Vera frowned. None of this was making sense. “So, that’s why she gave me to you?” Maybe her mother had been slightly loose in the head, it was certainly possible if she’d suffered the way Jaeros had insinuated. Vera made a mental note to circle back and ask more about that later.

He shook his head. “No. She’d planned to travel to Cruiris and leave you at an orphanage until you were older. She had a bag packed and everything.”

“Why didn’t she?”

A fond smile graced his face as he glanced behind her at his son. “Because Jaren found you first. You’d barely breathed air into your lungs before he sensed you and tracked you down. I’d never seen anything like it.”

Gooseflesh spread across her skin as Jaren’s fingertips trailed up her arm, pausing to trace her shoulder before continuing up her neck and into her hair.

His nails scraped along her scalp, keeping her head taut against his chest as if to say, I told you, aitanta. Our souls match. From the moment yours entered the world.

Unaware of the simmering desire making its way through her body from Jaren’s touch, Jaeros continued. “As much as she wanted to protect you, she was not willing to separate you from your mate. No queen had ever been mated before, including her. She saw it as further proof that you were different. Special.

“So, we agreed to take you and raise you as our own until she felt it was safe for you. It’d been several years since we’d adopted Jaren, so it wasn’t a far stretch for anyone to believe we were ready for another.”

She noticed that although Jaeros was obviously trying to paint Vaneara in the best light possible, he’d never once confirmed that she’d loved her. Only that she’d thought she was important for whatever unknown reason.

But something else stuck out to her as well, something he’d said by saying absolutely nothing about it at all. “You keep saying she,” Vera pointed out, forcing her fidgeting hands to lie still in her lap.

“You haven’t once mentioned my—Vesstan.” She stumbled over his name, unsure what to refer to him as. It didn’t feel right to call him father when she still wasn’t sure what his intentions with her were.

Jaeros placed both hands on his knees, shoving off the bed with a grunt. He really did look exhausted, and she wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all the previous night, or if he’d stayed up filling Dedryn in on everything.

“King Vesstan wanted heirs. Neither he, nor the council, would’ve agreed to end the Arenaris bloodline. He didn’t like what Vaneara went through, but he also believed it to be a necessary evil for the good of our people.”

He sighed heavily, the lines around his eyes deepening as he added, “It’s because of that, that your mother hid her pregnancy from everyone, including him.”

“What? How is that even possible?” How on Aleron could someone hide an entire pregnancy from their spouse? She remembered Eithan saying the rebellion happened because her existence had been discovered, but she hadn’t realized she’d also been hidden from her father.