Page 22 of Cruel Revenge
“I think they have a mate bond they haven’t told anyone about,” Benjamin whispered.
“No!” Arlo didn’t agree at all. “You keep saying that, but I’m not buying it. I think they would tell us if they did.”
“They look at each other secretly like Dirk and Landon do,” Benjamin continued, arguing his case. “Like they know exactly when the other is looking at them and stuff.”
Benjamin was the people watcher of the two. I was inclined to believe him noticing things like that. At the same time, I believed that if Teagan and Olivia had a real mate bond, we’d all know about it. At least Heath would, and he would tell me. Or I wanted to believe he would tell me.
“Well, I just wanted to check in, and since everything seems okay, that’s all.”
“You weren’t awake when she got here. Of course, you’re more cautious than the rest of us,” Arlo said, sounding ten years older than he had any right to. “Dirk trusted her enough to bringher to help you, though. Teagan was going to protect her from Heath if he had to. Your mom likes her. We like her. It’s all good, Jacky.” Arlo grinned. “We’re going to go hang out at the packhouse now.”
“Go have fun,” I said, stepping back and waving as they got back to walking.
When I reached the house again, I could smell something new. There was a nervous energy that hadn’t been there earlier. My anxiety jumped as I recognized it as Carey’s nerves and wondered what had gotten her worked up from breakfast to now. I went back into my office to find her there, fiddling with her phone, and she jumped out of her skin as I entered.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“I need to talk to you about something important, and my dad can’t know,” she said simply, her nervous swallow almost audible.
“Are you in danger? What’s happening?”
“I’m not in any danger. I don’t think. Um…” Carey started pacing. “You know, you and Dad are covered by the news, right? I know we pretend like it’s not happening because it’s not like we have paparazzi here or anything, but it happens.”
“Heath and I are public figures. He’s a well-known public Alpha, and I’m designated as the werecat rep for humanity,” I confirmed. “We don’t do a lot publicly, but there are people interested in what we’re doing and where we are.” I let my brother, Davor, and Dirk manage all of that. Davor made sure nothing too personal snuck out into the public and if it did, he had alerts to quickly get things taken down or held off. He didn’t report any of this to me. I was allowed to live my life and ignore it.
Heath didn’t particularly care about his own movements being followed, either, something Callahan taught all the Alphas. Just move about the world like a normal person, and the articlesget less news. It worked. We weren’t very interesting, so only niche, obsessed humans really cared, and none of them were stupid enough to become proper stalkers. Beyond that, the BSA was always trying to follow all of us.
“Well, you and Dad… your engagement made the news ages ago, right? It’s been public for a long time. It got whispered out there by some BSA agent or another werewolf Alpha or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Because of that, someone reached out to me recently.” Carey was looking down at her phone, flipping it around in her hands.
“Who?”
“My biological mother,” she answered softly.
Oh, shit.
I couldn’t stop my pulse from skyrocketing. I couldn’t stop my breathing from becoming a little too fast and shallow. I did my best to keep those as my only reactions to this information, though, as I walked around my desk and reached my seat. I planted my hands on my desk and sat down, letting that news hit me.
“And because I don’t want Dad to know about this, but I did want you to know, I had to wait for a good moment to tell you.” Carey came closer to the desk, her eyes bright with anxiety.
“And today is it.”
“And I started getting really nervous, knowing you were going to be back in here any second,” she explained, coming another step closer.
“So, what does this mean? Your biological mother has reached out. She must have hired an investigator to get your phone number. You don’t have social media anymore.”
“Yeah. You guessed exactly right,” she said, nodding. “She wants to have dinner. She said she’s felt really guilty about leaving me for all these years and… with you and Dad getting married…”
“You want to meet her.” I closed my eyes.
This is her mother. Her real mother. She’s not even seventeen. Of course, she wants to meet her mom finally. Give the woman a chance…
“Yeah,” Carey confirmed softly. “But only once. I just need her to explain… all of it. Why she left and stuff. I don’t want anything else from her.”
“Really?” I asked, pained. I couldn’t smell a lie, but this was an unexpectedly painful conversation to be having. I couldn’t force my human emotions to trust what my werecat nose knew.
“I promise. It’s all I want. Just to hear her side of things. She’s never been in my life. I don’t really want her to be in right now, but with you about to marry Dad… I think it’s a good time for me to get answers from her.”
“I don’t like this,” I admitted.
