“Enough,” her father said with a swipe of his hand through the air. “Katarina has vile tongue like snake. Do not test her.”
Katarina laughed again. “Tongue like snake? Maybe. My fangs are more deadly than snake. Would you like to see?”
Her father manhandled Clone Joshua as he dragged Reed’s traitorous grandson from the room. She felt sorry for Reed again. He might be stoic and passionless, but he was a magnificent wolf who cared for his people. Reed deserved to make a version of himself as good as he was. He deserved to create a Black Wolf alpha to replace himself.
When they were gone, Katarina couldn’t stop thinking of how it would hurt Reed to discover he had yet another traitor grandson. A wolf who’d been a fair alpha for hundreds of years surely deserved a better legacy.
“You’ve gone soft,” she said aloud. “And do you think to help him create miracle version of himself, Katarina Volkov? You are dreamer instead of realist. Reed is done with such things—done with family. He has said this. His heart has suffered from too much failure. Better you think of how to escape cage than indulging in female dreams like Yana.”
Katarina closed her eyes and hoped the metal thing Brandi had put inside her would help betray her captors. She knew they were coming for her. Brandi and Gareth would look. Maybe Stewart too—their smart son—would look as well.
But Reed? The man seemed too close to dead to make the effort. She would be wise to let all her wishes for that handsome wolf fade away.
Brandi liked silence—preferred it even—but Reed took it to a whole other level. He hadn’t spoken in over an hour, not even to ask questions. When she couldn’t handle the silence anymore, she cleared her throat to get his attention.
“Jon really seemed to enjoy tearing that helicopter apart. His strength is amazing.”
Reed nodded. “He has exceptional control of his beast. I’m glad for him.”
“Loving your children provides exceptional motivation,” Brandi replied.
Reed turned to smile at her. “It does. You’re a great mother, Brandi. Given how that bear described the boy’s transformation, I have even more respect for what you and Gareth have taken on.”
Brandi nodded. “I’m choosing to be positive about it. I didn’t see it, but I heard the description. Maybe Stewart’s form is like Heidi’s fighting form.”
Reed thought about it and nodded. “For that to be the case, whatever wolf blood was used would have had to have that form within its genes.”
Clearing her throat, Brandi stared out the front window. “Yeah, well, about that—I think I know who supplied the wolf genes that Randall fed to my kids.”
“Me?” Reed guessed, appalled at the idea that they had used him to create more werewolves.
“Only indirectly. The first wolf Randall used was definitely in your gene pool,” Brandi whispered.
“You’re talking about Travis,” Reed guessed.
“None other,” Brandi confirmed. “I don’t intend to tell them until I have no choice. Shitty Sheldon…”
Reed snorted. “Is that another code name?”
“Yes. After Stewart had his first growth spurt, Shitty Sheldon asked to do a DNA match between the kids and me to check an idea he had. The test showed we were all related. It may have been why once I saw them I had to free them. Ariel passed along Randall’s laptop to Sheldon. There were records that he paid Travis to abduct the kids from the orphanage. We know Heidi got her devil wolf from you. What the guy described about Stewart…” Brandi faded off and shrugged. “In my world, two and two nearly always make four. What do you think?”
“That would make them my great-grandchildren.”
Brandi winced but nodded in agreement. “Yeah… something like that, I guess. I’m not great at the genealogy stuff. I haven’t told Ariel what Sheldon found out yet, but I bet she could discover the relationship between all of us, including molecule distribution.”
Reed nodded and blew out a breath. “Stewart panicked and called forth all of his beast, then chased after the attackers by himself, trying to save Katarina. Travis would have made someone else take such a risk before he would have.”
Brandi shrugged. “Even in the orphanage where they grew up, all my kids ever had was each other. Now they have me and Gareth. Honestly, I don’t give a shit what Stewart turns into. I only care that he uses his abilities for good.”
Growling, Reed turned to stare out of the window. “You can consider that plan to be a huge success, Agent Longfeather.”
Brandi nodded, even though Reed didn’t see her do so. He was brooding over his family failings again. Enough was enough.
“So what’s the deal between you and Katarina? You two have the kind of chemistry that fills up the space you’re both occupying. It reminds me of Ariel and Matt when they were first getting together.”
“What can there be between us? I’m hundreds of years older and thousands of years more jaded. She is passionate and caring—to a fault. I mostly want to be left alone. We’re in very different places.”
Brandi snorted at Reed’s poor me speech. “If you want to talk about people being jaded, Gareth and I could write a book. I beat the holy crap out of him for making a deal with Shitty Sheldon to bring me in to their fucking group. He also let Travis in on his deal without warning me that Travis was an agent. Gareth’s damn lucky I didn’t kill him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Brandi laughed at the question. Who ever got asked that so sincerely? Her. That’s who. Because people who knew her knew she genuinely had contemplated Gareth’s death.
Finally, she giggled. “I suppose I let him live because of the great sex. It created some kind of bond between us that my logical brain couldn’t deny, no matter what he did to me. During intimacy, Gareth made me feel accepted and safe with him. That’s a poor reason to spare him, but honestly, that was why I kept backing off.”
“Have you forgiven him for all that?”
Brandi laughed. “It’s more like we declared a peace treaty. We had a lot to work out between us before our union worked out in reality. Getting custody of the children required us to trust each other personally, so the business stuff had to take a back seat. Gareth’s a great father. He’s also an excellent mate. In every other way, he annoys the hell out of me, especially with all the cow breeding talk and his antiquated ideas of how our mating ought to go. His arguments are illogical because he knows damn well we will never live anything close to his idea of a normal life.”
Reed laughed. He couldn’t help it. He’d known Gareth a long time. They shared a similar history when it came to women. “Gareth’s other mates were so docile. I imagine falling in love with you was quite the rude awakening for him.”
“It was quite the rude awakening for me as well. I didn’t believe in love. I never let myself have feelings for anyone before I did him. I didn’t know what love ever felt like until he showed me. That may sound corny, but the first time I felt love I mistook it for indigestion,” Brandi admitted.
Reed chuckled. “Is his age a problem between you?”
Brandi barked out a laugh at that question. Age wasn’t even a factor. She often forgot her mate’s age until someone else brought it up. “Gareth Longfeather keeps me up all damn night like some twenty-year-old human guy. At what age does that slow down, Reed? Not that I’m complaining, but a woman needs an entire night of sleep now and again.”