Page 30 of War Games (Jacky Leon #11)

I followed myself into the large room where the family had decided to hold the meeting. Subira and I found a corner, watching together, her hand holding mine now.

“I know everything he said,” Subira said, squeezing my hand. “I know what happened before I arrived. I’m still sorry it had come to this.”

I could only nod as it started with Hasan snapping across the room at Dirk when he and Makalo were finally meeting in person. Even Subira flinched.

“I stripped his hide for that,” she said, her words tight and controlled but not well enough to stop me from knowing it made her furious. “He meant them at that exact moment. He regretted them later.”

“Does he understand how damaging that is to people?” I growled softly.

“Oh, yes. He understands. I won’t give you any excuses. I understand why he lashed out, but that understanding doesn’t fix the damage.”

“He really hurt Dirk,” I said, covering my mouth as I watched. Landon getting angry, then me stepping in. What really stuck out to me was the middle daughter of the family, Mischa.

“Why is she so mean?”

“She’s always been abrasive about certain things. Let’s be honest for a moment, Jacky. There are many ways she’s like you. She just defends something different. She was our first child after Zuri and Jabari. Compare her to me and Hasan, to your eldest siblings. Does it look like she fits in?”

“No, she doesn’t, if I only cared about skin deep part of family,” I said honestly. “Neither do I on that scale, though. Most of us don’t.”

“Imagine how a little girl will throw her life away for the family who saved her from being sold away by her blood parents,” Subira said gently, touching my elbow. “Imagine how someone who believes she owes everything to her father, the one who found her and decided to love her in the place of her first family, might be willing to ignore the man’s flaws. Or defend him from any perceived threat, even if it’s someone she is supposed to love as another member of the family.”

“It’s been thousands of years since she was a child,” I pointed out.

“We immortals can be very stubborn people,” Subira countered. “And for a long time, her unfailing loyalty to Hasan was a boon. She’s trying to protect her father, just like you are trying to protect those young men. There’s love between her and I. She’s as much my daughter as you and Zuri, but she’s much closer to Hasan. She goes to him for all the advice she needs in life. She looks to him to tell her she’s done well or how to improve. Families have those relationships. I’m not jealous, nor do I love her less, but she doesn’t want me in that role for her, so I never forced myself into it.”

“Were you ever jealous, or have you always been wise and untouchable?” I asked dryly, as I considered how she could handle all this. She was ancient, but she also seemed perfect. Part of me almost disliked it.

“I was immensely jealous when she was young,” Subira admitted softly. “All it did was damage my attempts to get closer to her. Eventually, we settled on what we have now. I’m her mother. I will hold her while she cries and talk to her about romantic partners, but I won’t push into the spot where she has firmly placed Hasan. Just like Hasan doesn’t push into the place I hold for Zuri.”

“Ah. You started letting all of us decide who we were going to really lean on,” I said, still watching the family argument explode. Not literally. Not yet.

“Yes. We did… until you.” She leaned on her staff, the most casual thing she ever did. I was beginning to recognize it as a moment of humanity from her, needing something that wasn’t her own power to rest with. She carried it damn near everywhere, almost like a source of comfort.

“Hasan Changed me, so it was decided he was the parent I got to deal with.”

“I can be a lot,” Subira reminded me. She wasn’t wrong. If I had met Subira in the earliest years of being a werecat, I might have run and never looked back. She was other, different in ways I couldn’t have fathomed at that time, too inexperienced with magic and the supernatural. She would have terrified me.

But she was more to me now. She was the one who was here, for one, but it wasn’t just that. It was her quiet vulnerability, her fierce love that held nothing but honesty, her wisdom, and all the mystery that would have terrified me before. Now, I was drawn to her, needing her wisdom, wanting her opinion on things, wanting her to know me and to know her.

Things were coming to a head in the argument.

“Why couldn’t he just trust me?” I asked softly, feeling the aching pain of having wanted his approval, the support that said I could do no wrong, and if I did, he would bandage me up and let me try again without judgment.

“Because the trust he should have had was shattered by others. Not just by the werewolves who killed Liza, but by Liza herself. He’d trusted how he trained our children, trusted their judgment, trusted that they would listen when situations were dangerous. Liza didn’t, and she died. He didn’t just stop trusting the world, Jacky. He stopped trusting himself as a father, a mentor, and a teacher. His grief overwhelmed him.” Subira crossed her arms around the staff. “Then he started making the very mistakes he had never wanted to make.”

“Well…” I made a face. “I’m not ready to forgive him.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“How can you still…” I didn’t finish the question, knowing it was a terrible thing to ask.

“Stand by him and love him?” Subira seemed nonplussed by it.

I winced.

“Because I know who he is and who he’s not.” She nodded toward the memory of Hasan, his fury uncontained. The room exploded, all the furniture becoming tiny pieces of debris. Almost instinctively, I thought how I didn’t want to get cut up by all of it and it froze, leaving me and Subira in a snapshot of the memory, much like the memory of fighting Rainer had frozen.

“He’s not the man I confronted that day. He was fighting a lot of demons that day, just like we all have personal demons to fight, as you know. He never wanted to be the man he was that day.” Subira waved a hand. “Let it continue. We’ll be safe.”

I took a deep breath and did.

I wasn’t ready to have peace with Hasan. Understanding didn’t mean I had to forgive. That was the high road, certainly, but it wasn’t just what he had said or done to me. It had been about how he treated Dirk.

“I tore the family in half,” I said, fighting the guilt I felt. It wasn’t enough guilt to make me back down from how I felt about Hasan, though. If I could just do as he asked, none of this would have happened. I put on a brave face and vented frustrations, but deep down, I still felt terrible for all this. I also wouldn’t change a single thing about it. I would defend Dirk and Landon until the day I died. I was going to marry Heath Everson, and no one was going to stop me.

“No, you didn’t. You drew an important boundary. You stood up for what you believe in, for those you promised to stand beside. You’ve done it with our family before as well. You didn’t break anything, Jacky. And we both know that those thoughts and feelings don’t come from this moment, not entirely. They are from something from a different time and place, from the eyes of someone who can’t tell the difference between this and what happened back then.”

“I don’t remember what happened when I was young, Subira,” I reminded her, shaking my head. “Hard to go to a memory to confront it, if I don’t remember it at all.”

“You don’t?” Subira turned and stood in front of me, ignoring the argument she had with Hasan that day. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I growled softly, not liking what she was implying.

“Jacky, if you didn’t remember at all, then it wouldn’t haunt you. Something in you remembers.”

“No, it doesn’t. My human family treated me pretty badly. It’s probably just like?—”

“Hasan was mean. He said cruel things. I know all of this. He’s reacting to a feeling caused by someone else in our lives you remind him of. You remind him of the circumstances. He’s scared for you.”

“And?”

“And he recognizes how badly he hurt you because he wasn’t the first to do it. Just like you aren’t Liza, he’s not your biological father.”

Those words slapped me.

I wasn’t sure why, though.

“I know he’s not. I thought you weren’t going to try to make me forgive him.”

“I’m not trying to make you forgive him. I’m trying to make you think of the girl who is holding on to the pain. Not the grown woman in front of me. The little girl you claim you forgot, but clearly, your body remembers. Your heart and your mind remember, Jacky, and we need to get to it because it has lived with you far longer than anything else.” Subira pointed at Hasan. “He is not your biological father.”

He wasn’t my biological father. I knew that. I knew he was consumed by grief, and that caused him to be irrational. I wasn’t stupid. He said mean things. They were awful.

He never hit me.

Those words went through my head, and terror gripped me.

I ran from her. I ran from Subira. I ran out of the room, ran from Niko’s home, and escaped to the forest, running at full speed, unable to stop.

He never hit me.

When I felt deep enough, secure enough in the dark trees, I sank down.

He never hit me.

Who hit me?

No one hit me. I don’t remember being hit by anyone.

I heard the werecat before I saw it.

It wasn’t alone. Subira had followed me, her scent full of guilt and sorrow.

“Don’t bother with that,” she ordered, pointing at the werecat with her eyes on me. “It’ll protect you only so far before it ruins you.”

“I…”

“Let me tell you what I know to be true. Don’t keep running. You’ll get lost, and that will make this harder for us… and then we could lose you entirely.”

I so desperately wanted to keep running, but Subira stood right in front of me, looking ready to grab me if I tried.

“When you became a werecat, Hasan told me, and I was too curious. You see, I raised all of my children until that point from their younger years. Some were much younger than others, but they were all children when they came into my life.”

Subira knelt in front of me, and I couldn’t help looking up and seeing the werecat hovering there, just waiting for me to try to run from everything again. The next time, it would help me escape her if I couldn’t face what she had to say.

“I took a small sample of your blood and looked through your memories, the ones you had at the time. Of course, I don’t know everything since then.”

“What? That spell you talked about doing for the boy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew right here…” She touched her heart. “That you were my daughter, and I wanted to know you, but you weren’t ready to know me. You know that.” Her hand dropped. “I also wanted to know why and how the world kept you from me and Hasan for so long. I have never believed in fate or destiny, but something in me ached that I hadn’t been able to see you grow up. So, I watched you grow up through your memories.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t fault her. I wished every day that I had met Carey sooner, gotten to see the eleven years she wasn’t in my life. My heart said she was mine , but I hadn’t always been there to help her to be as close to a mother as I wanted to be. I craved stories of those days I hadn’t known her.

“Yes, and let me tell you with certainty that you remember,” she said softly. “You certainly remember… but I understand why you don’t want to.” Subira reached up to wipe her eyes.

“I’m scared,” I whispered, shaking.

“Me, too,” she said, holding out her hand.

I took it.

“Can you lead us there?” I asked, swallowing.

“I think you already know what to think of.”

I did.

Someone had hit me.

The watercolor memories changed.