“Unfortunately, yes. Once you and I are mated, they’re much less likely to try anything, but I’ll still always make sure you’re protected.”
“But you’re sort of in an alliance with them, it sounds like. Or did that fall through because you chose me?”
“Even with an alliance, I’d never trust them fully. They’re just not trustworthy and never have been.” He shrugged.
I chewed my lower lip. “So…I’ll never get to meet my real father, looks like.”
Killian shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”
“I guess there was a dream that he’d magically turn up one day, and I was the descendent of royalty and he’d whisk all my troubles away, and I’d meet a prince, and I’d live happily ever after.”
With the types of men that my mother went through, I knew how unlikely that would all be. But I guess a little girl could always hope.
Killian smiled sympathetically. “I’m sort of a prince. And we’ll live happily ever after. I’ll make sure of it.”
“I think, in my dream, there was a whole lot less dog hair involved.” I paused again and cocked my head in thought. “Do shifters have dogs?”
He shook his head. “No, we don’t. Domesticated dogs don’t exist in our realm, and they don’t like us much in the human realm, unfortunately. Witches have cats, though.”
I pursed my lips in thought. “I guess I’m asking irrelevant questions because the real ones are kinda scary.”
“Real questions like what?”
“Like… uh… well, my half brothers are horrible in every way. Was my father a good person?”
Killian frowned. “He was…strong. He kept his pack together and protected them.”
I winced. My birth father was a jerk and my brothers took after him. “How on earth did some alpha pack leader end up with my mother?”
“Red Sands, the town you’re from, is near one of the points that we use to enter your world. We travel there for business all the time. Human goods are highly prized, and throughout your world, our kind has built up a network of contacts who buy things like our timber, stone, and clay without asking where they came from. So Clive traveled for business, selling granite from a quarry on his property, and that’s likely how he met your mother.”
I frowned in thought. “My mother told me so many lies. And we moved all the time when I was younger and she’d never explain why. I honestly am wondering how long the affair went on with Clive, if she knew I existed, and if maybe that’s why she went on the run with me. Like, she wanted to protect me…” my voice trailed off.
And then I shook my head sadly. No, my mother had never been much of a protector.
“What?”
“I actually think that she did it out of spite. She always got really mad at married men when they wouldn’t leave their families for her. She probably felt the same way about him.”
Killian nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe. What brought you back to Red Sands? Why would she come home if she was hiding you from him?”
“Well, in California, where we’d lived for a while, things were kind of heating up for her. There were some bounced check issues and an angry wife with a shotgun… Also, I’m a grown-up now, and even if Clive was alive, he couldn’t claim me. So she probably didn’t worry about it anymore.” Also, I was pretty sure she was having an affair with someone because there was no other way she could have afforded that house we moved into.
“So… if my father is a shifter, I’m a half shifter? Does that mean I can turn into a half wolf or something?”
“No, no, just a full wolf. You are, or you are not. Bloodline does not dilute that nature. You have a wolf like everyone else in the White Fang pack.”
“Why didn’t I ever shift in the human realm then?”
“Because you have to live in a ley line area to be able to do magical things. If I left the ley line area for too long, I wouldn’t be able to shift. Now that you’re back, though, you’re channeling that magic up from the lines and you were able to at least partially shift right away when you were under threat. Magic tends to be stronger when you’re under attack. It’s a survival mechanism.”
I was a wolf.
I mean, I had always had a freakishly strong sense of smell. Maybe that was part of it. “So…. um… how do I decide to shift? If I want to?”
He stared at me as if I had asked him something totally obvious. It must have been second nature to him.
“What, you just know how to do it right out of the womb? Your mother squeezes you out and you can become a puppy?”
