Chapter 17 #2
“Yeah. I know. It’s…” I shake my head, ducking through the doorway Zara gestures to. She follows behind, stepping around me to help peel back the bedding.
“There. Van said she’ll probably sleep ’til morning.”
“I didn’t even realise he’d planned this.” I lay Rose down, slipping off her shoes — brown leather, like I’d assumed them to be — and pull the covers back over her. Her eyes flutter briefly, but she doesn’t wake.
“He’s really onto it. The difference from my old pack is insane.”
“You know I never liked Stephen,” I say, referring to her former alpha. “I mean, he hated me.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “It’s water under the bridge. Will you watch her?” I nod at Rose. “I know it sounds silly, but I don’t even want to leave her to take a piss.”
Zara’s smile is full of humour and understanding.
“Yeah, I’ll watch her. I’m probably gonna shift soon and just park myself outside the door here for the night, so if you do need one of your midnight-snacks,” she says, giving me a teasing look — I did used to have a habit of doing that, back when we were in uni — “you can trust that she’s safe.
And the werewolf witch that arrived with you is staying the night here too. ”
“Lylia? The fae one?”
That grabs Zara’s attention. “What do you mean, the fae one?”
Ah, shit. I guess I wasn’t supposed to share that part, or at least not yet. “She’s mixed, like Rose,” I say, keeping my tone even. Zara’s eyes narrow.
“You forget that you may be an actor but I can smell it when you’re lying, Zackary.”
I’m about to open my mouth in self-defence when she turns her head suddenly, the look on her face one I’ve seen hundreds of times as she listens to something I can’t hear. “You’re being summoned. Van wants to talk to you downstairs.”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” I mutter as quietly as I can, and Zara shakes her head with a grin.
“I’ll take the time to shift. Go. Rose is safe with me, I promise.”
I pass Zara’s husband, Finn, in the hall. “Hey. Sorry about fucking up your night.”
He shrugs. “It’s all good.” He’s a man of few words; I know that from the few times I’ve met him.
When I get downstairs, Van is waiting for me in the kitchen. “I didn’t know if you preferred tea or coffee, or something harder. We have it all, so help yourself.”
“I’ll just go with water, thanks.”
You know you’re in a wealthy household when the water comes in individual sealed glass bottles from the fridge. “Still or sparkling?”
“Still.”
He passes me a bottle and grabs himself a beer from the fridge. “I wanted to touch base before I head home for the night. After all that, I want to be by Ellie’s side overnight. This all went better than I’d hoped, but it also raised a lot of questions for everyone.”
“I think I’m going to try and block out what I saw through that portal. Rose looked…” I shudder, thinking about the image of her lying there, blue eyes open but unseeing, as the fae sucked the life out of her.
“I saw. You don’t need to say it. You know, they almost took Ellie a few years ago.
” He shakes his head. “I knew it would be bad, but seeing it… it’s worse than I could have imagined, and now we’re having a baby, and it’s what I’ve always wanted with Ellie, but I’m so fucking terrified that they’re going to come after not just my wife, but my child as well. ”
“I get it.”
He nods, staring at me with haunted eyes. “Yeah, you’re probably the only guy who really does.”
“I forgot to congratulate you earlier,” I tell him. “About the baby. It’s exciting.”
He nods slowly, clenching his jaw. “It is.” He doesn’t look happy at all.
“It’ll work out.”
“The world? Because what I witnessed today was fucking terrifying,” he says quietly.
“You seem to have the resources to deal with it, at least.”
We sip our drinks silently, and then Evander says, “I appreciate your optimism, Zak. Ellie is like you — she’s always finding the silver lining in everything. I need people to remind me of that.”
“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know how much you know about me — even saying that makes me feel douchey — but when the Unravelling hit I lost the role that was going to be my big break, take me beyond doing just soaps in New Zealand. I used to be on Wynyard Street.”
“The medical drama?”
“Call me Dr. Sinclair. I got killed off in a serial killer plot in season fifteen. Anyway, my whole world turned to shit. I know you would’ve been impacted too, but…”
“You lost a lot.”
“I lost myself.” I shrug, fighting back the burn at my throat.
I gesture in the direction of the hallway that leads upstairs.
“Rose found me again, so I just wanna thank you for helping us. ‘Cause I was going nowhere. Maybe I still am, but I’ve got her. So yeah, I like to believe that if you’re not a dick, things work out for you in the end.
Good karma, or whatever you wanna call it. ”
Evander does that typical guy thing where you pat someone on the shoulder three times, but it’s gotta be manly, so it’s almost a slap. “I’m glad we were able to save her.”
I don’t even want to think about the alternative. I blink again, because I really am that close to just bursting into tears. “Are they really sisters?” I ask instead.
“Yeah. I sent Ellie’s mom the picture of Mr Copthorne earlier today, and she called me immediately and swore her head off about it. I have no doubt that they share the same father, as insane as that is to think they were born a century apart.”
“Do you believe what they’re saying? The… coven?”
“That T. J. Copthorne is still out there? Absolutely. That ward around the house felt so similar to Ellie’s magic, and now I know why. It has to have been him.”
“Which would make him a good guy, right? He’s been protecting his daughter as best as he can.”
Evander shrugs. “My father has always been very protective of his pack and family — excluding me, of course — but he’ll be the first to tell you that he isn’t a good guy. Life is more nuanced than that.”
“I was gonna ask how it worked out for you, with your dad being an alpha too.” I was with Zara long enough to understand pack dynamics, including how bloodthirsty alphas get towards each other.
It must have been hell growing up with a dad as the opposing alpha, and it makes me all the more thankful for my parents.
The worst I get is their mild hassling about finding a ‘decent job.’
He shakes his head. “Don’t. That’s my answer.
” He sculls the rest of his beer. “Anyway,” he adds, “my Mom is picking me up shortly — and yeah, I know how lame that sounds. She’s going to portal here once she’s done dealing with her family, and then I’ll head back to Motuwai.
I’m leaving Lylia here, as well as Zara and Finn, and I’m confident that between the three of them, you and Rose will be safe until morning.
By then, I might have some more answers.
I’ve got a private investigator looking for the other sisters. ”
“You think they might be alive?”
“Possibly. There comes a point in terms of generations of descent from a fae when people with fae ancestry truly live and die as humans, with no extended lifespan. Lylia, on the other hand, had a fully fae mother and a were father, and the expectation is that she’ll live to around a thousand years old.
So there’s definitely a spectrum. Where Rose and Ellie fall… ”
It’s a grim thing to think about. The sight of Rose trapped in that realm is burned at the back of my brain, and I might say I’m going to block it out, but I don’t have much faith that it’s possible to ever forget it.
All I know is that I hope Rose gets more than the average eighty human years of life. After all she’s been through, she deserves a long life, and I want to be there for every minute of it.