I bit my lip as I whispered, “I might not be able to help the boy. Are you sure you want me there?”

“Of course I do!” she groused. “Kali Sara, why wouldn’t I? Now that I’m safe, I have no reason to stay away from you. I thought you’d be—”

“Married? To a Lindowicz?” I huffed. “Yeah, guess again.”

She gulped. “I’m sorry, Lara.”

I could hold it against her for life, keep a grudge between us to shove distance in our way so that we’d never have a close-knit relationship ever again… Or, I could forget about things we’d done when we were both young and stupid, and we could have another chance at being sisters…

She’d called me at the exact moment when I was pretty sure I was going to die. She’d called me and stayed on the line, and apparently, her men—did she really have three of them?—were trying to help me, had sent people after me to protect me.

Sure, they were late, but they’d tried.

That was more than anyone else had done.

I’d been alone for so long that the prospect of having someone again was a little overwhelming, but this was Sabina. She wasn’t just someone.

She was my sister.

And if anyone could understand the powers we had, if anyone could share the burden, it was her.

So even though I was probably crazy, because I was leaping from the frying pan into the fire by leaving my home, all I’d known for years, and a hyena corpse that revealed an entirely new world to me, I whispered, “Okay. I’ll come.”

And when Sabina burst into tears, her relief poured down the line in a way that made my own eyes prickle.

She loved me.

That much was clear.

All those years ago, I’d loved her enough to help her escape. I could well remember the night when everything had gone wrong. It had just been a regular family meal in our trailer, until it hadn’t been. When father had told her he’d picked her a husband, and she’d told him she was pregnant with another man’s child… I’d seen him in a killing rage before, but something had stopped him. Something had merely made him lock her in her room.

Later on, I’d helped her escape. I’d called her boyfriend, told him she was in danger, then I’d broken into her bedroom while father was fucking mother loud enough for us all to hear.

That had been the last time I’d heard from her.

The last time I’d heard a lot of things in my left ear—father had hit me so hard, he’d perforated my ear drum.

I’d been glad she’d been free, yet after she’d gone missing, after father had told the family she was dead, and I knew it was irrational, but I’d been so mad at her for leaving me forever. Now, looking back, I knew it was founded in the same emotion—love.

I loved her too.

I loved her enough to forgive her abandonment, and I loved her enough to want to know this new her, to be grateful that she was alive, that she was here to piss me off and to cry over me.

Today might have started off as the worst day of my life, as the day I almost died, but it wasn’t going to end that way, was it? I couldn’t be anything other than happy about that.

Even if I was still pretty sure I was going loop-de-loop.

Four

Eli

Sabina was nervous, and it was cute. In fact, it was more than cute. It was beyond adorable, and I wasn’t the kind of man who often found the random things that women did adorable. I just wasn’t that way inclined.

But watching her shift her clothes, move vases around, rub at the tiniest of smudges on a mirror, before dusting a spot on a dresser that had never seen dust in its lifetime, thanks to all the staff who, over the years, had cleaned it, was sweet.

Especially when she had Knight attached to her.

I knew I loved her. I’d known that from the second I saw her bundled up in Austin’s arms that first blue-moonlit night. Yes, we were fated mates, and that helped things along a lot, but this went deeper than that. That she could accept my wolf when no one else ever had been able to, tore open the nails in the coffin my heart had once existed in. Freed it from shackles that had been opened by her alone. But seeing her with Knight made me love her even more.

The way she talked to him, cooed at him… Perhaps this was what all mothers did, but I’d never seen it before. And the woman and child had never been mine. My blood, tied to me. Knotted into my soul.

I slouched back in my seat, watching her bustle around, chittering at Knight as she did so. He stared up at her like she was his whole world, and every now and then, he’d head butt her breasts as if to remind himself they were his.

Well, they were momentarily.

Mother, I couldn’t wait until she was mine again.

Grunting at the thought, I carried on watching them, even as I began to rock slightly in my seat. I moved at a slow pace, as slow as Sabina was walking around, and when Berry shoved at the door, pushing it open in a way that was beyond magical because it was locked, Sabina shot her a look, firmed her lips, then went back to her chores.

The imaginary list was seemingly endless, and when Berry started following her around too, I figured enough was enough.

“You’re going to wear yourself out,” I told her calmly. My wolf responded to my calmness with an agitated growl, because while I found it amusing and sweet that she was primping for her sister, a sister who was probably ragged and exhausted after dealing with an animal siege, my beast didn’t.

If anything, he sensed her agitation and was throwing it back at me ten-fold. I was used to it, though, used to bearing the brunt of his emotions, so it didn’t affect me like it would Sabina if her she-wolf was feeling antsy.

“I’m not that weak,” she muttered, which had my wolf snarling in disagreement.

Of course, she wasn’t weak. She was the exact opposite of weak, but the wolf wasn’t exactly loaded down with a Merriam-Webster thesaurus. It wasn’t like he had a great vocabulary to pad out his lexicon.

He sensed her fatigue, a fatigue that came from having a newborn, but more than that, he sensed her upset. I could too. She scented of tears.

And I knew why. She’d shed them earlier today because of Knight. They were unintentional, of course, but they were a mother’s frustrated tears that made me want to solve things for her, but equally, how was I supposed to solve a breast milk crisis?

I’d never even known they were a thing.

I pursed my lips at the thought, pursed them harder when she started sniffling, and when that happened, I had no alternative but to get off my ass and to wander over to her.

Slipping my arms around her, I slid them tightly about her waist and under Knight’s body, taking his weight off her back, before I muttered, “You’re too hard on yourself.”

She pushed her face into my chest, and both of us ignored Knight’s grumbling, even though I knew the kid was quite happy with being smushed between us. He was pack, after all. We were used to being jumbled together, and if anything, that was when we were at our most comfortable. It was why, even though I could afford a mattress the size of my bedroom, we stuck with a queen-size bed, because there was no greater sense of comfort than ending the night piled in.

Even if things were a little awkward with Knight now, because we didn’t want to squash him, there was no way in hell I was changing our sleeping arrangements.