To Love a Shifter: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (121 page)

“Of course, there was.  And you called me your
ward
.”

“Stop shouting.”  He sat down as calm as you please, his gaze almost insulting in its utter steadiness.

That only made me shriek even more loudly.  “I’m mad and when I’m mad I shout!”

“Fine.”  The bored expression on his face almost drove me to murder.  “Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

His fingers drummed on the armrest.  “You’re mad because I hid our immortality from you.  I apologize for that.  There just didn’t seem to be a right time to tell you.  You’re mad because I didn’t tell you about Angelica?  Then I’m sorry.  You can ask me now, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.  You’re mad I called you my ward?  Then again I’m sorry, but I’ve told you from the start I don’t want others to know about what we have.”

His litany of sins was honestly weakening, and I collapsed on the sofa. 
One thing at a time, Deli. 
That was the trick to solving things.  And if it didn’t work out, well, there was always the ground to bury my head into, wasn’t there?

I started with the least hurtful, albeit also the most surprising.

“The immortality thing…”  I paused, trying to find a way to combine all my thoughts into a single sentence.

He raised a brow.  “Yes?”

Oh.  Now I get it.

“How does it work?”  There.  That was a great question, wasn’t it?

Lucian coughed and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “We don’t die of sickness.  We can, of course, die if someone tears our head off, but it’s rare for humans to obtain such an opportunity since we’re a lot faster and stronger than they are.  Besides, humans have never been our problem.  Zekans are.”

“But what about…aging?”

“That’s the tricky part.  If you’re born Evren, your body should ideally stop aging beyond your eighteenth or twenty-first year—the age more or less depends on how fast your body matures.  And to stop the aging process permanently, you just have to let your dragon out regularly.”

“Like I did during training?”

He nodded.  “You could think of it as…exercise, if you will.  Something that not everyone’s capable of doing…like yoga or something like that.”

I frowned, remembering the old and young Evren faces I had seen and belatedly realizing that the majority didn’t lean toward the youthful.  “Is it really that hard to let your dragon out?”

Lucian nodded.

“B-but I could do it at the first try!”

Lucian nodded again.  “I suppose it was because we were the ones training you and—” he cast me a quick, doubtful look, “—you could be stronger than others.”

“
Special
,” I breathed.

He rolled his eyes.  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

I ignored that.  With my questions about our immortality satisfied, my stomach tightened up in a knot of unease, telling me that I could no longer run away from confronting him about
that
woman.

But coward that I was, I still grasped for more straws.  “B-before…you told me about your mom leaving Dyvian for you to take care of…”

Wariness shrouded Lucian’s face.  “So?”

“I once thought you were only alone for a short time before you had Dyvian with you, but now…how old is Dyvian?”

His hand slashed the air in a gesture of incredulity.  “What’s the point of this?”

“I’ll know anyway so just tell me.”

“He was born in 1804.  You do the math,” he snarled.

I tried calculating that as fast as I could and whitened at the result.  No wonder he was so antisocial.  Lucian’s mother had left him when he was eight and came back over a hundred and forty years later only to dump Dyvian on him.  He had more than a century to perfect his aloofness and distrust.  I should count myself lucky he was telling me this much, shouldn’t I?

“Is that all?”  Lucian’s impatient gaze scorched me on the spot.

No, but I wish it was. 
I took a deep breath.  “How long have you and Angelica been together?”

“We didn’t have a relationship.  We just went out whenever there was a chance.”

“How long did you
date
then?”

His lips compressed into a thin line, but he answered, “A couple of years.”

My chest tightened.  I was right.  They had known each other for a long time.  And since this was Evren we were talking about…  “How long is a couple of years?”  No one had seemed surprised that Lucian and Angelica were particularly close.  Could that mean he didn’t mind people knowing about her?  And could that mean he didn’t feel the same about me?  That he was ashamed of what we have?

He cursed when he caught sight of my tears.  “Deli—”

“How long?” I shrieked.  I knew I had no business caring about how long Lucian and Angelica had been going out in the past.  It happened before I came into his life.  It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.  And it hurt because, even though I loved Lucian with all my heart, I just wasn’t sure yet about what he felt for me, and every little threat to what we had made me jealous, fearful, and insecure.

“A hundred maybe?  Are you satisfied now?”  He scowled and swore when I sucked in my breath at his answer.  He tried taking me into his arms.  “For God’s sake, Deli, I’m only human.  She offered company and there were times—”

“No,” I countered, feeling cold and petty.  “You’re not human.”

Lucian ignored it.  “Don’t be such a baby.  The point is, I enjoyed her company, she understood the rules.  She didn’t care about labeling what we had.”

And try as I might, my head just didn’t want to stay buried under the sand.  I heard the words he hadn’t said, words that may or may not be real.  “You had sex with her, didn’t you?”

“So?”

“
You did
?”

Lucian’s mouth opened and closed, his face stunned as he realized that he had fallen for the trap.

“How could you have sex with a block of ice?”

No answer.

“Did you have to use an electric blanket?”

More silence.

“I hate you,” I shrieked.  I wished I could think of something more hurtful and sophisticated at the same time.  “I really, really hate you.”  It was what I felt, and I spat the words out, meaning them with all my heart.  Angelica knew Lucian
that
way.  The knowledge was like a knife in the gut, and I ran up to my room and slammed the door shut with enough force to make the walls shudder.

I had another reason to sulk now, and I was definitely going to sulk, big time.

~~~

Another week had passed in my Evren life, a week that was tedious, tortuous, and tiring because I still wasn’t talking to Lucian.  Why couldn’t he just say sorry?  Why couldn’t he even show he cared that I was mad?

But, no, Lucian was colder than ever and a hundred times busier.  He went on trips almost every day and when he did come home, he’d be locked in his study all the time.

Maybe he didn’t really love me.  He wouldn’t have been able to stand being apart from me this long if he did.  In fact, the only reason I could think of to explain his stubbornness was that he
knew
without a doubt I was suffering, too, and he was waiting for me to come to him first.

Could that have been it?

He probably didn’t even miss me.  He was probably having so much fun single-handedly dominating Wall Street.

I hate him,
I growled silently to myself as I viciously wrote my answers to my homework for History.  But I was holding the pen too tightly, and I had to tear off another pen-punctured sheet, toss it into the wastebasket, and rewrite my assignment.

Dyvian knocked on the door an hour later, just as I was scribbling down my last sentence about the injustices in the Civil War.  “I brought you hot chocolate.”  He shut the door with a light backward kick and strolled inside.

I took the mug and managed a smile.  “Stop being so guilty, Dyv.”  He had been showering me with little good deeds the entire week to atone for his own role in Lucian’s deception.  “I told you you’re already forgiven for not saying anything about our…”  The fact that we’d never die—by natural causes at least—was even stranger than the idea of being Evren, and I finished awkwardly, “our lifespan.”

He pulled out a chair, straddled it.  “How was school?”

“Just the same.”

“Is that Wesley guy still making the moves on you?”

I blushed.

His eyes widened.  “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”  But I had answered too quickly and he wasn’t fooled.

“You’ve gone out on a date with him, haven’t you?”

“Of course not.”  I fussed with the things on my table, repositioning the huge pencil sharpener Lucian—the mere thought of his name made my chest ache—lent me and piling my notebooks on one side.

“Come on, Deli, spill.  You know you’re going to tell me sooner or later.”

“No, I—”  I shut up, but it was too late.

“So, you
are
hiding something from me.  If you didn’t go on a date with him then…”  His voice trailed off.

I bit my lip hard, doing my best to keep quiet.  But my propensity to talk won out in the end.  “Okay, I flirted with Wesley.”  I stole a look at Dyvian, scared of what he’d think.  His smile somewhat soothed my worries.

“You don’t think I’m a slut?”  Sure, Lucian and I had a tiff but it wasn’t like we had broken up.  I still thought of myself as Lucian’s girlfriend…even if he didn’t like admitting it.

“No, I don’t think so.  There’s no harm in flirting.”

“But I wouldn’t want Lucian to flirt with another girl.”

“You’re hurt and that’s why you probably indulged in a little flirting with another guy.  It’s an understandable reaction, and I don’t think you’ll do it again, will you?”

I shook my head.

“Then that’s that.  Lucian will simply have to accept it.”  Dyvian’s eyes suddenly narrowed.  “When was the last time you’ve talked to The Voice?”