Clearing my throat, I drop my arm from Sabrina’s shoulders to take her hand. Stroking my thumb over the back of her hand, I internally hiss,Don’t do this now. We can shift tonight, you can roam free and terrorize the Slaughter’s pack and make all kinds of new problems for us, but let me have this time to see if this might fix things between me and Mom.
“If you think Sabrina can fix things between you and your mother, she was right about you. It’s a bitch move to expect her to solve everything that you can’t, and the more pressure that you put on her shoulders, the more she’ll subconsciously resent you for it. The only thing that can change things is if your mother decides to get past her own hang ups and stop punishing her son for existing when his only crime was genetics.”
I attempt to reply, but he cuts me off with a guttural snarl.“It’s why Sabrina is perfect for us. She understands what it means to wear the face of someone that torments her. She’s everything, and if you fuck this up for us, I’ll make the rest of your life a living hell.”
What has my life come to?
Damian saves me as I get so caught up in fighting with myself, I forget to answer again. “He means we were planning on saving her from the men that she’d unintentionally bound herself to since she claimed them before even realizing she was one of us. Offer her a do-over, if you will. But then we realized she actually loved them, we got to know them and decided they weren’t completely awful, and one thing led to another. So we wound up bringing all of them back here, and we’re currently shacking up in the Slaughter alphas’ cabin while we figure out what the fuck to do from here so they can get to know their long-lost daughter.”
My mother releases a pathetic squeak. “No wonder you’re the spitting image of her. YouareAnni’s daughter then?”
Gritting her teeth in a weak smile that’s transparent as hell, Sabrina attempts to play nice. “Yep. Sabrina, spawn of Annika. Bear with me as I mess all of this up since I didn’t know about any of this wolf nonsense until a little over a month ago and I’m still getting up to speed, but it’s nice to meet you.”
She extends a hand to shake that my mother immediately takes, dragging her in for a hug and getting teary eyed. “I can’t believe it.” After a moment of blubbering, she holds her out at arm’s length, looking her over before going right for the jugular, “Where the heck have you two been all of these years? Why’d she leave in the first place; pregnant, no less? Is she going to return now that you’re here?” Briefly, she glances at me. “Things will be better now, right? Everything broke when Annika left, but if her daughter returned, surely that’ll even things out?”
Her gaze is there and gone before I can even assure myself that I remember the color of her eyes. “We’re hoping, of course, but if not, that changes nothing.Sabrinais here, and that in itself brings hope. Maybe not in the way you’re thinking, but some much needed change nonetheless.”
I’d forgotten how confrontational and tactless my mother could be after all of these years of shooing me out the door as quickly as possible. “So, the seven of you then?” Gaze flitting over her, she addresses Sabrina with an assessing glint in her eyes. “They waited to bring you home until they knocked you up so your fathers couldn’t deny their claim, I presume?”
Choking on her spit, Sabrina sputters, “Hard no on that one.” Tapping her inner arm, she clarifies, “Birth control may be fighting for its life, but it’s hanging in there like a champ.”
She furrows her brow, turning to Derrick, but he pointedly finds a spot on the wall incredibly fascinating. The others don’t help her out either, so she’s left with no choice but to focus on me, and dear gods, while I wished for her attention for years, I never expected it to be for this hellacious of a topic. No grown man should have to take point on giving his mother any branch of the sex talk, but seeing as no other woman on the mountain has left besides Annika...
“Human women have a few different medical options that keep them from getting pregnant when they have sex.” Damian snickers behind me, and I shoot him a quick glare before elaborating. “So until her implant expires or she chooses to, Sabrina won’t be getting pregnant.”
My mother looks at my mate like she has three heads. “But you’re not human.”
“No,” Sabrina concedes, “but I was until recent events. Regardless, my value extends beyond that of being treated as a broodmare, and with food as scarce as it is, do you really want more mouths to feed out here? Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, or my birth control will lose a year off its lifespan because of my newly activated shifter healing abilities and I’ll have a surprise baby, but that’s not really a driving factor for me. I get enough meaning out of life as I am without needing a kid to validate my existence.”
Wincing, she backtracks, “That came out wrong, but you know what I’m trying to say. I mean that even if I never have kids, that doesn’t lessen my life in any way. But as it stands, the fact that everyone is pressuring me to repopulate a dying race is exactly the reason why Ishouldn’t.That’s a recipe for falling into the trap of girls getting used their entire lives for the sake of the ‘greater good,’ and to be completely blunt? That’s gross, probably why all of you guys are in this mess in the first place, and generally just wrong on so many levels. If you’re only looking at someone’s life as valuable for what you can wring out of them, you’re on the wrong side of history.”
Shrugging, Sabrina sums up, “There’s enough stress in my life without having someone completely dependent on me when we can hardly take care of ourselves. I don’t want a baby right now; maybe not ever. You guys auction off girls like they’re some rare prize to use and abuse, and the guys are worked to death and miserable. Doesn’t really seem conducive for a happy, healthy life, and one might argue it’s a mercy not bringing someone into this shitshow.”
Heavy silence follows her words, and it hits me hard. I was so caught up on the thought of getting Sabrina to notice me, hoping that she’d choose to claim me, I never gave any thought to the fact that she might actually never want kids. In my brain, it was the default. If you were lucky enough to find a mate, you cemented the bond, had as many kids as you were blessed with, and lived happily ever after. It was the picturesque life that people dream about... or at least, I thought.
I’m an idiot, aren’t I?
My other half doesn’t deign to answer me, but I feel him writhing around, taunting me with the fact that he’s integrated himself throughout my system to the point that he could take over at any moment without warning, and with very little effort.
Not only is my mother staring at her, but so are my step-fathers. Everyone in the room is caught in Sabrina’s web, helpless to escape the hard facts that she spits back into our faces, and I can’t find a single counterpoint to argue. She’s completely right. You shouldn’t have kids simply because it’s expected, or someone thinks you should, you should have them because you want to. Otherwise, you wind up in situations of people like Annika being parents, and as someone that’s been miserable the better part of his life, I’d have to agree that being born isn’t the de facto blessing that people like to pretend it is.
But there’s still a part of me that’s able to envision Sabrina carrying my child, or any of my packmates’, and I can’t deny that it satisfies something deep within my soul. While I want that, though, I can’t ever imagine coercing Sabrina into it if she wasn’t nearly as excited about the concept.
These are the things normal people discussbeforethey get into a long-term relationship.
“We’re not normal, and it’s not a make or break factor for us. We loveSabrina;hard stop. Nothing else matters.”
He has a valid point, but regardless, the entire topic has my stomach twisted up in knots.
“Either way, I’m happy to have you here,” my mother diplomatically decrees, ending the tension before it can continue to grow.
Breathing easier, we follow them deeper into the cabin. There’s barely enough room for us all, needing to drag the chairs from the table closer to the couches, while Bo and Reid wind up leaning against the walls. Tugging Sabrina down onto my lap as I sit on the couch, I thread my fingers into a makeshift seat belt around her waist, keeping her trapped on top of me. Squirming a bit, she settles in more comfortably, reclining against me as we carry on the conversation that I’m seriously struggling to focus on.
The biggest downside of my mother always reluctant to look at me; she ignores all of my pointed looks as she brings up story after story of Annika since they grew up together.
“Such a stubborn thing, Anni,” she says with an amused huff. “Always giving her mother lip, sneaking off at any chance she could before someone would drag her home for her fathers to deal with. She made everything so much harder than it had to be.”
Slade mutters under his breath. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
