When Tia’s mates and sisters found Grimm, he was in ruins, his skin beaten to shreds, actually hanging off his bones in some parts. And his mind… Both the wolf and man they knew were barely there anymore, visions of untold horrors having been planted into his mind by some of the sickest, most twisted sorcerers in existence besides the Rasputins. It took their greatest healers and tons of magick and therapy to put him back together. And he still hadn’t been quite the same since, reverting to being a wolf more often than not. So, when the time came, Tia knew for sure telling him about Jelissa would only reverse all the effort made to make him mostly whole again.
“Grimm, by the time the decision was made to keep her hidden, you were still barely on the mend. I couldn’t risk losing you all over again.” Tia was having almost the same amount of trouble as Anya with trying to justify hiding the truth. “Look, I could apologize to you fifty million times in fifty million different ways, but none of those apologies would change a damn thing. Yes, I should have come clean with you long before now, but it never seemed to be the right time. Do I regret not telling you in the very beginning? No. I don’t. The decision had already been made, so there was no point in risking losing you when I had just gotten you back.”
“Tia, how am I supposed to react to all this?” Grimm asked, his tone a combination of hurt and bewilderment. “So, what, you expect me to take all this in like it’s everyday news? And the messed-up part is I don’t even have the luxury of being able to process any of it, because now she’s missing. You, all of you, kept this knowledge, my daughter, away from me all these years, and now she’s lost to us. What should my reaction be, Tia? Yay, it’s a girl?”
“Why don’t you back that train up, Mister Self-Righteousness, or have you forgotten you lied to Tia for most of her life? Not only about who you really were, but also about who and what she truly was?” Tia knew that Bran had had about enough of Grimm; not that he ever really liked him in the first place. The only reason he’d even bothered pretending he did was for her sake.
“This has nothing to do with you, so why don’t you stay the Hel out of it and mind your own business?”
“First of all, anything to do with Tialanna is my business. Second, that girl you’re referring to came from not my fucking essence, but from my seed. Meaning she was my daughter with or without the elixir, so that makes this conversation doubly my business.” Bran’s eyes took on a dangerous red tint, his true form peeking out. “I suggest you take it down a notch or two, pull up your big boy pants, and worry about what’s really important right here and now. In case that wasn’t put plainly enough for you to comprehend, your ego and what you feel you were entitled to isn’t it.”
Grimm looked like he’d rather bite off his own tongue than to admit Bran was right. “Whatever, you smug bastard. How about you come up with a plan then?” he mumbled.
“I’m trying to think of just that, you arrogant son of a bitch,” Bran replied with a twisted grin, seemingly pleased with himself at the non-insult he threw at his frenemy.
“I swear, dealing with the two of you is worse than dealing with blooming children.” This came from Chandler, who shook his head at the two. “I may not be Jelissa’s father by either essence nor seed, none of that matters to me. Tialanna is my Fated One any child born from her will always be mine, in both my eyes and heart.”
Just then Anya walked into the gardens with Elyssia no more than two steps behind her. The look on her face revealed before her words that what she had to say, none of them was going to like. “Uh, we need to talk,” she said, to no one in particular.
With a resigned sigh, Tia asked the question none of the rest of them wanted to. “About what, exactly?”
“There’s something none of us ever took into account, since we thought it would never be a factor as we aren’t really around any humans except the donors you guys use. She was never around them because that side of her never transitioned or even made so much as a peek. And Bran usually snacks on their sins as you and Chandler feed anyway. So, in actuality, while here, at home, in this realm, you know, it wouldn’t really be a problem and so far, it hasn’t been.” Elyssia was attempting to explain, though her explanation was coming out as a jumble of thoughts, with one sentence running right into another. And she was beginning to sound like a bumbling idiot.
Pinching the bridge of her nose and letting out a beyond-exasperated sigh, Tia said in a deadpan tone to her sisters, “Spit it out, one of you, whatever the Hel it is you’re trying to say.”
“Well, you know how we never really worried about what type of demon Bran was as far as what Jelissa would inherit from him? I mean we did worry about it, and we asked him about it, but we didn’t really worry it would be a factor over here on account of the factions in this realm don’t really care about sin the way humans do—”
“Elyssia!” Tia, Bran, Grimm, and Chandler all shouted at the same time.
Elyssia stopped mid-fidget; she had been
