teach you the runes of power needed for this now, but if you were to mess them up, we would lose precious time. When we’re done here, I shall go to your home with you, and we will make sure you have all the protections the family can provide.”
“Ah…it’s not necessary, Jabari. Like I said, I can live on my—”
“Yes. You are very adamant you can do it on your own, having done it for seven years without major problems while no one knew you were a member of our family. I will teach you.” He was snappy again. “That is final.”
I groaned as he stomped away. “I can’t win with this man, Heath. I just can’t win with him.”
“Seems like.”
I walked past Heath, following the ancient man who was supposed to be my brother but instead, was just a pain in my ass.
“Can you believe that? He was there when vampires popped into fucking existence,” I muttered as we walked after Jabari. “I didn’t have any idea. I knew he was older than fucking dirt, but fuck, that’s old.”
“Imagine the things he’s seen,” Heath whispered, agreeing with me. “Too bad he’s an asshole. I don’t care that he’s from a different time when it comes down to it, though. He needs to act better.”
“You aren’t going to let that go, are you?” I asked.
“No. Not when every time he talks to you, I can fucking imagine the blade cutting at you. I can see the fucking hurt flash in your eyes with every word that comes out of his mouth when he’s not dismissing you completely.” Heath curled a lip, mimicking a look I had seen earlier on his face. I rarely saw him disgusted and angry like this and never while in my territory—frustrated, yes, a bit pissed off with me, certainly, but nothing like the level of distaste he had for Jabari.
“Well, please, let it go for the rest of this. I just want to get through the night alive and out of the forest without having to break you two up. I said my piece, and that’s all. If he wants to follow me home to teach me something he should have taught me seven years ago, he can do that. I’m not going to fight with him anymore.” I was too fucking tired to fight with him and knew it would escalate if I rejected him further. He would tell Hasan I was denying protections the rest of the family used, which would then let Hasan know I never had them to begin with, and who knew what that would lead to.
We made it back to the mouth of the cave, and Jabari got the fire going finally. We took places around it, watching it go, and when the quiet proved too much for me, I decided to continue asking him questions.
“How old is Hasan?”
“You need to ask him,” he replied. “Every one of us has had to confront that question on our own. Consider it tradition, one he enforces.”
“Damn,” I sighed. “Can you tell me if he’s the first of our kind?” Were all the werecats technically his in the end?
“No, he’s not. They’re all gone now, but we had known older. He’s just the oldest left. He’s from early on, I can tell you that. It took me a century to ask him. Zuri and I confronted him together about where he came from. Mischa took two hundred years. Davor asked immediately, refusing to believe he didn’t know something and couldn’t work it out on his own. Everyone has their own timeline about asking Hasan about himself. He’s not…an easy father to have,” Jabari conceded in the end.
“No.” I pulled my knees up and laid my head on them. “And this isn’t an easy family to be a member of.”
Jabari visibly winced that time.
22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sky grew darker outside the cavern. Sometime during the afternoon, I napped, leaning against the rough rock wall. Heath woke me up and offered something I wasn’t expecting—meat.
“Rabbit. I went out and caught a couple before it got too late,” he explained. “I cooked it as best I could.”
“Would have eaten it raw,” I said, chuckling. “Thanks.”
I took whatever the body part was he offered and bit into it. Gamey and tough, I had to pull the meat from the bone, but it was calories I was certain everyone needed. Jabari quietly sat across the cavern, ignoring us, but I could see the clean bones beside him on