Page 211 of Broken Bonds

“Yes.”

“My first grandchild.”

I scowl. “What about Brynnella’s baby? I’ve been curious since she wasn’t at the press conference. Did she have it already?”

Her lips press in a thin line and nearly go white. “Randolph wanted her to get rid of it because it wasn’t a boy. She refused an abortion, so he made Thad secretly drug her. Switched out her hot tea and her prenatal vitamins.” She blinks back tears. “Once she miscarried, Randolph told her he hoped the next one would be a boy.”

“Fuuuuuck!”

“I didn’t know,” she adds. “Not until after. She called me in hysterics, and I went over.”

“Why didn’t she leave him?”

Mom’s eyebrow arches. “Do you really need to ask that question?”

“True. Is that why she wasn’t at the press conference?”

Mom nods. “It’d happened six days before. When she threatened to leave, Randolph told her he’d have her family killed in front of her before killing her. Including her three little sisters.”

I slump back in my chair. “Wow. I didn’t think it was possible to hate the old man more than I already do, but I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry he’s your father, honey. You know how vicious he is. Brynnella basically had a nervous breakdown. She’s been heavily medicated ever since. I’m not sure if she’ll ever recover. As much as I hate to say it, maybe she’s better off. At least this way she doesn’t have a child who can be used against her for leverage.”

“Or who can be molded into another generation of mini-assholes,” I say.

She finishes washing up, starts the dishwasher, and sits next to me at the table. “I wish I’d been braver. I wish I’d killed him in his sleep after we got married.”

“You didn’t have a mate bond with him, did you?”

Shaking her head, she grimly smiles. “Arranged marriage. Never forgave my father, either.” I lay a hand over hers as a breath shudders out of her. “But you’re not a therapist, honey. I shouldn’t be telling you all of this.”

“I want to know.”

She blinks back tears and doesn’t speak for a while. “You said you and Todd have a mate bond?”

“Yeah. Neither of us was sure, at first. It was sort of a slow burn for a few days before it came to a boil. And we can talk to each other mentally.”

A dark cloud fills her features. “He didn’t…force you?”

“No! I swear, everything we did, I was fully on board. He was more cautious than I was. I kept trying to talk him into doing more.”

She nods. “Good. I’m glad. You deserve to have a good man.” She sniffles. “My wedding night was not…enjoyable.” She blows out a shaky breath. “But he wanted sons. Wanted clay to mold.” She squeezes my hand. “When you came along, he already had three Alpha sons. I begged him to let me keep you, no matter what you were.”

“What do you mean?”

“He never let me keep girls,” she whispers. It takes a moment for the full impact of the horror to hit me. “But now knowing what I do, maybe that’s best. Because he probably would’ve sold off a daughter to whoever paid him enough to marry into the family.”

I hate to ask this. “How many?”

“Four,” she softly says. “Four little girls. One after Thad, one after David, and two after Harrison.”

Horrified, I wrap my arms around her. “I’m so sorry.” I hate that my questions dredged all of that up.

“I begged him to let me keep you, girl or boy. To please let me keep you, and I would keep having as many babies as he wanted after that. I told him I didn’t care if he wanted to sleep around, that he could do whatever he wanted, even father pups with others and bring them home for me to pretend I had them—anything. By then, he was so busy playing perfect father and pack Alpha and working that he agreed.”

“Thank god he never made you have more.”

Despite her tears she smiles. “My doctor hated him. He put me on bed rest four months in and told Randolph I’d lose the baby and possibly never have more pups if I didn’t rest.”