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“Well, two people had sex and then—” she started, but the growing rumble in my chest cut her off.
“Not fucking funny, Unicorn,” I muttered.
She rolled her eyes at me, then moved with Markus back to the chair they’d been sitting in, resuming the same seating arrangement before she continued.
“Like I told you previously, I had an intuition to find Kinsley, then once I did, I knew we had to come here,” she said. “I didn’t know why or I would have told her. I care about Kinsley, too, but I wasn’t going to keep Markus from her once I knew who he was.”
My eyes glared at him, and I crossed my arms, suspicion rising inside me. “And how do you know he’s really her brother?”
She snuggled further into his lap and sighed. “Because I do. It’s my gift, and I can’t explain that to someone who doesn’t have the same ability. It’s just like breathing. My eyes see images and I sense feelings. Then my mind translates them into thoughts that guide my decisions.”
Lia glanced at Markus, stroking his cheek right under his eye. “Look at him and tell me you don’t see the similarities.”
She wasn’t wrong, exactly. I could see they had the same nose and eyes, maybe even facial structure, but nothing else felt the same. Not the hair color or skin tone, and he didn’t have the same wolf strength that Kinsley did.
He was weaker, yet he seemed oddly okay with that as I stared hard, judging him.
“Your father was a monster,” I said, my tone leaving no room for argument. “How do we know you aren’t the same?”
The shifter straightened his shoulders and met my dark gaze. “If you know of my father, then you should also know that anything you might have heard about me was done because I felt like I had no choice until I realized I did.”
“And when was that?” I asked, annoyed that his words were ringing true.
He shared a constricted look with Lia, then answered. “When he told me to kill my first mate because she rightfully rejected me. I wouldn’t do it and he banished me from the House. I’m a member of Blood and Beryl now.”
I didn’t really care about his past or how that might affect Lia, considering it sounded like she was his second-chance mate, but I was curious why he’d returned to Fire and Fluorite, so I asked as much.
“I came back to check on my younger brother,” he answered. “Given the current state of this place, I’ve been trying to convince him and my mother to flee, but he’s afraid of leaving the boundary line and getting denied entry to Blood and Beryl.”
Again, he spoke the truth, which meant Kinsley didn’t just have one half-brother…
“Do you have any other siblings?” I asked cautiously.
He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of, but it wasn’t a well-kept secret that my father slept around on our mother. Him casting me out was probably the only good thing he’d ever done in his life, even if it took me a while to see that. Though he’d clearly meant it as a punishment.”
“And what are you going to do now that you know about Kinsley and have found a second-chance mate?” I asked, because if they thought they were going to leave Kinsley behind and cause her further hurt, that was going to be their last thought.
More importantly, I hoped she was at least listening in on this conversation, even if she didn’t want to be directly part of it at the moment.
Markus glanced longingly at Lia. “I don’t know. I need to contact Blood and Beryl to let them know of my circumstances. They’ll be expecting me back today, otherwise.”
“You’ll tell them nothing of Kinsley,” I demanded. We didn’t need more Houses coming around and wondering what it meant that one of Mathis’s heirs had surfaced. One who had been hidden away for nearly three decades.
I could assume now the reason she’d been abandoned had been just to keep her away from Mathis, which would be valid enough on its own, but if there was something else—something that had made Johnathon send me after her—I didn’t want anyone else to know before us.
Lia leveled her bright gaze on me. “We can trust him, and I know you know that already. Are you done with the interrogation?”
I opened my mouth to tell her I’d be done when I was damn well good and ready, but I heard the bedroom door open, and I stood up to find Kinsley coming back down the hallway.
Her face was still tense, but she was breathing evenly. My first instinct was to go to her and pull her into my arms, but I refrained, letting her handle this however she needed to.
“I heard what you guys were talking about,” Kinsley started. “What do you think your mom and brother would say if they knew about me?” she asked Markus, staring him down with the alpha power I’d already been feeling from her.
“My brother—his name is Triton, by the way—would probably be pretty excited for a sister, and my mother…” Markus grimaced. “Well, she’s pretty broken after everything that’s happened. She doesn’t talk much anymore and hasn’t left the house in months. No offense, but I probably won’t tell her until I think she’s mentally capable of knowing that there’s physical proof walking around this House of her mate’s infidelity. Considering how much worse things are getting here, that might not ever happen. Unless you’ve come to change that.”
Fuck.I had a feeling someone was going to ask that once I’d figured out who Kinsley was. She was strong, but I wasn’t sure she was ready for what he was suggesting.
“What do you mean?” Kinsley asked, proving my point.
