Chapter 65
SIXTY-FIVE
Jez
THIS... COULDN’T BE. I was looking at my mother, but through the frosted glass of eight years’ passage of time.
Her lank, dark blond hair, always swept back in a bun or a braid, was now cut to bob length and peppered with silver.
She was thinner than I remembered, deep lines of stress and worry cutting across her brow and cheeks.
“Mom?” My voice sounded high-pitched and unsteady, like a child’s.
Like a thirteen-year-old girl’s.
“Oh, Jezzie,” she said, the words riding on the back of a jagged breath. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”
We both moved at the same time, staggering toward each other like two people caught in an earthquake. Then we crashed into each other, and bony arms wrapped around me with the strength of a mother’s love.
I wrapped her up in turn, hating how hollow and birdlike her jutting bones felt.
“Mom...” I choked, since that was apparently the only word I still knew.
Her fingers combed through my hair, the movements nearly frantic. Through the bond, three presences hovered as though trying not to intrude; alpha protective emotions held tightly in check.
“I never stopped looking for you, baby. I swear I didn’t!” My mom buried her face in my neck. “But there were no leads... it was like you’d disappeared from the face of the earth! I talked to the police... tried to hire a private investigator—”
“It’s all right, Mom,” I interrupted, but she shook her head sharply. The tears on her cheeks matched the tears on my own.
“No,” she said. “It’s not all right. He found out what I was doing. Kept me trapped in the house for weeks; wouldn’t let me near a phone or a computer. He even smashed the TV so I couldn’t watch the news.”
There was no need to ask who ‘he’ was. I squeezed her tighter.
“I would have come back home,” I whispered. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t.” Not while my father was there. The final part went unsaid, but it echoed still between us, deafening.
How had she gotten away from him, even so many years later? Had she managed to run? To get a divorce?
“Are you and he still—” I began, hesitant.
“He’s dead,” she said, the words dropping like boulders. “An accident. He was drunk. He fell down the stairs.”
I jerked backwards, my hands on her shoulders to steady both of us. The sudden suspicion in my own mind echoed back and forth with a similar suspicion from my bondmates.
“He... fell?” I echoed cautiously, scanning my mother’s face.
Her expression hardened in a way that was completely foreign to my memories of her—the righteous, unyielding planes and angles of a monument to Lady Justice.
“Yes,” she said, her tone absolutely flat. “An accident. He fell down the stairs.”
Inside the doorway, Gage let out a low whistle.
“Guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree,” he said under his breath.
“I got his money, eventually,” my mother went on, still stony-faced. “I’ve been searching for you ever since. For seven years and four months, I looked everywhere I could think of. Hired people, tried to get the news channels interested, lobbied every politician I could find.”
Her shoulders slumped beneath my hands.
“And I got nowhere, until a lawyer contacted me a few days ago and gave me Mr. Knockley’s number.”
My eyes flew to Knox.
“I’ve had people searching since we discussed the matter, before your last heat,” he said. “It took a little longer than I would have liked—sorry about that.”
“I changed back to my maiden name,” my mother said. “That probably made it harder.”
It was so much to take in—but there were other questions I needed to ask. “What about Jackson and Jonathan?”
My older brothers, who’d been away when the whole thing kicked off. Jackson, in the army, and Jonathan at college.
My mother nodded quickly, wiping at the tear tracks on her cheeks.
“They’re both fine. Our relationship has been.
.. strained... since you were taken. But they’ll want to see you.
I held off on telling them about this trip, because I had to make sure first.” A look of exhaustion swept over her.
“There have been, well, some false alarms over the years. I’d see someone from behind, or from a distance, and for a moment I’d be so sure it was you. ”
My heart ached at the idea of my mom rushing toward a stranger in the middle of a crowd, only to find out it wasn’t me.
I’d spent so much time trying to survive, trying to manufacture some kind of meaning for my own life, that I hadn’t thought much about what the last eight years must have been like for the rest of my family.
“I want to see them, too,” I assured her.
I hadn’t even begun to truly wrap my brain around the idea of my father being gone. Much less the idea of seeing my brothers after so long. But I also had news to share, after eight years apart.
“I don’t know how much Knox told you about us,” I began.
“Nothing about the pack,” he said. “Just that you were with us and safe.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath and stepping back to include the others. “I’m mated now, Mom. You already know Knox, or at least, you’ve spoken with him. This is Heath. This is Gage. And this is Tony, my best friend in the entire world, who is also in our pack.”
The others approached. Heath stuck his hand out as though he wasn’t sure what the proper greeting was for a long-lost mother-in-law, but my mom scoffed at him and drew him into a hug instead.
From him, she went on to Gage, who wrapped her up until she practically disappeared beneath his bulk—and then to Tony, who was doing a bad job of hiding tears.
“Hi,” he told her unsteadily, “Nice to meet you. And if you’re willing to take on an honorary kid, I’m very much in the market for a parent who doesn’t suck.”
My mother let out a little noise that was half-laugh, half-sob. “Hi, Tony. I’m not so sure how well I qualify for that. But if you’re part of Jezzie’s family, you’re stuck with me now, too.”
Tony pulled back and gave her a watery smile. “Trust me on this part—you qualify. Welcome to the pack.”
She smiled back, before turning to Knox. “You. Come here.”
Knox submitted to a hug, and then to letting my mom take his face in her hands and tug him down until she could press a kiss to his forehead.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He gathered her hands in his and straightened, smiling down at her from his ten-inch advantage in height. “You’re welcome.”
The six of us talked long into the night, while Gage plied my mom with Michelin-star leftovers.
Our plans, our hopes, our dreams... talk of the future, now that the darkness of the past no longer ruled our lives. There were still aspects of that past I wasn’t willing to tell her about—like how I’d first met Knox, for one thing. Maybe one day, I’d be ready to share that.
For now, though, it didn’t matter.
We were together.
Safe.
Loved.
“How would you feel about the idea of living overseas?” Gage asked, his elbows resting loosely on his knees as he leaned toward my mother. “Someplace like, for instance, Portugal?”
Mom blinked. “I... don’t speak Portuguese.”
“Neither do we,” Heath muttered wryly.
The conversation continued on a hundred different subjects—years’ worth of pent-up words, finally freed. Eventually, exhaustion set in—for Mom and me, at least.
“You could stay here with us tonight,” I said. “Right, Knox?”
He smiled. “She has the suite next door. If you two would rather have some privacy, that is.”
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Your new pack is rich-rich, baby. I’m pretty sure the nightly rates at this hotel are about the same as our mortgage used to be.”
“Only the best for our mother-in-law,” Gage said magnanimously.
My mother smiled at him, before turning the expression on me. “I can’t say I’m in a hurry to let you out of my sight, now that I’ve finally got you back, baby. Want to come camp out with me for the night? It’ll be like old times—there’s even a fireplace in the room.”
Immediately, I was swept back to memories of campfires in the forest—wrapping up with blankets and singing at the top of our voices.
“Does room service do hot cocoa?” I asked.
“Almost certainly,” Knox said.
Mom shot me a conspiratorial look. “How about s’mores?”
“That, I’m less sure of,” Knox replied, visibly amused.
“There’s a bit of chocolate lava cake left in one of the restaurant bags,” Gage offered.
My mother and I shared a look.
“Close enough,” I said.
Later, we sat leaning together on the rug in front of the crackling fireplace with full bellies and overflowing hearts. Mom had dragged the expensive comforter off of the queen-sized bed and wrapped it around both our shoulders, even though the room was a comfortable seventy-two degrees.
I found my hand wandering once more to my belly, as it had been doing often over the past couple of weeks. My mother glanced down and nudged my shoulder with hers.
“Too much cake?” she asked gently.
I shook my head. “No, it’s...” I trailed off, unable to stop a wistful smile from curving my lips. “My heat was two weeks ago. I haven’t taken a test yet, but... I think I’m pregnant. An old alpha grandma told me tonight that it would be twins.”
My mom’s breath caught. “You’re going to have twins?” Her voice sounded faint, but she pulled me tight against her side. “Oh, Jezzie...!”
“I’m terrified,” I admitted. “And also so excited that I can barely think about anything else. What business have I got raising kids? But, this pack—”
“Your pack,” my mother said, taking my face gently in her hands, “is amazing.” She paused, a smile like the sun coming up sliding over her careworn features. “And, you know—I did pretty well in Spanish class, back when I was in high school.”
“Is that right?” I asked, an answering grin tugging at my lips.
“Mm-hmm,” she confirmed. “So, I bet I could learn Portuguese, too... if I put my mind to it.”