Forbidden Alliance: A Werewolf's Tale (Forbidden Alliance Trilogy) (72 page)

Toran looked up at me from the floor where he still sat thanks to Mum’s nasty left hook.
“
I suppose that
would be prudent,” he
mumbled.
“
Actually…I
cannot. I obviously
do not know anything anymore. Kaia marked you?”
he asked as more of an afterthought.

I snarled. “Jay Dee, not Kaia.”

“I thought for sure that it’d be the other one,” he mumbled, looking at his hands.

I growled. “Bloody hell, why does everyone keep saying that? Even Rayland said that!”

Toran
absently nodded, a look of unfathomable despair washing
over him
. “
So you know,” he surmised and I reluctantly nodded. “
I am so sorry,” he whispered over and over, shaking his head. “This was not supposed to happen. Not like this.
”

Mum sighed. “
How was it supposed to happen, Husband?”

The vampires eavesdropping from the second level didn’t miss her condescension.

“I was supposed to protect them, all three,” he whispered. “Aesa said that she was arranging a means to protect the crown, so that her people wouldn’t be completely lost…never did I imagine that it was a something like this. I swear to you,” he said, his eyes snapping to Mum’s, “never did I image that
she meant something like this. For centuries she was hell bent on the
foretelling
being fulfilled. Never did she have doubts or hint that she wished for something other than
the uniting the mythical world.”

Mum looked to me.

“They were dodgy,” I admitted. “Perhaps lying?”

She sighed. “Toran is the king of secrets, but Aesa was the
goddess
of
them.
This is not going to end well for any of our children.”

Toran nodded but she was speaking to me.

“Your destiny await
s
, my precious one,
” she mouthed.

I swallowed hard and nodded.

“What destiny?”
d’Artagnan
asked, appearing stretched out on the chaise and the others soon joined us in the den. “And I must say, I absolutely
love
what you’ve done with the place,” he said, motioning towards the windows.

I glared at him and he smirked.

“Miss Jay Dee is the Queen of the Varulv,” I informed him and his he cocked an eyebrow.

“And that means what to those not shagging a werewolf?” he asked condescendingly, g
etting a warning look from Mum.

d’Artagnan
disappeared from the room before she could assault him next.

“
The
Varulv,
the Norwegian werewolves, had been ruled by a royal family since the beginning of their time.
They lived in a hidden city-”
Toran absently said.

“The Holy City,”
I interrupted, attempting to fill in the blanks from the vision-like memories that Jay Dee had told me of.

“Yes
,” he said with a sigh. “
For more than eleven centuries they existed in peace.
That is
,
until a vampire Seer saw something that would put the Varulv, a usually peaceful people, at war against their own kind.
A very powerful and ancient sect of purist called the Aslak marched into the city, killing everyone, including the
K
ing and
Q
ueen.”

Mum hissed, her hands balling into fists while she struggled to keep from beating him senseless.

Georgiana raised her hand. “How in bloody hell do you know all of this…
Better question,
how do you know any of this?” she asked, turning to me.

I flipped her off.

“I am not a werewolf,
” Toran said, “
but my allegiance has always been with the werewolves.
It was a werewolf who saved me when I was turned.
M
y sire had not meant to turn me
and
ran
off,
however,
that is not the point
,” he said in a clipped tone. “
King Olaf and Queen Aesa were
our
friends, for many centuries, and were like family to
us
.
When i
t was brought before the vampir
ic
council that the Aslak were marching on the
Holy City
, I begged the council to send reinforcements, but they refused my request and dismissed me from my position.
They stated that I was unfit to command the Finnish Legion of Vampires any longer, and I was stripped of rank and title.
I was thankful for that, because what I next did would have sentenced me to die.
”

Mum gasped and appeared at his side. “Tell me you did not…” her words trailed off.

He absently nodded.
“I broke the rules of engagement and joined the battle in the Holy City, but I wasn’t fast enough.
They Aslak forces had already taken more t
han half of the city, killed
Olaf…all I found was the bloody remains of his guard
, and nearly all of the three thousand residents inside the city walls
were slaughtered
.
I helped
Aesa
escape; however
,
we only made it four kilometers outside of the city before she went into labor.
In a cave, while being pursued by the Aslak,
Aesa gave birth to a daughter
:
Kaia.
With her last breath, and after blessing Kaia and
bestowing her with the crown,
she begged me to keep her safe. And I vowed that I would.
”

“Oh, Toran,” Mum sighed and wrapped her arms around him.

“The
Gods
shone upon the young child that night, as a storm swept through the region, effectively masking our trail from the Aslak, and offered us a veil of protection.
Once we were able to get clear of the region, I moved the child from estate to estate,
usually
remaining two steps ahead of the Aslak.
When in
Clochán an Aifir
, they caught up to us and killed
nearly
all of the guards and
almost
succeeded in killing the child.
That was when I knew that it would be too difficult to keep a werewolf in the protection of vampires.
The only place she’d be safe was with her own kind.
”

Buggers.

“That is why Declan was there,” I mumbled, suddenly feeling guilty for the disdain
and jealousy
I was most recently feeling towards the mouthy pikey.

Toran gave me a look. “Yes…how did you?”

I dismissively waved for him to
continue
.

“I called on
our
old friends, Sky and Reign Lightfoot, and explained the situation.
They were already well aware of Aesa and Olfa’s demise, and what awaited their child, so t
hey guardedly agreed to temporarily house the child until permanent arrangements could be made.
In keeping with the rules of engagement, we set out to sea by ship.
We
were attacked
…as if they knew exactly where we were going to be, which should not have been possible with Kaia’s necklace.”

Abigail wiped away the tears building in the corners of her eyes and Steffen
tenderly kissed the side of her head
.

“B
y the mercy of the
Gods,” Toran continued, his voice merely a whisper, “
Kaia washed up on shore as if it was where she was destined to be.
I washed up in Canada,”
he growled the latter.

“Father,” I whispered and he looked up at me, “I love her.”

“I know,” he admitted to my surprise. “
And that is why you have to stay away from her,” he said, and in a blur of movement, Mum and I fell backwards at the same time, and it was f
ollowed by the sound of Steffen, Abigail, and Georgiana
hitting the
floor
.

Toran was
suddenly
standing over me, his eyes going between me and the stake sticking out of my chest; nothing rivals the speed of a fifteen-hundred year old vampire
, nothing
. “
I love you too much to simply allow you to throw your life away because of…
Kai
a
is like a daughter to me, but you
are
a son to me,” he explained. “I really wish i
t would have been the other one
because he would have seen this coming,” he said with a disappointed look on his face. “If you cannot even stop your father from staking you in your own home, how in the hell do you expect to prevent a sect of werewolves hell bent on killing all of you in order to prevent a well overdue blending of the
species?
”

You are dead to me
, you bastard!

“It is better this way,” Toran said again before pulling Mum into his arms, minding the stake sticking out of her ches
t and carried her from the room.

The sound of his near silent footsteps going up the stairs were accompanied by his sniveling and mumbling, until he was in their bedroom.

d’Artagnan
’s face suddenly eclipsed my view
of the ceiling
. “Now that I did not see coming,”
he
whispered
with a
n amused
chuckle.

Mom looked as if she was going to cry while ripping someone’s throat out, and Dad didn’t look much better.

I
eventually joined them once I finished packing, and sat
between them on the edge of my bed. “
I
have never been more murderously irate than I am at the Aslak,
” I whispered. “
And
I’m livid at Toran for keeping it from
me…
from
us
.
But I can’t hate him because
his actions gave me the greatest parents a girl could ever hope for, and a brother
who
I love
,
and
for some reason
he loves me just as much.
I couldn
’t imagine having a better life
,” I assured them and they both started crying. I took their hands in mine and reassuringly squeezed them. “
It may be harsh of me to say, but the greatest parents in the world weren’t the ones to who I was born, they are the ones who raised me.
A day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t felt endlessl
y loved, even that first day
…which is funny because out of everything that I can’t remember, and wish that I didn’t now,
I
have always
remember
the
first day so
vividly.
I woke in my mom’s arms,
in your arms,” I said, squeezing Mom’s hand. “You
had me wrapped in
that
beautiful quilt that
your mother made you
, and I remember thinking that it smell
ed like home, it felt like home
in your arms.