“Hello, Caspian! I’m your nana.” She cooed, and Hannah introduced herself, both of them trying to crowd out the shying child as he whimpered in confusion. He spotted one of Min’s hair sticks, though, and made a mad grab for it, easily mollified as he chewed on the wooden stick.
Gilbert, standing alone behind them, had his mouth open in an unattractive gape, gawping like a fish in near disbeliefthat Min and Hannah would so readily drop all pretenses and indignation.
“So, you’re his mother?” Hannah treaded quietly over the words.
“Nope. Papa. It’s how mages do things. Omegas. Dad explained it to you, yeah?” Midnite stuck his hands in his pockets in a nervous force of habit.
“He said how it worked and that you’d been kidnapped.” Hannah stared Midnite down, turning her attention away from Caspian.
“Kidnapped, assaulted inmultipleways, trapped as a cat, mutilated. Yeah. Thanks for keeping me safe.” Midnite huffed and gave Gilbert a sneer.
“You look good, now.” Hannah’s cautious words ended when Nite pulled his hands out and flicked the gem on his collar. His fingertips faded away, leaving his scarred stumps behind. Nite wiggled them and huffed. “Bad kitties get declawed.”
“Oh. Oh, Cade…” Hannah sniffed as her eyes watered, and Min’s face grew hard. The glare of misplaced blame flicked toward Roan before Midnite brought his fingertips back with a pulse of magic to his gemstone.
“My husband fixed it.” Midnite referred to Rexford as partner or husband more often than mate, as it carried different connotations to him. “Rex is good to me.”
“Can’t be that good if you live in a shithole like this,” Gilbert said through gritted teeth.
“We’re mostly bachelors in this commune. We’ll be expanding to houses one day, but for right now, we are living below our means to keep us mobile. It’s safe for the time being. We can protect our omegas better in this setup.” Rexford opened his arm as he circled by, letting Caspian reach out for him with a pant of excitement.
“Dada!” Caspian screeched with joy and babbled, a word somewhere in the mix that Marquis understood assnack.
The temporary reunion could only be just that. Temporary.
“C’mon, little runt. Come to Uncle Sailor and we’ll go get you some nom-noms.” Sailor took Caspian from Rex and hoisted the chubby babe onto his hip. He sniffed. “And maybe a diaper change.”
Marquis hadn’t smelled a thing, but Sailor could be quite proficient with his nose since he’d embraced the wolf in his bloodline.
Hannah and Min watched Caspian leave with slight disappointment. Gilbert, for his part, appeared as if he’d eaten something sour.
Midnite waved a thanks to Sailor and turned back to his family. “All this time and you’ve not even said hello to me, Gilly.”
“It’sDad,” Gilbert sneered. “All this time and you can’t even call. Your mother drove me loony wailing over you.”
“And you forgot about me for a while, too. I was trapped as a cat. I called sometimes just to hear Mom’s voice.” Nite sneered. “And all this because you were terrified of what I am?”
Gilbert grumbled something about it not being normal.
“No, it’s not normal. It’s rare, but it’snatural.” Nite lifted the hem of his shirt to expose his flat belly, healing stretch marks and the dark, puckered omega line that had healed a little funny. “Because I’m not like you. I’m not human, fully.”
Marquis would argue that, but mages were primarily humans, inundated with magic in their DNA, aligned and attuned to the forces of nature, and maybe a little shifter, kin of beast and man where two souls united. When the kings of wolves met with the kings of men, they joined their souls for all time. So, shifters, too, were human, but not only.
Gilbert turned his head in disgust as Hannah and Min warmed up to the idea, as if they understood what he was. Notthat two alphas or two women were wrong but that he was the other half of mage pairs.
“We should probably sit down and talk. We have questions,” Rexford said, corralling the group toward their meeting room. Gilbert lagged behind as Nite escorted Min and Hannah. Roan sat off to the side, glaring at Min occasionally, his energy sour and tense. He never should have abandoned his son, but a hurt heart did strange things. Marquis, for his part, aided Rexford in corralling the human male.
A wistful and guilty expression crowded Midnite’s face. He knew what had to come of the reunion. Even so, he leaned into his younger sister, hugging her tightly. His mother, reserved and snippy as she was, made an effort to show interest in his new life.Likely only because a grandchild was involved.
Gilbert? He wouldn’t even sit. He sat the whole time glaring at Roan as if her prior relationship with him were an affront to his senses.
“Midnite?” Marquis cleared his throat. The familiar glanced back at Marquis sheepishly, his green eyes begging for a few more minutes.
He waved his hand, and Marquis settled back a bit.
“So, I guess now you know I’m alive and I didn’t run away.” Midnite put his hands on the table. “You spent all that effort running to Australia. Why did you think I’d be safe there?”
“Oh…” Min cleared her throat before explaining that another mage had told her that their baby would be rejected, and likely killed, and after she had the babe, he’d come to visit and seen Midnite was an omega and gave her money to flee the country.
