16. Finley #2
“You don’t think he can tell we are doing this like the vampire can, do you?” Mason asked.
Derven sighed. “I do have a name, you know.”
“What, it’s a loving nickname. I could have settled on fang boy, but it didn’t seem to fit. You’re too posh,” Mason countered.
I couldn’t help but snort at the look of horror that crossed Derven’s face when he found out he’d almost been dubbed fang boy.
“Vampire is fine, as long as you don’t mind me calling you pup,” Derven commented with a smirk. “You are a werewolf and so much younger than myself. I think it fits nicely.”
“Don’t start a fight you can’t finish. I’m sure I could come up with something worse than fang boy,” Mason countered.
Derven gave him a wide smile showing off his fangs. “Do your worst, pup.”
“Enough,” Rath snapped. “I understand you are trying to help, but we need answers, so keep it down.”
“Ooo, you got in trouble from daddy elf,” Noah teased.
Everyone tried to cover up their laughter at the banter that was going on in our heads. While Rath was right that we needed to stay on task, I couldn’t be more thankful for them lighting the mood.
“Finley,” Eli said, grabbing my attention.
I turned to look at him sitting next to me, his eyes wide with shock. “Did you create a true soul bond with your men? All of them?”
Cocking my head, I reached out to his emotions, getting amazement and a hint of fear from him. “Something tells me, by your reaction, I shouldn’t have been able to do that, but yes, I am mated to them as an elf and however my mates’ species requires.”
“That’s impossible. There’s no way that should have been able to happen,” Eli rambled as he combed his fingers through his hair. “Your mother tried to do that and failed.”
“What?” I demanded. “Why would my mother need to create a soul bond when you are an elf?”
“Like you, your mother had a mixed nos as well. There were only three of us compared to your eight, which by the way, is impressive any way you look at it. Maybe that was the problem. Your mother’s magic wasn’t strong enough to make the bond,” Eli mused, his eyes losing focus as if he was looking into the past.
I reached out and placed a hand on his arm and immediately got sucked into what he was thinking. There stood a woman who I knew had to be my mother. When he said I was the spitting image of her, he hadn’t been lying. Other than the eye color which I got from him, I looked just like her.
She was lying in a field of flowers with a tiger as her pillow and another man with his head on her legs, hand resting on her pregnant belly.
I couldn’t tell what he was, but I didn’t get the sense that he was a shifter.
Assuming I was looking at this from Eli’s point of view, this must be an outing all of them had gone on together.
There was so much pain and sadness emanating off Eli that it nearly choked me.
Were the other men still alive? The feelings of sadness ran so deep it led me to believe they were gone as well. Why is it that she had drawn others to her when she was purely elven? It made sense to me that I did, being a werewolf, but what if the same thing would have happened if I wasn’t?
Removing myself from his memory, I opened my eyes to see my father looking at me with a tear running down his cheek.
“That was the last time we were all together before you were born. Liam the weretiger killed himself after your mother died. He couldn’t bear to live without his mate and ended it on his own terms. James disappeared, I don’t know where he went, but he wanted nothing to do with me or you.
He couldn’t even look at you without seeing the reason his wife was dead. ”
He slowly reached out and cupped my cheek.
“We were happy, the four of us. We had sixty beautiful years together as a family before we lost your mother. I hope that you will see how they were in that moment because that is what our life was like, not what you see now. We loved each other as brothers, and your mother hung the moon in our eyes. To lose her, shattered everything. I suppose it’s good that we weren’t soul bound, or you would have been left with no one in the world to look after you. ”
“What is he talking about?” I asked Rath.
“There are some who believe that when you form a soul bond, when one person dies, the others die with them since their souls are connected,” Rath explained. “Many bond with their mates, but few create the soul bond. For all of us to be connected as a unit, it was the only way for that to happen.”
“So there is a chance that if one of us dies, we’re dead?” I demanded.
Silence was my answer. Now I understood why he was so upset with me for making the contract with Morwyn.
If I couldn’t do this or died trying, then I took everyone with me.
Taking a deep calming breath and letting it out slowly, I centered myself.
That was a problem for another day, there were things I still needed to understand, and it seemed my father knew more than anyone.
“How did she die? I understand that it was during childbirth, but how could that happen for an elf?” I asked.
Eli dropped his gaze to his hands, where he picked at the cloth napkin wrapped around the silverware.
“Your mother was cursed by a witch whose husband she killed while on a mission. She thought the home was empty like it should have been, but the wife came home early from her trip. A security ward we didn’t realize was there trapped your mother from getting out.
James was working on breaking the spell but couldn’t do it in time to get her out before the wife returned.
The curse was to ensure that Tiriana wouldn’t get to the future of her line, that she would die the moment she saw her child’s face. ”
“Why would she even risk having me?” I gasped. “That makes no sense?”
Eli gave me a wavering smile as he took both my hands in his.
“She wanted nothing more than to be a mother. Tiriana was a warrior like you, but deep down, she wanted to have seven children and be a homemaker caring for her family, but the world wasn’t safe for that.
James believed he had broken the curse and the first thing she did was tell us she was ready to have a baby.
Two months later, you started to grow in her belly, making her the happiest I’d ever seen.
When it was the last few weeks, there was complication after complication making me believe the curse hadn’t been broken.
“Your mother didn’t care. She was determined to have you no matter what.
Before you were born, you were everything to her.
So when the time came, it was a struggle, but she gave birth, and you entered the world silent as a whisper staring up at me with those big blue eyes of yours.
Liam tried to take you out of the room right away, refusing to let Tiriana see you in fear it would kill her.
She begged and pleaded for us to let her hold you, but none of us were willing to risk her life no matter what.
James finally came up with the idea of blindfolding your mother so she could hold you and that’s what we did.
She fed you, cuddled you, whispered secrets in your ear that to this day, I don’t know what they were.
We relaxed and most of us fell asleep after having been up with her all night.
When we woke, there she was dead, cradling you in her arms with a beaming smile as she looked down at you,” Eli shared, his voice cracking with emotion at the last part.
My mother, knowing the risks, wanted so desperately to see me that she ignored all the dangers just to get a glimpse of my face. “How could she give up everything just for one look at me?”
“That is the strength of a mother’s love, Finley,” Eli stated. “She picked your name, by the way, it means courageous one, and I believe you’ve lived up to it quite well.”
“How long did you keep me before giving me to the orphanage?” I asked, pulling my hands from his.
“Two weeks, then the attacks started to happen,” he answered.
“I don’t have any proof, but I believe they were James trying to kill you.
He became convinced that he’d broken the curse but that you had somehow absorbed it, so it killed her.
To be clear, I never thought that for a second and honestly assumed he never was able to break a dark magic curse that’s powered by the caster's own death. James couldn’t live with himself, so after I caught him trying to smother you with a pillow, I cast him out and never saw him again. ”
“So, what made you come back for me? If I was in so much danger from one of my own fathers, why would you bring me into the Organization?” I challenged.
A hand rested on my leg as Noah offered his support, sensing I was getting upset.
We were interrupted as the waiter arrived and started taking drink and food orders for the table.
Thankfully I already knew what I wanted, having looked at the menu beforehand.
When the waiter left, there was a lull with an uncomfortable silence before my father took a sip of his water and answered.