Sighing, I lifted myself up a bit better, so I wasn’t lying down anymore, and Darius gave me a stern look. We were meant to be enemies, and yet here we were sitting extremely close to one another, and I could feel his eyes read me deeply.
“I think I shall go to bed and read the rest of the letter in the morning. Darius, you are welcome to take the other guest room if you wish.”
“That’s very kind of you Hayley, but I will take my leave. I will return later today if that is ok with you?”
Nodding in agreement, Darius took my hand and kissed it lightly before getting up and heading out the room and the front door shut behind him as he left quickly. I still had many questions and so many things I needed to know. Eric sat down at my feet and lifted my legs onto his lap as he stared outwards into nothing, rubbing the bottom of my feet.
“I don’t like him.” He said, breaking the silence.
“You don’t like any man that isn’t you or isn’t being ordered by you.”
“No Hayley, that’s not it at all. If your mother and him were, for lack of a better word, family, why are you only finding out about him now? He was born when she was sixteen, and your mother died at what? Age forty-five? Which means he would be around twenty-nine years old, and she had you when she was, I think twenty-six? So, she had maybe fifteen years, maybe more to tell you of his existence, and she never once mentioned him? Did your father even know about him?”
“You are asking me questions I don’t know the answer to, and until I read the rest of the letter I won’t know. But for now, I am going to bed, as should you, and we will discuss the rest of this in the morning.”
I could feel the tension in the air and wished for it to disappear. I knew he meant well, he always did but he wanted answers to things we may never fully know or understand.
“I will stay up, keep watch just in case.”
“Suit yourself, but I am going to sleep. Wake me in a few hours."
10
As the door shut behind me and I kicked off my shoes, I slumped onto my bed and felt as if the weight of the world was truly on my shoulders.
How could my mother have known about a hybrid, and not mentioned it to anyone? Not even my father? This was unacceptable, and I didn’t know how I was going to forgive my mother for keeping this secret.
Granted, she was long gone, but I still felt the resentment of deceit and that wasn’t ok. Lying down with my legs dangling off the edge of the bed, I stared up at my ceiling as my brain processed the information.
My first thought was to call Jackson and ask him to gather up as much information as he could about hybrids, but I didn’t want to drag him into something else. Was this something? Did my mother keep this secret so well guarded because of something else?
Getting up quickly, I threw my bedroom door open and headed back towards the kitchen, passing Eric with faster than human speed. I grabbed the letter off the counter before heading back to my room. Eric, thankfully being as human as they come, didn’t notice, or hear me.
Sitting at my desk and switching on the small table lamp, I took a deep breath and took the wrinkled pages back out of the envelope. The paper daring me to continue reading and this time, I wasn’t going to ‘faint’ or get overwhelmed. Skimming to where I left off, I quieted my mind, and prepared myself for the truth…
For the first few years, I was able to keep Darius hidden using some spells Serena had created in preparation for her son’s birth, and for the most part it worked. I may have only been a teen but as part of the founding family, I knew all the hiding places and ways to keep Darius hidden from your grandparents.
It was a challenge, raising a baby and I did have to eventually come clean and ask for help from one of our maids, Jennifer. She had been with us since I was born, and I knew I could trust her with this secret.
She kindly took Darius in as I was incapable of truly looking after a child and, your grandfather was starting to grow suspicious as my studies were slacking as was my training. If he had found out about Darius, he would have killed him, and I couldn’t have that happen. Jennifer retired shortly after taking him home, claiming he was her grandchild and was left for her to raise when his mother died, not fully the truth but an easy lie to keep going.
I would visit from time to time but once your father and I were engaged, my visits became less and less. You see, Darius would grow so quickly, I remember around his fourth birthday, he didn’t look four but that of a young child, I remember thinking he looked around ten or eleven.
I researched a lot about hybrids when he was born, and as you well know, they aren’t common, more of a myth. I’m sure by now you want to know about them yourself. If you head to my office, under the fourth floorboard to the left of my desk, you will find a hidden panel, under there is a key to a secret compartment in my desk. It’s in the third drawer down on the right, you will find all the information I gathered, including more on Darius, as I’m sure you have been hunting yourself, but came up empty handed.
Pausing for a moment, I relaxed my shoulders, it was as if I could hear my mother’s voice as I read through her letter.I missed her terribly, and it ached my very soul…
I know you are angry with me by now, for keeping such a big thing like that a secret from you, and I’m sorry for that, my sweet pea. I wished terribly for you to get out of this life, and I had hoped you’d have been brought up normally, but alas I knew the day that Angelique White arrived in RavenBlack and began her war against the alpha, Louis, that things were going to turn a dreadful and ugly way. I had asked your father if we could take you away, but he reminded me of my duty as leader and thus, we stayed. Clearly, that cost me my life.
Please trust Darius, he has been a part of your life for a long time even when you didn’t know. He ages differently, remember that, so to you he appears near your age, but he isn’t. He’s a bit older. Not too old of course. He’s kind, an incredible fighter, and a witch, just like his mother. I have no idea who his father was, as Serena would never give up that information, and even during all my research, I was unable to find any clues.
I believe Darius may have given you a necklace, it has a star with an arrow running through the middle of it. Please always keep this on you, it protects you from any mental and physical magical attacks from Angelique’s witch minions.
It’s something Serena was working on a long time ago, and I had one of the elders in secret finish the spell. Whatever you do though, do not let Sophia or Angelique get a hold of it! It is very important and must always be protected.
Putting the letter down, I felt as if my brain had been overcome by an information dump, as if I was sitting in a classroom trying to cram for a test, and still cheating off Jackson. Rubbing my temples, I felt a large sigh leave my lungs as my mother’s words ran through my mind again and again.
Trust Darius? And, that necklace was actually important? I needed to sleep but there was no chance I was going to be able to close my eyes. Glancing over at the clock on my wall as it ticked away, it wasn’t even ten in the morning and all I could think about was I needed a drink.