I am your family, Jacques comforted her gently, his chin rubbing lovingly over the top of her head.
He was the young man in the second photograph Wallace and Smith showed me. I know he was. Shea laid her head wearily against his chest. I felt such wrenching pain when I saw the photograph.
I am sorry, Shea. So much has happened. You need time to absorb all this.
Puzzled by her obvious distress, Mikhail glanced at Gregori, who shrugged his broad shoulders rather elegantly.
“What of Rand, his father?” Jacques voiced the question for Shea, although the name sent pain splintering through his head, evoked a black, empty hole where memory should have been.
“Rand went to ground for a quarter of a century. He rose last year, but he keeps to himself. He sleeps most of the time,” Mikhail answered.
Shea’s fingers curled in Jacques’. “He did not raise his own son?”
When Mikhail shook his head, Shea swallowed the hard knot of protest blocking her throat and glanced accusingly at Jacques. Children and the women who live with them seem to be left alone rather easily by your race.
We are not Rand and Maggie. Jacques stated it firmly.
Shea bit her lip as she studied Mikhail. “What does ‘go to ground’ mean?”
“Carpathians rejuvenate in the soil,” Gregori explained, watching her closely. “The human sleep does not allow quick healing or real rest. We may go through human practices—showering, dressing, all the little habits to protect what we are, although there is no real need—but we sleep the sleep of Carpathians. The earth heals and protects us during our most vulnerable hours when the sun is high.”
Shea was shaking her head in denial, a hand going to her throat in a curiously defenseless gesture. Her eyes met Jacques in helpless fear. I cannot. You know I cannot.
It is all right. Neither would I welcome another burial. And it was true. Jacques had begun to suffocate, to associate the deep earth with pain and torment. I would not force such a decision on you.
Raven settled against Mikhail’s shoulder. “I sleep above ground in a very comfortable bed. Well, the bedroom is situated below ground, but it’s a beautiful room. You’ll have to come see it sometime. I don’t like to sleep in the ground. I was human, Shea, like you. If feels too much like being buried alive.”
“Rand is my father,” Shea admitted suddenly.
There was a stark silence in the room. Even the wind stopped, as if nature itself was holding its breath. Mikhail moved then, seemed to flow from the chair, his power unmistakable. His black eyes covered every inch of her. Gregori?
If this is true, Mikhail, Rand has done what was thought impossible. Unless…
Mikhail caught the thought. Gregori suspected that Shea’s mother was Rand’s true lifemate. “What you are saying is of tremendous importance to our race, Shea. Your mother is human?”
“Was. My mother committed suicide eight years ago. She couldn’t face life without Rand.” Her chin lifted defiantly. “She was so obsessed with him, she didn’t have anything left over for her child.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if she hadn’t suffered, hadn’t been alone all her life.
“Did he convert her?” Mikhail asked, furious at the unknown woman for neglecting her child, a female child at that. At the very least the woman should have brought the baby to the Carpathians to raise. “Was she Carpathian?”
“No, she wasn’t like you, not even like me. She was definitely human. She was beautiful, Irish, and completely withdrawn from the real world most of the time. I knew about Rand and Noelle through my mother’s diary.”
“Did your mother have any psychic talent?” Gregori asked thoughtfully.
Raven glanced up at Mikhail. She had psychic ability. Shea’s answer was extremely important to the future of their race. She would provide the proof of what they had long suspected, long hoped.
Shea’s teeth bit at her lip. “She knew things before they happened. She would know the phone was going to ring or that someone was about to stop by. You have to understand, though, she rarely spoke. She would forget about me for days, even weeks at a time, so I didn’t know much about her. She didn’t exactly share lots of information with me.”