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“Is that normal?” she croaked.
“No,” he admitted. “There aren’t many wolves who can resist the pull of a superior. Not because of my sex, either. I’m bigger. Stronger. Older. Your inner wolf should have sensed that and submitted within seconds. I’ve been questioning why you didn’t, myself.”
“Is it because I’ve been raised as a human?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. But… One explanation is something we refer to as ‘the calling.’ When a young wolf resists the pull of an Alpha, not out of disobedience but instinct. It’s rare, but it’s happened.”
Loren couldn’t tell if he was merely trying to make her feel better. “Have you seen it happen?”
He seemed to tense. “Yes. It happened with me. I didn’t submit to my Alpha the first time I was compelled to. I ran instead.”
Shock rendered Loren silent. More questions buzzed her throat, aching to be asked, but she sensed it wasn’t her place to rush this story. He needed to tell it in his own time.
“Such young wolves aren’t seen as disobedient or flawed. They are nurtured and taken under their leader’s wing. Lukas… He earned my trust, and then I submitted to him of my own free will.”
There was something else. Something he wasn’t saying.
“All this means is that I need to earn your trust. Your respect. Ialsothink,” McGoven added quietly before she had the chance to respond, “that we need to learn who your real father is. Soon.”
“How?” Loren blurted, not understanding the urgency.
If Fred Connors really wasn’t her father, she wasn’t too heartbroken about that—but what did that say for her so-called “real” dad?
Was he any better? Considering that he had left her to be bounced from home to home after her mother’s death, probably not.
“I need to know more about your mother,” McGoven began warily.
“Like what?”
“Anything. Where she lived. Where she grew up. Her family, if any.”
Loren squirmed. It shouldn’t have been hard to respond. Children were supposed to know things about their parents, right? But, wracking her brain, all she could come up with were small details. Her smell. Her laugh. Her smile.
“I…I don’t remember much of her,” she admitted after a while.
“Tell me anything you can,” McGoven urged. He didn’t seem like the talkative, emotional type, so his encouragement shocked her enough into talking.
“She was p-pretty,” she stammered, feeling like an idiot. “And funny, and that’s all I really remember. Her name was Eveline, and we lived in Ridgerton. Before that? I don’t know.”
Her mother hadn’t spoken much about her past life or where she’d come from. As to her real father, well, if Fred Connors wasn’t it, she had no idea who it could be.
“Did she ever mention your father?” McGoven asked.
She shook her head. “Not to me, and I learned quickly that bringing up family around her wasn’t a good idea.”
She would get sad, Loren remembered. Clam up. Sometimes even crawl back into bed and stay there for the rest of the day.
“Does it hurt? To talk about her?”
Loren bit her bottom lip as she thought it over. “Yes. But in a way, it feels…good. She was a good person.”
Unlikeher father, the memories of her mother didn’t sting and burn at the back of her mind.
“About my father…”
Beside her, she could feel McGoven stiffen as if knowing what she was going to say before the words even left her mouth.
“It’s been almost a week, and I haven’t been—” She broke off, trying to think of the right way to say it.
