Sierra Dean - Secret Unleashed

Lucas calling to apologize for his behavior.

Desmond. Desmond. Desmond.

Grandmere.

Desmond.

Mercedes.

Tyler.

Desmond. Desmond.

As I cleared the last of the messages, the phone began to buzz in my hand. I didn’t bother checking the screen before answering. It didn’t matter who was on the other end, I was about to get an earful.

“Hello?”

“Just where in the hell have you been?” Aha! So Sig could get angry.

“I can’t really get into it—”

“Don’t. Don’t start. I will not listen to excuses.”

“I wasn’t making excuses.”

“You vanish off the face of the planet, leaving Ingrid in Los Angeles to make excuses for you, while the goddamn Tribunal thinks you’ve made off with some precious artifact. I’ve got Eilidh complaining to me about a window, and she assumes you’ve run off with Holden, while Rebecca would love to know what you’re doing with all her offspring.”

I was glad I was already sitting because it was a lot to hear all at once.

“I didn’t run off . I went looking for Sutherland like the Tribunal requested. It just took longer to recover him than expected.”

“ Two weeks longer? And your phone has been off the whole time? I find that hard to—”

“I don’t care,” I snapped. I’d held my composure pretty well over the past several days, all things considered, but I wasn’t about to take a browbeating from Sig because he believed I was shirking my council duties. I would not be guilt tripped or talked down to. Not after what I’d been through. “I don’t care what it looks like, Sig. I don’t care what the West Coast council or Ingrid think . I have been through hell getting my father back, and I refuse to explain myself to them, to you or to anyone else.”

Static filled the line, making me think I’d lost the connection.

“You aren’t going to have a choice. You have to explain it to the West Coast Tribunal, and sooner rather than later.”

“Why?”

“Because this morning Galen Altos issued a warrant for your death.”

I didn’t imagine the first time I’d meet my father would be because I was trying to get us both out of a death sentence.

When I was younger, I’d thought about him a lot, the way I imagined most girls with no parents did. My grandmere warned me about my mother to high heaven, so I didn’t have the same fantasies about Mercy as I had with Sutherland.

The man I’d imagined as a child was not the man I met in the lobby of the military hospital. I’d used what limited pull I had with the FBI—and through them Major Logan—to secure my father’s release. It was amazing what people were willing to do when you explained your life was on the line.

I didn’t kid myself that my wellbeing concerned them. Tyler might have cared, but to everyone else I was a resource they’d invested time and money into. If letting a crazy vampire out of a military hospital was what it took to keep me alive, they were apparently okay with signing him over to me.

He emerged from a back office with an armed attendant. Normally I’d have said it was uncalled for, but given what Logan had told me about Sutherland’s mental state, I wasn’t going to question any precautions the humans wanted to take.

The first thing that struck me was how young he appeared. He’d been fed and had physically recovered from his wounds—whatever they’d been—and now he looked like a boy. It was hard for me to think of this man as my father.

“Hello,” he said sweetly when he reached us, his voice sticky with a Southern drawl much like the rest of my family’s. He nodded to me and Desmond, then to Holden. “Hello.” The o sound was drawn out, and something about the way he spoke was a bit…off.

“Sutherland, do you know who we are?” Holden touched my father’s arm, and seeing them side by side was too bizarre to comprehend. Holden was forever frozen in his early thirties, whereas Sutherland would have to show ID for liquor for the rest of his unnatural lifespan.

“Yes.” Sutherland nodded, his hands clasped in front of him. I followed the bobbing motion of his head but didn’t see any understanding on his face.

If the eyes were the windows to the soul, Sutherland’s were looking in on a vacant suite.

“My name is Holden. This is Desmond. And this…” he nudged me forward so I was close enough to touch, “…this is Secret.”

“Hello.” He didn’t seem to know who we were at all because my name caused no reaction.

“Secret McQueen ,” Holden added, placing extra emphasis on my last name.

That did it. My father’s eyes widened, and his hazy expression became clear when he focused his attention back on me, this time as if seeing me anew.

“McQueen?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?” His brown eyes—the same color as mine—narrowed into slits.

“Twenty-three.”

“Where were you born?”

“St. Francisville, Louisiana.”

He chewed on this for a while, looking to Holden and Desmond as if he wanted them to validate his suspicions before he spoke again.

“Who’s your mother?”

“Mercy McQueen.”

His eyes went wider, and now he looked more excited than suspicious. He took a step closer, but I wasn’t expecting it and stepped out of his reach on instinct.

“Who’s your father?” he asked quietly.

“You are.”

Instead of moving closer, he toyed with his hands, fingers nervously tugging at the hem of his shirt. He was forty years old, but still acted like a teenager.

“I knew you were alive,” he said after a long pause. “I knew…knew I hadn’t killed you.”

“No. You didn’t.”

“I wanted to meet you, but…I didn’t know where you were.”

“I know. Vivienne hid me.”

He nodded, seeming to accept this fact without question. He probably assumed she’d been hiding me from him, when in fact she’d been keeping me away from her own children, fearful of what Mercy or my Uncle Callum would do to me.

“You look like her. Like Mercy.” He smiled, obviously thinking he was paying me a compliment.

“I think I look more like you.”

When his smile broadened, I knew I’d said the right thing. “It’s nice to meet you. Secret.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.” I wanted to say Dad . Wanted so badly to call him by that title since I’d been missing out on using it for over two decades. But when I was presented with a chance to finally say it to his face, the word froze in my throat and I couldn’t. Instead I said, “I need to ask you about the pendant.”

Ingrid was the first person Holden, Sutherland and I saw when we entered the Council headquarters in L.A. later that same night. Once I’d found out what my father knew about the pendant he’d been carrying, I secured us safe passage back to Los Angeles.

Desmond understood why he couldn’t join us for this leg of the journey and had volunteered to get our belongings from the hotel in San Francisco. I’d never been so grateful to accidentally stay at a Lucas Rain Hotel before. Under normal circumstances our things would probably be long gone, but since my ex-fiancé owned the hotel, Desmond told me our room had been left untouched, the expenses ignored at Lucas’s request.

He’d even arranged to get our towed car out of impound, hopefully with my katana still in the trunk.

As much as I hated Lucas sometimes, he could occasionally do something to remind me why I’d fallen in love with him in the first place. Love wasn’t what I felt now, but perhaps loathing might yield to grudging respect someday.