Page 34 of Captive Hybrid

A light chuckle escapes Aidan’s lips. ‘Hey, focus on me.’

I grumble at him, then finally reach out and touch the glowing, yellow ball. A wave of calm washes over me and I close my eyes. Along with the wave of calm is strong arousal, a deep sense of trust and serenity. I yank my eyes open, pulling my hand away.

‘See?’ Aidan’s voice is gentle.

I fold my arms together before me, like a safe line between us. ‘Just because you feel good or safe doesn’t mean I do.’ I play with the straw in my drink, trying not to feel overwhelmed. Again, I reach out for Mordecai in my mind, then pull back. He can’t help.

Aidan worries his lower lip, glances over at Evelyn, then gives me a nod. Without warning, he stands, and takes my arm. ‘Come with me.’ He offers me his elbow in a weirdly old-fashioned gesture which almost makes me smile, instead I roll my eyes, and take it.

He leads me away, through a hall, and into an empty sitting room lowering himself into an armchair beside me.

After a long moment, I stare at him expectantly. ‘What are we doing here?’ I stare around the room. The walls are bare stone, cold. There are a few rugs on the ground, but most of the space is bleak and grey, like this whole Tomb. A few people wander about, but the room is mostly quiet.

‘I thought you would be more comfortable out here. The Den doesn’t seem like your… scene.’

I lower my gaze. ‘No. I don’t think so.’ The back of my throat aches, my whole body tense with my lack of freedom. Control. ‘Why… what kind of person chooses a life like this?’

A muscle in his jaw tightens, his only reaction. ‘Our lives are our own, to do with as we wish, Zenna.’

I roll my eyes again. ‘You sound like a patronising parent.’

Amusement quirks his mouth. ‘I didn’t think I was that old, but thank you. I mean it, though. Tell me a bit about yourself. How you came to be here.’

‘Are you saying whatever choices I made led me here, so it’s my own fault?’

Aidan’s warm, brown eyes soften. ‘No, not at all.’

A blanket of tense silence falls over us. I don’t know if I want to talk to him. All I can think about is getting the fuck out of here. My throat burns again, so I try to swallow the sensation down. It doesn’t work.

‘Ever since I was a baby, I have been unwanted.’ My words aren’t designed to seek pity, so when I meet Aidan’s gaze, there’s no well of sympathy in his eyes. He lets me continue. ‘My parents abandoned me. They left me to the Triple Moon Coven. The Coven and the Pack had already joined in an alliance. A witch raised me. When I was eighteen, to be mated with the alpha’s son, he rejected me. Because I’m a hybrid.’

This time, Aidan’s lip betrays the sympathy he tries to hide. ‘That’s rough. How did you get mixed up in this—’ He waves a hand, gesturing to the Tomb, the vampires, all of it.

‘The first murder. Or,’ I amend, ‘the first one I knew about was of a witch in my neighbourhood.’ Now that I think about it, the bloodlines… ‘She was actually my cousin. I never knew her, though. I just… I felt the need to find out why she was killed.’

‘Oh? How unusual.’

‘What do you mean?’

Aidan presses the tips of his fingers together, making him look like a villain, just shy of a fluffy cat in his lap and an ominous scar over his eye. ‘Well, it takes a special kind of person, human or supe, to seek out danger.’

I blink. Despite Jana’s warnings, I had never thought of it like that. ‘I just needed to know why she was killed. So, I went to the crime scene and—’ I halt, realising I’m half a sentence away from telling this stranger about one of my powers, my visions. I can’t lie about what I see in them, but I do have control over who I tell about them. ‘—and the Detective showed me what had happened to her. Her name was Paige. She was only nineteen. She was killed because of her bloodline. She has the same witch bloodline as me.’ Sadness pulses through me. I had a cousin out there I never knew about. I don’t allow myself to wonder if she knew about me. What she was like.

Aidan’s brows inch together. ‘The Origins were recently awakened. They wanted blood for what happened to them.’

‘You say awakened as though they weren’t dead.’

Aidan smirks. ‘Just because something is not alive does not mean it is dead.’

I try not to shiver at that. ‘Then, my… my fated mate, Mordecai, showed up. His father had been killed in the same way.’

‘Ah. That makes him a target, too.’

I nod. ‘We never found who actually killed them, though.’

The witch reveals nothing. ‘You can’t imagine how many work for the Origins.’

‘Who revived them in the first place?’

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