Genesis (35 page)

He nearly choked. “I didn’t think you’d
want to.”

I glanced at him. Something like hope
lingered in his eyes. Seeing him like this melted my fears. I
traced the lines in his palm, not quite able to look at him while I
spilled my soul. “I never expected this. I mean, I wanted it.
Something real. So now that I’ve found it, how could I deny you
everything that I am?”

He hugged me so tight I was sure a rib
cracked. “I hoped you’d say that.”

I laughed. “No pressure
though?”

He shook his head, smiling almost
boyishly. My own grin hurt my cheeks.

I was smitten by the lord of fire. Who
would have thunk it?

“
Hey now,” he
said.

I gave him a smirk. “How is it I’ve
been able to block everyone else from my mind but you?”

He patted my leg before his fingers
clasped my knee. “I have ways.”

“
Speaking of your
ways
, are you going to
tell me why you have been helping the rebels?

He shrugged. “No one else
would.”

“
That’s it?”

His fingers intertwined with mine.
“From the beginning I thought it was wrong for us to use
Elementals. Some of my brothers seem to forget that we are dealing
with people. The first time I saw a woman taken from her betrothed,
I vowed never to do that myself. I’m no saint, mind you, but how
can we hope to gain anything other than time here if we treat
humans like possessions?”

“
So when you were testing me
when I first met you?”

The sound of him swallowing made me
study his strained features. “I may have gone overboard. I heard
that you had been able to repel compulsion, and I was curious. I’m
not going to lie to you. It started out as a game.”

Fair enough. I appreciated his honesty.
“When did it change?”

“
After we danced. After Jett
nearly took you.” His eyes clamped onto mine. “I couldn’t stop
thinking about you. Finn had asked me to take over. I was next in
line, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I agreed. To be
honest, I thought there must be something wrong with you because
Finn was so focused on Cassie.”

I laughed. “Good to know.”

“
After a while, though, I
realized why he had bowed out.”

I frowned. “Why’s that?”

“
Your power is intense. It’s
overwhelming sometimes to sit near you; even now I can feel it
glowing inside you, and I should not be able to.”

“
This really is a sanctuary
then?”

He nodded. “With everything going on, I
had to find a place to protect you if it came down to it. I still
don’t know how this will unfold. With you being missing, the
council has ordered the guard to come looking for you. I’m still
not sure we can keep this place concealed from them.”

“
Why not?”

“
The royal guard came to us
from your creator and use different sensory perception to locate
their target. They have the advantage because they originated in
your universe. You have to understand, we are outsiders as well as
outcasts. Although all laws of creation are universal, those laws
are not always interpreted the same way.”

I shook my head. “This is so
complicated. Whatever happened to simplifying?”

“
I’m sure I would be
punished for telling you this, but we were only allowed to come to
this planet after we agreed to servitude. Now we war because we do
not like our duties.”

A little ungrateful if you asked me.
“Which are?”

“
Many things, but most
important is the protection of the planet and the resources within
it.”

“
Protection like from alien
invasions, or what?”

He shrugged. “Anything is possible, but
it is the threats to and within the human race that we deal
with.”

“
If that’s true, you guys
haven’t exactly done a great job.”

“
I’m not here to argue that
point. Rebel, remember?”

“
How long exactly have you
been involved with the resistance?”

“
I cannot say. At first I
only contributed when I knew it would have no effect on my race,
yet after a while, I could no longer look at the hunt in the same
way. It’s one thing if a woman is raised to desire the bond. It’s
completely different if she is taken from a life she doesn’t want
to leave.”

I could hardly believe I was hearing
this from a fae lord. “What about helping your people?”

He scoffed. “We tend to forget where
we’ve come from sometimes, and frankly the courts make me
sick.”

“
How so?”

“
Everything is about power
and control. None of it is about happiness and advancing our
race.”

“
What do you
mean?”

He shrugged. “Like seeing if there is a
way for us to find a permanent place in this universe.”

What an interesting thought. “Care to
clarify that a bit more?”

He wouldn’t look at me even though I
tried to get him to. His voice came out ragged. “It’s been done
before. A whole race incorporated into a new world.”

“
So if you were incorporated
into the human world, what would happen?”

“
Ideally, we would get
another chance at progression.”

My brows furrowed. “I don’t
understand.”

“
I cannot tell you what is
beyond this world; it is forbidden.”

“
What can you tell
me?”

He gave me that smile of his. “That I
am late, and like I said before, I have some things to take care
of.”

I nudged his shoulder. I couldn’t seem
to keep my hands off him, and I was going to have to talk to Aunt
Grace about this soon. “I’m sure you do.”

He stood up and brushed his braid over
his shoulder. I still wanted to get my hands into his hair. “Catch
up with you in a while?”

“
Absolutely,” I said more
casually than I felt.

When Heath walked out the door, I
pulled my knees to my chest. I couldn’t believe this. I’d actually
made a decision and it wasn’t that hard after all. I’d even gotten
some answers from him, too. My only regret was that four men would
be hurt because of me. Even though they’d come into this knowing I
could only belong to one of them, it still didn’t make me feel any
better about letting them down…especially Zach. I didn’t know how I
was going to tell him.

I didn’t want anyone to ever have to go
through this kind of pain. I cared about all of them, and I wanted
to see them happy. A new plan was forming in my mind. I didn’t know
how realistic it was, but with Heath’s help, maybe we could change
things in his realm and mine.

I found Grace in the kitchen. Instead
of leaning over a stack of bills, she hovered over something on the
stove. I sniffed a greedy breath. Doughnuts? She hadn’t made them
in forever. I pulled in the fragrance once again before I wandered
into the room.

She turned toward me and smiled. “Just
in time. They’re almost done.”

My mouth watered at the thought of
them. No time like now to tell her about me and Heath. “Hey, I need
to talk to you about something.”

She gave me a knowing grin over her
shoulder. “Are you sure about this, Rayla?”

I frowned. “What? Are you suddenly a
mind reader too?”

She laughed. “It isn’t hard to see
where you two are headed. I think you’re forgetting I’ve been
around a while longer than you. Besides, you didn’t answer my
question.”

I licked my lips then steeled my gaze.
“I’m sure.” I hesitated to ask her, but I needed to know. “What do
you think about him?”

She shrugged. “He is a private man. I
haven’t been able to get to know him very well, but he has only
ever helped us…even before I took over word spread about the rogue
fae that smuggled information for us.”

I sipped my chocolate milk. “It’s just
sort of unbelievable. I mean to find out that he has been so
chivalrous.”

She laughed. “John thinks he’s merely
bored.”

I picked at the edge of the table. “How
is Uncle John?”

She came across the room with a stack
of freshly glazed doughnuts and held the plate out for me. Still a
bit too hot, I dug in anyway. Miraculously, she didn’t comment on
my nervous habit of picking at the table edge. The one at home had
an entire section carved out by the time I was done with it. She
told me she was going to make me buy a new table when I started
making money. Regret stirred inside me. Thinking about a place I
would never see again was pointless, so I put it out of my
mind.

Her face was guarded. “He’s been
through a lot and doesn’t want it to be for nothing. We had hoped
to find out where Travis was. John feels responsible for him being
taken, and worries if we ever do find him, it will be too late. We
all knew going into this that torture was a realistic possibility,
but now he has nothing to show for what they subjected him to.
You’d have to understand the mind of a man to know what I
mean.”

“
I suppose,” I said. Could
any woman ever truly understand the mind of a man? I ached for
Uncle John the same way I ached for Luke. Even with what he had
done, I still wanted to help him get away from Ainessa’s rule. I
had to find a way to help him. Given different circumstances, he
and I could have been good together.

Neither of us said anything for a
while, but Grace touched my sticky hand. “You have my blessing, if
that’s what you’re after.”

I nodded. “Thanks. This isn’t exactly
how I imagined things would go for me when I left home.”

The cringe she gave me looked odd on
her. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been
through.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t say that to
make you feel guilty. It’s just that I didn’t know I could feel
like this about someone. Brody kind of ruined me.”

Her brown eyes warmed with compassion.
“I was afraid of that. You two spent so much time together alone;
it was bound to happen.”

That wasn’t what I meant. It was like I
was talking to a different person. The old Grace would have been on
my back in less than a heartbeat for letting things go too far. I
glanced at her, but was too shy to match her stare. “I stopped him,
but he didn’t like it.”

“
Rayla, I’m not here to
judge you. I was simply trying to keep you from getting hurt. That
boy couldn’t have been who you ended up with, and I knew
it.”

Who I’d end up with? It hit me. She’d
had a plan for me. “Who did you think I’d end up with?”

“
At first, we were hoping
for Travis, but you never took to him that way.”

I choked on my chocolate milk. “You
wanted me to marry my cousin?”

Her laugh filled the small room. “You
still don’t know? I thought Sharon would have told you, or that you
would have figured it out.”

“
What are you talking
about?”

“
Travis was stolen from the
Order when he was a baby. We had planned to place him in a
different home, but John fell in love with him. I couldn’t take him
away.”

My eyes felt huge, so I blinked a
couple of times trying to get the grit to go away. “That’s just
weird.”

“
Well, you’ve found someone
on your own, so problem solved.”

I shook the blanket of ick from my
shoulders and stood up. “Thanks for the doughnuts and for
understanding.”

“
I know you want all the
answers right now, honey, but even after half a lifetime in this
mess, I am no closer to understanding. Sometimes there are no
reasons. Sometimes things just are.” Her expression shifted. “There
is something I need to ask you about.”

Uh-oh, I was in for it now. “What’s
that?”

“
Before you chase down your
knight in leather armor, would you mind giving a few pints of your
blood?”

I frowned.

“
I know I haven’t given you
much time to process this, but Jessica is in a fragile place. She
needs some strength.”

“
All right,” I said. I
didn’t want anything coming between Jessica and Adam, and if I
could help in some small way, I had to do it.

When we entered the room, a couple of
people were there. They’d brought in the bed I had occupied before
and placed it next to Jessica’s. I focused on her as they hooked me
up to the tubes. Her face was so pale, it might as well have been a
death mask. More than anything, I hoped this worked because I was
tired of seeing people torn apart. The needle slid easily into my
arm, and I watched her more closely.

I turned to Aunt Grace. “When will you
wake her?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Adam is
on his way now.”

Just then Adam walked into the room.
His clothes were filthy as was his face, but his eyes shone with a
blinding hope.

He sat next to my gurney and squeezed
my hand. “Thanks for doing this.”