Page 73 of Shifters Unifying
“Were the bodies still there?”
That wiped the leer from his face, and his expression hardened. “No, they were gone, but I found something else in aftermath.”
“What?”
He extended his hand. A small pendant, a golden bat, rested in his palm, red indentations in his fingers showed how tightly he’d been holding it. Inset ruby eyes glittered in the broken light.
“Is it a relic?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “It belonged to my sister.”
“Was she there?”Worse…Had I killed my own birth mother?
His stony exterior cracked, and I could have sworn his chin quivered. He didn’t lower his arm. “I couldn’t smell her.”
“So…” I paused, processing. “Either she wasn’t there?—”
“Or it wasn’t her anymore.”
“What about your… your nephew?” I couldn’t bring myself to call him my brother. Not until we had something more than suspicions.
“Nothing.” He pushed the bat form toward me, and I took a step backward. “But you should have this.”
Accepting his sister’s pendant felt like I would be accepting his assertion that I was his niece, and I couldn’t do that. Not yet. “You keep that,” I said. “It belonged to her.”
“Still don’t believe me?” He took a breath. “Is it so repugnant to be related to me?”
“Gifts always come with strings.”
“Not this one.”
“Are you sure?”
“If it came with strings, it wouldn’t be a gift, Emma,” he said, so softly I strained to hear him. “Please take it.”
“I can’t drop everything and go looking for your sister… or her son. I have to do what I’m here to do.”
“I know.” His voice cracked, exposing the grief he hid behind his bravado. “Don’t you think I know that?”
I plucked it from his palm, careful not to touch him. “Why did your sister have a bat pendant?”
“When she first learned to shift, we went exploring together and came back with it. We found a trove of relics deep in the only bat cave in Louisiana.”
“Where’s that?’
“Wolf Moon Cave.”
“Were there more relics there?”
“There were, at the back. Through a few booby-traps, and we always said we’d go back once I was appointed as the alpha of Ville Platte. Though, we never did.”
“Good to know.”
“There’s something else.”
“What is it? It wasn’t long after her exploring that she discovered she was pregnant. She always said the father was a human, but…”
“But now you’re not so sure,” I finished. “Great. That’s great.” I scrubbed my hand over my face. I didn’t need anything else to sort through with all the shit going on in the shifter world. “Are we done here?”
