“Yes, the former Alpha General. Gatlin is my half-brother, which was a surprise. And my mother was a…” I looked at Tia’s gray face. “Are you okay?”
“Mom—” Beckett started again.
But Tia cut him off. “Your father was the former Alpha General?”
I frowned, but nodded slowly. “Yes?”
“Oh.” She turned to Beckett. “I’m feeling a little off, Beck. I might just go and lie down.” She stood and left, and I gaped after her. What the fuck had just happened? I looked around at the guys and caught the expression that passed between Corvin and Beckett.
“What just happened?”
Silence. Everyone avoided my eyes, until Darius sighed and threw them an angry look. “You two—go make this right with Tia. Come on, Kitten. It’s a story better told outside under the warm summer sun.”
Cooper and Darius led me out of the cabin and back toward our temporary home. We walked silently for a moment, before Darius grabbed my hand and held me closer. “Beckett’s dad died when he was young. He was the love of Tia’s life, and they’d been destined for each other like the stars themselves had written it. Unfortunately, he died in an accident, leaving Tia a widow with a young son.”
My heart constricted at the idea of losing any of my guys, so I didn’t want to imagine the pain Tia must have been in.
Darius continued. “Tia was respected around town, being one of the few teachers, and she was beautiful as well. The former Alpha General Huxley decided that Tia needed to remarry and have more cubs, for the good of the Manix. He harassed her about it for years. When she rejected every suitor put forth, the old Alpha General decided it was because she had been waiting for him. He came around one night when Beckett was out with Corvin and Raiden, and tried to, uh, present his suit. Tia rejected him, but rejection wasn’t something the man took well…”
“Did he?” I gasped, horrified.
Darius shook his head. “Beckett and Corvin arrived home just in time, with Raiden in tow. Raiden was the son of a Legion General, and an Omega at that. He was harder to manipulate into silence than two preteen boys. So the old Alpha General left, and Tia moved in with her brother’s family so she was never alone and vulnerable again. Huxley let her be after that, but the whole thing changed Tia.”
Holy shit. I was spawned from absolute evil. “And no one thought I should fuckingknowthis before I walked into her goddamn living room and ate cake?”
Okay, I might have screeched that last part. How could they have been so damn insensitive? Needing to get away before I said something I regretted, I turned and ran in the opposite direction.
“Kitten!” Cooper shouted, but I dead-eyed him over my shoulder.
“Do not follow me or I will kick you in the balls, Cooper Wiley,” I yelled, sprinting off.
I was so fucking mad. So. Fucking. Mad. I jumped the unused train tracks and just ran some more. It was flat, wide grassland, and I felt like I could run for a hundred miles before I hit a mountain. It was the exact opposite of what I was used to but somehow still comforting. I only ran a little more before flopping down in the grass, staring up at the wide, cloudless sky and cursing my bad luck.
How would she ever be able to look at me? At our cubs? I was the reason her tormentor’s DNA would live on. I let the tears slide down my temples as I wallowed in self-pity. I hated this man I’d never met. I was mad that I couldn’t meet him and tell him that he was a waste of space and emotion. Mad that he was the reason I would never have a mother. I lay out there for hours, letting the bitterness swirl in my gut until it churned to acid.
Crunching grass was my only warning someone was close by. I sat up, and I was surprised to see Gatlin.
“Your mates thought you might respond better to seeing me than to them right now.”
“They’d be correct.”
He sat down in the grass beside me. “For someone who’s so good at tracking, you left a trail like a bulldozer through the grass.”
I narrowed my eyes at the man who was supposedly my brother. Who shared my tainted bloodline. I guess we could both lament together. “I wasn’t trying to be stealthy.”
Gatlin grunted. “I’m shit at this talking thing. You should have seen Naja’s face when they all suggested I come and talk to you. She thought it was funny as hell. I don’t do… feelings well.”
I snorted. “Maybe that’s hereditary too.”
“That man gave us nothing. We are who we aredespitethe taint of his blood. He had less than nothing to do with your upbringing, so he didn’t foist his bullshit ideals onto you. You can’t inherit bigotry—that’s a choice, and it isn’t one that either of us will make.” He paused. “Tia has her own demons that have nothing to do with us. It was probably just a shock. She knows you aren’t your father’s daughter, Kitten. You’re nothing like that asshole who made us, and I know that for a fact.”
He stood up, rubbing grass from his butt. “Now, stop wallowing, and let’s head back. Courtland is holding a meeting in twenty minutes, and I have a feeling that it’s going to shift all our futures.”
43
DARIUS
The cubs were practicing their choreography for a flash mob in my womb. I was sure of it. I rubbed my stomach in an attempt to soothe them, or distract them.
