Made By Design (Blood Bound Series Book 2) (50 page)

“Not now,” Kendrick warned. His narrowed eyes flared as he glowered into the rearview mirror at my brother. Then they softened to settle on me. His hand shifted from the leather steering wheel to cup my knee. “Amelia, please. There will be plenty of time for this, later. Right now you need to mourn, to think of and remember Ty.” At my venomous look, his hand retracted, palm up. “I know how painful this is for you. You know I do. And the question you’re asking has nothing to do with him. I promise you that.”

I gritted my teeth. Whether the information was related to Ty or not, it clearly had something to do with me. Good or bad—probably the later given the distant look in Dorian’s eyes—I needed to know. I snatched the envelope from Dorian. It came from his grasp that had seemed so tight and desperate, as easily as if he hadn’t been holding it at all. We may never have had that eerie connection twins shared, but I still knew him. He wanted me to know what hid within this flimsy yellow covering that couldn’t have held more than a few single pages. “Tell me what’s in here,” I said to Dorian. “Or I’ll find out myself.”

Dorian drew in a long breath and expelled it. “The envelope holds blood test results.”

I thought of Ty, wondering if they had tested his blood after his death and discovered he was a hybrid. Though I couldn’t think of any reason they would want or need to test his blood in the first place. “Whose results are they?”

Dorian yanked at the navy scarf around his neck, worrying at the frayed end. “They’re Caius’s, Mom’s, mine, and yours.”

I frowned.
Why test our blood?
My brain felt sluggish, unable to conjure the answers. All I could see when I kept thinking back was Ty, his chest sliding free from Caius’s scarlet-painted sword before crumpling to the red and black slicked council ground. I fought the need to shudder. There was no turning back now. He had to tell me. “Why?” I demanded. “I don’t understand.”

Kendrick pried my hand from the edge of the envelope. “The Council needed to prove or discount your mother’s claim.” A grimace pinched his face. “Don’t you remember?”

The fragmented pieces of memory splintered, then shot back together. Mom had leaped between Caius and me. I screamed at her to move, threatening to kill her too if she didn’t. Still my unwavering threat hadn’t dispelled her, hadn’t freed my attack of Caius’s sword ready in my hand. Instead she had clung to my arms, pleading for me not to kill him.
But why?
My internals lifted, as if I’d plunged off a cliff, free falling. I clutched at my throat, struggling to find air in the Cabriolet’s small cab. “My father is…is Caius.”

At my words, Dorian turned a ghastly shade of gray. The deadpan look across his face was alien, and terrifying. I had never seen him look so vacant before, so totally lost. Dropping the envelope I spun on my seat, knees pressing into the backrest. Desperation made me want to reach out to him, to soothe his turmoil. But the stillness of him sitting there, not looking at me, not looking at anything, kept my fingers pried around the edge of the leather seat. “My God, Dorian. What is it? What’s wrong? Please, you have to tell me.”

Dorian didn’t even budge, and it was Kendrick who spoke. “The tests proved that you are both natural-born royals. You were never turned vampires.”

After all the obstacles we had needed to break through, especially when Pure Blood had been required to open the locked door to the cell corridor below the Portsmouth Council, I had suspected that I was somehow a royal. Though I’d only thought Caius’s experiments had modified my DNA and blood. Being a born royal hadn’t even crossed my mind. Now I knew the truth. Caius was my biological father. My stomach churned like milk turning to butter. Had Caius forced himself on our mom all those years ago? I recalled her trust in him, the way she gained strength at his touch when she’d revealed us all to be vampires. Then I remembered Caius locking her away during the battle. There was something between them. There always had been. I’d seen it in my vision of Dorian’s and my birth.

Another revelation hit me like a bullet between the eyes. “A-Athobry,” I stammered. It was the name our mom had said was our fathers. Which wasn’t a total lie—if you rearranged the letters. How could we all have been so blind? “It’s an anagram for Bathory.”

With this new sickening notion to deal with, on top of everything else that should have rendered me crazed and screaming, a question formed on my lips. Part of it came from Dorian’s statue-stiff form. The rest resulted from feeling the roadblocks in Kendrick’s mind that remained as solid as a foot-thick fortress of steel. “Kendrick? Dorian? What aren’t you telling me?”

Dorian’s chin rose, expression lost and alone. Trepidation tightened my chest. His silver-blue eyes were glazed, but not reddened with tears. His grief here was bigger than the day I’d revealed Marika’s treachery. It was personal and forever life changing. “Caius is your father,” he said on the breath of a whisper, holding up the results for me to see. “But he’s not mine. And that’s not all…”

Bewildered by stiff silence, I sat staring through the windshield but seeing nothing. Dorian wasn’t Caius’s son. If that were the only drowning revelation, it would have been enough. But there was more. So much more. There had been a fourth set of blood results that had been rushed after the first three were reported. This fourth blood test was my mom’s. It revealed a number of interesting facts. One confirmed that she was in fact a turned vampire. This collaborated Caius’s claims that he had turned her, as did my vision of the act. Still I wanted to believe he’d somehow compelled her to think it was necessary. Yet after everything we now knew, it couldn’t be true. Mom had to have been involved.

The second and much more gripping reveal, was that our mom’s maternal genetic markers which matched my DNA, were not even close to matching Dorian’s. Dorian, my twin, the boy who’d been my brother since my first breath of life, was not even related to me. He wasn’t biologically my brother. Our mom wasn’t our mom. She was mine. Only mine.

Shaking my brain free of cobwebs, I twisted, reaching out to clasp Dorian’s hand. “I don’t care what those stupid results say.” I glared at the envelope now repositioned on his lap, as if it were the culprit for this chasm between us. “Blood or not, you
are
my brother. Nothing can ever change that.”

Dorian shrugged. His expression wasn’t as blank as before, but it was just as wary. “Sure. Whatever.”

With a crunch of gravel the scenery surrounding us cleaved into focus. The Cabriolet had stopped moving. Surrounding us were parked cars, a church…and a hearse. The two brick levels with spear-shaped windows reflected the doom-lacking, fluffy clouds above.

Without a word, I exited the car and slid around the side of the building. We hadn’t been invited to the funeral and wouldn’t be welcomed, even if hell did freeze over. With Kendrick and Dorian waiting, shielded by a canopy of magnolia trees, I scaled the outer wall to the second level. Each sliding step tightened my lungs, like a vice was closing around them. I wanted so badly to slip through one of the speared windows that marked the church’s entire west side. I wanted to get as close as possible to Ty’s gold coffin. To see his human face and run my fingers across his cheek. To imagine he was just sleeping and not a decomposing shell of the boy I still and always would love.

From this position, I could make out the open lid over the heads of people lining up to pay their respects. But I couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t get close enough to whisper those three powerful and undying words to him, hoping he’d hear it beyond. A werewolf’s sense of smell was second to none. It would only take a whiff to alert them of my presence. And the soaring church was packed to the brim with them. From what I could see, everyone had honey-glazed irises marking them as werewolves. Yet to my surprise, not all were black haired and tan.

“Are they all…?” I whispered, throwing a glance down at Kendrick and Dorian. It was late afternoon and the wintery sun, though weakened, was clear from any shielding clouds as it dipped low. Lace-work shadowed over them from magnolia branches, and I could feel the tingle that touched Kendrick’s flesh at the ultraviolet light. “Werewolves?”

From where they stood, Kendrick had a clear view of a number of faces inside through a lower window. He shook his head while prodding fingers trampled over my brain.
I can’t believe he never explained it to you.

For a second I thought he was about to give me another lecture on things Ty had kept from me when alive. But no. He was simply surprised that the clarification had never come up.

Ty was a lycanthrope, a form of werewolf. The kind that is born, not created. The more general term werewolf refers to humans who contracted the lycanthropy disease, through the bite of either a natural-born lycan or a werewolf. All wolves morph during a full moon, but only lycans can do it on command.

I studied the people inside. Apart from their eyes, most of them appeared more or less human. They didn’t have the same excess of overdeveloped muscle. Though most were still toned and built to fight. Beyond that, their other physical features didn’t hold any distinct pattern that would mark them as unique or part of an elite group.

My forehead pressed against the cool glass, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of Ty. Minutes passed. Then the lined up people paying their respects fanned out. I held my breath. My shaking fingers lifted to the glass, as if reaching out that few inches would bring me closer to him. Still I couldn’t see Ty. An overflowing arrangement of vibrant orange, yellow, and white flowers blocked my view of what the coffin held. Sudden relief washed over me. It traveled from Kendrick down on the ground and magically through our bond. At the same moment Ty’s father appeared on the stage, unshaven and looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. He clumsily rearranged a set of cards in his hands as he stood at a glass podium, dull eyes downcast.

I gave neither him nor Kendrick a second thought. My Vans, toes squished into the front of my shoes, began edging along the tiny ridge that jutted out below the line of windows. Pressure constricted my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t let my breath out to take a fresh one in until I was close enough to see him.

“Amelia, stop,” Dorian rasped from below the trees. “They’ll see you.”

Kendrick’s relief vanished. He launched from the ground and up twenty feet to block me on the ridge. In what seemed to be a reoccurring event, his thoughts and emotions became blocked. Yet what he could hide from me mentally, he couldn’t keep concealed physically. His eyes were wide and unblinking. His heart drummed with the fear that froze his expression. “Amelia, please. It’s time to go.”

“What?” I breathed out in surprise rather than allowance. “No. I want to see him. I need to say…” The feeling of waking during heart surgery with no anesthetic, my ribcage cracked open and a scalpel cutting into my heart, sent volumes of pain flooding my body. My Vans slipped on the ridge and Kendrick caught at my elbow, keeping me from plummeting to the ground. I winced, trying to think past the agony. “I need this, Kendrick. And I can’t promise that I’ll be able to go on afterward. But ever since waking, ever since remembering
his
death,” I said while thinking,
and failing to save him.
“I’ve just had one thing that kept me breathing. One thing that kept me from giving up, on everything. Please understand. I need to say
goodbye
.”

Kendrick grimaced, feeling my pain and love for Ty collectively. He sighed. “I know you do. But I also know you trust me.” He glanced at Dorian then back at me with hope. “I need you to trust me now. You don’t want to see this. It won’t help anything. It will only…” He broke off, staring away from me and squinting at the lowering sun. His teeth gritted. “Amelia, please…”

“No,” I snapped. Today of all days he wasn’t going to pull this crap with me. “And it will only what?” I pinched his jaw and forced his face back to me. “Kendrick, you’re hiding your thoughts from me. What I don’t know is why. You say to trust you, and I do. You know that. But you also know that I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”

Kendrick sighed, the resolve to keep his mind locked from mine waning. “Something happened after Troy knocked you out with that tranq. The council hall was cleared out, bar the guards and a few others. We came back to help clear out the…” he paused, shuddering, “
bodies
.” His eyes, so filled with fear and yet so honest, rose to mine. “I was certain you’d want to see Ty when you woke, and I wanted to make sure you could.”

“But when you got back, the wolves had come to claim him,” I said, finding the words in Kendrick’s head before he’d decided how to deliver them.

A surreal reenactment played snippets through my mind. Mr. Malau stalking into the Portsmouth Council, rage bulging every corded muscle. Two lycans flanked his side along with Troy and Marika, still in human form. Guards intercepted them. Then the threats started. “Give me my son,” Mr. Malau had snarled, body vibrating, canines sliding past lips, and eyes glowing with hate. The next second the anger was gone. Vacancy replaced it and Troy and Marika moved to support the solid man’s crushing weight.

I blinked away the snippets. There was something important there, but I wasn’t getting it. “Was there a fight?” I asked. Then a terrifying thought occurred to me. “Oh no. The Council wanted to keep Ty’s body to run tests on him, experiments. Didn’t they?”

Kendrick’s brows arched in surprise. “No. And even if they did…” He sighed again, long and hard. But he didn’t seem able to get the words out.

Behind me I sensed someone’s presence. The shadow of their body blocked the warm sunlight from my back. “Amelia.” It was Dorian, balanced on the ridge, his voice a murmur of emotional control. “There was nothing for them to fight over.”

Whipping my head sideways, blood pulsed through my ears. Dorian’s words echoed like a taunting threat. Below I saw the backs of Mr. Malau and his son, Harper, along Troy and Marika. Harper’s shoulders were shaking, and his hand lifted to scrub his face. Troy’s face was painted by frozen anger as they closed in on Ty’s coffin. Marika lifted the flower arrangement, sniffing back free-falling tears. She shifted it to the stage, leaving a clear view of the coffin and the white satin padding within.