Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
But where she acknowledged that the loss still hurt, she knew he never would. “I’m glad you found your family. They obviously came for you.”
A slow lowering of his lashes, and when he raised them back up, his eyes were obsidian, eerie and lovely. “I was fourteen when I started to question the improbability of my grandmother losing one of her children, much less one of her grandchildren.
“If you knew her, Lei, you’d know that Ena Mercant never loses track of one of her own. The one time anything like that happened, she wasn’t responsible for the child, and she still had that child under her care in a matter of months.”
A frown. “But you said your mother was a security specialist, good with computronics.”
“Not good enough to escape the reach of my grandmother—the Mercant network would’ve been scanning constantly for her DNA, would’ve tagged her one of the many times she ended up in jail for low-level possession. They always take DNA during booking, add it to the main system.”
“Wait, wait.” Soleil held up a hand. “Where were you while she served her jail terms?”
“The terms were short and she wasn’t so deep into her addiction to the crystal flower by then—she managed to make arrangements with some trustworthy street people.”
Soleil covered her mouth with her hand but didn’t interrupt. He understood her shock. Now that he was an adult, he could hardly imagine the scenario in which a mother would leave a vulnerable child with other junkies. He had to have been younger than three the first time around.
“No Mercant would ever make that choice,” he said. “It’s just not in their bloodline. I knew that, like I knew they’d never have lost track of me. So I went looking for the truth even though I didn’t want to find it. I wanted to be a Mercant more than anything, part of a family that is as much a pack as DarkRiver or StoneWater.”
He could still remember that day, every cold second of it. “I broke into closed medical records, confirmed that I have no Mercant DNA. None. It was another one of my mother’s grandiose lies.”
Soleil searched his face. “What happened?”
“I was so angry. My Silence has always been less than perfect due to my mother’s drug habit and how it impacted me in the womb. She also gave me small doses when I was a boy.”
“A heart full of fire,” Soleil whispered, spreading her fingers over that heart. “You told me in a dream. I saw it.”
He nodded, left it at that for now. He’d save the worst of it for last. “I confronted Grandmother and asked her why she’d lied.”
“What did she say?”
“That day,” he said, “for the first time, I came face-to-face not with my grandmother, but with Ena Mercant, the woman who scares powerful people in the PsyNet.” Her focus had been pure, her will granite.
“She told me that a small boy looked her in the eye and told her he was a Mercant. That boy, she said, had more courage in his bones than the grown men more than twice his size who’d escorted him to the meeting with her—and who couldn’t meet her gaze.”
A memory of a slender hand gripping the back of his neck, the hold not the least painful—but unbreakable in its sheer intensity. “Blood, she said, wasn’t the only way to be a Mercant.”
Then he spoke the rest of the words she’d said to him, the words carved on another part of his skin. “‘We are who we are because we treasure courage, treasure strength. Many of our best and brightest have come from outside the bloodline. You are a Mercant, Ivan. Never again say that you’re not—not unless you wish to deal with me.’”
He could hear each word in her voice, steely and cool and resolute. “Then she pulled me to her in an embrace I could’ve never expected—Grandmother doesn’t do physical contact. But that day, she held me above the crashing waves of the sea and she said, ‘You are one of mine, Ivan Mercant. Now and always.’”
Soleil’s eyes were no longer human. “I love her already.”
“I think the feeling will be mutual.” Soleil might be a healer, but she had within her the same fierce steel when it came to protecting her people.
“When can I meet her?” Soleil raised an eyebrow. “And yes, I’m asking to be introduced to your family.”
His gut clenched at the idea of a thing he’d never expected, never thought he’d deserve.
You deserve joy, Ivan. Hold on to her, on to the spark of joy inside your heart.
His desire to believe Arwen, to give Soleil what she wanted, was a violence inside him. But he hadn’t told her the whole truth yet, had saved the worst horror for last. And that horror didn’t permit happiness. Not now that it was awake.