I love my brother so much. I have missed him beyond belief and if this a dream, then I never want to wake up. Sobs catch in my throat and desperation overwhelms me.
“I understand. I hear you.” I repeat his words, needing to know what he’s holding back and not really laying any weight on them. Of course, he’s my brother, I know he loves me. He always did. We both thought each other dead but it doesn’t change a thing, nor does it matter now. Jasper will always be in my heart and hold a special place that no other living soul can replace. There has always been a dark hole that belonged only to him.
“They saved me because of….. your mother.” He dodges eye contact and goes back to staring over my head at the sky in the distance. His emotions all over the place and feeding my nerves. I frown waiting for him to elaborate, impatience growing until one little word catches my attention and I furrow my brows as I repeat back his sentence in my brain and sound it out for myself
“Your?” I home right on it, loudly verbalizing with heavy questioning as he pauses. I feel his stiffness as he looks left, over the top of my head at the open door of the car which is silent and still. Leyanne and the vampire still tucked inside and leaving us to it.
“She wasn’t my mother, Lorey… by blood. I’m not even related to you. I never was. We’re not siblings in any other way than marriage.”
I step back, gasping as my head spins and I’m hit with the weight of his words like a kick to the gut while nausea rises rapidly in response. Trying to compute, but it doesn’t make sense. I glare at him, anger rising because it’s a lie. Frowning, shaking my head. I have the urge to laugh at him. To hit him in the shoulder and tell him to stop messing with me, but the deadpan blank look on his pale face tells me that’s not what he’s doing at all.
“Yes, you are. Stop it.” I snap, swallowing my ludicrous bubbling despair, and step back to shove him in the chest again, only with aggression and denial. “Take that back.” I snarl, eyes glowing with burning rage that he’s trying to hurt me or make me hate him and I don’t know why. He flinches at the contact but reaches for my hand and catches his fingers in mine so he can pull me back to restrain both my hands in his.
“You have no idea what it means to be here right now, to see you, to know you’re alive. God, I have wished for this moment for so long.” He swallows the croak of his tumbling emotions and furrows his brow back to seriousness, quieting my voice within my chest as he exhales harshly. Caught in shocked silence and begging him with pleading eyes to stop doing this. “She was pregnant when we met her…. I was five years old. Dad was my uncle. He was raising me because my mother died in childbirth and took her mate with her. I always knew who I was, and then you two came and you gave me a new family.” He pulls me in nearer as the choked expression and numbness stills me completely. Freezing out my thoughts as I blink and try to inhale through what he’s saying and almost fail at getting enough oxygen in the process. “She was running, from our kind, for fear of what they would do if they found out about you. And we were camping on the south side of the mountain, out there alone. I don’t think it was by chance…. they imprinted on sight. It was… beautiful. I gained a mother in the blink of an eye. And a few short months later, a baby sister.” His explanation cuts my heart from my soul and rips it into shreds, burning my body with intense pain as my brain stammers.
“No! … He was my dad too. He’s my dad…. she’s my mom… you’re my brother. STOP IT!” The sobs break as every memory I possess is torn in two and all I thought was real turns out to be a lie. Every moment, every happy encounter and image I have clung to my whole life. None of it is real and I was living in a fake world with people who were never even my own blood. Jasper hauls me into his arm and pulls my face against his chest with a strong palm, enveloping me with that protective bulk of body.
“He was, in every other sense of the word, Lorey. He loved you. You were his daughter. It didn’t matter to him where you were created. You both became ours and we loved you both exactly that way. It didn’t matter to us. You ARE my sister.”
“No, I don’t want it to be true. He was my dad, you’re my brother, stop saying it. They were all my family. I won’t believe you.” I can’t take this in, and he squeezes harder, pinning me tight, as though somehow this isn’t the worst he has to say. I instantly absorb his tension, reverberating through me. Picking up on his feelings even while mine are insanely overpowering it freezes me to my core. A new wave of dread hitting me like a brick wall.
“I’ll always be your family, but the truth is…. who you are is why I got to live …. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He falters and through the mess of my head and the muggy thoughts colliding, one truth I already knows rings clear. Sense prevailing, logic kicking my ass.
“Because my mom was part vampire… and that somehow saved you.” I blurt it out, whimpering, wishing none of this was true, but his tense stiffening tells me that’s not right exactly.
“No… I mean, she was, but…… your father, Lorey. Your biological dad. He’s the son of the high lord. Your dad’s one of them.”
His words have the same effect as cutting me down where I stand and even though my brain doesn’t really compute it, my body reacts just the same and my legs give out. Crumbling but his grasp on me tightens and he holds me up and to him as I break all over again. Nausea choking me and I wretch and sob at the same time, unsure how else to respond.
I’m not part vampire, diluted from my mother’s side. I’m half of a freaking vampire and for the first time it suddenly makes sense why my eyes are red and hers never were. Why my gifts are strong and yet, I never saw them in her. Yes, she was part vampire, but no, she didn’t give this to me… he did.
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