“She’ll talk to you,” Sabina whispered, turning to Eli. “As Alpha, you can talk to her, can’t you?”
He shook his head. “She isn’t very communicative right now.”
Because that was the first time I’d heard of this, I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Like he was ashamed of the admission, his shoulders wriggled as he begrudgingly divulged, “Sometimes, She won’t let me into the sacred circle if She knows what I want to talk about.”
I gaped at him. “She won’t let you in at all?”
“No.”
Ethan’s brows lowered. “Is this new?”
“Since Sabina.”
She sniffed, but Ethan mused, “That’s interesting.”
“Is it?” Eli retorted shortly. “It’s pretty fucking annoying.”
“Yes. But it’s proof She’s hiding things from us. There’s a whole game at play, with rules and laws and things we’re not privy to.” His eyes turned pensive. “Interesting.”
“Only to you,” I groused.
Sabina muttered, “I want to give Her a piece of my mind.” Her hands balled into fists at her side. “Even if She doesn’t reply, I can still shout at Her.”
“I’m sure you want that,” Ethan soothed, but I could see his mind was still away with the fairies as he tried to figure out a goddess’ game theory. “But what’s the point? You can do that here. And nothing has changed. I have to believe that Merinda would have shifted by now if she could. Her spirit is still strong inside her, enough for Lara to see, because she’s Merinda but not.” He reached up and rubbed his chin. “I wonder if the deal was for Merinda to have a second chance. We all know how devoted Berry is to those twins, and it’s quite clear the pups are—” He blew out a breath. “—incredible as it may be, us.”
“Who do you think her mate is? The male with the silver stripe?” I queried softly.
Eli cleared his throat. “I’d hazard a guess and say your father.”
I tensed at that. “What makes you say that? Why not Paul reincarnate?”
“Back at the clearing, after you claimed Sabina and dealt with the wolf attack, I scented my father. I think he was the alpha you killed.”
My mouth dropped open. “You’re shitting me.”
“No. I’m not,” he said with a tired sigh as he scraped a hand through his hair and used that as an excuse to rub the back of his neck.
I couldn’t blame him.
This conversation made me want to take a nap too.
“Shit,” I rasped, then guilt surged inside me. “I’m sorry, Eli.”
That had him snorting. “Don’t be. It wasn’t my father. It was, but it wasn’t.” He grimaced. “That makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense too.”
Ethan cleared his throat. “So Berry’s mate is our father. I wonder if Lara could see spirits inside the other wolves, or if it was just Merinda?”
“We can ask her.” Eli held out his hand. “Come, mate, we don’t need to go to the totem for this.”
She heaved a sigh. “Why are you trying to keep me from there?”
“Because she can smite us.”
Sabina’s jaw dropped open at that. “She can what?” Then, she raised a hand. “Is this like that whole invoking the spirit shit you decided not to tell me about until it was too late to back the hell away from all of you?”
I snorted at that, and though Ethan merely rolled his eyes, Eli’s response wasn’t as amused. His hackles were pricked, and he snarled at her, a snarl that was pure alpha. That, had we been anything other than alphas, would have had Ethan and I nose deep in the grass as we fell to our knees in submission.
As it was, I felt the frickin’ tingles of his dominance, and I knew his wolf was well and truly roused.
“Probably not the best thing to joke about, Sabina,” Ethan muttered. “Not when things are so testy right now.”
She glared at him. “I’ll say what I want. Invoking spirits makes it sound like you guys get possessed—am I in a reboot of The Exorcist? What with Seth as well? Kali Sara.”
“Only if you want to be,” I tried to tease, and decided to call it a win when her lips twitched and she shot me a glower that was half-amused, half-annoyed. “We can make our own film.”
“And upload it to PornTube?” She arched a brow. “No. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Shame,” I chivvied, grinning at her when she crinkled her nose.
“Shut up, you!” she wailed. “I have a right to be mad!”
“You do,” I agreed. “But why piss off Eli when he’s trying to help?”
And it was very clear to see that Eli was beyond mad.
His wolf was quite clearly engaged, his hands balled into fists, and I just knew that his claws would be poking into his palms from his ill-temper.
I got it. I did. Her even joking about not being tied to us was enough to aggravate even the lowest rank of wolves. Eli was top dog. Literally and figuratively.
She heaved a sigh, then traipsed over to him, not stopping until she shoved her face into his chest, turning it so that she was cuddling Knight and then sliding her arms around Eli’s waist. A rumble escaped him, one that had her replying with a snarl that was beyond snarky.
If it was clear Eli was beyond mad, it was just as evident that Sabina was not in a touchy-feely mood.
The snarl didn’t have Eli demanding she submit, though. If anything, it settled his temper. I knew why, too. Everyone was frightened of his wolf. Everyone apart from the three of us, and that Sabina wasn’t scared had to be like Eli’s version of foreplay.
I almost smiled when she grunted, “Now is not the time for a hard-on, Eli!”
Her rebuke had me outright snickering. “Yeah, Eli. Time and a place, boy.”
He glowered at me over her head, but I just grinned at him, unafraid and not scared to show it either.
“What does it mean when she smites you?” Sabina mumbled against Eli’s chest, her tone sulky now.
“She doesn’t smite people, she smites the pack. So, a wind might stir that causes a lot of the trees to break, which cuts down our running area until we can clear it. Or she might cause a nasty storm,” Ethan clarified, wandering over to her as I did and resting a hand on her back, while I kept one on her hip. He pressed a kiss to Knight’s head and murmured, “We’d just prefer not to deal with the aftermath of that.”
Eli grunted. “No, now is definitely not a good time for dealing with that kind of shit.”
She tipped her head back. “As bad as all that?” I wasn’t sure if she was impressed or not, but it figured that Eli’s unease would catch her attention.
He was rarely uneasy about anything, usually took most things in his stride, so for him to be wary said a lot about the last time the Mother’s shit had hit the fan.
“I was only a kid when it happened before, and looking back, I know why too,” he said with a wince.
She tensed. “When Merinda met her second mate?”
He rubbed his chin against her hair as he tucked her face into his throat. “I have a feeling it was more to do with my father… Well, with what he did to her second mate. The Mother wasn’t pleased with that, and we had one of the worst storms we’d had in decades. Twenty days and twenty nights of rain.”
“Well, if that isn’t biblical, I don’t know what is,” I said lightly, even though, deep down, it gutted me to think that my father might have been murdered by the man I’d called alpha.
“You don’t know Paul killed him,” Sabina said, trying to soothe, and I saw how the tables had turned now.
“I don’t know for certain, but I think it’s likely.” He soothed himself by rubbing his chin over her hair. “The clearing, after the wolf attack, scented of father. I know it sounds crazy, but I think that’s why Austin had the chance to take him down, because the Mother thought it was only right to test him, see if he’d changed, and when he hadn’t, when he still went for one of the twins, Austin had the right to seek vengeance.”
“You’r
e putting words in the Mother’s mouth,” she argued, then snapped, “And Austin, don’t you dare make a joke about that right now. This is serious. While I know you make jokes to cover up serious moments, this isn’t the time to do it.”
Because I agreed, for once, I didn’t rebuke her, just stroked her hip, telling her I was in agreement.
“Sabina’s right,” Ethan agreed woodenly. “We don’t know what happened.”
“We know Merinda lived,” Eli rasped. “If your father is dead, then she should have perished soon after, that has to mean that the claiming never happened. Not at the totem. It wasn’t sanctioned by the Mother.”
“And yet, we were born,” I tacked on, uneasily.
“There’s no pregnancy between mates without a claiming?” Sabina queried.
I shook my head. “Not usually, anyway.”
Ethan blew out a breath. “None of this matters.”
“Yes, it does!” Eli stormed. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here. I thought my mother stayed with him because he’d just sent your father off. Shipped him away. If he killed him, what was she thinking? Was she so fucking weak?”
“We know the answer to that already,” Sabina rasped. “For her to just dump the boys on their adopted mother says it all.”
“None of this feels right,” Eli growled. “It’s always been messed up, but it’s never mattered more than now, when she’s back here and we might be able to ask her questions.”
And with that, he grabbed Sabina’s hand and started tugging her back to the house.
“If anyone can give us the answers we need, it isn’t the Mother, Sabina. I could try and commune with Her now, but She isn’t the one who can explain this to us. It’s Berry. We need to wait her out so you can ask her all this shit.”
“What if she doesn’t come back?” she asked warily, which had him pausing in place.
“What makes you say that?”
“Didn’t that feel like a farewell to you?” she rumbled, her shoulders hitching. “When they were all standing there, a family, before they ran off into the forest?”
Eli’s nostrils flared. “No. I can’t handle that. I need to know what the fuck she was doing, what she was thinking—”
Ethan strode forward, grabbed Eli’s shoulder and shook him slightly. “That’s in the past. We’re in the present now. Maybe we are who we are for a reason. What happened to us went down so that we’d be the men standing here today. Getting answers to questions that are decades old won’t help us in the long run.”
Eli shook his head. “I supported her. I tried to do as she wanted, I led by my father’s example, a father who might have killed her mate, who tore mother and children apart—”
“No!” Sabina’s voice was stony, colder than the Antarctic. “No, that wasn’t on your father. He might have demanded it, but she didn’t have to go along with him. I can tell you now, categorically and without a shadow of doubt in my mind, if you asked me to give up Knight? You wouldn’t see me again. You wouldn’t see me for goddamn dust.
“Merinda made that decision. She chose to give up the twins. That’s on her. Your father was a prick for asking it of her, but she could have stood up to him.” She jerked her chin up. “She was a mediocre omega, whose only strength was forged in the sons she bore her men. That was her purpose. You three.
“Ethan’s right. What happened before doesn’t matter.” Her jaw clenched before she ground out, “I was mad for all of you, but now I see we need to focus on us. On the here and now. What your parents decided to do is of no concern to us.” She squeezed Eli’s hand. “We’ll return to the packhouse and make my sister comfortable. She, unlike Berry, matters.”
I didn’t think I was the only one who heard a mournful howl whisper through the breeze, between the trees, but Sabina’s shoulders stiffened, so I knew she heard it too.
I guessed we had our answer.
Berry hadn’t gone anywhere, but she might have now.
Seven
Ethan
Returning to the house didn’t exactly sow more calm our way.
We waded out from the middle of a battlefield, a personal one, and into outright mayhem.
It was only Austin’s instincts and quick reactions that had him darting from the doorway where we walked into chaos, rushing up the stairs, just in time to catch Maribel, who was hovering on the edge of the top step, her arms waving back and forth as she struggled to catch her balance.
For a second, I could do nothing more than shake my head as I tried to figure out what happened. But when I saw Seth standing there, a gleam in his cobalt blue eyes that was anything but concerned, I waited until Austin had gathered Maribel in his arms, to head up the stairs myself.
He picked her up and carried her down to the hall, while I grabbed Seth by the ear and tugged him down too.
Sabina had started shaking, and Eli’s arm was around her as she watched Austin and Maribel, who’d started weeping.
It was quite clear to me what had happened.
Seth had tried to push his mother down the stairs. And while it was only good fortune that Austin was one of the fastest shifters in the pack, and could only be deemed good timing that we’d walked through the door right at that moment, it didn’t take away from what the little bastard had done.
It was a shame we never turned any pup away, because if there was a child who needed turning out, it was Seth.
His thin arms flailed as I dragged him by his ear, catching half a handful of shaggy blond hair that frothed around his head in a tumble of feminine curls. I knew my grip was painful, but we weren’t like humans. We could take pain, and sometimes, it was the only way to gain respect among pups who were stronger than they ought to be for their age.
And strong in no way described this twisted little bastard.
He was powerful, just not powerful enough to shift yet. His strength came from a different source, one that made me wonder if he truly was possessed.
My brow furrowed at the thought as his legs kicked at me in an attempt to escape my hold, and when I was down on the first floor, I rumbled, “Watch yourself, Seth.” The growl in my voice had him tensing, and he stopped trying to kick at me.
I looked up, hearing footsteps on the landing above, and saw Daniel and Lara rushing to peer over the carved bannister.
Daniel scowled at Seth—there was no love lost there, not when Daniel did everything he could to behave, to be a good boy so he couldn’t be accused by the pack of being anything like his father—and Lara was frowning, even as she rushed down the stairs to comfort Maribel.
Pressing a hand to her stomach, she whispered, “The babe is well, but you must calm yourself.”
While it was surprising to hear that Lara knew Maribel was pregnant—with her gifts, I could only imagine we were in for daily surprises—Daniel gasped at her words like they were a stab to the belly and hurried to the foyer. But my focus shifted from him as a sudden flurry of activity had all the staff surging from out of nowhere. There was a packed crowd who witnessed Eli grinding out, “Seth, explain yourself.”
His mouth was a tight ring as he grimaced first at Eli, then peered down at the floor. “It was only a joke.”
Maribel was still sobbing, but she began shaking her head from side to side—her silence speaking louder than words.
I sensed she didn’t want to get him into trouble, but equally, that she couldn’t stop herself from reacting to his remark.
Watching Eli take in her reaction, he ground out, “Why would you think that was a joke?”
Sabina closed her eyes, cupped the back of Knight’s head, and then whispered, “Speak the truth, Seth. I can sense if you lie.”
Lara, still on her knees and soothing Maribel, twisted around at that and peered over at her sister, arching a brow in apparent surprise at her words.
Either she hadn’t been a truth detector before, or that was a new ability tied to her omega powers.
Only, when Lara stared at my mate, her gaze drifted
over Seth in the interim, and I watched her behold him for the first time. Clearly, she’d only had eyes for Maribel, but now she saw Seth, I watched her rear back.
“He has a spirit in him.”
“A wolf?” I asked, because that made sense, but Lara’s eyes glazed over as she shook her head.
“What kind of spirit?” Sabina asked, her voice soft as she moved out of Eli’s hold and wandered over to her. She crouched down, gently touching Lara’s face and forcing those unseeing eyes to look back at her.
Lara didn’t even blink. Though Sabina urged Lara to move, it did little good. Her gaze was fixed on Seth, who stared straight back at her.
Feeling like I was watching a ‘child of the corn’ situation unfold, I cleared my throat and glanced around the foyer, seeing all the staff hovering, wondering and watching what had happened. Their whispers were a nuisance, so I ordered, “Go back to work, please.” I put just enough power into it for them to feel my wolf, which had them ducking their heads with irritated sniffs at my dominance—they still didn’t particularly like me or my twin—which gave them no alternative but to comply.
I didn’t need to be either Lara or Sabina to sense their displeasure at failing to watch the drama unfold, not that I cared.
This was no one’s place except for those who were unfortunate enough to be involved in the situation.
“Lara? What kind of spirit?” Eli asked, his tone harder than Sabina’s, hard enough that our sister-in-law jerked in response.
“I-I don’t know.”
Austin, turning to our woman, asked, “Can’t you sense it, love? I’d have thought you’d be able to connect with him?”
“He’s a dark blur… That’s pretty much all I can see,” she admitted, blowing out a breath, her frustration clear to behold. She pressed a kiss to Knight’s head when he started to fuss, then muttered, “Lara, can you help me see what you see?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“This was why I wanted her to come here. I knew there was a darkness in Seth, but I wanted it to be confirmed because I’ve seen it in no other pack member.”
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 10
