I bit the inside of my cheek. “He shouldn’t have had that responsibility on his shoulders.”
“No, but he gladly took it.” She hummed as she pressed a kiss to my shoulder, and I felt her breathing even out as she drifted off to sleep.
I felt how calm she was, how happy, and it made me feel better, even though I was still a little tangled up inside.
“It’ll get better,” Austin mumbled, and I heard how sleepy he was too.
“Will it?”
“Yeah. Just don’t focus on the past. We’ve got too much to live for.”
He wasn’t wrong, but sometimes, it wasn’t easy to let go of the bitterness. Rebekkah had been a shitty mother, but in comparison to what Merinda had done, she’d been a peach.
Here I was, with my future in my arms, and I couldn’t be happier that she was the exact opposite of Rebekkah. That she was nothing like Merinda, either.
We’d shared the war stories of what had gone down in that other place. She’d repeatedly shown how she’d protect us, fight for us, defend us. How she’d fight for younglings, and the way she’d brought Daniel into the pack’s bosom? A key piece in the jigsaw puzzle that was our mate.
She was a born nurturer, everything I’d never known I needed, and through her?
I’d find peace.
Even if that peace came with a side of crazy.
Sabina
The gasp hit me right in the chest.
It was strange. So strange. I blew out a breath, closed my eyes, and tried to swirl through all the balls of energy in my mind that were representative of a person in the pack.
When I found them, when I realized their attack was happening in this very house, I shot out of my seat and surged into action, slipping out of the small office I’d claimed for myself and heading out into the hall.
I was coming to learn the energy was like a magnet. It pulled at me and pulled at the other person until we were together.
These things were happening more and more frequently.
Ever since my powers had accepted all members of the pack, the bombardment hadn’t stopped, but I was refusing to stress over it, refusing to be anything other than accepting of it.
If I stressed, then I’d worry, and there was no point.
No point at all.
And, anyway, what I could do helped people. I’d wanted that all my life, and here I was with my desires met.
I rushed into the kitchen and saw Ariel, one of the cooks who worked here, holding her chest. I knew I could have calmed her from afar, but sometimes that wasn’t enough.
I didn’t know how to define ‘sometimes.’ I only knew that she needed me here.
The staff members were all watching on in horror, with a few hovering around her like they wanted to help but had no real idea how.
Me? I knew what to do, but I waded into the mix, unsure if they’d let me through.
Just because my powers had accepted them, didn’t mean they’d accepted me.
They were still wary, and I understood that.
I was unusual.
A freak.
Just like always.
But it didn’t matter because I had my men at my side, and that was all I needed.
True acceptance from these people would come with time, and I was more than willing to give them that, because I wasn’t going anywhere.
When I almost dropped to my knees as I approached Ariel, I ignored the gasps and sniffs as I shoved people out of the way. Instead of focusing on them and their wariness, I focused on her.
She felt it too.
Her body responded as if I’d jolted her with power, and maybe, I thought guiltily, I had.
I wasn’t sure, to be honest. This was the first time I’d done this, and I wasn’t even healing her, more like just calming her down.
The way our energies collided, however, was like nothing either of us anticipated, but she instantly started to relax.
I hummed under my breath, remembering how that had helped Ethan that day with Cyrilo, and as I did so, I felt the wariness in the entire kitchen start to disband.
It was surreal for me too, and I knew this was possible, so only Kali Sara knew what everyone else was feeling.
I carried on humming, even started to sing an old ditty my mother had sung to me before bed, and eventually, the cook I knew as Ariel opened her eyes and stared at me.
She gasped a little, her breath coming out in pained sobs that made me wince with her.
“What happened?” I whispered, wanting to know so that maybe I could ease that pain as well.
“She’s terrified of mice. One flew across the kitchen floor.”
The voice had me twisting around to find its owner. I gaped at them. “Mice?” I pulled a face, then blew out a breath. My instinct was to tell them to put poison down, but ever since the other realm, I’d started changing.
I was a predator by nature now. I knew that. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t live my life by my choices.
And those choices meant I didn’t like to kill unnecessarily.
So much blood had been shed in my past, so much of it a waste of human life and love, that to be faced with a world where death was closer at hand, where the repercussions might lead to not just one death but two? Well, it wasn’t my idea of a dream come true.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t change things.
I cleared my throat. “We need to figure out a way to stop them from coming around then, don’t we?”
Elsa, the housekeeper, commented, “I’ll get some poison.”
I shook my head. “No. No poison. Something more natural.”
She scowled at me, so I scowled back as she grumbled, “They don’t work.”
“Sure they do. There are ways and means. We’ll figure it out.” When she pursed her lips in disapproval, for the first time, I called on my she-wolf.
Two things happened—the bitch from the other realm waded into the quarrel, snapping her teeth whenever someone got in her way, and my she-wolf came out to party.
The other females gasped at that, and Ariel, sadly, started gasping for air again, so I quickly dropped my hold on my she-wolf, well aware that everyone now knew that I had power to back me up.
I didn’t like pissing contests, but these people were predators too. They respected strength, so I’d shown them what I could do. And that was that.
I rubbed my hands over Ariel’s shoulders as the bitch moved over to me. When she pressed her head onto Ariel’s lap, the other woman tensed, but I reached for her hand and put it on the bitch’s head. “She means no harm,” I assured her.
Ariel’s breathing calmed, and she stopped bellowing air in and out, instead, starting to breathe a little more subtly. “Who is she?”
It figured the household staff would want to know, so I shrugged. “She’s my friend.”
That was the only answer I had, and it was the only answer they’d get, because I had no other answer.
When she was calm enough to stand, enough to wander over to a seat, I patted her hand and got her some water. When she took a sip, I asked, “Are you okay, Ariel?”
She stared at me with hesitation in her face, her eyes. “Y-Yes, Omega.”
I shook my head. “Sabina. My name’s Sabina. You know where I am if you need me.”
I didn’t wait on her to reply, just shot her a soothing smile and started out of the kitchen.
Women moved out of my way, and I let them, sensing their wariness had morphed into surprise, and I was good with that.
Everything was a learning curve, wasn’t it?
As I headed out into the hall, the bitch at my side, I heard Daniel giggling at something overhead in the room we’d given him.
Even though he wasn’t my son, the links between us were powerful.
I had no way of knowing why, just knew that to be true, and it was only one of the reasons why I’d wanted him here, close at hand.
Austin was helping him with his homeschooling, which amused me because
I knew he hated books, and we were all taking it in turns to help him catch up with all the education he’d missed.
Which was a lot.
I was almost tempted to go up there and help, but I knew I’d be a distraction, and Daniel didn’t need that.
He needed his teacher focused on him, not on my ass.
Lips twitching at the thought, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my other men.
Eli was out. I hated that. I knew he was at one of the pack businesses, knew he was scoping things out for when he decided on his next plan of action.
That he was taking so long to act when he was decisive by nature told me he was nervous, and it was the kind of nervous I couldn’t soothe.
He took too much on, bore too heavy a burden, and though I could help ease the strain, I couldn’t erase it entirely.
Instead, I just tried to share it, and I figured I was doing an okay job of it because he hadn’t complained yet.
Ethan, on the other hand, was in the office where Eli worked, so I wandered in there, smiling when I saw him sitting at Eli’s desk.
“Rebel,” I called out when, after finishing his call, he put down the landline and twisted to look at me.
His grin was sheepish, but he beckoned me with his hand, and I moved toward him, easily slipping onto his lap like I’d been doing it since I was young, and not just in the past month or so.
Everything about us was as natural as night following day, and the ease of it all just settled in my soul, making everything a thousand times better.
When I rested against him, my butt against his crotch, I felt his dick harden, but mostly, I felt the way he wanted comfort and wouldn’t ask for it.
His arms slipped around my waist, and he rocked us back as he sighed. “Feels good to have you in my arms, mate.”
They were all surprisingly tactile, but I wasn’t about to complain about it. I figured they were all alphas, all manly men who weren’t allowed to show weakness…only to me.
“Everything okay?”
He shrugged. “Just a lot going on right now.”
My eyes narrowed at that, and I twisted somewhat so I could look up at him. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Uncle Frank,” he said bitterly.
“What did he want?”
“He extended an invitation for us to go down to the family pack.” His jaw worked for a second. “I have no desire to go.”
“I know you don’t. We discussed this already,” I told him calmly, accepting his choice, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with it.
He huffed, apparently sensing that, and muttered, “If anyone should understand that family isn’t everything, it’s you.”
I arched a brow, surprised by his tone. “My situation is a lot different than yours. Plus, your family wants you in the circle. There’s a difference.”
“They don’t want us,” he muttered, that same bitterness etching his voice. “They just want to see their brother or their nephew or whoever in us—”
I frowned. “You’re more than your father, and if what Eli said is true, then your father was a convict. I mean, I’m not saying that’s bad, but from what I’ve learned—and I figure Cyrilo was a pretty big lesson to be taught—a shifter has to do something bad for the pack to allow him to be jailed in human prisons.”
He huffed. “Yeah.”
“You know what Lucas did?”
“Killed someone, apparently.” His sullenness didn’t come as a surprise. But his answer did.
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, wasn’t sure how to ease this particular ache.
“You don’t like that you understand Eli’s father’s reasoning, do you?” I guessed cautiously.
He hissed under his breath. “No. Fuck, why do you always know what I’m feeling?”
I snorted. “It’s kind of what I do.”
“Yeah, but still.” He blew out a breath. “If another male came to our union and he was a convict? I wouldn’t let him anywhere near you.” He gulped. “I don’t like that. I don’t like that I’m anything like that fucker.”
“You’re protective of me. I get it,” I told him softly, surprised by his cursing. “You don’t need to beat yourself up over this, Ethan. We don’t know the ins and outs. Maybe it was self-defense. You don’t know. Unless you look.”
“I don’t want to,” he confessed.
“Then don’t.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“No, it isn’t,” I confirmed, “but the truth is, you have a long life ahead of you. A lot of time to figure out your roots. Just covering them up won’t help you, love. Just burying your head in the sand when you need answers will get you nowhere.”
“True.” He grunted. “Maybe in time.”
“Yeah. In time.”
He cleared his throat after a while of us just sitting together, restful despite the conversation at hand. “Sabina?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
I tensed at his somber tone. “When?”
“With Kian and Joshua?”
I swallowed. “I told you some of it.”
“Not all of it.”
“No.” I bit my lip as I thought about how to answer. The past and the present no longer blurred, but with Joshua? He was a blank space in my future that I could never erase. “Kian and I loved each other. It was crazy to bring a baby into the mix, but we were stupid and young. We thought that was the only way my father would let us be together—”
“He couldn’t have stopped you.”
A bark of laughter escaped me. “Oh, but he could. He’d planned a marriage between me and a boy from another family, don’t forget. The night I told him I was pregnant was the night he told me about the marriage.”
Ethan sucked in a breath. “Jesus.”
“Yeah. I was lucky I was pregnant, because I know things would have happened fast after that.
“He locked me in my room, but my sister, Lara, helped me get out. She’d called Kian, and he was there, waiting for me a few streets away. I never went home again.”
Maybe he heard the sadness in my voice, a sadness he might not be able to understand because he was disconnected from his family in a way I wasn’t, but while the men in my line had been bastards, my sisters weren’t. My mother wasn’t. Weak, yes, but horrible? No.
He ran a hand over my arm, soothing me with his touch. “Austin mentioned you had sisters. Do you think they’re like you?”
“Cyrilo was special, wasn’t he? I don’t see why they wouldn’t be too.”
He hummed at that, then his voice deepened, changed, and I knew what he was going to ask before he even finished the question. “You carried to term, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Sadness filled me, as did the horror of having Joshua and losing him to a family grudge. My lungs felt like Ariel’s—compressed, tight and taut, unable to let me breathe. But then I registered where I was and with whom. I was also older and wiser.
I swallowed, but it was thick and hard to do so. “I thought when we moved away, we were safe. Then, the day after I got out of the hospital, we were driving down this road. It was bright, the sun was so fierce it hurt my eyes, even though it was winter. There was snow on all sides, and the plows had just been out, and we were so fucking happy. We’re from the South, we’d never seen snow before. It was like a gift.
“And Joshua? He was beautiful. So beautiful, Ethan. He was perfect.”
I peered up at him through tear-drenched lashes and saw his sorrow for me. When he pressed his lips to my temple, I sighed. I wasn’t soothed, but it was better than the gnawing emptiness that I’d always had as cold comfort before.
“He was tucked into the car seat. He should have been safe. We all should have been. But as we rounded this curve, suddenly, there was a big truck there.” I gulped. “It came straight for us, moving onto our side of the road. We collided because every time Kian tried to maneuver out the way, Cyrilo wended into our path.
“Even thoug
h I knew Kian was doing his best, it wasn’t enough. It would never be because Cyrilo was there with his orders. I knew we were dead.”
“But you survived,” he whispered softly.
“Yeah. Only just.” My mouth trembled. “It was luck, if you’d believe it. Where he pushed us off the road, it landed us into the next county. It muddled things in the news. So when I went into the hospital, he checked the wrong one. He never was that smart though. He should have checked both.
“Dad put too much faith in him because he had a penis. But his stupidity was my saving grace. Even if, for most of my recovery, I wanted to die.”
He squeezed me. “Thank you for living.”
My lips curved into a sad smile, and I reached up, ran my fingers through his hair, and whispered, “You’re welcome. But I know now why I survived.” I shrugged. “To be here, with you.” I kissed his lips. “Most of my family sucks. There’s no way to argue that. But yours? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s cool. And maybe they’re horrible. Don’t discount things just because it’s your knee-jerk reaction, hmm?”
With that said, my story imparted and never to be shared again because I couldn’t keep looking back to the past, I turned my face into his collar and let myself weep.
For Joshua.
For Kian.
Because they had no happy ending, and my love for them was as pure now as it had been back then.
Love didn’t die.
It changed.
Morphed with the years.
But it stuck fast.
Even while my heart beat solely for Eli, Ethan, and Austin, the memory of what I felt for Kian and Joshua was capable of taking my breath away.
So I sobbed in my mate’s arms and let him hold me as I absorbed the grief that would always linger, knowing that I was safe and out of harm’s way and in the arms of men who’d die to protect me.
More importantly, who I’d kill to defend.
Seventeen
Eli
With her hand in mine, we walked into the diner.
Austin and Ethan flanked me with Daniel hovering just ahead, moving with a dance to his step that made me smile, because it told me that in a few short weeks, we’d managed to improve his life. As we passed through the doors, the entire place came to a standstill.
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 35