Page 181

Brandon

“Oh my god, that was so good,” Jules said, pushing herself away from her plate, her hands resting on top of her belly. Satisfaction, pleasure, and love radiated from our mate, and our daughter lapped it up like mother’s milk.

I hadn’t sensed our daughter’s consciousness until well after Jules made her announcement, hadn’t even known what it was initially.

I’d been reading the book of our relationship to Jules as we lay in bed, the late afternoon light coming in golden and mild through the window.

I’d kept my voice calm and even, as I read to her all the words that had clawed their way out of me before I met her and after.

But underneath that cool, calm mask, I’d loved the way Jules hung on my every word, her hand going to my arm and holding on when I described some of the more raw moments.

It was the sweetest thing, because I could feel that love, unfettered and unending, coming down the bond, and because it was completely unpredicted.

I hadn’t foreseen this moment, didn’t know we would end up like this, since the visions of our child were so fleeting and immaterial, I’d always wondered if it would actually happen. Still did, if I was honest.

It’s all too neat , a voice in the back of my head said. Jules might not carry her to full term, something might happen to her, the White Wolf ? —

I’d stilled the thoughts using the mindfulness techniques I’d used since I was a kid, focussing on the here and now, since I was unwilling to let my worries take away what was before me, a beautiful moment with my mate.

She was so soft and sleepy and open, something that could be hard to get from Jules at times.

We pushed her buttons and always got intense responses from her—sex, love, anger, frustration, need. Just like she did for us.

Perhaps it was because I’d let the quiet inside myself that she came with it.

I was looking down at the page, about to restart where I was reading, when I felt it. The pack’s minds touched mine all the time without realising it, but I knew each one’s feel and flavour. This was something else altogether. I frowned, fear spiking as I felt something, someone rushing at me.

Bam! She was in me, connected completely and utterly, and somehow joyful about it.

Like, totally joyful. Very few adults are able to throw themselves entirely into one feeling, since their emotions are usually a weird combination of many, but not her.

It felt like a young kitten or puppy that had come barrelling up and curled its little furry body up in my arms, while I was left wondering who she belonged to.

You , my Tirian said. She belongs to you.

I just sat with that information for a second, as Jules said something that I didn’t hear. Instead, I reached out for the childish consciousness that had collided with mine and held it.

Is this what being a father is like? I wondered as I closed my eyes, just feeling that warm, burbling, psychic signature of our daughter and treasuring it.

In that moment, I saw my parents the clearest. The love between a parent and a child is this amazing, terrible, frightening thing, I realised.

She was so small right now, unable to live beyond her mother’s body, completely vulnerable, and I loved her.

I loved this little creature who couldn’t fend for herself, who couldn’t stop random biological processes from hurting her, and neither could I.

“Mum, do you remember…” I stood in the kitchen of my old childhood home, my family sitting around the big table in the middle of it. “Do you remember feeling me before I was born?”

I knew the answer the moment she looked at my dads. Brandy snorted at this, but when silence reigned across the room, she inspected us more closely.

“What’s he talking about?” she asked, but our parents just watched me, then Mum nodded.

“I thought it was normal, to feel the presence of your child as they grew inside you. It wasn’t until Brandy was conceived that I realised, and by that time, the alpha had been alerted to your abilities. You were just a…”

“Spark,” Adam said. “You felt like this bright little spark, and we huddled around you, protecting you.”

“Being warmed by you,” Duke said.

“Every night, when we were all in bed, we’d cluster around your mother, like rocks around a flame and just…commune with you. This little wonder,” John said.

“And that never happened with me,” Brandy said. Her expression, completely flat and scrubbed clear of emotion, worried me. Being my sister came at a price, just as most of the relationships I had did.

“Brandy, you were a treasure in a whole other way,” Mum said, but my sister just sat there, staring at the table top.

“But you know what this means,” John said. His smile was a cautious thing, like he wasn’t sure it was appropriate. “This is your daughter.”

“Of course she’s my daughter.”

“No, she’s your daughter,” Mum said, sitting up straighter. “This means she’s… I need to talk to the alpha.”

“No!”

It was weird, seeing my parents jump at my order, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

The thought of all the attention and the testing, the looks and the expectations, the adult conversations being held with me when I was way too young.

That couldn’t happen to my daughter. They’d find out in their own time.

“No,” I said more softly. “Not yet, not now. I haven’t even had this conversation with Jules.

They’ll want to…” Words failed me as I thought just how much more invasive things would get once people were alerted our daughter might be a seer like me.

Branwen, the White Wolf, Eomis, and Sylvan, all of it bombarded me like actual physical blows, and I fought to keep my breathing under control.

“No one says a word.” My voice carried with it an alpha resonance that had everyone recoiling in shock, then becoming still as my will beat down.

“She’s my baby, and she’s going to get a chance to be one before all this bullshit comes beating down on her.

” I hated this, the frozen bodies of my family, the stink of their fear.

They had no idea I could do this, no one here did.

Men didn’t use the alpha whip and survive, not until now.

This would put a target on my back. Finn was working on creating greater acceptance of alpha men, but it was slow going.

But even as I coerced my family into compliance, my Tirian shifted inside me, and I realised whatever skills I had were nothing against the Great Wolf herself.

We chose this , I insisted. We chose to keep out of it .

But your daughter didn’t , my beast replied.

“I’m sorry,” I said, slipping off the kitchen bench. “I didn’t want to do this to you. Maybe…maybe you should just forget we had this conversation.”

I grabbed my keys and shoved them in my pocket, my fingers itching for a cigarette, even if it was just something to hold, so I wrapped them around the keys instead.

“You off already?” Mum said as she came to, now that the compulsion had worn off. “You only just got here.”

I looked at the lot of them, all blankly happy now my compulsion had wiped the memory of my discussion with them away. I hated doing it, but I’d do much worse to protect my child.

“Something’s come up with Jules. She asked me to come home.”

“She OK? How’s she coping with the pregnancy?” Brandy said with a grin. “Have you been doing the lymphatic massage I showed you?”

“Yep, that’s helped a lot,” I said. “I’ll see if she wants another when I get home.”

“Brandon?”

I blinked as I came back to the dining room, the feeling of our daughter’s happiness filling the gaps left inside me by my memories.

“Do you mind giving me a massage again?” Jules asked, and I nodded, smiling. Touching her, stroking her, easing some of the pain that radiated off her soothed me and her.

“Of course, love, and then maybe a nap?”