Crave (Harlequin Teen)

I going to be back home in a few days?”
    “I do not know. If all goes well, yes. I am trying to convince them that we have much to learn from you still. I have spent the last few months pleading your case to them.”
    He’d argued with the council…for me? Shocked, I blurted out, “Why would you do that?”
    “Because you are my daughter. Why would I not try to protect you?” He said it simply, as if the answer was obvious.
    “I…didn’t realize you cared.” I stared down at my hands in my lap. “I mean, all those volleyball games and basketball games…I asked you to come watch me play, but you never did. So I thought…” I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.
    “I was trying to minimize the council’s spying upon you. Everything I see, they see. If you had begun to show vampire or magical abilities early in life, I did not want them to see it.”
    So all this time, he had been protecting me.
    Except that still didn’t explain his threatening Mom and Nanna on the council’s behalf. Unless… “At the restaurant today, you said elder vampires can command younger ones. Can the council command you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Even completely against your will?”
    “Yes.”
    “So when you passed on their threat to hurt Nanna and Mom if I didn’t stop dancing…?”
    “That was at their command.”
    My throat tightened. “What if I had refused to go with you today?”
    “I am under command to bring you to them one way or another. If you had refused, I would have been forced to drug you. It would have hurt me greatly to do so. You are and always will be my child. But a command from the council is unbreakable and cannot be ignored.”
    I had to look away and blink fast as my eyes burned. I’d always thought he cared more about the council than me, that everything he did for them had been done willingly to earn their approval again. But if they had forced him to do it instead…
    He was as much at their mercy as I was. And everything I’d thought about my father was wrong. Did I know him at all?
    I had to take a few seconds to clear my throat before I could speak again. “So why don’t they just command every vampire to follow the rules? Then they wouldn’t have to worry about settling vamp problems or dealing with rule breakers.”
    “They like us to feel as if we have free will.”
    And yet the council could order vampires around like puppets if they chose, even as tools to be used against their own children.
    I remembered everything I had accused him of, all the times I’d refused to speak to him. Telling him he was no longer my dad. My hands shook. I pressed them against my knees to hold them still and forced myself to look at him. “Dad, I’m really sorry I made things harder for you with the council. And for giving you so much grief. Thank you for trying to protect me.”
    He nodded. Leaning forward, he rested a hand over one of mine. “I may be old, but there are still human emotions left within me. I am only sorry you thought otherwise of me.”
    In that moment, a heaviness inside that I’d long grown used to slowly began to lift, loosening the pressure on my chest. My dad cared about me. He’d fought the council for me. He was trying to help me now.
    After a minute, he squeezed my hand then leaned back in his seat again.
    I sat back, too, trying to smooth out the tangled mess of thoughts and emotions inside my head. So much was changing. It was definitely reassuring to know I wasn’t alone here, that I had someone on my side to help me out. But it still didn’t solve my biggest problem. How could I—we—convince the council that I wasn’t a threat to them? And what would happen if we failed?
    “Dad, are you still allowed to tell me the truth?”
    “If I cannot, I am allowed not to answer you.”
    That would have to be good enough. “How much trouble am I in?”
    “I convinced them before your birth that it was better to let you live and learn from you. But they only agreed because you were not magically trained, you stayed away from the Clann and you did not have the bloodlust. You did not pose an immediate threat to them.”
    And now I did.
    They’d allowed me to live before. Now it seemed they might change their mind about that.
    My mouth went dry, and I desperately reached for something else to think about. “So, um, you never told me where your…our…type of vampires come from exactly.”
    He sighed. “There are many different theories about our origins. We are not a