But the kid in me who’d been tossed out like yesterday’s trash? Whose mother didn’t love him enough to hold onto him? Whose adopted mother hadn’t given that much of a shit about him, even if the alpha had to have been paying her a lot of cash to keep Ethan and I fed and watered?
That part was rocked to its marrow by her actions.
The sweetest, purest gratitude for her, for everything that she was, had me restless as my brothers dozed, as my mate slept, and my son wriggled between us.
Knight was on his back, but in the faint light as dawn approached, I saw his eyes were open. Heard his coos. It was impossible not to reach down to have him tug on my finger, impossible not to watch over him as though he were the crown jewels and a cat burglar had threatened him.
When he was quiet, I could admit to being fascinated by him. The chubby, bright pink cheeks, the strange way his skin bunched on his arms and legs as his body began to grow, and the mop of silky hair on his head.
He was perfection.
Even if he did crap a lot.
A snicker whispered into my mind, and because I recognized the source, I sent my gaze higher to my mate.
“Thought you were sleeping.”
“I was, but…” She shrugged.
I heaved a sigh. “I was thinking too loud, huh?”
Her lips twitched, but it was a happy sigh as she cupped the back of Knight’s head and carefully rolled him so that he was cooing beside her. “They were beautiful thoughts. They made me happy.”
My brows rose. “They did? Why?”
“To hear your love for him, to feel it, is an honor.”
I’d admit my cheeks grew a little red at that. “I’m not as patient as Ethan or Eli.”
“Which is truly saying something, as neither of them are, what you could say, patient by nature, hmm?” She laughed softly. “But you’re you, Austin. I don’t want you to be anything other than that. Just you. And that’s all Knight needs you to be.” She cast me a look. “He’s too strong-willed for his own good.”
I winced. “He’ll shift when he’s young.”
“Eli already told me that he thinks that too. It concerns me.”
“Why? He’ll be safe here, and when he has his covenant, hopefully he’ll be granted a mate early so that he isn’t plagued with all the crap Eli had to go through.”
“No, that isn’t what worries me. What bothers me is that you four might butt heads.”
“It’s a rite of passage, Sabina. That’s how it works.”
“In my world, we have those too, and they never end well,” she whispered worriedly.
Anger hit me because I knew what she was talking about.
Something about me made it easier for her to open up, to talk about this kind of stuff, but it left me dealing with the repercussions of her insecurities. It was, I’d admit, hard on me to think she might believe us capable of hurting our son.
“You have to know we’d never hurt him.”
She gulped. “I know you wouldn’t. But I saw it every day with my father, Austin. And it happened even more after Lara came into her powers. She was strong, he saw that, and he hated her for it. I tried to defend her, but it was no good.”
Though her words pained me, I just said, “It never is.” I thought about what Lara told the Rainford alpha earlier this evening, about how just because something was the way of it, that didn’t mean it was right, and I commented, “Your parents had an unusual dynamic.”
“She was his slave.”
“Like in a BDSM way?”
Her snort of laughter came as a surprise. “No! My dad wasn’t a Dom, he was just a sadist,” she said dryly. Sadly. “He was so much older than her, and did things to her that kept her under his control. She was still young—he married her when she was barely sixteen. She’s not even in her fifties now.”
“What kind of things did he do to her?”
She peered up at me. “I know if I asked her, she’d lie, but there was a reason my father was so much harder on Lara than he was on Cyrilo, Jana, and me.”
“You think he saw something of himself in her?”
“No. I don’t think she was his.”
Whatever I’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that. “Wouldn’t she have been too scared to cheat? Or do you think she was just looking for kindness from someone?”
“No, she adored him. To the point where she’d do anything for him. Anything he asked.”
Her somberness made me reach over and cup the back of her head. Encouraging her to look at me and not Knight, I asked, “I’m not Eli or Ethan, mate, I can’t read between the lines as well as they can.”
She crinkled her nose. “You know I hate it when you compare yourself to them.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to hide a grin. “Sorry.”
Sabina heaved a sigh. “It’s okay. Just this once.”
Well, that had me told. I laughed, before I asked, “Explain?”
“Three times in my life, I remember him losing everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. We went from riding the highs to surfing the lows.” She pursed her lips. “As difficult as it was living on the carny circuit, it wasn’t that much different than those times. After all, we were always traveling, I think we only stayed put for a year, maybe two, at the most, and then we had some truancy issues so my father had us on the move again.
“Traveling around is what we did best. The poverty? Nothing worse than what I had to deal with during those times.” A breath escaped her. “Father was a good shot, and there were periods when he had to go hunting just to put food on the table. I always hated that. But those were the lows, and somehow, he always managed to get us out of it. I have no idea how, but something would come through, and we’d be back on top once more.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“You’d think so. I just… I don’t know.”
“What? Come on, tell me.” I reached over and ran my hand over her arm.
“Truly, I don’t know, Austin. It’s just something I sensed.”
“Like what?”
“When I touched Cyrilo’s mind, it was black. I thought that was fitting. Like imagery, you know? He was evil. Therefore, his aura would be black.” She exhaled roughly. “Pitch like coal. It was disturbing. But when I touched Lara, I saw something.”
“What? What did you see?”
“A reflection of my color. That’s also black.”
“You’re not evil,” I scoffed, instantly hitting to the heart of the matter, because I knew that had to be what she was thinking. That was why she sounded so pensive.
“No, I’m not.” Her lips twitched as she shot me a look.
“You’ve never seen your aura before?”
“How would I?”
“In a mirror?” I asked dryly.
“Doesn’t work like that,” was her calm retort, when, if I’d asked Ethan a similar and somewhat obvious question, he’d have slapped me upside the head. I swore to the Mother, I had the best mate ever. “So if I’m not evil, and my energy is black like his, just like coal, then the link has to be blood, doesn’t it?”
“There are many other variables—”
“I’m sure there are,” she agreed, her tone reasonable. “But when I saw Lara, her coloring was silver. A gleaming silver. The complete opposite.”
It didn’t take much to piece things together. “Did you ever see Jana’s coloring?”
“No. I spent most of the time when I was a teenager ignoring my gifts, because they were an inconvenience. They usually got me into trouble, and when Lara was unable to control her own, it just got us into more bother with father, so it was a deterrent against using them. He already beat us enough without having to add to the list of reasons why he’d slap us.” As rage filtered through me at her words, she reached over and patted my arm. She soothed, “He’s dead, there’s no need to get angry anymore.”
“There’s every need.”
“I appreciate it, but I don’t want you wa
sting energy on him. He’s gone for good, and that makes me feel infinitely better.”
I just hummed at that, because in my opinion, it wasn’t enough. Draga Krasowski needed his ass kicked, and only then would I be satisfied he’d got his.
“Only when I was fortune telling and reading tarot did I start to rely on my gifts, and even then, it wasn’t that necessary. I had to stay under the radar or I’d come to someone’s attention, and that was the last thing I needed. So I kept it to love lives and misery at home. Simple.
“What I saw today… It wasn’t just a different color, it was a different feel. Her energy was like mine, but the coloring wasn’t.”
“If your dad got aggressive because you didn’t jump high enough when he told you to, do you really think your mom would’ve had the guts to have an affair?” I asked her again, trying to get to the heart of the matter.
“No. I don’t. But that’s what I’m saying. If he sold her out, then…he couldn’t get angry, could he? And kids are often the result of sex, aren’t they?” she said wryly, but her eyes were loaded with a bitterness that hurt me to witness.
I wasn’t used to that look in my mate’s eyes, and I wanted to take it away, wanted to free her from it, but I couldn’t. She was buried in the past, steeped in her personal history, parts of her life I could never touch, would only be able to witness from afar and from the limits of what she shared with me.
For the first time in my life, I found myself wanting to know everything about a person. Sure, there’d been whispers of that before, ever since I met her, but nothing as overwhelming as this.
I could read a file on her, encyclopedias about her past, minute details that covered her days from when she was small to when she met her high school sweetheart, Kian. I’d read it all and never get bored, not even with the tedious details of what she ate for breakfast when she was eight years old. My fascination for her was infinite.
I knew what it was to be mated. I’d been living that since she walked into our lives. But it was the first occurrence of my being jealous of any time she’d had without us in it. It was stupid and irrational, and a waste of fucking energy, but that was how I felt.
Stupid, irrational, and everything else.
“You really think he pimped her out? Wouldn’t he make her abort the child if that was true?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. He was very religious. Incredibly Catholic.”
I snorted. “Catholic enough that he felt nothing in selling out his wife?”
“There’s a difference between that and murder.”
“I thought you said his game was the bare-knuckle boxing fights?”
“Yeah, and some were to the death. I’m not saying it’s logical or rational. I’m just saying there’s something different about Lara than with Cyrilo and me.”
That had me shaking my head. “I thought auras changed colors.”
“They do. But at their core, there’s a light about every person.” A small smile curved her lips. “Do you know, I’ve never talked about this with anyone before? Not even my mom? Or Lara?”
I squeezed her arm. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“I know it is. I never doubted that. I just… It’s hard to explain, I guess.” When she fell silent, I let her, and she was silent for so long that I figured she wasn’t going to say another word, which I’d admit to being disappointed about.
I guessed I’d liked the idea of her sharing something that was for me and me alone.
Egotistical for sure, which made me feel bad because we all shared her, and Eli and Ethan never seemed to get mad about that.
What was it with me?
Why did I find things so hard, when they found them to be so easy?
Knight—I struggled with. I struggled with being a dad. Questioning everything I did or didn’t do. But Saint Eli and Ethan just found it easy. They held him and didn’t seem to worry if they were going to drop him, and I’d seen them change diapers. Even the great Highbanks alpha could change one without barely batting an eye.
Whereas for me, I wanted to puke.
Every single time.
The little dude was three months old, surely my gag reflex should be over it by now?
“You overthink things, mate,” Sabina whispered into my mind. “You’re no better nor any worse than Eli or Ethan, or even me. You think when Knight pukes on me, I dance with glee? Of course not. I think you just need to change more diapers. You’d probably get over it faster if you did.”
My lips curved at that. “Immersion therapy, huh? I’m glad you’re not my shrink.”
Her eyes twinkled in the deepening shadows. “I’d make a very fine shrink, I’d have you know.”
“I’m sure you would, but you already see too much into me. I don’t need you psychoanalyzing everything too.”
She snorted, but her hand moved over to me and she reached for my fingers, tangling hers in them as she explained, “Everyone has an aura. It’s tangible to me. I can reach out and feel it.”
“Even mine?”
“Even yours.”
“What color’s mine?”
“Orange.”
My nose crinkled. “That’s a girl’s color.”
“You do know it’s 2020, don’t you? Not 1920?”
“I hate orange.”
“Well, that’s funny because that’s you. Light and loving, charming and irreverent, capable of depth and of being grounded. You’re solid, you have roots, and I see that every time I look at you. That’s your energy. That’s you.”
“And what you say is black is what Cyrilo and your energy is?”
“Exactly. But all around that base color, there’s a rainbow, I guess. Sometimes, one color is darker than another, and that’s what I use to judge someone.”
“What’s the predominant color around me now?”
“Dark blue. You’re concerned about me, but calm. Nothing I’m saying is angering you, you’re just trying to figure out what I’m talking about.”
I thought about that, but had to reason she wasn’t wrong. “That’s pretty much how I feel. I just want to help you understand so that you feel better.”
Her smile warmed my heart. “That’s what makes you such a good dad, Austin. You might not be great at some things, but hey, Knight has three fathers, and each one of you is good at something in particular. We all need someone we can confide in without fear of judgment… Don’t you think that’s important?”
Mouth working, I rasped, “I do think it’s important.”
“Good. You should. Especially when it’s coming from someone like me, who never had anyone like that growing up. Lara would have listened without judgment, but she’s a lot younger than me. She couldn’t understand half of what was going through my mind.” She bit her lip. “So, I’ll keep telling you this until you realize I speak the truth. You’re no better and no worse than Ethan or Eli. You’re just you. They’re not saints. Knight doesn’t want you to be a saint either. He just wants Daddy Austin. Nothing more, nothing less. He’ll come to you all for different things, and he’ll figure out what each of you can give him. He’s a lucky boy, because none of us were so lucky.”
“I think Eli was,” I said, after a little while of processing her words. “Before we came along. I think he’s probably the only one of us who knows what it’s like to have a proper family.”
“That’s sad, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“Yes. It is.” I shot her a look. “But we can make things better for Knight.”
“We can. We will.” She tightened her fingers around mine, and I smiled at her, truly believing that for the first time, we could make things right.
“What you were saying, before, about your mom…about what your father did to her, what he made her do… Would she have loved him so much if he forced her to pay off his debts?”
“I’ll never understand my parents’ relationship. I just know that something about Lara is different. Different in a way I can’t explain. And what she did tonight, th
at was impossible.”
“The way she shifted, sure was.” We’d already dissected the night’s events after Choi had left, and none of us could even get our heads around what Lara had done.
Borrowing another’s power? Leaning on another shifter’s wolf to transform?
Crazy.
But we’d seen Lara with our own eyes. Had watched her shift. She was like Sabina, but not. The eyes were different, the body was too—Lara was smaller. Daintier. She also gave off more of a beta vibe than Sabina, who was pure omega.
Again, they were similar but not.
A shared energy, but not.
She sighed, drawing me back into our conversation before she muttered, “I’ll talk with her tomorrow about it. We need to discuss what we’re going to do anyway. Choi and her… Who’d have thought it?”
“You have to love the Mother’s surprises, don’t you?” I whispered softly. “One minute, you’re about to be eaten alive by a hyena, and the next, you’re mated to an alpha wolf a pack across from your sister’s.”
She snorted. “That’s one way of figuring it, yeah.”
Eli
The following morning
“You know why I’m here.”
I did. But I had to see for myself.
Lifting an arm to the door, I leaned into it and remarked, “I thought I told you last night that if you were to enter my territory, you were to ask first.”
“You did, but I came alone, and I came to you first.”
Like that was an excuse.
I snorted. “If Lara was in another house, I’m sure you’d have still come straight to me.”
He shrugged. “I would have, actually.”
“A man of honor?” I scoffed.
“Yes. I was raised a certain way, with certain codes of conduct.” He straightened his shoulders, but his lack of posturing interested me.
I’d come around betas with more presence than Todd Choi, but there was definitely something about him that caught my wolf’s attention.
I figured Choi and I both knew I could kill him in a challenge, but life wasn’t a challenge. Life was about politics. About getting along. Muddling down the same path together, trying to live our lives with decency and respect, and ensuring that we safeguarded our mutual packs for another generation.
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 15