on in Kettlestone for a few years, but even though it weren’t more than a half hour drive, we hardly saw her. Your dad didn’t much like her coming out to visit.”
Felicity sounded like she was nervous about offending him, so Saul jumped in to reassure her. “My dad’s an asshole. Treated her mean. I wasn’t old enough to do anything about it, but I saw it. I think he hit her sometimes.” He swallowed the shame those words brought up. Nothing had ever happened in front of him, but he’d known, hadn’t he? He’d only pretended not to.
“You were a child,” Jasper said. Jasper had barely let go of him since they got to Woodhaven, always keeping a hand on him somewhere. Saul was grateful for it. He didn’t know where he’d be without Jasper keeping him anchored. He was such a tangled mess of excitement and happiness and fear.
“Wish I could say I’m surprised to hear it,” Felicity said. “Wish I’d done more to stop it, too. After you were born, they moved to Ferris, and we never saw her in person again. Guess it was too easy to believe what she wrote—that everything was fine, that she was happy. She wasn’t lying about how much she loved you though. Sent a picture in every letter.”
Felicity drew a packet of pictures out of a drawer. Saul flipped through them, seeing himself grow from a chubby baby to a wobbly toddler to a sturdy child. His resemblance to his father became more clear as he aged. He wished he looked more like his mother.
“Then she stopped,” Felicity said.
“Stopped sending pictures?”
“Stopped writing altogether. We got concerned enough to send the sheriff out to your place. You didn’t have a phone, Barb said.”
Saul shook his head. They’d had a phone.
“The sheriff told us she’d run off—left her husband and abandoned you and gone who-knew-where. We figured she’d turn up here. Where else would she go? But she didn’t. So we went back to the sheriff, asked for an investigation, demanded to be allowed to see you. Never got anywhere with it.”
“My dad and the sheriff are friends.” His dad was friends with all those kinds of alphas, the ones who liked lording it over people.
“I had it right on my calendar that you turned eighteen this year and I should hunt you down to see if I could get you to talk to me directly, but here you are in person. I could just about cry.” Felicity didn’t look like she’d ever cried in her life, but she beamed at him so adoringly that he was about one more kindness away from crying himself. Jasper pressed a kiss against his cheek, and Saul turned into it appreciatively.
“This has been a lot to take in,” he told Felicity. “I never knew anything about any of you. Mom didn’t talk much about where she’d come from.”
“Most likely your father didn’t like her talking about it. He got her away from us on purpose.”
“So where is she then?” He was glad to have all these relatives. Hundreds of them, if he could believe everyone who’d tried to tell him how their mother’s uncle’s sister was his whatever. But he’d come to Woodhaven hoping for news about his mom.
Felicity considered him with a sorrowful look. “Now, honey, I’ve gotta assume she’s gone from us. She had every right to run from Otis, but she’d have taken you with her.”
He didn’t want to admit his mother was dead, but he’d needed to know she wouldn’t have left him. He’d really needed to know that. Tears threatened at his eyes again. He tried to present a more alpha countenance, to be hard and stalwart. But then fuck that. He was soft, had always been soft. He didn’t even want to be hard. He wanted to be among people he loved, to nest with them in safety and comfort. He’d just never had that option before.
He turned into Jasper’s arms, vowing to himself that their children would never have any reason to fear him. Or to fear anything. The house he’d built would be a strong, safe haven, full of their love.
“I’ve got you,” Jasper said into his neck.
“We all do,” Felicity said. “You have a family now.”
That only made Saul cry harder. They were mostly tears of joy, but there was loss mixed in there too, plus the relief of knowing the loss had been involuntary. His mother hadn’t left him. But if she hadn’t left him,