I tipped my head to the side. “You were sick?”

“Yeah. For a long time.” Her smile was tight, the memories of her suffering not having faded yet. “I’m well now, though.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I told her sincerely.

Her smile peeped out. “Me too. It wasn’t fun.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You’ll never guess how I stayed afloat…”

“How?”

“Fortune-telling at a carnival.”

My brows lifted but I had to giggle. “Please tell me you had to wear one of those stupid costumes.”

“Oh, I did. My wardrobe consisted of nothing more than scarves for a while.”

Snickering, I told her, “Well, it’s more traditional than what I’ve been doing… writing SEO articles online.”

Her nose crinkled. “Staid.”

“Well, you know I like things to be boring.” I shrugged. “It barely kept me afloat, but not having to go out made it more than worth it.” Looking around the uncomfortable as hell formal living room, I murmured, “I guess money hasn’t been an issue for you for a long time.”

“No. Not for a while.” Sabina’s brows lowered. “Funny how things change, perceptions with it. I never thought about father using that whole turf war lie as a shield. I thought the money issues and that were tied together.”

“Nah. You forget, I used to be at home more than you. I listened in on most of his conversations.”

She snorted. “I swear, no matter how hard I worked to keep you out of trouble, you always found a way to get back into it.”

I shrugged. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“Watch cartoons?” When I rolled my eyes, she asked, “Do you ever wonder about how he repaid his debts? Or did you hear anything from his phone conversations?”

“Well, I knew you were a payment—wife and trust fund, why wouldn’t they want us?” I told her calmly. While the notion was sickening, equally, it was something I’d accepted long ago.

Just as I’d known that I’d end up a Lindowicz wife at some point too. It was one of the reasons, after our father’s death, I’d run and I’d only ever called mother from a phone booth and given her the address of a PO Box, so that if they came for me, and asked about me, she’d only be able to give them that.

Which prompted me to ask, “How did you get my number?”

“I called Mother. I left the particulars to Eli. I know he called on another pack for a favor in retrieving you though.”

“I only gave her a PO Box address.”

“Eli and the packs have ways of finding out such matters, I have to assume, considering you’re sitting here and aren’t hyena food.”

I shuddered. “True. I wonder who killed the hyena. The guys who found me came after he was dead and gone.”

She winced. “That’s a long story.”

“We have all day, don’t we?”

That made her sigh. “I’ve been having dreams. About a cackling beast—a hyena, I presume—one I kill with a bow and arrow. That night, before I called you, my she-wolf attacked the creature. In my dream.”

My stomach plummeted. “The hyena had an arrow to the heart and had been mauled.”

She gulped. “Yes.”

“That’s got to be a coincidence.”

“Has it?” Sabina caught my eyes with hers. “The dream was important. I knew it was to do with you, I could just never figure out how. I realize now that it was leading up to my being able to protect you. To my bringing you here. And now I know you’re mated to Choi, I think it all fits. Don’t you?”

“We’re not mated.”

“Of all the things I just said, that’s what you’re focusing on?” she complained.

I pursed my lips and decided a change of subject was required. “Why all the questions about the Lindowiczs? There’s no way of knowing what crazy stuff was going through father’s head. His brain was pickled even before the Alzheimer’s worked its number on it.”

“Because I realized something last night.” She soothed herself by stroking her fingers over Knight’s head. “Your energy is different than mine and Cyrilo’s.”

“In what sense?”

“When he died, I looked into him, into his being, and I mistook what I saw for his nature. His energy was black. I thought that was because he was an evil man. Then, after what happened with Seth, I saw a reflection back at myself through your eyes. Mine was also that color. Yours, on the other hand, is white.”

“Blood ties?” I asked, my tone clinical.

“I think so.” She bit her lip. “I’m constantly learning about my new powers,” Sabina admitted. “I don’t know how I do half of what I can do, if I’m being honest, and when I learn something, I don’t always know how to repeat it because it’s instinctual.”

“That makes sense.”

“Does it? I’m glad it does to someone, because to me, it’s incredibly frustrating.” A heavy gust of air streamed from between her lips. “Last night, I was exhausted still, but this morning, over breakfast, I tried to see into my mates like I did with Cyrilo. Austin and Ethan share a color, but Eli doesn’t. They were mothered by the same woman.”

“The inference being that we share a mother, but you and Cyrilo share a father?”

“Yes.”

Though the information rocked my world—in a good way—I asked, “What color do they share?”

“A kind of violet. In my mind, they’re orange and green respectively, but when I looked, deep into their being, I saw a violet. Eli? He’s maroon usually, but his blood, his spirit I guess, is blue.”

“What about Knight?”

Her eyes flared at that, and I realized she’d never thought to look into her son. When she tilted her head down and stared at him, her gaze turning misty with gold and white swirls in a way that reminded me of swift onset cataracts with how foggy her irises turned before the miasma dispersed as quickly as a cloud crossing the sun, and she looked back at me, whispering, “Blue. Like Eli.”

“Auras aren’t as superficial as you first thought?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “No. Maybe they were before. But everything’s different now.

“With the pack, I can feel their heartbeats, see their auras and a light—the heartbeat tells me they’re alive, but the light tells me they’re connected to the pack. Their aura tells me their mood.

“With my mates, I can see their mood, their light is colored, but their blood also has a hue. I think that’s something to do with family. Otherwise, I’d see it in everyone, but I don’t. Only those who are tied to me.”

“Patrilineal blood,” was all I could think to say. From father to child.

She cleared her throat. “Considering what I know about pack culture, that’s more interesting than you can imagine.”

“Why?”

“They celebrate a deity known as the Mother.” Sabina grew tense at that, and her focus diverted to Knight—a self-comforting gesture if ever I’d seen one. “I’ve communicated with her.”