outburst, doesn’t try to explain it. But he stops swearing, stops looking like he wants to tear the entire library—and Jaxon—apart. And skulks off to sit in one of the chairs by the window, his back to me.
I turn around to find Jaxon staring, and there’s an edge in his eyes that has a chill working its way down my spine. Not because I think he’ll hurt me—Jaxon would never do that—but because it makes him feel far away from me, distant in a way I didn’t expect and don’t know how to handle.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s just hard to ignore someone throwing a tantrum in my head. I wish I could,” I tell him. “Even more, I wish he wasn’t there at all. But he is, and I’m trying, Jaxon. I’m really trying.”
The ice in his gaze melts at my words, and his whole body softens. “I know.” He reaches for my hand, pulls me close. “You’re handling so much right now. I wish I could take it all away from you.”
“That’s not your job.”
“I’m your mate.” He looks vaguely insulted. “If it’s not my job, whose is it?”
“Mine,” I whisper, going on tiptoes to press my lips, very softly, to his. “You’re just the moral support.”
He gives a startled laugh. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been given that role.”
“I bet. How does it feel?”
To his credit, he thinks about it for a moment before saying, “I don’t like it.”
I shoot him a fake shocked look, and he just laughs. Then says, “Do you want to hear about gargoyles or not?”
“I absolutely do.”
Jaxon leads me back to the table and we settle into our seats again, reaching for the books we’d started to read before Hudson’s outburst.
“Like I was saying, gargoyles are old—although not as old as vampires. No one knows how they were created—” He breaks off, thinks about it. “Or at least, I don’t know how. I just know that they didn’t exist before the First Great War but were around by the time of the Second. There are all kinds of origin stories, but my favorite ones always revolve around the witches bringing them into existence in the hopes of saving themselves and humans from another great war. Some say they used dark magic, but I never believed it. I always thought they asked a higher power for help, and that’s why gargoyles have always been protectors.”
Protectors. The word settles on me. It sinks into my bones, flows through my veins—because it feels right. It feels like the home I haven’t had in four long months and, conversely, the home I’ve been looking for my entire life even though I didn’t know it.
“What are we supposed to protect?” I ask, blood humming with the promise of what’s to come.
“Magic itself,” Jaxon tells me. “And all the factions who wield it in all their different ways.”
“So not just witch magic, then.”
“No, not just the witches. Gargoyles kept the balance among all the paranormals—vampires and werewolves, witches and dragons.” He pauses. “Mermaids and selkies and every other not-just-human creature on the planet—and also humans.”
“But why did your father kill the gargoyles, then? If they were the ones keeping everything balanced, why would he want to get rid of them?”
“Power,” Jaxon says. “He and my mother wanted more power, power they couldn’t just take with the gargoyles watching. And now they have it. They sit at the head of the Circle—”
“Amka mentioned the Circle to me. What is it?” I ask.
“The Circle is the ruling body that governs paranormals all over the world. My parents have the highest positions of power on the council, positions they inherited when my father instigated the destruction of all the gargoyles,” Jaxon explains.
“He instigated the murdering of all the gargoyles,” Hudson says from where he’s still near the window, “because he convinced his allies that the humans were planning another war, used the Salem Witch Trials to prove his point. And gargoyles were going to side with them.”
“He killed them all because of a war that never happened?” I whisper, horrified.
Jaxon turns the page in the book he’s currently thumbing through. “Well, this is what some people believe, yes.”
“He killed them all because he is an evil, selfish, power-hungry, cowardly arsehole,” Hudson corrects. “He’s drunk his own Kool-Aid and truly believes he’s the savior of our kind.”
I’m a little shocked—and a lot horrified—at how Hudson, of all people, describes his and Jaxon’s father. Hudson is