Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,55

exactly act on impulse, but that she’d definitely behave without a care for proprieties if her gut told her what to do.

That was the reason for many of the times our father had slapped her, I was sorry to say, and in our household, even though I’d tried to protect her, it was no good. I’d just get punished at the same time as she had.

My jaw worked at the memory, at all the times we’d been beaten, that we’d suffered at our father’s hands, and I wouldn’t lie—I was glad he was dead.

Was glad he was in the ground somewhere, his body nourishing the earth because that was all he was good for. He’d never fed us, not like I wanted to feed Knight all the wisdom in the world. He was more than just a child to me, after all, he was my future. But our father had never looked at things that way. He’d never thought further than the next dollar to be earned, the next drink to have in his fist, and the next meal our momma could put in his belly. Even though Cyrilo was in his image, even he’d never come up to his standards.

A man like Draga Krasowski was impossible to satisfy. Impossible to please.

And Lara, for some insane reason, had agitated him more than any of us.

She’d often worn bruises on her cheeks, often sported the miserable proof of a father who felt no shame in hurting his children. It shamed me that I’d allowed it to happen, but it shamed me even more that, when my time had come, I’d gotten out of there.

I’d left her behind.

But I wouldn’t leave Daniel.

I released a shaky breath at the thought, years’ worth of guilt and teenaged angst hitting me square in the chest.

I’d left her behind.

Left her with them.

How could I have done that? How—

“You were young, my love,” Ethan soothed, whispering the words into my mind, soothing me with his love, gifting me with his affection.

“Never too young to allow what happened to happen.”

He shook his head at me. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not to blame for your father’s actions. Only he’s to blame for that. Just like I’m not to blame for my roots.”

“Me either,” Austin grumbled, nosing into the conversation with an ease that pleased me.

The walls between us weren’t as strong or as high as I’d like, for their sakes. They were powerful men, used to owning their own thoughts, and I tried to respect their privacy, but the open door to their souls was infinitely comforting.

And I wanted them to have that too.

I wanted them to know that the second they wished to speak with me, to commune with me, they could.

Something that Ethan had just done.

Maybe he knew the door opened both ways, or maybe after today, something had changed. I didn’t feel different, in all honesty. But I didn’t have to feel it to know it, did I?

Just like I knew something else. “Please, don’t take Daniel away. He’s mine.”

And he was.

He was family now.

He was ours.

A part of Highbanks pack, sure, but more than that, mine.

Lara twisted back to look at me, and I saw the confusion in her eyes. We’d been raised to be possessive, obsessive. Never to share. To cherish only that which belonged to us.

Cyrilo would never have been able to take on another man’s son, for example. That would have been a weakness in his eyes. It didn’t matter if he was in love with the child’s mother, didn’t matter if they were soulmates. His past would never enable him to do that.

And I’d been raised in the same way.

But I’d broken free of the ties and was here as a result, pleading for the safekeeping of a child that wasn’t mine, that wasn’t my blood, but who belonged to me nonetheless.

I tipped my chin up, and rasped, “He’s a good boy. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“I didn’t deserve to lose my father, either, ma’am,” the other man replied, and his tone was so stalwart that I truly didn’t believe I’d ever manage to sway him. “And because of his death, I lost my mother too.”

“You say that like it’s his fault,” Lara replied in my stead, her voice soft and gentle, and the male, an alpha, surprisingly strong but not as domineering as my men, turned to look at her.

To grace her with all his focus.

That had silvery wisps making an appearance, spinning into being around him where his