Mate (Bride, #2) (59)

I immediately understand where this is going. “Would he remember me, though?”

“Not your face,” Sem explains. “Which is just as well, since his eyesight has been deteriorating. He’s in his nineties now. But he might remember your scent. Come, he’s this way.”

In the living room, Dr. Silas sits between two women: the first looks so much like Sem, she has to be his sister. The second has short strawberry-blond hair and a shy smile. Her fingers slide around Sem’s as he introduces her as his partner.

“Layla is one of the pack’s midwives,” he explains. Before adding, a little sheepishly, “We’re all doctors in this room.”

“You are making me look bad,” Dr. Silas says from his chair. He’s a robust man, with a full head of milk-white hair and a husky voice. “My entire family became doctors, and people assume that it’s because I’ve been butting my nose into their lives and pressuring them. And now we have Sem’s daughter, who cannot read yet and is already saying she’ll be a surgeon.”

“Don’t worry, Grandpa. We’ll tell everyone that you pushed us to become trapeze artists and coal miners, and that we severely disappointed you.”

“Is it too much to ask for a poet? Or a musician? I so love music . . .” He sighs and turns in our direction. When he smiles, his face splinters into a million fine, leathery lines. “Koen, child. It’s always a pleasure to see you.

And how kind of you, to bring me the halfling.”

I glance at Koen, puzzled. “The what?”

“We have stories in the north. Legends, ballads. Ancient stuff about children born of Weres and Humans. Weres and Vampyres, too. We call them halflings.”

“Halflings.” I taste the word, then smile. “I like it. More than ‘hybrid.’

Makes me sound less like a car.”

“Do come closer,” Silas beckons. “You will forgive me if I don’t stand, won’t you? Serena, right?”

I nod, taking a step toward him. Then I remember what Sem told me about Dr. Silas’s eyesight and add, “It was given to me at the Human orphanage. If we met before, you might have known me under another name.”

“I see, I see. Will you sit, please?”

I drop to his feet, cross-legged. “These halfling legends . . . Do you think they might hold some truth?”

“Most stories do. Although the truths we seek are often not the ones we find. But if you’re asking whether you’re the first of your kind . . . I do not believe so, no.”

Juno said the same: hundreds of thousands of years ago, Weres and Humans and Vampyres used to be one. There are lots of theories about how speciation occurred, and I’m sure that at this very moment at least two anthropologists are fisticuffing over them at a sparsely attended academic panel. The bottom line, though, is that some groups split off and went their merry way. By the time they attempted to rejoin, they were no longer the same.

But reproductive compatibility is fluid, Juno said. Our DNA is similar enough that all it takes is a few mutations at the individual level to allow procreation. There will be people referring to you as the harbinger of the decline of civilization, but what you are is not new, per se. It’s just . . .

A comeback?

If you will.

What you’re saying is, I’m vintage.

It’s not really what I—

And Renaissance Girl should be my new nickname?

I didn’t—

Deal.

“How old are you?” Dr. Silas asks, leaning forward in his seat.

“Twenty-five, as far as we know.” I fall quiet and fail in my quest to not glance back at Koen. I must have lost my object permanence skills, because I need constant reassurance that he exists, he’s here with me. He gives me a small nod, and I feel marginally less like used kitty litter.

I shouldn’t be nervous. I’ve lived my entire life not knowing who my parents were, and I’ve been just fine. I never allowed my origins to define me, because if I had, I would have been destined to remain undefined. I may be Serena Nobody, but I’m still Serena. The past doesn’t have to shape the future.

Hell, I don’t even have a future.

And yet, as Dr. Silas inhales deeply, I’m on tenterhooks. If he doesn’t recognize me, what would that mean? What if he does? What if my parents are alive and well? What if I am forced to meet them, listen to their excuses,

and maybe even forgive them? Because that’s what I should do, right? Be gracious and compassionate and somehow over it and—

Dr. Silas slowly shakes his head, and the relief folds my insides like origami. And Koen, whose eyes never, ever, ever leave me, can obviously tell.

A brief silence. Dr. Silas is saying that it could mean nothing— maybe he forgot, maybe my scent changed, they know so little about halfling developmental biology. Sem is agreeing, listing possibilities. Koen’s face is worried, like he’s about to ask me if I’m all right.

The only thing giving me strength right now is knowing that, asshole that he is, if I vomit gastric acid on his shoes, he’ll never let me live it down. “Hey, is it okay if I . . . I’d love some fresh air.”

“Of course.” Layla smiles. “Back door is through the kitchen, on the left. You’re welcome to go for a run, too. If you like the shoreline, it’s just us for about ten miles.”