Magnus quickly waved both hands in front of him, fending off Brody’s accusation. “No, no. Nothing like that. I know someone who could run the test for me privately. Nothing will be public, but... well, look.”
He held out his phone, which showed a long list of data. The first was the literal genetic breakdown of his DNA, but then under that was a complicated tree of various ancestors he was related to.
“What are we supposed to be looking at?” I asked. My gaze darted over the various lists of names and dates, but I found nothing out of the ordinary.
“Right there, at the end.” Magnus pointed to the earliest name on one of the shorter branches of his ancestral tree. “Apparently, I have an ancestor who, at the turn of the twentieth century, grew up in an orphanage. I looked up the location ofthat orphanage and... it’s the same location that Rose Milford allegedly dropped off her child.”
This had to be a joke. I refused to believe it, but I also knew that Magnus wouldn’t lie about something like this.
Surely, there had to be a mistake somewhere.
I was still reeling from this new piece of information when Magnus, unfortunately, continued.
“I also looked up you two as well. The results are in the files I gave you. It looks like?—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted him. “Don’t tell me what I think you’re about to say. I really don’t want to hear it.”
“But,” he started to say, but I cut him off again.
“Nope. I’m not listening to this. Chester Grieve was crazy, and that’s all there is to it.”
I handed back the file without opening it and left to take a walk to cool my head.
My denial only lasted as long as it took me to make a few laps around our property. Eventually, curiosity won, and I ended up looking at the file anyway.
There it was, written in black and white.
Chester Grieve had been right all along. That didn’t change the fact that the bastard was still crazy, but in this one instance the man’s instincts had been right.
Magnus, Brody, and I had met completely by chance while serving in the military.
What were the odds that all three of us would turn out to be distantly related?
Even more, what were the odds that we would randomly choose to settle down on the same patch of land where our ancestors had lived?
It was such an impossible coincidence that it almost seemed... unnatural.
No, I was not about to start entertaining the thought of witches and fate and the supernatural. Everything that had happened was entirely natural. Just very, very, very unlikely.
Magnus seemed more open to the idea of supernatural influence, while Brody was still on the fence about the whole thing. We agreed to disagree on the matter and left it at that.
The one thing we did agree on, was the fact that we needed to keep this information secret. Trent, Ellis, and Kayden could be brought into the loop, but other than that, we wouldn’t tell another living soul.
The Tamed Soulsstill existed, though its threat had mostly been declawed without Chester Grieve, and theMothers of the Mountainstill had believers in Emberwood. If it ever got out that we were actually descended from the founders of both cults, we would never know another moment’s peace.
The truth of our ancestry was locked away in Brody’s safe, and we tried to forget it as best as we could. Maybe someday we would build our own complex security measures to keep the information safely hidden, but for now we were happy to pretend that it didn’t exist.
There were plenty of other things for us to worry about, and a future that we needed to build.
CHAPTER 12
Kayden
It tookanother two months after our escape from the cult to finish building Creed’s house. Summer had given way to autumn, and the mountain trees had changed from brilliant green to a fiery patchwork of colors. In that time, I’d left for a few small trips to appease my editor, but I couldn’t bear to stay away for long and always ended up coming right back. I’d never built a house before, or done any woodworking for that matter, but I helped where I could. There was always plenty of basic labor that needed to be taken care of.
Creed had also managed to find a job, and I knew that he felt better now that he was able to contribute financially. About two weeks after Creed and I were rescued, a group of campers went missing out on the mountain. Creed volunteered his services to help find the missing campers, and his skills ended up being invaluable to the rescue efforts.
Apparently, the campers’ GPS had been broken and took them in the wrong direction. None of them had been skilled enoughat reading the environment around them to realize they were off track until they started running low on supplies. They’d been so far from their intended destination that even the rescue team’s scent hounds were having trouble locating them. Creed’s knowledge of the area and ability to read the almost invisible signs and tracks left by the group ended up being invaluable, and the rescue team even admitted that without him, they might not have found the lost campers in time.