Page 22 of Lost Fate

He slips his hand in mine, and my heart feels like it’s soaring.

I’ve walked this way plenty. I’ve moved around the pack plenty. But this is the first time ever that I truly feel like I’m part of something.

For the first time, with my hand in Leander’s, I feel like I belong.

The meeting with Thorne is surprisingly easy. Evander isn’t there, which I’m pleased about because I think he’s a dick, and Thorne is very kind to Leander. I still introduce Leander as my cousin, because it seems like the right move.

Probably not a good plan to lie to Alpha Thorne, but oh, well. He asks what pack Leander is from, presumably to call his alpha, and then tells us that Leander has one week before Thorne will ask him to leave, or he can petition Thorne to become part of the pack.

Leander is polite, deferential, and overall, the whole thing is done in less than twenty minutes. I still, however, feel weirdly bubbly after we leave.

Once we get back to the cabin, Leander grabs us two beers, and we sit on the porch. The sun is just starting to get low and dip behind the mountains, and the cold beer is incredibly refreshing.

I turn to look at him. “Okay, I definitely feel like I got called to the principal’s office and then didn’t get in trouble.”

He laughs. “Were you in trouble a lot as a kid?”

“Oh, hell yes. My aunt literally couldn’t keep me out of that office.”

“I could see it.” He smiles.

I nod. “Sometimes I think… I don’t know. I wonder if it would have been different. If my mom raised me, or my dad was around.”

“You don’t remember your mom at all?”

I shake my head. “No. My aunt used to tell me all the time that I look like her, though.”

“Yeah. You look just like her,” he murmurs.

It’s a tiny comment. The smallest possible thing that he could say. But it echoes through my mind like a thunderclap.

Slowly, I turn. I put down my beer and move so that I’m staring at him.

“What did you say?”

Leander blinks. “That you probably look like your mom. I’d imagine so,” he says in a completely calm voice.

It doesn’t smell like he’s lying. His heart isn’t beating any faster. I can’t sense that he’s sweating or upset or anything like that. Maybe I did hear him wrong.

Slowly, I settle back in my chair. I grab my beer and hold it up to my lips. “There’s a neurologist in Steamboat Springs. She’s a witch, so she’s kind of adjacent to our world. She can get you checked out. For your memory,” I add.

“Okay,” Leander says softly.

“I’ll call tomorrow to see if there’s an appointment.”

The silence feels like it’s digging claws into us. I can practically feel it squeezing around my heart.

I want Leander to say no. To protest and say that he wants to stay here and petition Thorne to be part of the pack.

I want him to explain more about why he said I look just like my mother. There’s no way he could know that. Hell, I don’t even know that. I have one picture of her and my dad together. It’s one of those small pictures that comes in a long strip, like from a photo booth. In it, they both look ridiculously happy. It must have been taken from the date they went on that resulted in me, and there’s a frayed edge on one side like someone ripped it off of another picture. There’s a crease over the man’s face, so I can’t really see what he looks like, but I can see my mom and the broad smile on his lips as he looks at her.

My aunt refused to talk about my mom. So, it’s all I have of hers.

The picture is hidden deep in my sock drawer, underneath a box of other random things that I always keep on top of it so that if someone were to rob me, they’d take the junk first and leave the real treasure behind. Has Leander been going through my things?

Questions swirl around me. Why the hell did I find him in the woods? What was he doing there?

The doubts feel like they’re gnawing at me. I don’t have a good answer for any of them, and that’s even worse, because I feel like I don’t know what questions to ask.

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