Trina just shakes her head. I’m not certain if she’s denying my assertion, or if her loyalty to her deceased chosen mate simply extends that far.
“Who, then?” Rian asks.
“I … I had to figure things out quickly after I … found out he wasn’t coming back. I was … he’d started an account for me, enough in it to cover my first year of university. He said that she… that Adeline would need time to accept me … that I should focus on getting my degree …”
“Adeline?” Rian asks, his voice a low rasp.
“Bolan and Livi’s mother,” I say.
“So you knew?” Rian’s voice is pained now. “That he had another family?”
“I was part of that family,” Trina says, still quiet. But edged and fierce now. “I was … his. And he was mine. I knew it the moment I saw him. And he knew it. He … his ties were to the royal guard, not to a pack. It had to be that way, that’s … he explained that it worked like that. He wanted to bite me into his family pack.”
“He hadn’t bitten Adeline,” I murmur, voicing the conclusion I’d already come to.
“They must have been married,” Rian says, getting just a little pissed. “Under law. You still cheated with a married man.”
Trina clenches her hands into fists, leaning toward her son. “You must know. You must know what it feels like, if you’re sitting here letting a pretty mage claim you before your mother.”
Rian blinks, a little taken aback.
“She’s got you there, wolf,” I say. “Though Rian’s connection to the bond group is through Mirth. He and I have only just met.”
Rian takes a deep breath, then lets it all go with his next exhalation. It’s seriously impressive. “Who did you reach out to, Mom? I need to know. You made it seem like we were on our own, but I have half-siblings I never knew about.”
Trina nods, mostly to herself. It’s obvious that she’s running through how to deliver the bit of Rian’s past she’s chosen to keep from him all these years.
“You were almost three …” She takes a breath, deeply but steadily, then meets his gaze. “I … it took me that long to get my first degree. I stretched the money James had given me, workingnights before you were born and living on campus. I couldn’t afford rent in the apartment he’d found for me off campus. We’d … we’d found for me. And then there was you … and it was a lot to balance.”
“Understandably,” I murmur.
Rian dips his chin slightly in acknowledgment. Maybe he knows this part — all the struggle. But maybe it’s not enough anymore, hence all the questions. Hence getting emancipated instead of waiting until he was eighteen to take control of his choices and his finances.
Trina sighs quietly. “I went to the house. The manor in the country. I took you with me, and maybe that was a mistake, but …” She shakes her head. “I knew that Oliver and Olivia should be in school. I had my degree, and I had you, and I thought … that even without James … we were supposed to be pack! But Adeline …”
She presses her lips together, but not in sorrow. As though even now, she doesn’t want to speak badly about someone who she thought was supposed to be her chosen family.
“She knew about you?” Rian asks. The question is a quiet, pained rasp. “She knew about me?”
“James … yes … she knew about me. James told her. But not you. I never got a chance to tell James about you. I’ve never lied to you about that. About any of it, Rian. Yes, I could have texted him when I started throwing up and I took the test, but I wanted to tell him in person.”
“Because the plan was for you to get your degree while Adeline … adjusted,” I say. Clarifying things, because I’m not certain Rian, for all his calmness, is absorbing everything his mother is telling him. “Not to have a kid. Not before formalizing your bond.”
Some emotion, some form of tension, flickers over Trina’s face. But she simply says, “Yes.”
“And what did Adeline do when confronted with her dead husband’s lover and bastard child on her front porch?” Rian’s tone has chilled, but he is still way too calm. Completely contrary to the words that fall like blows from his lips.
“She refused to acknowledge any of it.” Trina doesn’t drop her son’s gaze. “She said she never would have accepted me into her marriage. And she refused to even look at you.”
“You could have told me. About my siblings, at least.”
Trina shakes her head again. “She said that … she’d have me arrested if I went near her children, that she’d … sue me for … slander if I spread my lies. And she’d make sure that …”
Her gaze drops, and she twists her fingers together.
“That she’d make sure you lost Rian,” I finish for her, my world vision shifting far too much and far too quickly for my comfort. Adeline might not have been my mother, or even a mother figure for me, but … “Bolan is going to be fucking pissed.”
“You left me anyway,” Trina murmurs. “You chose your horses over your education.”
