Page 112 of Fate

She knew because it was the same jaw he shared with Lucian. The silvery eyes that flashed and smirked and did everything to appear sardonic and mocking rather than simply express honestly.

She could kiss it away in Lucian.

Because he was not his father, and he did not want to be cross with her.

Oberon was a wholly different matter.

“You will not steal this from me,” Ellena insisted, her voice shaking. “You will go home, and we may talk when I return.”

His eyes widened, but it was not in surprise. “You are giving me an order?”

Ellena paused, her hands curling into fists as she stood a little taller. “I am telling you,” she started again. Firmly, but with more composure than she’d had before. “To leave them be. To leave me be when I am with them. You did not want them—you made that perfectly clear. But I do, and I am doing my best to mend what you have broken, and you are making that far more difficult than it needs to be.” Her breath came in great heaves by the end of it, and for one terrible moment, Firen expected Oberon to reach out. To take hold of his wife and...

She could not even supply what she thought. Shake her? Strike her?

Those things were notdone.

Not between mates.

Not ever.

And yet... she thought it.

Briefly.

As he looked at her, then swivelled his attention to his son.

To Firen.

“Your mother’s loyalties have always been so backward,” he commented, strangely cool and unaffected by his mate’s words. “The moment our children were born, they always held so much more of her attention.”

Firen reached out. Curled her hand about Lucian’s. “Some mates would be thankful to have such devoted mothers for their children. I am sorry you could not appreciate it.”

There was that look again. The one that was growing most tiresome as eyes drifted down toward her middle.

Wondering looks.

She made no answer—he, of all people, did not deserve one. He’d have no part in the life of her children, not unless he grew penitent. If he would not try to feed them little lies about bloodlines and old families, and what a pity it was their mother was so beneath the rest of them.

She had more to protect than Lucian’s feelings. Or would. Someday. She would have children to shield, to protect. To offer the truth to them gently, when they were old enough to understand it.

Not expose them to Oberon’s poison as Lucian had been. To prey upon their age and inexperience. To fill them with doubt. With prejudice.

“This is a family matter,” Oberon answered Firen with a curl of his lip that hid none of the disgust he must have felt toward her. It shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t twist something inside her, the part that had flourished in her girlhood. That wanted so desperately to be liked by everyone, for them to smile at her, be pleased with her, and he... wouldn’t.

Not ever.

She couldn’t know that for certain, but it was not a wager she was willing to make.

“Kindly remove yourself, so we might finish it in private.”

Her mouth did not drop open at his impudence, but it was a near thing.

And for one horrible moment, she almost did as he asked.

Back to her mother. To pace around her kitchen table and spill out all the things she wished she might have said, but hadn’t. Around and around, until Lucian came back and pulled her into his arms and assured her he was gone and could not be so wretched any longer.

But Lucian’s grip tightened on her hand, and he took a half-step forward.

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