I was on to something.
What the hell was going on?
He shook his head, his gaze narrowing again. “I thought you were being oblivious and secretive, but you aren’t, are you?”
I made a face. Secretive was one thing.
“What do you know about your family?” he asked with his bossy, no-nonsense voice.
I wanted to go back to the oblivious talk because rude, but I wanted to know where the hell he was going with this more. “What do I know about them?” I parroted back.
“That’s what I asked, isn’t it?”
“Your tone sometimes, boy…” I shook my head. “I keep asking if I did something in another lifetime to make you dislike me, and you keep not answering. You know that?”
That dark gaze moved over my face, and he scrunched his nose just a little bit. “It’s not your fault I don’t want to like you. What do you know about your family?”
He didn’t want to like me? What did that mean? Why? It made no sense, but… I shrugged. “Okay. That’s a broad question. I don’t know anything about my dad’s side of the family.”
He waved me off. “They’re irrelevant. What do you know about your mother’s side?”
“Those grandparents are the ones who raised me, I told you that. Her mom and dad.”
Alexander made a circle with his hand, telling me to keep talking.
“Okay. My grandma was Costa Rican, but her parents were originally from Spain. My grandpa, his dad was Costa Rican, but he was vague about where his mom’s family was from.”
Something moved across his face. “What else do you know about your great-grandmother? That one?”
“Not much. My grandpa loved her. He talked about her, but not really anything that I think you’d care to hear.”
“You’d be surprised what I want to hear.”
This man-being-person. Wow. No wonder they didn’t let him talk in public. I rattled off some information about her, her first name, that she’d had three children, one who had passed away as a baby. Alexander didn’t exactly look all that interested so much in that, but then my mind trailed to the other thing my grandfather had always said about her. “He told me she had these premonitions sometimes. How she sometimes knew things were going to happen before they did. He said she called herself a bruja, a witch, and would laugh about it.” His grandmother had been the same. He had spoken about her in awe, but I didn’t think he wanted to hear that.
Nothing on his face changed exactly, but something in his eyes did.
“Sometimes I get these stomachaches when something bad is going to happen or when something important is, and he told me I got that from her. Remember? I told you that day when the cartel showed up that I had a little bit of ESP? Why are you looking at me like that?”
The man raised his eyebrows. “That’s even less than I thought you knew.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your great-grandmother wasn’t a witch.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “I know that.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “She was a fourth Atraxian.”
The urge to reaffirm she had moved to Costa Rica as a little girl was on the tip of my tongue, but it dried up real quick. Because somehow, I knew we weren’t talking about nationalities. My heart started beating really quick as I asked slowly, “What does that mean exactly?”
Those bright purple eyes powered up, and I know I didn’t imagine that his voice went deeper and so, so serious. “That she was from Atraxia. That means you’re one of the few people on this planet with Atraxian blood.”
My stomach did a little tap dance, not in alarm, not in warning, but like I had figured being on a roller coaster would feel like. Like the world was about to change. “I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I wanted to take one of those DNA tests, but it was just one more way someone one day might find me, so I didn’t do it.” Why was my hand shaking? Why did my voice sound so weird? “Where is that? Atraxia? It sounds like a moon or…” I trailed off, my stomach doing another quick jig.
He tipped his head to the side, his face unreal and handsome. Almost angelic. Those eyes of his were grave, and his voice was very, very even. “Atraxia is a planet in a solar system with a lot of syllables that I don’t feel like pronouncing.”
I looked at him.
I thought about what in the fuck he’d just said.
And then… then I fainted.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
“Damn, you’re dramatic,” Alexander said.
I groaned up at him, blinking slowly.
It wasn’t the fact I’d fainted that surprised me the most, but the fact I wasn’t sprawled out on the floor with a big knot on my head. It had taken me a second to realize that I was on the couch with my head propped on the armrest as he looked down at me in exasperation.
He hadn’t let me bust my ass.
“You done?” he asked, sounding bored.
“Fainting?”
The Defender gave me a face that said “duh.”
“I hope so.”
He sighed as he glanced at the sliver of couch at my hip, and I scooted over an inch before he slid onto the spot. His hip pressed against most of my stomach as he focused down on me. “I might as well take a seat because I can tell you’re going to have at least a hundred questions.”
He wasn’t wrong there, but I didn’t appreciate how well he thought he knew me already.
“Go ahead.”
I tried to put my thoughts and questions together so that I wouldn’t talk more than I needed to. I didn’t need to sound like a crazy person. I could handle this conversation. Once I was ready, I kept my voice steady, though the rest of me felt anything but, and said, not sounding like I was insane, “So you’re telling me that my great-grandmother was this… Atraxian person, and that’s why she had these… premonitions my grandpa knew about.”
“Not ‘Atraxian person.’ Atraxian. From Atraxia.”
He was correcting me about a planet in another solar system.
I wanted to laugh hysterically, I really did, but all right. I could keep my shit together for a minute. I could wander down this road with an open mind. “From a planet called… Atraxia?”
He gave me another expression like being from another fucking planet was a normal thing and he had no idea why I was struggling to comprehend what he was implying.
I pressed my lips together and clung to my sanity. “How do you know about it?”
He almost looked disappointed. “Really? You haven’t put it together?”
He had a point, so I told him the truth. “This doesn’t feel real, and I want to hear you say it.”
He blinked. “I know about this ‘place’ because my family is from there too. Only our line isn’t as diluted as yours is,” he answered.
Open mind, Gracie. Open mind.
I wasn’t dreaming. If this was a dream, he would probably be shirtless. And so would I.
If this was a dream, my lungs wouldn’t feel like I had a hippo sitting on my chest.
This was real. It 100 percent was.
“Okay. I see.” I didn’t. Not really. “How… do you know about my great-grandmother? That she… was that?”