by K. N. Banet
“I told you if you called her, you had to remain calm,” someone said out of view. There were a million ways I could describe the voice—low and husky, definitely a woman, patient but stern. My heart pounded as I realized who it had to be.
Zuri was with Subira, the mother I had never met. I didn’t really see her as my mother, but she was definitely special to the family, and seeing her was obviously rare. Now, for the first time since I had become a werecat, I heard her voice. My palms went clammy, and I rubbed them together, wondering if she could see me when I couldn’t see her.
“You’re right, you did,” Zuri said. She took a long deep breath, closing her eyes as she held it, then slowly released. She did it three more times before she looked at me again. “I wish I could fly out to you, Jacky, I do.”
“Any advice would be appreciated,” I countered. “What’s going on? You’ve been MIA for months.”
“We’ll talk about that later. First, we need to talk about you. How are you feeling?”
I remembered the sick feeling when it had all started—the violation of my privacy, the exposed feeling, my blurred body.
“I really am doing better, but when I think about it…I feel violated,” I admitted. “I’m not sleeping in my house, and I’m getting new security installed. Dirk is really stepping up for me, talking to…” I trailed off, letting Zuri fill in the blanks.
“You can say his name,” Zuri said softly. “Heath is a good werewolf, and he’s been a wonderful friend of this family.”
“This family?” My eyebrows went up. He was certainly my friend, more than that, but I didn’t remember any point where it was suddenly decided he was everyone’s friend. He and Jabari didn’t get along at all, Davor hated him from a distance, and Niko was interested, but I knew they didn’t talk. Heath had no chance to build a friendship with everyone in the family.
“By being a friend to you, he is a friend to this family. I don’t want to make the distinction anymore. My…perspective may have changed recently, and I’m not going to give you a hard time for letting him help you.”
It felt sudden, but I had no idea what Zuri was going through to prompt this sudden acceptance.
“Okay…yeah, I went to Heath. After I called the family, the next day Dirk and I cleared the cameras off my property, then I went to Heath to talk about new security Dirk and I could manage and find names of contractors to install it…and I broke down. Right there in his office. I fell apart.”
Someone whistled off-screen, and Zuri sent a glare in that direction.
“Is someone else there? Besides…Subira?” I asked, frowning deeply.
“Yes,” she answered but offered nothing else. “And said person is supposed to be out for a time, so I could speak to you alone.” She continued to glare in that direction until something happened that made her content again. “Gone now. Continue.”
“I am so lost right now.” What the fuck was Zuri into? Was it a friend? Another werecat? A human?
“Jacky, I really can’t—”
“You can; you’re just too scared to,” Subira said from wherever she was hanging out off-screen. “She’s your sister, not one of your brothers. It’s really those boys you’re hiding from. Let her know. If you open up to her, she will be more willing to open up to you. I know I don’t need to explain this.”
“Okay, but at the end,” Zuri said, running a hand over her face. “Jacky, let’s just stay on topic right now.”
“Sure. What would you do in my position?”
“Exactly what you are doing. Keep playing hardball with them. Remind them you are going to live for an eternity, and you can always bargain with the next generation. The thoughts and ideas of men change rapidly, the world moves swiftly. You can bide your time to get what you want. They can’t. I don’t have a problem with you telling them all about us. Because we’re so closely related to werewolves, they know our weaknesses. They don’t yet know our strengths, but if they want to, they need to give you everything.” She reached out, and from the look of it, she was touching the screen.
“I don’t want you to keep looking like this, darling. Please take care of yourself. That worries me more than the humans, do you understand? You have it hard in our family as the youngest. You’ve forged a different path than what we’re used to, but I am curious to see where this path leads. I came out here because I’m tired. I thought it was because of the drama you had caused, but in reality, I was just tired of the life we live. I don’t want to see you become one of us—one of Hasan’s powerful and reclusive children with no hope of normal lives. I want you to keep fighting for what you want in life. I just want to see you live through it and be happy.”
I blinked several times, tears filling my eyes. “What’s gotten into you, Zuri? You used to demand that I be every bit the queen you believed I was.”
“You’re a werecat and the ruler of your territory. You were always a queen to me. I should have said it more often. Seeing you like this…hurts me.” She blinked as well, and I caught the glisten of her tears. She took a deep breath. “Oh, I’m so damn emotional these days.”
“You can tell me what’s going on. I told you about my breakdown.”
She nodded and leaned back from the computer. Something seemed off as she turned in the swivel chair, but when she stood up, the situation became very clear.
It was a beachball-sized problem.
“Oh my god, you’re pregnant,” I gasped. “Oh my god.” I leaned back, then rushed forward, getting closer to the screen. “Oh my god! Zuri! What?” I threw my hands over my mouth, trying to remember coherent thought, but Zuri backed away, showing me the entire story, posing with her hands wrapped around her belly.
“I met a man at the beginning of my vacation, and my…preventative measures failed. In an unlikely turn of events, I discovered I was pregnant shortly after this man decided he needed to head home…in the Sahara Desert.” She smiled, but it looked tired. “You can’t, under any circumstances, tell our father or any of our siblings about this. They will come out here and find me. They will force me to live with Hasan until the baby is born. I want to give birth with Mother attending me and let this child be born in the wilds where I believe it will belong, where I feel most at home.” She slowly ran her right hand over her baby bump.
“The…the other person…” I pointed, but I didn’t really understand why.
“The father,” Zuri answered softly. “His name is Kushim. He’s an Immortal. He was passing through my territory, looking for a rogue who had stolen something from him. We connected as I helped him and decided to have…a bit of fun, thanks to that connection.”
“Let me get this straight. You met an Immortal, had sex with him once, and got pregnant, defying all the odds since it’s really rare for werecats to get pregnant.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a one-night stand,” Zuri admitted, smiling. “More like a two-month stand. We got out of bed to eat, and we talked.” Her smile turned dreamy. “About pirates and bandits through the ages. It was so…perfect.” She sighed happily, and I saw her cheeks darken with a blush.
“See, this is how you ended up pregnant,” Subira said, walking on-screen and pointing a finger at her daughter.
I lost all the air in my lungs. She was so short, probably five-foot-two, and had long, beautifully braided hair like Zuri, though Zuri towered over her, closer to five-foot-nine. The face, though—Zuri had inherited her beauty from this woman. Subira laughed, and it was at Zuri’s expense, who laughed along. This was the bond between a close mother and daughter.
I finally saw more than just a painting of this woman, and the painting didn’t do her justice.
“Immortals are immune to magic and nullify it in other things when they touch it,” Subira continued. “You were so enamored with your bandit, you didn’t consider while you made love to this man, his touch would stop the spells protecting you from pregnancy. That, my lovely daughter, is why I told you to not fall for love!” She was still laughing as Zuri
waved her off.
“You love Father!” Zuri reminded her, grinning.
“I do,” Subira said, her smile also turning peaceful as if thinking of Hasan was her favorite thing to do. “He’s a fool, that man, and you’ll learn your bandit is as well. Love tends to do that to men.”
Oh, they’re still both madly in love with each other. It’s not just Hasan.
Will Heath become a fool? I have to watch out for it now.
Subira finally turned on me, her smile not fading, only changing. It became indulgent.
“And you,” she whispered, coming closer to the camera. “I expected we would meet under different circumstances. I have been told Hasan calls you Jacqueline, but…if I may, I would like to call you Jacky like the others do.”
“Jacky is fine. Why haven’t we met yet?” I dared to ask.
“Imagine being Changed by a man like Hasan, introduced to all of our children, then told you’re one of them now. It’s easier to finish easing someone into the family slowly. If you had stayed with Hasan for the decade he needed to teach you, I would have visited, but…” She trailed off, considering me. It felt as though I was being disassembled and my every part checked for defects. “You had to reckon with some uncomfortable truths, and I decided I wouldn’t involve myself and rush you or pressure you in any way. I have heard of your adventures, though.” She raised an eyebrow at me, amused as heat flooded my cheeks. “And what adventures they have been. We’ll talk about them one day.” She stepped back again and lifted her hands. “I can’t stay. I’ve been making a potion for Zuri to help with her discomforts. I need to check on it.”
Then she was gone, leaving me and Zuri staring at each other.
“That’s really not how she wanted to meet you,” Zuri said as she came back toward the camera and sat down in her swivel chair. “At least the initial introduction is over.”
“She’s…”
“She’s our mother,” Zuri said with a wise nod. “She’s special.”
“I think I caught that,” I whispered. “A potion? Is she…” I leaned in close. “Is she half-witch?”
“There’s a reason she had to leave the second Tribunal seat empty,” Zuri said softly. It clicked for me as Zuri said it—half-breeds couldn’t hold ruling positions. Subira, a witch making potions, couldn’t also rule the werecats on the Tribunal. It was a conflict of interest, people would say. “And…a reason I’ve had to leave it open.”
Spells. Potions. Runes of power, symbols that have magic no matter who uses them.
“Are you—”
Zuri put a finger over her mouth, and I stopped, not daring to go further. This was a secret. Mother wasn’t, not really, but Zuri was.
“Everyone in the family knows Mother is a witch. Normally, she tells you, but you hadn’t met her yet,” Zuri said softly. “She was born one and Changed into a werecat later. The story is more complicated than I’m letting on, but there are some things she needs to tell you. Jabari is cranky right now because I’m blocking his connection with me.”
I just stood there, giving my sister a wide-eyed, confused stare. She chuckled softly.
“Jabari and I were born twins of a magic user. We have a connection. We can feel each other over vast distances, though at a certain point, it grows weak. Mother, for my pregnancy, has helped me block that connection, so he can’t track me down. It’s something we’ve never told anyone, except Mother.”
“Why are you telling me?” I asked, laughing in shock. “What? I’m…the last person in this family you should give your secrets to right now.”
“Because I know one of yours,” she said softly.
17
Chapter Seventeen
I stopped laughing and stared in wide-eyed horror at nothing, unable to look up at her on my monitor.
I only had one secret.
“You didn’t treat your own injuries last year,” she continued. “You went to see Heath. When you left his home, you were running. Look at how Heath treats you, little sister. His love and devotion are clear.”
I took a long, ragged breath.
How does she know that?
“Who are you going to tell?” I asked softly.
“No one,” she said simply. “Not a soul. Not even my twin.”
“Why?” I looked up at her again, stunned yet still fearful.
“Because I’m having a child with an Immortal. Really, Jacky…I’m not going to tell anyone. The heart is the heart. That has been made very clear to me recently.” She turned and smiled. Lifting a hand, she beckoned for someone to join her without needing to say a word.
The man who walked onto the screen had a swagger that couldn’t be denied. He was covered in scars, but not ugly because of it. Once, he would have been a heart-stopping, good-looking man. Now, he was definitely a man who had seen more battles than I could comprehend.
“This is Kushim,” she introduced. “The bandit who very effectively stole my heart.”
“My queen, I do believe you gave it to me,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her. It was so tender. When he looked at the camera, he waved. “I’ve heard about you, Jacky Leon, through the grapevine, not just from your sister. An old friend of mine runs the Mygi thing.”
Zuri practically rolled her eyes. “Hospital. He runs Mygi Hospital. Most people call him Director Johannsson.”
“Yeah, he and I met,” I said, clicking my tongue on my teeth. They hadn’t been pleasant phone calls.
“If you and Heath decide to go public, you have two allies in us,” she said with her signature smile. That smile said, ‘I rule this world, and I get what I want.’ “Or if you two decide to end it without ever going public or decide you don’t have a future together, I’ll be here with a child for you to cuddle and play with to ease the bruised heart. But I won’t out your relationship. This…” She pointed at Kushim, then patted her baby bump. “This has changed me.”
“You could have outed me beforehand,” I pointed out. “Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted more evidence and decided I was just going to avoid the situation entirely. I didn’t want to unleash drama on the family after what had happened to you with Lani and the other rogues, but I did give you a warning last year. I meant it. You needed to distance yourself from Heath. When you didn’t and everything with your human family had settled, I decided I wanted to go on vacation. Give you more time and a break from the pressure and give myself time to think. I was tired. Sadly, now there’s so much other stuff happening.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a huff. “Um…since you know about Heath and me…the BSA might have evidence of it, too.” It felt wonderful to get that off my chest. It was even better to know I had a friend in the family who would protect us. Finally, I wasn’t keeping a dark secret. My sister knew, and she didn’t just want to keep the secret for me, she decided to trust me with her own.
Except, that feeling ended with Zuri’s response. I didn’t exactly give her good news.
She straightened her back and frowned. “Explain.”
“They didn’t send me a video of anything about it, but I know the day they had to have put their surveillance in. Heath and I were meeting every Saturday night at my house, a pattern we had already established because he would come to Kick Shot for a drink every Saturday. It’s how we got so close, I guess. The full moon was on Sunday night. The timeline means they would have recorded Heath coming and leaving my house.”
“You need to ask for that footage,” Zuri said, more worried than she had been. “They don’t know how bad it is, right? Have you said anything to them about our kinds being enemies?”
“No, and I don’t think any werewolves have mentioned it, either,” I confirmed.
“Don’t. Don’t ever mention it. The moment they know, they’ll know they have something to use to blackmail you. That’s bad. This is bad. This is worse than I assumed. From what I’ve been told, everything was smoothed over for the werecats about you being found out by a human government, but…I d
on’t think we could smooth over you being with a werewolf yet. Not at the same time. That’s something we need to do in a controlled release, and only once the family knows.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll continue to think about this. Don’t fret. You can trust me to do everything in my power to protect you.”
“Don’t put yourself at risk for me again,” I pleaded. I remembered the rebar in her chest. It could have killed her. It should have killed her.
“Unless our own family tries to kill me, I won’t be at risk of anything,” she reminded me.
“And me?” I asked honestly. It had been one of my biggest concerns. I could never truthfully guess one way or the other if my own family would turn on me for being with Heath.
“I wouldn’t let them even if they tried,” she said, full of a conviction that made me love her. “And really, there’s only…” She counted on her fingers, probably weighing and measuring each of our siblings and parents. “Davor, Jabari, and Mischa would be the problems. Niko would die for you, die to protect this life you’re building. He’s wanted peace between the races since I met him. Hisao would find the killing in war needless, and he might be angry with you but silently. He doesn’t raise his hand against family…under any circumstance. I mean, if you tried to kill him, he would fight back, but he would then leave you for one of us to deal with. It’s a rule he has, something Mother taught him when he was young. Mother and Father…Mother isn’t an issue at all.”
“You told her, didn’t you? I mean, she probably heard us.”
“I didn’t need to tell her,” Zuri said with a flat stare. “I was telling her about your adventures, and she asked when you fell in love with the wolf and how no one else has realized it.”
“I hadn’t even met her!” I was incredibly uncomfortable with that.
“She’s like that,” Zuri said, just as unamused as I was. “Father…Father keeps his own counsel on you and Heath. He loves you and wants you happy and safe like the rest of us. Heath isn’t safe for you, but Father also hasn’t forced you to kick those werewolves out. He’s protective of you when the rest of us become too, well…us. You didn’t have the easiest start in the family, and he blames himself.”