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“I’m sorry?” I offered, not really sure if an apology was expected.

“No,” she said sharply, reaching out to squeeze my arm. “No, it’s a good thing. It’s different. I’m different. It’s just…..I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I can’t answer that, but if it makes you feel better everything changed for me too when I came here. Who I am, who I thought I was, what I wanted, who I wanted,” I chuckled, the sound a little damp. “Hell, even what my parents are and my brother changed. Sometimes we need to be shaken up so we don’t get stuck.”

“I’m glad you came to Banks.”

“Me too,” I replied softly. “Me too.”

We sat quietly for a few minutes, as I considered the twists my life had taken to get me here. As much as I despised my mother for her coldhearted bitchiness, I also owed her. If she wasn’t the way she was, I wouldn’t have been so determined to escape her and, consequently, the life I’d planned. Dad’s drunken aim had brought him here, and forever changed what we thought we knew about the world.

Shifters existed and according to Dom, I was one of the few breeding females that could possibly bear a shifter child. A quirk of DNA inherited from my Dad that made us different. Except, it wasn’t just my Dad.

“My mom showed up,” I announced, the words spilling from me. I felt Anna shift next to me, but couldn’t look at her as I explained the rest. “She’s a breeding female.”

“What the hell? You’re just now telling me this?” Anna growled, outrage clear in her voice. “What is she doing here? When did she show up? How do you know she’s a breeder?” The questions came lightning fast and I waited until she paused for breath to answer.

“I don’t know. This morning. And Dom,” I spit out answers before she could start again. The next words were harder as I admitted, “She knew. All along she knew what I was, what Monster was.”

“Oh, Jess.” I heard the sympathy in her voice and it almost broke me.

“Or at least she knew what we could become. She never said a word.” My voice cracked and suddenly Anna wrapped her arms around me, engulfing me in hug, squeezing tight enough to keep me from falling apart.

“Your mom is a real bitch. I thought sending your brother via courier was bad but this is so much worse,” Anna mumbled against my hair and a wet snort escaped me. “To not say anything? Who does that?”

“My mother,” I answered, pushing my head back so I could breathe. “It’s a classic, really. She withholds important information and watches me flounder and then says, ‘I told you so,’ when I fail.”

“But your dad,” Anna breathed, loosening her grip finally and I sucked in a deep breath. “He didn’t know either.”

I shook my head. “He was adopted, remember? He never knew anything about shifters.”

“That’s also really strange, by the way. Shifters don’t just let potential shifters get adopted out of the pack.”

“What if they thought he was just human?” I asked, shrugging.

Anna stared at me with wide eyes and shook her head, “Still not cool. And neither is your mother showing up out of the blue.” She sent me a questioning glance. “It was unexpected, right?”

I nodded forcefully, pulling my knees to my chest and propping my chin on them. “I thought after she sent Monster, that was it. She washed her hands of us.”

“And then she shows up.”

“Yep,” I agreed, sucking in a deep breath as I told her the rest. “I might have broken her nose.”

There was dead silence for a beat and then I heard a loud, “Hell, yeah.” I glanced at her in shock as she raised her hand for a high five. I gingerly hit her hand as she gave me a huge grin. “I wish I’d seen that. Did Dom see it?” I nodded mutely and her gaze got that unfocused look that told me she was communicating with the Pack, or more specifically Dom. After a minute, her gaze sharpened and she gave me an impressed nod. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

A laugh escaped me and then another until I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. Anna watched, her expression amused as I laughed to the point of tears, until finally I was just hiccupping. “Done, yet?”

I nodded, leaning back, as I said, “You’re a shifter. I don’t think I’d ever get a punch in on you.”

She considered the thought for a moment before saying, “Maybe a sucker punch.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I mocked, pushing her leg with one of my feet. “Or maybe, I’d just wind up with a broken hand.”

That caught her interest as she grabbed my hand and inspected it. “Hmmm,” she hummed as she examined the clearly unbroken skin. “Dom healed you.”