Still, he didn’t do anything more than come in a couple of steps and close the door.
A tense silence filled the room as she waited for him to speak.
“Is something on your mind?” she prompted.
“Yes… I’ve been trying to figure out how you’re a shifter if Cratus is your father. We don’t just spontaneously come into this world.”
He was right. They normally required two shifter parents to have a child with those abilities. It was rare for even a hybrid with only one shifter parent to be able to transform.
For her…
“My mother’s father was a shifter.”
The surprised expression was quite comical. “Beg pardon?”
“My mother’s not the only one who steps outside the bond of marriage. Apparently, her mother had a voracious appetite herself.”
“I’m trying to make sense of this.”
She couldn’t blame him for the struggle. It was a hard one.
“Who was her father?”
“She’s never spoken of him. All I know is that she lied to me years ago. I didn’t put it together until you mentioned the mark under the tongue.”
“How do you mean?”
“My mother has such a mark. She told me that she had it put there so that we could always tell it was her and not an imposter.”
Ronan went pale. “She said what?”
“I had no reason not to believe her. But…”
“You think Meara’s a shifter?”
She shook her head. “She can’t shift. I know that for a fact. It infuriates her that she’s stuck in a centaur’s body.” And now it made a lot more sense why that angered her. No doubt, she felt robbed by her genetic code.
“But you can.”
“Exactly. I always thought it came from my father. But no one ever mentioned Cratus having those powers. If the shifting isn’t from him…” She arched a brow.
“It has to come from your mother.”
“Exactly,” she said with a nod. “But have you ever heard of it skipping a generation?”
Ronan grew silent as he considered that. “No one knows much about us because they’re always too busy trying to kill us. And there aren’t that many of us left. I know in most mixed marriages, the children can’t shift. Not always true…but it’s uncommon for it to happen. It was why those marriages were forbidden while Lygaria stood. They were trying to preserve our race because even then our numbers were dwindling.”
That made sense to her. But it didn’t answer her primary question. “I know my grandmother wasn’t a shifter.”
“Do you? She could have been one of us who only lived as a centaur.”
“You can do that?”
He nodded. “I have a friend who spends her life as a bird. She almost never shifts into any other form. It’s not uncommon for shifters to withdraw from the world and live as something else. Again, it’s why no one knows how many of us are left. We could be the insect in the room or anything.”
“So, there’s no way of knowing where this came from?”
“None at all.”
