Page 17 of Promise of the Wolf Moon

Someone would come for them.

Tillman had taken me from the twins. That separation had been the first of my many heartbreaks.

Hot tears slid over my temples to disappear into my hair.

I listened as Nereida gathered the ingredients for hot chocolate as she did every morning. The twins might be identical, but I could tell them apart by how they moved. Arteisma danced, floated like the earth had no pull on her. Nereida moved with purpose as if she carried the weight of the pack on her tiny shoulders.

Anger raced through my veins as I dried my tears. Their blood family didn’t know them, had never come to see them. Their own parents had...

“Try it like this,” Arteisma’s sweet, patient voice interrupted my spiraling thoughts. “The slices have to be kind of thick. Then you cut this way to make strips so we can dip them in our cups.”

“Oh, I get it,” Seff answered.

“You got this?” I imagined Arteisma’s confident smile, her dark, twinkling eyes staring up at Seff like she was giving him a gift.

“You betcha. I got this.”

At some early hour of the morning, safe in Seff’s arms, sleep had finally found me. Though I dreaded getting up and facing the day, I missed Seff. I craved his warmth in my bed, his strong, calloused hand holding mine. He didn’t look at me like I was a broken thing. He didn’t scold me for having a soft heart. He hadn’t broken his word and taken what I wasn’t ready to give.

If we could’ve only met before...

I wiped away new tears and realized it had gone silent in the kitchen. A strange apprehension filled me. Seff came through the doorway, ducking past the privacy curtain, a twin in each arm. He stopped short while he did a slow perusal of my body, then gently deposited the twins on the bed.

“Someone’s here,” he whispered.

Panic rose in my blood. “Someone’s here?”

Seff rounded the end of the bed, leaned down, and whispered again, “Two familiar scents. Not rogues.”

I grabbed his hand as he moved to step away. He wrapped his fingers around mine and gave a gentle squeeze.

“It’s okay. I’m gonna check it out.”

“Not alone.”

He glanced from me to each of the twins. Concern creased his brow.

“Des, darlin’.” He paused, letting the look on his face tell me what I needed to know. Stay with the twins. Let him do this. He would protect us.

I inhaled deeply, trying to catch the scent, and there was nothing. “I don’t—”

“It’s tangy, not acidic,” he said, like that explained it all. Then, his arms were around me, his lips against my ear. “Trust me.”

And then he was gone.

Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.

Stop it! Seff is not like that.

Before I could examine Seff’s motives more closely, Nereida slid off the bed and ran toward the door.

“Wait!” I reached out to pull her back, and she scowled.

“The milk will boil over.”

A sigh rushed out of me as I nodded. “Use a potholder to set it aside.”

She gave me an eye roll and mumbled, “I know how to do it.” Then marched out of my bedroom.

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