Free Web NovelChapter 212: Chapter 211: Go get her, Uncle
Raphael’s POV
He was doing fine.
This was what he told himself, with the practiced conviction of someone who had been managing his own internal states for two hundred years and was extremely good at it. He was doing fine. He was present in this room, contributing appropriately to a tactical discussion, processing the situation with the analytical clarity that two centuries of survival required.
He was not thinking about Elena’s apartment outside the pack. The building, fourth floor, the window that faced east and got the morning light. The way she’d described it to him once....it’s small but it’s mine, I made it mine....I made it for when i needed to just be away from the pack.
She had said it with the pride in her voice.
He was not thinking about the fact that there were no wards on that building. That he had never placed wards on it because Elena didn’t know enough about his world to understand why she’d need them, and he had never....had not yet....found the way to explain it without explaining everything else, without having a conversation that he had been carefully avoiding.
He was not thinking about Malachai’s people. About what they looked like, the operatives Malachai used for surveillance and targeting.....supernaturals with abilities that an Omega couldn’t sense, couldn’t fight, couldn’t even perceive as threats until they were already inside her space.
He Eve was looking at him.
He became aware of it gradually.
Eve looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, to the room in general, "Can everyone give me a minute with my uncle?"
The brothers exchanged glances.....that wordless communication they’d watched develop between them and Eve over months, the bond making redundant a significant portion of spoken language. Damein looked at him the at Eve, he nodded then dropped the file he was holding on the table and walked out of the room and his brothers followed him out.
Silas was the last to walk out of the room and she shut the door.
The room was very quiet after they left.
Raphael looked at his niece....at the girl who had nearly died forty-eight hours ago and was currently sitting in a recovery bed with anger in her eyes and something much softer underneath it.
He already know what she was going to say.
"Elena," Eve said and tilted her head to the side to look at him.
Raphael looked at her and just dropped his head to his hand and said nothing.
"How long?" Eve asked, and her voice was gentle in a way that was somehow harder to withstand than directness would have been.
"It’s not..." He stopped. Started again with more honesty. "It’s complicated."
"Uncle."
Raphael looked at her face then he turned and looked at the window. At the grounds. At the morning light that fell across the estate and made everything look, briefly, like it existed outside of consequence.
"The feeding," he said finally. "It began practically. She was available, willing, and the energy exchange was....mutually beneficial. That’s all it was intended to be."
"And then?"
"And then it continued." He paused. "And then I started....noticing things about her. The way she thinks. The way she engages with information she doesn’t fully understand yet.....with curiosity rather than fear. The way she is with you." Something moved across his face that he couldn’t entirely suppress. "She’s extraordinary, Eve. In ways that have nothing to do with what she provides energetically. She’s...."
He stopped.
"She’s Elena," Eve said softly. freewёbnoνel.com
"Yes," Raphael said. "She’s Elena."
"She’s outside," Eve said. "Alone. In an apartment with no protection against people from our world, against people who are now specifically looking for the people closest to me." She looked at him steadily. "She’s an Omega, uncle. She can’t fight this. She won’t even see it coming."
"I know." The words came out rougher than intended. "I know exactly what she is and what she isn’t equipped for and I know that this...that the danger she’s in exists because of the world I inhabit. Because I brought that world into proximity with her."
"Then go," Eve said.
He looked at her.
"Go get her," Eve said. "Bring her here where we can protect her properly. Put her inside the wards, inside pack protection, somewhere that Malachai’s people can’t reach her." A pause. "Go, Uncle. Right now, before the security rotation gets there and she has strangers at her door without context. Go yourself."
The relief that moved through him was....embarrassing in its intensity.
He had not gone himself because going himself would have been an acknowledgment. Would have been visible evidence of something he’d been so careful not to make visible.
"She’ll have questions," he said. "About why. About the level of threat. About....."
"Tell her the truth," Eve said. "As much as she can handle. She’s stronger than you’re giving her credit for uncle, the Elena i know is strong and won;t back down easily even facing difficult situation.’’
So go and get her now uncle before Malachai’s people will get to her
He looked at his niece....this girl who had been raised human and had survived the unsurvivable and was currently sitting in a recovery bed commanding him with the quiet authority of someone who had been born to it....and felt something that he had no adequate word for. Something that lived in the space between pride and grief and the that feeling of love was overwelming for a person who had been alone for a very long time and had found, unexpectedly, that they weren’t anymore.
"You should rest," he said.
"I will," Eve said. "Go."
Rapahel nodded and walked out of the room.
He was in his car and out of the estate gates inside four minutes later, moving through the early morning city with the focused urgency of someone who had been given permission to stop pretending he didn’t care.
