Chapter 15 The prophecy

Chapter 15 The prophecy
Evangeline
She told him everything except the most important thing first.
The bloodline. Scarlett's capabilities. The way a hybrid of her particular combination would experience the awakening faster than any recorded case because both sides of her were old, older than most living vampires or wolves could trace, and old blood woke hungry.
Dorian listened the way she imagined he did everything, completely, missing nothing, filing it all somewhere precise and retrievable.
Then she told him the important thing.
"There is a prophecy," she said. "Older than Aldric's reign. Older than this estate. It exists in three places the wolf elders' records, the original vampire covenant texts, and," she touched her sternum briefly, "here. My mother gave it to me the way her mother gave it to her. Spoken, never written down by our line. Because we knew, eventually, it would be one of ours."
Dorian looked at her steadily. "What does it say."
Evangeline folded her hands in her lap.
"Born of blood divided, wolf and night entwined. When the two become one in the child between, the king's long reign finds its end. She who is both shall be neither bound, and what was taken shall be returned."
The tower room was very quiet.
"Scarlett," Dorian said.
"Scarlett," Evangeline confirmed. "A hybrid of old vampire nobility and wolf blood. Bonded to an alpha and a vampire heir." She met his eyes. "Your father has known about this prophecy for two centuries. It's why he took me, not to punish me, not politics. He wanted to understand the bloodline. Wanted to know if the child survived and what she'd become." She paused. "He's been waiting for her to surface because he believes if he controls her, the prophecy works for him instead of against him."
"He wants to own the thing that ends him," Dorian said slowly.
"Your father has never met a threat he didn't think he could turn into an asset." She looked at him. "He can't control her, Dorian. That's what the prophecy means, she who is both shall be neither bound. She cannot be owned. Not by Aldric. Not by the pack. Not by anyone." A pause. "Not even by you."
He absorbed that without flinching. She respected him for it.
"You need to go," she said. "He'll have noticed you didn't come to breakfast. He'll be counting the hours."
Dorian stood. Looked at her with those dark eyes that had his father's colour and none of his father's coldness. "I'm coming back for you."
"Focus on Scarlett first."
"Both," he said simply. "I'm coming back for both of you."
She looked at Aldric Blackthorn's son standing in her doorway and thought about nineteen years of waiting and the letter she'd sent and the daughter she hadn't seen since she was three months old.
"Tell her..." Her voice did the thing again. She let it this time. "Tell her I have her eyes."

Dorian
His father was waiting in the corridor.
Of course he was.
Aldric stood ten feet from the east wing entrance with his hands clasped behind his back and his expression pleasantly neutral and Dorian walked toward him at a pace that communicated nothing and stopped at a comfortable distance and met his father's eyes.
"The east wing," Aldric said mildly.
"I got turned around," Dorian said.
"You've lived here twenty six years."
"The renovations are disorienting."
His father looked at him for a long moment with those ancient dark eyes doing what they always did — reading, cataloguing, looking for the error. Dorian gave him the same surface he always gave him. Still water. Nothing underneath.
"You're leaving this morning," his father said. Not a question.
"Ashveil requires my attention."
"Indeed." Aldric tilted his head slightly. "The girl, Dorian. I want her found and brought here within the fortnight. Unharmed, I cannot stress this enough. She is not to be frightened or damaged. She is to be...."
"Collected," Dorian said.
"Welcomed," his father corrected, gently. "She has no idea what she's capable of. We can offer her answers. Safety. A place where what she is would be considered extraordinary rather than aberrant." His tone was warm and reasonable and Dorian had grown up understanding that his father's warmth was the most dangerous thing about him. "You understand."
"Perfectly," Dorian said.
Aldric studied him a moment longer. Then smiled — the real one, the one that reached his eyes, the one that meant he believed he'd already won. "Good. I'll expect your report by the end of the week."
Dorian nodded once and walked away.
He was through the front gates and on the road back to Ashveil in eleven minutes.
He drove with both hands on the wheel and the prophecy turning over in his mind and his mother — she who is both shall be neither bound — and thought about a girl with silver eyes on a wall with his hand at her throat who had looked at him like she was already filing him away.
What was taken shall be returned.
He pressed the accelerator down and watched the estate disappear in his rearview mirror and didn't look back.
He had a fortnight. Less, probably, knowing his father.
He pulled out his phone at the first straight stretch of road and typed a single message to Caden Wolfe.
I'm coming back. Tell her.
Three seconds later, Wolfe's reply.
She already knows.
Dorian stared at that for a moment.
Then he put the phone down and drove faster.