Chapter 34
Chapter thirty-four
Jack
The voices around me had risen to a crescendo. I could barely make out one over the other, not that I was even listening anymore. I’d checked out about thirty minutes ago, pulling a leg up into my chair as I stared off to the side.
A hand slid onto mine, and my mom squeezed with a reassuring smile.
“Okay?” she mouthed, shooting a look at my arguing dads. Even my godparents, Tristen and Mizuki, had joined in the fight over my disastrous love life.
My mom nudged her head toward the side, signaling me to go to the kitchen with her.
In the kitchen, Darren stood at the sink, washing the dishes as he was prone to do in the face of conflict. I gave him a weak smile before I found one of the island chairs, leaning forward so my head hung over the counter.
“Don’t mind them,” my mom explained as she opened the fridge. “They’re being overprotective.”
I snorted, watching her pull out orange juice and tequila. “Little early for that, isn’t it?”
Darren sat two clean cups on the counter in front of me. Mom thanked him and sat the bottles on the counter.
“Not when you’ve had your heart broken.”
“It’s not — I’m not…” I sighed and then grabbed the tequila taking a swig of it out of the bottle. I grimaced, groaning as I laid my head down on the counter. “How could I be so stupid? How did I not know?”
“Oh, honey.” My mom smoothed a hand down my back, brushing my hair away from my face. “There’s no way you could have known. Did he talk about Kle—?”
I glared.
She pressed her lips together. “You know what I mean.”
I sighed and leaned on my hand. “No, he’s not a big talker in the first place. And it just… never came up. Tate, his human servant, mentioned some vampires hating on the council, but I never got around to asking him more about it.” I flushed, rubbing my hands down my pants.
My mom chuckled. “I get it. You were busy falling in love. Hard to think about work stuff when you’re in their presence.” She glanced back toward the dining room with a dreamy smile. “Believe me I know.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I shifted in my seat, staring into the dining-room door. “They don’t want me to go back. They want to—” I sucked in a harsh breath. “They won’t really kill him, will they?”
“No,” my mom rushed to say. “No, honey, they’re just feeling overprotective. They don’t have any reason to kill him.”
Darren snorted.
“Dating their daughter wouldn’t exactly hold up as a valid reason to the other council members,” my mom pointed out to him.
For some reason, that information made me feel better and worse. After hearing that the vampire I’d been falling for — sleeping with — was the fledgling of the one vampire I hated most in the world, the reason behind all my nightmares and trauma, it was a lot to swallow.
A rational part of me knew that it wasn’t Kyren’s fault.
He didn’t know who I was, what his sire did to me.
I almost smiled at the thought of how he reacted when he’d only thought someone had attacked me.
If he’d been there when Kleon’s minions had grabbed me as a kid, I feared they wouldn’t have gotten off as easily as a quick death.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was them again.
I wanted to talk to them, and yet… I couldn’t.
I couldn’t bring myself to face them when I didn’t know how I felt about this.
Even if I did accept that Kleon was Kyren’s sire, that he wasn’t the same person who would do the same thing to me, how did I know that Kyren wouldn’t hate me when he found out?
I turned my phone off and sat it on the counter.
“Are you going to go back?” my mom asked as she stirred a spoon in a glass the sound, making a tinkling noise in the empty kitchen. “I know I pushed you into it, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Twisting my hands on the counter, I shook my head. “I don’t know. If I go back—”
“You’re not going back.”
My head jerked to see Drake in the doorway of the kitchen. “I’m not?”
Drake walked in with his twin, Allister. “No, if we can’t kill him and we can’t kick him out, then you aren’t going back.”
“We’re so sorry, Jackie.” Allister reached for me, pulling me into a hug. “If we’d known, we’d never had sent you there.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said into his chest, sniffing back the tears that tried to come out. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Well,” Drake started, clamping a hand on my shoulder, “we know now, and the guild will just have to find someone else to flush out the rebels.”
“Wait, what?” I pulled away from them. “Find someone else?”
“Well, yeah. If you’re not going back, then someone else will have to finish the mission.” Drake moved around the counter to wrap his arms around my mom’s waist. “Tristen will let your partner — Julian, was it? — know and then you never have to think about that place ever again.”
My dad said it like it was all so easy. I just didn’t go back and someone else takes over my job.
Except it was anything but easy.
“No.” I stood from my seat.
“No?” Drake stared at me in confusion. “What do you mean no?”
Without answering him, I strode into the dining room where they were arguing my future actions.
“Yes, I do put some of the blame on your shoulders,” Antoine clipped, his usual cool exterior starting to fracture. “You took our daughter and turned her into this person who can only think of the next kill and not about her life, her future.”
Tristen scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t see you complaining when you wife joined our group. So it’s good enough for her but not for your daughter?”
“I do not think that’s what he means,” Mizuki tried to interject but the two of them ignored her.
Wynn and Marcus stood off to one side, watching them argue, while Rayne rubbed his temples in a chair, no doubt overwhelmed by all the loud thoughts hitting him at once.
“Hey!” I said, snapping my fingers to get their attention, which worked about as well as if I were whispering. Stalking forward, I unsheathed a dagger and threw it, slicing through the space between Antoine and Tristen.
“Woah.” Tristen grinned. “Nice shot, Jack.”
The silence from the rest of the room was deafening as all eyes turned to me.
“Yes, Jaquelynn, did you want to say something?” Antoine laced his hands in front of him, not at all disturbed by me throwing a knife near his head.
“No one else is doing my mission.”
Drake stepped in behind me. “Now, hold on a second—”
“You shouldn’t be worrying about that now, Jaquelynn,” Wynn tried to reassure me, brushing his hand down my arm. “Let the hunters deal with it.”
“I’m a hunter,” I snapped, letting my gaze settle over the people in the dining room, who all thought they had the right to decide my life for me. “No matter how much you hate it or wish I’d do something else.”
I shot a look at my mom. “I’m a hunter, and I’m not going to let someone else complete my mission because my complicated love life.”
Mizuki gave me a firm nod, and Tristen puffed up, pride pouring out of him.
“Jack,” my mom placed her hand on my arm, “we just want you to be safe is all.”
I turned on her. “You can’t keep me in a box and only pull me out when you want to show me off. Life happens, and sometimes you won’t be able to protect me from it.”
Several of my dads started arguing over each other, trying to explain to me in so many words how much they loved and cared about me. But, at this point, it was just noise over the rushing of my pulse.
“Quiet.” Antoine’s voice rang out through the room, his powers of command shutting them all up in an instant. He turned his pale gaze onto me. “Jaquelynn, what do you like to do?”
I sucked in several deep breaths trying to get a hold on my emotions and thoughts. What did I want to do?
The thought of going back to the school and facing Tate and Kyren terrified me. More so that Kyren would find out who I was, and how he’d look at me the way the vampires I fought on a regular basis did. Like I was his enemy.
But there was a job to do. I’d made promises — a commitment — to find the rogues, and I wasn’t about to let my teenage drama get in the way of doing my job.
No matter how much I was hurting, how much it would kill me to face them, I had to go back and do my job. If I didn’t, they were right, and I wasn’t a hunter at all.
“You spent most of my life shielding me from danger,” I began, turning around the room, “even more so after I was kidnapped. No one knows what I look like, but you and I know that those against the council and, let’s be honest, the Durands.
” I sent a look around the room at my family.
“They won’t be able to help themselves if they know I’m around.
So I want to announce it at school. It’ll be the perfect bait. ”
“But Jackie,” Allister stepped toward me, “we don’t want to put you in any more danger.”
“He’s right,” Tristen pointed out. “You’d be painting a target on your back.”
I shrugged. “How is that any different from any other mission I’ve gone on?”
“You’ll have to be careful.” My mom frowned. “You won’t be able to tell who your friends and enemies are. Believe me as someone who went to public school. You might think someone is your best friend, only for them borrow five hundred bucks, steal your boyfriend, and then take off.”
I arched a brow. “Wow, mom, that was oddly specific.”
“I just mean,” my mom sat on Wynn’s lap, “you’ll need to be more careful. You won’t be able to stay in the dorms like you do now.”
“Right,” Rayne interjected. “It’s not secure. Anyone could come in and kill you in your sleep. In fact, I should skim some minds, make sure no one has plans to —”
“Dad.” I shook my head and chuckled. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I promise.”
There was a moment of silence before Drake spoke up. “So, any ideas of how to let everyone know you’re a Durand? I was thinking something big. Something that’s in your face. Something no one can ignore.”
I smiled as they devolved into arguing once more over the best way to reveal my identity, but it was settled. I was going back to Durand Supernatural Academy.
Now if someone could tell my heart that it was a good thing, then we’d all be on the same page.