by SM Reine
“What exactly was my situation? It’s not like you couldn’t have your own children. Why was I adopted?”
She pulled her hand away and laced her fingers together. “You weren’t.”
Just then, Maizy came bounding into the room. “Mommy! Can I please have some cookies?” She lifted her shoulder and tilted her head to the side in that innocent way kids do to turn on the charm. Few could say no to her adorable dimples.
“Just one, sweetheart. It’s almost dinner.”
Maizy skipped over to the bright yellow jar by the sink and pulled out a small chocolate-chip cookie. Seconds later, she went flying into the living room wearing her pink skirt and white shirt with all the sparkles. She was in princess mode.
I warmed my hands around my mug. “What do you mean, not adopted?”
Her voice lowered. “I don’t know where you came from. Your dad brought you home one night. He used to stay out late sometimes, and I convinced myself he was having an affair. But occasionally, he came home with—with blood on his clothes.” She pulled her hands in her lap and shook her head. “Not a lot, but spatters around the sleeves. I was afraid to ask what he was up to because he was a serious man—you know that. I don’t know what he was involved in, but we argued for weeks. All I could think about was your poor mother, worried to death about where you were. He assured me you had no mother, and that frightened me.”
“Why?”
She pulled the salt and pepper shakers to the middle of the table, lining them up neatly and never once lifting her eyes.
“I’m an adult now, and there’s no need to lie anymore. Whatever you’ve been carrying around for years, we can talk it out. Maybe it’ll help. But I can’t go on not knowing the truth. Everything.”
My heart galloped and I placed my hands on my lap to hide the fact they were shaking. Had Austin never come back into town, I would have gone on thinking my life was normal.
“The night he brought you home, there was blood on his clothes. Only this time, I found them in the trash instead of the wash, and they were just soaked in it.”
“You didn’t know what he was involved in?”
To my knowledge, my dad had worked for a shipping warehouse. He was a bossy guy, but otherwise, family life seemed as normal as it could be. He took Wes fishing in the summer and we had a barbecue every Sunday. I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad, and he was strict when it came to punishment, but this revelation came as an unexpected shock. I felt disenchanted with my life, knowing that nothing was as it seemed.
She shrugged and pulled my cup away. “Do you want something else, hon? Chocolate milk?”
God, my weakness. “Sure, Mom. That’d be great.”
The table sat in a room connected to the kitchen, but a partition wall with an opening in the center separated the two rooms. My mom put her favorite fern on it to add a sense of privacy. Light blue paint colored the top of the walls and wood panels covered the bottom. Outside the window on my left, the hummingbird feeder swung like a pendulum in the breeze. I’d never seen any hummingbirds, but Mom always kept it filled with bright red liquid.
I watched her through the divider as she stirred the chocolate into a tall glass. As calm as we were, I had a feeling I’d be in tears later on once everything sank in.
She set the glass down on the table and I took a sip, hoping the coffee wouldn’t complain. Mom eased into her chair and peered around the corner, listening for Maizy.
“When I first met your father, he was involved with some dangerous people. He used to work as a middleman, and I don’t know what exactly he did, only that it was illegal. He quit that life when he proposed, and I thought we were going to have a new start. I wouldn’t have to worry about something happening to him, or the police showing up. That’s not the kind of home I came from. He changed, or at least I thought he did. It started up again a year after Wes was born, when we were struggling financially. Suddenly, your dad paid off the bills and things were okay. How could I complain? Everything went back to normal until the night he brought you home. He was panicked that night and then for weeks, he barely slept.”
Tears threatened to slide down her lashes and she averted her blue eyes. “Only he knows the truth about where you came from, but I fell in love with you, Lexi. I had to buy you little gowns and booties since you were only wearing a onesie with Talulah stitched on the front. I always wanted a little girl. You were such a sweet little thing, didn’t cry much at all even though you must have known we were strangers.”
“Did you keep my clothes?”
Her voice fell to a whisper. “There was blood. I had to throw it out. Your dad somehow got a fake birth certificate; I just didn’t ask questions.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Did Wes know?”
“At first,” she said. “But he was a toddler and after a while, he forgot where you came from. We told him the stork brought you and in time, I guess he just didn’t remember. Your grandparents never knew because they were living in Seattle. We told them we had been keeping it a secret because the doctor warned us the pregnancy might not go to full term and then we said you were born premature. They didn’t come down to visit until you were five anyhow, and two years later, they moved down to San Antonio.”
I circled my finger on the smooth table. My mom had lost her parents when she was ten, and my dad’s parents never came around much—especially after he split. “Are Wes and Maizy yours, or—”
“Yes, they’re ours. Maizy is the spitting image of your great-grandma from the childhood pictures I’ve seen, and Wes looked just like Grandpa Knight. Oh, God,” she whispered, covering her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Mommy?”
Maizy wandered into the room and worry filled her blue eyes. Mom discreetly wiped a tear away from her smooth cheek and smiled. “Mommy has allergies. Do you need something, sweetie pie?”
My sister might be a child, but she knew something was wrong. Mom held out her arm and Maizy walked forward until Mom hugged her tightly and kissed her on the cheek. In fact, she started kissing Maizy all over her face and it switched on her gigglebox.
“Go in the other room, Maze,” I told her. “I’ll be in there in a minute and we can watch the best part together.” I knew which part was coming up because I could hear the song playing and practically had that movie memorized. Maizy skipped out of the room and I rubbed my eyes.
“I need to get a hold of Dad. Do you know where he is?”
She shook her head adamantly. “I have no idea, honey. A friend of mine even tried searching for him on the Internet. He just… disappeared.”
“Then I’m going to find a way to make him reappear, because he has the missing piece to my puzzle.”
Chapter Ten
The next day at work, I kept popping jellybeans into my mouth. Normally I stayed away from the candy, but I deserved a few extra pounds after my unforgettable week. Instead of eating my sack lunch, I walked down the street to the deli and ordered a chef salad. While staring at the glazed sugar cookies in the display, a familiar voice called out from behind.
“Alexia Knight, is that you?”
These are the curses of living in the same town you grew up in. Either your old classmates still lived there, or they eventually returned to visit family. I was always running into someone from my past and it felt weird, like you weren’t supposed to know what happened to everyone when they grew up.
I recalled some of the most turbulent times of childhood. I got in a fight at school with a girl who called me Flatass, my brother and Austin took me to prom because no guy had asked me, and a couple of my besties either slept with my boyfriends or ended up going to college and never called me again. While I’d been avoiding class reunions, they didn’t seem to be avoiding me.
I turned around and laid eyes on Josh Holden. He now worked as a manager at a gas station. I’d run into him a few times when I lived with Beckett because the station was on my way home. Usually I just paid at the pump, but a couple
of times Beckett wanted me to go in and pick up some lottery tickets.
When I was fifteen, Josh had tried to get me a little more experienced with older boys than I was ready for, but chalk it up to teenage hormones. Up to that point, my version of dating was handholding and a few French kisses. I’d never had a real boyfriend or done anything sexual. Then Josh took me out on a date and couldn’t keep his hands off me.
“Haven’t seen you in a few months,” he said. “Your hair looks different.”
“So does your face. What happened?” It was bruised up and his left cheek was green.
“Uh, got jumped by some psycho,” he said, scratching the side of his nose. Josh was once a buff guy on the football team, but time had worn away all that brawn. Now he stood around five feet ten inches and had a potbelly. His reddish-blond hair was shaved close to his head, and his once golden skin was now mottled and freckled in places.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Robbery at the gas station?”
“Nah. I was driving around and, I don’t know. So how you been? You still seeing that big dude with the pythons?”
By pythons, he meant Beckett’s arms.
“No, we split up.”
“That’s too bad. I just broke up with some chick I met online. Stay away from those dating services.”
“Why’s that?”
He nodded at the man behind the counter. “Ham and cheese to go. And a pickle.” Josh put his hand on the counter and scoped out a blonde who walked inside carrying a small dog under her right arm. “Most of them use pictures they took ten years and two babies ago.”
What a pig. “You don’t have kids?”
“Hell no. At least, none that I know about.”
I impatiently glared at the manager. He was putting the last toppings on the salad and I suddenly wished I had ordered my lunch to go. Please do not let Josh get the bright idea to join me.
“I love kids,” I declared in a bright voice. “Can’t wait to have a bunch of them.”
His brows popped up.
“Miss, here’s your salad.”
The man behind the counter slid my tray forward and I grabbed the ends, looking back at Josh. “Well, take care, and good luck with everything.” What else could I say? It’s not as if he was an old friend, and the conversation was just weird and a little sad.
I walked to the back of the quaint little deli and set my tray on a small wooden table beside the soda fountain machine. When the heavy legs of the chair scraped back, Josh sidled up beside me. “Can I join you? I’ve got the afternoon off and we can catch up on old times.”
Old times of him pawing me in the front seat of his dad’s Pontiac? No, thanks.
“Sorry, Josh. I have a lot on my mind and I’d rather be alone,” I said, sitting in the wooden chair.
“Maybe we can talk about it,” he suggested, leaning forward with his hand on the table, obscuring my view.
I poked my plastic fork in a boiled egg and sat back. “No offense. I really need to be by myself right now.”
“Problem?” a deep, scary voice rumbled from behind him.
Josh stiffened and looked over his shoulder. Austin stood with his arms folded and the most volcanic gaze I’d ever seen. He looked wolfish, like a predator stalking his prey. His dark brows sank over his bright eyes, and the way he looked at Josh gave me the chills.
Apparently, it gave Josh the chills too.
“See ya, Lexi,” Josh mumbled, walking swiftly to the door without waiting for his sandwich.
“You seem to always show up at the most convenient times,” I noted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were following me.” My statement was a question in disguise.
Austin pulled out the chair across from me and slowly sat down, resting his forearms on the table. He was wearing a sleeveless black shirt and my eyes stole a glimpse of his remarkable tattoos.
“How did it go with your mom?”
“Are you following me?” I repeated.
Austin rubbed his jaw and gave himself away. “What did that asshole say to you?”
I tapped my finger on the table and something clicked. “Are you the one who put those bruises on Josh’s face?”
“I heard everything you said at the cemetery and that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t like hearing about the way he treated you.”
“I was fifteen, Austin. He was just doing what boys do.”
That pissed Austin off something fierce as his expression tightened and he scorched me with his eyes. “Time doesn’t erase stupidity. You should have told us back then and we would have taken care of it. Do you think I treated girls like that? Do you think Wes did?”
I snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure you rolled out the red carpet and showered them with rose petals and poetry before popping their cherries. Don’t play knight, because boys are boys and all boys think about is s-e-x.” I stabbed a tomato with my fork.
His voice became smooth like molasses as he leaned forward. “I’m not a boy anymore, Lexi. Are you going to sit there and tell me you never think about sex?”
Damn if that didn’t make my toes curl.
“If I had known all this was going on when we were younger, you might have wound up seeing a darker side of me, Lexi. I didn’t have sex until I was nineteen, and fuck it if that makes me a big pussy because I waited so long, but having sex with a girl who wasn’t even a woman never seemed right, even then. That’s the difference between Shifters and humans,” he said in a quiet voice. “I got a lot of shit for it back then from Wes and some of my human buddies in school, but none of my brothers said a damn thing. That’s just the way it is in our world.”
“My mom confirmed what you said. I’m adopted.” I bit into the tomato and sighed. Suddenly, it didn’t taste as good as I’d hoped. It had all the bitterness that was already in my mouth from learning the truth.
“You okay?”
I flicked my eyes up and my heart skipped a beat. Austin had that look.
The look.
The swoon-worthy look that made my palms sweat. All the rough edges in his voice were gone, and it was the smooth timbre of concern I’d heard on rare occasions when he was being soft and not treating me like his best friend’s kid sister. Except now, with his broad shoulders and bold tattoos, he was shrouded in mystery.
“I guess.” My shoulders sagged and I set the fork down. “She doesn’t know where I came from because I wasn’t adopted. My father brought me home and my mom doesn’t have a clue who my real parents are.”
“Palmer, your order is ready,” the cashier called out.
Austin rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Shifters, of course. But we don’t give up our own.” Austin ran his index finger along his eyebrow and glanced at my salad. “Eat your lunch.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
Austin leaned in closer and slowly pushed my bowl toward me. “It’s not good to starve your wolf,” he warned. “They get angry and pace until they’re ready to take over. Don’t try to deny what you are, Lexi. It won’t go away just because you choose to ignore it. I need to talk to you later about this—tonight. I’m here because I’ve been keeping an eye on you today. I don’t want anything upsetting you or else you might shift.”
I licked my dry lips and held my breath. Something in me was starting to believe him and I didn’t know if it was brainwashing or insanity.
“Could that happen?”
Austin slid my salad to the side and leaned across the short table, curling his finger for me to do the same. I leaned in and his mouth grazed against my ear.
“I’m a bounty hunter, Lexi, and I protect what’s mine. You don’t have anything to worry about, because if you shifted in this room, I’d lay to waste any man who tried to capture or kill your wolf. Are we clear?”
My cheeks flushed and the bristles of his jaw immediately rubbed against my skin. Something had changed in Austin, all right. There was raw power in not only his words, but in his presence. I felt it, just as sure as I felt h
is whiskers prickling against my cheek. A thick tension built between us and something inside me began to pace.
Austin was offering me more than his friendship—he was offering protection.
“Just so we’re clear,” I pointed out, “I’m not yours.”
I felt his smile stretch across my cheek and his breath melted against my ear like hot wax. “What time do you get off work? I want you to meet my pack.”
~ ~ ~
“This is where you live?”
I scanned our surroundings in the dark woods, leaning against Austin’s black Dodge Challenger. The gravel road led to a rather large house nestled in the middle of nowhere. The front yard was dirt and pebbles, and to the right, a couple of cars were parked beside horseshoes and a rusty metal pin staked into the ground. A crooked light pole lit up the side of the house and the woods were thick with native trees. I cupped my elbows and a twig snapped beneath my foot.
Austin chuckled. “Come on, Lexi. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
He took a few steps and looked over his shoulder at me. It was out of character for me to be so timid, so he walked up and held my face with his strong hands. “You’re always safe with me, Lexi. I want you to know I won’t let anything bad happen to you. My brothers are good guys, even if they are rough around the edges. You can trust them.”
“Pack or brothers?”
“What’s the difference?”
Austin took my hand and led me to the front door. A motion sensor light clicked on and he slid the key in the lock. I could already hear rowdy chatter inside and found myself gripping his hand tighter.
The door swung open and I stared into an entryway with a view of an atrium that was in the middle of the house. It was a small, grassy enclosure with a barbecue grill in one of the corners. I might not have seen it had the light outside not been flipped on, and there was no roof, so it was open. The wall on the right stopped at an entrance to another room, but I hadn’t moved from the front door because I was a bundle of nerves.
“That must be Austin,” someone said from the room on the right. “Hey, Aus, I hope you brought some beer because dickhead drank the last of it.”
