CHAPTER TWENTY
The next morning, I decided it was time for me to take matters into my own hands.
I found a pack of playing cards in the penthouse, and on impulse, I snatched them up and tucked them into my pocket.
Last night we'd gotten word that Ethan had moved Jordan into a hotel room a few levels below ours, which was guarded at all times and magically warded by Larkin so the Leo alpha couldn't escape. Ethan hoped Jordan would be more amenable if he was treated more like a guest and less like a prisoner, but I remembered all too well when Jordan had done the same thing to me. A prison was still a prison, no matter how comfortable it was.
When I stopped in front of Jordan's door, the guards didn't question me this time. I felt a wave of satisfaction go through me as I walked into his hotel room. It was smaller than ours, just one room with a king-sized bed and a small seating area, plus a tiny kitchenette area.
As I shut the door behind me, Jordan looked up from his spot on the bed, blinking in surprise. He looked better than he had the last time I'd visited and wasn't chained up any longer. Clearly, he wasn't being mistreated either.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, scowling.
"I thought you might be bored." I pulled the cards out of my pocket and motioned for him to sit at the table and chairs in front of the window overlooking the city. I hoped I could take his mind off of interrogation and help him let his guard down enough to open up to me.
Jordan cocked his head. "You're going to play cards with me?”
“Why not?” I asked as I unboxed them and began shuffling them. “Do you know Go Fish?”
Jordan nodded grudgingly as he came to sit at the table.
“Good. I'm going to come play Go Fish with you every day,” I said. “Or other games, if we get tired of that one."
"I can't imagine Kaden approves of this."
I shrugged. "You're my brother. I can visit you if I want."
Jordan scoffed but took his cards as I settled in and began dealing them. At least he was open to me being here. I doubted he got to talk to anyone much, outside of being asked questions by his jailers. But I knew Jordan didn't respond to threats—we needed another way to get inside his head.
We were both silent for a few moments as we checked our cards, and then Jordan surprised me by speaking up first. “What was our father like?"
I snorted as I set a card down. “It sounds like he wasn't much better than the Leo alpha. He was a hard alpha to live under and a worse father. To me, at least. To Wesley, he was fair, if not a bit controlling.”
“Between my two fathers, I never had any hope of ever being anything but a villain,” Jordan said with a dark glower and set his own card down.
I frowned. He was winning. “That's not true,” I said, checking my cards subtly once again to see if I had anything to counter him.
Jordan set down another card, ending the match before it had even truly begun. I blinked at his card, and then Jordan flicked his wrist up for me to see and slid a card out. I raised an eyebrow. I hadn't seen him palm it.
“Like I said, incorrigible villain.” He grinned, but it didn't hold any humor. “Run back to your nice little alpha, Ayla,” he said, flicking his fingers toward the door.
I stood up, gathered the cards, and left without another word, trying not to let him get under my skin. That was what he wanted, after all.
The next day, I returned with the deck of cards again. Jordan looked surprised, and though he pretended to be annoyed, I think he was actually pleased to see me.
“You again,” he said.
I sat down, and after a moment's hesitation, he joined me at the table. I dealt us out for Go Fish again, and Jordan slid his cards to his side of the table and picked them up. I watched his hands carefully, but I didn't see any sleights of hand.
We played in silence for longer than yesterday, and a sudden pang of sadness went through me. I could have imagined us doing this as children if we'd been raised together the way we should have been. Maybe Wesley could have joined in too.
“How is it possible that we're siblings?” I asked, breaking the silence at last, as Jordan showed no signs of cheating. “Do you have an ace?”
He handed over an ace. “I asked my mother the same thing after you escaped. She didn't want to tell me at first, but I finally got it out of her. My mom was the daughter of the former Leo alpha before Dixon. Her father never had any sons, much to his disappointment.” Jordan set down another card, and I snatched it up. Jordan's eyes flared, as if he'd caught me red-handed. I discarded the ace he'd just given me. “When it came time for her mating, her father chose the strongest male Leo in the pack, Dixon, and paid the Sun Witches to mate them together.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Their pairing wasn't a natural mating either."
“No, and I don't think my mom ever loved Dixon.” His lips took on a wry twist as he set down a complete book of fives. “I doubt Dixon was ever capable of love. But then my mom met our dad when Harrison came over for some negotiations one time. She felt something for him, and it surprised her.”
“Lots of women seem to have felt that way,” I muttered, thinking about what my mom had told me about her relationship with him. I couldn't see it, but there was obviously something there, or women wouldn't have kept swooning into his arms.
“Maybe,” Jordan said. “I also wonder if my mom, Debra, was actually Harrison's real mate.” When I raised my eyebrows at him, Jordan shrugged. “What? I've had a lot of time to think in here since no one else is willing to come in and play card games.”
“If that had been true, maybe their natural pairing would have ended the rivalry between the Cancer and Leo packs.”
Jordan made a noncommittal noise and drew one of my threes out of the discard pile and set down another book. I shook my head and drew another card. He was still winning, and there weren't any signs of cheating today.
“Which of course, the Sun Witches wouldn't have wanted," I continued. "They would have done everything in their power to keep Debra and our dad apart.”
“Maybe. All I know is that no matter how much my mom and Dixon tried, she couldn't get pregnant,” he continued as he discarded another card. I finally had a book of twos. I set them down triumphantly, and looked up in time to see a slight smile curving over his lips. He hid it quickly enough, but I was surprised to see it. He cleared his throat and drew another card. “Then there was a full moon right on the Cancer-Leo cusp, and she spent the time with Harrison. You can guess what happened next. I was born right at the cusp myself, only a few hours into Leo.”
My eyebrows darted up at that. He seemed to embody everything Leo, so it was particularly shocking to hear that he was a cusp. Hardly even a Leo at all.
Jordan let out a bitter laugh at the look on my face. “Yeah, a cusp baby, and my father never let me forget it.”
I grimaced as I looked back down at my hand of cards. “I know exactly what that's like,” I said after a moment. I hoped that I could get through to Jordan, to find common ground between us. “Did Dixon know that you weren't his birth son?”