“See? She could have gone and didn’t,” Frances snapped. Long, kohl-darkened fingers curled around her cup so tight, the glass squeaked ominously. “No one’s forcing anything, boy. Unlike you, Sue cares about staying close to the clan, helping out.”
“You can keep pretending that you wanted me to stay here and I abandoned you so that you can feel good about hating me,” Kaz shot back, as hard and sharp as a knife’s blade. “I don’t care what you think of me, Frances. I care about the fact that it sounds like you’ve pressured Sue into giving up her dream. Why? You afraid that she’ll realize there’s a bigger, better world out there? Oneyoudon’t control?”
“Kaz—” Tosun and Atria spoke at the same time, but both were cut off by Frances slamming a heavy palm on the table. Every bit of cutlery and tableware rattled.
“I sent a daughter out into the world once and shipped her directly toyourfather. Ask me how that worked out for her.”
Kaz narrowed his eyes. “Amira made the choice to leave, and then she made another choice when she pursued a relationship with Thaddeus. You respected her right to choose her path even when it was clearly disastrous. Why is Suhana different?”
“Suedidchoose,” Frances argued. “She chose to stay!”
Kaz didn’t give an inch. “Is it really a choice if your matriarch pressures you into it using your dead sister as leverage?”
A low growl rumbled in Frances’s chest. Pain, old but undulled by time, cut through her aura. “Keep this up and I’ll throw you out of this house. You have no right to talk about Amira that way. She’s notleverage.She was my daughter, and she’s gone because of your madman of a father. If I want to keep my youngest child safe, is that a crime? At least I care about her. Can’t say the same for you about Amira. You’ve never even visited your mother’s cairn.”
“Frances.” Tosun’s voice was low and firm. He rested the heels of his palms against the edge of the table and leveled his mate with a hard look. “Stop.”
Atria found Kaz’s hand beneath the table and gave it a firm squeeze. “That’s enough, I think,” she said, fighting to keep her protective instincts in check as she backed up Tosun’s call for a ceasefire. “There is a lot of pain here. A lot of pressure. Sometimes anger helps release that pressure, but more often than not it only adds to it. I think everyone should take a breath before they speak again.”
Silence reigned for several long minutes. Frances and Kaz were locked in a glaring match for most of that time. They didn’t seem to realize that their jaws stuck out at the same stubborn angle, nor that their low growls had a similar cadence. They had no way of knowing that their pain mirrored one another’s.
Atria shared a raised brow look with Tosun and Suhana, who could only shrug helplessly.
They wouldn’t help her mate by stepping into the argument. He was on his own and probably always had been when it came to conflicts with his grandmother. That seemed awfully unfair to her.
He’d picked a fight, certainly, but Frances met him halfway. They’d both come to the table swinging and the rest of the family was apparently content to watch it play out. Atria tried not to hold it against them. Family dynamics were layered and often painfully bound up in guilt, obligation, and reinforced behavior. She understood that.
She didn’t have to like it. She might want to give Frances a good, hard shove for talking to her mate that way, even, but it wasn’t about what she wanted. It was about Kaz. It was about whatheneeded.
He needed her to be calm. He needed her to help. He needed to know he wasn’t alone at the table or anywhere else.
He had her. Even when he started an argument, she would stand by his side and do what she could to help him. If it came down to it, she’d fight for him, too.
Her first instinct was to get through the meal as quickly as possible and then get out, excusing her mate from a situation that caused him pain. But that wasn’t fair to him, nor to his family. They both deserved the opportunity to reconnect. She would do what she could to ease the way.
Putting aside the defensiveness that made her want to bare her teeth at his grandmother, she sent him a burst of warmth and determination. The feeling rippled out through his aura like a stone dropped into deep water.
Look at me, big guy. Focus on me.
He cut his gaze to her. After a tense moment, his jaw flexed then released. He took a deep breath through his nose. When her mate was feeling less fragile, she turned her focus to the room.
Easy,she thought, smoothing her fingers over the ugliness that floated in the air around her.Calm. Everything will be all right.
Slowly, the stiff wariness and anger leached out of the orcs assembled around the table.
When Kaz spoke next, the words were bitten off of the tip of his tongue. They weren’t friendly, but they weren’t exactly angry, either. “I haven’t visited her cairn because I don’t know where it is.”
Frances scoffed. “What do you mean you don’t know? You were at the funeral.”
Kaz looked away. Old grief, guilt, and shame rose up from the depths. “I didn’t see where you took her. I left after the viewing.”
“Why?”
“I was too upset.” He gripped Atria’s fingers hard beneath the table. “No one wanted me there. The whole town looked at me like… doesn’t matter now, I guess. I just couldn’t do it. The idea of watching you cover her body with stones made me— I couldn’t handle it, so I snuck out.”
And just like that, the anger that had buoyed Frances bled away.
“Oh.” She sat back in her chair. Her eyes, pale blue and lined with a spiderweb of thin wrinkles, settled on the half-empty platter without really seeing it. The energy that had given her so much belligerent vitality drained away, leaving her older. Tired. “I don’t remember that.”
