Kira fought past the lump in her throat. “You called.”
“Calling isn’t coming to see how you’re doing, though,” Susan said mildly.
Mark started to put the food into the fridge. “We’ll let you decide what to freeze and what to keep out. There are some of Joshua’s favorites, but Sue also remembered a few of the dishes your mother used to bring to the pack potlucks.”
“I can’t promise they’ll be anything like you remember,” Susan warned, flushing.
Kira stared at her, her chest tightening. Heat rose in her face, and she wanted to reassure them both. And, she also wanted to refuse the food, to tell them that she was fine and didn’t need the help. There was just something so nurturing about it that made her feel… feel…
Loved.
Oh, and she was messing everything up with Joshua. And if she messed things up with him, she’d mess things up with his parents and lose this feeling.
“Oh, my dear.” Susan squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t cry, dear. Everything is going to be okay.”
Kira’s lip trembled as tears leaked down her face. “I don’t see how.”
“They’ll find that demon, just like the last one,” Mark said bracingly. “Joshua spent quite a few years in the military. He’s trained for this.”
She believed that. Maybe it was the part she ought to be worried about, but she wasn’t as afraid of the demon as she was about her own inability to be a good wife and mate. To bridge the gap between them. Just like her vision… she didn’t know how she was going to mend fences between them when she couldn’t be vulnerable enough to tell him the truth.
Even now, she didn’t know how to tell his parents the full truth of what was between them. She couldn’t betray his trust… but if anyone could know why he didn’t want children, it would be them, wouldn’t it?
She let Mark and Susan take care of her. Mark took over the cooking while Susan went with her through the house, tidying and cleaning everything. Kira felt much more settled when they sat around the table, the food kept warm on the stove while they waited for Joshua’s return.
And it was there, surrounded by the care that they’d shown her, that she admitted it. “He won’t give me children. I’ve always wanted to be a mother, but he doesn’t want to be a father. He’s told me that outright. He said I could adopt or use a donor if I wanted, but I can’t bring a child into a situation where they won’t have two loving parents.”
Susan reached across the table and squeezed Kira’s hand. “My dear, I don’t think you understand what he said.”
“He told me plainly.”
Mark sighed. “To be clear, did he say that he didn’t want children, or that he didn’t want to havebiologicalchildren?”
“He—” Kira cut herself off. He had used that word. She hadn’t fully realized it, not until now. Bloodlines were so important in the pack, which was why witch descendants either hid their ancestry or faced ostracism.
“Do you think Joshua wouldn’t love your children if they weren’t his blood?” Susan asked gently.
Kira tried to remember Joshua’s exact words. He had brought up the alternatives. He’d said something about publicly claiming her children as his, didn’t he? Her mind swirled inconfusion. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t understand what they were saying…
“Joshua has a big heart,” Susan continued, smiling softly. “I remember one time when he first came to us, he found an injured bird. He put it in a shoebox and spent all his savings taking it to a vet clinic on the mainland. We were worried sick. But then… that big heart got him into trouble and he had to harden himself.”
When he first came to them? Kira remembered how he’d reacted when his parents started to talk about his childhood at that first dinner. Her heart jumped to her throat. “Why did you say that?”
Susan, who was in the middle of a different story, paused. “Pardon me, dear?”
“You said when he first came to you. What do you mean?”
Mark leaned back in his chair. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Kira’s voice was soft. She knew. Somehow she already knew, but she needed to hear it aloud.
Mark and Susan shared a glance. Susan nodded, and Mark answered, “We adopted Joshua when he was five.”
It explained so much. He didn’t look like either Mark or Susan, and certainly didn’t act like them. The reluctance to talk about his childhood and how he’d reacted during the dinner made so much sense now. Who were his biological parents? Had he even been born into the pack? And… would he have the position within the pack he had if someone else had taken him in?
It was an unsettling thought—that the way the pack treated them was based on such happenstance.
Even worse, he didn’t tell her. Did he think she’d look down on him for it? There was a strangely hard emphasis on bloodlines, but she wasn’t the type of person to think poorly about someone for the happenstance of their birth.
