Page 12 of The Awakened Wolf

“He’s not,” I whined, sounding more like my wolf than myself. “He’s the smartest male I’ve ever met, when he’s not dumbing himself down to look macho for the other males. And funny! You wouldn’t guess it, but Gods, he makes me laugh when we’re alone. But he also has this tender side—”

“Sounds like I really dodged a bullet,” Kiana deadpanned.

“I’m sorry.” I winced and then immediately un-winced. “Wait. No, I’m not! You told me to mate with him!”

“I encouraged you to accept his claim.” Kiana sagged into her aggressively feminine version of the armchair we’d called our father’s throne. “And proceed with a proper mating ceremony.” She rubbed her temples. “You do realize you might be carrying his pup?”

“We were careful,” I mumbled. “So I’m probably not.”

“Careful?” Kiana echoed like she’d never heard the word before.

“You know.” My mumble got even mumblier. “We used protection.”

“Protection?” Kiana repeated in the same tone as before, her face a mask of genuine confused. And then it shifted it to abject horror. “What was even the point?”

“The point?” I stared at her. The point was the point, and Sebastian had proven it three times in a row, which admittedly may have increased the chances that a stray seed got sown, but the point was still the point, not pups.

“Why would you let him—” Kiana grimaced and shook her head as if she’d been offered a bite of something rancid. “—carry on like that if you weren’t open to the possibility of conception?”

She doesn’t know.

It was my turn for my mask of confusion to twist into horror. She didn’t have friends to explain the infamous diner scene in When Harry Met Sally. She’d never even seen the movie. Any movie. She didn’t know about Rose’s hand slapping that steamy car window in Titanic. She didn’t know the right male could take you to the stars, not just to motherhood.

I swallowed bile. “Kiana, who gave you the talk?”

The basics of conception were explained in a special class when we reached puberty and experienced our first shift, but the mechanics of sex were left up to our mothers to explain, traditionally the night before our mating ceremony.

“Damian, of course.” Kiana’s cheeks flushed pink with shame. “Not my fondest memory, but it was all very proper. He told me what Sebastian would expect and how to make sure his efforts were… fruitful.”

“And nothing about what you should expect from Sebastian, I imagine.” A dark laugh rumbled from my burning throat. I’d been a little jealous that I didn’t get to kill that bastard myself, but now I was glad my sister had gotten her revenge, even if she didn’t totally understand why she deserved it.

“Of course not,” Kiana snapped, always toeing the party line. “And after this whole debacle, I know he was right about one thing. You’ve seen too many movies. What human females do isn’t—”

“Damian is Sebastian’s biological father,” I announced, unsure if she’d heard that part of the conversation before she’d arrived on the scene and ended the monster.

“Oh, please!” Kiana rolled her head away from me, shaking it with disbelief. “Yara? A fallen female? I know she’s fragile, but I seriously doubt she would—”

“She might not even know it happened.”

Kiana flinched. She knew exactly what I meant.

“So, please,” I said. “Forget everything he told you about sex.”

“Is that—” Kiana cupped a hand over her mouth. “Is that why Yara is unwell?”

“Maybe? I can see how being forced to forget who fathered your son might shatter your whole mind, but I can’t say anything for certain. Except that it happened. Damian is Sebastian’s father, and when Sebastian found out…”

I thought of Luke Skywalker throwing himself into the abyss because it would have been better to die than join his long lost father in serving the Empire. Damian hadn’t made him any such offer, but within minutes of his death, the One-Eyed Man had appeared from thin air with his wolves who could disappear into it.

“Oh, Gods…” Kiana rubbed her mouth like she might’ve thrown up in it a little. “He was trying to mate me with his son.”

My lip curled with disgust. “That’s what you’re sick about?”

“Yes! Damian was like… like our uncle… Sebastian’s practically our cousin.”

“He’s literally not our cousin,” I sighed. “But close relations didn’t seem to bother you when you were shoving me into Blaze’s bed and I said he was like an uncle.”

“Because Blaze isn’t anything like an uncle!” Kiana banged her head against the back of her chair. “Honestly, only you could be selfish enough to complain that I set you up with a match who would make sure you were safe, supported, and respected at the highest levels of our society. And given the size of his own brood, I figured he’d go easy on you with the whelping. If anything, I thought you’d thank me.”

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