Chapter 32
The entire room went deadly silent.
“What. Did. You. Say?” Ronan growled.
Saoirse swallowed hard as she twisted the beaded bracelet around her wrist. “Your half brother.”
Declan released his hold on me. “We don’t have any siblings.”
Saoirse sighed. “I’d heard rumblings for over a decade. That there was a woman your father had hidden away. That she wasn’t of noble blood, so she wouldn’t have made an acceptable mate.”
Ronan bared his teeth at the older dragon. “So, what you’re saying is that he was cheating on our mother?”
She held up a hand in a placating gesture. “I’m not so sure about that. Cillian was born more than a decade before you.”
“Cillian.” Declan said the name like it tasted bad.
“He’s just as innocent in all of this as you are,” Saoirse said in warning.
Ronan let out a rumbling sigh, not saying anything. But I knew what that expulsion of air meant. I knew that he was acquiescing to Saoirse’s words.
“Where does he live?” Ronan asked.
“With his horde in Northern California.”
Declan’s brows pulled together. “About as far as you can get from Rhode Island and still stay in the United States.”
Saoirse released her hold on her bracelet now that the twins had calmed. “I don’t think he has had it easy.”
“Why did you seek him out?” Ronan asked.
“The rumors I heard were of a boy who was incredibly strong, gifted, even as a young one. I figured he wasn’t the biggest fan of your father—”
“Don’t call him that,” Declan snapped. “He’s never been that.”
I reached out, taking Declan’s hand and squeezing hard. I knew that feeling so well. Not wanting to claim a person as a parent when they’d never lived up to the title.
Saoirse nodded slowly, pain lancing her features. “I figured he might not be the biggest fan of Patrick. I was right. He’d like to help.”
Ronan squeezed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure how he can do that when he lives on the other side—”
“He’s here,” Saoirse interrupted.
Colt’s body jerked. “You invited him here without checking with us? This is our home. Our haven. You had no right.”
“Everyone, just take a breath,” I said as calmly as possible. Then I pinned Saoirse with a stare. “You should’ve asked them if they wanted this.”
“I didn’t want to cause them pain if I couldn’t find him or he didn’t agree.”
“I understand that,” I said, gentling my tone. “But you can’t keep things like this to yourself, not with everything going on.”
Saoirse blew out a breath and nodded. “I promise to keep you up to date from now on.”
“Let’s hope to God there are no other bombs like this one,” Declan muttered.
“Well, do you want to meet him, or should we leave him standing down the street in the cold?” Saoirse demanded.
Colt turned to Ronan and Declan. The twins shared a look and then both gave an almost imperceptible nod. Colt pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. A second later, he pressed it to his ear. “Yes, there’s going to be a Cillian…”
“McCarthy,” Saoirse supplied as she tapped out a text message on her own phone.
“A Cillian McCarthy coming to the gate. Please escort him up to the front door.” There was a pause. “Yes. Thank you.”
Colt ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket.
“We should be running our own checks on him first,” Trace grumbled.
Saoirse sent him a scathing look. “Do you think I was born yesterday, boy?”
“I think you were born a couple centuries ago,” he snapped back.
Saoirse smacked him upside the head. “I had my own personal investigator look into him. Cillian is well respected in the supernatural community. He might have a reputation as being ruthless—”
“Ruthless?” I squeaked.
“Only when it’s warranted,” Saoirse assured me.
A shiver of unease skated over my skin, but it was too late. The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Baldwin called from somewhere deep in the house.
“Should we let him answer the door alone?” I asked, panicked.
“There’s a guard escorting Cillian,” Colt reminded me.
Dash nodded. “He’s far too outnumbered to make a move here. He’ll know that.”
“And yet, he came anyway,” Saoirse reminded us. “Outnumbered, in a place that he was cast out of, just to help brothers he’s never even met.”
All of us were appropriately chastised.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, loud and heavy.
I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat.
A shadow cast over the floor, and then a massive man entered the kitchen. I looked up into piercing green eyes and froze. He was even larger than the twins, who dwarfed me by almost a foot. He was a mixture of both Ronan and Declan. Ronan’s dark hair and Declan’s nose and jaw.
There was no arguing he was incredibly handsome, but he didn’t spark that same reaction in me that the other guys did. Maybe it was the coldness that came off him in waves. Maybe it was simply that he wasn’t mine.
It was Colt who made the first move, crossing the kitchen and extending a hand. “Cillian. Welcome to our home. I’m Colt.”
Cillian took his hand in a shake, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, his gaze traveled to the twins, something that looked like pain flashing through his green eyes. Then that gaze zeroed in on me. There was curiosity there as he studied me.
Ronan shifted so that he was standing in front of me, blocking Cillian’s view. “How come we’ve never heard about you?”
Those enchanting green eyes flashed gold, then silver before returning to green. “Pretty sure your father didn’t want anyone to know that he held a woman against her will for over a decade. That he raped her repeatedly and then slit her throat when she was no longer of use to him.”
And just like that, everything went silent.