Page 12 of Dark Rebel’s Reckoning (The Children Of The Gods #93)

12

KYRA

I t hurt. Kyra didn't remember Jasmine's father, but the pain Max had described cut her nonetheless.

She had so many questions, but Max was reluctant to give her the answers, and she couldn't really blame him for wanting to stay out of the family drama.

Kyra shook her head. A family drama implied a family, and she was still shocked that she had one, but the man whom she'd loved enough to marry and have a child with was now married to someone else. There was no salvaging that past, and perhaps it was for the better. He was most likely not an immortal, and tying her life to a human made no sense.

She was no stranger to loss and grief, but that didn't mean that she sought out pain when she could avoid it.

"I understand." She gave Max a reassuring smile, not wanting him to feel guilty. "Can I still use your phone?"

He hesitated. "Give me the phone number and I'll type a text message. It's not that I don't trust you, but I have safety protocols that I need to follow as well."

"Do you know Kurdish?"

He shook his head.

"Then we have a conundrum. My second-in-command understands English, but he will doubt a text that's not written in Kurdish."

"Then you will have to think of something to say that no one else would know. Can you think of anything like that?"

"Twelve," she said without pause. "My team knew about my obsession with the prisoner in cell twelve. I can tell them that she's safe."

"That's good. Also, the men we freed might have found their way to your rebels and told them about the rescue. Not that they would remember much."

Kyra tilted her head. "Why not?"

"We thralled them to forget what they witnessed. Yamanu back there, the tall guy with the long black hair, can blanket thrall people. I can do only one person at a time."

"What is thralling?" Kyra asked.

"It's like hypnotizing. I can enter a person's mind and see their most recent memories or whatever they were just thinking about immediately before. I can also replace those memories with something else or just push them down below the consciousness level so they will be forgotten like dreams."

"Fascinating." She rubbed her temple. "Is that a talent many immortals possess?"

"Most of us do. Those who transition as adults have a harder time with it. Their brain is already fully formed, and very few manage." He tapped his phone. "Tell me what you want to communicate to your friends."

Kyra finished the last of her coffee and put the cup down. "This is K. I'm using a friend's phone to let you know that I'm safe and I have Twelve with me. We are on our way to a secure location. I'll contact you as soon as it is safe for me to do so."

Max finished typing the message. "Now the phone number."

He typed the digits she recited, but didn't press send. "Do you want me to add that they can respond to this number?"

Kyra shook her head. "Even if your phone is untraceable, I'd rather not. The message goes to an app that my team checks. Not to someone's actual phone. We only use phones as the last resort. That's also why my message is so vague. Even if anyone intercepts it, they won't know what it's about. Soran knows not to respond."

"That's smart." Max sent the text and lifted his eyes to Kyra. "So, Soran. Is he someone special to you?"

Was he jealous?

It sure looked like it, which was kind of funny. Was Max really falling for her?

The half-smile she gave him was knowing. "He's just my second, and now he is the leader of my team. I hope I taught him well enough over the years that we fought together."

"I'm impressed." Max crossed his arms over his chest. "You were a rebel commander."

"Didn't your seer see that?"

"Not as far as I know. She saw you with the Kurdish rebels, but she didn't tell us that you were commanding them, so I assume she didn't know."

Kyra swiped her tongue over her lips. "You speak fondly about your seer, so I guess she's not the scary conceited type."

"Not at all. Syssi is a sweetheart. She's mated to the head of the clan on the American continent, and she's the perfect counterbalance to him."

Kyra frowned. "Is he the scary type?"

"A little, but only to those who don't know him. Those who do also know that his bark is much worse than his bite."

Kyra laughed. "Does he know that you talk about him with such impudence?"

Instead of answering, Max looked at her in wonder as if he was trying to figure something out.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

"Like what?"

"Like you are trying to solve a puzzle. Other than the immortality stuff, which you know more about than I do, I'm a very simple woman."

"I doubt that. I just wonder if you are always so quick to laugh."

The truth was that she rarely did that. There was just something about Max's easygoing attitude that made her feel lighthearted when she should feel anything but.

"Not at all," she admitted. "You just have a gift for presenting things in a funny way. A cheeky way."

A bright smile bloomed on his face as if she'd given him a great compliment. "I've been accused of worse. And as for Kian, he knows what we think of him, and he doesn't mind. He's not big on protocol, and we all call him by his given name, and we don't use titles when addressing him. His mother, on the other hand, is always referred to as the Clan Mother. She's the head of our clan, and although we all love her dearly, only a few are brave enough to call her by her first name."

"The goddess," Kyra said.

"Indeed."

"Does she punish those who dare to use her name?"

Max snorted. "The Clan Mother never punishes any of us unless we transgress greatly, and even then she's always merciful. It's just that the awe she inspires makes it nearly impossible to call her by her given name." He leaned closer to her. "Ell-rom is her half-brother, so Jasmine is one of the few with that privilege."

Kyra's head whipped over to Ell-rom, who didn't seem to have heard Max because he was watching a movie and didn't turn to look at them.

"My daughter is mated to the goddess's brother?" Kyra whispered.

"That's right. You are related to royalty, so to speak."