43. Kate
After Kane left ten minutes ago, I pulled on a pair of black maternity leggings and a loose, sleeveless top, then slipped into a pair of cute flip-flops with sparkles on the top. I almost forwent the footwear, wanting to remain barefoot. There’s just something so grounding and natural when the earth is connected to the bottoms of my feet. But I’m good with my choice for today. The entire attire is my mother’s style, not mine, yet it’s comforting wearing the things she’d wear herself.
I piddled in the bathroom, fixing my hair even though all I did was brush it again and then capture my long strands into a ponytail. Kane has a drawer full of them in the vanity. I used the toilet despite not really needing to go. Now, I’m pulling the door open and taking a deep breath as I step outside.
Elijah is seated on the top step of the porch, his back to me. There’s a side-by-side parked in front of him.
I stop next to him, stepping down to the next step, then I lower my butt to sit beside him, my left arm brushing against his. He’s wearing a cream-colored T-shirt and dark jeans with worn boots. Despite this moment being strange and a bit awkward, I’ve never shied away from Elijah or felt intimidated by him. The same warmth I feel in Annalise’s presence is the same I feel with him.
After a minute of silence, he stands, cracking his neck. Then he turns to face me, his arm outstretched, offering me his hand. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Sure?” I say slowly, wondering if sitting this close to me was a problem for him. It came out more like a question, even though I hadn’t really meant it that way to him.
I place my hand in his, and Elijah pulls me to my feet.
Does he hate me after what I did yesterday?
I saw Elijah sitting next to Ronnie when I approached. I hadn’t considered if they were friends. Other than a few times I’ve seen them have small talk, I didn’t think they were close. But what do I know? In the past, I’ve only ever stayed here for up to five weeks at a time. Nothing compared to the rest of the days of the year. Maybe I don’t know Elijah like I thought I did.
Does he wish he’d never discovered I was his missing daughter?
What if Kane is wrong, and the majority of his pack won’t accept me?
I want to live here. I’ve wanted that since the first time we arrived in Moonwake. But I don’t want anyone to fear me or hold what I did against me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to be the most hated person in my pack anymore. That was the role I played as a Marked Crest shifter. It’s tiring, and if I’m honest, it mentally hurts too much.
Now that I have Kane, I’m not willing to give him up either, but I also don’t want to come between him and his pack, him and his parents, or his friends.
“Whatever is going through your head right now, I can assure you it’s wrong.”
I nod so he knows I heard him. I can’t chance opening my mouth right now. If I try to speak, the dam will break, and I’ll burst into tears. I don’t want to disappoint him. I don’t want to disappoint anyone.
As if sensing my inner turmoil, and with my hand still gripped in his much bigger one, Elijah tugs me down the last step and pulls me straight into his arms. Wrapping one arm around my back and his other hand around the nape of my neck, he holds me against his chest, hugging me, comforting me like I’d imagine a father doing with his daughter.
And at that thought, I lose it. My vision blurs as the inside of my nose stings. Tears rise to the surface and spill over the bottom of my eyelids and onto his T-shirt. He squeezes me tighter while a sob forces its way up my throat and past my lips.
Kate?Kane growls inside my head within seconds, reminding me that he can feel everything I feel and experience my emotions as if they’re his.
I’m fine,I reply back as my arms wrap around Elijah’s middle.
Do you need me? Kane asks. Knowing my mate would come if I needed or wanted him to, his voice soothes and calms the emotions running wild inside me. More tears seep out, but my body stops shaking. Elijah continues embracing me.
No. I’ll see you in a bit. I’m fine. I promise. Work. Don’t worry about me, I say, communicating with him in my mind.
I’m leaving the lodge now. I left all the spare keys to the vehicles that belong to the pack in the kitchen for you. Pick whatever you want, but if you need me, just say the word, and I’ll come find you.
Noted. Get out of my head now. Love you,I add.
Love you too.
“Kate,” my dad calls out, and I swear I bury my face farther into his chest despite no space separating us. “Did you get upset because I stood after you sat down next to me?”
I nod, silently answering him, but now I feel stupid. I don’t cry in front of other people, aside from that one time recently in front of Kane.
If Eli is responsible for you crying, I’m going to knock his fucking head off,Kane says.
He’s fine. Go away, I tell him, to which Kane growls inside my head.
His protectiveness is more endearing than I ever imagined. It isn’t suffocating like I’d thought an alpha male would end up being toward me, and that’s why I feared being anyone’s fated mate until I learned Kane was mine.
“Do you hate that I’m her?” I ask, biting the bullet and asking the question I’ve been fearing the answer to. “That it turned out Trez and I are the missing?—”
“My daughter is alive, and you’re here.” He pulls back, and I feel his brown eyes on me, so I force mine to flick to his. “I’ve begged for that every day since you were taken. It was the first thing I did when my eyes opened and the last thing I did before closing them. I didn’t care who I was speaking to in the beyond, fate or a god, or even the king of the underworld himself. I would have done anything to get you back.” He pauses for breath, pulling in a lungful of air through his mouth. “Can we go? I have a lot to say, a lot I should have already said.”
My brows furrow, not understanding his need to leave like it’s urgent or he’s going to puke if he stays here a minute longer.
“I’m not that old yet, kiddo. My shifter nose is still as keen as it’s always been. Every time that door opens,”—he jerks his head, gesturing behind me—“what do you think I get a whiff of?”
All the sex I had with Kane, I’m guessing, but I don’t say that out loud. Just the thought is awkward enough.
“I’ve known Kane was my daughter’s mate, your mate, for a long time. It’s never bothered me, but now it’s real and feels too sudden.”
“So, how about that ride?” I ask for a lack of knowing what else to say.
Kane and me happening doesn’t feel sudden. It feels like we’ve been on the path of a head-on collision for years. And I guess we have because we were always meant to be together.
After sliding into the passenger side of the off-road vehicle, I don’t bother with the seat belt. I hate restraints unless it’s Kane’s hands or body pinning me down.
Ten minutes go by, Elijah’s side-by-side bumping along the dirt trail at a slow speed. Now it doesn’t feel like he’s in a hurry as I sit next to him, a foot between us, in silence, him driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on top of his leg.
It’s a comfortable silence. It always has been when I’m in Elijah’s company. This really isn’t different from any other time, except now I feel like a child waiting to be punished for doing something wrong and unsure of what the consequences of my actions are going to be while fearing my parents won’t love me anymore.
I never felt this way with Dick. One, I didn’t care what he thought, and two, I already knew he didn’t love me. He told me often enough that I was a disappointment. It stung when I was a little girl, but it never crushed me. The thought of Annalise or Elijah, or both of them, hating me, regretting they found me after all these years, could very well send me spiraling into a debilitating depression.
What they think matters to me, and I’m not sure I would handle it well if they didn’t want me here.
When another five minutes go by, and the only noise around us is the birds chirping, I ask something I’ve had on my mind since I found out his mate wasn’t sleeping in their bed.
“Why is Annalise staying at the lodge?”
“She’s angry with me, and she has every right to feel the way she does, but she’s also mad at herself even though she’s not at fault for any of this.”
I’m not sure what to unpack first with that statement, but wanting to know what happened between them, I ask, “Why is she so mad she left her house?”
“Partly because seeing me, smelling us all over our house, makes her want to forgive me, and she isn’t ready. The other reason being that Jag is there, and she’s holding out hope that you’ll move into the lodge, and then she’ll have both children under one roof again.”
The latter makes sense. She’s a mom who didn’t get to watch both of her kids grow up together, but he failed to explain their issue.
I roll my head, and either he senses my stare on him, or he sees me looking at him from his peripheral vision. I arch an eyebrow, hoping he’ll elaborate.
“She knew, Kate. She knew you were our daughter. She felt it in her bones, but I dismissed it after I’d thought Dante and I had proved you and Trez weren’t our missing kids.”
I heard about the blood tests they did and wondered how they even took samples without Trez or me knowing. It took me a day of thinking back to that first summer to remember. Trez misfired an arrow from a bow because he’d been fucking around and taunting me with it. It sliced through my upper arm, and I bled like a stuck pig for all of two minutes before my shifter healing abilities kicked in and sealed the wound. I retaliated, of course, because back then, I was that much of a child. I stabbed him with the same arrow that cut me.
Kane, Jagger, Ash, and even Maddy were with us, taking part in training Maddy, Trez, and me. I ended up laughing about the whole thing until Dante and Elijah gave an hour-long lecture on never harming anyone from your own pack, meaning Trez and me. But that’s what we’ve always done. We’re siblings, or at least, we thought we were. We bicker, and we get into tizzies, but I have his back and he has mine—always.
“You didn’t know a witch had spelled us. I don’t fault you, Elijah.”
“I fault me. Your mom faults me, and she should.” He brakes, slowing the machine, and then takes a right turn. “Kate, I didn’t just ignore a mother’s intuition. I brushed off my mate’s instinct, and to some of us, that’s a very deep betrayal, right up there with cheating, you might say. Annalise told me time and time again that her gut was telling her you belonged here. That you were ours. I got tired of hearing it, so I pleaded with Becca to talk some sense into her.”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself, and she’s being too stubborn if she can’t see you exhausted your efforts to find us.”
Annalise is for sure stubborn, but why hold this against her mate? Seems a bit harsh.
“You’re also still young, and the whole fated mate thing is brand new to you. Take my word for it: when you can feel how strongly your mate believes something, don’t act like they’re the crazy one. Because that’s what I did. I even threatened to not allow you and Trez to come back if she kept it up. That’s what made her stop.”
“Oh,” is all I can say to that. If I were in my mother’s shoes, I’d probably feel resentful and bitter too.
Ultimatums never work.
You’ll either drive the other person away, or they’ll eventually come to hate you.
“We did so many things wrong—Dante and me. We knew the only person who had anything to gain by taking one of our kids was Everhart.”
“You were trying to protect your pack from another war.”
The last war between The Bloodmoon Pack and The Marked Crest Pack, the only war between them that I know of, sounded bad from the stories I’ve heard. Dick still boasts about it from time to time. Very few shifters were lost on Dick’s side, while over half of Kane’s pack lost their lives. It makes me wonder if magic was involved to ensure a victory for The Marked Crest.
“It was a war we should have raged. And I’m sorry we didn’t. I’m sorry I let someone take you. I’m sorry I failed you.” He breathes out a heavy breath. “Then my own daughter showed back up over fourteen years later and I didn’t even recognize her, didn’t scent that she was you. I’m sorry, Kate. I’m so goddamn sorry. I’m ashamed of a lot of things, and I don’t have the first clue how to fix any of them.”
“Maybe the first step is talking to Annalise. You’ll never fix anything with your mate while you’re sleeping apart and refusing to even acknowledge their presence.” I did that with Kane for several weeks, and all that did was prolong us from being together.
“Just because she doesn’t want to be in the same room as me doesn’t mean she isn’t talking to me. Annalise is the sweetest woman in the world, but she can hold a grudge like no other, only this time, it’s with me, and it’s been coming for a long time. She’s saying a lot,” he admits as he taps his temple, telling me she’s talking to him in his head.
I get the feeling she may be screaming at him. He’s tensed up a few times already while he’s been driving us around the pack. I noticed once his eyes squinted and his brows drew tight. It makes me wonder if her talking is more yelling rather than a calm conversation.
“Do you want me to talk to her?”
“Yes, but not on my behalf. Annalise needs to get all her feelings out in the open. I’m not worried that we won’t work our shit out, Kate. I’m terrified she’ll bottle it back up again, and the resentment she’s feeling will turn to hate. That would kill me.”
His fingers flex and squeeze the steering wheel with his shifter strength, and for a split second, I contemplate if the thin metal around the ring of the wheel is going to snap off, but after taking a long breath, Elijah eases up on his hold.
“All I need you to do, kiddo, is settle in, focus on yourself, and enjoy your new mate bond. When your pup comes, you’ll be a busy momma. Despite being a supernatural creature, a baby will wear you out. Try to enjoy the next few weeks and keep spending time with your mom. She needs it, Kate. I think you need it too.”
His words bring all of my emotions to the surface, shock being one of them.
“So, you do want me to stay in Moonwake?” I ask, my eyes staring out the opening where a windshield would be if he had one.
His arm flies out first, then the brakes lock. My back lifts away from the cushioned backrest as his forearm halts me from falling forward. He wasn’t driving at any significant rate of speed. I could’ve easily braced my hands against the dash to catch myself if I had needed to.
When I glance at Elijah, he looks horrified and more ashamed than before.
“Have I given you the impression I don’t want you here? You’re my daughter. It would destroy me if I lost you again. Why would you think that?”
“I killed a man yesterday. You weren’t exactly thrilled with me.”
“That wasn’t my finest moment, Kate. I’m sorry that I overreacted. Really, I am. I freaked out when I saw what was about to happen, and I didn’t know why you would attack him like that. No matter what, I shouldn’t have put my hands on your wolf.”
Emotions shine heavily in his eyes, but I don’t think any of them are the disappointment I feared.
“You aren’t mad at me?”
“I’ve never been mad at you, Kate. For anything. I was caught off guard yesterday. That isn’t an excuse, but it’s the only one I have to offer. Do I wish my daughter hadn’t had to kill the man responsible for her being kidnapped twice? Yes. But maybe if I hadn’t been so afraid to come see you, I would have known.”
“Doubtful. I didn’t tell anyone he’d followed me. I hadn’t known about the original kidnapping until Kane filled me in after, but…” I trail off, not wanting to admit that I’m glad it was me who killed him. I’m not proud of it. But if someone else had taken care of it, I wouldn’t have gotten the closure I never knew I needed until I saw him lying lifeless on the ground.
It’s weird because I’m not upset that Becca killed Veronica instead of me. Maybe that’s because I hope it gave her some type of closure too. At the end of the day, Richard Everhart is still the one responsible for it all. Everyone else was a pawn.
“I hate myself for being a coward and not coming to see you like your mom did. I felt what she felt when she saw you for the first time. I wanted that too, but I couldn’t bring myself to face you when I’m the one that failed you.”
“Maybe ease up on yourself. I can’t imagine what the four of you went through when you discovered we were missing.”
My baby isn’t even here, I haven’t even felt him move, but I still feel an overwhelming sense of protection toward my little wolf pup.
“It was hell. Over twenty years of living in torment while having to remain strong for the rest of the pack when all I wanted to do was curl up and die. I thought I did everything to find you and Trez, but I didn’t. And knowing that might be even worse.” He takes another breath, this time pulling air in through his mouth and forcing it back out between his teeth. “And now, I get the feeling you showing up here each year was on purpose and not by chance.”
A chill ripples down my spine at his spot-on assumption.
“It was,” I admit, recalling everything Salem laid out—Dick’s real plan.
“Care to fill me in?”
My head tilts toward him, my eyes flicking to his. I want to give him the answers he’s likely been chasing for twenty years. He deserves to know. Everyone does, but I feel like I need to talk to my mate before divulging to others.
“Let me tell Kane first, and then I’ll share the little I know. Annalise should hear it at the same time.”