His voice dimmed as I noticed the hulking figure darkening the open doorway. My stomach contracted. How long had August been standingthere?
Liam exploited my moment of inattention to touch me. His fingers were suddenly on my face, pushing a lock of hair off myforehead.
I prancedbackward.
He unhurriedly returned his hand to his side, seemingly unshaken by myreaction.
“What did you just say? The same way my what?” I repeatedtersely.
“The same way your father waited for yourmother.”
“My father?” I frowned. “I don’t understand.” I glanced over his shoulder again, but the doorway wasempty.
“Remember how I told you mates didn’t always end up together the night of the pledgingceremony?”
Ice filled my veins. “My father had amate?”
“No.Myfather hadone.”
What did Heath having a mate have to do with myfather—
Oh. . .
Oh.
My hand climbed up to my mouth. “My mom was your dad’smate?”
He didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. Just looked at what his revelation was doing to me. At the thoughts detonating inside myskull.
My mother had been intended for Liam’s father, not for myown.
Yet she’d picked myfather.
She’d loved him, not hermate.
“It created quite the stir back in the day,” Liam said, walking over to the bed to sit on it. The stiff mattress creased under him. “Your mom was sixteen and had already been dating your father for three years. And my father . . . Well, he wasn’t looking to settle. But the mating link made tensions rise. I don’t know the full story. Just bits and pieces. My father was an angry drunk, but a voluble one.” Liam rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. “A month or two into the link, he decided he did want to be with your mother, so he tried to woo her away from your dad. But, Maggie, she was in love with your father.” He studied one of the lines of sunshine that slashed the squeaky clean linoleum floor. “So you see, I don’t put much stock in mating links,Ness.”
He raised his gaze back to my face. Although I was no longer clasping my mouth, it still gaped. I wasn’t sure whether it would ever closeagain.
My mother andHeath?
Ishivered.
“Maybe the moon, or the wolf God, or whatever’s up there”—he gestured noncommittally to the ceiling—“opens connections between people, but in the end, those people are still masters of their own destinies. Of their ownhearts.”
Dust motes spangled the air between us, coming in and out offocus.
Liam didn’t speak for a long moment as though understanding that I needed time and silence to processthis.
“You and August have history. And unlike my father, August is a good guy, so I understand if you’re confused about how you feel abouthim—”
The chill that had enveloped my body was replaced by lava-hot heat. I palmed the back of my neck, hoping my cool hand would drive the heat backdown.
“—but don’t forget how you felt about me before he came into thepicture.”
How the hell did he know I felt conflicted aboutAugust?
Was itobvious?
