Page 67 of Bred Mate
“Is your revenge banging his father?”
My mother feigns being scandalized. “Of course not,” she says. “Or perhaps. Hard to say. If it is revenge I am greatly enjoying it.”
“Can we see the baby?” Orion asks.
“She’s asleep right now,” I say. “And if you wake her up I will turn both of you into throw rugs. And if my mother tries to eat her, things will be significantly worse.”
“Is that any way to speak to your mother and father and father in-law?” Margaret takes villainous pleasure in constructing that sentence.
“Goddammit, Mom. Come and have some tea.”
“Baldwin!” Orion greets the butler with a hearty embrace. “How are you, old man?”
“Nice to see you again, sir,” Baldwin says. “Have you not brought the children back with you?”
“The children?”
“Your children, sir,”
“Oh. My children,” Orion says. “They’re with their mother.”
“You two really do seem to have a lot in common,” I say to my mom.
“Really?”
“Yes, of course. Both powerful, both supernatural, both in the habit of abandoning family and pretending you’re good people anyway. Your delusions are really complimentary.”
“Thank you, darling,” she says, not having listened to a damn thing I said.
We have to escort them into the dining room, and we have to feed them and tolerate their company even though the reunion really doesn’t feel like a good thing. The air is thick with hidden agendas and secret plans. There is no way my mom doesn’t have an ulterior motive for being here. Neither one of them give a damn about a baby.
“How does the forest sound now?” I mutter the question to Karl.
“Don’t tempt me,” he growls back.
“Seriously, Mom, if you crave human flesh, you can’t see Yvie. It’s not safe.”
“I ate before I came,” my mother says in the most disturbing way possible. “I’m perfectly safe, darling. I’d like to see my granddaughter.”‘
“You haven’t earned access to her,” I say. “Not after all the shit you’ve pulled.”
She sighs. “I think you’ll change your mind once you see the present we have for you.”
“My childhood back?”
“Not quite,” she says.
Karl leaves the room for a moment, and I know why. He’s gone to get our daughter. For obvious reasons, neither one of us likes it when she is out of our sight for very long.
I don’t bother to make polite conversation in the interim. I let Orion stare at me in the calculating old man way he has, and I let my mother pretend everything is fine even though it is clearly not remotely okay.
Sitting with parents like this is like sitting in a room full of old sins. They might be pretending to be better people now, but they’re not. Neither one of them should be here. I know what Orion did to Gray’s wife, sending her to a secret laboratory to be experimented on. I know he’s manipulative and dangerous. I’m really not sure which one of these two is worse.
“There’s no point hating us, darling,” my mother says. “You’ve made a new little one who has us both in her veins, and you and your mate are half made of us.”
“Let’s hope genetics are not destiny,” I say. “Yvie is never going to suffer like Karl and I did, because we’re not going to leave her to survive on her own, or throw a fucking axe at her face.”
Orion bursts into laughter. “Is that what he said happened?”
