Gracie - Sherry Foster Page 0,39
each line and pull it apart to find the best wording to defeat each part of the curse.” He stopped then and looked down at her upturned face. “They only have a chance that what they did will break the curse and then only because they knew exactly what the curse was and what it was meant to do.”
“They could try to figure something out. Someone must be able to figure it out.”
“No. Mia, we don’t know what curse sits on my head. We don’t know why or how or who cursed my family. I can’t, I won’t take a chance on passing the curse to a child of my making. I won’t hurt a female by asking her to be my mate. I won’t take a mate, can’t take a mate with the past hanging like an ax over my head. Whatever it is, whatever the curse is meant to do isn’t something we can change. You only have the vaguest idea of the history behind my family. Even from the same pack I wasn’t brought out much for the others to know. You admitted you never met my mother and I have only hints of her in my memories. The curse, whatever it is, affected my mother. It affects the mates of the males in my family and only the mates. I won’t chance it. Whatever it is was enough to cause the Alpha to try to kill me the day my father passed away. So great a curse Gillion was willing to kill a child to kill the curse. If Gammon hadn’t been there that day we both would have died. Would you think me a male worth having if I were willing to risk a female?”
“You are a male worth having. You have always been a male worth having. I told you years ago I would never give up on finding out what happened and how we could fix it. Gillion was crazy. Maybe you weren’t old enough to know the true scope of his insanity but I was. I was going to run that day even before I saw what happened, what was about to happen. Even before Gammon stumbled into our lives that was the day I was going to run. Saving you was a bonus. What if there is no curse? It could have been the ravings of a lunatic.”
“No, Mia. You and I both know that isn’t true. My mother was kept separate from the pack for a reason. My father spoke of a curse hanging like an ax over our family. And so it does, by a narrow thread. And what that curse could be we don’t know.”
“Gillion called you a shifter half-breed. But shifters don’t have half-breeds unless you count Kate and her mate Craig. Her a witch and he one of us. We couldn’t know back then what the words meant, but Hendrix, it could be you are a half-breed. We know now they are possible. Gillion would never have accepted you into his pack if your mother smelled of human, and they do smell different from us. To Gillion you would have been an abomination half human half shifter. We didn’t know of witches then and our kind are unable to mate to humans to produce a child. The Alpha would have seen your line as cursed. To him no one but a cursed one would produce a child with a human. To Gillion humans were an abomination and he would have seen you as the child of an abomination.”
“Do I smell like these witches of yours?” Hendrix demanded? “Do I smell of a human?”
“I, no, you have always held the true scent of a wolf.”
“This Kate you speak of, does she hold the scent of a human? Her mother a witch, her father a shifter, what scent does her skin hold?”
Mia blinked a couple of times before she whispered. “She smells of us. Her mother holds the scent of a witch with a hint of wolf but Kate holds only the scent of the wolf.” Her eyes widened and she spun around and started to run back to the house. She had only made it a handful of steps before Hendrix scooped her up in his arms.
“I don’t think I would survive Gammon’s rage were you to fall while in my company.” He nodded toward Dimitri following a distance behind them. “I am more than certain he would have left little for Gammon to hurt if you