A raw, rasping whine filled his throat before he could bite it down. He ducked his head as if to escape her hands, but April didn’t let him hide. She put her arms around his neck, laid her head on his shoulder, and lifted one hand to weave her fingers into his hair and hope the tenderness that overflowed her soul for him was something his wolf senses couldn’t miss. At her touch, his body shuddered, as if it did indeed feel the tender place in her heart that was fresh, surprising, and only for this wolf.
“You are so strong,” she whispered. “And I know what that means to you. But, Malachi, it isn’t weak to feel pain. It isn’t weak to need to talk. It’s the opposite; it’s a self-awareness that requires its own kind of strength.”
He was silent and still for long minutes. His body never relaxed. He held her to him, let her hold him, breathed tightly, and remained motionless.
At last he said, “I was born with amber eyes.”
Thirteen
Inthearmsofhis mate, Malachi’s wolf heart wanted to sing. But then she asked for his past. He tried to outlast her willingness to hear him. Then he tried to speak—tried three times.
The fourth try, he said, “I was born with amber eyes.”
It was the only way to begin. April nodded against his neck, her soft hair brushing his cheek. Her arms were firm around his neck. She wasn’t letting go.
The breath rasped in his chest. His voice rasped in his throat. He shut his eyes and focused on facts. A report. This way he could grant what she asked and maintain strength, both at once.
“My parents believed I was a vampire for a few years. They found it a little unsettling, but Helena, my mother, joined an online group for vampire mothers and began asking questions. Not everything they said lined up with her experience, but she was deep into the belief that I could be nothing else. She didn’t tell the other mothers that she had an infant; they all discussed their teenage children emerging, changing, and she said things like, ‘My son always seems to be running a fever,’ to which the other parents responded with how odd that was for a teen vampire, to which Helena would delete her comment. And if you’re wondering how I know any of this, she told me when I was seven.”
His chest cracked with a growl. April’s fingers began to stroke his hair, and her touch… He shut his eyes again. She was wrong about the strength shown in talking, but for her, he would try.
“For a year, Helena stayed in the group. Read everything. Had to discard most of it, of course. The sharpened senses were the same, but almost nothing else. And then one day they were talking about eye color—metallic variations, violet and that distinct blue, silver and steel-gray—and Helena said, ‘How common is yellow?’”
A hard shudder seized his body. Came from nowhere, gripped him before he could do a thing about it. April’s arms tightened around his neck. Her fingers pressed into his scalp, but the sensation helped him, grounded him. After a moment her hand began stroking his hair again, and he could go on.
“She received messages from dozens of women who berated her for trolling them…and then one woman told her the truth. ‘I don’t think you’re a troll. I think you’re a human mother who joined this group because you’re scared, so I’m going to help you. Yellow eyes are one in a million, but when they show up in a child, they always mean werewolf.’”
April gave a soft gasp.
“I don’t use the term,” he said. “Unless I’m relaying someone else’s use of it.”
“Of course,” she whispered. “But…when you were small…surely your mother didn’t?”
A snarl tried to escape, but he swallowed most of it.
“Malachi, I am so sorry.”
She didn’t even know anything yet. He cleared his throat. “I was three years old at the time. The color of my eyes, my elevated body temperature, my keen hearing and eyesight—she had the answer for all of it. Now, granted, most wolves don’t develop those second two until they’re thirteen and begin changing under the moon. But with my extra wolf DNA, I developed some traits early.”
“That makes sense.”
Sense. Yes. Logical sense. Hold onto that. But the ability to report facts was slipping away with every sentence he spoke. He was alpha, sitting in a cabin built largely with his own hands, talking to his mate. But he was also a confused, helpless pup, hungry all the time, monthly digging in his heels as two adult sets of hands pushed him into the darkness and shut the door while he promised to be good, not to hurt them, not to hurt anyone, not to turn into a wolf. His body felt wrenched open, all his insides allowed to spill out. Breathing hurt.
“I don’t know how to continue,” he said.
“Can I help you continue?” she said against his neck.
She was so gentle. With him. He could hardly take it. He cupped the back of her head and set a kiss in her hair.
“You’ve been strong tonight,” she said. “Stronger than you know, I think. We can stop if you need to.”
“I want it out, but I don’t know…how.”
“Your parents weren’t kind to you, when they finally understood what you are.”
“No.”
Then he sat there in more silence he couldn’t break through.
