Leah made a snuffling sound as she buried her face in her mate’s throat. Ferdie looked at them both, agony drawing deep lines into his brow. That look compelled Lia into moving. She crossed the seating area and knelt beside the armchair. Cautiously, she placed a hand on Leah’s arm. When that hand was engulfed by her grandmother’s, she caught Ferdie’s eye and saw his warm smile of approval erasing some of his earlier pain.
“There might be two great-grandchildren,” she teased, trying to lighten the moment. “I was a twin but my sister died, and I believe my mother’s father was as well. She didn’t talk much about her past, but I know that much.”
Leah turned to look at her in astonishment, the surprise burning away some of her misery. Lia knew it was only for a moment, but it was something. A small salve to ease the pain she’d caused this woman earlier.
“Of course,” she almost breathed. “Wolves are far more fertile than we lions.” She looked up at Ferdie. “How marvelous would that be?”
“It would be a miracle,” he told her. “But let’s not get too excited. One is a wonder in itself.”
Leah grinned. “I’ve always been greedy.”
He grunted at that. “I can attest to that.”
“Y–You will come visit, won’t you, Lia?” she asked, changing the topic abruptly. “Not that you have to visit. There’s more than enough room here. If you wanted to live in the palace, you’re more than welcome.”
It was easy to see how eager Leah was for her to accept. She squeezed the older woman’s fingers, knowing she had to tread carefully. She wanted Caden to be happy, and she couldn’t imagine that ever happening if they were involved with the Pride on a day-to-day basis. “Our lives are in the city.”
Leah seemed to understand her thought process, once again surprising Lia with her perception. “They could be here. Oregon is in need of lawyers, too.”
“Perhaps, but not like Manhattan.”
“I suppose you’re right. We’ll just have to come to you, won’t we, Ferdie?”
His eagerness was equal to that of his mate’s. “We could open up the apartment in New York. It’s probably full of cobwebs but nothing a good clean wouldn’t do.”
“That would be nice. We could see each other when you’re on vacation.”
“Oh no, dear,” Leah said with a shake of her head. “In for a penny in for a pound as my granddam used to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll move to New York to be closer to you.”
Lia blinked. “Don’t you need to be here?” she asked, confused and concerned. “I thought this was the Mater’s seat?”
Leah sniffed. “The Mater’s seat is wherever she deigns to sit. I’ve let my position take one of my beloved from me, I’m not going to miss a chance on losing another.”
Lia blinked at the resolve in her grandmother’s voice, then turned to look at Caden who just shrugged, but she saw the uneasiness in his gaze. “If you’re sure,” she said, doubt lacing her tone.
“Oh, I’m sure.” Leah narrowed her eyes. “It will do the nation good for me to shake things up a bit. My daughters, too. They’re all so damned secure in their roles. Let’s see what happens when we make the move.”
“They’ll argue,” Ferdie warned.
Leah hooted at that. “Let them. I might be in my seventieth year, but I’m as strong as I always was. They can challenge me, and they won’t win. Not for a while yet. I’m still in charge here. It’s time they were reminded of that.”
A smile graced Ferdie’s lips. Small, it was, but filled with satisfaction. He squeezed his arm about his mate, and said, “It is good to see you fighting again, mate.”
“I just needed a bit of motivation. They might be my children, but they act like strangers. I have a stranger for a granddaughter here, and already, she’s shown me more affection than Hera has this past year.”
“Hera is our eldest,” Ferdie told Lia.
Leah waved that off. “I also have a grandson! One that looks like you, and in New York, as well.” She clapped her hands. “The decision is made.”
“Grandmother, do you think you should make such a huge decision right now? You’re obviously very upset, but it would be like the President moving the White House, right? It’s just not done.”
More tears watered in Leah’s eyes, and for a second, Lia wondered what she’d said to upset her further. Then, she realized she’d called her grandmother. When she’d had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Lia wasn’t sure if she should be discomforted at how easy it had been to call Leah that, or if she should just roll with the punches.
There wasn’t exactly a guideline of how to meet your grandparents for the first time in five easy steps. Or maybe there was.
Damn, she should have checked online while they were flying over here.
Leah squeezed her hand. “I am not voted into power, love. I am a law unto myself.” Her mouth firmed with satisfaction at her own comment. “If I wish to move the seat, I shall do so. I wish I could explain how beloved your father was to us both, Lia. I know it’s unusual in our world to favor the son over our daughters, but we almost lost him, didn’t we, Ferdie?”
“At the third month. Leah had to stay permanently in bed for the remainder of the trimester. He was the last cub to bless us, and from birth, he was the cub of our hearts. You try to love equally, as a parent, that’s your job, but our daughters...” He shook his head. “They were always so headstrong. Adults from day one, we used to tease, didn’t we, Leah? Only Archie needed us.”
Emotion gathered in her belly, swirling and unfurling. That these two craved what she herself had desperately wanted before she’d met Caden was enough to prod her into tearing up. Family—only those who had one didn’t appreciate it. While the others were left out in the cold, wishing they could be so lucky as to be surrounded by people who gave a damn about them.
“I’m sure when the baby comes, I’ll need your help, Leah. I have no idea what to do with babies. All of my friends are kid-free, and I can’t imagine Caden is going to be handy with nappies.”
“I resent that,” he taunted, but didn’t deny her remark.
She stuck her tongue out at him, then grinned.
Leah sat up, dislodging Ferdie. “I’d love to help. Now, I need to set this out in a directive. How long until your birthing time hits?”
“Four months,” Caden answered for her.
Lia frowned. “I’m eight weeks pregnant.”
“Shifters birth between the fifth and sixth month, Lia. I don’t have much time to get this plan in action.”
She leaped from the chair with a spryness that confirmed her earlier statement that she was as strong as ever, and one that completely belied her age. It was hard to think the woman storming down to her computer terminal was in her seventies, but that was the truth of it.
Ferdie watched her go, a glint in his eye. It was nice to know that when she was in her seventies, Caden would probably be looking at her like that, too. Not that she wanted to think about her grandparents having sex.
When he saw her watching him, a smile on her lips, he returned it. He pressed a hand to her cheek and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” she said dismissively, shrugging off his thanks.
“For that,” he remarked, looking pointedly at his mate, who was muttering to herself as she started to sort through the files littering her desk in search of something. “You didn’t have to say any of that, but you did. I can only imagine how hard it was for you. The Enforcers who visited you this morning told me a measure of how difficult your childhood was. I expected you to be bitter, resentful. Not a gift wrapped in a face that could have been my Leah sixty years ago.”
His gratitude discomforted her. Especially as she had been bitter at first. “I wasn’t very nice to her at the start,” was all she said.
“The Enforcers will have told her every single detail of your conversation with them, Lia. If I have a general sense of how it must have bee
n for your family, Leah will know for certain. Some anger is only natural, my dear. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I don’t mean to press, Ferdie. But, don’t you think this is a little rash? Her making such a huge decision on the spur of a thirty-minute conversation?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. She’s needed something this past twenty years, Lia. Ever since we stopped receiving those postcards from your father. If this does it, if this gets her back on track, then I’ll support her in that decision. And if she wants it badly enough, she’d move the building, brick by brick to Manhattan. So moving into an apartment is a damned sight easier than that!”
“Well,” she said doubtfully, “if she changes her mind, let her know I’m not offended.”
“I won’t change my mind,” Leah suddenly called out from across the room. “This is just what the damned Oregonians have needed. A spur up the behind.” A wicked cackle powered toward them.
“She doesn’t like her current cabinet,” he told her, decrypting Leah’s statement, then, moved his hand to pat her cheek once more. “Now, you must be tired after that trip. You should have rested, although, I’m glad you didn’t. Seeing your grandmother with a fire in her belly...well, let me just say, I haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“I slept on the plane, and I wanted to meet her, too. I’m ready now, though. I didn’t realize how raw this would be.”
Ferdie looked at her, then cocked a brow at Caden, who just said, “Lia isn’t overemotional.”
“What does that mean?” she asked with a scowl.
“It means that Pride females are usually overly emotive.”
Ferdie snorted. “That’s being kind. Like damned seesaws, and they say we can’t control our emotions!”
Both men shared an irritated look, and from that second, Lia knew a kernel of friendship had been born.
The thought pleased her. And as she and Caden made their way out of Ferdie and Leah’s living quarters, out of a private door that led to a segregated corridor set aside for family use, there was a swing to her step.
Family.
She’d never really had one. Not a close one, at any rate. Her mother had always been working. And Tommy, after he’d hit puberty, had spent most of his time with his buddies, and the gang that would eventually be his reason for going to jail.
Here was her chance to have something she’d wanted for a long time. It was an outcome that was outside of her expectations. But it was a happy one. And for that, she was grateful.
Chapter Fifteen
Coming from a family as respected as his own, even if he didn’t respect the members of that family all the time, Caden was used to being treated a certain way. Maybe it was elitist, he didn’t really know what it was, but people tended to address him with a kernel of deference, as well as care and politeness.
In the Mater’s seat, he was slowly starting to understand how scorned Lia must have felt the last two years of their marriage. With his mother constantly berating her for a past she couldn’t help, and her refusal to stop even though Caden had made countless threats, undertaking some of them—he hadn’t spoken to her for an entire summer a year ago—it was a wonder Lia had any confidence at all.
For the shoe to be on the other foot, he wasn’t exactly pissed, he just felt guiltier. He hated that Lia, the woman who possessed the other half of his soul, must have been feeling a lot shittier than he’d ever expected. Christ, she’d never once complained about having to visit his family. He’d been the one bitching.
Shaking his head at the thought, he was broken from his contemplation of the eggs on his plate, by Lia’s soft query, “You’re quiet this morning.”
He glanced up from his breakfast set on bone china so fine it was almost translucent and stared at his mate. He couldn’t say that meeting her long lost family had done her much good. If anything, she looked even wearier than she had when he’d made it out of the clinic. Dark circles rimmed her lower lids, making them look almost bruised with fatigue.
“I could say the same to you,” he retorted, a grin twitching along the corners of his mouth.
She rolled her eyes, before pointedly staring around the room. The breakfast room wasn’t a nook. It held a table that seated around fifty people. Which made sense, considering the Mater’s closest relatives numbered such an amount. Over a gleaming expanse of polished walnut, Lia and he could look at her father’s entire side of the family. Well, apart from Ferdie and Leah. They ate in their own quarters, as they’d learned last night when he and Lia had come to dine in another exorbitantly huge room, and they hadn’t been there.
He could understand why.
“They’re not exactly cheerful, are they?” he murmured under his breath.
She snickered at that, having to press a hand to her mouth to prevent the inadvertent spray of toast on glossy white linens. For her amusement, she received pained glares from almost every one of the thirty-strong breakfast crowd.
That glare came from all ranges of age groups. A five-year-old girl dressed like she was dining at a gala rather than breakfast, a teenager with more rips in his jeans than fabric, a woman he recognized from the magazines his mother sent him—she was the Mater’s eldest granddaughter, Lila—and a few of Leah’s other daughters. He knew them all by name, but he hadn’t been granted the use of them.
Lia quickly ducked her head, but he could still see the grin she was fighting to hide. It eased some of his guilt to make her happy in a situation that was as uncomfortable as this one.
The doors opened a few minutes later, and when Leah and Ferdie walked in, a small explosion of noise occurred. Plenty of, “Dam? Sire? Granddam? Grandsire?” came from all quarters. From the youngest to the eldest.
The doors opened at a point that reached the middle of the table. To the left, at the bottom end of the room was the food, at the top, there were just flower displays. He and Lia were seated at the very top, away from everyone else, like they were contagious.
Leah patted a few shoulders, smiled at her surprised and happy relatives—because they were definitely pleased to see both of them—then headed to the top of the table.
The noise that had appeared after their arrival died a sudden death as Leah reached his mate’s side, bent down, and pressed a kiss to Lia’s cheek.
Lia flushed, realizing the import of such an act. She hadn’t understood yesterday when she’d done the same to him, but he’d explained as soon as they’d had a minute to themselves. Displays of affection were reserved for people in the inner circle of a family. But a kiss? A kiss was like a brand. It declared to the world the importance of that person by the kisser.
In all his life, he’d only been kissed twice by his mother. Once when he’d graduated summa cum laude, and the other time when he’d made partner at his firm.
Affectionate was not the way to describe the females of the Pride.
Leah took a seat beside Lia, and when Ferdie returned with two glasses of orange juice, he sat next to Caden after he set the glass in front of his mate.
“We missed you last night. I thought you’d dine with us.”
Lia frowned. “We just followed Marcia.”
Leah smashed a fist against the table, making both of them jump in surprise. “Leanne! I will not have you countermanding my orders with the staff!”
Her bark crossed the table and headed down the other end of the room. It was the second eldest daughter who was in the crosshairs of her mother’s ire though. Leanne grimaced. “We had a right to meet her, Dam!”
“You had no right to countermand my orders,” Leah repeated. “No right, whatsoever. I would have introduced Lia to you all, in my own time, and in a place more suitable than the dining room, for Lea’s sake!”
A hissed breath escaped her, and even though her anger throbbed throughout the cavernous room, the youngest daughter, Leanor, gritted out, “You’d let us have no say in how we meet our brother’s daughter. She’s our family, too.”
“And so she looks it,”
Ferdie snapped. “Sat at the very top of the table as though she had leprosy. Is this your idea of a greeting, daughter? Or of a welcome? I taught you better than to treat any guest with such blatant rudeness.”
“They decided to sit there. I can’t sway them from their choices.”
“I’m sure they felt compelled to sit away from the firing line,” Leah bit out.
“She’s the only reason you’re here this morning, isn’t she? Both of you? It doesn’t matter that it’s Delia’s birthday today, or that it’s Cece’s piano recital tonight....”
Before Leanor could continue, Leah slammed to her feet, and leaned over the table, one of her fists precariously close to knocking over her orange juice. “I know that it’s Jason’s first match of the season tomorrow, and that the day after, you have a meeting in Kentucky. Don’t tell me what I do or do not know about my family. I know all of your calendars at any given time. I make it a point, every day, to know what you’re all doing. You’re my children, I’m interested in your lives even if you’re not interested in mine or your sire’s.
“What do you actually think is happening here? Do you think I’m showing favoritism because a child who grew up outside the circle of our family has finally made her way home? Should I not be grateful she’s here? Should I just ignore her, and go on with my daily business? Is that what you expected of me? Or all you all so petty as to deny me a tiny bit of happiness? Your brother’s been gone for twenty years, and Lia and her brother are all that your father and I have left of him. They’re all you have left of Archie. Rather than sniping at me, maybe you should try to get to know her.
“Now, I’m not even sure why you’re acting this way. I’d like to think it was jealousy, but we’ve never been close, Leanor. I’ve tried, Lea knows I have, but you’ve never let me. So, what this is about, I don’t know. I’m as involved with your cubs as any of my daughters will allow me. I do as much as I can within the limits you all set. This can only be spite on all of your parts and I won’t have it!” She slammed her fist down against the table, finally knocking the OJ over, and forever destroying the diamond-white tablecloth.
Claimed by Caden Page 22
