Tied together for eternity and doomed to fight one last battle that would eventually end the world.

Now, if what Xev said was true, Mennie had used that last Sephiroth to impregnate Nick’s grandmother and birth his own mother as a trap for his father, knowing his father wouldn’t be able to resist her. Cherise was the yin to Adarian’s yang. An innocent human with the blood of a Sephiroth. A human who had no knowledge of the inhuman creatures who shared this world with mankind.

Unable to believe it, Nick glanced from Menyara to his mother. “You set my mother up?”

“I’m so sorry, Nicholas.”

Stunned, he struggled to breathe as he again had that feeling of being out of sync with time. Of everything slowing down. “Is that why she’s so pure of heart? So incorruptible and unwilling to believe in anything supernatural?”

Mennie nodded. “For some reason, she can’t see it and has an unreasonable reaction to it whenever we try to explain it to her. I tried to hint about it once when she was a girl and she reacted so violently that I erased it from her memory, and have kept her from anything to do with it ever since. She simply can’t handle it.”

Now he understood why his mother had reacted so badly when Ambrose had tried to tell her the truth about the paranormal world around them. It must have triggered something inside her that had been unable to deal with the fact that she wasn’t completely human. That she’d literally been so ill-conceived.

Ambrose must not have ever experienced this moment where he learned the truth about her birth and his heritage.

And maybe that was why his mother was unconscious now. Because she was part Sephiroth, whatever was infecting Caleb might be infecting her, too.

Menyara sighed before she spoke again. “It’s also why Cherise is incapable of seeing the evil in others. Why she’s like a beacon that calls out to so many who need kindness. Acheron. Caleb. Kyrian. The Peltiers. Like all Sephirii, she’s innately soothing and gentle to be around. A spiritual balm. Unless they’re in battle and are defending what they love, the Sephirii can calm the most restless of souls.”

And that made him furious. Because of what they’d done to her, his mother had been attacked and thrown out of her home. As a teen, she’d been homeless and pregnant. Abandoned.

Yes, Menyara had taken her in, but now that he knew the truth …

Nick wanted blood.

He glared at Menyara. “How could you do that to my mother? You cost her everything!”