Page 11 of Faithless
Mom’s head snapped around to face me. “The dove has talked to you? Has it told you its name?”
“I…what?”
“Answer me, Rori. What has it said to you?”
I’d never heard my mom speak so harshly before. Now it was her breath coming out in short, panicked puffs. My fearless mother, Mariposa Wilder, motorcycle club queen and battle medic of wars past, didn’t just look afraid. She looked terrified.
I swallowed, but there was no moisture left in my mouth. “Its name is Astarte,” I said. “And it said it was my destiny.”
“Oh no…” Mom whispered with the smallest shake of her head. Then she turned to face the dove, anger coursing through her words. “Listen, you willnottake my daughter! Not after everythingwedid! Do you hear me?”
An odd sensation rumbled over my skin, and I somehow knew it was an amused reaction. Something like laughter.
Mariposa, child of Freyja,the voice chuckled. I felt it in my head, on my skin, everywhere.You know how this works. Your daughter is already mine.
5
RORI
Iwas so fucking confused.
Over the next twenty minutes, my mother refused to explain another word. She only said that all my fathers needed to be here for a family meeting. She called Shadow at the tattoo shop, telling him something in a hushed whisper before hanging up the phone after a few seconds.
The next thing she did was send Nolan to our grandparents’ house down the street, which confused me even more. Rather than a family meeting, it seemed more like some kind of parental intervention.
Shadow must have left his shop immediately after getting off the phone with Mom, because his loud motorcycle rumbled up the driveway just as my other parents and I settled into the living room. I sat cross-legged in the big armchair, hugging a pillow to my chest as he came through the door. A looming, scarred figure with black hair to his broad shoulders, Shadow made grown men swallow and step back when he entered a room.
He also worshiped the ground my mother walked on and was the first to hold me whenever I had a meltdown as a kid, whether from a nightmare or a scraped knee.
I didn’t know exactly what he did for the Steel Demons back in the day. Everyone said he was an enforcer, which could have been anything from slitting throats to making sure people were loyal to the president, Reaper.
I knew in my gut that he had killed people. All my dads and probably even my mom had. Their softer sides were private, reserved for at home with our family and friends. The public only knew their deadly sides, and Shadow was said to be the deadliest of all of them.
“Rori,” he grunted out softly, crossing the room to my armchair in two long strides.
“Hey, Dad—uh, hi.” To my surprise, he dropped to his knees in front of the chair and hauled me to his chest in a protective bear hug. He even bowed over me, as if the house were caving in and he was trying to shield me from a collapsing roof. My family and I were close, but it had probably been a decade since he hugged me like this, if not longer.
He held me like I was a little girl, using his size and strength to protect me like I was tiny and vulnerable again. And that was what clued me in to how serious this really was. I was a grown woman, one that had learned to hold my own and take care of myself, and my most protective father wanted to shield me from it all.
I gripped the edge of his cut at his shoulder, allowing myself to burrow into his embrace for a moment. “Dad, what’s going on?”
Shadow lifted his head. “Have you filled her in?”
“Not yet,” Mom answered. “We wanted everyone to be here.”
“Yes, please, fill her in whenever you’re ready,” I snapped, annoyed with all the secrecy.
Shadow released me and went to sit on the couch next to Jandro while my mom opened the sliding door all the way. “You might as well come in. We all know what you are,” she yelled outside.
The dove flew in moments later, perching on the stair banister while I felt myself curl up into a ball again.
“Astarte,” my mother said in a clipped tone. “Tell us what you want with our daughter.”
That is between Aurora and I. It does not involve you, daughter of Freyja.
Everyone else in the room flinched as if something unseen had touched them all at the same time. “Shit, been a while since I heard a god inside my head,” Gunner said, rubbing his temple.
Something clicked into place, a missing piece of my parents’ past that made the big picture much more clearer.
