Chapter 25

**Harper**

I felt like my entire body was nothing but a knot as I turned away from Gabriel toward the front door. I wanted to explain everything to him, but everything was so jumbled up inside of me.

"Harper?" I turned back to look at him.

"I have to know Gabriel. I will be back in a little bit." He reached out and brushed my hair away from my face.

"Be safe, call me if you need me." His fingertips brushed my temple and it was both comforting to know he was going to be keeping tabs on me and upset me a little. I could handle myself, but I should be grateful for the support he was offering because God knows I needed it. I walked out of the house and slipped into the back of my father's car. It felt like I was going towards a future I could never return from that this was going to be a turning point in my life. My father sat in the seat across from me the car's driver slowly put up the center divider.

"Harper are you sure you want to know this?" And the way he said it caused me to pause. Did I want to know this? I couldn't unknow something once I learned it. I mean I could have Gabriel bury it in my mind, but would I want to?

"Don't try to scare me off of this...what am I?" He sighed and looked away from me again.

"I really take offense to you calling yourself a what. You aren't a what Harper." I felt like there was something I was missing.

"You have a very long bloodline, that can be traced the whole way back to those who served the Allfather." I felt a twinge go down my back as he spoke that name and he bowed his head. I waited for him to continue, and he was taking his sweet old time I wanted to put a name to the weirdness that I had felt inside of me.

"Dad please..." Words had started to tumble out of my mouth like a waterfall. I couldn't stop the flow.

"Ever since that night in my bedroom, I have felt this overwhelming presence within me, and I have felt like it has been driving me instead of me driving myself. Please help me understand, I feel like if we can get this cleared up I will feel better. It will bring me some kind of peace and it will give me a way to handle things better than I have been. I need to know this dad, please." He nodded and leaned forward bracing his arms on his knees.

"Okay Harper, you are old enough now. I just need your word on one thing beforehand." I nodded trying to brace myself for anything he might ask me for.

"Please don't tell your mother...she would never let me hear the end of it, it's just better if she believes that I am human until the time that it cannot be hidden any longer." Oh, that was an easy thing, it wasn't like my mother and I was what people would call close.

"Easy. Done, I give you my word I won't tell my mother." He gave me a lingering close look and the car stopped. He crawled out first and I stepped out to the shadow of the car. We were in front of a large white house that screamed grandma, the white picket fence with the garden's on either side. The flowers are taken care of the greatest of care. All shades of the rainbow are present in the gardens. Colors I wasn't even sure should have existed did. The little blue door of the off white house swung open. And my father waited on the other side of the gate for a moment.

"Oh! Jonathan come in! Come in!" An older woman came over to the doorway. Her long silver hair flowed down her back, but I had expected her face to be warm with age, and wrinkled from a lift time of emotion. It was quite the opposite. She stood with her hair silvered from age but looked no older than 30 years old. Her warm brown eyes turned from my father to me, and I felt the shock filter through her.

"Oh my. She certainly is Hildr. Isn't she?" I cracked my knuckles trying to ease some of the stress I was feeling.

"Come in. Both of you this talk have been a long time coming." My father walked through the gate and I felt my knees lock up. Was this real? Maybe I was dreaming. My father didn't look back to see if I was following him, and the other woman had disappeared into the house. Come on Harper, man up. Go inside the house, the beast inside me sturred, but not in the way that I was familiar with, it was there to strengthen my will. Giving me the support I needed. I through the fence into the well-manicured yard. The flowers seemed to turn towards me as I approached. It was an older feeling one that the beast inside was more familiar with. I walked up onto the porch.

Come on Harper, it's only your whole life. I walked over the threshold and it felt like walking into another world. The entire house seemed to give off this otherworldly vibe like there was much more to it than meets the eye. I followed the sound of voices to find my father and the woman sitting in a large parlor type room. She sat with a mug wrapped in her hands, again the oddity of her age-worn hair against the youth of her skin struck me.

"I am much older than my face appears, your instincts are not wrong. Hildr." While the name wasn't one that I knew to associate as my own, the beast inside of me shivered with understanding.

"You must be so at odds with yourself, Jon I am so disappointed in you for hiding this from her. She could have gone in a totally different person."

"I didn't start out to hide this from her, I just...fell into a rhythm that was easier to hold than I had expected."

"The damage is done...please sit with us. We do have much to speak of in such little time. My name is Greta...but you will know me better by a different name. Skuld." When the name left her mouth it struck a cord deep within me, that made me feel like I really did know this woman. Somehow I thought in a different time we would have been good friends.

"You are correct, we were the best of friends in a previous life my dear. She is very bright Jon." His chest puffed out in pride but he kept silent. His eyes flicking between myself and Greta.

"Now Hildr..." I shook my head as much as I wanted to understand the name and how it was attached to me, that was not my name.

"My name is Harper." She sat back in her chair the mug still settled between her hands.

"Of course, that is a foolish oversight of mine. Harper....I know you have already come into contact with your other nature...and it is very surprising that it has not over taken you yet. But it seems to be coinciding very nicely within you."

"I'm sorry? within me? Other nature...please Greta up until last night I believed that I was just half human and angel. Now you are telling me that I have a different nature, and that I was wrong about myself my entire life...I have been wrong about my father..." She nodded with sympathy in her eyes. She sat forward and touched my cold hands with her warm ones.

"Don't struggle with this...we will take this journey together. But we have to address a couple things first..." I nodded trying to prepare my mind.

"You come from a very long line of Valkyries Harper."