This got their full attention. Gazes locked on me, one set of eyes concerned and the other with flames raging. “I can find out very easily,” Shadow warned me, chest rumbling harder. “It’s not good for your health to hide information from me.”
Mera reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Babe, if we read between her not-so-subtle lines, this is kind of the reason Sam has been avoiding us. Maybe tone it back.”
He rumbled again before shaking his head. “I don’t tone, you know that, Sunshine.” She shot him a small smile and soft eyes, and he let out a huff. “But I might have time for a stroll with our baby girl. Give you two a few minutes to chat.”
Shadow might think he didn’t tone... but for his Sunshine he went close.
There was no place he was out of earshot though, so I proceeded as if Shadow was at my side listening. “I truly am sorry, Mera. You and Simone are shifters I could see myself being best friends with forever. Growing old together—” I paused. “Wait, do you age?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Neither does Simone, but that’s her story to tell. Back to yours.”
She was impatient, and as predicted, I could no longer hide the truth from her. Not when she was face to face with me.
“You know how I told you that before I shifted I dated a moon-loving, crystal-wearing, gorgeous man who marked me with his vision of a wolf.” I pressed my hand to my tattoo, the memories still not clear, outside of those few moments I’d managed to recall.
Mera nodded. “Yes, I remember. The tattoo caught my attention because it’s super lifelike, and because it was not a normal shifter wolf, but more like…” She trailed off and I blinked at her, waiting for the rest of the thought.
“More like what?” I finally prompted.
“Simone’s new wolf,” she whispered. “Holy fuck. It’s just like Simone’s new hybrid form, and… it must be connected. Shadow said that we’re all connected, which is why I have not…will not…give up on you.”
Simone’s hybrid wolf form?I’d clearly missed a lot in my prison of Clarity pack and shutting out the rest of the world.
Mera shook her head at the confused expression I was shooting her way. “We’ll deal with that later. Let’s get back to your story before Shadow gets antsy.”
I glanced back down the path again. “How much longer can he keep holding Clarity pack in stasis?”
Mera laughed, relaxing. “He could hold them forever. Don’t worry about that.”
Fair enough. “So, anyway, the crystal-loving dude,” I continued. “The weird part about my relationship with him is that I could only ever remember those few facts. At the time I thought it was because I was away from the pack, my wolf angsty about being alone. Or maybe it was due to the fact that he was human, or at least I thought he was human…”
Mera was nodding, her expression encouraging.
“Turns out, I was pregnant.”
She went so still she could have been mistaken for a Clarity pack statue. “Pregnant? To a human?”
I shrugged and coughed out a weird sound. “The baby is not human, and timing suggests it was crystal guy, but I can’t actually remember anything else from that time. I don’t even remember being pregnant. Apparently, I stumbled into Clarity when I was pregnant and in the fog of memory loss, shifted here, and found out my mate was the alpha’s son. They didn’t take kindly to me being knocked up, so they took the baby from me. The only reason she wasn’t killed was to be used as a bargaining tool. They hid her from me until I tried to escape into your old pack.”
Mera’s mouth was so wide open now I could see down her damn throat. “You never knew about your baby until Alpha Lorenze called you back?”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember any of it. Being pregnant, giving birth, shifting and finding my true mate. Anything that was connected to that part of my history and the child is a blank space in my head. Completely blank.”
The pain of knowing what I’d missed was all I had from that time.
“Why did they let you leave in the first place, if they had the baby to keep you there?”
I swallowed hard, trying to find words. “The alpha’s son rebelled and rejected me. He didn’t want used goods. The alpha released me in an attempt to force his son’s hand. It didn’t work, and after the alpha killed him, the contingency plan was initiated. I was yanked back in and forced to exist here until the second son was of mating age.”
Mera’s arms were around me so fast that I almost shoved her away as a reflex. It was only as the warmth of her energy surrounded me that I relaxed. It had been so long since I was hugged like this, full-bodily, and I couldn’t contain the sob that rose up in my chest. This was why I’d avoided seeing her or Simone. Why I’d avoided close relationships. I could not afford to hope or wish or want for a life that was out of reach.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mera choked out against my shoulder. “We would have helped you save your child. No mom should have to miss out on those days with their baby.”
Fuck. She really wanted to break me.
When she pulled back, she stared into my eyes hard enough to see my brain. No idea what she was searching for, but if she thought she could pry memories free like that, she was welcomed to try. The gods knew I’d already tried everything.
“We are going to fix this,” she said with all the confidence of her goddess-like powers. “You should have known that Shadow would smite that fucking alpha in a heartbeat. Why did you waste all this time trying to deal with him and sacrifice yourself?”
