“It’s better if I don’t. I will always love her, but she’s gone. I said my good-byes. My focus needs to be on the children she blessed me with. If she can see me, she can see I’m happy and loved by her sons. That’s enough.”
Winter grabbed Aiden and hugged him tightly, roughly wiping tears on the man’s shoulder. “You are loved,” he whispered in a choked voice.
Aiden held him. “I know. My sons have always made me feel loved.”
When Winter stepped back, reluctantly releasing Aiden, the smile was a little steadier on Aiden’s lips. “And because of that love, I feel confident in saying that you should tell your brothers…everything.”
Winter groaned and turned toward the house. It was an old argument Winter had spent one hundred and seventy-seven years dodging. “Now is not the time. We’ve got other things to occupy us.”
“There’s always a new excuse, but I know it comes down to fear. You’re scared of how your brothers are going to react. Scared they will look at you with fear or pity.”
“Yes!” Winter snapped, throwing his arms up. “Of course I am. After all we went through with Mother, I don’t want them looking at me like I’m a fucking ticking time bomb. Even after all these years.”
“I don’t think they will.”
“Well, now is definitely not the time to get into it.” At least with the threat of Damon and the witch, he felt on firmer ground with his evasion. He started to walk toward Marcus’s house, and Aiden fell into step beside him.
His father didn’t say anything, but Winter knew he was right. He’d put it off with the excuse that they had to put all their energy into protecting Julianna and their family. Now it was about protecting the clan from Damon and his pack of assholes. There would always be a new excuse. He’d spent almost his entire human and vampire lives hiding things from his brothers, and it was getting old. The weight pressed heavy on his chest.
He was so damn tired.
“Could you do me a favor when you talk to Zelda?” Winter asked suddenly.
“Of course.”
“Ask her about my prophecy.”
“Winter…” Aiden started, but Winter was already shaking his head. This was the other thing they’d gone around and around about over the years. They were never going to agree on it, and Winter had reconciled himself to it.
Aiden had spoken to Zelda shortly after Winter had been reborn a vampire. He wanted her opinion on Winter’s strange ability to hear the dead, to see the dead. Zelda had replied with the one and only prophecy she’d given the Varik clan.
When the mother finds peace,
And the brothers find joy,
The youngest shall find silence divine.
Winter might not necessarily believe in witches and magic, but some irrational part of his brain had clung to those words for so many years. He just needed to know that it would be over one day. He hadn’t known it would take one hundred and seventy-seven years for them to complete the first two parts of the prophecy, but he had to believe that the end was finally upon him.
Right now, all he prayed was that he would last until after Damon was taken care of. Then he’d find his own peace in silence. He’d always taken the final line to mean that he was meant to die. What other divine silence could there be? How else was he supposed to shed this curse?
Aiden clung to the hope of some answer, but Zelda had provided no new enlightenment or guidance. Part of him remained skeptical, but her words were his last and only hope.
“Talk to her for me. I’m tired, Aiden. I just want to be rid of the dead at last.”
Chapter 5
Winter glared at the massive house glowing against the darkness in front of him. Of course, Damon’s house was enormous. It’d taken Winter three nights to get to Damon’s compound in Virginia. He’d been careful to drive from his place in Connecticut, checking over and over again to be sure he wasn’t followed, that he wasn’t found by humans or vampires when he was forced to stop for the daylight hours.
Even after he reached Fairfax, Virginia, he kept a distance from Damon’s house, avoiding vampires and humans. He wasn’t sure who was on Damon’s side—he just had to assume they all were.
But there was one group he could safely speak to—the ghosts who lingered close to Damon’s grounds. And there were more than a few former vampires who