Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Mira was so stunned she was frozen, limbs locked and vision blurry with tears. As they spilled over her cheeks, she let out a soft sob, and Leo gave her a hug and kissed her forehead.
Then he gently turned her toward her family and kept his hands on her shoulders, a warm and comforting presence at her back.
“I’m Leo,” he said. “Mira is my truemate. I’m here with my pack to visit Danika and her mates, because my alphas thought there might be a connection with the white lions or Danika being a madter. She’s a bit in shock right now.”
“Mira?” her brother said.
Theron.
“They changed your name?” Theron asked. He looked at their parents in confusion. “Why would they do that?”
“Probably to keep her safe,” her mom said.
When her mom spoke, something snapped in Mira, and she lurched forward with another harsh sob, crashing into her mom and hugging her tightly. Her mom’s arms were immediately around her, and the smell of her—cedar and vanilla—was so familiar that it made her heart ache.
“Oh, sweet Calypso, I never gave up hope,” Layla said, her voice filled with tears.
“I don’t understand,” Mira said. She eased from the hug and looked at the males closest to her mom. “And I don’t know who is who.”
“I’m Rami,” the male with dark hair said. “Your father. I’m an eagle shifter.”
“I’m Auron,” the male with blond hair said. “Your other father. I’m a white lion.”
“You don’t need an intro for me, I can tell,” Theron said. “But this is Selene, our younger sister. She’s a madter like mom.”
Her maternal uncles greeted her warmly—Dorian and Acastan.
“I can’t believe this happened,” Jantha said. He joined their small group. “I’m so very happy that the wolf alphas thought to bring Mira here. I mean, Calypso.”
“No,” Layla said with a sad smile. “Her name has been Mira for twenty-five years, that’s what she’s called, and we’ll keep it.”
Jantha nodded.
“You can all hang out here in the gazebo,” Danika said. “I’m sure you have loads to catch up on.”
Cinder stepped close and said to Mira in a low voice, “You can stay as long as you’d like. We can send an escort back for you and Leo when you’re ready to leave. I don’t think you need us here, but we’re going to visit with Danika and her mates for a little while before we head out.”
“Thanks for coming,” Mira said.
“Hey, you found your family. This is so neat to be a part of.”
Mira looked at Leo, and he smiled at her encouragingly.
“I’d like to sit down and chat,” she said. “I have so many questions.”
“Us too,” Auron said.
The falcons and white lions excused themselves to visit with the wolves, and Mira and Leo sat with her biological family.
Layla sat at a picnic table across from Mira and Leo, her mates on either side of her, and squeezed her hand. “Are you still with the psychics? How long have you and Leo been together?”
“I’ve been with them all along, and I just met Leo this past weekend. The psychics are staying in Delta Park at a bed-and-breakfast, but they’re leaving for their travels on Saturday. I just found out—like literally—about you. About what I am.”
“What?” Rami asked. “What do you mean you just found out what you are?”
“They told me I was a psychic,” Mira said, explaining the suppressing spell the Wiccan had cast at their request, and that she’d been told her psychic abilities were simply latent and may never appear.
“It wasn’t until I talked to the North Corner of a coven in the area that I learned the truth, which my adopted family confirmed.
Then, when I met Leo at the festival, I started to feel my gryphon. ”
“I can’t believe they never told you,” Theron said. Their uncles were hovering nearby but letting the family have time together.
“Daphne and Gideon must have been very scared,” Layla said.
Auron cleared his throat. “When you and Theron were born, we knew that your mismatched eyes meant something was different about you, that instead of being a madter, you would be a gryphon. And we knew our king—Dravon—would kill you. He was superstitious and crazy, which is not a good combination.”
“I grew up with Daphne,” Layla said. “Our gryphon clan lived in the Montana mountains, and her psychic house would travel through the area several times a year. We made the decision to have her and Gideon keep you safe. Their house had a reputation for protecting those who needed it, so we trusted they would keep you safe. We kept in touch through an online message board, and they never came back through Montana again.”
“Right,” Rami said. “They used shielding spells to hide their trail, and the plan was to raise you until our king was no longer a threat, or we could break free of his iron rule and meet with them.
“Then tragedy struck. Four years after Mira was born, the king died, and a subsequent coup of the new king destroyed the clan. Only seven of our family members made it out alive.
“By the time we got to Washington State, which was the last time we’d heard of a location for the psychics,” Layla said, “we found the camp destroyed and the town gossip was that a wolf pack had killed every person.”
“That happened when I was three,” Mira said. “They lost a lot of members of the house, but they escaped with me and four others. We pretty much stayed out of the Pacific Northwest after that.”
“I dreamed about you sometimes,” Selene said. “I always felt like you were out there somewhere.”
“The Wiccan spell must have kept me from feeling that,” Mira said.
“We never gave up hope that you might have escaped and were alive somewhere,” Auron said. “We don’t like to be nomadic by nature, but we just kept searching. None of us wanted to admit that our family was going to be missing you forever.”
Mira listened as her family shared about their lives and asked her questions. They ended up talking for hours, long after the pack had gone back to Thorn Hollow.
She had her biological family now. And it made her feel odd toward her adopted family. What if they had told her the truth years ago? What if she’d been able to search for her biological family?
But then she might never have met Leo.
She realized that the star her adopted family had followed—Velastra, prophesied to reveal secrets—had actually done just that. It had revealed the secret of her shifter nature through not only the Wiccans but also her truemate.
Much later, she stood under a streetlight with Theron and watched her mate talk to her fathers and uncles. They accepted him immediately, and she loved that.
In a heartbeat, she’d gone from her adopted family and Leo and the pack to having her biological family too.
“It’s wild, isn’t it?” Theron asked.
She looked up into the eyes that matched hers. “What’s that?”
“The roads we don’t take. If you’d known we were out there, we might have been reunited, and then you wouldn’t have been in Northern Ohio to meet Leo. And if that asshole king of ours hadn’t been so scared of powerful shifters—like a unique female gryphon—you wouldn’t have ever been away from us.”
“Definitely,” she said. “I was just thinking that meeting Leo was the best thing that ever happened to me. Not only because he’s my truemate and helped me find my gryphon, but because his pack has a relationship with the falcons and white lions, and you guys happened to be here visiting Jantha and his family. ”
“I’m glad to finally have you back. I always felt like I was missing a limb.”
“Is it weird for you to think of me as Mira instead of Calypso?”
“I’ll get used to it,” he said, smiling. “You’re still you, no matter what we call you. Plus, I’m just so damn happy to see you.”
“Me too,” Selene said as she and Layla joined them.
The quartet hugged quietly under the pale light of the streetlamp in a town that Mira had never heard of, full of falcons and white lions.
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, they joined the males in the gazebo, and her father, Rami, said, “Darling, we were planning to stay here in Bishop for a few days. Jantha is your father’s cousin, and that’s why we came for a visit.
Jantha said that there’s space for you and Leo if you’d like to stay here tonight. ”
She looked at Leo, and he nodded. “I’m game. I’m working at the garage tomorrow, but I don’t have to be in until nine.”
“I’d love to stay,” Mira said.
Her mom’s eyes shone with happiness, and her sister gave both of their hands a squeeze. The comfort of being surrounded by people who shared her blood settled into her chest like a balm. Something she hadn’t known she was missing until recently.
Now, she stood with her truemate and her birth family, and felt whole for the very first time in her life.
Leo looked down at her. “I’m so happy for you, sweetheart.”
“Me too.” She leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.
She smiled to herself as every corner of her heart was filled with warmth. Tonight wasn’t just a reunion that no one expected; it was the beginning of a whole new chapter of hers and Leo’s life together.