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Dmitri looked on in silence, but when her voice caught a little, he gave her thigh a tiny squeeze.
“My adoptive mother was very kind, but I kept causing issues with her. Just was… kind of a shit. I eventually learned that I was adopted. Well, I didn’t so much learn asforcemy adopted mother to tell me. Somehow, I knew it already, in my heart. But I needed that confirmation.” She waved a hand in front of her. “Anyway, I was, of course, conflicted, and felt just… sort of lost? I’dthoughtI was my mother’s daughter only to find out that I’d been somethingentirelydifferent.”
“Not different. You were stillyou.” He said it in a way clearly intended to be comforting, but it only grated.
She wished he’d just shut up and listen.
“So, I attempted to make contact with my biological mother. My adopted mother—Margretta was her name—she told me it was a bad idea. I didn’t listen, of course.Nobodywas going to tell me otherwise.” She looked over at him. “Like I said. Kind of a shit.”
She’d never forgotten sitting across that beat up desk from her, the taupe institutional drab on the walls, the fixtures coated with so many layers of paint over the years that they’d begun to lose their shape. “Vera was the official’s name—I can’t recall her last—and she was the palest person I’ve ever seen. Absolutely bloodless—in both senses of that word. I used to joke that she was anactualvampire.”
Dmitri’s tone was sober, but a hint of levity was there too, just under the surface. “You sure she wasn’t? Now that you know a little more of the ugly truth…”
She shrugged. “Who knows? But that day she was sitting in the full sunlight—or as full as you can get in Russia in February. So, I doubt it. But instead of illuminating her, that light, it…fadedher, somehow. Damnedest thing, really. It was fitting though, considering what she told me. I don’t think it was that she got off on telling me my mother wouldn’t see me. No, I just think she… couldn’t give less of shit. As if ittiredher to even have to bother going over it with me.”
The scene played in Stacy’s mind again. The woman’s voice was nasally, officious, like someone not used to being questioned—about anything.
“Your mother was quite clear in her directive. She does not want to be contacted,” the woman had said. “Ever.”
The rest were variations on a theme that amounted to her being told that any attempt at contacting her birth mother in any way was a permanent dead-end.
“Iwashurt, you know.” She glanced at Dmitri, touched to see the pain she’d felt that day so long ago reflected in the male’s dark, keen gaze. “But I understood. After that though I… never truly fit in. I didn’t know who I really was anymore. Just a stupid, headstrong girl, lost in the world. Alone.”
“Well, youaren’ta misfit here—and you never will be. Here is where you belong. You aren’t Stacy anymore. You never were.”
“Oh please,” she said, looking away, but there wasn’t any conviction in her tone. In a way, his words reassured her—which was unexpected, indeed—that it was okay that she’d felt that way.
“You don’t know who you are anymore, but the truth is, you’re finally becoming the real you. You are becoming who you alwayswere. As for not having contact with your birth family, or what you think you were before—does that really matter? Because that Stacy, that person is gone. It’s only a matter ofwhenyou admit it. It’s already happened. You just have to accept it.”
“I don’t have to acceptanything,” she snapped, a flash of bitter anger surprising her. In a bid to distract herself from it—and hopefully not say something else that would get her in hot water—she tried a different tack. “You said something earlier. What the hell is a true mate?”
“It is someone who wasdestinedfor another—a match for an alpha. A true mate is destined from birth, though none know that at the time. We don’t knowwhysome are and some aren’t. It just is. When we encounter one, the pieces fall into place, so to speak. They’re very rare as a result, but when it happens, it’s a very special thing, even more special than the mind connection an alpha and omega typically have. With us? Obviously, there’s some sort of telepathic or mental connection between us. I can’tquiteread your mind, but I can see inside your head sometimes. Perhaps a time will come where we will be in each other’s minds?”
There was no way to tell if any of what he was telling her was legitimate. Which only brought home the bitter truth of her situation.
In spite of all that had happened, one thing hadn’t really changed—her isolation.
It was the height of ironies that she struggled so much with it. To be the most alone, and the most fearful, right at that moment.
Because she realized, much as she might want to question it, what her heart was telling her.
He’s telling you the fucking truth.
Which meant that it really was possible that she was indeed succumbing to what he told her. That she was transforming, becoming someone else.
Or somethingelse.
She had no way to make any real sense of it though. She had no idea what it meant. Whatever the “true mate” thing actually was—such a concept wasnevertalked about it in the Bureau.
Despair threatened to close in on her then. And it wasn’t just because of her loneliness. She’d been so wrong, so foolishlynaive, about the one thing she thought she believed in.
Being an agent.
Because that too… was all a lie.
CHAPTER23
In any other situation, the truck stop diner, the crashing dishes, the loud voices, the sounds of running water, footsteps, laughter, and all the other attendant din of humankind would have been at the very least distracting and at worst maddening.
