Page 82 of Act of Passion

“Brooke, my sweet, I’ve lived a long time,” hesaid.

She blinked at him. “So manwhoring is okay if you’re in yourthousands?”

He opened his mouth, only to be at a loss forwords.

She gasped. “Ohmygod, did you sleep with mymother?”

“What?No!”

“Are you sure? I mean, how can you actually keeptrack?”

Jamessnorted.

Malik exhaled loudly. “I swear to you, I didn’t sleep with her. I ran into her while sneaking out of a hotel room in the middle of the night. Suddenly I ran right into this tall, beautiful woman who I hadn’t noticed in the hall a momentbefore.”

James put his hand on Brooke’sshoulder.

Malik put his hands up. “My sweet, she was just there. I collided with her but she didn’t budge. I knew in an instant she wasn’t human. She looked at me from intensely green eyes and shook her head. She said that she was so disappointed in me. And my life would change in the coming future. That I’d see the error of my ways and that I’d better hope my mate was able to find it in her heart to forgiveme.

“I laughed at her. I mean, who was this mysterious woman trying to tell me about my life and talking about a mate I knew I didn’thave?”

James rubbed Brooke’s shouldermore.

Her shouldersslumped.

“I made a backhanded comment to her and the next thing I knew, I was slammed against the wall and pinned in place by nothing more than her sheer will and power,” he admitted. “She walked right up to me and looked me up and down. She told me when she’d pushed me from afar, when I was young, to not take the throne, it was in the hopes I wouldn’t end up like my father. A demi-god who was also a cat-shifter, who saw women as objects, something to serve and sate his needs, and a man who waged wars for his own amusement, because as king he could and because he cravedpower.”

James lifted a brow, hearing about Malik’s past for the firsttime.

Malik kept going. “She said she truly thought when I walked away from a kingdom of my own, that I’d be worthy. I didn’t understand what she was saying. She said while I’d done well to avoid being power hungry, I’d failed miserably in not seeing women as objects. She told me my past would come back to haunt me. I asked her who she was, and she looked me right in the eyes and told me her name, a name everyone in the supernatural world had heard before, and she then said that if I hurt what had been gifted to me, she’d find a way to return from the other side and make me very sorry I’d crossedher.”

Brooke’s jaw dropped. “My mother basically called you a whore and then threatened yourlife?”

He snorted. “Yes. She did. And just like that, she was gone.Poof.”

James eyed him. “She talked to you like she knew she was going to die sooner rather thanlater.”

Brooke cupped her mouth. “I think they both knew. They’d make comments around me about how they wouldn’t be with me long, and then they took me to meet a woman I’d never met before. A woman they said was my grandmother but she didn’t feel like…likeus. She felt like nothing. Sweet and caring, but like nothing. Yet, I really did think she was my grandmother right up until my night with Malik. Then memories flooded back tome.”

James patted her shoulder. “She washuman.”

Brooke looked at the floor. “I remember my father starting to cry as he bent to tell me that I needed to learn to trust the woman. That one day he and my mother would go away on a long trip and that I’d stay with the woman, until the son of the god king came forme.”

Malik held tight to his emotions. Abasi had known all along that Brooke was to mate him. Yet he’d never uttered a word to Malik aboutit.

“Daddy didn’t want to let go of me and Mother told him it had to be. That they could no more change their fate than they could prevent the pain and heartache I’d face one day. And that it needed to be done. She said something about the others not being allowed to smell me or they’d know the truth. My dad was huge but in that moment, he looked so small, so broken. He shook his head and begged her not to do it. Not to suppress what I was born with—that it would make me unable to protect myself when the timecame.”

James gasped. “Your mother blocked the rest of the supernatural world from being able to sense anything other than human on you. Which is why every operative who was around you swore you were human. Even Malik. But Malik’s claim on you changed that—unlocking it, for lack of a better word, along with your memories of your parents being more thanhuman.”

Brooke started to cry. “I have the image of my father, who was larger than life to me, openly sobbing, clinging to me, trying to convince my mother that they could change fate, and he kept pointing out that my mate wouldn’t be able to sense my need of him, or know to claim me because I’d seem human to him. I remember my mom laughing softly through her tears and telling him that Fate would see to it my mate and I came together, and that my father was wrong, my mate would claim me, even thinking I was human. She told him the power she’d put over me would end then. That I’d be what I’d been born tobe.”

Malik hugged her tight. “She was right. I claimed you thinking you onlyhuman.”

Brooke cried softly. “I thought when I was being held captive that I was just making it all up in my head. I tried convincing myself that it wasn’t real. That everything I was seeing around me was making me believe my parents were something more too. That seeing my father’s eyes go from dark to amber wasn’t real. That my mother couldn’t possibly do all I’d seen her do. I mean how could anyone predict the future or make things move without touchingthem?”

James swallowed hard. “Brooke, Gwenhwyfar was the queen of Fae for thousands of years. And then suddenly she was gone, abdicating the throne to another. And she was rumored to be able to see the future and the past. To know things long before they happened. She must have seen what would come to be and I’m guessing that was why she paid Malik a visit. She wanted to prepare him for what was to come and meet him face to face to express her dislike of the lifestyle he wasliving.”

Malik swallowed his emotions, knowing how painful this all was to Brooke. “Why didn’t Abasi reach out to me and tell meeverything?”

---