"Yours."? The word barely left my mouth before the room seemed to tilt around me.
"Not Victoria's father," I whispered. "Mine."
Damien's expression held something raw, grief layered over decades of silence. "I loved your mother before either of us ever married anyone else. Before Alaric destroyed everything between our families and forced us apart."
"That's not possible." My voice shook despite every effort to hold it steady. "My father raised me. I have his eyes in every photograph from my childhood, his laugh, his-"
"You have your mother's eyes," Damien said quietly. "The man who raised you loved you enough to never once let you doubt it. That doesn't make the blood between us any less true."
Across the room, Caleb's laughter rang out at something an elder had said, and the sound of
