“Everything alright?” Uriah asked, setting down a wide-mouth bowl with a truly delicious looking wedge of beef, a pile of juicy carrots and potatoes, and two fluffy biscuits slathered in what looked like sticky honey-butter.
Ivy put her phone away and picked up her fork. “Yeah, it was Henry's sister reminding me to come by and grab whatever I want before they shut the doors. She sounded really nice, and this, looks amazing.”
Uriah grinned proudly when she speared a potato and moaned in utter bliss as soon as it hit her tastebuds. Her eyes rolled when she bit into the fluffy biscuits, the sweetness of the honey combined with fresh baked bread, both comforting and delicious.
Uriah laughed when she conveyed to him the superb riot of flavors with inarticulate groans, moans, exaggerated expressions of delight, and circles of her fork as she chewed.
“Glad you like it, honey. Henry's a good guy, and I like it that he's rewarding all your hard work. We can take the truck and go in tomorrow. I made sure there's plenty of garden space for you to fill up with whatever tickles your fancy.”
Ivy nodded, taking her time to chew and savor the tender meat that fell apart in ribbons with just one poke of her fork. “The way you set up the garden beds is perfect, like we discussed it or something.”
Uriah winked at her and dished himself up a heaping helping before sitting beside her.
“You could get started on your Blossom Shrine.”
She made an agreeable sound, tipping her head side to side. “To be honest, right now, having a garden here and the garden I've got going already at Rowena's to take care of seems like so much work.”
Uriah made a sound of understanding, reaching down to rest his free hand on her thigh. “I hear that. There's no rush to put something in here, from the peek I got it looks like you've got plenty at Rowena's to get your business going—and I'll help you in any way I can—but maybe down the road when you need to expand, you can hire some garden fairies or something to help you keep it all going.”
With her fork poised to stab a carrot, Ivy went still as more of the cobwebs tangled and woven around her memories were brushed aside. Uriah gave her thigh a squeeze and said her name with a note of concern.
“My mom called me that.”
“Called you what?”
Ivy put her fork down, her gaze sliding to where she'd set her mother's journal. “Her little garden fairy. I think it was the same day I first learned how to pull sleeping flowers from inside their seeds. The memories just keep randomly coming up.”
“I checked in with Rowena like she asked while you were sleeping; she said considering the strength of the binding, there might be huge chunks of your childhood that you don't remember.”
Ivy nodded, forcing herself to dig back into the delicious meal her amazing mate had made for her, using the food to keep her mouth full to avoid speaking.
Uriah hadn't done anything wrong, and Rowena was her best friend. Both of them worked together to take care of Ivy because they loved her and wanted to protect her. Still, she couldn’t avoid the burn of anger that they’d been talking about her behind her back.
Uriah moved his hand from her thigh to her back, rubbing soothing circles between her shoulders. “Honey, what is it?”
“I'm so... so...” Ivy gripped her fork so hard her knuckles turned white, struggling to choke out the words burning in her throat.
“Angry?” Uriah suggested helpfully.
“YES!” She threw her fork down with a ringing clatter and stood up so fast she nearly knocked the barstool over, furious tears pricking her dry, scratchy eyes. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—”
Uriah righted her stool and turned to face her, reaching out to take her clenched hands, massaging until she quit digging her nails into her palms. “Don't be sorry, Ivy. I get it.”
“How could you possibly get it?” she snapped, instantly regretting having lashed out at him.
Uriah didn't reprimand her or snap back. Instead he lifted her knuckles to his lips to press loving kisses across each one. It made her feel loved, and like an absolute bitch as he opened himself up and exposed a pain so deep, the tears she cried were for both of them.
“My father and uncle were killed on a job. Our family business centered around hunting down shifters who’d gone rogue and threatened to expose the community, and sometimes they went after humans who’d captured shifters for whatever reason.
“This particular time, a local pride hired my dad and my uncle to track down a group of humans who were taking shifters to use in these fucked-up big game hunts. By the time my folks were tasked with the job, over thirty shifters had gone missing.
“I was at home with my mom when the pride came to tell us something went wrong. That my dad and my uncle weren’t coming back. While I listened to my mom wail and scream, I told myself over and over things would have gone different if my dad had let me come with him. I felt like they’d left me behind because they thought I was too young to be of any use to them.
“Insane with grief, my mom went after the humans responsible for killing her mate and her brother a few days later. She left me, just took off one night without saying anything, and by the time I realized where she'd gone, she was dead too.
“I felt so betrayed, so angry, so fuckin alone. I tore off to my cousin's place because they were the only family I had left, and when I got there, all they had to say was that my dad, my uncle, my mom, were all heroes. They clapped me on the back and told me I should be proud, and still, there wasn't anything in me but rage.”
The tide of Ivy's anger ebbed, leaving only sadness behind as Uriah told his tale.
“When my cousins decided to take down the human hunters, they didn't tell me I was too young. They gave me weapons, involved me in the planning and strategy, praised me for my furious demands that we kill them all. They encouraged me to use all that anger, to feed it to my bear to ensure a successful mission, and we went in.
“I was all kinds of fired up, but at that point in my life, the only thing I'd killed were steaks. I found out very quickly that I don't have an issue defending my family or myself, but straight up killing for the sake of killing wasn't me.
“My cousins realized it too and took out the hunters while I went to work freeing a total of ten shifters bound and caged in silver. We were too late to help two of them: a tiger and her cub.”
Uriah blew out a shaky breath, his eyes no longer seeing Ivy, his body and his voice still firmly there with her, but his mind was far away. Off in some dark forest, witnessing unspeakable horrors.
“They'd been shot first, and I thanked every star in the sky for it, because the hunters did what they do best and skinned both. Field dressed them right there in the dirt. The kid couldn't have been more than ten. Staring at their mangled corpses, I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, some sick fuck had skinned my family and had their pelts decorating his house.”
With tears in her eyes, her belly twisted in knots over what that must have been like for Uriah, Ivy lifted her hands and combed her fingers through his thick hair.
“Did you ever find them?”
His throat worked loudly as he gave a tight nod, blinking to bring himself back to her.
“My cousins kept one of the hunters alive for a little while, questioned him until he gave up all his clients’ names. It took another two months, working with different groups and different territories to find out it was a dentist from Alleghany.”