Page 91 of Blue Moon Mistress

“I imagine, it would be something horrible. Something unforgivable. The spell allows me to control you and if I was another witch, maybe I’d abuse that. But I’mnotanother witch. And even if this thing we’re trying doesn’t work out, I’m not going to bethatkind of witch.”

I hear my mother coming back a moment before she appears. The guys probably won’t notice, but she has washed her face and reapplied her makeup.

The idea that she shed frustrated tears over this whole thing stabs at me. Guilt isn’t what I want to feel around any of them.

But she sits down and picks up her fork staring at the untouched casserole in front of her before looking back at them.

“I apologize. But you have to understand, I love my daughter and you could too easily take her away from me.” She laughs and it’s a bitter sound. “If you were just werewolves, everything would be fine.”

“I wish,” Thomas says, looking at me for a long moment before turning his attention back to my mother. “We all wish that we had met your daughter well before last month’s full moon, and it has nothing to do with the fact she’s taken away our need to turn. But now, I have another reason to wish we had. Because I know you don’t trust us, and you have no reason to. Maybe, if we’d wound up in her path before, we’d have had the time to earn your trust.”

Joshua nods beside him, “I hope, we’ve started doing that now.”

She asks about their jobs, nodding when Johnny describes the racoon he had to pull out of someone’s attic yesterday morning. His job makes the most sense for someone to have been turned.

Thomas mentions that he’d been scouted, but tore his ACL before the draft that would have decided his fate. The lycanthropy had fixed that… but there was no way to explain it, and being under public scrutiny had seemed like a bad idea, and he’d always liked helping kids at summer camps, so…

Joshu had barely touched on his job, and while my mother looked like she wanted to interrogate him, she turned to Chase. “And what about you?”

“I run a local bar.”

“Run it?”

He shrugs. “I’m part owner, but the other guy handles all the business aspect of it. I sling drinks, break up fights, the fun stuff.”

“That doesn’t exactly sound like a career.”

“I’ve been at the Liberty for almost twenty years, so…”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you. There are child labor laws in this country.”

“And I’m forty-six.”

She looks at him for a long moment and then turns to me. “That is very interesting.”

We finish breakfast while Johnny tells more wild animal stories and when we’re done, my mother gives them all a once over.

“I suppose, I have less to worry about.” The glare that narrows her eyes makes me think she doesn’t believe herself. “But that doesn’t mean I trust you yet.”

“We wouldn’t expect you to.”

I see them out after my mother stops them from trying to do the dishes. She stays inside—much to their relief.

“Come over once she’s gone?” Thomas asks, the first of them to kiss me goodbye.

I nod. “It won’t be until tomorrow.”

He doesn’t look happy about that, but heads to the truck and Johnny slips into his place, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me up to draw me to his mouth. “You could sneak out like a teenager tonight…”

“Tempting.”

Chase whispers a thank you against my ear and delivers his goodbye kiss to my throat and I have to squirm a little to deal with the desires that drags through me.

Only Joshua lingers, and I have to think it’s because the others are afraid of my mother. And they have every reason to be.

“I don’t doubt that you’re going to be okay, but… you know that if you need anything, you can always call us. Right?”

“Of course.”

---