. “I will not go back to that, Eleazar. Do you hear me? I will not! And no council of arrogant males will decide my fate for me!”
He shook her slightly. “Adriel, get ahold of yourself. Do you honestly believe any elder would send you back to such a cruel male? For God’s sake, your son is on the bench. You are his mother. He loves you and will protect you.”
Her trembling fingers went to her bone-colored lips. “Dear Lord, Christian. He will find out. He will know. What if he blames me for denying him a father?”
“Adriel, you must calm down.”
“He is my mate, Eleazar! I know how you males feel about called mates!”
Larissa could not bear watching this woman fall apart anymore. “Adriel, Eleazar would never allow that to happen. He is our bishop, and he is good and fair.”
“
Somebody tell me what the hell is going on!
” Dane shouted, apparently tired of being ignored.
“Well, Dane,” Adriel said, wiping her eyes, a bit of her composure returning. “You may not have found your mother, but I can introduce you to your half-brother.”
Chapter 29
Sex would be happening tonight. Destiny waited for Louis at the swanky little bar down the street from her work. Louis was a station manager who had been asking her out for quite some time. He wasn’t overly good-looking. He had nice eyes. He dressed okay, made a decent living. She could have sex with Louis. Sure.
Who was she kidding? Louis was so not her type, but she was getting concerned that her body had gone into retrograde and her virginity might be growing back. She told herself she needed to make a change when her vibrator broke and she realized she had spent an exorbitant amount of her paycheck on erotic romances and batteries. It was time to start dealing with real people and get out of the fantasy world she had created.
In the past year she had slowly put on an additional fifteen pounds. She needed to join a gym and stop ending every social fiasco with a pint of double dunk ice cream. It didn’t help that her best friends were all married with children. They didn’t understand.
Louis walked into the bar and scanned for Destiny. She waited for him to spot her, and she waved. He hustled over to her and sat. Louis never walked anywhere. He always hustled.
“Hey, Destiny. Did you order a drink? What are you drinking? Is the food any good here? I haven’t eaten since lunch. Gotta keep my sugar up or I get the shakes. I’ll have a Bud,” he said to the bartender then turned back to her. “Aren’t you glad it’s Friday? Man, this was a long week.”
Louis wasn’t the kind of guy who required answers. Destiny simply nodded and sipped her wine. He continued to prattle on. One thing she enjoyed about Louis was that he liked to read. She was an obsessive reader and found it a plus when her dates understood why books were so entertaining.
“So I’m on this zombie kick right now. I’ve read, like, five series in the past month. Totally hooked. I was doing the vampyre thing for a while, but now I’m on zombies. You like sci-fi? Bet you’re really into those
Twilight
books.”
She had enjoyed her vampyre novels when they were all the rage, but after a while the whole paranormal thing got old. It was easier to fantasize about characters that had the slight possibility of existing. There were no such things as vampyres and werewolves.
Louis rambled on about zombies and then moved on to scary clowns. Destiny people watched as happy hour ended and the nighttime crowd came in. The more her date talked, the more she realized getting laid would require copious amounts of alcohol. She ordered another drink, switching from wine to liquor and this time pairing it with a shot.
The ball was in her court. Louis would probably react like a cartoon if she took her clothes off in front of him, jaw hanging by the hinges, tongue rolling out like a carriage runner. She just needed to get him somewhere private, but first she needed another drink.
By eight o’ clock she was wasted. Louis had been listening to himself talk all night. The room spun, and faces blurred. Time to go. She leaned close to him and whisper shouted over the music, “What do you say we go back to my place?”
Louis paused as if it had never occurred to him that she might suggest such a thing. He better last more than a minute. There was a price for sex with someone from the work place. Monday mornings were awkward, but she had decided she needed a flesh-and-blood man, and Louis was easily accessible.
He looked around nervously as if she might have been speaking to someone else. “Uh, your place?”
“Yeah.” She pressed her hand into his thigh and rubbed seductively over his knee. He wasn’t really muscular. “I want to show you something.”
Nice, Destiny. Real smooth.
She was drunk. Her game was suffering, but she didn’t think Louis would notice.
“Uh, okay.” He dug money out of his pocket and placed it on the bar.
“Wait,” she said, stilling his hand. “Let’s get another shot first. We can take a cab home.” She needed some courage. They ordered two mind fucks, and at the last minute Destiny switched hers to a double.
* * * *
She didn’t remember leaving the bar and, worst of all, she couldn’t remember the sex. She was definitely home. Her face pressed into her pillow, and she peeked through her left eye at the familiar stack of books sitting on her nightstand. A hand curled over her bare shoulder, and she tensed.
“Good morning, beautiful.” The hand traveled lower, and a familiar string tugged in her mind. She recognized that voice.
“Jesus Christ!” She jumped out of bed, yanking the sheet with her, and turned. “Adrian! What the hell are you doing here?”
His satisfied grin faded, and he frowned. “You invited me.”
“When?”
“Last night. You called me and asked me to pick you up. I did and then you asked me to stay.”
She found it ironic that when Adrian owed her something, he was unavailable, but when sex was on the table, he picked right up. Oh God…“Did we…?”
“You don’t remember?”
She searched for any memory after leaving the bar. She shook her head. Wait. Crap. “What happened to Louis?”
“The zombie guy? We left him at the bar. Some chick wouldn’t stop yapping about monsters, and he wanted to stay and talk to her.”
Great. She had been dumped by Louis. Her social life just kept improving.
Adrian stretched, folding his hands behind his head. He smiled, and she noticed his erection tenting under the blankets. “Come back to bed, D.”
She stared at him. This was the man who represented the most successful part of her past. She had given him years, and he had cheated on her and blown through a hefty portion of her savings with absolutely nothing to show for it.
She actually debated giving in. She was exhausted from husband hunting. She was thirty-three now, and she still wanted children. Her dating life was as exhausting as a constant uphill swim against the tide. She looked down at Adrian.
They would have beautiful babies. He was good-looking, fit. He wasn’t honest, but maybe he had changed. He would marry her if she asked. Her parents would be okay with that, since they never found out about all the ways he had betrayed her. Vito would probably be a little pissed, but he’d get over it.
There were drawbacks, sure. Destiny would probably never have a natural orgasm again, but she had ways to get there without a man. They would have to have separate accounts, and he would need to prove that he was over his cheating ways.
Bottom line, Adrian
did
love her. She sighed. She wished she could remember last night. Was the sex any good? Did they still have chemistry? He looked up at her invitingly. Sighing, she slowly dropped the sheet.
Adrian grinned, and then a phone rang. “Hold that thought, babe, I gotta get this.” Pissed that he would take a call one second after she got naked, she frowned. He was still as much of a dick as he was before, but Adrian had some good qualities. He was thoughtful at times. He was funny.
Suddenly his conversation broke through her musings, and she turned. Adrian quickly pleaded with the person on the phone. “No, baby, it isn’t like that. We’re just friends. She was with a date. She needed a ride home, and it was late, so I just crashed. You know I love you. Don’t be mad…”