Page 88 of Owning His Mate

“This is crazy,” Halle mutters.

“Crazier than us being able to turn into wolves at will?” Wyatt comments, shrugging his shoulders. “Let’s face it—everything about our lives is crazy.”

“I know it sounds far-fetched, but I promise you I’m not lying.” Hester blows out a breath. “Revna discovered she was pregnant, and she was so happy about it.”

Apryle flinches next to me, and through our bond, I feel her apprehension.

“My father was meant to marry for alliances, to have children who would become his heirs. He no longer needed Revna’s magic. His constant use of the pelt was already corrupting him. He started to think more like a wolf, started to exhibit certain personality traits of the beast he turned into when he was wearing the pelt. I think part of him was scared of what he was turning into. He couldn’t control the beast taking over his mind, whether he was wearing the pelt or not. He tried to draw the evil out of it, to stop himself from becoming a monster, but it was too late. Magic, power, it has its own force, and that can’t always be controlled.”

“I saw it…” Apryle’s words are soft, so soft I barely hear them, but Hester’s gaze bounces in her direction. “I dreamwalked. I didn’t understand anything that was being said, but I saw Revna being tied to a post and her back torn open by a whip. She waspregnant, but she turned to look at me, and I swear she could see me. I thought she was going to hurt me, but then I woke up.”

She didn’t wake up. I dragged her out of that state by force.

Apryle squeezes my hand.

“That explains my vision. She shouldn’t have been able to see you. Dreamwalking is an imprint of a memory, a snapshot into someone’s unconscious mind. The fact that she was conscious enough to see you not only shows her strength, but that she is awake.”

“So you’re one of these Seidh?” Cade asks, massaging Halle’s nape.

“You smell like tau,” Jackson adds, “but it always seemed a little different.

“My sister and I both had attributes of my mother’s witch side, but also my father’s growing wolf powers.”

“You were the first hybrids,” Apryle says, and I place my hands on her shoulders, gently squeezing. I never expected we would learn any of this. The origin story of our kind seems difficult to believe, and yet I believe Hester’s version. It is the only thing that makes any logical sense.

“Every tau wolf can trace themselves back to me and my sister.”

“So, you’re like our great-grandmother times a lot of greats?”

She gives Apryle a small smile. “In the loosest sense of the term. Things kind of spiraled the further the generations went on. The more children were born, the further the line got watered down. You guys can do less than the first generation of tau to be born.”

“What about us? Where did vargr wolves come from?” Jackson asks.

“From my brother. Our father tried everything to get rid of me and my sister, but our mother was fiercely protective. She refused to let him hurt us, and although he continued to hunt forus, he also went on to have his own children. Our half-brother, the white-haired man, looked human when he was born, but he began to display wolf tendencies from a very young age. He was strong, could fight, and he could change into the wolf. Every generation after him was either full wolf, vargr, or a kind of melting pot of human-wolf, like Abel.”

“What happened to make your brother hate us?” Roux asks the question that sits on the tip of my tongue.

Hester folds her hands together in her lap, a ripple of pain spreading over her face. “The magic that turned our father was already destroying him, and he grew bitter about what he perceived as a curse placed on him by my mother. He hated everything about our mother and what she had done to him, and by proxy, he hated me and my sister. We were like her, we had the same magic, the same evil abilities.”

“But he didn’t share that animosity toward your brother?” Dove asks.

She shakes her head. “Erik was his heir, and he needed him to continue his legacy. So my brother became a symbol of his power, of his heritage. How many other Jarls had family who could turn into fierce beasts? But he still hated our mother. He saw Freya and me as abominations. We weren’t wolves. We were a mix that he just could not see as anything else but a corruption. And his hate for our mother made him twisted. He wanted to punish her, and so he and my brother dedicated all their time to hunting down anyone associated with her. That included my sister and me, plus our children.”

I’m not sure why, but it makes me feel better to know that we’re caught up in this through no fault of our own. It doesn’t change anything, but it is good to finally have answers.

As I look around the faces of the people who have become friends to me, I find myself wondering if all of this could have been prevented. All this suffering, and for what?

“So everything that is happening is because of your little family spat?” Sawyer asks, taking his usual relaxed demeanor. “Tau wolves die every day. They are tortured in horrendous ways, their babies ripped from them, because you, your siblings, and your parents had a little domestic issue thirteen hundred years ago?”

When he puts it like that, it seems ridiculous, but history shows wars have been fought over less.

“Erik is the problem here, not me or Freya,” she says.

“If you’re powerful, why are you scared of your brother?” This question comes from Dove. “You have your mother’s genes, her gifts.”

A shudder works through Hester. “Because my brother has no conscience, Dove. The things he has done to me over the years, to Freya as well, terrify me. So I did what I could. I tried to protect hybrids when he found them, when I saw them in danger in my visions. You are, after all, descendants of me and my twin. I felt obliged to help.”

“I’m not calling you Grandma,” Sawyer mutters, earning a glare from Hester.

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