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Quinton looked like he was fighting off laughter as I walked out of the dining room, but I didn’t care about that, either. I was too busy floating on the happy cloud that meeting Rain had brought into my life.
Chapter Thirteen
Rain Kimber
My eyes stung as I looked around the room that my teenage daughter called her own and slept in every night. I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried, and I wouldn't do so now. Not when I wasn't alone.
They'd made no sound as they came into the room not long after I had, but I knew they were there, standing behind me. I felt their presence like a physical touch. One burned brighter than the other; he was more gifted. The other's light was harsher, colder. He didn't hold a natural talent within him, but he housed the ability to be ruthless and merciless when the need arose, and he was a danger to those who threatened him. It wafted off of them in waves, and I highly doubted anyone else in the house was aware of the energies the others were giving off by the second.
Except maybe Ariel.
She had a special light all her own that I knew she was very unaware of, and I wondered just what she was capable of.
Watching her go toe to toe with that hot head in the kitchen, and having her defend the rest of them against me when she thought I'd care about how Vivian had died had made me extremely proud to call her my daughter. At the same time, it had made me want to bawl my eyes out like a fucking baby and unman myself in front of my daughter’s boyfriends. Something no father ever wished to do, certainly not this one. It had been a struggle, though, a very big struggle inside me, one that standing in her bedroom was threatening to make sure I failed at.
She'd grown up with Vivian as the only mother she knew, of course she was fierce and brave. She'd have to be to survive that witch. I swallowed thickly past the bile and emotions that threatened to overtake me and force me to wretch all over the floor that the thought of my daughter forced to be with that woman brought out in me.
"What?" I asked snidely. "You don't trust me to be in here all alone? Do you think I'm going to steal something?"
I laughed humorlessly.
Their auras flickered around the room with uncertainty. I had made them uncomfortable with my blunt, confrontational questions. Good. Because she was a girl and had magic, my daughter was a rare gem. That she came from a family descended from rogue hunters made her the rarest of rare. Her talents would grow and quickly surpass those around her, they would surpass even that of the Council itself. She needed to surround herself with people who were willing to do whatever it took to protect her, and she needed to learn how to protect herself now that she was on the Council's radar. If they found out just what she was exactly, she'd never be free of them. They would lock her away, claiming it was all in her best interest, when really they would be doing it for purely selfish reasons, and she'd only be allowed out of her gilded cage when they needed to wield her magic like a weapon and use it to their advantage. She didn't need to be surrounded by pussies who flinched at the thought of confrontation with me. I thought the elder Alexander might be up to snuff, but I wouldn't know until I filled him in on what exactly it was he'd be facing, and we'd see then if he flinched or not.
Somehow, I doubted he'd flinch.
I liked that one. He had a real pair of balls on him, he'd faced me without backing down once, and he'd never showed fear.
Yes, Quinton Alexander would do quite nicely for my daughter. The others, I wasn't so certain of.
Out of all of Ariel's potential boyfriends, I had only heard of the James twins and Dash Flynn. And, them I had only heard of because I had paid for information about any of the witches in the U.S. covens that had stood out, and those three definitely stood out.
The Flynn boy had been a huge sore spot for the entire Council. His grandmother had been the daughter of a great and powerful Council member who, if I remembered what my father had told me about all the Council members correctly, had bragged far and wide about how he'djust knownhis pregnant wife's unborn baby girl was a witch and would grow to have great powers worthy of any Council member. My father had laughed when he'd told me about the man. He'd laughed because the man had been incredibly full of himself, and entirely full of shit. The Council didn't allow women to join their ranks, feeling as if they should be coddled instead. Well, coddled was as nice a word as I was willing to use for it. As the story goes, the Council had laughed in his face when his only daughter had been born a mundane, average human, devoid of any kind of magic. If it had been my girl, I would have just been happy to have had a healthy baby born, and I wouldn't have given a shit she had magic or not. Not all men were like me, though. That particular Council member hadn't taken kindly to being laughed at so he tried the next best thing. He tried to breed his daughter with a male who was a witch. The story got even better here, because she had a child and it was a girl. Another girl with no magic to her name whatsoever. The mother raised the child to be bitter just like her. The mother eventually tricked her brother’s son into coming to visit her and meeting her daughter. She drugged him, and her daughter then raped him. Nine months later, Dash Flynn was brought into this world, a healthy baby boy who had magic. There were rumors floating around the coven community that the boy had suffered greatly at the hands of those two women after his own beloved father had died, but no one was able to confirm or deny the rumors. That young man was now who my daughter was living with.
The James twins were the talk of a different sort. Their mother had had zero magic to speak of, and their father had still let her into all of his coven's dark and dirty secrets, which is something frowned upon by the Council. You can sleep with the regular humans, even mate with them and have normal children with them, but you never, ever, told them what you were. It was a good way to get yourself on the wrong side of the Council. When the twins were born, one with a head full of black hair and the other a head full of white hair as the only way to tell them apart, it had been all anyone with magic could gossip about for years. They were said to be evil, a bad omen, if you will, and when it was discovered they had magic... Well, let's just say there were those that whispered about having them put down permanently. The Council had forbade it and, eventually, people had found something else to whisper about. I had worked really hard to keep myself and my existence hidden from the Council and most of the witches in the U.S. But there were those, like me, who remembered their fathers and mothers and grandfathers telling them about rogue witches and people with magic gone bad, and what, and who, had been used to put them down. They'd helped me and my family out along the way even though we no longer shared the same last name as my father’s father before him had. It wasn't safe to go by anymore, but we got the ink, we carried the stories with us, and it was never hard to turn the ones who'd grown up on the stories into true believers. Without their aide, I might not be standing here in the room my daughter now slept in.
The next room over housed the bathroom, and the shower running could be heard from in here with the door open.
Ariel had disappeared up here to take her shower, and, after being told where her bedroom was, I couldn't sit downstairs and patiently wait for her return. I had gotten edgy, and my daughter's coven hadn't reacted well to it. I'd asked Quinton where her room was, and he’d directed me up here.
I had only been in here for a few short moments before two of them had entered her space quietly behind me.
"Well?" I asked when neither of them answered my question, and the room remained silent.
I tore my eyes off of the beautifully done tarot cards that graced the wall over the bed and turned around to face the uninvited guests.
"It's Julian and Damien, yes?"
If I membered their names correctly, Julian was the one who shined brighter with a natural gift. He had honey blonde hair cropped close to his skull in a buzz cut that, no matter the short length of it, would still give off a golden shine in the sun. He was tall, slender, and had a deep tan that said he'd spent a whole lot of time outdoors over the summer, and the tan had stuck with him and likely would year around. It might fade a little over the winter months but would darken right back up again as soon as the weather grew nicer and he started to spend more time outside again. There was a black hoop sticking through one of his lips, and I realized it was through the opposite side of the lip that Ariel had a similar black hoop through hers.
If I were anyone but her father, and of a different generation, I might have thought the matching lip rings was sweet. But I wasn't a different man, and I didn't want to think about where that lip ring had been when it came to my daughter. I scowled at them both.
The other one, the one whose light had burned harsher and colder than the other one, was Damien, if I was remembering his name correctly. He looked like a smug prick, and I completely understood why his aura was different than the other one. It was in his perfect clothes that matched his haughty demeanor. He looked like he spent a lot of time looking down on others, and I wasn't so sure I wanted him around my daughter. Not until I got a glimpse at the humble side of him, if there even was one.
"Yeah," Julian said. He glanced at his friend who shook his head before looking back at me and making excellent eye contact. "I'm Julian, and that's Damien. What are you doing up here in Ariel's room?"
He was direct, I'd give him that much.
"Could ask you the same question," I shot back, just to fuck with him and his snooty looking buddy.
