Page 20 of Challenged Mate
I nodded, but I couldn’t ignore the discomfort growing in the pit of my stomach. There was so much I had yet to learn about who my mother was, and why it would mean sorcerers wanted to kill me. My gut said the less people who knew the truth of her identity, the better.
I changed the subject before my thoughts could grow any darker. “Which of your parents was a shifter?”
“My dad,” she told me. “My mom, obviously, was a sorceress.”
“Oh, cool.”
“Yup,” Kayla grinned. “My mother was actually the most powerful sorceress in our pack in four generations. And my dad was the strongest male shifter.”
“Even compared to your alpha?” My father had said the current Wilds alpha was rumored to be the most powerful alpha the Wilds Pack had ever seen. It was part of his motivation for sending me to the Wilds Pack. He believed the alpha would be able to protect me from the sorcerers trying to kill me.
“Well, our alpha is the most powerful now, of course,” Kayla said with a hint of unease.
Before I could ask more, I felt the silencing bubble around us fade away as she asked, “Are you interested in grabbing a cup of coffee? I’m tired of those hags sneering at us from across the park.”
My back straightened. I glanced at the group of females and saw one bare her teeth at Kayla. I realized why she removed the silencing barrier.
Stifling my chuckle with my hand against my mouth, I murmured, “Sure.”
We walked out of the park, away from the glaring foursome, without a backwards glance.
As we walked, I picked up our earlier conversation, “I have a question.”
Kayla didn’t miss a beat. “Shoot.”
“How is the magic in your pack’s bloodlines not diluted? I mean, your guys are pretty isolated out here.” I doubted there were incestuous relationships taking place in the Wilds Pack. That was just as taboo among shifters as it was for humans.
“Most of our bloodlines are actually pretty diluted,” Kayla told me. “Many of our pack members are limited to one-eighth to one-sixteenth of magical blood in their line, but that still gives them pretty impressive power when coupled with their shifter abilities.
“It’s only when a sorcerer or sorceress abandons their coven and joins our pack that we get spikes in the next generation for magical blood levels,” Kayla continued. “That’s what happened with my mother and her sister—Chase’s mom. It’s why my brothers, cousins, and I are so powerful compared to other pack members in our generation.”
I replay her words in my head, trying to grasp the new information, when one word stands out above the rest. “Wait. Did you say, ‘brothers’?”
“Oh, Mother,” Kayla exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me. Asher didn’t tell you he was a twin?”
My jaw fell open. I quickly closed it, then cleared my throat. “Um… no. He didnottell me that.”
It shouldn’t matter. Asher and I weren’t going to fulfill our bond. We weren’t dating. We weren’t even friends. But I couldn’t ignore how Asher’s omission hurt.
“Typical.” Kayla shook her head. “Ash has never been a talker. Axel is, by far, the more sociable one.”
“Axel?” I repeated absentmindedly. My thoughts were still focused on the fact that I knew practically nothing about the male I shared a fated bond with, disliking how much that truth bothered me.
“Asher’s twin, my other brother.”
“Why haven’t I met him?”
“He’s with Asher.”
“Ah.”
We walked the rest of the way in silence. Most of the shifters along the street smiled at Kayla in greeting, but their lips fell whenever their eyes met mine.
Out of the blue, Kayla resumed our conversation. I believed she was trying to distract me from her packmate’s less-than-welcoming looks, “Back to the subject bloodlines, our pack is pretty large—larger than the other North American packs believe.”
“What? Really?”
We reached a coffeeshop with a navy-blue awning hanging over the door which readThe Daily Bean.
