Redemption (Page 32)

"Did you go to join them because of what had happened to your mother?" she inquired.

He shook his head. "No, no matter what a monster my father was, no matter how much I hated him, I left the palace because I still had this sick need to try and prove myself to him. I was determined to show him that I wasn’t weak and useless by infiltrating the rebellion. Once I was outside of the palace though, and away from him, things began to change."

"The rebels knew what you were?"

"Not in the beginning."

"How did they discover you?"

Jack almost shied away from that memory, it wasn’t one he was proud of, but neither was it an entirely bad one. His mind drifted back to the day David had found him and confronted him about his secret. Jack had feared that the little bit of solitude and make-believe he’d found in the woods would vanish like smoke in the wind when the man he’d come to admire and consider his friend stepped around that tree…

The crack of a twig made his head shoot up, his fingers curled into the velvety neck of the doe before him. The deer’s struggles had ceased but he could still hear the steady beat of the animal’s heart. His gaze searched the trees but though he couldn’t see anyone yet, he knew someone was there. He could hear the muted beat of a human heart and even before David appeared from behind the tree, Jack had known that it was going to be him. He was the only man that could have gotten this close to Jack without him knowing it.

David stepped out from behind a large pine, his bow was clutched in his right hand but he didn’t have an arrow in it yet and he made no move to lift the weapon. Jack wasn’t fooled into thinking the man couldn’t get the bow loaded in the blink of an eye though. In the past three years he’d come to learn that David’s family was most at home amongst the forest and could move as fleetly as faeries through the trees. They were also lethal with a bow and arrow, especially David and Aria.

Jack slowly released the doe but he didn’t rise to his full height as he studied the man across from him. He saw the revulsion and anger he’d expected to see amongst the rebel leader’s eyes but there was also something more, something he’d never seen in anyone’s eyes before. It was a sense of betrayal so intense that Jack felt as if someone had staked him through his non-beating heart.

He couldn’t stomach that look on the face of a man he had come to respect and admire. He’d uncovered plenty of betrayal in his lifetime. Other than his younger sister, Melinda, he was the only one that knew his father had killed their mother and attempted to kill Melinda in order to start the war that had left the human and vampire population decimated. The aristocratic vampires that had attempted to stand up against the king had fled to lands that no one ventured into, and were still hunted by the king’s men. His own brother-in-law, Ashby had been banished to a tree house prison after blinding and nearly killing Braith with a bomb.

But none of those revelations or betrayals had rendered quite the same look on anyone’s face as the one on David’s. Now that Jack thought on it though, he hadn’t been overly floored by the discoveries he had uncovered about his family. His father was a sadistic bastard, everyone who had ever met the man, and even those that never had, knew that. There was nothing the man wasn’t capable of, nothing he wouldn’t do to seize power and twist the world into the perverted version of what he meant for it to be.

Now though, Jack was staring into the full face of disappointment and he found he didn’t like it at all. Just when he thought he couldn’t take any more of the protracted silence, David finally spoke. "So this is your secret."

Jack didn’t know how to respond to that, it hadn’t been a question but he felt as if he had to say something. "You suspected I had a secret?"

"I knew you had a secret. It’s few that come through here that aren’t hiding something, or running from something. Not everyone chooses this life, some are forced into it. Though I’d have to say that this is the first time we’ve harbored a vampire, Jack."

"Jericho. My name is Jericho."

Something flashed within David’s eyes as his mouth parted on a breath of recognition. Most of the rebels knew little of the royal family, but David wasn’t most of the rebels. He may not be out in public often, but he knew more about what went on outside of the rebel camps than most of the people that were still able to move between the camps and the people that lived on the fringe of society.

"Your father sent you?"

Jack thought about denying it, but he couldn’t. The illusion of his new life here had already been shattered. He’d never known sorrow or grief before, not like this. "He did."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

Jack was taken aback by the question. He’d expected condemnation, hatred. He’d expected to have an arrow fired at him at any second and instead David was still speaking with him. "I don’t understand."

"Don’t you?" David continued to clutch his bow but he took a step closer to him.

Jack knew the man was fast with his weapons but he had no real concern that David would actually be able to hit him with an arrow he fired at him. He just wasn’t sure what he would do when David fired that arrow. He should kill him, it was what he was supposed to do, it was what his nature and breeding expected of him, but for the life of him he couldn’t bring himself to even consider killing the man standing before him. He’d been accepted here, he’d been welcomed and he’d found his home amongst these people. He’d made friends and he felt closer to some of them than he did his own family. In fact, they were his family now.

"You know all of our secrets; you know who I am, who my children are, the location of our camps and caves. So what are you still doing here, Jack?"