Her lips pressed together. “He is as good as can be expected.”
“We didn’t know that was what…she planned,” I told her, feeling like it needed to be said. “I know that isn’t an excuse, and I don’t mean it to be, but—”
“Reaver already told us that none of you knew what would happen.” Seraphena closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then reopened them. “We love our sons, both of them. Even when they anger us. That love, though, doesn’t blind us to their faults.” Shaking her head, she appeared to struggle with what to say next. “Malec…he has always been independent, needing to forge his own pathdespitethe risks,” she said. Reaver whistled softly under his breath, and her lips pursed as she seemed to prepare herself. “We understand why what was done had to be done.”
Shock rippled through me, mirrored in Casteel and Kieran.
Seraphena’s gaze lifted to Casteel. “That doesn’t mean we were happy about it.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be,” he said, his thumb swiping across my waist. “Neither would my mother.”
The fresh, springy breeze of a wolven’s imprint brushed against my mind.Poppy?came Delano’s voice.Is everything okay?
Focusing on his mark, I opened the singular pathway to him.Yes.
“Eloana,” Seraphena said. “She loved him.”
Another dose of shock swept through me, momentarily severing my connection with Delano.
“How—?” Casteel paused, his thumb stilling. “How do you know that?”
Delano’s voice reached me once more.We’re being…pulled to Wayfair, but I don’t know why. We feel something…unexpected.
I almost laughed. Something unexpected?
“Neither Nyktos nor I were asleep at the time,” Seraphena explained as I glanced at Kieran. His jaw was tight as he pulled his gaze from the Solar and met mine.
I knew what was happening. It was the Primalnotam. And as I’d told Casteel, since she was the true Primal of Life, her presence in the mortal realm was strengthening the originalnotam.
Everything is okay,I told Delano.I think you’ve been called here because the true Primal of Life is here.
There was a beat of silence, and then,The fuck?
I managed not to laugh.Yeah.
“We never met her, but we…checked in on them—in the least creepy way possible,” she said. “Malec…he did love your mother.”
Casteel’s laugh was short and cutting. “He had an interesting way of showing it.”
The skin at the corners of her mouth pulled taut, but then she nodded curtly. “He treated your mother like the Queen she was until…”
“Until he didn’t,” Casteel finished.
“Until he met her.”
I knew at once that she meant Isbeth, and I had a hard time holding her gaze.
“That doesn’t absolve him of responsibility,” she was quick to say. “Malec made many choices.”
“They really were heartmates?” Casteel asked. “Isbeth and Malec?”
Her gaze flitted away. “They were.”
Casteel tensed behind me. “Then why did you all refuse the heartmate trials?”
“The answer to that question is complicated,” Seraphena said.
I’d always wondered why they’d refuse something like that for one of their sons, but then I realized something. It was partly the timeline surrounding everything, and also instinct. “When did you go to ground?”
