Free Daughter of Anat by Cyndi Goodgame

answer.
    “It ’s okay you know,” I wasn’t sure why I was defending him, “I know what they tried to do.  Make you marry me.  I don’t blame you.”
    His dark, brooding eyes found mine now.  Had I screwed up saying the truth?
    “I never intended to force you into anything.”  His face lingered too long and then turned back to the traffic.  “I wanted you to choose.  You chose.”
    Very super clear on that!  “Do you mean that —
    Nope!  Can of worms.  I stopped myself from saying it.  He would have done it.  Married me.  The solidarity of that single fact made my back shiver from the understanding of true fate.  He’d...we’d changed it.  Fate didn’t own me. 
    Maybe...just maybe the gods had us bamboozled into a corner making us think we had only one clear path.  What i f we made our own paths, regardless?
    I wanted Cord to feel strong again.  Where this came from must have been deep down in my psyche, but it made me feel better.  Like he was someone who could be cared about.  Cord didn ’t deserve loneliness just like none of us did.
    “I would have done what my father asked if it meant something for the greater good.  I just don ’t think an arranged marriage where the two people do not love each other is for the greater good of me or to anyone.  Besides, knowing what we know now, I question if my father really had the intentions he did.”
    Cord pondered this with his head tilted down a little, watching the front window of the car with his upturned eyes.
    “Might be, but I have a feeling your father had us all in a net we couldn’t escape.  And it always came back to you.”
    “What happened to your parents?  How did you end up with the Ryan ’s?”  I’d known the family for well, all my life.  But I’d never known Cord.  Weird. 
    “Maybe you shouldn ’t ask that question.”
    “Why not?”   Sure, I was way curious now.  I checked my watch.  Thirty minutes had passed.  We knew what we ’d do at arrival, so there was no discussing it.
    “Because you might change your perspective on your boyfriend.”
    His way of saying boyfriend was a little bitter though his mouth curved upward as if in a devious, well thought plan to make me angrier. 
    “Tell me anyway.  It ’s not like our lives have ever been in anyway normal.  What possible secrets could devastate us past what we already have perversely learned?”
    He eyed my way with the lift of one eyebrow and a shoulder to match, but dropped both with the reminder of whate ver bad news he had forming in his brain.  “This could.” 
    Cord was refusing to tell me.  It must be that bad.
    He sighed and said remorsefully, “Thorn’s court killed my parents.  He was sent on his first mission with his father to take them out.”
    Who wouldn ’t gasp a little at that?  It was shocking, but not so much in my world.  “Does Cas know?”
    His look was so ridiculously funny, I looked away from the smarmy smile I had no reason to given the news.  His face was scrunched up, making the tiny spikes of his hair move up with his brows.  I ’d never noticed the movement of his hair before.
    “I was a ward of your father ’s estate after that until Ryan took me in.  I took it to rid myself of the Valkyrie court only to find out in the same way Thorn and Calum and Szar did that it was always planned anyway.  Ryan took me in because he knew I’d be bitten and raised me to the killer I am.”  He sounded in pain.
    “It wasn ’t your fault.”
    “You know much Stace, but there are things you will never know about men no matter what kind of warrior you become.”
    He was barely a man himself, but like Cas, he sounded so much older.  I feared the things the two of them have seen.  Lived through.
    I had a sudden other fear. “Is this what Cas deems as what he calls worse?  The worst he ’s done.”
    “Killing my parents?”  Cord laughed.  “He didn’t actually do the deed.  He was just there.  Watched.