“Maybe stress is making you read more into it.”

“I’m not reading into anything,” I snapped. He didn’t look like he agreed. Exasperated with him and the conversation, I looked over the rec room. Elena stil had Seth cornered, but that wasn’t what drew my attention. Jackson was in the room.

He leaned against one of the pool tables beside Cody and another male half. His swarthy complexion seemed unusual y pale and he looked like he hadn’t slept recently. I couldn’t blame him. While I didn’t know the current status of his relationship with Lea, he had to be worried about her, upset over what’d happened to her parents.

My gaze shifted to Cody. For a second, our eyes met from across the room. I didn’t expect a smile or anything, but his icy stare and disgusted look stil cut through me.

Confused, I watched as he bent down and said something to Jackson.

I took a shuddering breath. “I think they’re talking about me.”

“Who?” Caleb turned. “Oh. Jackson and Cody? You’re just being paranoid.”

“Do you think they… know?”

“About your mom?” He shook his head. “They know she’s a daimon, but I don’t think they know she was at Lake Lure.”

“Aiden said people would find out.” My voice tightened.

Caleb seemed to grow tal er as he picked up on my fear.

“No one wil blame you. No one wil hold it against you. They can’t, because it has nothing to do with you.”

I nodded, wanting to believe him. “Sure. I guess you’re right.”

***

Over the next week, the whispers increased. People stared. People talked. At first, no one had the guts to say anything to me directly, but the pures… wel , they knew I couldn’t touch them.

On the way back to the training rooms after lunch, I passed Cody in the courtyard. I kept my head down and barreled past him, but I heard his words anyway. “You shouldn’t be here.”

My head jerked up, but he was already halfway down the walkway. I headed back to training, his words replaying over and over again. I couldn’t have misheard them.

Aiden gave me a puzzled look when I entered the training room. As training neared the end, I final y said something.

“Do you think there’s a chance… my mom didn’t attack those people?”

He dropped the mat and faced me. “If she didn’t then it would change what we know about daimons, wouldn’t it?”

I nodded solemnly. Daimons needed to drain aether to survive. Mom would be no exception. “But they could…

drain without kil ing, right?”

“They could, but daimons rarely see the point in not kil ing. Even turning a pure requires an amount of restraint most daimons don’t have.”

None of the pures had been turned in Lake Lure. The attacking daimons had shown no restraint.

“Alex?”

I looked up, not surprised to see that he was standing in front of me. Concern lined his face. I forced a smile. “Part of me hopes that she’s stil in there somehow. That she isn’t al evil, and she’s stil Mom.”

“I know.” His voice was soft.

“That part in me, it’s so lame, because I know—I really know she’s bad and she needs to be stopped.”

Aiden stepped forward, his eyes were so bright and so warm. I wanted to forget about everything and fal into those eyes. Careful y, he reached out and with those fingers, he tucked back the strand of hair that always ended up in my face. I shivered, unable to help it.

“There is nothing wrong with hope, Alex.”

“But?”

“But you have to know when to let hope go.” He brought the tips of his fingers across my cheek. His hand dropped and he stepped back, the connection broken. “Do you remember why you said you needed to be in the Covenant?”

The question knocked me off guard. “Yeah… I needed to fight daimons. I have to.”

Aiden nodded. “And do you stil need that? Even after knowing that your mother is one of them?”

I thought about that for a moment. “Yes. They’re stil out there, kil ing. They… have to be stopped. I stil need that even though Mom’s one of them.”

A smal smile played over his lips. “Then there is hope.”

“Hope for what?”

He brushed past me, stopping only long enough to give me a knowing look. “Hope for you.”

I watched him leave, confused by his words. Hope for me? Hope that the kids would forget my mother was a daimon who quite possibly had slaughtered a classmate’s family?

Later that night, I felt the stares in the common lounge.

Eventual y, word did reach me. Some of them—pures and halfs—didn’t think I could be trusted. Not with Mom so close and so deadly. It was stupid.

But it got worse. Now people questioned why we’d left three years ago, and why I’d never returned to the Covenant during that time. Rumors circulated. My favorite? Mom had become a daimon long before that terrible night in Miami.

And some people believed it.

Days passed, and only a few halfs spoke to me. None of the pures did. Seth wasn’t helping matters either, and damn, he made it impossible to steer clear of him. He was everywhere: in the courtyard after practice, eating dinner with Caleb and Luke. He even showed up randomly during practice, always watching quietly. It was annoying and creepy.

A certain look would cross Aiden’s face whenever Seth stopped by. I liked to tel myself it was a mixture of dislike and protectiveness. Though today we made it through practice without Seth showing up, so I didn’t get to further examine the look. What a shame. I watched as Aiden grabbed one of the dummies we’d been practicing with and dragged it toward the wal . The thing weighed a ton, but he moved it around like it weighed nothing.

“Need any help?” I offered anyway.

He shook his head and placed it against the wal . “Come over here.”

“What’s up?”

“You see this?” He pointed at the dummy’s chest. There were several indentations in the flesh-like material. When I nodded, he ran his fingertips over them. “These are from your jabs today.” His voice fil ed with pride, and it was better than any look he could give Seth. “That is how strong your hits have become. Remarkable.”

I beamed. “Wow. I have the fingers of death.”

He chuckled softly. “And this is from your kicks.” He brushed his hands over the dummy’s hip. Part of the material had been knocked in. And part of me was envious of the dummy. I wanted his fingers to touch me like that.

“There are students your age who’ve gone through years of training and can’t inflict that kind of damage.”

“I’m the kung fu master. So what do you say? Am I ready to play with the grownup toys?”

Aiden glanced over at the wal , the one I badly wanted to touch. “Possibly.”

The idea of training with the knives made me want to do a happy dance, but it also reminded me of what the knives were used for. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

He only looked a bit weary. “Yes.”

“If… your parents had been turned, what would you have done?”

Aiden paused before he answered. “I would’ve hunted them down. Alex, they wouldn’t have wanted that kind of life, to lose al their morals and ideals—to kil . They wouldn’t have wanted that.”

I swal owed, my eyes stil trained on the wal . “But they…

were your parents.”

“They were my parents, but they wouldn’t have been once they’d turned.” Aiden stepped beside me, and I felt his eyes on me. “At some point we have to let go of the attachment.

If it’s not your… mother, it could be any other person you know or love. If that day comes, you’d have to face that they’re not the same person they used to be.”

I nodded absently. Aiden was technical y right, but in the end, his parents hadn’t been turned. They’d been kil ed, so he’d never real y faced something like this.

He steered me away from the wal at that point. “You’re stronger than you realize, Alex. Being a Sentinel is a way of life for you, not just a better option like it is for some of the others.”

Once again, his words brought a wealth of warmth. “How do you know I’m so strong? I could be rocking back and forth in my room for al you know.”

He gave me a weird look, but shook his head. “No.

You’re always… so alive, even when you’re going through something that would darken the souls of most.” He stopped there, becoming aware of what he’d said. The hol ows of his cheeks flushed. “Anyway, you’re incredibly determined—to the point of stubbornness. You wouldn’t stop until you succeeded. Alex, you know what’s right and what’s not. I’m not worried about you not being strong. I’m worried about you being too strong.”

My heart sort of swel ed. He… cared for me, and he’d hesitated before answering the question about his parents.

Somehow, it made me feel better about my own conflicted emotions, and he did bring up a valid point. No matter who I faced out there, if they were daimons, it was my duty to kil them. It was why I was training now. In a way, I was actual y training to kil her.

I took a deep breath. “You know… I hate when you’re right.”

He laughed as I made a face at him. “But you’ve been right when you don’t even realize it.”

“Huh?”

“When you said I didn’t know how to have fun—the day of the solstice? You were right. After my parents were kil ed, I had to grow up real fast. Leon says my personality got left behind somewhere.” He paused, chuckling softly. “I guess he was right, too.”

“How would Leon know? He’s like talking to a statue of Apol o. Anyway, you’re funny—when you want to be. And nice, and smart, real y smart. You have the best personality I’ve—”

“Okay.” Laughing, he held up his hands. “I get it, and I do have fun. Training you is fun and definitely not boring.”

I murmured something incoherent, because my chest, wel , it was doing that fluttery thing again. Practice was over, and even though I wanted to stay with him, there were no other reasons for me to hang out. I headed for the doors.

“Alex?”

My stomach tightened. “Yeah?”

He stood a few feet away. “I think it would be a good idea… if you don’t wear that to practice again.”

Oh. I’d forgotten what I was wearing. It was a pair of questionable shorts Caleb had picked up for me. I hadn’t even thought he’d noticed. Looking at Aiden now, I realized he had noticed. I fixed an overly inno-cent look on my face.

“Do you find these shorts distracting?”

Aiden gave me one of his rare smiles. Every cel in my body warmed. I even forgot about the terrible thing I was training for. His smile had that kind of impact.

“It’s not the shorts I find distracting.” He brushed past me, stopping at the door. “In our next practice I may let you train with the daggers if we have time.”