Page 36 of Ellie 2 (Tantalizing Trilogies #8)

Ha-joon

My heart beat in my ears at Ellie’s words.

I forgot how to breathe as I blinked at our joined hands.

“There’s no excusing when someone goes that far,” she said firmly even as her voice cracked.

“There’s no justifying it or trying to understand it.

All the ‘parent’ does is pick a side and not the side of the child who was the victim.

Fine, I wasn’t her biological child, but she raised me and didn’t raise her. And I did nothing wrong. I was better.

“That wasn’t my fault. That’s genetics. That’s chance.

That’s the gods’ choice. I also worked harder to make her proud and her biological daughter was jealous of that.

She was jealous she wouldn’t have the mating prospects I did and the power of being a coven leader’s wife.

There is no forgiving attempting to kill a sibling out of jealousy. Ever.”

“Walk us through it,” Dr. Bass cut in, clearly understanding there was more to all of this but wanting to move things along. Probably so she could rest.

Which was also why I’d asked Dr. James to cover my patients for the day. He’d been shocked, but I didn’t have anyone on my calendar who needed me specifically and… Seriously, Ellie needed me more. When I put it like that he said he’d make it work.

Good man.

Ellie sighed. “It took a couple of years, but Father found someone he said was perfect on paper and invited him to stay with the coven. He said that was what was missing and how his wise mate and daughter could see through the cracks with the help of the elders. So do it better and invite him out.” She let out a stressed giggle.

“This is like a telenovela where your half sister met him on his journey somehow and fell madly in love, right?” Carla drawled.

Ellie giggled again and tapped her nose before pointing at her.

“Oh yeah. Broken carriage wheel and everything. I mean… My life is like a shitty period cliché that—whatever. She didn’t know until he was here a few weeks that it was so we might be mated.

I still wasn’t on board and threatened not to go through with it if they didn’t tell me about my birth mother.

“Father laughed and said he thought it was hysterical that I thought I got a choice, but I had cards to play too. I was ready to tell the coven I was a bastard instead of living with that threat over my head later. It was—you can imagine. Long story short, she found out and went apeshit. I don’t know how long she knew about the switch but… ” She shrugged.

“She escaped her arrangements and somehow got into the coven?” Gerald pushed, looking a bit too engaged in her backstory.

“I don’t really know,” Ellie sighed. “I don’t know how much freedom she had.

” She grabbed my bottle of water that I’d left on the coffee table and took a swig.

“I never knew all that much and it’s hundreds of years later.

All I do know is I wasn’t the pampered princess she’d assumed I’d be as a coven leader’s daughter.

“I trained hard because life was hard, and several of the elders instilled it in my head that if Father should fall I would be the acting coven leader with my stepmother until—I had to be ready. I have no idea if it was real advice or more elder mischief, but I took it to heart.” She angrily wiped tears that broke my heart. “That’s how I met my younger sister.

“With a dagger trying to kill me in my bedchambers. She’s fucking lucky I recognized her even in the moonlight coming through the window. She’s lucky that it was almost a full moon and the moonlight would come in. It was a warmer night and I had the window and curtains open for the breeze.”

“She looked like your stepmother,” Carla put together.

“Spitting image but younger,” Ellie confirmed.

“I disarmed and knocked her out only before waking my servant in the connecting room to get my stepmother immediately. I made up some excuse of—I forget. I was in shock, but she saw it was important enough and then my stepmother came and found her real daughter knocked out.”

“Her reaction?” Dr. Bass hedged.

“Grateful,” Ellie admitted. “She confessed Theresa was jealous of me and the life I ‘took’ from her. Everything from my position to my damn name. Apparently, Ellie was a much more graceful name.” She snorted.

“What?” I whispered.

“I was cruel. She was grateful I didn’t kill her daughter but not apologetic that she came to fucking kill me when I didn’t do anything other than what she and my father ever asked of me.

I didn’t even know the woman’s name until she said it in that moment.

I told her that I hoped Theresa ended up hating her as much as I did if not more once she saw it wasn’t my fault but hers. ”

“I don’t think that cruel but fucking justified,” Carla mumbled.

“I want a piece of the fucking bitch. If you don’t want your child born of a man you’re forced to mate, you fucking run.

You don’t go Machiavellian with all this other shit and other people’s lives like you own them and are the puppet master.

You—children aren’t possessions. She was just as bad as her parents. ”

Ellie looked at her like she’d never seen her before and let out a shuttering breath. “Thank you. Seriously, thank you. I think all of this crazy was worth it for me to hear that, like that , and articulate what I’ve always felt and…”

“Couldn’t ever form into words when so much wanted to come out with the madness,” I finished for her, nodding when she did.

“Yeah, I’ve felt the same a lot. You build it up in your head that you’re being too sensitive or blowing it up.

People convince you that it’s not as big of a deal, so you keep it in or—Dr. Carpenter has helped me a lot saying several things. ”

“I have?” he asked, his eyes bug wide.

“Another time,” I brushed off but then sighed when I saw everyone curious, even Mum.

“You’re very accepting and excited to correct the medical misconceptions about what I can do.

You’ve seen it now, and—my last hospital and so many were excited to save lives but wanted the treatment hidden. They wanted—”

“It to be a dirty secret. They made you feel that, pup,” Alan said gently. “They made you feel embarrassed about what you could do instead of accepted and special.”

“Yeah, they really did,” I confessed for the first time.

“Not here. We won’t ever do that to you here. We have a lot of faults. A lot of them, but not that.”

I snorted. “Like you keep calling me ‘pup,’ you git.”

“Sorry to bring the conversation back, but I need to handle this and get charges filed with Ellie’s permission,” Gerald interjected.

She sighed. “Theresa blew that proposed mating up.

Kenneth counted it, but it never even got to being signed.

The guy liked me and the coven—he was tolerable, but when she found out it was still going on after their whatever, she got to him and told him the truth.

Things spun out from there. I physically looked like him then, so clearly I was his child.

“She looked like her mother. Kenneth was even worse when it fell through and the guy promised to keep the secret. He didn’t believe him and wanted me mated.

He wanted it all settled and no more upset.

He thought it would all be resolved then except Theresa trying to kill me and the stress of it all triggered whatever makes me different. ”

“Different how?” Gerald asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Alan interjected. “No, it doesn’t. Clark has different gifts than other shifters. I have abilities over some vamps and so does Ellie. We all know people of our species with this or that gift because of interspecies mating. It happens.”

“Fair. Okay, sorry.” He met my gaze. “Sorry. I know this seems like prying and—my mind immediately went to Kenneth trying to say you’re dangerous or the arguments he could try to throw at me.”

I gave a half shrug. “He probably will and more. He will tell all kinds of lies and wild stories—shit I don’t even know or anything he thinks he can get away with.

It’s who he is. I heard him tell someone once that I had angel blood.

He’s a compulsive liar and gambler—not someone remotely reliable. ”

“And no matter what he throws out, he hasn’t been in contact with Ellie in fifty years. He wouldn’t have any sort of idea of her control,” Carla interjected. “That’s your defense. One conversation with several of us who have worked with her for longer than her father has seen her and that’s it.”

“Yes, good, okay, so that’s how long she has roots here,” Gerald muttered, jotting down more notes. Okay, so he really was focused on the picture he was building to help Ellie, not just fishing for information.

Fine, he was a good attorney.

“Then Kenneth wanted to make me the coven leader and announce to everyone his daughter was special and—he’d go back and forth,” Ellie whispered.

“He was all over. Constantly. Then there was talk of mating me to one of the elders of the coven since I would need the guidance as the first female coven leader.”

“What was the tipping point that made you run?” Dr. Bass asked when Ellie went quiet. “I think that’s what we really need to know to protect you and you’re so scared about.”

Dr. Carpenter cleared his throat when she simply covered her face.

“She overheard her father yelling at her stepmother that he was going to impregnate Ellie. That she had denied him a son and the curse didn’t say anything about male grandchildren.

That was the answer since Ellie was a bastard and someday it would get out and he would lose the coven. ”

“Is that true?” Dr. Bass pushed for some reason I didn’t understand. “You believed it and not just one of his wild manic swings?”