Her Mortal Mate

Chapter Sixty Eight: Mental Heath

Jadea

“Hey squirt,” Lucien called out to me as I came running out of the circle with exhilaration. I’d just beaten the Fairy King, Octavius, to a duel. Truthfully, it had to have been a fluke because I knew he was a great swordsman. Hell, all of Constance’s guard were the best of the best! He had been my first fight of the day and I was on top of the world.

“Hi daddy!” I flew into his arms and knocked him back a few steps from the force. “Did you see!?” I burst out excitedly.

A huge grin split his face. “Yes, I did squirt. You did good,” he complimented, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” He asked and I sobered up quickly.

“Of course.” I followed him as he led us away from the crowd so we could easily talk without being interrupted or overheard.

“You’re doing the right thing, you know.”

“By allowing Adam to turn?”

“By giving him a choice,” Lucien corrected.

I looked askance at my father.

“Don’t give me that look, Jadea. If it was something you really didn’t want to happen, you would never have allowed it.”

Meaning I would have used my powers to persuade him otherwise.

As much as his statement irritated me, he was right. “I know you try not to use your powers at all, but I know you use them when you feel there is no other option.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I huffed.

He chuckled. “How are you doing?” He shifted the subject.

That was a rather loaded question. “I’m not okay,” I said honestly. There had been a time, long ago, when I would have lied to him. Hiding my pain behind a smile. I had grown a lot since then and knew I could rely on him to understand and be there for me.

He nodded, his expression neutral, as if he had suspected as much. “A lot has happened in a short amount of time. You deserve to have some time to sort everything out and get back on the right foot.”

“But there isn’t time for that, is there?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“The hunt for Elam and Hans is important,” he started, “But it can wait.” His statement surprised me. I heard his heavy sigh right before he stopped to face me. “You are now a councilwoman. There are other responsibilities now resting on your shoulders other than the importance of finding Elam and Hans. It is imperative you are in the right frame of mind, otherwise things can go south quickly.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, not quite following where he was going with this.

“You, Adam and your pack need to take some time to sort through everything that has happened. The kidnapping. The underground city. Leviathan. Hans. Elam,” he listed.

“We are on a bit of a time crunch to find Elam,” I started to argue. He had been there when Fate herself said we only had a handful of years...

“Yes,” he agreed. “But that time crunch is several years, Jadea. A month or two delay to reset and take care of your mental health isn’t going to be detrimental to finding him.”

“But they—

“They have had enough time already to go to ground, Jadea,” he interrupted me.

I deflated, a knot in my chest forming. “I just didn’t want to let Constance down.”

“She would want you to take care of yourself too, you know,” Lucien commented. “I mean, look at this,” he waved at everything going on in the garden. “If she was a stick in the mud who didn’t care about everyone’s emotional and mental health, do you think she would have allowed this?”

No, she wouldn’t have. Nor would she have waited for Adam to be turned. She would have taken the risk of his mortality to find a way to save her sister and brother and to find Elam as well.

“She trusts you to get the job done, Jadea. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have given it to you. She doesn’t micromanage. She will not interfere unless it has come down to the wire. She isn’t going to care if you take a little bit of time for yourself and your pack. She understands the importance of mental health. She has had to work through it herself, along with managing her guards health as well.

“Now, even though I have pulled my pack out of retirement to help find Elam and Hans, it is going to take some time for them to be field ready again. We are all a little rusty,” he smirked. “You can come stay with us during that time. It would allow all of us to get acquainted and learn how to work together before it matters.”

He was planning on joining forces to find and capture Hans and Elam. This was the excuse I needed to stay in one spot long enough to deal with everything that had happened and to hopefully encourage the rest of my repressed memories to shake loose.

“What else is going on, Jadea? I can see it in your eyes.”

“There are pieces of my past that are shaking loose, daddy. Memories I had repressed to just survive.” I shuddered as the latest one involving Elam resurfaced.

He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not just that, though, is it?”

I shook my head. For some reason, I had this nagging feeling that what I was repressing was important. It could help us not only find Hans and Elam, it felt detrimental somehow to their takedown and capture. “Whatever I have repressed is important and relevant to the present.”

Lucien pulled me into a hug. “It’s going to be alright, squirt. Remember to breathe. Remember not to force your memories, they will shake loose when they are meant to be remembered.”

“There’s also one more thing,” I whispered against his chest.

“And what is that?”

I licked my lips as i gathered my wits and thoughts. “Adam’s ex, she’s a succubus. She was working with Hans.”

Lucien tensed. He knew this wasn’t good news either. “Have you talked to Adam about this?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“You need to, Jadea. And soon. This is something he deserves to know about. Especially since it involves his children.”

“How did we not notice?” I asked, referring to Aidan and Anika. My pack and I should have picked up on the different scent.

“Perhaps she is one of the stronger succubi and, when her true form was killed, she was able to latch onto a mortal’s soul?” Succubi and Incubi weren’t as strong as many of their other demonic counterparts. In order to survive, they had to feed off of other’s souls. Much like a vampire has to drink blood.

Incubus and succubus weren’t strong enough to split their souls either, and it was rare for them to latch onto another’s soul and completely overtake it. However, it wasn’t impossible.

“If this succubus took over a mortal body, then the children shouldn’t be incubi.” As long as the demon hadn’t destroyed the soul of the initial mortal who owned it, the body wouldn’t be forced to undergo any kind of biological transformation. The succubus’s soul would only latch onto and feed off of the host’s soul, much like a parasite. If done right, the succubus wouldn’t have to rely on others in order to survive. And, unlike when other demons take over a host, the initial soul wasn’t lost entirely. If done with care, the succubus’s soul could be extracted and then killed without killing the host.

“I’ll talk to him when we are on home turf. There are a lot of things he and I have to discuss anyway,” I added.

“Okay,” Lucien relented. “And what about about Kristi?”

Garret’s sister. “I will talk to her tomorrow. Today, I just want to give Garret some time with her. And, this is Adam’s day. I don’t want to talk pack business.”

“That’s fair,” Lucien agreed. “Do you think you’ll offer her a spot in your pack?”

I shrugged. “As long as I feel she will fit in well with us,” I stated. I would screen her tomorrow and we would go from there.

“I don’t know if Constance has told you, but she is a weak shield. She could be very useful.”

Especially right now when I was hunting Hans and Elam. “I’ll keep that in mind.” But I was never one to make a decision based on power. If someone’s personality wasn’t a match, their powers wouldn’t make up the difference.

“We should probably head back before someone starts to wonder where we disappeared to.” Lucien said as he looped his arm through mine.