She laughed, wrinkling her nose. “Well, I’m just trying to keep up with the times.”
“Yeah, I’ll explain it to you again. Actually, after dinner I can show it to you if you want.” I glanced toward the stairs as we made our way down the hall toward the cafeteria. “I’ll meet up with you in a sec. I just need to go do something really quick.”
“Okay.” She joined the throng of students heading to the cafeteria, giving me a wave.
After darting up the stairs, I made a beeline toward my dorm room, chewing on my bottom lip as I walked.
It was strange. Other students might seem a little intimidated by me or frightened by me now, but they had all taken the news that I was the daughter of a god in relative stride.
Me, on the other hand?
I still couldn’t process it. I kept running through my conversation with Ryker over and over in my head, delving into my memories to try to pick up any hint or clue I should’ve noticed as a child that the man who claimed to be my father was actually no such thing.
But I couldn’t find any. I had loved my dad, the man who’d raised me, and I was sure he had loved me too.
In that sense, I was glad that Ryker had stayed out of my life. I’d at least managed to have something like a normal childhood—for a few years, anyway, before I’d been left on my own at age twelve.
The sheets on my bed were rumpled when I walked inside the room. All three of the men had been sleeping in here every night since we’d gotten back from the godly realm. Everything else at this school was turned on its head, so sticking with our original dorm assignments seemed pointless and stupid. And besides, I was pretty sure we all felt the same sort of desperate need to keep the others around, as if we wer
e all anticipating the moment when battle might drag us apart, might kill one or all of us and shred the happiness we’d found into little pieces.
Shoving those fears into the back of my mind before they rose up and swamped me, I grabbed the little notebook I’d kept for years from its place atop my dresser. I’d never really been a “dear diary” kinda girl, but I’d kept this journal around to jot down random shit that I just needed to get out of my head. I also had a few keepsakes and mementos pressed between the pages near the back, and I flipped to a picture of my mom, pulling it out.
The photo was worn and faded, but the face in it was achingly familiar. High cheekbones, a heart-shaped face with a slightly pointed chin, dark hair tumbling over one shoulder. My mom had been beautiful, and I could see so many of her features in me.
I stared at the picture harder, shifting it back and forth so that light played across the surface.
Who the hell were you, mom?
I knew more about her now than I ever had before, but every question that’d be answered had only led to dozens more questions. All my life, I’d thought my mom was an ordinary woman living a simple, straightforward life. But in reality, she had been a wild magic user, a brave and daring woman who had fallen in love with a god and paid the ultimate price for it.
Ryker’s words echoed in my mind. It shouldn’t be possible.
I shouldn’t exist. Regardless of whether my mom fell in love with a god, it should’ve been impossible for them to have a kid together. According to Ryker, that had never happened before. No gods had fathered half-human children.
So what did mean?
My father was a god. My mother was a wild magic user.
What does that make me?
Chapter Twenty
My back hit the mat with a heavy thud.
I rolled quickly, slipping out of Lachlan’s grip before he could pin me. Then I scrambled to my feet, lashing out with a well-timed kick before he could tackle me again. I caught him in the shoulder, sending him sprawling, but he managed to hook my standing leg with a sweeping kick of his own, bringing me down again.
My blood rushed in my ears as he straddled me, and I bucked, hooking his arm and shifting my weight to roll us both over.
“Ah, shite!” With a muffled curse, he rolled us again, laughing low in his throat when he ended up on top of me with my legs wrapped around him.
Lachlan and I had stepped into the training room at around nine in the evening, and we’d been going hard for the past hour. This was the first time I had sparred without magic in days, and it felt amazing to just fucking fight. My powers were starting to settle in much more deeply, to become as instinctual and second-nature as the boxing combos I’d been practicing since I was ten. And I knew that in the upcoming battle against the gods, I would absolutely be calling on every magical advantage I had.
But that hadn’t stopped me from begging Lach to spar with me tonight in a good old fashioned brawl; no magic allowed.
Judging by the way his eyes had lit up when I’d asked him, he’d been dying to scratch that itch just as much as I had.
And judging by the look in his eyes now, by the feel of his body between my legs, it wasn’t the only itch he’d be happy to scratch. We’d all been too exhausted to do much but collapse into bed and pass out every night for the past week, and although I loved having them curled up next to me while I slept, I’d been seriously missing the physical connection the three of us shared.