Deathless Read Online Free PDF Page B

loop, for sure.
    The man’s message just could not be true—it challenged everything she had believed about her childhood. How could the man she had called Dad until she was seven years old not be her father? It did not make sense.
    Finally, she eased back from Rave’s embrace. Max backed away and looked up at them, his eyes wide and seemingly sympathetic, as if he understood what was going on in her head. Rave’s brown eyes were also filled with sympathy and understanding.
    “ You heard all that, of course?” she asked.
    Rave nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
    She looked down at the broken phone she still held in her hand and cursed herself for dropping it. Its memory held the number the man had called from, but the cell was useless. Now that she had recovered a bit, she wanted to call him back, to question him, to find out why he would make such a ridiculous claim, but she could not. He might even be trying to call her again right now. What would he think when he received no answer? What would he do next? She had no way of knowing.
    “ I don’t know how or why, but I felt like it was trouble as soon as my phone rang,” she said. “But I never expected anything like this. Not in a million years. How could he claim to be my father? That’s ridiculous. My father lived with us until I was seven. What could this guy want?”
    Rave shook his head. “I do not know. I wish I could help, but I don’t even know who my father is. It’s not the volkaane way.”
    Leesa remembered Rave telling her about a volkaane mating ritual, when each female paired up with a male during a special festival held only every few decades. Any children that resulted were raised communally, not by their parents. Rave’s mentor Balin was the closest thing he had to a father. Leesa had met the old volkaane several times and liked him a lot.
    “ I know,” Leesa said. “But I’m still glad you were here when it happened.”
    “ Do you think there is any chance it could be true?”
    Leesa thought for a moment. “A chance? I guess there’s always a chance. Maybe I was adopted—not all parents tell their adopted kids about it. Maybe mine didn’t tell me.” She did not really believe that, though.
    “ No, I do not think so,” Rave said. “If that were true, how would you explain the taint of grafhym in your blood?”
    Leesa had forgotten about that. Rave was right—her mom had to be her real mother. The chances of some other woman being bitten by a one-fang and giving a child up for adoption were too small to even be considered.
    “ You’re right,” she said. “I guess that leaves only two possibilities. Either my mom had an affair, or the guy on the phone is lying.” She shook her head. “I just can’t see my mom having an affair, but I guess all kids probably think that about their moms. Who knows what she might have been like before the grafhym bit her? I’ve only known her as the timid, reclusive woman who kept insisting she was bitten by a one-fanged vampire.”
    “ A story that turned out to be true, of course.” Rave took Leesa’s hands in his. “So, what are you going to do?”
    “ I don’t know. I don’t see how I could possibly ask my mom about this, not after everything she’s been through.” Leesa shook her head and sighed. She was growing up fast, but this was not something she could imagine doing, not unless this thing turned out to be way more important than it seemed right now. The call had been troubling, sure, but it wasn’t worth risking her mom’s all too recent recovery.
    “ What would I do, anyhow?” she said, more to herself than to Rave. “Say ‘by the way, Mom, did you sleep with someone besides Dad before you got pregnant with me?’ No way I could do that.”
    A sudden thought hit her like a punch to the stomach. Could that be the reason her father found it so easy to leave his family, because his wife had cheated on him and he knew he wasn’t Leesa’s real father? Heck, maybe he wasn’t