I don't know how to react or what to think or feel. I stare at him, gawping. Somehow rooted to my spot, anger consuming me, mixed emotions swirling around me like a dense fog. Pain, then relief, some inkling of joy and hope, but it all swirls back to agonizing shards of biting fear as I try to absorb that this is real.
I open my mouth to speak again, but only the noise comes out. A whimper of desperate sobbing breaks me down, and in a second, I'm crushed against a strong warm chest, surrounded by arms that used to be as familiar as my own skin. I'm hugged tightly by the one person who used to make my day brighter before Colton did. Before our world fell apart. I can only slump into him, so caught in memories and how this feels so familiar and necessary, yet I cannot stop crying against his soft clothes like a wounded child.
"If I had known... I would have found a way to take you. I would never have left you or abandoned you. I truly, truly believed I was too late. I swear, Lorey." He mumbles into my hair, his breath warming my scalp and sending shivers across my whole body as I collapse against him. Savoring his feel, breaking to pieces, and trembling at his touch. Crying over a million days of haunting pain where I mourned his loss along with my parents. My brain is so fuddled and confused, and I try to pull fragments of possibility together, so not sure this isn't a dream. Gasping to curb my emotional breakdown and sniffing back to some level of sanity.
"But how..." the words push out with a weak tone from the chaos of my foggy head, and I know I need answers more than hugs right now. They all died. Juan made sure of it, so where was he, and how did he survive? Why is he with vampires?
He exhales heavily and rubs his hand over the back of my hair, stroking me in such a familiar way that it pains me and cuts to the core like a knife. Squeezing me tight as though his words are going to wound me. My instincts immediately perk up, and the red alert flag of intuition moves up my spine in a cold shiver.
"There's so much you don't know. There's so much to tell you. I...... Lorey, the vampires, are who saved me. There's something important... They gave me a home because...." He hesitates, pausing between broken sentences. His voice trails off, and his tone fades like a whisper as though he hasn't the will. I pull back in suspicion, blinking away my tears to focus on his face, and the joy and pain at being able to look at him again almost end me for a second time. I impulsively reach up and touch his cheek, grazing his warm skin. Checking if he's real and burying my face against him again just to be sure.
My brother's alive and holding me, telling me that I have someone left of my blood that still loves me. I wasn't truly alone all these years, and had he known, he would never have left me in the home, but then... I wouldn't have bonded to Colton. I push it aside, knowing that despite what I endured, I would never give up my mate or how I came to be his. Even if I lost ten years at my brother's side. I have him now, the fates brought him back to me, and all I need is truth.
"Because?" I push where he left off and then pull away again to gaze at his handsome face and absorb every detail and line that I've missed beyond belief. When I realize no answers come, I raise my brow and nudge his abdomen lightly with my palm. He's staring at the top of my head, avoiding my focus. A look of anguish as though he's torn about what to say, and even after all these years, I can still read his facial gestures as if we haven't been apart for half my life.
"Tell me." I shove my palm into his chest as I did as a kid when he would tease me and hold out on something I wanted to know. His pained half-smile at my reaction tells me he remembers me doing this to him so many times as a ten-year-old pup. The happiness of the familiar behavior. His whole body softens, but then he sighs while his brows furrow gloomily and reaches out to stroke my hair again.
"No matter what.... you're my sister. You always were and always will be. I never stopped loving you. You have to know that before...... just tell me you hear me, okay?" His words tremble, his voice low and almost pleading with me to agree to his terms. Dread rises in my stomach, and I pull at his sleeve nervously, yanking his hand back to my head almost childishly for reassurance. Confused and reverting to old habits, it only seems to wound him more. My youthful behaviors so effortlessly returned when my brother is holding me tight. He was always my guardian, my best friend, and my mentor. The protector who was always ready to kiss my boo-boos and carry me home.
I love my brother so much. I have missed him beyond belief, and I never want to wake up if this is a dream. Sobs catch in my throat, and desperation overwhelms me.
"I understand. I hear you." I repeat his words, needing to know what he's holding back and not laying any weight on them. Of course, he's my brother. I know he loves me. He always did. We thought each other dead, but it doesn't change a thing, nor does it matter now. Jasper will always be in my heart and hold a special place that no other living soul can replace. There has always been a dark hole that belonged only to him.
"They saved me because of..... your mother." He dodges eye contact and goes back to staring over my head at the sky in the distance. His emotions are all over the place and feeding my nerves. I frown, waiting for him to elaborate, impatience growing until one little word catches my attention, and I furrow my brows as I repeat back his sentence in my brain and sound it out for myself
"Your?" I home on it, loudly verbalizing with heavy questioning as he pauses. I feel his stiffness as he looks left, over the top of my head, at the car's open door, which is silent and still within. Leyanne and the vampire are still tucked inside and leaving us to it.
"She wasn't my mother, Lorey... by blood. I'm not even related to you. I never was. We're not siblings in any other way than marriage."
I step back, gasping as my head spins, and I'm hit with the weight of his words like a kick to the gut while nausea rises rapidly in response. Trying to compute, but it doesn't make sense. I glare at him, anger rising because it's a lie. Frowning, shaking my head. I have the urge to laugh at him. To hit him in the shoulder and tell him to stop messing with me, but the deadpan blank look on his pale face tells me that's not what he's doing at all.
"Yes, you are. Stop it." I snap, swallowing my ludicrous bubbling despair, and step back to shove him in the chest again, only with aggression and denial. "Take that back." I snarl, eyes glowing with a burning rage that he's trying to hurt me or make me hate him, and I don't know why. He flinches at the contact but reaches for my hand and catches his fingers in mine so he can pull me back to restrain both my hands in his.
"You have no idea what it means to be here right now, to see you, to know you're alive. God, I have wished for this moment for so long." He swallows the croak of his tumbling emotions and furrows his brow back to seriousness, quieting my voice within my chest as he exhales harshly. Caught in shocked silence, begging him with pleading eyes to stop doing this. "She was pregnant when we met her... I was five years old. Dad was my uncle. He was raising me because my mother died in childbirth and took her mate with her. I always knew who I was, and then you two came and gave me a new family." He pulls me nearer as the choked expression and numbness still me completely. Freezing out my thoughts as I blink and try to inhale through what he's saying and almost fail at getting enough oxygen in the process. "She was running, from our kind, for fear of what they would do if they found out about you. And we were camping on the mountain's south side, out there alone. I don't think it was by chance.... they imprinted on sight. It was... beautiful. I gained a mother in the blink of an eye and a few short months later, a baby sister." His explanation cuts my heart from my soul and rips it into shreds, burning my body with intense pain as my brain stammers.
"No! ... He was my dad too. He's my dad.... she's my mom... you're my brother. STOP IT!" The sobs break as every memory I possess is torn in two, and all I thought was real turns out to be a lie. I have clung to every moment, happy encounter, and image my whole life. None of it is real, and I was living in a fake world with people who were never even my own blood. Jasper hauls me into his arm and pulls my face against his chest with a strong palm, enveloping me with that protective bulk of his body.
"He was, in every other sense of the word, Lorey. He loved you. You were his daughter. It didn't matter to him where you were created. You both became ours, and we loved you both exactly that way. It didn't matter to us. You ARE my sister."
"No, I don't want it to be true. He was my dad, and you're my brother. Stop saying it. They were all my family. I won't believe you." I can't take this in, and he squeezes harder, pinning me tight, as though somehow this isn't the worst he has to say. I instantly absorb his tension, reverberating through me. Picking up on his feelings, even while mine are insanely overpowering, freezes me to my core. A new wave of dread hits me like a brick wall.
"I'll always be your family, but the truth is.... who you are is why I got to live .... Do you understand what I'm saying?" He falters, and through the mess of my head and the muggy thoughts colliding, one truth I already know rings clear. Sense prevailing, logic kicking my ass.
"Because my mom was a part vampire... and that somehow saved you." I blurt it out, whimpering, wishing none of this was true, but his tense stiffening tells me that's not right exactly.
"No... I mean, she was, but...... your father, Lorey. Your biological dad. He's the son of the high lord. Your dad's one of them."