“Who was he?” her voice was soft and scared as she gripped my chest with her nails.
“He was a known serial killer, someone they’d been hunting for years.” I broke off telling her about him when she started to shake.
“It was only then that they had dug and dug until they unearthed the truth. Because of her reclusiveness, no one knew of the affair Ekaterina was having with the young man in the next town over.
He had no idea of who she was and wasn’t a part of the society. In fact, he was the descendant of another great house, but one great not so much for its supernatural ability as for its royalty.
He was a direct descendant of the great Catherine, now living way beneath their means, but not destitute by any stretch of the imagination.
The two young lovers had met in secret for months, until she became pregnant and delivered a son; a son that no one knew of, until twenty-one years later.
It took a lot of doing, but the society was soon able, through intense investigations, to put all the pieces together.
On the day of her death Ekaterina had not been well and so she’d asked an elderly lady to keep the child. After her death, the woman, fearing being named, had taken the little boy who was just a few weeks old at the time to an orphanage.
Here it is thought that a Russian family now living in America had adopted him. Since the gift skipped a generation, there had been none in the boy, now known as Peter, and no reason for anyone to think that the child left on the doorsteps of the old monastery was the offspring of a great house.
My family was drawn to the states the year before you were to be conceived and born, though they couldn’t have known it at the time.
For whatever reason my family used an old derivative of our ancestral name the first time we’d come here.
Whether because whatever led us here knew of the things to come and was safeguarding us, or just an over cautious move on my father’s part, I’m not sure.
The long and short of it is this; somehow, someone learned of my attachment to you during the time we were here.
Someone who knew of the legend and the fact that it was I who was supposed to have this new child of the ages. I’m afraid it was that attachment that caused the deaths of your grandparents.”
“No, it’s the people who did this that are responsible. Do you know who?”
“Mina’s family is my first choice, but we’re still unable to prove that they were the ones behind Ekaterina’s murder, and the attempted murder of you, her granddaughter all those years later.
It hadn’t been hard for them to find the breech, not when one of the household servants had been found with her neck broken and more money than she should have, squired away among her things.
While they were trying to piece the mystery together all those years later, I was trying to find you again in my head, to no avail. The bond had been cut.
The society came to the conclusion that with all the new uncovered evidence, that you were my intended.
The Divecki family contested the new findings, proving their guilt even more firmly, in my head at least. But without hard evidence, everyone’s hands were tied and they still needed you to make sure of the lineage.
Mina’s family denied that Ekaterina could’ve hidden a child so well with her being under careful watch of the society.
I guess it was a testament to her abilities that she was able to outsmart those learned men and women for so long. Her power was rumored to be greater than most.
Your father was never approached about his true identity it was too risky, in case they were wrong, mistaken.
First they needed to find his daughter, my future, before they set off the mayhem that would ensue if any of this got out.
It took me a few years to find you again. By then I had gone through a change. Though some might have wavered and doubted, I always knew in my heart that I would find you, legend or no.
So while they combed the annals looking for clues to the future, I built my strength up, learned all that there was to know, and did that other thing that is now de rigueur for men like me, with my talents. Joined the Special Forces.
Joined makes it seem like I had a choice, but I didn’t. It is just a natural part of who we are, we are expected to defend and protect our country with our special gifts.
Now here we are, and we have come full circle. But I promise you I won’t let anything happen to you ever again.”