Chapter 12 #2
“When I said my parents would express concern about my reputation, I wasn’t talking about you.
” His free hand hovered for a moment, then settled, featherlight, on her face.
He cupped her cheek, directing her dazed attention away from their now-interlaced fingers and back to his intent stare.
“I was referring to my participation in an extremely public brawl. With a troll roughly twice my size, whom I subdued via an unsporting and merciless kick to his genitals.”
That might be true as far as it went, but—“I’m sure they’ll also have opinions about your involvement with an underpowered oracle from the Zone.”
If Councilor Goodling’s reaction was any indication, they’d dispatch a very classy raven-bedecked SWAT team to remove her from their son’s exalted presence, stat.
Especially if they saw how closely she and Hugh were sitting now.
How linked their bodies had become, even if every spot of connection could still be considered innocent.
Her desires weren’t innocent, though. And given the molten heat in his gaze, she was beginning to wonder whether his thoughts had stolen down the same shadowy, pleasure-drenched lanes as hers.
“If they do, that’s their concern. Not mine.” His thumb slowly slid over her cheek, and she leaned into the tender touch. “Not yours either, Gwen. Trust me.”
As if she had any other choice, despite their history together.
He might prefer to look before he leapt, but he’d still jumped for her. Repeatedly. And when he wasn’t risking his life and reputation based on her notoriously unreliable word, he’d been trying to care for her as best he could. Even though he had no idea she was pregnant.
Gods, what was he going to think about her pregnancy?
“I do trust you,” she whispered, and that foolish admission was only one of countless reasons she was terrified out of her mind. “Hugh, I…”
No. Now wasn’t the time. If they survived their mission, she’d tell him about the baby then.
Her tiny headshake settled her cheek more firmly into his palm. “Never mind.”
“What about your family?” His eyes searched hers. “What do you intend to tell them about what’s happening?”
A demon in close contact with his own family might not understand her situation, but she supposed she could try to explain regardless.
“I love my family,” she told him. “I want to be clear about that.”
His gaze sharpened on her. “And they love you back, I would hope?”
He’d caught that omission, huh?
“In their way, yes.” A very distant and bewildered way, full of unexpressed disappointment, sure, but what family was perfect?
“You have to understand, Hugh. I was born well before the Battle for Containment and the grand entrance of Supernatural and Enhanced humans onto the world stage. Common humans didn’t realize that the genetic lottery could bring them an Enhanced child, however rarely.
I didn’t even know I was an oracle until elementary school, when the usual dragnet gathered me up. ”
Before the Battle for Containment, Enhanced kids had understandably puzzled or alarmed common human parents, who didn’t comprehend or necessarily believe in their children’s growing powers.
In response to that issue, and in one of the few pre-SERC examples of cooperation among different Enhanced adult communities, a plan to locate and support those children had been created back in the eighties.
Trusted witches would visit elementary schools disguised as motivational speakers and/or crime-fighting dogs in trench coats.
In between exhorting the student body to resist drugs and narc on their peers and playing some extremely awkward basketball in the school gym, the witches would cast spells to detect any Enhanced children and classify their talents.
And once those children had been given an official Enhanced designation, they’d receive invitations to various prestigious, all-expenses-paid, year-round boarding schools for “gifted” students, each of which secretly aligned with a certain power.
Gwen’s parents had been startled, to the say the least, to hear of her supposed genius. “We had no idea you were so smart, Gwennie,” they’d told her in pleased bafflement, then gladly packed up her few belongings and sent her to Delphi Academy in Atlanta.
Even at the best of times, her mom and dad could barely scrape together enough money to feed their large family. In their view, her departure to Delphi was a total win-win situation: one less mouth to feed for them, a brighter future for her.
At the academy, she’d first experienced comfortable warmth in winter and a full belly.
She’d discovered and practiced her own oracular power.
She’d been introduced to the Supernatural and Enhanced world.
But with all that privilege had come significant drawbacks: her loneliness and isolation in such a power-obsessed institution.
And, of course, her newfound distance—both literal and figurative—from her family.
“I grew up in western Maryland,” she told Hugh.
“Once I moved to Atlanta and began attending Delphi Academy, my parents couldn’t afford to bring me back often, so it was hard to stay close to everyone.
Especially given all the secrecy. Until the Battle for Containment, when I was fourteen, I wasn’t even allowed to tell them the truth about my own power. ”
His forefinger smoothed a wisp of hair back from her temple, and the careful tenderness of his touch drenched something long parched inside her heart. “Did you move back with them after graduation?”
“For a year.” The most miserable year of her life. “But I couldn’t pull my weight financially, and it was…challenging…to be the only openly Enhanced human in my hometown.”