“Grace, you have to acknowledge it.”
Acknowledge-what? That I’m her mother?
But he’s continuing,
“She’ll keep repeating herself if you don’t. It’s right there-on her knee.”
I twist my head to peer down at the knee pressed against my side. It looks a little red.
“Her knee?”
“Doomed,”
Sara moans from behind her hands.
Bun pulls back, her lower lip jutting out as she sniffs hard.
“Mama,”
she whines, sounding a little more pathetic and less… loud. But there’s a promise of escalation if I don’t handle this right.
The dark-curled boy rolls his eyes.
“We know it hurts, Bun. Grace, you have to kiss it. Bun, you want Grace to kiss the owie?”
The toddler brightens.
“Mm! Mama. Hee. Mama.”
She kicks her leg out, proving it doesn’t hurt at all-except in her memory.
“What’s she saying?”
Lyre asks, looking way too amused by this entire situation. Her cat-slit eyes are dancing from person to person, her lips twitching every time she looks at Bun.
“She’s saying ‘owie here’,”
Jer translates as I kiss Bun’s knee.
“Wait-are you saying she isn’t calling Grace mama?”
“Huh?”
The boy frowns at Lyre, crossing his arms.
“Why would he call her mama? We just met her. ‘Mama’ means ‘owie’.”
Oh.
Ohh.
The relief on Caine’s face is immediate and palpable, like someone just lifted an entire truck off his chest. His shoulders drop a fraction of an inch, and the murderous gleam in his eyes dims to merely threatening. He even smiles.
Smiles.
“She’s hurt,”
he says, still smiling.
I narrow my eyes in his direction, but he doesn’t seem to notice, still with an absurd tilt of his lips as he nods, as if the world is right again.
And in a way, it is. I get it. To go from motherhood to not-motherhood in the span of three seconds, I also feel relieved. And no one’s getting murdered over a misunderstanding, so even better. But as I look down at Bun’s tearful face, at the smudge of red on her knee I’ve already kissed, there’s a tiny, sharp pang of disappointment.
Ridiculous.
I’ve known this child for hours, not days or years. I’m not her mother. I don’t want to be her mother. I’m eighteen and just escaped a pack that treated me like dirt for being human. The last thing I need is a shape-shifting toddler calling me
“mama”
and meaning it.
And yet.
For one brief, insane moment, someone needed me. Someone chose me, specifically. Not because I was convenient, or there, or because a mystical bond said so. Just… me.
I swallow hard and force a smile.
“See? Not my kid.”
My heart breaks a little.
Bun beams, wiggling her magically better leg.
The tension drains from the room by degrees. Jack-Eye looks like he might start breathing again. Owen’s no longer tense, though as soon as he meets Lyre’s eyes, he jerks back until he bumps into the wall.
Unsurprisingly, Lyre looks disappointed.
“That’s a shame,”
she drawls, stretching her arms over her head.
“I was looking forward to the whole ‘you have a secret baby’ drama. Really would’ve spiced things up.”
Caine glowers at her, but she doesn’t even look at him. I used to think she was suicidally stupid to stand up to the man, but after seeing her fling him across the room? I’m starting to see there’s a lot more to Lyre than I ever expected.
Bun turns her face back toward me, rubbing her nose against my neck. I wrap my arms around her, careful not to squeeze too tight. There’s something uncomfortably right about holding her. Like my arms were designed for exactly this.
“So all these kids are… what did you call them? Soulspliced?”
I ask Owen, desperately needing to change the subject before I think too hard about the maternal instincts apparently lying dormant inside me.
He nods, relieved to be discussing something other than perceived parenthood. Lyre takes a step closer to him, and he stiffens further. I wasn’t sure it was actually possible.
“Yes. Their soul has the essence of multiple souls within it, which is considered-“
“-Fuck.”
Lyre’s voice cuts through his explanation, and she groans. Loudly. Rubbing at her forehead as she looks at the ceiling, her other hand propped onto her hip.
If I had to guess at her emotional state, it would be exasperated, but I’m not sure why.
“What?”
I ask, tightening my grip on Bun instinctively.
“I forgot the cages,”
she says, smacking her palm against her forehead once. Then twice.
“Damn it, I forgot about the cages.”
Caine’s attention snaps to her.
“What cages?”
“The facility where I found-ugh. It’s a long story. Look, the point is that there are cages underground. A lot of them. Filled with shifters.”
Lyre’s gaze flicks to Bun, then back to Caine. Her usual sarcasm has vanished entirely.
“Some have children in them.”
“You forgot about kidnapped people?”
I blurt out, unable to process how anyone could forget something like that. Lyre’s strange, but she’s caring.
Her catlike eyes narrow at me.
“I got some bad news. It was no longer a priority.”
My heart flips a little.
The Lycan King has returned, all trace of the slightly warmer and marginally more approachable Caine gone as he asks,
“Were they alive?”
“Yes. Mostly.”
His face hardens.
“Where? How many? Why are they there?”
“About ten miles to the northeast of here, there’s an abandoned industrial complex. Doesn’t look like much from the outside, but there are magical wards everywhere.”
Lyre’s eyes drift to Bun again, who has mercifully fallen quiet in my arms, she’s chewing on the collar of her onesie as she rhythmically kicks her foot out, content to sit where she is.
“At least one was soulspliced. Shifters, most likely. Possibly some humans mixed in. They’ve been there a long time.”
Owen sighs, and Sara lets out a little whimper. She looks horrified, but by the way her stare’s still glued in Caine’s direction, I’m not sure if she’s reacting to what Lyre’s saying or if she’s just… really convinced Caine’s going to eat her.
Jer, on the other hand, is ignoring all of us. He’s trying to get to the rest of the tanghulu, set out of his reach.
My heart constricts painfully.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.