I felt the wariness in the entire kitchen start to disband.
It was surreal for me too, and I knew this was possible, so only Kali Sara knew what everyone else was feeling.
I carried on humming, even started to sing an old ditty my mother had sung to me before bed, and eventually, the cook I knew as Ariel opened her eyes and stared at me.
She gasped a little, her breath coming out in pained sobs that made me wince with her.
“What happened?” I whispered, wanting to know so that maybe I could ease that pain as well.
“She’s terrified of mice. One flew across the kitchen floor.”
The voice had me twisting around to find its owner. I gaped at them. “Mice?” I pulled a face, then blew out a breath. My instinct was to tell them to put poison down, but ever since the other realm, I’d started changing.
I was a predator by nature now. I knew that. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t live my life by my choices.
And those choices meant I didn’t like to kill unnecessarily.
So much blood had been shed in my past, so much of it a waste of human life and love, that to be faced with a world where death was closer at hand, where the repercussions might lead to not just one death but two? Well, it wasn’t my idea of a dream come true.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t change things.
I cleared my throat. “We need to figure out a way to stop them from coming around then, don’t we?”
Elsa, the housekeeper, commented, “I’ll get some poison.”
I shook my head. “No. No poison. Something more natural.”
She scowled at me, so I scowled back as she grumbled, “They don’t work.”
“Sure they do. There are ways and means. We’ll figure it out.” When she pursed her lips in disapproval, for the first time, I called on my she-wolf.
Two things happened—the bitch from the other realm waded into the quarrel, snapping her teeth whenever someone got in her way, and my she-wolf came out to party.
The other females gasped at that, and Ariel, sadly, started gasping for air again, so I quickly dropped my hold on my she-wolf, well aware that everyone now knew that I had power to back me up.
I didn’t like pissing contests, but these people were predators too. They respected strength, so I’d shown them what I could do. And that was that.
I rubbed my hands over Ariel’s shoulders as the bitch moved over to me. When she pressed her head onto Ariel’s lap, the other woman tensed, but I reached for her hand and put it on the bitch’s head. “She means no harm,” I assured her.
Ariel’s breathing calmed, and she stopped bellowing air in and out, instead, starting to breathe a little more subtly. “Who is she?”
It figured the household staff would want to know, so I shrugged. “She’s my friend.”
That was the only answer I had, and it was the only answer they’d get, because I had no other answer.
When she was calm enough to stand, enough to wander over to a seat, I patted her hand and got her some water. When she took a sip, I asked, “Are you okay, Ariel?”
She stared at me with hesitation in her face, her eyes. “Y-Yes, Omega.”
I shook my head. “Sabina. My name’s Sabina. You know where I am if you need me.”
I didn’t wait on her to reply, just shot her a soothing smile and started out of the kitchen.
Women moved out of my way, and I let them, sensing their wariness had morphed into surprise, and I was good with that.
Everything was a learning curve, wasn’t it?
As I headed out into the hall, the bitch at my side, I heard Daniel giggling at something overhead in the room we’d given him.
Even though he wasn’t my son, the links between us were powerful.
I had no way of knowing why, just knew that to be true, and it was only one of the reasons why I’d wanted him here, close at hand.
Austin was helping him with his homeschooling, which amused me because I knew he hated books, and we were all taking it in turns to help him catch up with all the education he’d missed.
Which was a lot.
I was almost tempted to go up there and help, but I knew I’d be a distraction, and Daniel didn’t need that.
He needed his teacher focused on him, not on my ass.
Lips twitching at the thought, I closed my eyes and concentrated