“I hope you jest, Lydia. I hope to God you jest,” Aunt Kate whispered but her whisper was strange.
It was angry and it was afraid.
“Katie –” Aunt Nadia started.
“You’d wish that on your daughter, to build a legend?” Aunt Kate hissed.
There was silence.
Then Mom replied, “Kate, I just want to see Leah happy.”
“Happy for what? A few years? Until they cotton on, they hunt them down, they torture them and they hand down The Sentence?”
“Kate –” Avery said gently.
“No, Avery, no,” Aunt Kate cut him off. “If such a fool thing as lifemates exists and if Leah is Lucien’s lifemate, I hope she doesn’t figure it out. And I especially hope he doesn’t. There is no way the Great Lucien will denounce her. Not ever. And Leah’s so stubborn, she wouldn’t denounce him either. He’d burn and while he did he and the rest of us would watch her swing.”
My breath stuck in my throat, stars exploded in my eyes and I thought I might faint.
My dream, the heat I felt, the noose around my neck, Lucien telling me he was in it. Was that what it was? A premonition of this sentence thing?
Lucien burning. Me swinging!
Oh my God!
“For a month, Lydia,” Aunt Kate went on, “you and Nadia, Lana, Natalie, Kendra, Melissa, you’ve all been after me to let you speak to Leah, to let you disobey the wishes of a vampire to make sure she’s all right. And now you want her life to be at risk?”
They wanted to speak to me? Even Kendra?
My cousin Kendra and I fought before I left because she couldn’t find that kickass belt I loved so much that I wanted to bring with me but I’d lent to her. She was always losing my stuff (like my kickass belt). Why I let her borrow it, I’d never know.
“Do you think Lucien would let anything happen to Leah?” Mom asked, sounding uppity and taking me out of my thoughts about my belt. “You saw them when we walked in. Have you ever, once, seen Lucien laugh?”
More silence. I guess they hadn’t.
Wow.
Mom went on, “We agreed to this because this is bigger than all of us. This is huge.”
“Yes, and this is about Leah,” Aunt Kate returned. “The reason I didn’t allow you to go against Lucien was because I had every faith Leah would have the exact effect on Lucien that we witnessed when we walked in. She’s the best of the lot of us. She’s a true Buchanan. She’s a Buchanan of old.”
At those words, uttered by Aunt Kate no less (I always thought she thought I was a big, crazy loon), I felt my chest get tight and I had to put my hand to the wall to hold myself standing.
It was Aunt Millicent who spoke next and she did so softly.
“Let her work her magic, Lydia. She’s got the strength to see this through at Lucien’s side to however it ends. No other concubine I know, living or dead, has that same strength. But lifemates, which is a ridiculous notion Nadia, even for you, don’t even consider it. And definitely don’t put that idea in Leah’s head. She’d run and Lucien would have no choice now he’s come this far, to hunt her.”
More silence. More swirling in my head.
Finally Aunt Nadia muttered, “I still want them to be lifemates.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, why?” Aunt Millicent snapped.
“Because, you and Katie are right, this is Leah,” Aunt Nadia snapped back. “And she’s special. We’ve always known that. And I’d rather her have however long Lucien can give her of something beautiful before The Dominion puts a stop to it, if they can defeat Lucien at all, then for her to be set aside like the rest of us.”
At that I backed away slowly, carefully, not making a noise.
My heart was racing, my eyes were stinging, my stomach hurt and my head was filled with loads of junk none of which I could sort. I really, really, really needed to talk to Stephanie.
Or maybe Edwina because I had the sneaking suspicion she knew more about everything than she let on.
Or even, possibly, Avery.
I turned and walked up five steps, shutting out their murmurs while deep breathing.
When I had myself under control, I bounded down, shouting, “Found you guys a guest house!”
Their murmurs stopped. I sauntered in like I’d heard nothing.
“That’s great, honey,” Mom, sitting on the couch, said and since I was close to her, she grabbed my hand. She gave my hand a squeeze. I gave her a squeeze back.
“Are you still disowning me?” she asked, giving me a cheeky grin because she knew my answer.
I had, of course, in my efforts at being sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious, told my mother I disowned her.
“I haven’t decided,” I replied but she knew I wasn’t serious.
She gave me another hand squeeze.
I saw movement outside and looked out the windows. One wall of the kitchen was made of floor-to-ceiling windows making the indoors seem kind of outdoors, which was really cool. And I saw Lucien and Stephanie stroll out of the woods.
So Stephanie and Lucien had gone for a stroll which was why he couldn’t hear my family’s mind-boggling, earth-shattering, Leah’s place in the family and all her foundations and everything she ever thought about life herself and the world as she knew it rocking conversation.
They were walking slowly even for mortals and I watched Lucien’s body move.
It was a sight to behold.
Even walking slowly across a yard, he looked imposing. Not like he was walking across a yard but as if he was strolling broodingly across a battlefield, pre-battle. A battle he’d eventually win, of course, soundly.
As I had this thought, his head came up, and he looked right at me.
I hoped he didn’t hear my thoughts.
Then his lips tipped up in that sexy way of his. Not smug or arrogant, just smiling at me.
He didn’t hear me.
I smiled back.
Then I felt something strange and I looked toward its source and saw Avery was watching me musingly. And somehow I knew that he knew I’d heard every word of the earlier conversation.
But it was something else. And that something else was somewhere I did not want to go.
I wrinkled my nose at him and he grinned.
Lucien and Stephanie walked in.
I went to sit down on the arm of the couch next to Aunt Kate which, incidentally, had the added benefit of being closer to Lucien. Then, I couldn’t help myself, I bent and kissed the top of Aunt Kate’s head.
“What on earth!” She batted around her head, her hands getting nowhere near me. Aunt Kate, by the way, hated public displays of affection or affection at all for that matter. “What’s the matter with you, Leah Buchanan?” she snapped.