Page 9 of Cleo

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“What about your mom? She didn’t do anything to stop him?” Minx asked.

That question gave me pause. “My mother died giving birth to me.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kiki said. “We need a timeline here. What’s your birthday?” she asked.

A boulder took shape in my throat. This was more emotional than I thought it would be. “It’s in the fall.”

All three of them shared a look. Predictable. I knew this would cause some intrigue. Everyone knew their birthday, even the people on the TV shows I watched. They had birthday parties and surprise gifts. I’d never had any of that. Unimportant detail, my father said. “The fall? You don’t know the date?” Minx asked.

I shrugged. “Something that wasn’t important to our father. I was born when the leaves had turned colors and fell to the ground in the forest below. The mornings and nights had a chill. That’s all I know. Birthdays weren’t celebrated, so I really don’t know exactly how old I am.”

All eating had stopped. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and my senses let me know that, as I suspected, we were being listened to. “Minx is older than both of us, and Kiki and I are only months apart.”

I shook my head. I didn’t like telling them all these truths at all. But I had to remember they weren’t my transgressions. They belonged to my father. “My mother was first. After she died, he began taking trips. He would come home smelling of other females, or was the hearsay. I heard some of the servants whispering about him trying to have a son. I think he raised me because he loved my mother. He told me once that if he believed in Fate and fated mates, my mother would’ve been his.”

“So you are older than us.”

“I suppose.” That was my best guess. “You all were raised by your mothers? That must’ve been nice.”

I listened to them speak about how they were raised. Minx was raised by her mother and someone who she thought was her father. They were still alive. Ava’s parents died in a car accident and she found out through some blood tests that her father wasn’t her biological one. Kiki had been left at a fire station. Her mother had abandoned her. And my father had abandoned them all.

And here I was complaining about my pampered circumstances.

“So, he let you come here? What changed?” Ava leaned forward.

What I had managed to eat soured in my stomach. “I realized my life wasn’t my own. My days were controlled and scheduled. I was limited to the perimeter of our lands physically and mentally. Angie dared to expose me to books and movies. There was a whole world out there I had no idea about. Still don’t.” I shrugged, embarrassed. None of how I’d been raised was my fault, but I hated being so vulnerable to everyone aroundme. I could trust my sisters, but the rest of the world, not so much. I could be taken advantage of and never realize until it was too late.

“And he let you go?” Ava asked again. Some of her dark hair fell forward, almost hitting her plate.

“No. Father would never let me go.”

Chapter Nine

“Then tell us how you—” Minx started, but a buzzer rang out above us. “Shoot. We have to get to homeroom. But more later, okay?”

I nodded. Each of them hugged me, and Kiki whispered in my ear that none of what happened to me was my fault and she was glad I escaped. I appreciated the reassurance. Until Angie showed me the DNA results, I thought myself an only child. Father never mentioned another heir, so I assumed his efforts in having a son were all failures. Already, there was a connection between us. Akin to the bond I had with Angie but stronger.

Finishing off my coffee, even though it was now cold, I walked my tray to the place where everyone else deposited theirs. With my schedule plucked from my pocket, and its handy map, I saw that my homeroom was only one floor down and down the hallway a bit.

A wave of nervousness made me regret the coffee and the breakfast, but I had to take these steps to claim my life.

I felt silly with an empty backpack on one shoulder, but I expected to receive books and other materials that I wouldn’t just hold in my hands.

As much as I wanted and needed to go to my first class, my feet didn’t move. A cold sweat spread out along my brow and the back of my neck as tingling ran down my arms and legs. My feet were glued in place.

The only other time I’d felt like this was the moment my body crossed over the invisible boundary to the compound. The moment my life changed forever.

“You’re okay,” a voice to my right said. The body the voice belonged to was next to me. The warmth came from them in waves. I forced myself to look up to find Pax standing there. Hiseyebrows bunched. He worked his lips between his teeth and ground his jaw. “Cleo, everything is okay.”

Oh. Did he sense me freaking out?

“I’m okay,” I repeated his mantra back to him and to myself.

“Yes. You are. Come back.” Somehow his sentence snapped me back into reality.

I sucked in a long breath and then released it. “I have to get to class,” I told him, my voice ragged and gravelly from the freak-out. Gods, let that not happen again.

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