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  He jabbed a finger down at the man. “Ye can only mate with those of Alpha blood. Why do ye think I am so strict on who our Clan can and canna mate with? Ye canna risk it any other way. The fecking cockatrice are trying to taint our line and ruin us forever. And when ye become head of our Clan, ye will have to carefully—nay, ruthlessly—guard our bloodline’s purity.”

  “But, I love her. I mated her. Code of the Ancients—”

  “Code be damned! We dinna follow it. Only the weak settle for such things, and we are not weak wolves.”

  He strode over and grabbed Rodolfo by the tunic again, bending over and getting in the young man’s face. “Ye will ride this moment to Dunning, and stay there a fortnight. From here, this very instant. And when ye return, I will hear no more words about that woman, no questions, nothing. Do ye understand? And the next mate ye take will be of my choosing. I dinna care who ye tup, but ye will not be mating and breeding with anyone and ruining our lines.”

  His cape swirled around him as he turned and strode for his horse, mounting in one fluid leap without using the stirrups.

  In the clearing, Rodolfo watched him ride off at a gallop before his head fell back to the grass and he wept.

  Elain released that thread, not wanting to see more. Now it made sense, things she’d gleaned from other threads as she searched through his mind, the things he’d done over the years.

  Tannel had killed Rodolfo’s first mate.

  His true love. His One.

  If that wasn’t enough to drive someone mad with grief and anger, she didn’t know what was.

  Elain took a moment to gather herself before she switched to another thread, one that wound all the way to the present, until it snapped off around the time Mercedes had captured him. The story she’d learned from Marston about Mercedes didn’t seem to jive with what she was seeing now, despite knowing Marston had not lied to her, to the best of his knowledge. According to what Mercedes had told him, Rodolfo had tried to kill Mercedes’ mother when he found out she was pregnant. That was what Marston said her brothers had told her.

  In this version…

  Rodolfo’s father was in failing health, but still firmly in control of the Clan. After Rodolfo fathered several betas with a woman he didn’t even like, much less love, she died in childbirth while delivering an Alpha son who didn’t survive, either. Rodolfo then took another woman of his father’s choosing as his mate. She was bound to him, but he wasn’t to her, his heart long dead.

  Then Rodolfo had found himself smitten by a strange, beautiful woman, someone he’d run across at a market in a town he’d been passing through. Someone who had, since losing his first mate, actually spoke to his soul.

  Watching the events replay, Elain saw his reaction, even felt his pulse race in response to what his body felt for the woman.

  The woman he knew he wanted to make his mate.

  His One. The first person he’d responded to since the woman he tried to never think about because it hurt too badly.

  After taking a room in the best tavern, which wasn’t much, he knew with all certainty she was meant to be his. Wanted her to be his. He didn’t care that she had children, sons, with her now-deceased husband, but he held off claiming her out of respect for what she claimed were her wishes, to introduce them slowly to him since they’d recently lost their father.

  Looking at it as an outsider, Elain wondered if the woman was even telling Rodolfo the truth about that.

  He felt bewitched and didn’t even care. For weeks, she refused to let him know where she lived, meeting him in town for their rendezvous, claiming she didn’t want to frighten her sons.

  Ignoring rumors his men heard about her, he was happy when she told him she was pregnant with his child.

  Unfortunately, his father called him away to fight in yet another bloody Clan war. It took him months longer to return than he’d anticipated, and even longer to find her.

  He’d began to worry something had happened to her, to their child. And he’d determined that, when he found her again, he would mark and claim her and be done with it, finally able to enjoy true love instead of some forced mating his father had insisted upon.

  This time, he would not cede. This time, he would kill his father, the way he should have killed him that day in the clearing, but had been too stunned by the revelations to react.

  And then the Seer, the daughter of the woman who’d been there at his birth. Who came to him when he summoned her, hoping she could help him locate his missing love. Instead, she told him not only that the daughter his lover had borne him was an Alpha wolf, but also half-cockatrice because his lover was a cockatrice using dark magick to disguise her true nature in an attempt to infiltrate the powerful wolf line and take control of them from within. That his daughter would one day be the cause of his downfall.

  More silent insanity crept into his brain at that revelation, adding to the already unstable foundation in his soul. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, even killed the Seer while caught up in his outrage, believing that she would lie to him because of the ancient oath Seers had taken against cockatrice.

  Believing she’d been working for his father to bring him back home to Scotland, to the Clan compound.

  When Rodolfo had finally tracked down his lover and demanded to see their daughter, she’d taunted him, told him he finally had the Alpha wolf offspring he’d always wanted, but if he wanted her, he’d have to pay up.

  And when he demanded to know the truth, when he’d chased her and cornered her on that cliff, he’d found out more than he ever wanted.

  “You fool.” Her manic grin split her face like an evil gash across her features. “Your Seer was right. You killed an innocent. How ironic. There is magick the likes of which you will never understand. The stink of cockatrice is even upon you, in your genes, no matter how much a wolf you are. It’s there. Which is why I wanted you so badly when I found out who you were.”

  She’d stepped closer, so close his men standing watch nearby couldn’t hear her words. “I spilled blood and charmed myself to make me seem like a wolf to you. And a love spell to ensure your fealty. I am no wolf. I am a cockatrice.”

  His heart seized. “Lies!”

  “I now have the way of bringing down the wolves, you bastard. And I will use her to ruin you unless you pay me. If you want her, you will pay me dearly.” Her laugh taunted him. “An Alpha bitch cockatrice. What a disappointment you shall be to your father.”

  “Liar! Give me my daughter!”

  “Only if you pay.”

  He’d grabbed her arm, meaning to shake her. She’d pulled free, and then…

  She’d backed away, the ground crumbling under her, sending her plummeting to her death.

  And he’d never found his daughter, the one he’d wanted. The one he knew had a chance to pass as normal in this life despite her bloodlines, especially if she was an Alpha wolf.

  He was living proof she could manage it.

  He never found her.

  She, however, had eventually found him, bringing the Seer’s predictions to fruition after all.

  But on that day, as Rodolfo fell to his knees and stared down at the rocks at the base of the cliff below, where the water already lapped at his lover’s body, he felt what little remained of his sanity completely slip away on the breeze.

  Elain watched all of this play out, surprised at how sorry she felt for him. His life had been one fucked-up situation after another, literally from birth.

  And, if this was really how events had occurred, Mercedes’ mother had lied to her sons about her plans. Marston’s memory had shown Mercedes’ telling him that there had been an attempt on her mother’s life while pregnant with her, that she’d jumped from a cliff and shifted mid-fall, saving her and her unborn child and allowing her to escape.

  According to what Elain saw here, that never happened. So either Mercedes had lied to Marston, or her brothers had lied to her. Or perhaps their mother had lied to Mercedes’ brothers, and ir
ony had brought it to pass. Any or all of those scenarios were quite likely, now that Elain knew more about the cockatrice. If the woman would use a newborn baby as a pawn in that way, she would likely lie to her adult sons about it, playing both ends against the middle, as it were.

  And Rodolfo had spun the story, of course, claiming he’d never wanted the child and telling his men he had to kill the woman and child. Telling others later that he’d hunted and killed the cockatrice before she gave birth, once he’d made sure any eyewitnesses to what had happened had come to unfortunate and premature ends themselves.

  That explained the discrepancies in the story Gigi had told them that day after her mom had been abducted by Rodolfo. Gigi had heard it that way and didn’t know the truth.

  I’ll have to talk to her and confirm that.

  Besides, none of that mattered now. Mercedes never had any more of a chance at a normal life than Rodolfo.

  Or that she herself had, except that Maureen and Liam had sacrificed to make sure her mom would raise her.

  Two women’s lives shaped by Rodolfo Abernathy, in differing ways. A daughter he’d always secretly wanted and longed to find, who grew up despising him.

  Then there was herself, a woman who knew nothing about him, yet whose entire life had been shaped because of his obsessive need to find her and fulfill the blood oath, because those were the only things he could control in his otherwise fucked-up life.

  * * * *

  Elain sat back, breaking the contact, and stared down at Rodolfo. Now she saw him in a new light. Trying to process everything she’d just learned wasn’t something she’d be able to accomplish right then and there.

  She didn’t know if he was even capable of understanding her at this point, having sunk so deeply into his madness between his previously unstable mental state and the pain that had tortured what little remained of a rational mind right out of his skull.

  The greatest gift I can ever give my children is teaching them the freeing power of forgiveness. And I can’t do that unless I can practice what I preach.

  Her father and mother were prime examples of that. They chose to live for what they currently had, not what they’d lost.

  No, there would be no forgetting, no absolution for his actions. That was impossible.

  Forgiving, however, was for the benefit of the one bestowing it, not absolution to the one receiving it.

  Reaching out again, she gently touched his temple. The answer came to her, instinctively, primally, as it had that day in Maine when, together with Lina and Mai, they made the meth lab house simply disappear.

  “It’s time for you to rest and know peace,” she whispered. “I forgive you.”

  The energy raced through her and into him, painlessly short-circuiting and shutting down his brain. She watched as he closed his eye, his chest falling still, the pulse point at his throat no longer throbbing. All tension drained out of what little remained of his body and he lay slack on the pads.

  Sitting back, she took a deep breath and stared at his body for a moment. She tried to visualize him as a child, an innocent infant, before the world and those around him, along with his own choices, irrevocably shaped and carved him into the thing he was today.

  She did not want that for her son. And she’d be damned if she’d let anyone do it to him, if she had a choice in the matter.

  Then she drew her legs in again to sit cross-legged and closed her eyes.

  I am where I started.

  The softness of the bathroom rug under her ass wasn’t a surprise. She kept her eyes closed, letting her keen lupine ears listen for any hint of disturbance in the house.

  She heard none.

  She didn’t know how she knew to do what she’d done, but understood at a primal level she’d spent way too long thinking about things instead of simply trying to do them.

  It was what everyone had been advising her from the start. To trust her gut, rely on her instincts. Not having met her wolf side until recently, she hadn’t understood that as easily as other shifters did.

  Getting up from the floor was a little more difficult than getting down. She eventually settled for rolling onto her hands and knees and using the bathroom counter to pull herself up. In the dim light, she stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  I just killed a man.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d killed, but unlike the other times, this killing left her full of peace. It felt like bestowing mercy.

  I did the right thing. He’s finally free. I released him from the prison he’s been in all his life.

  He’d been insane. Clinically so, if she had to guess. Had been since he was a very, very young man. It didn’t absolve him of any of his actions. Plenty of people had suffered horrors in their lives and gone on to be productive, kind, nurturing people.

  Unfortunately for Rodolfo, his mental wiring, combined with really shitty parenting, had sent him off the rails in a devastating way.

  She felt sorry for him. And she did forgive him, could do that without absolving him for what he’d done to her and others throughout his life. The flip side of that, she understood holding on to the resentment would not only be counterproductive, it would likely turn her into something resembling Baba Yaga.

  And I damn sure don’t want to go there.

  No, the kindest thing had been to release him, once and for all. She didn’t blame Ortega for what he did. She understood it. But he’d—literally—more than extracted a few pounds of flesh from the man.

  It was time to let Rodolfo go so they could all look to the future instead of to the past, focus on what was important. For Ortega, it would mean turning his full attention to Fiona, to being there for her.

  For herself?

  She blinked at her reflection in the mirror. I’m going to be a mom. I am a mom.

  Their as of yet unnamed son.

  Elain quietly opened the bathroom door. Ain had rolled over in his sleep, but was still deeply out of it. She walked through to the other room where the baby lay and reached into his crib, resting the tips of her fingers on his forehead.

  Another instinct welled up from deep within her. An instinct she no longer feared.

  Instead, now she embraced it.

  Who are you?

  In an instant, the quiet voice of his soul spoke somewhere in her mind, many names from throughout the ages, and she knew.

  They were, all of them, she now understood on a cellular level, people recreated from somewhere, something.

  Someone.

  Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it only changes forms.

  Like attracts like.

  Her fingers trailed down to stroke his chubby cheek as she successfully struggled not to laugh and awaken him.

  These were things Ryan had told her during their talk.

  It was either laugh, or allow herself to be driven to madness by the realization of how truly insignificant she was in the eyes of the Universe despite her growing powers.

  “Eiselman,” she whispered, speaking the only name she recognized out of the ones his soul had revealed to her. “Welcome home.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Before Elain returned to bed, she grabbed her phone and walked into the bathroom again. She was able to hook into the compound’s Wi-Fi and get on the Internet. It only took her a few minutes of browsing to locate what she wanted, smiling to herself as she shut down the phone and went to bed, where she crashed into sleep.

  The next morning, she awoke to find Ain staring down at her, a quirky little smile on his face.

  “Good morning,” she said, hesitant, hoping whatever she’d done to him the night before had really worked.

  If it hadn’t, she didn’t know what her next step would be.

  He leaned in and kissed her, so deeply she might have let him keep her right there in bed had the baby not whimpered in the other room. “Good morning, my beautiful mate.”

  “You’re certainly in a good mood.” I hope.

  His energy definitely
looked clearer, with none of the dark cloud it’d had following his admission in the cave. “I slept better last night than I think I have in years. So, did you decide?”

  “Decide on what?” He helped her roll up into a sitting position.

  “A name for our son.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “We don’t want to wait until we get home?”

  “Well, like you said last night, we can’t. Ortega needs to give his guy a name to put on the paperwork for us.”

  Relief filled her. The story she’d implanted in his brain had taken hold.

  “Connor,” she softly said. “Connor Aaron.”

  His brows knit together. “I like that, but I don’t recognize those names.”

  She shrugged. “I just like them.”

  He leaned in and kissed her before walking around the bed to help her stand. “Then I like them, too.”

  According to the baby name site she had bookmarked on her phone, the site she’d spent hours on over the past months trying to decide on a name for their daughter, Connor meant “wolf lover” and Aaron meant “strong.”

  A new start for everyone. Across the board.

  The baby let out another cry, a little louder. She smiled. “Coming, Connor.”

  He grinned. “Connor Aaron Lyall. Our son.”

  “Our son.”

  Once they had the baby situated, they headed downstairs. Rosa refused to let them prepare their own meal and insisted they sit at the table in the kitchen while she took their requests. She even cooed over Connor, who Elain had sat on the table in his carrier.

  “He is a beautiful little boy,” the cook praised. “I cannot get over how much he looks like you both. He is very lucky to have such wonderful adoptive parents.”

  Apparently, Ortega was already busy spreading the story. “Thank you,” Elain said. “We feel very blessed.”

  Ain, wearing a broad smile that practically looked painful, squeezed Elain’s hand. “Yes, we do.”

  From somewhere else in the house, Elain heard a heated conversation taking place in Spanish, dark in tone. Ain frowned, but Elain patted him on the hand. “I’ll be right back. You stay with the baby.”