full-bloods. A psychic race with skills of unfathomable psionic abilities. It was why their race had been extinguished. Fear and greed. People either wanted to control the Trisani and use their powers for their own petty purposes, or they were too terrified of them to let them live in peace.
Hadrian took her hand into his. “We’ll find him, Jaynie. Have no fear.”
“I know, baby. I just hope he’s still alive.”
Hadrian and Nero exchanged a quick glance. “He’s alive,” Hadrian assured her. “I can feel his life force. But he’s… angry.”
She smiled at the one truth of Talyn’s character. “Ever full of fight.”
Hadrian nodded before he buckled himself in beside her.
Her heart aching, Jayne turned her link on and pulled up the old photo she kept of Talyn from back in the day when he’d been in her class and she’d first met him and Galene. It’d been her first year as a student teacher at Brunelle Academy. Nervous and unsure, she’d kept waiting for someone to recognize her as the daughter of her nefarious father, and throw her out.
Or have her arrested.
But no one had. And as the class had filled with students on that first day, she’d just begun to relax.
Until Talyn had walked in. The moment he did, a fissure of friction permeated the air so thickly that she could have sliced it with a dull spoon.
Only eight years old, he’d held his chin high and walked in alone, unlike the others whose parents had brought them in and helped them to find their seats. Without a word, and acting like a full-grown adult, Talyn had ignored the sneers of the Hyshian students and parents who didn’t want an Andarion male in the mix, and had gone to his desk. He’d been so adorable with his caramel skin and bright white eyes. Since his black hair was longer, per Andarion fashion, than the rest of the males in his class, Talyn had worn it under a dark-colored religious Azukarian cap, which he continually tugged at to make sure it didn’t expose his hair.
“Gah, why am I stuck with that in my room?”
Jayne had arched her brow at her senior teacher’s derision. “Is there a problem?”
She’d jerked her chin in Talyn’s direction. “I can’t believe the administration allows him to go here. He’s no business in this room with our kind. Imagine a universe where they mix freely with us.”
By the sudden tenseness of Talyn’s jaw and hurt look in his young eyes, she knew he’d heard the older teacher. But rather than call her out, he’d unpacked his bag and kept his gaze on the floor in front of his desk.
Little had the stupid bitch known, Jayne’s own grandmother was a full-blooded Andarion. It was why her hair was black and she was so tall. And it’d been just such prejudice that had forced her grandmother from her homeworld and made Jayne’s father the angry criminal he was.
Feeling for Talyn and knowing he had to be even more nervous on his first day than the others, Jayne had gone over to him.
“Hi.”
He’d glanced up at her with a frown that said he wasn’t sure why she was talking to him.
“I need your name so I can mark you as present.”
Instead of speaking and exposing his tiny fangs, he’d pulled his name tag from his shirt and handed it to her.
“Talon Batter?” She’d intentionally mispronounced it to force him to speak.
His eyes full of patience, he’d shaken his head. “Tah-lean BAH-tour.” His little high-pitched voice had barely been a purred whisper as he rolled his l and r like only a native Andarion speaker could.
Jayne had held her hand out to him. “I’m Miss Erixour. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Talyn.”
Cocking his head in an adorable fashion, he’d stared at her hand as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Which made sense, since Andarions didn’t greet each other that way.
Jayne had dropped her arm as she was called away to assist with other students. But over the next few weeks, her heart had broken more and more for the boy who was ignored at best and mocked at worst.
Talyn never spoke. To anyone. He just glared out at the world with a procacious gaze and tolerated the meanness so that no one at their school would call Galene about his behavior and get his mother into trouble at work.
Months had gone by with Jayne wondering about his parents, and why they’d so cruelly put him