“What’s wrong?” Issan asks softly, reaching for me, his hand curling around my upper arm. “You are never interrupting me. You are always wanted.”
I sink into his arms and he pulls me into the room, shutting the door as I break into tears. The flood banks open and I can’t stop crying as I take it all in, as I remember my father and the last time I saw him. He would always hug me, tell me he loved me and tell me how proud he was that his daughter was attending the academy to be a ranger. He loved me so much, and he must have known I wasn’t his daughter in blood. My mother, Gods, she kept the secret from me. They both did. I trusted them, mourn them every day, and now I’m not sure of anything. Onyx is my brother, and it’s so fucked up.
Issan just holds me and he doesn’t ask questions. He knows I don’t need that right now. I just need him there. He holds me tight for a long time before I break away shakily, wiping my tears from my wet face. I must look a mess, and he still stares at me like I’m his world. Issan has always looked at me like that, and I’ve never once accepted it as the truth. Issan is my mate. Onyx is my brother. Paavo Nieminen is my father. This is the truth.
Issan gets me a box of tissues and sits on the end of the bed next to me and just waits while I clean myself up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”
“No, don’t be sorry. You can come to me anytime. I’m your mate. Anytime, Annie,” he firmly reminds me. “You don’t even have to tell me why you’re upset. But if someone’s hurt you?—”
“No one’s hurt me.” I clear my throat. I don’t want him to be all protective and possessive. Mates can be like that. I realise with a shock, I’d be the same if anyone tried to hurt him. “Onyx is my half-brother. He’s just told me. I don’t think he intended to tell me today. It’s just that our conversation went a certain way, and it probably felt like the right moment.”
He looks shocked, his eyebrows raising. “How do you feel about that?”
“My first instinct was—good. I don’t have any family left. No one. But I have him. I have a brother. He’s actually a goodperson, a good man. I’ve known him my entire life in one way or another, seen him nearly die for his mate and never judge her. He’s a good person and I should be happy to learn I have family now. I know that I can actually see that. It’s not a bad thing to have him as a brother.” I pause. “I guess that’s not really my problem. It’s who my father was. You didn’t know Paavo Nieminen, but he was the alpha of Starlight City and he did terrible things, including sending Vian to kill my parents. He killed my mother, the woman who had his child. I saw him afterwards in Starlight, and there was no guilt on his face. He acted like my father then, just stepped into the space of the parents he killed as if it was owed to him. I wish I knew so I could tell him to fuck off.”
“I’m sure he can hear you now if you want to shout it,” Issan softly suggests.
My lips twitch. “I’ll give it a go later.”
“If it helps—I relate to that problem a lot. My father is…well…”
I almost forgot for a minute that Issan understands completely. “Okay, you definitely win the terrible father competition between us.” I almost smile.
“Annie, it’s easy to sit there and think that because one of your parents turned out a certain way, you’re definitely going to be like them. It’s easy to think the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But the apple definitely can fall far from the tree. A gust of wind can blow it miles. It could be on top of a hill, and when the apple falls, it rolls and rolls and rolls until the tree is long forgotten. I definitely think that happened for both of us.” He looks at me softly. “I don’t remember too much about my mother. But what I do remember—she was good. What about yours?”
“She loved me. My mother loved me. So did the man I thought was my father. He loved me too. They were goodparents. There was nothing abnormal about them, except for the fact that they had money.” I sigh. “It feels like a lot of my life, people just kept secrets from me to protect me. First, Kosma, and that didn’t end well, did it? He made decisions that were bad and ended up dead.”
The look we share says everything. I’m scared of losing him too. I never want to feel the death of a mate again. It felt like I died that day, like my heart was cut to shreds, and I don’t know how I kept moving. I suspect I kept going because my Nexus and my soul knew Issan was out there and waiting for me. I was never alone, never meant to have just one mate, and I could have a future. “Yes, you may never understand Kosma—none of us could understand those actions and lies told to you—but I do think he did it to protect you in the end. He saved you in the end. For that, I’ll always be thankful to him.” He takes my hand gently. “Annie, perhaps you don’t need to think about all of that. You haven’t lost a father you were biologically related to. Perhaps you can just accept that you have a brother, be happy about that, and leave everything else behind.” He looks at me steadily. “This war is going to come to an end, one way or the other. I’m going to protect you. I promise you that. I’ll protect you because I love you. I am in love with you. I want you happy, and I think having family is a very important part of that happiness.”
He leans in, brushing his lips against mine gently, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Onyx is a good brother to have. I imagine he feels alone too.”
I guess he does. He lost his family, too.
“How about we make a deal? Me and you—no secrets, no protecting each other from things. We tell each other. We come to each other when there are problems. We fight for each other and for the world we want,” I ask Issan. “I will work on myrelationship with Onyx, and we will continue to fight for a future.”
“I will work on my relationship with my half-brother too. Severi…we need to do better,” Issan offers. “And the deal? It already stands for me. No secrets and no hiding.”
My heart pats hard in my chest. “We can do this and compare bonding with family notes. I think Severi is probably going to be a little harder to bond with than Onyx.”
“Probably. You’re definitely going to win.” Issan smiles at me. By the twin Gods, he is handsome when he smiles.
I think about all these months. I’ve been worried out of my mind for Gwen. I’ve been trying to pick up the pieces here, looking after Franklin, helping find any of her mates with any clues for her. Issan has been at my side through all of it, helping, doing everything he can. He’s never wavered from my side, and he is my mate. Maybe he is exactly what I’ve always been looking for.
I search his eyes and then lean forward and kiss him. Not a brief kiss—a deep one, sinking my hands into his hair. He groans, pulling me tight against him, but then he pulls back, and it’s his turn to search my eyes. What he finds there has him rolling us back onto the bed, covering my body with his. He smiles down at me, making little tingles shoot through my body.
“I love you too, Issan. I think you were everything I was looking for. I was just far too scared to ask for us.”
“Forever, Annie. I want it all with you. Every difficult conversation, every fight and make up. I want us, the messy and the good. All of us, because we never give up,” he murmurs against my lips.
“We never give up,” I agree with my whole heart. My Nexus bursts with joy as he kisses me again, and I gasp—just as an explosion rings out. A bang echoes from outside the room, and I slam my hands over my ears as the city rocks.
Chapter
Eleven
We just get back to the apartment when an explosion ricochets through the rooms, the sound making my ears ring as I clamp my hands over them. Nibbles cries next to me, curling up at my side and whining at the noise, and I lower one of my hands to hold her against my side. Finn rushes straight to me from the kitchen, leaving the waffles he was about to make behind. He only seems to care about me, not the noise that the explosion is making that is like an endless scream. He picks me up, holding me to him and taking Nibbles’s collar to keep her close to us as I cover my other ear. “What the fuck is that noise?” I shout at Finn.
“No fucking idea,” he shouts back. When it finally stops, there is an unnatural silence that echoes across the city, like every car has stopped, every child has decided to not laugh, and no adults are talking. Not a bird chirps, not a single noise…until it starts. Alarms and screams of terror ring out across the city in a blast of noise, and I breathlessly look at Finn. He nods and immediately gets up, grabbing my Nex dagger and handing it tome. I slip it into the band of my leggings at my back as we both head to the door.