“Yes. Just the one. My father was jealous. She met her second mate later on. Decades after their claiming of one another.”
“What happened?” Austin whispered, his hands around the armrests, his fingers digging into them like he was forcing himself to stay still.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Just that he died. Mother gave birth to you, and my father forced her to give you to Rebekkah to raise.”
“Why would she agree to do that?” Sabina growled. “That’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever fucking heard, and trust me, I’ve heard a lot of shit in my time.”
“I’ll bet,” I rumbled, and then I raised my hands. “I’m only the messenger. I don’t have all the answers, and I shouldn’t even know what I do.”
“How do you know anything?” Sabina queried.
“I heard them arguing way too many times over the twins. My dad hated them with a passion. I think that’s why she had to give you to Rebekkah, because she feared what he might do to you.
“I distinctly remember my father changing when I was a kid. He was a good man, a decent father, and a fair leader. Then he changed.”
“Didn’t you know about the second mate? The babies? She must have been pregnant?”
“She told me she lost the baby she was carrying.” I rubbed my brow. “I remember her being very upset and going away for a while.”
“Bet your damn ass she’d have been upset. I can’t imagine having to give up my kids because my partner was such an asshole.”
“Multiple partners don’t often come along, and when they do, it’s with omegas,” I tried to reason, even though there was no reasoning in this situation.
When I’d figured out what had happened, I’d always been wary around them both. To know they were capable of… Well, it didn’t inspire trust. I could love them as my parents without respecting them, and love without respect meant very little in the grand scheme of things. Still, in my position now, things were a tad different, and I could view things from father’s side.
“Usually, the mates appear before the claiming, because the Mother knows these situations can happen.
“After forty-six years with my mother, after all that time together, how do you think he’d have suddenly felt, having her heart cleaved in two and her love for him being split with another man? I can already tell you right here, right now, that I’m okay with Ethan and Austin being your mates because we’ll be claiming you together. But if they came along after we’d been together for decades? I’d want to slice them from chin to ass.”
Austin released a shaky breath. “I hate to agree, but I know what you mean, Eli.”
His eyes were intense, but no more so than Ethan’s, who raked Sabina with a glance that would have probably scorched her.
“I concur,” he ground out.
“So even though my father was an asshole, it should never have worked out the way it did.”
“Why did it? If the Mother is always right and never does shit wrong, how did she get shit wrong in this instance?”
I could feel her umbrage all the way over here, and I was touched for the twins because it was on their behalf, and they deserved that. They truly did.
“Because we still have free will. I think, and I could be wrong, that your father, Austin and Ethan, got out of prison. Another reason mine didn’t like him, and didn’t declare him to the pack.”
“You don’t think your father did something to theirs, do you?”
“I don’t think my mother would have stayed with him if he had,” I told her honestly. “She loved him right until the end, and each day without him after he passed was hard-won and done only because she was scared about the pack’s future. I don’t think she’d have done that, would have strived so hard if she hated him. Or had a reason to hate him. But equally, I wouldn’t put it past him if he could figure out a way to do so without her knowing about his involvement.”
She plucked at her bottom lip, and I could sense her need to comfort the twins, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not as an omega and not as a mate, because we had stupid rules that needed to be abided by.
Goddamn those rules.
“So, we’re brothers?” Ethan asked.
I nodded.
“That’s why you’ve always been nice to us?”
Ethan’s tone was too wooden for my liking, so I murmured softly, “Yes, but mostly because