Chapter 44
Forty-Four
IZZY
To say the silence is uncomfortable would be an understatement. It’s practically suffocating. I’m pretty sure I would be able to cut the tension with a knife.
Travan doesn’t speak as he meanders along beside me, his hands shoved into the pockets of his faded blue jeans. He’s whistling, but I don’t recognize the song.
As we walk through the dense forest, my feet crunching over dry leaves and the branches overhead casting twisted shadows on the path, I try to ignore the unsettling feeling gnawing at my gut. I periodically glance at Travan out of the corner of my eye.
His presence is…overwhelming, to put it mildly, like a storm I can’t avoid. I feel exposed walking next to him, my unanswered questions swirling in my mind.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. My pulse quickening, I turn to face him.
“Did you know about me?” I blurt, then I inwardly wince.
I don’t know why that’s the first question that popped into my head, but now that I’ve thrown it into the world, I find that I can’t take it back. I don’t even want to.
Travan regards me intensely. “No.”
“No?”
“Not until you arrived here.” He resumes walking, but at a slower pace, his expression contemplative.
“Neither did your other fathers. We didn’t say anything at first because we didn’t want to scare you away.
You didn’t even know about the supernatural world, for fuck’s sake.
Anything we said would’ve sent you running for the hills. ”
I consider his words, that uneasy feeling from before intensifying. “You acted like you’ve been here this entire time. But I only just met you yesterday.”
A smile plays at the edges of Travan’s lips.
“I’ve been here,” he answers evasively.
“What do you mean?” I study him closer.
Kyle and Silas were both a part of my life before the truth was revealed. But Travan? He’s an enigma. A mystery.
Yet if he claims he’s been here this entire time…
“Were you…stalking me?” I gape at him, alarm crystallizing in my blood.
I expect Travan to look ashamed or sheepish or indignant.
Instead, he just waves a hand in the air dismissively and says, “Stalking? Watching without your knowledge? Is there really a difference?”
He kicks at a rock almost absently.
“I…I don’t…” I shake my head rapidly.
What the fuck do I even say to that confession?
“It’s not like I watch you sleep or anything,” Travan says with an exaggerated eye roll. He gives me a look that suggests I’m being overly dramatic. “Okay, I did that one time, but in my defense, it was only for a few minutes to make sure you were okay after those assholes tried to hurt you.”
A darkness I’ve never seen before shadows his face. Pure, venomous rage emanates from his eyes, which have turned dark as pitch.
My gut lurches with a sudden burst of fear, though I don’t allow that emotion to show on my face. Instead, I focus on his words and their meaning.
“Wait…” I begin.
I remember the men who attacked me.
The monster who attacked them.
Travan smiles knowingly at me.
“That was you?” My voice is practically a whisper.
Travan shrugs a single shoulder. “Those men deserved worse than torture and death.”
“What’s worse than torture and death?” I find myself asking.
Travan’s smirk… I imagine it’ll frighten even the reaper of death. Terror coils through my chest like barbed wire.
But instead of answering, Travan gestures for me to duck beneath a low-hanging branch. “Come on. We need to get back to the others.”
This time, the silence only lasts a few seconds before I shatter it.
“What happened to my mother?” I ask, thinking of my conversation with Gerry and Hale.
Travan’s jaw begins to twitch. “We don’t know.” He removes one hand from his pocket to rake it through his shaggy brown hair. “She… She started acting weird before she went missing. One night, she never came home. We assumed it was a kidnapping until we found her note.”
“She left a note?” I wrap my arms around myself, as if that physical gesture may hold me together when I want nothing more than to shatter.
“She said she had to leave and she was sorry.” Travan flicks his gaze towards me before refocusing on the path. “We didn’t hear from her again until the police called.”
“She committed suicide in a hotel bathtub, right?” My heart thunders in my chest. I can hear it between my ears, each consecutive thump getting louder and louder until I fear I’ll go deaf.
“Allegedly.” Travan grits his teeth together.
God, I can’t imagine what he’s going through. I never met the woman, but to him…she was his everything. His lover. His mate.
“You don’t believe she committed suicide either?” I glance towards him before immediately looking away.
It’s strange to stare at him for too long. When I do, I start noticing the similarities between the two of us, and my head reels. It makes everything feel all too real.
“Helena wouldn’t have left me,” Travan says resolutely. “Wouldn’t have left you.”
“But she did leave you, didn’t she? When she ran away?”
“She would’ve come back,” Travan says.
I can’t help but admire his confidence. If one of my mates were to leave me with only a note…
I shake my head to clear it of the errant thought.
“Is it true about Delaney?” I turn back towards him, gauging his reaction carefully.
Travan’s expression turns impassive. “What about her?”
“That you and your pack mates used to…date her? Before you met my mom?” My skin crawls at just the prospect.
“It’s…complicated.”
His words hit me like a slap. My chest suddenly feels tight, like there’s a weight pressing down on it.
“So you did date her?” I phrase it as a question, but I know it’s the truth.
“We briefly—very, very briefly—were in a relationship with Delaney before meeting your mother. But when we saw Helena…” He ruefully shakes his head, even as a tentative, fleeting smile curls up his lips. “Nobody else mattered.”
“Damn. You seriously left Delaney for her twin sister?” I gawk at him.
No wonder my aunt is such a raging bitch. Anyone would be in her position.
For the first time since we started this conversation, Travan appears sheepish. Red shades his cheeks as he lowers his head. “Yeah. It wasn’t our finest moment. But Delaney knew it wasn’t serious. She knew we would have to end things when we found our Heart.”
“I doubt she expected your Heart to be her twin sister.” I don’t know why I feel so defensive of my aunt. She’s an evil, conniving bitch, yet… I can’t help but pity her. “Do you think…?”
“That Delaney killed Helena?” Travan glances at me then looks away. “I don’t know.”
“Gerry and Hale don’t seem to think so.” I hesitate before adding, “Gerry told me Delaney hired him to look into Helena’s disappearance.”
I can tell I surprised him, though he quickly tries to stifle his expression into one of neutrality once more.
“Oh.”
“Oh?” I arch an eyebrow. “That’s all you have to say to me about it?”
Travan shrugs. “I don’t really have anything else to say.”
We resume walking—I haven’t even realized we stopped—when I think of another question I want to ask him. One that has been nagging at me for a while now.
“What are you?” A knot forms in my throat. “The beast that attacked those men… It wasn’t a wolf. Hell, I don’t even think you’re a shifter. So what are you? Why does everyone want you?”
And consequently me, because I’m part whatever he is.
Travan doesn’t answer right away, his gaze drifting to the trees as if weighing his words. At first, I don’t think he’s going to answer.
But then he does.
“I’m assuming you heard the story of how shifters came to be, right?”
“Wouldn’t you already know that? You’re the one who’s been stalking me,” I quip, anger curling through my veins like flames.
“I couldn’t get cameras into the vice principal’s office,” Travan says seriously.
I gape at him.
He ignores me and continues his story. “When the animals merged with their magical hosts, power like no one ever felt before flooded the earth. It only lasted a few minutes, but with nowhere to go, all of that raw, unencumbered magic entered a poor, innocent human. A farm boy.”
“And you’re related to this farm boy?” I struggle to piece all of this together, my mind a whirlwind.
A plethora of emotions crash together inside me.
Travan stops walking and turns towards me. “No, I’m not related to the farm boy.” He spreads his arms wide, his smile growing. “I am the farm boy.”
A chill runs down my spine at his words. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel—anger, fear, confusion, disbelief. What he’s saying doesn’t make sense. At all.
I find myself shaking my head. “No, that’s impossible. That would mean—”
“That I’m hundreds and hundreds of years old, practically immortal, and made of pure magic?”
He stands utterly still, yet the space around him thrums with tension, like the forest itself is holding its breath.
Light pulses beneath his skin—an otherworldly glow that radiates from within, shifting like molten gold through the veins of his body.
His eyes are the most impossible thing—twin furnaces of raw, burning fire.
They don’t reflect light; they create it, casting flickering shadows across the ground.
Power coils around him like a living thing, thick and suffocating, bending the world to its will.
The ground beneath his feet cracks and shifts.
Every breath he takes causes the air to ripple, distorting reality, as if the space around him can’t remain the same in his presence.
The light from his eyes—those searing, molten orbs—grows more and more intense, a flare of heat that threatens to burn the flesh off my body.
A column of flame erupts from the ground at his feet, climbing higher and higher. The trees bend away, as though afraid to be too close. The sky darkens above, the clouds swirling and churning with an approaching storm that didn’t exist seconds prior.
Holy shit.
Fear wraps around me like a suffocating cloak. It starts deep in my chest, a cold, insidious tremor that crawls up my spine, sending shivers through my whole body. My heart pounds in my ears, drowning out everything else—each beat a loud, frantic drum.
I try to steady myself, but the trembling in my hands is uncontrollable. My skin prickles, every inch of it alive with a raw, primal awareness.
And it’s not just because of Travan’s display of power.
It’s because I’ve felt it before.
A deep, gnawing sense of helplessness takes over. The fear invades me until I’m drowning in it.
Then, like a rubber band snapping, the power recedes, and Travan’s eyes lose that luminescent, ethereal glow. The sky returns to its usual cheery blue, the trees straighten, and the fire dissipates.
“I’m not a shifter, Izzy,” Travan reiterates. “I’m…magic. Pure magic. The same as you.”
The same as me.
I think of what happened back at the covenstead, then again with the Hunters.
I felt powerful. Deadly. A force of nature.
“That’s why everyone wants you,” I whisper, the pieces clicking together in my mind.
I think of one of my first lessons at the covenstead. We learned the differences between witches and warlocks and how they’re able to draw magic. But to know that someone is magic? If I’ve learned anything from my time in the covenstead, it’s that people would kill to possess that type of power.
“That’s why everyone wants us,” Travan corrects with a pointed look.
“I suspected for a while you inherited some of my…gifts. And now that the witches know that as well? They’ll stop at nothing to possess you.
To own you. To rip you apart and steal that magic for themselves.
I made a deal with Delaney to keep you safe for the time being, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last, not with your most recent display of magic. ”
I can’t wrap my head around all of this. I’m trying to. I honestly am, but it’s too surreal to comprehend. I barely accepted the fact that I’m part shifter and witch, and now this?
“Wh-what deal?” I whisper, finding my voice.
“Excuse me?” Travan turns to me.
“What deal did you make with Delaney?”
Travan’s smile sharpens, morphing into a serrated blade. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But—”
“It’s a father’s job to protect his daughter. And I will protect you, the way I couldn’t Helena.” He jerks his chin towards a break in the trees, where I can dimly make out the silhouettes of the others. “Come on. Let’s get back to your wolfy mate.”