Noah is stone-faced, staring down at the petite woman who looks so like him. They have the same dark blue eyes and sun-streaked sandy hair.
Liora’s lip trembles, and her eyes grow glassy, like she’s holding back tears. Noah still hasn’t moved. “Why are you here?”
I open my mouth to explain, but before I can, Noah signs as he says, “I want to know why you abandoned me.”
Noah
I’ve waited so long for this moment. To meet the mother who sent me away.
And now I’m here, and my whole body is awash with hot and cold sensations.
Nan always told me Liora was a sweet, loving person. She insisted that her daughter, who came from a powerful alpha bloodline and could’ve been a pack luna, was sucked into a cult that degraded her, brainwashed by them. She told me my mother loved me. I used to look at her photograph and imagine her tucking me in at night and singing me to sleep. But I don’t understand–if she loved me, why would she give me up?
Liora winces. I can’t think of her as my mother, not yet.
“My son,” she signs fluidly as she speaks, “I did not abandon you. I would never abandon you.” She emphasizes never. “I had to give you up to save your life.”
Why didn’t you come with me? If this place is so terrible, why did you stay? I sign. I shouldn’t be asking these questions. I need to stick to the plan and convince her to leave, so Aster and I can get her out before we’re all discovered and killed.
Instead, I’m rehashing the past. But I can’t help it. I have to know.
I was afraid, Liora signs. I was young and powerless, and I knew if I disappeared with you, the pack would hunt us both down. This way, I could sell the lie that I’d lost you. Because I did lose you. And I grieved. There are tears shining in her eyes now.
I harden my heart, even though I want to go to her. I feel too conflicted. There are too many emotions bubbling up in my body.
I sense Aster stepping close to my side. All the times I imagined reuniting with my long-lost mother, I never imagined I’d have my mate by my side, but I’m glad she’s here. Her sweet scent steadies me, lends me strength.
Now’s your chance. I came to get you out.
No, she signs, and even though Nan warned me she wouldn’t come, I feel it like a blow to the chest. A second abandonment. But then she adds, I want to. But I can’t. Oriana. She fingerspells a name I don’t know, tears her gaze away from me, and looks to Aster. Speaking and signing, she says to Aster, “The Warden has her. She’s locked in the tower now. They all are.”
“All the females for the ritual?” Aster asks.
“Yes. When you were found missing, the Warden gathered them up and locked them away. We’re all on lockdown. I shouldn’t even be here, but I had to, I had to…” she breaks off, her whole body trembling.
Aster leaves my side and goes to her, pulling her into a hug.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Liora says, her eyes still on my face. “It’s not safe. It’s too late for me.”
I can’t read Aster’s lips with her back to me, but Liora answers, “I’m not leaving without your sister.”
Her sister? I sign.
Liora releases Aster and faces me. Your sister. She nods her head, her eyes intent on mine. Oriana. Your little sister is in trouble. Her eyes fill with tears.
I have a sister?
Goosebumps race across my arms. My breath leaves me in a whoosh. I. Have. A sister.
All the particles in the Universe seem to break apart, leaving chaos as my mind is forced to re-arrange around this new information.
Aster didn’t tell me! Maybe she thought I already knew, but Nan hasn’t been able to contact her daughter since the day she met her in a New York City subway station to take custody of me as a newborn pup. Liora never sent letters, never made contact again.
It never occurred to me that she might have had other pups. That she has her own family here. The news makes me want to retreat into myself. To go even more wooden than I was before.
While I possess alpha traits, I don’t consider myself a leader. My whole life I’ve self-isolated. I had Nan, but I stayed apart from her pack, and I avoided joining one out East. I decided early on to make it in the human world with my intelligence and the hell with the shifter world. They didn’t involve my plans, other than to take down the Moonborn and free my mother from her servitude.
But right now, some protective alpha instinct comes screaming to the surface. If I have a younger sister, she’s under my domain. In my pack. My previous pack of one.
