Page 63 of Ruin

Stone raised a brow. “You can teach us that?”

“Yep. So where’s queen bitch?”

Stone raised his silver brows as they turned away. “Why do you call her that?” he asked.

Ember giggled, and in a move she did just to piss him off, she took Stone’s arm in hers. He frowned down at her, but didn’t pull away. “I’ll tell you before she comes…”

Their voices faded and I turned back, spotting a dark haired woman sitting in the shadows at the back of the cave.Shadow fae…I took a deep breath and walked towards my mother.

Her shadowed face lifted as I approached, her dark eyes softening, though I didn’t miss the way she clasped her hands nervously in her lap. A pang of remorse hit me. I had been so angry with this tall, elegant woman my whole life. When I was a baby up until the time she had left, she had never been there when my father beat me, and she had only rarely been around to hold me and comfort me. Then she had left and the beatings, or discipline as he’d called it, had only gotten worse. Now I understood how shit her life had always been. My father had likely locked her away, keeping us apart. All these years, I had blamed my mother for leaving when it washewho had lied to me.

Mother Wolf, he hadsoldher to a fucking demon general. I breathed in to calm my anger. She tensed as if sensing my emotion. But it wasn’t directed at her, it was directed at the man who had given me life, and then destroyed it. As I’d gotten older, I’d worked out that the bastard who was my father wanted a successor, one who in his mind was strong enough to stand beside him. I hadn’t planned my escape from him, but when he’d taken me on a business trip to London from our mountain home in France, I’d run. It had been a spur of the moment decision, an opportunity where the fates aligned to give me a few seconds freedom. He had just left the room and was talking to my guard, and the guard had left the door slightly ajar. Without thinking about it, I’d darted into the hall and jumped down the laundry shoot. I’d hit the bottom and broken an ankle, but the pain didn’t stop me. I’d known I needed to get away before my father broke me completely.

There had been no way I could get out before his guards found me, and even if I did, he’d hunt me down by scent. I’d hobbled to the detergent store and poured the perfumed powder over my head, rubbing it in my skin and hair, and then chucked a load of sheets over the evidence on the floor before I shimmied back into the laundry shoot. It had only been minutes before they came searching. I hid in the darkness praying to the Mother that they would be fooled and think my faint scent in the shoot was from where I’d slid down it. They did. Even my father had told them to leave it, that I would have run. Yeah, he really hadn’t known me, at all.

Everyday, I climbed out and poured that disgusting powder over my skin. Then ignoring the pain in my ankle and the burning on my skin and in my eyes, I climbed back in and used my good foot and my back to jam myself back in the shoot. At night when the staff had left and I was thirsty, I sneaked to the nearest tap to drink, but I didn’t dare try and find food. I pushed the memory of my escape from my father away and concentrated on my mother.

“Hi,” I said gently. She gave me a weak smile. “May I sit?” I indicated the chair opposite her.

She nodded, her attention not wavering from me.

Alex mumbled something about privacy and moved a respectable distance from us.

“How are you?” I asked, a little unsure where to start. I understood now why she had left, but I still had questions—about so many things.

“I am...fine.”

I nodded, my fingers gripping the chair arms tight enough to make them creak. “I’m sorry about Zander. I know how much he loved you, and I know how much he sacrificed for me. I, umm, I don’t know what to say about him.” I couldn’t help my next question. I couldn’t stop it tumbling from my lips; it had been rattling around in my thoughts for so long. “Why did you leave me? Why did you go?”

She sighed, and looked down at her hands. “I had no choice. And my life may have been full of pain and abuse but I have two beautiful sons because of it. I love you, Connor, I always have, just as Zander loved you. From the moment I told him about you when he was a young boy, he loved you, he vowed to find you. When he found out from King L’nar that you had been recruited by him, too, Zander did everything in his power to keep you safe, while trying to protect me from Berith.”

Regret dragged on my heart because of my treatment of Zander, but it seemed we had both done things we regretted. “I can see that now. I treated him badly.”

“Yes, and he treated you and yours badly. Connor, none of this is your fault, or his. He never wanted to hurt you or your friends; but life is never simple.”

I swallowed hard. “I know. I just wish he was here now. I had genuinely started to like him, and I would have loved to get to know him as my brother.”

A small smile curved her mouth. “I’m glad. He always wanted to meet his big brother. Then when you arrived, King L’nar warned him not to tell you who he was.”

My brows dipped. “Why?”

Her slim shoulders rose and fell. “So that you wouldn’t lose your focus. Or that’s what Zander thought. Walker, as you call him, even let Zander know where Ember was living. Somehow, Walker knew how much that girl meant to you. He made Zander leak the information of a powerful female shifter working for a banished fae, to Doherty. Walker even sent his son to make a deal with Doherty for the human girl who worked with your mate, to get her out of the way.”

“Wait, so Doherty genuinely thought Ember was a killer? He didn’t know who she really was?”

“No. Zander made sure she didn’t reveal herself with her fire to that bastard. Zander loved you, and he wanted you to be happy. That’s why he really brought Ember to you, it wasn’t to threaten you, though that’s why Walker wanted her there.”

I rubbed my face. “Dammit, I thought Zander had brought her to the prison to use her against me; to make me work quicker.”

She blinked slowly. “No. Zander kept her safe, and when he realised how much she meant to you, that she was your soul mate, he planned to get you both out as soon as he could.”

Now it was my turn to close my eyes briefly. “Gods, his life was more of a prison than mine. He was trapped by BerithandWalker.”

“He was, but he knew that the High King would give us a way out eventually, all of us. That’s why he did what he did. Don’t be angry with him. He had no choice.”

“I’m not angry, not anymore. I just wish I’d known.” I blew out a deep breath. “He sacrificed his life for me. I’m so sorry, Mother.”

She gave me a watery smile. “It’s not your fault. Zander is strong willed and powerful, you couldn’t have stopped him, no one could, even if he’d told anyone his plans, which he didn’t. But I do miss him. He was always my rock, my reason for living after I lost you. He took so much abuse from his father...as much as you did from yours.” Her voice broke and she coughed, raising her eyes to mine.

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