Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Fingers brushing her hair as Jeffrey raised his free hand to caress her downbent head. “I’m sorry.” Rough words. “For so much, Ellie. But most of all, for making you believe you didn’t have a father when you’d already lost everything.”
Never, in all her adult life, had she believed that Jeffrey would apologize to her, much less with such heartfelt grief and sorrow. Maybe it was the medication. Maybe he’d return to being an asshole tomorrow, but at this moment, she felt something toxic that had been clawing at her heart for too long break away, setting her free.
“Slater was attracted to the house because of me,” she said, raising her tearstained face to look him in the eye. “I know you blamed me for it.”
“I blamed myself. Because your blood is mine.” He clenched his jaw. “My mother was hunter-born. That’s where you get it from. I always knew the fault was mine. I saw my mother be murdered and still I went ahead and married and had babies, creating more vulnerable people for the vampires to brutalize.”
When he met her gaze this time, it was with the face of the hard-eyed father she’d come to know. “I never blamed you, Ellie. Do you know what I see when I look at you? A living indictment of my failure. I’m the reason you exist in this world, I’m the reason you live a life surrounded by vampires and blood, and I’m the reason you had to watch your sisters die. It all comes from my bloodline.”
Elena was no longer so sure this was post-surgery meds talking. That had sounded very much like her father. “You know about Mama’s parentage now. One of her parents was a vampire. If your bloodline is to blame, then so is hers.” She shook her head when he would’ve parted his lips to reply. “I know you don’t blame Mama for any of it, but it doesn’t work that way. I’m made of both of you.”
“You’re wrong, Ellie.” Harsh words. “I do blame her. For leaving me. For leaving us. We could’ve made it but she never gave us the chance.” His jaw worked. “We could’ve made it.” The anger in his voice wasn’t the coldness she’d heard so often over the years—this was red-hot and raw and passionate.
He squeezed her hand with more power than he should’ve had. “I hate her a little bit for that. And I love her endlessly.” A moment of searing eye contact. “You’re like me that way, do you know that? You love with as much devotion, and that kind of love? It’ll destroy you if it’s in any way betrayed. She killed me when she killed herself. All that remained was a shell.”
“No,” Elena gritted out, their hands still linked.
Father and daughter.
Survivor to survivor.
Anger against anger.
“You don’t get to cop out like that.” She refused to break eye contact. “You made choices along the way, including the choice to let me think that there was something wrong with me, that my papa had stopped loving me.”
Jeffrey flinched, but his color stayed high, his eyes bright—as if his anger had brought him to life. “You’re right. It’s easier to be angry with Marguerite than to confront how badly I screwed up.”
His chest rose and fell in quick, fast breaths. “I’m so proud of you, Ellie. For always being your own person, for fighting for Eve when she was too small to fight me herself, and for standing up for what you believe in—even if that meant telling me I was an ass.”
Elena’s chest compressed and compressed, until she couldn’t breathe. “How medicated are you?” she managed to get out.
Her father’s laugh was ragged, without humor. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me, but facing death up close and personal has made one thing clear to me: I don’t want to die with us broken. With my Ellie so far from me that Marguerite would be ashamed of me both as a man and as a father.”
A sigh, his eyes fluttering. “Damn,” he said, and then his eyes closed.
Elena’s heart jolted, but the machines stayed stable, didn’t send out any alarms. She got the closest doctor anyway, told him what had happened. After checking over her father, the gray-haired man said, “He’s more stable than he was a few hours ago. Excellent news.”
He patted her on the shoulder, accidentally grazing the inner curve of her wing. An extremely sensitive part of an angel’s anatomy, any touch there was normally limited to lovers and other intimates—and healers. This healer, she thought, had meant only to give comfort. “The way he fell asleep?”
“You have to remember that his body has suffered a massive insult.” The doctor made a notation on Jeffrey’s chart. “When he wakes, he might not even remember that you two spoke.”