After lunch, Tariq left so Reyna could get some work done. However, Reyna’s concentration was shot. Her mind troubled, Reyna did as she’d always done when something bothered her. She went to Jorlan.
She entered his office without knocking. He was on the phone so she wandered over to the window and stared down at the busy street below. When he finished, he came and stood beside her.
“What’s troubling you, Kitten?”
Reyna absently drew her finger across the glass in a random pattern. “My friends know who I am. Tariq accidently let the cat out of the bag.”
“In my opinion, it’s about damn time. How’d they take the news?” he asked.
Reyna snorted out a laugh, still unable to believe what had happened. “Turns out they’d already figured it out. All except Delany, that is.”
“They’re smarter than I gave them credit for being. I’m glad.”
When she scowled at him, he shrugged. “Kitten, those women work in some of our company’s key positions. Your signature’s on every important document in this place. They’d have to be stupid not to have figured it out before now. For the sake of Illuminator Incorporated, I’m glad to see they’re not.”
“Delany didn’t,” Reyna muttered, disgruntled because she hadn’t realized they would reason it out. What would her relationships with them be like now had she trusted them with the truth?
Jorlan arched an eyebrow and gave her a sardonic look. “The name says it all.”
Reluctantly laughing, Reyna admitted it did. After a while, she sighed. “Life’s never going back to normal, is it?”
“If by normal you mean the way things were before, no, it’s not,” he agreed.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “It feels like my whole world has shifted.”
Jorlan placed his arm around her shoulders and tucked her close. “Your old world wasn’t that great. This new one is better.”
She tilted her face up to his. “It wasn’t so bad. I had you.”
He closed his eyes and hugged her hard. “You always will. That will never change. You’re my little kitten.”
Reyna blinked eyes gone damp and with her ear to his chest, listened to Jorlan’s steady heartbeat. It was a sound which reassured her that no matter what went wrong in her world, Jorlan was her one constant. After a long while, she asked, “What do you think will happen with the pride now?”
Easily following her train of thought, Jorlan sighed. “I don’t know. A new leader will have to be appointed now that Ragnor is dead. The elders will have to change their ways or risk losing the young members. Earth’s a new world full of opportunities. If we as a species don’t adapt and change to our new environment, we’ll die out.”
When Tariq had first informed her of Ragnor’s death, Reyna hadn’t really cared. In her hurt and anger, she’d considered the pride dead to her. The feeling hadn’t lasted long. Though she was learning to embrace her Vampalien heritage, in Reyna’s mind she’d always be Felini first, and vampyr second.
Thinking of her pride made her remember their reactions to the Vampaliens in their midst today. “Did you see the way the pride reacted today? They treated Alvaro with awe and deference, and their wariness of Tariq bordered on fear. I expected it of the humans. I thought the pride would be more…hostile.”
Jorlan smirked. “I didn’t think you’d noticed. You seemed rather…enthralled with your new husband.”
Reyna felt her face flush. With his Felini senses, Jorlan would have been able to smell her lust. So would the others.
“Alvaro ripped Ragnor apart with his bare hands,” Jorlan said seriously, though an amused glint still lingered in his eyes.
Grateful he’d decided not to tease, she said, “True. That explains their awe toward him, but they acted a bit strange with me, too.”
Jorlan gave her a “Duh” look. “Kitten, your father’s a member of one of the seven ruling houses on Vampalien.”
“So?”
“You know what that makes you?”
The same thing the Felini had always despised her for being. “A half-breed,” she said flatly.
He shook her briefly. “No, royalty.”
“Get out of here,” she scoffed, shrugging out of his hold. She took a few steps away before turning to face him. “The Felini don’t care about status and social ranking.” Not like the humans did.
“No, you don’t care about such things because in the pride, you never had either, but the Felini do respect power. All species do and you, my dear, are rolling in it.”
Reyna rolled her eyes. “Jorlan—”
He came closer and took both of her hands in his. “Hear me out, Kitten. Not only is your father a high ranking member of Vampalien society, so is your mate. Your mother is the only surviving daughter of the Felini’s former top leader, and the newly revealed mate of your father. Now that the stigma has been removed from your birth…” He trailed off, leaving her to connect the dots.
She remained quiet as his words sank in. How ironic that for most of her life, her parentage and the circumstances of her birth were a source of deep shame. Now both were thought by others to be a source of pride? Reyna couldn’t wrap her brain around it.
Frowning up at him, she said, “Jorlan, I’m the same person I was before. They didn’t accept me then.”
Jorlan cupped her chin and stared directly into her eyes. “Kitten, what others think about you was never the issue. It’s how you think of yourself that counts.”