Chapter 14 #4
“Una said fate gives us what we need, not what we want.” I turned my hand beneath hers, our palms meeting in a touch more intimate than any kiss. “And we rarely recognize the difference until it’s too late.” I paused, staring into her eyes. “Is it too late for us?”
The question was loaded with years of missed chances. My wolf surged forward, desperate to claim what we’d lost.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her gaze dropping to our joined hands before pulling away. “Your mother,” she said after a moment, changing the subject. “What was her name?”
“Genevieve,” I replied, grateful for the simple question. “Genevieve Thornbern.”
“What was she like?” Rozi asked, settling more comfortably beside me.
The question opened a flood of memories I usually kept carefully contained. “She laughed all the time. Had this way of finding joy in the smallest things.” I smiled despite the ache in my chest. “She was the one who taught me to carve. Said my hands were meant to create beauty, not just strength.”
Rozi smiled, a genuine expression that transformed her face. “I’d like to have known her.”
“She would have loved you,” I said without thinking. “Your intelligence, your determination. The way you never back down from a challenge.”
She looked away. “Do you have any pictures of her?”
I reached for my wallet, extracting a worn photograph I’d carried for decades. “Just this one.”
Rozi took it carefully, studying the image of a woman with my eyes and smile, her arm around a gangly eleven-year-old version of me. “You have her smile,” she observed softly. “And her kindness, I think.”
The observation caught me off guard. No one had ever said I resembled my mother in anything but physical features. The thought that Rozi could see beyond that, could recognize parts of Genevieve’s spirit in me, felt like a gift I hadn’t known I needed.
“Thank you,” I said simply, unable to articulate the complex emotions her words had stirred.
She returned the photograph, our fingers brushing in a contact that sent warmth through me. “For what?”
“For seeing me,” I replied. “Not just who I am now, but where I came from. Who I might still become.”
Her eyes softened, vulnerability and strength coexisting in her gaze. “That’s what mates are supposed to do, isn’t it? See each other clearly, even the parts we try to hide.”
The word mates lingered between us, neither accepted nor rejected outright. Progress, of a sort.
Rozi nodded, her throat working as she swallowed hard.
“The same genetic quirk that makes king cheetahs vulnerable as cubs makes us susceptible to certain aggressive cancers later in life.” She stared into the fire for a few beats.
“My mother knew the risks and had studied them extensively. Still, when the diagnosis came…” Her voice faltered, the sound like glass shattering in the quiet night.
Something in my chest cracked open, raw and bleeding at the pain she couldn’t hide.
Rozi hesitated, her fingers absently tracing patterns on the cushion between us. The motion was so hypnotic, I wondered if she even realized she was doing it.
“My mother… she wasn’t always absent,” she began reluctantly. “When I was seven, I got very sick. There’s a rare condition that affects king cheetah shifters, something in our unique coat pattern genetics. It weakens our immune system temporarily during childhood.”
My brows furrowed in concern. “I thought shifters don’t get human illnesses?”
“Most don’t,” she explained, her voice taking on that professorial tone that made my wolf rumble with appreciation.
Even as she explained something painful, her mind shone through.
“The same genetic mutation that gives king cheetahs our distinctive coat pattern creates a vulnerability in childhood. My mother called it the price of biological distinctiveness.”
Her eyes grew distant, remembering. “Most king cheetah cubs don’t survive their first decade. I was lucky.”
The thought of Rozi as a vulnerable child, fighting for her life, sent a protective surge through me so powerful I had to clench my fists to keep from reaching for her. My wolf snarled at the mere concept of her in danger, even decades in the past.
“That’s why there are so few king cheetah shifters,” I said. How close had I come to never meeting her at all?
A strand of caramel-blond hair fell across her face. My fingers itched to tuck it back. “My mother took two weeks off from her research, something she never did, and set up a little lab in my bedroom. Said if we had to be quarantined together, we might as well do science.”
I couldn’t help smiling at the image. “Little Rozi, feverish but still running experiments.”
A small smile curved her full lips, transforming her face in a way that made my heart clench painfully.
“We tested different natural remedies. Created this elaborate scoring system. Turned me into a meticulous recordkeeper.” The smile faded, shadows returning to her eyes.
“It was the last time I remember feeling like I was more important than her research. After my father left, she retreated. Physically there but mentally gone.”
“And then you lost her completely,” I said.
“Yes. I was seventeen years old. The funeral was on a Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was alone in our house.” Her voice had gone flat, clinical, as if reciting facts about someone else’s life. “Called my grandmother, thinking surely she’d come get me.”
“But she didn’t,” I said softly, already knowing the answer from what she’d told me before.
“She told me I was old enough to manage on my own. Said my mother had made her choices, and now I had to make mine.” Her bitter laugh held no humor, just old pain.
“So I did. Got myself through three doctoral programs. Built a career. I learned that depending on anyone was a luxury I couldn’t afford. ”
There were parallels between our stories. Both abandoned by parents. Both taken in by women who shaped our futures, Una with her love, Tabia with her rejection. Both of us building lives designed to prevent further pain.
I reached over for my pack, pulling out Una’s weathered leather journal. The binding was cracked with age, the pages yellowed and stained with what looked like decades of herbal extracts. It was my most precious possession, the last tangible piece of the woman who had saved me.
I gently opened Una’s journal to a marked page, angling it so the firelight illuminated the faded writing.
“See these diagrams? They’re barely legible now, but she was trying to map how the plants near the COL supposedly grew in concentric circles.
The pages are damaged, but you can just make out her theory that those plants were arranged in a meaningful pattern. ”
Rozi leaned closer to see, her shoulder almost touching mine.
Her scent intensified, jasmine and vanilla with the underlying musk that was uniquely hers, filling my lungs until I could taste her on my tongue.
My wolf slammed against my control, pacing restlessly beneath my skin. Mate, so close, finally close.
I tightened my fingers on the journal, claws threatening to emerge. One inch. That’s all it would take to close the distance, to feel her skin against mine.
“I can barely make it out,” she said, her focus entirely on the journal, seemingly oblivious to the war raging inside me.
But the wild cadence visible at the base of her throat betrayed her.
She wasn’t as unaffected as she pretended to be.
“But what’s visible is fascinating. She wasn’t just collecting recipes, she was mapping ecological relationships. ”
I wanted to freeze this moment, Rozi with her guard down, passionate, leaning toward me without fear or anger.
“When I visited the COL last time with Quinn and Mack, I tried to find these circles of plants she described, but I couldn’t locate them,” I admitted, frustration coloring my voice.
“We were focused on getting the water, and I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly.
Without the complete diagram, it’s like trying to solve a puzzle with most of the pieces missing. ”
Rozi’s fingers hovered just above the page, not quite touching the fragile paper. The careful respect in the gesture made my chest tighten with emotion.
“There’s a pattern here though,” she said, her analytical mind making connections I never could. “Even from these fragments, I can see she was documenting something systematic.”
Pride swelled in my chest, not for myself but for Una and her work that Rozi so clearly respected. “She used to say nature doesn’t create random arrangements, that everything has purpose if you know how to see it.”
Rozi looked up, surprise flashing across her features. Our faces were close enough that I could see the warm flecks in her brown eyes and could count each individual eyelash. “My mother used to say something similar. That patterns reveal themselves to those who are patient enough to look.”
“After my father left, Una would take me to a gathering every morning,” I said, the memory warming me from within.
“Said the forest had lessons to teach that no classroom could offer. I’d hold her baskets while she collected plants, listening to her explain each one.
Why did it grow where it did. How it interacted with plants around it. What it could heal.”
Rozi watched me with genuine interest. “That sounds like an incredible education.”
I nodded, remembering those golden mornings.
“It was. I was an angry kid, full of abandonment and rage. But there was something about following her through the woods at dawn, watching how gently she treated every living thing… It changed me.” Una’s voice echoed in my memory, so clear I could almost hear her beside me.
“She’d say, ‘Damaged things still have purpose, Brody. Just like you and I.’”