Chapter 27 RUMI #2
"I want you to meet my mates," I say finally, changing the subject before I can dissolve into tears again. "I want you to see what I've become, who I've found, what we're building together at Phoenix Sanctuary."
Dante's eyes light up with genuine joy. "I'd like that more than anything. I've been watching from a distance, saw the demonstration, saw you stand against the hunters, saw the sanctuary transform from a prison into something beautiful. I'm so proud of you, Rumi. Your mother would be proud too."
"You were watching…" I still can’t really believe it.
"Through divine channels. Ways of seeing that don't trigger Dmitri's monitoring contracts.
" He looks almost embarrassed. "I couldn't stay away completely.
Couldn't stop myself from checking on you, making sure you were surviving.
When you manifested your full divine nature during the demonstration, I wept for hours.
You were everything she hoped you'd be, and you became it without any help from me. "
"I had help," I correct him. "My mates. Stellan, who showed me that different isn't dangerous.
Jade, who taught me that hunger can be transformed into love.
Harlow, who proved that choosing life is always possible.
Ambrose, who demonstrated that any price is worth paying for family.
And Skye, who believed in all of us when we didn't believe in ourselves. "
"Then I owe them everything," Dante says simply. "For protecting my son when I couldn't."
We spend hours talking after that. Dante teaches me about demigod heritage, about abilities I haven't discovered yet, about the ancestral voices that whisper through divine power and how to interpret them.
He tells me more stories about my mother, about their love, about the hope they had for me even knowing the danger.
And slowly, conversation by conversation, the anger continues to fade. Not disappearing, not yet, maybe not ever completely. But transforming into something I can carry without it poisoning me.
When I finally emerge from the chamber, Harlow and Ambrose are waiting in the corridor. They take one look at my tear-stained face, at the peace that's replaced the tension I've been carrying for weeks, and pull me into a hug without asking questions.
Their love and relief washes over me. Even across the greater distance, Stellan and Jade and Skye respond to my emotional shift, their joy at sensing my burden lighten.
"He wants to meet you," I tell Harlow and Ambrose when we finally separate. "And he wants to come back to Phoenix Sanctuary with us. Help with the reforms, teach students who are struggling with unusual essences, stand against Dmitri openly instead of hiding."
"Then let's introduce him to the family," Ambrose says with a small smile. "We've got room for one more."
The rest of that day and the next blur together in the best possible way.
Dante meets Harlow and Ambrose properly, bonding with them over shared experiences of loss and survival.
He's fascinated by Harlow's death-sight, by the way Death's Champion exists between worlds.
And he spends hours with Ambrose discussing contracts and prices, two people who understand sacrifice in ways most never will.
He teaches me advanced divine techniques, shows me how to channel my balance nature more precisely, how to use the black threads as tools instead of fearing them. The ancestral voices that have been whispering through my power become clearer, guides rather than chaos.
And he agrees to return south with us, to help protect Phoenix Sanctuary, to stand against his brother's legacy of corruption and control.
"Wait," I say on our second day, something finally clicking. "You said Dmitri. Your brother?"
Dante's expression grows complicated. "Not by blood.
By bond. We were raised together in the same divine household, trained together, thought of each other as brothers for centuries.
Until he decided that divine bloodlines were too dangerous to allow and started the purges.
Until he murdered my mate and tried to murder my son. "
"He was your brother and he killed my mother?"
"Family can be complicated," Dante says quietly. "And some betrayals can never be forgiven. Whatever love I once had for Dmitri died the day he gave me that ultimatum. Now he's just the monster I've spent a hundred years hiding from."
I process that, adding it to everything else I've learned. Dmitri isn't just a corrupt Council member. He's my father's former brother, someone who betrayed family bonds in the worst possible way.
No wonder Dante hid. No wonder he was so afraid.
"I should have done this a hundred years ago," Dante says on our last night in the mountains, as we prepare to leave in the morning. "Should have stood up to Dmitri, should have fought for your mother, should have protected you directly instead of from a distance. I was a coward."
"You survived," I counter. "You kept me alive. And now you're doing what you couldn't do then. That's what matters."
Stellan, Jade, and Skye’s presence reaches me from Phoenix Sanctuary. Their relief that we found Dante and that the reunion went well. Their excitement at meeting him. Their love reaching across the distance.
Tomorrow we head home, bringing the network's first connections with us.
And I bring my father with me.