Promised in Blood: Chapter 33

Ophelia sits between Xavier and Malachi on the sofa. I lean against the fireplace, and together, we watch Alexandros pace the floor of the den. There was definitely something off about him on our way back to the house, something bigger than what happened to Esme. And it seemed to have something to do with whatever he saw in Bones’s memories. I filled Xavier, Malachi, and Ophelia in on what we found in the woods, and now we’re waiting for the professor to tell us our next move.

“What will happen now?” Ophelia asks.

Alexandros stops pacing and stares at us, his face unreadable. “Osiris will alert President Ollenshaw, and he will call a faculty meeting. But before that, there are things we need to discuss.”

I twist my neck until it cracks, feeling tense and unsure. Whatever it is that he has to tell us doesn’t seem like a good thing, at least from where I’m standing. We wait with bated breath, and I am sure that in all my two hundred years with him, I have never seen him so seemingly lost for words.

“I told you all that I had a family once. Two daughters. But before their birth, I had a son.”

A son? What the fuck? It’s not enough that he kept his family from us for over two hundred years, he couldn’t even come clean all at once? And a son? For some reason, that hits harder, and the bitter flavor of betrayal coats my tongue. Too stunned to speak, I stare at him in silence.

“You had a what?” Xavier asks.

The thick column of his throat works as he swallows. “I had three children. Two daughters and a son.”

“How old was he?” Malachi asks.

“He is seven hundred and sixty-two,” Alexandros answers matter-of-factly.

Back the fuck up. “He is? Not was. Is?”

Alexandros nods, his face a mask of granite.

I growl instinctively. “So you have a son who’s still alive, and you never thought that was worth telling us?”

Xavier snorts. “We’re just the stupid fucks he sired. Haven’t you learned by now that he owes us nothing?”

“Xavier!” Alexandros sighs.

“Please let him explain,” Ophelia says, her eyes brimming with tears.

Oh, hell no. Please don’t tell me she was in on this too. “You knew about this, princess?”

She bites on her lip, her cheeks turning pink with shame, and nods.

“Fuck, Cupcake!” Xavier shakes his head.

Malachi jumps up, his fists balled in anger. “Leave her the fuck alone. It wasn’t her secret to tell.”

I grind my jaw to stop myself from saying anything I may regret. Malachi is right, although that doesn’t make it hurt any less. That she kept such a huge secret from us stings like the cut of a thousand blades. Still, I direct my anger at the professor where it belongs.

“Ophelia found Lucian in my memories when we bonded. I did not consciously choose to tell her about him, but I was unable to stop her from discovering him. And I asked her to let me tell you myself when the time was right.”

Lucian? That’s the name of the professor’s son? His real son. Unlike us, the three idiots who idolize him despite everything.

“The time would have been right four weeks ago when you told us about the rest of your family,” Xavier snaps.

Alexandros shakes his head, his frustration growing more evident. “I had my reasons.”

Xavier sits back in the armchair and huffs. “Yeah, I bet.”

“Xavier,” Ophelia says softly, reaching for his hand, but he shrugs her off.

I glare at my sire. He has a son. A living, breathing son, and he never told us. “I can’t believe you kept this from us. Do we mean anything to you at all?”

Based on the veins bulging in his neck and face, Alexandros’s temper is approaching its boiling point, but I don’t care. I want to push him. Goad him until he explodes because that’s what I feel like doing. And if he comes at me, then I can fight back, and maybe that will make me feel better.

“Why are you telling us this now?” Malachi asks, frowning.

Xavier answers for him. “Probably because the prodigal son has learned his pop bonded with an elementai, and now he wants to come home and try to take what’s ours. Am I right?”

Alexandros’s body is little more than a blur crossing the room, and a split second later, he has Xavier hoisted in the air by his throat. Rage radiates from him like heat from the sun, and I take a step back for fear I’ll burn if I get too close. “I did not tell you about him because up until two weeks ago, I thought he was dead. And before that, you insolent little fuck”—he shakes Xavier, who claws at our sire’s arm for him to let go, but he takes no notice—“I never spoke of him because he destroyed my heart and shattered my soul. He killed his own mother and his little sisters, and he probably did it with a smile on his face. Is that what you wanted to know? Does that satisfy you?”

He throws Xavier onto the sofa and stalks back to his spot on the other side of the room, far away from all of us and, I can only assume, away from the temptation to rip someone’s head off.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Xavier chokes out, rubbing at his throat.

Malachi drops his head and refuses to look at any of us.

I can’t imagine living through that kind of betrayal, and although the words seem hollow now, I murmur my own apology.

Alexandros twists his head from side to side and closes his eyes, visibly regaining his composure. Ophelia goes to him, the only one of us brave enough to comfort him right now. “Does Lucian have anything to do with what happened to Esme?”

He clears his throat. “I believe he is connected to that and to the attack on the witch at Silver Vale.”

Malachi lifts his head, his mouth gaping open. “That’s why there was a trace of your scent?”

Alexandros nods. “Perhaps.”

Xavier stands, his sore throat already forgotten. “What do you think his angle is? I mean, the first attack seemed like an attempt to frame you, but this one was aimed at the Onyx Dragons, right?”

Alexandros blows out a long breath. “I have no idea. Perhaps to cause chaos with the vampire houses. Maybe they hope to destabilize the entire institution of Montridge.”

“Possibly to get closer to Ophelia?” Malachi suggests, and a chill runs down my spine. Lucian is a bloodborne vampire; he’d want her for himself too.

Alexandros nods. “It is possible he is aware of her existence, yes.”

Something the professor said earlier fills me with terror. “But he wants to kill elementai, right? He killed his own mom and sisters?”

“We cannot rule anything out.” He wraps a protective arm around Ophelia’s shoulder before pressing a kiss on top of her head. “I will never let him hurt you, agápi mou.”

She nestles her cheek against his chest and brushes a stray tear from her cheek.

Xavier snarls. “None of us will let him hurt you, Cupcake.”

I couldn’t agree more. Just give me an excuse to rip Lucian’s head off his shoulders, and I’m there. “So what do we do now?”

Alexandros stares at me, his dark eyes boring into my soul. I want to look away, but I can’t. It’s ridiculous, but I always felt special, thinking of myself as his first son. But now I realize I’m not even his son at all, and that hurts like a knife to the heart. “I believe that, as the threat toward Ophelia grows, it would be in our best interests to curate some allies,” he says.

Malachi blinks. “Allies?”

“People whom we can trust to learn of Ophelia’s identity and protect her secret.”

“And you think such people exist?” I ask.

“Enora and Osiris,” Ophelia answers for him.

He drops a kiss on her head. “Yes, little one.”

“I think we should tell Cadence and Sienna too.”

The fuck we will. “No, princess.” I growl a warning.

She untangles herself from his arms and steps into mine, and despite the raft of negative emotions still hurtling through my body, some of which are unfairly directed at her, I soften for her immediately. “They’re my friends, Axl, and I trust them.”

I bury my face in her hair, inhaling her comforting scent.

She plays you like a fiddle, you know that, right? Xavier says.

“I heard that, Xavier,” she huffs.

He laughs darkly. “I know, Cupcake.”

I glance over her head at Alexandros. No matter how pissed I am at him, I still seek his reassurance, and he offers it with a single nod. “I guess we tell them our girl’s an elementai then, huh?”

She melts into me, her body molding into the shape of mine like she’s a part of me. And I think she always has been a part of me—a part of us—and I have spent the last two hundred and forty-seven years simply waiting for her.