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“No. Nothing that I’d know how to crack. I haven’t spoken to my gramps since I was a teenager.” I looked at Maia, feeling all my old resentment at my gramps rising to the surface. “Any ideas, Mai Mai?”
She smiled at the nickname, and I felt the world brighten just a little. The world had always felt better growing up whenever I could get my sister to smile. “Can I read the letter?”
I felt the smile on my face disappear in an instant. “Yeah. I guess I can’t put it off anymore. Can we step outside to do it, though?”
“Sure,” Maia said, with more than a little sarcasm. “If everyone will let me up.”
“Bear. Off.” I growled and tapped him on the nose. Bear grunted in annoyance, but lifted his head off Maia’s lap.
“How did you do that?” Lexie complained loudly while glaring at Bear. “He never listens to me.” Bear ambled over and whuffed at her as he butted her hip to pacify her.
I just smiled as I held out my hand to Maia to help her up. I hesitated next to Lexie for a moment, wondering if I should ask her to come with us. This was going to be hard, but in my heart, I felt it should be just Maia and me as she read it. Lexie leant forward and kissed me lightly. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
I sent her a silent thank you through the bond and turned to head outside. It felt like we were heading out to meet the firing squad, not read a letter.
The door closed behind us and before we moved away, I heard Lexie ask, “Are we really going to pretend like we’re not going to watch out the window?”
I shook my head, but I wasn’t really surprised or even upset. It was part of living in a small community, amongst family. I headed over to the large shady tree at the edge of the garden and handed the letter to Maia.
She fiddled with it for a moment before opening it, and glanced up at me, almost shyly. “I read some of your letters yesterday. They were in order and I started at the beginning. The first one was dated the day you left, the one you said you wrote from out in the barn. Ben must have found it with gramps’ things. I just wanted you to know. It meant a lot to me to read it.”
I nodded to her. Finding those letters still felt too raw to talk about.
“I took them out of the metal box. There was a beautiful old timber box in Damon’s study, and he let me have it to keep them in. I’m going to treasure them, Sam. I mean, I believed you when you told me you’d written them, but actually reading them is completely different. Your emotions were so strong as you wrote them, I could almost feel them soaked into the paper.”
“Those letters were my lifeline while I was gone.” My throat was suddenly tight, and she reached out to grab my hand. My gaze flicked down to the one in her hand now, and she tracked my focus.
I’d dreamed of being able to give her one of my letters in person. Yet, here I was with another letter for her that was so very different. “I wish I was handing you one of my letters now. I’m afraid this one won’t bring you any joy.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she looked at the letter in concern as she dropped my hand and flipped it open. She started reading straight away, tracing her finger over the words as if she was trying to connect with gramps through the ink he’d used. She was always romantic about letters and books. It was why I’d kept writing, knowing if she was getting them, they’d mean so much to her.
A small bang had me glancing back at the security cabin, to see a window full of startled faces and a curtain rod hanging half across their heads. Most of them were frozen in place, as if I couldn’t see them if they didn’t move, while Hunter was pretending to clean a spot with his sleeve. I loved them all at that moment. They were family. Even Maia’s mates.
When I turned back to Maia, there were silent tears tracking through the devastation on her face. I hated causing her this pain, and I’d put it off as long as I could. I’d even briefly considered not showing her, but that wouldn’t have been fair.
I gasped when Maia suddenly grabbed her chest as if she was in pain, and fell to the grass as her legs crumpled underneath her. I dropped beside her, taking her into my arms, but her mates were already out the door. Leif ripped her away from me as Damon, Hunter and Max surrounded her protectively, shooting dark glares my way.
“What the fuck is in that letter?” Damon snarled at me as Lexie jumped in front of me and my mates surrounded me from behind, lending their silent support. I could sense raw pain coming from Maia as she sat in her mate’s arms.
We suddenly looked like two opposing groups about to go to war, not friends and family. I couldn’t stand it, so I blurted out the truth that had been eating away at me quietly since I’d first read that letter.
“Our gramps didn’t just steal all their research. He stole us.”
“Explain. Now,” Damon ground out, a growl growing in his chest and his beast riding him hard.
“Damon,” Lexie snapped, “they’re both in pain. Can’t you see that?”
Damon looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister.
“Fuck. Sorry,” Damon ground out, and attempted to rein himself in. “Something is driving our beasts to protect Maia right now, to the point of irrationality. It’s worse than usual. I need him to explain before I lose it.”
“Sam, what do you mean by he stole you?” Lexie asked me in a gentler tone.
“The mother and father who raised us weren’t our biological parents, which I guess explains how our mother could dump us so easily when things got rough.” My voice sounded strained even to my own ears.
“According to our gramps, our biological mother was his omega. They kept her in a facility they built. She became their first research subject. They did constant tests and trials on her. They thought they could make omegas more fertile by dominating them more and making them more submissive. The tests included attempts to breed her and when she fell pregnant twice, they claimed their project was a success. Gramps wasn’t one of our biological fathers, though. He was older than the others and not an alpha, so they deemed him unsuitable for the breeding tests.
“In his letter, he said he objected to their tests, especially as they steadily became more extreme, but they wouldn’t stop. When she died, he took us, along with all the research they’d gained from their tests on our mother. He hired a couple to raise us and hide us in beta society, figuring we’d be safer there.”
