Blaze of Glory - Liberty Parker Page 0,29
eyes when she finds out that her favorite reading genre is not a made-up fantasy.
Who knows, maybe she’ll surprise me and accept it wholeheartedly and I’ll have been worrying about nothing.
Time will soon tell.
Blaze
Echo refuses to let go of Maritsa, not that I can actually blame him for this act. But when we get her home to Angela, he’s going to have some tough decisions to make. But as always, I will be at his side helping him out any way that I can.
“Maritsa, we need to talk about everything you saw and heard while in captivity,” I begin. Her red-rimmed eyes look up at me, removing her head from Echo’s shoulder.
“Can you turn into an animal too, Blaze?” she questions me with a wobbly lip. I can see how much all of this is affecting her, and I wish I could fix it for her.
“Yes, Maritsa, I can.” My answer has her eyes widening, even though she asked the question and possibly suspected as much, having it confirmed seems to be hard for her to accept.
“And Aunt Glory, can she also change into an animal?”
“Yes, sweetheart. We’re both leopards.” Throughout the years, I’ve learned that answering a question such as this needs to be quickly executed. It’s like ripping a band aid off quickly so you don’t feel the hairs coming off with the sticky ends.
“That’s really pretty cool,” she says with a bit of awe in her voice. “And you, Echo?” She turns her attention to him, but I can tell she really is hoping he’ll say he is.
“I am. I’m also a leopard like Blaze and Glory,” he answers. I can see the worry in his eyes, he needs her to accept him and his animal as well.
“Why do I feel so drawn to you, Echo? I’ve never felt this need to be as close to someone as I do you. Is that normal?” I can see the confusion written on Maritsa’s face as she ask him this.
“There’s a lot I need to explain to you, Maritsa,” Echo informs her. “But we don’t have to get into all of that right now. First, we need to get you to your mother. She needs to see with her own eyes that you are safe and alive.”
“I can’t.” she begins to roughly breath, I’m fearful she’s fixing to have a panic attack. “You can’t leave me!”
“I won’t, I swear to you I won’t,” he soothing states as he pulls her head back into his chest. He looks up at me with wide, fearful eyes. This is new to all of us, no one in our family has been mated to a human and had to explain it to them in full detail. The things she’ll be feeling and experiencing are going to make it hard for her to stay away from him, from all of us. She’ll need that Familia bond in order to make it through each day.
“I think you should explain it all to her now, brother. She knows about us, it’ll be easier for her to understand and comprehend the feelings she’s experiencing,” I tell Echo.
We pull over to the side of the road and spend the next hour explaining and answering Maritsa. Through our link, I told Glory what was taking place and asked her to meet us at Angela’s. We can’t put off telling her about us, this, because there’s no way Maritsa will make it for any amount of time without Echo by her side.
I just hope Angela is willing to have an open mind. Because if she denies Echo, she could possibly kill her only child. Maritsa will slowly break down, her body will shut itself completely off, and if she dies as a result, so will Echo. And that is something I’ll never sit idly by and watch happen.
“We have to explain all of this to your mom, Maritsa. You and Echo cannot be apart for an extended period of time now that y’all have come face-to-face. It can and will destroy you both. Death has been known to occur in these instances.”
I don’t know this for a fact personally, no one in my family has mated to someone who’s non-shifting, but I’ve read reports of it happening.
“She’ll understand, I’ll make her,” Maritsa strongly declares. “If just the thought alone of Echo leaving is hurting this much; I can’t imagine what it’ll do to me if he actually leaves.”
“She may not take it well, Maritsa. I don’t want you giving yourself