The Beast And The Blessed by Ashley Breanne
Chapter 92
Natalie’s P.O.V.
“You seem disturbed.” Aurora’s soft voice called out, and I glanced over at her with a forced smile.
I trained for hours with Tobias, exhausting myself as I learned new ways to fight against vampires and avoid getting bitten. He still wouldn’t talk to me, and I refused to pressure him into it. Whatever his reasons were, they were none of my business.
His silence only seemed to make him all the more terrifying.
I closed the book I was studying as she approached me. She sat in the armchair to my left, staring into the fire.
“My people are about to go to war tomorrow. Many will die. That should disturb anyone.” My eyes raked over her features as I still failed to locate any apparent similarities between us. Even though Joslin never had the chance to test my blood with the council arriving, I knew Aurora was being truthful about our connection, but it was still unsettling.
“Yes, I suppose you are correct.” She sounded distracted, and I waited patiently for her to tell me why she had sought me out. I had my own questions, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I would be getting my answers from her sooner or later. “I’m afraid that I won’t be much help tomorrow.”
My eyes narrowed when the sudden fear of her leaving settled into my gut. Was this it? Was she going to abandon me again? “What makes you say that?” She smiled sadly as she turned to face me, leaning her head against the chair. “You’re growing stronger every day.”
“You’ve said that already, repeatedly.” My annoyance must have been evident in my tone because her smile fell. Her look reminded me of when the mother who raised me would scold me for something.
I wasn’t going to apologize for my irritation when she crashed into my life and refused to give me anything other than vague statements that didn’t answer any of my questions.
“We share in the Goddess’s gift.” She stated as she pulled her eyes away from me, looking dejected. “But yours is unlike anything I have ever seen before. My mother and every woman before her had it. We are at our strongest in The Sanctum. The longer we are away from it, the weaker we get. We didn’t know if the gift would die if we were away too long, so we were never gone for more than a few weeks. It is how we recharge.
Eventually, we stayed there, hiding from the people who wanted us dead. We were invincible there. No one could get to us.”
My fingers played with the pages of the elemental incantation book I had been reading. No matter how big and beautiful, I couldn’t imagine living in a cave. Hiding from the world sounded awful.
“But you only seem to grow stronger each day you are away. I have never seen anything like it in our family.” She cleared her throat, adjusting in her seat. It was the first time she had seemed uncomfortable since arriving here, instead of her usual elegant and confident self. “When I had the vision of you as a baby, I thought the Goddess was telling me you needed to be raised away from The Sanctum and among wolves. I left you right where she told me. I watched as they found you a few minutes later and took you away from me….”
Her voice cracked as she continued to stare into the fire.
“I didn’t think you were born with the gift since the Goddess wanted you to be raised away from The Sanctum. I know I was wrong now, but I am still so proud of how strong you have become.”
I swallowed hard as I wondered what would have happened if I had been stuck in the cavern for my life. Would I have met Killian when he was playing there with Joselin as kids, or would I have been hidden in one of the caves and never experienced the true love of my mate?
“What about my dad? Who is he?” I gnawed on my lip while waiting for the news of his death.
“Your father is a great man.” She smiled, discretely trying to wipe a tear from her cheek.
Is.
He must still be alive.
“I met him during one of my adventures out of the cave, and we instantly fell in love. He was the next in line to become Alpha when I met him, and his elders were furious when he introduced me. I wasn’t his fated mate, and they resented that I wasn’t like them. They didn’t know of my connection to Selene at the time. They thought he would produce stronger heirs with his fated mate than he would if he marked me as his chosen.”
She took a deep breath and composed herself as she sat up straighter and turned to look at me.
“Your father doesn’t know about you. I found out about you during my return to The Sanctum to recharge, and by the time I returned to him, his elders had set up their own Offering with a few allied packs where he found his mate. He had already claimed her by the time I got there. So, I went home and never went back. From what I have heard, he is a great leader, and I know he is a good man.”
I could hear her heart pounding quickly and watched as her fingernail dug into the arm of the chair.
“You’re nervous,” I stated as I watched her fidget.
“He’s here, staying in the city as we speak. He came with the packs to fight tomorrow.”
I could admit that I was curious about the man, but I felt no urgency to run off before a war to meet him. I needed to continue to study so I could be as prepared as possible. “And you don’t want to see him, or do you not want him to find out about me?”
“It’s not about him knowing you. I never stopped loving him. I never will. I can’t face the woman he chose over me.” She looked young and heartbroken. If I didn’t look closely to see the wrinkles around her eyes, I would have thought she was no more than 10 years older than me instead of the twenty I knew she would have been.
She was in pain at the idea of facing my father’s mate.
“Did you ever go searching for your mate?” My curiosity got the better of me, and I regretted asking immediately as she nodded.
“I looked. I wanted to move on from your father but never found my one. He is either hidden very well, further away from The Sanctum than I can travel, or….” Dead.
I nodded in understanding as I adjusted in my seat.
“I can tell you where he is staying if you want… your father, or I can keep his identity to myself.” Her offer was thoughtful, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know yet.
I looked away from her after a moment of silence. It was no longer her choice for him to know about me. When this was over, and if we both made it out alive, I would consider meeting him then. It didn’t make sense for me to completely disrupt a man’s life with the news that he had a daughter he didn’t know about.
He had a mate and probably other kids. It almost seemed cruel to appear out of nowhere and expect him and his potential family to want to know me or about me. Knowing I existed would only hurt his fated mate. I knew I would be devastated if Killian’s ex showed up and claimed to have had his child.
“You’ve barely taught me anything since you’ve been here,” I muttered, sounding like a petulant child as I tried to change the subject.
“I didn’t want to overstep.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, and I focused on the detailed work of the fireplace mantel. Everything about our interactions was uncomfortable. I knew it would take time to get to know her before the conversation would flow smoothly between us.
“Can you teach me something now?” From the corner of my eye, I watched her turn to me with a large smile. I glanced from her back to the fireplace, and my hand tightened around the book’s spine.
“Absolutely. Have you had any time to apply what you’ve been reading?”
I looked down at the worn cover in my hands. It must have been read hundreds of times in its life, but I was only on my third attempt. Wind and water hadn’t been my friend. Earth was easy to do, but it liked to get away from me and caused more problems than I had time to fix. After my experience with the other three, I was terrified to practice with fire.
“Not as much as I would have liked. I was practicing enchantments, and Agatha told me the best way to master my powers was to start with the elements, but that hasn’t gone very well.” I didn’t want to tell her that I had failed miserably and had flooded my bathroom on one occasion and caused a sinkhole in the training yard on another.
“Yes, she does have a point. She may be a stubborn old witch, but she knows how to get things done and how to do them correctly. The elements will affect everything you do. Even the smallest thing, like lifting your book. Things don’t just levitate. You use the air to lift and move them. Learning to master the elements is crucial to your control.” She turned in her chair to face me, and I sat up as a ball of fire flew from the burning logs and floated above her hand.
Aurora altered its shape and size, and I watched on mesmerized. “Holding the flame is done with the mastery of fire, but altering the flame is done by air. It is done by removing the oxygen to make it smaller or adding it to feed it and encourage it to grow. With your strength, your biggest problem will be holding back your power and limiting it to a limited application. Let’s start small.”
She closed her fist, and the flame vanished with a small, white puff of smoke. My glass of water was sitting half-empty on the table between us. My mother pressed her fingers against the glass, and it spun rapidly into a whirlpool.
My eyes widened as she then gestured for me to try it.
She gave me an encouraging nod as I reached forward. “I’ll talk you through it.” Butterflies swarmed my stomach with excitement, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of what I was about to learn or the woman teaching me with a loving smile.