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Prologue
Taylee
“Have you ever been in a fog so thick it felt suffocating? Like it might smother you because it’s so thick it’ll wash everything else out, including oxygen?”
Clay snorted. “Relax, Tay. I can see fine.”
Fine might have been an overstatement, but that was Clay. Her oldest brother was one of the most unsettled people she’d ever met, but he’d go to the ends of the earth to protect his family and members of his clan.
“I don’t think so. It’s more than a wall of white. It’s like we’re travelling through a tunnel that has no end. But on a mountain road. It’s kind of unnerving.”
“Look, I know the way. We’ve travelled this road more than a few times since we moved out here. Seattle’s not far. The fog will break up as soon as we’re off this winding bit. Just around the corner. Five minutes.”
She tensed and leaned back against the bench seat. The truck was so old airbags weren’t even a thought when it was constructed, and it was more rust than sheet metal by now. The seatbelts did function, thank goodness. That was all she’d be able to rely on in a wreck.
Taylee’s nails curled into her palms. She waited until she felt the sharp sting and then pressed a little harder and held her breath. She’d done that whenever she was nervous. Everyone thought she was just being patient, counting internally or something, but no. She just needed to force herself to breathe through whatever she had going on. She was doing that now, trying not to make it obvious, but her brother could probably smell her fear.
“We’re going to be fine. Besides, it’s a good omen.”
“How do you figure that?” she snorted, but she did uncurl her fingers and relax her hands slightly. The fog rolled past the truck, cotton candy wisps, but thick and unknowable. It was like venturing into another part of the world, shrouded by the hazy passing of time, years liquified into a different state, turned into misty vapors.
“Well, we’re going to pick up Misty. It seems like a good omen to start the journey off like this.”
“It’s fog, not mist.”
“Close enough.” He glanced over at her for just a half a second. He had the wheel in an easy grip. He wasn’t panicked at all by the lack of visibility.
Rain and fog, sleet, grey skies were all common here in Washington, just outside of Seattle, in the mountains they now called home. It was quite a change coming from Texas, but this had been their home for a little over a year now.
“I didn’t know you were into balancing your chakras and consulting oracle cards.”
“Jesus, Tay. I’m just trying to make you feel better.”
“Okay.”
It was supposed to be Kier and her going to Seattle to pick up the daughter they were going to adopt. Apparently, after adopting his brother’s children, Samuel, alpha of Greenacre, had hired a PI and done some research. He was aware that there were shifters out there, maybe even living close by, and that some of them didn’t have a clue who and what they were or what clan they might belong to—or even why they were the way they were. If there were members of the Greenacre clan out there, relatives of shifters, no matter what generation they were from, he’d been determined to find them.
The PI was another shifter, one who didn’t have a clan and roamed the world without ties or restraint. How Sam found the guy, no one really knew because he’d never admitted how it came about. Maybe Lily knew, but no one was going to pry that information from her. Maybe the how wasn’t important. Sam didn’t want to give anyone false hope or create chaos where it shouldn’t exist, so he hadn’t told anyone, not even his closest friends. Kier knew nothing of it until a few months ago, when Sam admitted to him and Tavish that he’d found a little girl.
Eight years old, the granddaughter of a shifter from the generation before Sam. Knox died of cancer almost twenty years ago, and the girl’s father had gone down the same road. He’d stayed in the human world, raised by his mother. The PI couldn’t find any information on whether he’d ever known he was a shifter, but then, he would have kept it a very close secret. How he’d done it away from his clan, Taylee couldn’t imagine. Her clan was everything. Her family was everything. The girl’s mother had died giving birth. Shifter births were hard. Had she known she was having a shifter’s child? Tay felt the pain of it deep inside of her.
Her birth, in her own clan, with her mother and the clan’s midwife looking after her, had been long and painful, and if she was honest, there were moments where she’d been utterly terrified. Where she’d wanted Josephine at Greenacre and her modern medicine and her experience. But she couldn’t betray her clan. Not that they’d forced her to have the baby with them, but she felt deep down that it would have been a betrayal of the women she loved the most and was so proud of. If things had gone wrong, she knew they wouldn’t have hesitated to take her to Josephine or go and bring her to Pinefall. They would never have put her safety or the baby’s safety above their pride.
“I’m so happy,” she whispered, clutching her hands tightly in her lap. “Onyx is going to have a big sister. Sam did all that work to find her, and the instant he did and found she was in care, he started the adoption process. He’s a good man. The clan couldn’t ask for a better alpha, and Lily is a good mate to him. She’s so kind.”
Clay’s brows inched up. “You’re excited, then? To move in with Kier over there?”
She might have had Onyx with her clan, in the home she shared with her parents, but once she was born, she’d promised Kier that she would move in with him in Greenacre so they could be together as a family. He gave her all the time in the world and hadn’t forced her or made her pick one over the other. He’d just made his wishes known gently and she’d made the promise herself. She loved him. He was her mate. They might have started out seeing each other in secret—a chance meeting of two shifters keeping watch over clans that bordered each other but wanted very little to do with each other—but it had quickly become more. At first, Clay and Jem, her other brother, were furious. Her father too, and her mom wasn’t pleased either. No one was. Her clan hadn’t opened up like Kier’s, and no one appreciated the secrecy and sneaking around.
When it was discovered that she was pregnant, Clay had gone over to Greenacre with the intent of doing some real harm to Kier, but when he found out that Kier knew nothing about the baby because she hadn’t even had a chance to tell him yet, he calmed down. He did what he was rarely ever able to do and listened. He didn’t pound the snot out of anyone. Kier might be big, but Clay was an animal. In the end, once he found out that Kier would do right by her, he gave him the chance to prove himself.
“I’m very excited.”
“It’s a big change. You already have a newborn. Now you’re taking on an eight-year-old girl who has been in the system for years.”
“She’s going to be wonderful, Clay, I know it.”
He grunted. “I hope so. I’m worried about your safety. And Onyx.”
