To Tempt A Tiger(60)

“She told you?”

“We both thought my father was out of the house and that we had complete privacy. We would have been able to feel him if he was in the house, or any other tiger for that matter, so she felt safe. Up until this point, the only tiger who knew about Nila was Elizaveta. My mom went to her when she found out she was pregnant, and Elizaveta helped her keep the secret.”

“Why did it have to be a secret?”

“Because of tigers like my father, my mother was terrified her child would be killed, terrified Nila’s father, Leo, would be killed, and Elizaveta wasn’t ready to make knowledge of hybrids public yet. She was still researching and didn’t want to get my people’s hopes up or start a war against hybrids. Especially if Nila’s conception turned out to be a fluke and not something we could duplicate. Elizaveta wanted time. My mother wanted Nila safe. So they kept the pregnancy a secret and when Nila was born, they left her with her father. My mother went back to the Mate Run to get a tiger mate.”

“Why on earth did she marry your father? Given the way he felt about hybrids.”

“She didn’t know about his extreme beliefs until well after their wedding. I asked the same question when she told me about Nila. She was pregnant with their second child—the twins as it turned out—before he showed her any hint of his beliefs. At that stage, she’d fallen in love with him and was happy with their pairing. She thought his ideas were just vague feelings, nothing too extreme, so she stayed with him.”

“When did she learn how…deeply he held the belief that hybrids were a bad thing?”

“I was about fourteen and my father announced to a group of powerful tigers that he’d kill any hybrids he found. That’s when the true depths of his fanaticism started to show. She stayed with him at that point to protect Nila. She didn’t want him getting even a hint that she disagreed, because she was afraid he’d try to find out why. My father is…was very smart and cunning. I’m still surprised she kept her secret as long as she did. Just goes to show how smart she was.”

He paused and Rose watched a range of emotions move through his expression, most of which were difficult for her to see—a lot of pain and bleakness.

He sucked in a breath and continued. “Anyway, we had this long talk where she admitted all this history to me, swore me to secrecy, but said I should consider going to you and trying to reconcile because it was entirely possible your baby was my child. I was both thrilled and devastated. I went for a run to consider it all.”

He gripped the counter, and Rose saw his knuckles go white. She heard the granite crunch and gasped. “Vlad?”

He released his hold and flexed his fingers. “Sorry. This…” He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “When I got back, I could tell my father was home, but I couldn’t feel my mother anymore. I didn’t think that was a big deal until I came into the living room and saw my father standing over my mother with blood on his hands, glaring down at her dead body.”

“Madre de Dios.”

“He’d ripped her throat out. Her head was barely still…” He swallowed hard. “And when he saw me, he didn’t show any signs of guilt. He didn’t even hesitate when he said she’d killed herself.”

“How the hell would she have ripped out her own throat?”

“He said she’d slit her throat with a knife—even though there wasn’t one around. He explained the blood on his hands by claiming he’d tried to put pressure on the wound and keep her from bleeding out before her body could heal. But the wound was clearly not from a knife slice, and the blood on his hands was not from trying to save her life.”

“What did you do? What did he do?”

“He said we had a problem to solve. My mother had committed a crime—which was why she’d killed herself, out of shame—and it was up to me and my brothers to fix her mistake. When I asked what crime, he said she’d given birth to a half-breed abomination and that disgusting offspring had to die.”

“Oh, my God. Vlad, what did you say? How did he know?”

“Later, after he’d rallied my brothers to his cause, I went through the house, trying to find out how he’d heard us. He was definitely not there when we were talking. He had the fucking place bugged. I don’t know why. Paranoid. Or maybe he already suspected my mother of something. Can’t ask him now. Didn’t dare ask him then.”

She flinched a little at his curse and glanced toward the living room. To her relief, Zoe was still asleep. She looked back at him. “Did you go to your authorities?”