Captive: Hopeless

Chapter 71 - Rewritten Past

"I do not understand, Mrs. Richards," Kay said, keeping her rising panic in check to avoid inadvertently betraying her inhuman heritage.

"Do you not, Daniella?" Eve asked, staring her straight in the eye with that look a mother had for the child born from her body. "Don't deny the truth. I figured out who you were before arriving here. Thane warned me on the day our ways parted that you'd become part of his world when you came of age. If running away could have hidden us, I would have, but there is no point in fleeing from a man of such power."

Bitterness coated every word.

"You knew?" Kay said, and even though the patio door revealed those vampire vangs peeking between pale lips, succubus eyes glowing blue, and a face suddenly looking so austere, there was no containing the anger flooding her veins.

"Yes."

Eve didn't even try to deny it.

"Since your birth, I waited like the royals in Rumpelstiltskin for the evil man to take my child, but with no way to save you."

"Then why did you keep me in the dark?" Kay demanded, surging upright.

"Is there a problem, Miss Lupine?" Minerva said, appearing at the door with Barker.

She had not intended to raise her voice, and the housekeeper glanced from one to the other, frowning at Eve's state and Kay's obvious anger.

"There isn't, Minerva. This is a private matter, please?" she said, calming down.

The two hesitated momentarily and, nodding, left.

"And make you live in fear? I chose to give you a normal life with a mother and a father and the hope of a future," Eve continued as if there was no interruption.

"Leading a lie left me unprepared for being kidnapped, forcibly ripped from my world, turned into something else, and given to the vilest person alive to t..." Kay stopped speaking as a single tear escaped her mother's right eye, unable to also place that burden upon her parent.

"To torture and humiliate because Thane did not claim you and had a purpose for you, despite your existence not being planned?" Eve asked, growing pale, and her eyes were almost luminescent with pain.

"If I realized his intentions, I would have fled that day, even if we spent our lives running. Bertram often forgets my presence, and with me knowing about the Underworld, she doesn't always filter conversations. I made sure she never learned of my connection to Thane. Although discreet with customers, she tells her best friend, Sorbonne, everything, and that one sometimes allows things to slip."

Eve hesitated, wringing the life out of a piece of fabric.

"Jarvis never knew, nor did your sister. Not about what lies in our DNA," she admitted, swallowing against the tears. "Seeing them suffer and not knowing whether you survived the change or what happened to you, nearly killed me. But not telling them placed a divide between us that I could never quite bridge again."

"Why did Thane tell you of your origins and my fate?" Kay asked, torn between hugging Eve and standing her ground.

"When he realized his love for me, he revealed the truth and offered to turn me if I would leave my life behind and never think of it again. Mother was sick at the time, and Lydia wasn't the seedling; Liam was. She didn't have long to live, and there was no way I would leave her to die alone, and he decided it might be for the best if our ways parted.

"Thane walked away, and I thought I would never see him again, but then I discovered myself pregnant. I'd barely gotten confirmation when the car arrived, ready to take me away as if I had no say, but I resisted. Don't think a human even dared do that before, and the two of us argued. There was only one way to persuade him to leave..."