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6

Better To Have Loved

MY GRANDMOTHER’S TIREDeyes stayed with me as I sat across the table, waiting for a man who was likely to dress me in something ridiculous. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

A lot didn’t even cover it.

Swallowing around the discomfort in my throat, I nodded. “A few.”

“You should. I know I still do.”

Her voice expressed an anger I’d never seen on her. It was bitter. It sounded like someone who fought to hold back what they really wanted to say. It was a resentment floundering in the dark for years without anywhere to channel it.

“I’m just wondering why you never said anything until now,” I started, trying to keep my voice from giving away the betrayal I felt when I heard it from some strange man and not the woman who raised me. “It feels like...well, I just don’t know why you thought I couldn’t handle hearing it. I’d like to think I’ve taken all you’ve told me with a grace befitting the Queen of England.”

Grams’s grief shined through despite her laughing breath. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you could handle it, but simply put, I wanted to wait.”

“For?”

“For you to be older. For you to be better trained. For you to live a little bit of a normal life, I suppose,” her voice softened. “I guess everything sounds like an excuse when I say it out loud.”

I bit my lower lip in frustration, heart held in a vice grip. “I get it, Grams. You were scared.”

When our gazes connected again, my grandmother who never cried in anyone’s presence, not one single time in my seventeen years, was misty-eyed. The remorse in her expression was heartbreaking.

Without saying a word, I could feel the pain and fear she’d suffered for years, alone, imprisoned by her desire to give me a chance at being normal. Though, I’d argue my life had been far from it. And I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around the strongest woman I’d ever known.

But Grams sucked in a deep breath and went on, “Other than Phillip, I couldn’t say a word to anyone. Not your uncles. Not your grandfather.” Her hand wrapped around mine. “And for a long time, I didn’t want to believe it. Because the repercussions of such a truth would mean you’d never be safe. You’d be turned into a weapon much like I was.”

She paused, closing her eyes tightly. “I’ve known Phillip since I was twenty, and I saw for myself that he never aged and the immeasurable abilities he wields. I was one of very few who knew, and I didn’t want to think they’d do it again.” The tone she took was the weakest yet. “But they did. To my own granddaughter, no less.”

“So, when did you know I had the same genetic makeup as Phillip?”

Grams shrugged, her weary eyes straying to the kitchen window over the sink.

She’d never looked more her age until that moment.

The years of heartbreak and suffering showed on her face, in her slouched shoulders, on her desperately fragile skin. After seeing a classmate’s death the way I had, I could only imagine what seventy years of it could do to a person. Grams never discussed who she’d lost, but I already knew it was more than several lives’ worth.

Where did someone put that sort of grief? Where did it go when you couldn’t talk to anyone about it? Did it sit on her chest the way Daxon and his family’s death had mine?

Seventy years is a long time to hold onto that kind of guilt.

“I didn’t suspect anything. Not until I first saw your strength and skill when you started training at the age of seven. It wasn’t the same as other young Hunters. Without our blood activated, not many could do what you did.”