Page 123 of The Alpha's Seer

“Not by choice, Calix,” Mom reminds me, her gaze steely.

I falter but know I need to say it. She needs to hear it.

“Fifty percent of him is pure wolf. Seventy-five percent if you count his shitty father’s genes. Twenty-five percent of him is demon.”

“So? It’s not his fault!” Mom snaps at me.

“He’s partdemon, Mom.” I drag my hands through my hair. “God knows how many of the little bastards he created.”

“Calix!” Blair hisses at me as Mom drops her eyes to the table.

“After everything I endured, Calix.” Her voice is small, but every word cuts. “I carried a child that was conceived through torture. I lived with that weight, and every night I woke with him in my head. I can hate the man who did it—I do—but the baby… the baby is an innocent in all of this.”

She swallows hard as if the words hurt to push past her throat. “If I can feel pity and fear for that child—if I can see that it’s half victim, half threat—why can’t you at least see both sides? We owe them a chance—not because of the bastard who made them, but because mercy separatesusfrom the likes ofhim.”

Her fists unclench, trembling. “I don’t want them in my house, Calix. I don’t want them near you or Blair. But murder? That won’t unmake what happened. It will only make us the same kind of monsters we’re fighting. If I can do it, why can’t you?”

I grunt in response.

Because I don’t fucking want to, that’s why.

“I’m sorry you went through that,” I tell her. “But I don’t have to empathize with thesethings, and I won’t. Not even for you.”

“I think you should go.” Mom stands and points at the door with a trembling finger, her eyes shining. “Calix, leave. Now.”

“Fine,” I spit out, looking at my mate, who’s already on her feet. “But my child won’t be growing up with filth like that lurking in the background, always a threat. They’ll never fit in anywhere but hell. We can’t let them survive.”

She looks at me with raw pleading. “Consider exile, strict guardianship, or binding them to a distant foster pack—anything but killing a child.”

For a second—one second—something flickers in me at the idea of exile, of keeping them away and watched and alive. Then the heat of it returns: the thought of those genes, the risk.

“No,” I say, harder than I mean to. “We can’t let them survive.”

Then I leave, having told her I’m going to murder her other son along with any of his siblings.

Blair scurries after me, and I wait for her outside, my chest heaving. She pulls me into her arms and soothes me, but I know she won’t ever agree with murdering those kids.

But she has to understand the threat they pose.

To our kind.

To all kinds.

Chapter Fifty-Two

BLAIR

Istroke my swollen stomach lovingly as Calix chops wood near the lake. I love watching him do this, especially when he’s shirtless.

Damn, he’s fine.

He wipes his brow, which isn’t that sweaty, and winks at me.

“How’s our son?”

“She’s fine,” I quip back, enjoying the banter over the gender of our child. We don’t care whether it’s a boy or girl, but we love playing games.

Especially cat and mouse, but I am too heavily pregnant to be chased around the woods.