Well, that had me told. I laughed, before I asked, “Explain?”

“Three times in my life, I remember him losing everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. We went from riding the highs to surfing the lows.” She pursed her lips. “As difficult as it was living on the carny circuit, it wasn’t that much different than those times. After all, we were always traveling, I think we only stayed put for a year, maybe two, at the most, and then we had some truancy issues so my father had us on the move again.

“Traveling around is what we did best. The poverty? Nothing worse than what I had to deal with during those times.” A breath escaped her. “Father was a good shot, and there were periods when he had to go hunting just to put food on the table. I always hated that. But those were the lows, and somehow, he always managed to get us out of it. I have no idea how, but something would come through, and we’d be back on top once more.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“You’d think so. I just… I don’t know.”

“What? Come on, tell me.” I reached over and ran my hand over her arm.

“Truly, I don’t know, Austin. It’s just something I sensed.”

“Like what?”

“When I touched Cyrilo’s mind, it was black. I thought that was fitting. Like imagery, you know? He was evil. Therefore, his aura would be black.” She exhaled roughly. “Pitch like coal. It was disturbing. But when I touched Lara, I saw something.”

“What? What did you see?”

“A reflection of my color. That’s also black.”

“You’re not evil,” I scoffed, instantly hitting to the heart of the matter, because I knew that had to be what she was thinking. That was why she sounded so pensive.

“No, I’m not.” Her lips twitched as she shot me a look.

“You’ve never seen your aura before?”

“How would I?”

“In a mirror?” I asked dryly.

“Doesn’t work like that,” was her calm retort, when, if I’d asked Ethan a similar and somewhat obvious question, he’d have slapped me upside the head. I swore to the Mother, I had the best mate ever. “So if I’m not evil, and my energy is black like his, just like coal, then the link has to be blood, doesn’t it?”

“There are many other variables—”

“I’m sure there are,” she agreed, her tone reasonable. “But when I saw Lara, her coloring was silver. A gleaming silver. The complete opposite.”

It didn’t take much to piece things together. “Did you ever see Jana’s coloring?”

“No. I spent most of the time when I was a teenager ignoring my gifts, because they were an inconvenience. They usually got me into trouble, and when Lara was unable to control her own, it just got us into more bother with father, so it was a deterrent against using them. He already beat us enough without having to add to the list of reasons why he’d slap us.” As rage filtered through me at her words, she reached over and patted my arm. She soothed, “He’s dead, there’s no need to get angry anymore.”

“There’s every need.”

“I appreciate it, but I don’t want you wasting energy on him. He’s gone for good, and that makes me feel infinitely better.”

I just hummed at that, because in my opinion, it wasn’t enough. Draga Krasowski needed his ass kicked, and only then would I be satisfied he’d got his.

“Only when I was fortune telling and reading tarot did I start to rely on my gifts, and even then, it wasn’t that necessary. I had to stay under the radar or I’d come to someone’s attention, and that was the last thing I needed. So I kept it to love lives and misery at home. Simple.

“What I saw today… It wasn’t just a different color, it was a different feel. Her energy was like mine, but the coloring wasn’t.”

“If your dad got aggressive because you didn’t jump high enough when he told you to, do you really think your mom would’ve had the guts to have an affair?” I asked her again, trying to get to the heart of the matter.

“No. I don’t. But that’s what I’m saying. If he sold her out, then…he couldn’t get angry, could he? And kids are often the result of sex, aren’t they?” she said wryly, but her eyes were loaded with a bitterness that hurt me to witness.

I wasn’t used to that look in my mate’s eyes, and I wanted to take it away, wanted to free her from it, but I couldn’t. She was buried in the past, steeped in her personal history, parts of her life I could never touch, would only be able to witness from afar and from the limits of what she shared with me.

For the first time in my life, I found myself wanting to know everything about a person. Sure, there’d been whispers of that before, ever since I met her, but nothing as overwhelming as this.

I could read a file on her, encyclopedias about her past, minute details that covered her days from when she was small to when she met her high school sweetheart, Kian. I’d read it all and never get bored, not even with the tedious details of what she ate for breakfast when she was eight years old. My fascination for her was infinite.

I knew what it was to be mated. I’d been living that since she walked into our lives. But it was the first occurrence of my being jealous of any time she’d had without us in it. It was stupid and irrational, and a waste of fucking energy, but that was how I felt.

Stupid, irrational, and everything else.

“You really think he pimped her out? Wouldn’t he make her abort the child if that was true?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. He was very religious. Incredibly Catholic.”

I snorted. “Catholic enough that he felt nothing in selling out his wife?”

“There’s a difference between that and murder.”

“I thought you said his game was the bare-knuckle boxing fights?”

“Yeah, and some were to the death. I’m not saying it’s logical or rational. I’m just saying there’s something different about Lara than with Cyrilo and me.”

That had me shaking my head. “I thought auras changed colors.”

“They do. But at their core, there’s a light about every person.” A small smile curved her lips. “Do you know, I’ve never talked about this with anyone before? Not even my mom? Or Lara?”

I squeezed her arm. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“I know it is. I never doubted that. I just… It’s hard to explain, I guess.” When she fell silent, I let her, and she was silent for so long that I figured she wasn’t going to say another word, which I’d admit to being disappointed about.

I guessed I’d liked the idea of her sharing something that was for me and me alone.

Egotistical for sure, which made me feel bad because we all shared her, and Eli and Ethan never seemed to get mad about that.

What was it with me?

Why did I find things so hard, when they found them to be so easy?

Knight—I struggled with. I struggled with being a dad. Questioning everything I did or didn’t do. But Saint Eli and Ethan just found it easy. They held him and didn’t seem to worry if they were going to drop him, and I’d seen them change diapers. Even the great Highbanks alpha could change one without barely batting an eye.