Page 81 of Roaring Flames

I turn the name over and over in my head.

Mymother’sname.

Oh fuck.

I’m going to be sick.

“The witches wanted to take you in themselves. Believed that you could have some latent magic in you, though Amanda swore she didn’t sense anything. It took years of fighting, but eventually, you were able to come and live with us.” Hale lifts a hand, as if wanting to touch me, but thinks better of it and drops it to his side.

“You’re half shifter and half witch, yet you don’t show characteristics of either species,” Gerry says, scratching at his beard. “That isn’t to say that you never will?—”

“But usually, shifters and witches will come into their power by their eighteenth birthday, if they don’t develop their gifts sooner,” Hale finishes.

“The mate bonds,” I whisper as realization tumbles through me. “When I turned eighteen…”

Hale and Gerry both frown simultaneously. The former releases a heavy breath, while the latter drags his hand down his face and mutters, “I suspected as much.”

“It must be the latent shifter blood in you,” Hale explains. “Or it could be something else entirely. It’s rare, but not impossible, for shifters to mate with someone outside of their species. Just look at your mother’s pack.”

A new thought occurs to me, and I jerk upright in my seat. My heart, which has already been beating unreasonably fast, threatens to burst free of my rib cage. I can feel each thump of it against my breastbone.

“My mother’s pack… One of those men is my father, isn’t he?”

Hale’s frown deepens. “It’s a little different for shifters, especially ones who have a Heart. Usually, a tiny bit of all of their DNAs combine to create a child. But yes, they are your fathers.”

Fathers.

As in, multiple.

My hands turn clammy, and I rub them against my jeans.

“Who are they?” I whisper, flicking my gaze from one man to the next. When they don’t immediately answer, I repeat myself, my voice rising in volume. “Who are they? Who are my fathers?”

Thirty-Two

EMERY

“Ican’t believe this happened.” Sidney hugs my twin even tighter as she cries into his neck. “How can Minnie be dead?”

Ethan murmurs something noncommittally—his voice too low for even me to hear with my wolf senses—and strokes our sister’s snarled hair.

It’s been a few hours since Sidney received word that her packmate and friend Minnie passed away. I can’t even imagine the grief Sidney must be feeling. If I were to lose Ethan or Ashton or Reid or Izzy…

I may be pissed at almost all of them, but losing them would be the equivalent of having a limb hacked off. No, worse than that. It would be a type of death that I’m not sure I would survive—I would still be breathing, yes, but my heart would cease functioning. I’m not sure it’d ever be able to work properly again.

Almost against my will, my gaze snags on Ethan.

How can I love and hate someone so fiercely? Losing Ethan would destroy me, but allowing him into my life, after everything he’s done…

I swallow the sudden lump in my throat, the coiled ball of tension that tastes like cement, and force myself to look away.

The three of us are in the living room. Ethan and Sidney have claimed the couch, but I remain standing, staring intently at the roaring flames of the fire. Their soft red and orange glow illuminates the darkened room. None of us bothered to turn on any lights when we retreated here.

And as fucked up as this makes me, all I can think is—at least it wasn’t Izzy.

God, how easily it could’ve been her.

The mere thought splits me open from throat to navel, leaving my entrails on the ground, a disarranged mess of red and pink.

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