Chapter 468: Chapter 468

Mason For a second, all I could do was blink. Stella was watching me with a completely calm look on her face. Her eyes stayed steady on mine. They reminded me of Lanie’s. She’d always resembled Xander more, or so I’d thought, but I had to admit I’d allowed my imagination to sway me so I could pretend that instead of looking like my brother, she looked like me.

It was what let me think of her as my own, even though I knew that was impossible.

“You’re joking, right?” I shook my head and got off the bench to pace in front of it. I spun on the heel of my boot to face her, thinking I’d find her laughing. It would be a poor joke, but better for her to show off a terrible sense of humor rather than…

“No,” Stella said. “The Moon Goddess showed me.”

For another half a minute, all I could do was focus on curling my fingers hard against my palm, feeling my nails dig into the meat of my hand. I wanted to punch something, but I settled for carving wounds into my flesh, instead.

“Are you sure?” The words fell from my mouth like stones, one at a time. Plink, plink, plink. They tasted like ashes.

Stella nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

“How!” My voice raised in a shout, but I quickly suppressed it to move closer to her. There were so many staff in this house, I didn’t want anyone to overhear us. “How can you be sure?”

“Abba, you wanting me to be unsure doesn’t make it happen,” my daughter said calmly. She held out her hand and waited for me to take it, then drew me back to the bench so I could sit next to her.

“Did you always know?” I asked her, keeping my voice pitched low. I held her hand and put my other one over it, sandwiching her much smaller hand between mine.

Stella gave me a curious look. Her brow furrowed. “I must have, although it wasn’t until we came here that I really understood what that meant. After all, Abba, we’ve already faced death more than once in my lifetime.”

“But here, you’re supposed to be safe,” I hissed at her.

“Here, we are safe.” Her gaze went far away for a few seconds before she focused on me again.

“But I will be shown my true purpose, and when I’ve fulfilled it, then my time in this world will be done. I’m a Celestial, Abba. Everything I’ve ever learned about my kind is that yes, this is how it’s all supposed to go. Have I always known it? That’s hard for me to answer, since everything the Moon Goddess has shown me over time has been revealed when she decided it was time for me to know it. I am her servant.”

I squeezed her hand and let my head hang for a moment, then looked up at her. “I’ve never been very religious.”

“She doesn’t need you to make offerings or sing her praises,” Stella said softly. “But because I love you, I think you should learn to accept that her will transcends any choices I would make on my own.”

I gave a sharp, barking laugh. “Will that help me accept when my beloved daughter dies because of the whim of a Goddess?”

“It might,” she said.

A thought occurred to me and filled me with a fierce hope. “But you have no idea how long it will take to fulfill that purpose, right? It could be a week, or it could be a hundred years from now.”

A faint smile painted itself over Stella’s lips. “I suppose so. Sure.”

“And, your goal as a Celestial will most certainly be something designed to help people. Right?”

“Yes,” she said, inclining her head to study me. “Of course it will, Abba. I might have to cause harm, but my purpose would never be to bring harm.”

I thought of her facing the High Council. They’d had the chance to back down, but they hadn’t, and so that meant they’d had no chance to stand against her. Stella had been the reason for their deaths, but only because of their own anger and hatred.

“Well,” I said with a note of triumph in my tone, “you said that making friends and being social isn’t worth worrying about. But what if you have centuries left here? Doesn’t it stand to reason that learning more about your pack and the rest of your family isn’t such a bad thing? How do you know that the rest of your life’s mission isn’t to discover what would be best for people here to improve their lives?”

Again, her smooth brow crinkled in thought as she studied me. Her lips pressed together, then parted. I saw a hint of excitement in her eyes that she quickly blinked away.

“You have a point,” Stella said slowly. Begrudgingly. “But there’s no way I’ll be able to do any of that.”

“Of course there is,” I promised. “We just have to think of it.”