“I have something of yours,” she said, stretching her hand towards the drawer where she took the condoms from.
She brought out a letter, swiftly peeling off the brown paper to reveal white paper lined with red and blue at the edges.
“What’s this?” Malachi quizzed as she placed the paper on his lap.
“Open it,” she encouraged, her eyes gleaming with mischief and post-coital lassitude.
He unfolded the letter.
The first words were “Dear Lauretta.” Which seemed quite ordinary to him.
He had taken Lauretta forcefully and even though her mother had been quite hostile, Lauretta was still her daughter regardless.
The next words made him freeze.
“You probably don’t know who you are yet but I will tell you as your mother, from your birth I had felt something strange about you but I merely thought it was just normal maternal affiliation and since you’re the only one I have I never had the opportunity of feeling such way again but I do know my dear daughter that the way I felt was not ordinary and only now when you remain unshifted have I decided to investigate that subtle foreshadowing.
I should have told you sooner and for that I am sorry.
I kept the truth from you because I wanted to protect you for as long as I could, and I see now that my silence may have left you unprepared for the life that has taken you north.
If the days there are heavy, if the people around you treat you with coldness or cruelty, I need you to know that none of it is a measure of your worth.
You have always been more than the circumstances forced upon you.
My dearest girl, the strangeness I felt when I held you as a newborn never faded.
There were nights when you slept and the air in the room grew thick, as if something old and watchful sat beside the cradle.
There was the time you cut your hand on the broken basin and the wound closed before I could even fetch the cloth.
I told myself it was luck.
I told myself many things to keep from facing what I suspected.
You come from two lines, Lauretta.
One is the southern blood you know.
The other is older.
It runs back to the time before the current northern kings rose, to a union that was buried and nearly forgotten because it frightened the people who held power then.
That is why your shift has not come on the schedule the packs expect.
It is not weakness.
It is the old blood holding itself back until it chooses the moment.
I suppressed what I could with the teas and the old rites my own mother taught me, but I cannot suppress it forever, and I will not be there when it finally roses.
If the North has claimed you, then they have claimed more than they understand.
You are not only a treaty bride.
You are a key to something they lost long ago.
I do not write this to frighten you.
I write it so that you will stop believing the lies they may already be telling you about your own value.
You are not a nonentity.
You are not a weapon to be used and set aside.
You are my daughter, and you carry a legacy that predates their revenge and their borders.
When the shift finally comes it will not be ordinary.
It will change the way they look at you, and you must be ready to decide what that change means for yourself rather than letting any king or pack decide it for you.
I am sorry for the times I was hard with you.
I am sorry for the days I pushed you to be smaller and quieter because I thought it would keep you safe.
I am sorry that I could not give you a softer world than the one you were born into.I am sorry that I was greedy and enabled your marriage to the brutal king, these are measures for you to have a better life, I wouldn’t want you to struggle because of me hence why I had to bare my teeth at you, I do hope you understand my lovely daughter.
If those around you treat you badly, if they make you feel like you exist only for their purposes, remember that their treatment does not define you.
Endure what you must, but do not let them carve their coldness into your heart until you no longer recognize yourself.
You have a right to anger.
You have a right to want more than survival.
And if the day comes when you must stand against the very people who claim to own you, know that your mother already stands with you in spirit.
There is a small keepsake sewn into the lining of the blue dress I packed for you.
Keep it close.
It will remind you of home when the nights grow too long.
And if you ever find a way to write back, even a single line, I will wait for it.
I love you.
I have loved you since the first strange breath you took in my arms.
That love is not ordinary either.
It never was.” Malachi’s eyes moved over the final lines again, the paper held tight between his fingers.
The post-sex quiet in his head had vanished completely.
The mother’s words sat heavy in the room, longer and more detailed than he had expected, full of apology and warning and a love so open it felt almost aggressive He could feel his wolf pressing forward, no longer simply restless but focused, as if the letter had given shape to the agitation that had paced through him since the medical wing.
Lauretta was still the woman he had claimed for revenge.
That had not changed.
Yet the letter suggested the revenge itself might be standing on ground he did not fully understand.
Mira watched him from the bed, the ruined red lingerie still bunched around her waist, her expression sharp with interest.
“You went quiet,” she said.
“It must have been more than ordinary.” “It’s none of your business ” He snarled, he couldn’t let Mira think she was important.
Malachi folded the letter carefully.
Mira’s voice stopped him before he reached the door.
“There is one more thing,” she said, one hand resting lightly against her lower stomach, “I am pregnant.”