He hadn’t agreed with us talking to our mother, simply because he thought it was raking up a past that couldn’t be changed.

But I’d never lost contact with her, just had never been all that close.

What was there to be close to? She’d made her decision a long time ago—my father over me. Over all of us.

She had to have known that our father had asked Cyrilo to end Sabina’s life, but what had she done? Acted as if Sabina had never existed after she’d run away, and she’d certainly never defended any of us when he’d hit us.

Father was always right. That was the law under our roof.

It was a wonder that Sabina and I didn’t loathe each other’s guts, to be honest. Neither of us felt any ounce of remorse over Jana’s passing, or Cyrilo’s for that matter, but while I’d had some reservations when I’d first arrived here where she was concerned, they’d gone.

Sabina was a dedicated mother, a loving mate, a wonderful and caring omega, and a sister I was still coming to learn, who never ceased to amaze me with her generosity of self.

No, she wasn’t perfect. She had a little temper, she was too overprotective of Knight, to the point where I knew we’d have a conversation about smothering him with attention, and she was a workaholic, but dedication wasn’t a weakness, was it?

She just needed a friend.

So did I.

Mates were one thing, sisters another. Friends? We could be that for each other. I wanted that, more than she could know.

When Todd’s hand slipped into mine, he perched on the edge of the sofa, which immediately creaked, before he muttered, “Talking to her did nothing other than make you both scowl.”

Sabina shook her head. “I wanted to understand.”

He sighed. “You wanted to hear something that wasn’t the full truth. You heard her side, and she didn’t understand what had happened to her. There’s no reassurance to be found there.” He squeezed my fingers. “Hyena males often do what they did to her—bite her, scar her, impregnate her, then leave them.”

“Don’t they have mates?” she asked.

“No. They just call them that, but they’re chosen life partners.”

“Why? Do they like to be confusing?”

Lips twitching, he murmured, “No. It’s just a cultural thing. But everything is different for tigers, eagles, bears, and wolves.”

Sabina tensed at that, and her shoulders hitched up as she gaped at him. “Tigers, eagles, bears, and wolves?”

Okay, so it made me teacher’s pet, I knew, but I chimed in, “They were the first animals the Mother created. They were her first born.”

Her eyes rounded. “No way.”

I wasn’t sure why she was surprised, neither was Todd, but he confirmed, “Those four species were her first children.”

She bit her lip. “I had a dream about a totem after the hyenas’ attack.”

Todd’s shoulders straightened at that. “What kind of dream?”

Warily, she whispered, “I don’t know. It was a totem with one of each of the original shifters depicted there. Not like ours. Ours consists of only wolves.”

“The onerai?” he asked, his voice a tad dreamy, like I’d just given him the Kama Sutra and told him to pick one for us to act out.

Hey! There was an idea.

Still, sex was for later, so I snorted. “Like she’d even know what the onerai is.”

“The first totem. What was it like?”

His eagerness had Sabina rearing back. “I don’t know. It was stupid. Just a dream.”

I knew my mate wanted more answers, but he didn’t press.

That was Todd—ever patient. But Sabina’s distress and confusion were clear to see, and Todd wasn’t the kind to push. That was one of my favorite things about him. His intensity bled through in other ways, but he’d wait for her to ask questions, and if she didn’t, then he’d let it go.

He had the wisdom of someone who’d lived a thousand years in a hunk with a twenty-nine-year-old body.

I was such a lucky bitch.

“Why do those four creatures do things differently?”

“They just have distinctive rulings and methods of governance. They’re older, have deeper, more integral laws that make this society churn. It’s not entirely surprising.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s always harder on the eldest children?” I hazarded a wry guess.

She blinked. “Is that why, Todd?”

“Well, that, and their culture has had a lot more time to develop structure, and they were granted more blessings and curses along the way.”

“Like what?”

“Like, wolves get a mate. That’s a gift, but it’s a curse to die if the other dies. While that’s a relief at the time, because it’s painful to do without them, if there are children, then it’s not a blessing, is it?

“Then, there’s the fact that they have alphas and betas and omegas. Strict delineated rules for pack governance. The reason your sister could overtake the clan was because there’s nothing like that for the hyenas. They pick them like humans pick their leaders. It’s not innate to them. Which, as we know, doesn’t always work either. Look at the Rainfords. But there’s proper protocol in place that will help a pack overturn despotic rulers.

“For hyenas, it’s just chaos. They spend all their lives trying to make money and trying to gain political power in the human world, because they have no leg to stand on in this one. Jana, if she could see anything about the future, maybe have a vision of who’d become the next president or…well, whatever, she’d be very useful, and that kind of usefulness can be monetized, which leads to power in the clan.”

“She said her mate was powerful too. Came from a strong line,” Sabina muttered, like her mind was elsewhere.

“So she pussy-whipped him, and then backed it up with her visions,” I guessed.

Her lips twitched. “It fits. He wasn’t very dominant.”

“The males aren’t. There’s a reason there are a lot of males born but fewer females, and even fewer still who’ll shift.”

Sabina bit her lip. “Is that why Lara didn’t shift? Because she isn’t strong?”

“Hey! I’m plenty powerful,” I groused.

“Yeah, but in a different way,” she teased, and I was glad she was lightening up some.

Todd slipped a hand over my shoulder and hugged me tight. “Her hyena blood helps make her the Moon Child.”

“What does the Moon Child actually do though?” Sabina asked, her curiosity clear.

And while neither of us knew the real answer to that, because we hadn’t been let in on the secret either, when Todd spoke, a shiver whispered down my spine, because his words felt real. They felt like a portent.

“She changes everything.” Then, he beamed a smile at us, and said, “Anyway, enough of the past. You can’t control it, but you can control the future. You can make sure that you learn from your mother’s mistakes and that you’re better than she was.” He kissed my temple as he quoted, “‘We learn from history that we learn nothing from history…’ Don’t be like that.”

Sabina’s gaze turned pensive at the quote, but she asked, “You know the night of the attack?”