Noah’s nostrils flared but after a few tense seconds he and his brother nodded.
I turned to Reese. “Keep close to me,” I said in her ear.
We followed Noah and Ronan inside without introductions, which I’d expected. They might be my family but not the side I was close to.
“How is he doing?” I asked once we stepped inside the cabin. From the doorway, we could see up the stairs into a lounge area on one side and a hallway on the far side. I knew that hallway led to the four main bedrooms.
“He slipped into a coma a couple of hours ago,” Ronan said, his hazel eyes dropping to the floor.
My heart kicked against my chest.
“It’s too late,” Chance said inside of my head.
“He’s gone, then,” I said.
Both of my cousins turned sharp eyes onto me, angered. “Wouldn’t you wish he were?” Noah retorted.
I took a step in his direction, pissed at his accusation, but a tug on my hand stopped me.
“Who’re we talking about?” Reese asked.
“Who are you?”
“Don’t speak to her,” I barked at Ronan. I could let him off the hook for speaking harshly with me but I would beat his ass with one of those dumbass stuffed antlers mounted on the wall before I let him talk to my mate in the same manner.
He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes to slits as he looked between Reese and me. His gaze dropped to our intertwined hands and then back up to me. Recognition dawned on his face.
Fuck.
My hope was to get in and out of here before having to tell any one of them that she was my mate.
I let go of Reese’s hand and turned so that I stood between her and my cousins. “My grandfather,” I finally confessed. “He needed to speak with me.”
I thought back to the out-of-the-blue phone call I’d received days earlier. If my wolf senses weren’t so keen, I wouldn’t have recognized his voice. It’d been so long since I heard it.
“This is…” Her question drifted off while her wide-eyed gaze studied the room around her. Her attention landed on a painted picture mounted above the fireplace. I glanced over at Chance, and he, too, examined the image, the features of his face rigid. I could feel him doing his best to hold back the emotion of being back there again.
The painting was of a man and a woman seated. Behind them stood two children, a little boy and a girl.
“Is that your mother?” Reese asked, breaking the silence.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and ignored my cousins, whose eyes I could feel on me.
“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “It is her as a little girl.” I looked at my cousins. “Did he say anything to you before he went into a coma?” My grandfather, who I hadn’t seen or spoken to since right after my parents were killed, had called me and begged me and Chance to come up to Colorado. He knew his end was near and felt he needed to speak with us in person.
“He didn’t tell us anything,” Ronan answered. “Only that he’d called you.”
“Who’s come?” a woman’s voice asked from over the second-floor stairwell.
I glanced up to find my grandfather’s second mate, AnneMarie, slowly making her way down the stairs.
“Grandmother,” Noah called, going to her. I watched as he held his hand out for her to take. They exchanged a sweet look, his deference for her evident.
Chance watched them as well. Neither one of us had met this woman before. She wasn’t our biological grandmother. She was the woman my grandfather mated with after our grandmother died.
“Chael,” she said as she reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a sheen in her eyes as she looked up at me from her stooped position. I was sure at this late stage in her life, she hadn’t shifted in years. “Chance.” Her smile widened.
“He was asking for both of you.” Her gaze volleyed between my brother and me for a beat and then she peered at Reese. “And you are Chael’s—”
