“So, who is Bruce and what does he want with me?” I asked, breaking the silence. Dalton’s eyes were fixed on the road, but I could tell that he was apprehensive around me, and he had every reason to be. Still, it was strange to know I had the power to make him feel unsettled, considering he had the ability to turn into one of the most powerful creatures in the world. I felt confidence surging through me. It was a good feeling, and one I thought I could get quite used to.
“Bruce is…I suppose you’d call him an old friend,” Dalton replied.
“Some kind of friend,” I muttered.
“It’s complicated and it goes back a long way,” he began, but I held up my hand and cut him off straight away.
“I’m not going to go with you if you’re going to be evasive. You don’t have to tell me everything, but you have to tell me enough to keep me around. If you were the only one here, I wouldn’t be here right now. At least Rick told me about my parents.”
“Did he show you the picture?” Dalton asked evenly.
“Yes he did, and that’s another thing. How the hell do you know my parents?”
“Our…society has been separate from the world for a long time, but knowledge of our kind has still bled through and some people have been more curious than others. Your parents were such people. They sought us out and they actually managed to find us, which is no mean feat. They found a home with us, a place where they finally belonged. If you don’t believe me you can ask them yourself soon enough.”
I folded my arms across my chest. I still wasn’t even sure if I wanted to see them again, now that I learned they were right all along.
“You could have told me you knew them. I feel like such an idiot for talking about all these different things, and all the while you’ve seen them more recently than I have.”
“I never intended to keep these things secret from you. I just wanted to know how you felt about them, and once you told me that you still resented them, I didn’t think it was the best time to tell you the truth. I wanted to explain to you properly.”
“You should have just told me. Instead, I knew you were hiding something, and you should have known I wasn’t going to stick around for that, not after what I’ve been through. I opened up to you Dalton. I was more honest with you than I have been with anyone else, and you threw it back in my face!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking admonished, “I should have been more up front with you, but you have to understand that from a young age I was taught to keep my secret no matter what. It’s part of our culture to keep ourselves hidden because we know how people are going to react. Being honest about this stuff doesn’t come easily for me. I wish it did, because I never wanted to mess things up between us.”
He seemed genuine, which I appreciated, and my icy mood melted a little.
“If you’re taught to stay so hidden, then why are you in the city in the fir
st place? Did my parents send you after me?”
“In a way…but it’s not what you think. It ties in with what Bruce was doing there.”
“Which was…?” I looked at him expectantly, when he didn’t immediately continue. He sighed and flexed his fingers across the steering wheel. I didn’t care if it was difficult for him to tell me the truth. I was going to get it from him one way or another. He owed it to me.
“My people have separated into different prides all over the world, but over the years my particular pride has grown ever more isolated and there’s a problem with genetic diversity. There just aren’t enough of us to keep the population viable. We need new blood, but it’s not easy to bring new people in. Sadly, there is a lot of enmity between different prides so we can’t go that route, and revealing ourselves to pureblood humans is a risk, because they aren’t always as safe with our secrets as we’d like.” I got the sense that he was speaking from experience, but I didn’t interrupt him to pry because I wanted him to tell me everything he could. “Then your parents came along and they said that their daughter was open-minded enough to be welcomed into our pride. They told us that they had taught you about our culture and they believed that you would be excited to see what we had to offer. They also might have intimated that you didn’t belong in that world, although after what you told me about them, I think they might have been projecting their own feelings about the world on you.
They wanted me and Rick to come and find you, to see if you would be willing to come back with us and potentially help us out. We were never going to take you away without your consent, but Bruce had other ideas. In your culture he might be called a patriot. He was eager to bring you back and be the savior of our race. He couldn’t bear to be left behind by us, so when he learned that your parents had volunteered you for this mission, he did his best to get to you before us. Thankfully, whether you believe it was fate or merely coincidence, you found us first.”
“That’s why you spent so long looking at my ID,” I said, the jigsaw pieces all clicking into place. Dalton nodded.
“We kept an eye on you and weren’t entirely sure how to proceed. We couldn’t let any harm come to you, but we managed to scare off the man who was trying to attack you.”
“You turned into a lion then, didn’t you.”
Dalton smirked. “I did. The mere appearance was enough to scare him away.”
“Weren’t you afraid that he’d tell the truth?”
“While we’re secretive, we are not foolish. Nobody would have believed him, and he probably won’t believe himself, given the amount of alcohol he had consumed. The memory will no doubt be just a blur and it’s not as if he learned anything specific about our culture. But I want you to know that growing closer to you was not just a mission for me. I genuinely enjoyed getting to know you. I never feigned any of my affection or passion. I regret deeply that I didn’t tell you all of this before, but I didn’t know where to begin. I wish I had done, though. I wish I had told you everything because the pain I have endured since you told me it was over has been almost too much to bear.”
“Dalton, don’t, please,” I said, raising a hand. “I don’t know how I’m going to cope with this. I don’t know if I can go back to the way things were. I don’t even know if I can trust you again. I need time to process everything. This is a lot to take in and I can’t deal with whatever has happened between you and me, right now. Please respect that.”
“Okay,” he said, and he fixed his gaze on the road ahead. We sat in silence. My mind was riddled with thoughts, least of which were focused on Dalton. I was more concerned with the fact my parents had suggested I would make a good candidate to be a mother to these lions. I didn’t know what they were thinking, but once again they had their own ideas for my life and didn’t seem to care about whatever I wanted.
Rick was quiet in the back seat, sleeping to heal his wounds. My gaze naturally drifted towards Dalton, although I flicked my eyes away whenever I threatened to catch his gaze. I hadn’t expected to be in such close proximity with him again, and now that I was, all the intense attraction came back in full force. When I caught his scent in the air, it was as though we were naked again, our bodies writhing together, but my heart was not as buoyant as it had been before. Dalton had lied to me, and even though he had his reasons, I wasn’t sure I could forgive him for that. On the other hand, Rick had been honest with me and had defended me. I felt that I could count on him.
I looked out of the window at the dark forests going by. The night sky glittered with stars. It was a beautiful sight, but somewhere out there, a lion was prowling and hunting, wanting me for himself, and he definitely wouldn’t have been as kind as Dalton and Rick. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when we reached their home. I had no idea if I could be the woman they hoped I would be, but to my surprise I wasn’t immediately repelled by the thought. I leaned back in the passenger seat and watched the world passing by. It blurred into one long canvas. I’d never been out of the city before and I began to think of my parents and what they must have felt when they had begun their journey in search of Dalton’s people.