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Then I had a thought. “Did one of ya go into their labs as a human so ya could control what ya did?”

Orlin chuckled. “A guardian now runs the site we used. He will remain there until we have finished our research. It’s taken many of your human years. We don’t feel time as you do, but I know time drives humanity.”

I crossed my arms. “Ya have to be joking.” Even in the dark, I saw his head shake. Snorting, I stomped back to my chair and dropped into it. “Ya look young enough to be my child. It’s hard to take ya seriously when ya tell me you’re my elder.”

Orlin lifted his hands. “Every return to our original guardian form wipes away the effects of ever becoming another. That was how we were designed. But some circumstances can damage us so badly that a longer regeneration is necessary.”

“Oh, I know. I saw that firsthand with Rasmus. Even after he changed back, he wasn’t clear on what had happened to him.”

Orlin nodded and went on with his story. “When I was with Murieann, one of my brethren was captured by those you would consider to be evil humans. I changed back to my original form and went to retrieve him. I was captured and dissected into hundreds of pieces. My body parts were thrown off a cliff by humans who were convinced guardians were evil. My brethren collected my parts, but regeneration from those wounds took me a lot of time. A guardian heals much faster than a demon, but that was more than I had ever suffered. While in healing stasis, much time passed among your kind.”

I bowed my head and moaned into my hands. “Yer kind must think all humans are barbarians. How could ya not? I think that myself sometimes.”

Orlin chuckled, but dryly. It was not funny to know he and my grandmother could have had a happy life together if someone hadn’t done their best to kill him.

“Not all humans are barbaric, but you certainly have your extremists. They keep breeding and breeding.”

I raised my gaze to meet his. “Yes, they do, and I can’t believe Da didn’t believe ya.”

“Your father had lived his entire life to that point believing his real father didn’t care about him. Then I show up with a story that fits nothing he could accept as reality. I appreciate you haven’t sent me away like he did.”

“How did ya learn about Da being your child? How do ya know it’s even true?”

“Are you asking if I have any solid proof of my parentage?”

I shrugged in apology. “Well... yes. I guess that is what I’m asking. I hope ya don’t think I’m being rude.”

Orlin smiled at me. “My lineage was clearer than most because Murieann was my first lover in centuries. Brethren watched over her while I was healing. I know she never bred with any other male which was probably because one of the brethren told her I would eventually regenerate. It was not fair for her to live such a lonely life and it saddens me still. That was another thing your father didn’t believe. Or maybe he understood and hated me fiercely for not returning sooner.”

I ran a hand over my face. Poor Da. And he never told Ma about his history. He thought he had no magick, but then learned his father was a guardian. No wonder he had such a poor opinion of them. He’d been cheated in every way.

No father. No magick. Nothing but me and Ma.

“Ya’re not my Uncle Peter’s father. He was Da’s older brother and a very unhappy sort. Ma cursed him to be a better husband. I think he joined the church before he passed. No one in our family ever talked much about him. Ma told me he hated all magick and those that wielded it.”

Orlin held my gaze. “Your uncle’s father was a boy Murieann loved in her youth. She was sixteen when she had him. When your uncle was a baby, his father went to war and never returned. Like your father, your uncle also felt abandoned. Peter moved out of Murieann’s house before he turned sixteen and went to live with his paternal grandparents. She hated it but accepted his decision. I came into Murieann’s life that same year.”

Conn knew all this—that Grandma O’Malley hadn’t married either of the men in her life. My gut felt sure he was privy to the details. He could deny it all day long, but I suspected the only tidbit Conn hadn’t known was that Orlin had been a guardian in human form. Like me, he’d wrongly thought Rasmus was Nephilim.

I sighed in the dark. “Poor Grandma O’Malley. She birthed two children with no last name to give them but her own. Her luck with men was worse than mine. At least Jack and I were happy for a few years.”

Orlin spread his hands in the air. “I continued to watch over your father from a distance. I even asked to be officially put in the DNA database so there would be more than my word to prove the truth. If you or your father had done an ancestry check, my name would have shown up next to Murieann’s. She was an amazing woman and I can’t believe I’m now talking to someone who was born from both of us.”

“And Fiona makes yet another generation of yer guardian lineage.”

“Yes, and there’s a twist to my story that I’ve only learned since your father died.”

“Is this going to blow my mind like ya blew Da’s?”

Orlin shrugged. “Probably.”

I sighed and waved my hand between us so he’d tell me.

“When we found out that reproduction in our human forms produced mostly normal offspring, we investigated and learned that we’d produced more children than we imagined. That naturally frightened us because we didn’t want a repeat of the flood happening. Luckily, we discovered that mating with human women while genetically keeping ouroriginalguardian DNA was what caused the original anomalies. We only wore a human form back then instead of geneticallybecominga human.”

“Stories say ya bred giants who sometimes turned into cannibals.”

“Yes, some of them did. That was a dark time for us. We were ordered to track the cannibalistic ones down and kill them. The flood saved us from having to do much of that, but it was a terrible time for all species on Earth. There was more death and destruction in those days than any of us had ever witnessed before.”