MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

CORVIN

I found her in the east sitting room with a book open on her lap.

She was not reading it.

I had known she would be in this room. She had been there every evening since I left and I had spent three days doing everything in this pack house except walk through that door because walking through that door was the end of something and I was not ready for endings.

I was done not being ready.

I closed the door behind me. Turned the latch. She heard it and closed the book and set it on the side table and folded her hands in her lap and held my eyes and the fact that she was not surprised told me everything about how long she had been expecting this.

That waiting. That calm, prepared waiting. That almost broke me before I even started.

"I spoke to a woman named Sera," I bit out. "On the road home."

Freya did not ask who Sera was. She did not ask what things. She sat with her hands folded and held my eyes and the absolute readiness of it made me want to put my fist through the nearest wall.

"You are a first order witch."

"Yes? You already knew that."

I turned away from her. Crossed to the window. I put my hand on the frame and pressed and did not throw anything, which I considered a personal achievement given the last two days of sitting with this in a car with nowhere for it to go.

"You were not dead." I kept my back to her. "You let this pack believe you were dead. You let my sons believe it." My grip tightened on the frame. "You let me grieve you. You let me—" I stopped. Pressed harder. Took a breath and held it until the edges of it went quiet. "You let me bury you. And you were alive."

Her voice came through behind me. "Yes? You already know why.".

I turned around.

She had not moved. Still in the chair, still with that composure, and I had loved that composure since the first moment I encountered it because I had recognized it as the same thing I had in myself, the discipline of a person who had learned early that showing what you felt was a vulnerability, and right now I needed her to look as destroyed as I felt and she did not and that made everything worse.

"The bond." I kept my voice low deliberately. "Sera told me what you can do. What a witch of your rank can do with a bond that is not naturally assigned." I crossed the room until I was close enough to see her face clearly. "Tell me right now whether that is what this is."

She held my eyes without blinking.

"I can do it." Her voice was level. "I have that ability and I have not used it. Not ever. Not with you." She held steady. "The bond between us is real. I did not manufacture it. I had not wanted anything like this before and I would not have known how." A pause. "It was real. It has always been real."

I stood over her and I believed her and I hated myself for it.

I had built a clean version of this conversation in the car. The version where she had engineered the bond and I would have the absolute fury of a man who had been manipulated in the one way that could not be forgiven and the clean fury would carry me through without the other thing getting in the way.

The other thing was getting in the way regardless.

I turned away again. Put distance between us because the alternative was closing it and I was not ready for that either.

"There is something else Sera told me." I stopped on the other side of the room. "About a bloodline. A man who left this pack before we were born. Who had children in different places and stayed for none of them." I turned back to face her. "She gave me his name. I know who he is. I know he had a son who ended up inside my pack and has been sitting at my table and living in this house."

Freya did not move.

"I am going to say the name to you now."

I spoke the name into the room.

Complete quiet.

Her hands pressed down on her knees. Something moved across her face, brief, controlled immediately, but I had been watching her face long enough to catch things she did not intend to show.

"Cole." Her voice came out with the flat, like a woman who had been carrying something for so long that setting it down felt like dropping weight.

"Cole is my half brother. Same father. A Gravemoon-born man who passed through my mother’s village and did not stay." Her jaw was set. "Cole does not know. He has never known. I am the only one who has carried it."

I stood in the middle of the room.

I thought about every dinner I had hosted with Cole at my table. Every time I had watched my sons trust him. Every time I had trusted him myself with the running of this house. And she had known. She had come here knowing. She had let it continue for every day she lived under my roof.

"How long were you watching him before you came here?"

She lifted her chin. "Long enough to know he needed someone to make sure a door was open for him."

"And you chose my pack."

"Yes."

"Without telling me why."

"Yes."

I held her eyes. This woman I had loved since before I understood what the bond was. Who I had grieved. Who I had found again. Who was sitting in this room with three enormous things between us and the composure of someone who had rehearsed for this conversation and was not going to break during it.

The fury was real. What was underneath the fury was also real. I hated that both things were true at the same time.

I opened my mouth.

Three knocks at the door. Marco’s voice, quiet and urgent.

"Alpha. It is about Cole. He is not in the pack house. No one has seen him."

I held Freya’s eyes.

She held mine.

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