His expression cycled through shock, confusion, and something that might have been horror.
Then he squinted at me and said, “Hold on… are you?”
He gave his head a shake, like maybe I was an illusion he could blink away.
But I was still there.
And so was he.
And he looked like the younger version of someone whose face I’d gotten to know very well over the last few weeks. On the table, in the bed, on the couch with Zion and Boone softly encouraging me, at the kitchen sink when a hand job wasn’t enough….
I had a terrible feeling as to who he might be, even before the Mountie asked, “Are you Holly’s mom?”
34/
fuck! fuck! fuck!
BOONE
Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!
I didn't push those words down the bond as I stood outside Ravik's house with my asshole tattletale maul nephew, Takoda, waiting for Bell to finish getting ready and for her daughters to arrive any minute now. But Zion and Ravik heard me.
“Calm yourself, Boone,”Zion advised, while Ravik’s steely reserve washed over me.
Normally, I liked getting the mental side benefits of having them in my head. Emotional regulation, I guess you’d call it. It was like having an automatic control valve for my temper. Or taking those pills that the guy who ran my last boss-mandated anger management course tried to write me a prescription for because he didn’t know I was a bear, and that shit doesn’t work on us.
But in this case, I didn’t see how my first and second mauls could just stand there with their asshole, fucking-Goodie-Two-shoes son when the best month of all our lives was about to fall apart.
Zion and Ravik heard that, too.
“We don’t know that it will fall apart,”Zion insisted, even though I could feel his doubts like they were my own.
Ravik’s face remained stoic, but I sensed him broiling underneath—that this was coming right after the Bell freakout we’d been waiting for ever since she let him claim her on top of his kitchen table.
“Zion’s right,”he insisted anyway.“We’ll have to see how this unfolds and respond accordingly. Meanwhile, it won’t do us any good for you to take out your frustration on Tako?—”
“You know what, who does a quarterly perimeter check of a ghost town, anyway?” I asked Takoda out loud, turning on that asshole before Ravik could finish. “And you just had to go calling your mate like a good little Boy Scout, didn’t you.”
Takoda’s jaw flexed, just like his birth father’s, and his answer came out just as clipped. “You knew Holly was worried sick, and you still didn’t tell us her mother was only a few kilometers away.”
“Boone, stand down.” Zion stepped between us to try that diplomacy shit he loved so much.
“We’re aware of the optics here,” he said to Takoda. “But understand, Bell wasn’t ready to see them.”
Takoda glared at him. “Like Mom wasn’t ready to see Mara until it was too late?” he asked. “Were you trying to make my mate’s relationship with her birth parent as fraught as yours?”
Zion jerked back like his maul son had hit him.
“Takoda…” Ravik began, his voice going dangerously low.
Again, I didn’t let him finish. “You know what, I don’t care that you’re my maul kin,” I said, balling up my hands. “I’m American, and I’m pretty sure you Canadians don’t know how to sue. Say one more word to my second maul, and I will put my big-ass fist through your smug-ass face.”
Takoda scanned me with that same cold reserve as his birth father, then turned to Ravik and Zion. “This is the third you’ve chosen to restart your maul? No wonder you haven’t convinced her to let you three bond bite her.”
“Why you little…” This shithead was determined to buy his ticket for the Fuck Around and Find Out train, and I pulled my arm back, happy to punch it.
“Boone, stop, please.” Bell’s voice froze the Mortal Kombat “FIGHT!” screen.
