Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,39
what was she thinking? Was she so fucking weak?”
“We know the answer to that already,” Sabina rasped. “For her to just dump the boys on their adopted mother says it all.”
“None of this feels right,” Eli growled. “It’s always been messed up, but it’s never mattered more than now, when she’s back here and we might be able to ask her questions.”
And with that, he grabbed Sabina’s hand and started tugging her back to the house.
“If anyone can give us the answers we need, it isn’t the Mother, Sabina. I could try and commune with Her now, but She isn’t the one who can explain this to us. It’s Berry. We need to wait her out so you can ask her all this shit.”
“What if she doesn’t come back?” she asked warily, which had him pausing in place.
“What makes you say that?”
“Didn’t that feel like a farewell to you?” she rumbled, her shoulders hitching. “When they were all standing there, a family, before they ran off into the forest?”
Eli’s nostrils flared. “No. I can’t handle that. I need to know what the fuck she was doing, what she was thinking—”
Ethan strode forward, grabbed Eli’s shoulder and shook him slightly. “That’s in the past. We’re in the present now. Maybe we are who we are for a reason. What happened to us went down so that we’d be the men standing here today. Getting answers to questions that are decades old won’t help us in the long run.”
Eli shook his head. “I supported her. I tried to do as she wanted, I led by my father’s example, a father who might have killed her mate, who tore mother and children apart—”
“No!” Sabina’s voice was stony, colder than the Antarctic. “No, that wasn’t on your father. He might have demanded it, but she didn’t have to go along with him. I can tell you now, categorically and without a shadow of doubt in my mind, if you asked me to give up Knight? You wouldn’t see me again. You wouldn’t see me for goddamn dust.
“Merinda made that decision. She chose to give up the twins. That’s on her. Your father was a prick for asking it of her, but she could have stood up to him.” She jerked her chin up. “She was a mediocre omega, whose only strength was forged in the sons she bore her men. That was her purpose. You three.
“Ethan’s right. What happened before doesn’t matter.” Her jaw clenched before she ground out, “I was mad for all of you, but now I see we need to focus on us. On the here and now. What your parents decided to do is of no concern to us.” She squeezed Eli’s hand. “We’ll return to the packhouse and make my sister comfortable. She, unlike Berry, matters.”
I didn’t think I was the only one who heard a mournful howl whisper through the breeze, between the trees, but Sabina’s shoulders stiffened, so I knew she heard it too.
I guessed we had our answer.
Berry hadn’t gone anywhere, but she might have now.
Seven
Ethan
Returning to the house didn’t exactly sow more calm our way.
We waded out from the middle of a battlefield, a personal one, and into outright mayhem.
It was only Austin’s instincts and quick reactions that had him darting from the doorway where we walked into chaos, rushing up the stairs, just in time to catch Maribel, who was hovering on the edge of the top step, her arms waving back and forth as she struggled to catch her balance.
For a second, I could do nothing more than shake my head as I tried to figure out what happened. But when I saw Seth standing there, a gleam in his cobalt blue eyes that was anything but concerned, I waited until Austin had gathered Maribel in his arms, to head up the stairs myself.
He picked her up and carried her down to the hall, while I grabbed Seth by the ear and tugged him down too.
Sabina had started shaking, and Eli’s arm was around her as she watched Austin and Maribel, who’d started weeping.
It was quite clear to me what had happened.
Seth had tried to push his mother down the stairs. And while it was only good fortune that Austin was one of the fastest shifters in the pack, and could only be deemed good timing that we’d walked through the door right at that moment, it didn’t take away from what the little bastard had done.