Caleb groaned irritably. “I’m thinking I should have made amends with my brother sooner and moved him into my house to watch the púca.” He glanced from Simi to Xev and back again. “What kind of mutant life form do I have living in my cellar? And do I need to fumigate my house?”
“He doesn’t particularly stink unless you get him wet. But you might want to spray for fleas and ticks … and he does like to chew on things.… He’s a feral C?n Annwn. With an extremely heavy emphasis on the feral part. As in he makes Zavid look like a hand-fed Pomeranian. Back in the day, he was Aeron’s primary general. They’re a scary pair when they get together. And whatever you do, don’t give them alcohol of any kind. In any quantity. You liquor them up and that, my friends, is what really happened to the Picts. All of them. And why the Romans never got over Hadrian’s Wall.”
Caleb laughed sarcastically. “Oh, goodie. He must be having a ball in New Orleans, chasing down all the lost and blackened souls, and unchristened people here.”
Xev nodded in agreement. “No doubt.”
“So why’s he here?” Nick asked.
“You shall have to ask Aeron.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Xev sighed. “But Simi’s right. Kaziel will hunt him down and get him back, and if Aeron didn’t go of his own volition, I wouldn’t want to be that guy when Kaziel lays fang to him. He is a battle c?n. Fiercely loyal. Trained by Scáthach, the Lady Shadow, herself at her home fortress. And I can tell you from personal experience, he’s a pistol load of fun.”
“Can’t wait to meet him!” Nick said with a fake amount of enthusiasm. “All righty everybody, let’s go get Scooby!”
When Jaden started after them, both Xev and Caleb faced him with questioning brows raised.
He returned their stares with an equal amount of unspoken defiance written in his expression.
“Where do you think you’re going?” they asked in perfect unison.
Jaden blinked nonchalantly. “With you.”
“Why?”
“I have a vested interest in how this plays out.”
“Since when?”
Even though Caleb had spoken the question, Jaden cut a killer stare to Xev. “Since the day I sold myself into slavery to save the life of your son. Contrary to what you think, I didn’t betray you. I was trying to save you both.”
With a slack jaw, Xev staggered back in disbelief. It was the same sensation Nick felt at that unexpected disclosure.
“You knew about Jared?” Xev whispered.
“Of course I knew. How stupid do you think I am? I knew it the moment I first held him in my arms.”
“Yet you never said anything? Why?”
“The same reason you didn’t. It would have destroyed both Jared and Myone.” Agony burned deep in Jaden’s eyes. But beneath that was a deep, undeniable love. It was obvious that he did care about his sons and their well-being. That he wasn’t the heartless ogre they accused him of being. “In spite of what you and Caleb think, I’ve always loved you both. You are my sons. I just can’t trust the blood inside you. I know the call it makes. How hard it is to resist. What do you think the Verlyn is? An unstoppable force I have no control over. Forget the blood of your mothers … you both have that beast inside you.”
Xev shook his head. “I still don’t understand…”
“What? That I loved him as my own? That I protected him and raised him in my home?”
“Yeah. Let’s start with that, given how much you always hated me.”
Jaden winced. “Not trusting you isn’t the same as hating you. You never could understand that. And I never asked to be at war with you. But every time I tried to reach out, you looked at me as if you could go through me. As if you wouldn’t hesitate to cut my throat. And if I ever gave you the chance, you did betray me. So yeah, I’ve been cold in response to what I’ve felt. That’s my nature. I never knew what to do with either of you, given your attitudes. Ironic, isn’t it? My greatest fear was that your mother would use you to control me. Instead, it was your child who put me under her thumb completely. Had I done right by you and embraced you as the father you needed me to be when you were born, I wouldn’t be forced to serve her now. Jared wouldn’t be enslaved and we wouldn’t have lost this war. I screwed everything up because I was blind and afraid.”
Nick stepped back as those words echoed in his head, and smacked eerily of what both Ambrose and Acheron had said to him.
“We manifest our worst fears.”
They turned to stare at him.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your moment. I was just thinking over something Acheron said about how the worst things in his life happened because someone tried to circumvent his destiny. Had they just left it alone and allowed it to play out as it was intended, he and the world would have been a lot better off.” Rubbing his hand over his face as he grappled with that, he glanced at Kody. “Is that the key to this? Should we stop trying to fix it? Just let it run as it’s meant to?”
But even as he asked the question, Nick knew it wasn’t that simple. Not when the cost of doing nothing meant his mother would die.