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He sighed. “That story has a bloody ending.”
One of our old folktales, and probably that was why I’d liked it as a kid. Stories that always had a happy ending were filtered pablum.
“I’m sorry you had to fight with them,” I said softly.
He bristled. “My father broke a promise. The one damn promise I needed him to keep.”
“I’m certain he didn’t mean to. He had good intentions.” I held his hands tightly.
“And what do we know about the road to hell? Then he has the gall to stonewall me and let my mother say the same awful shit his parents say about her to you? And then tell me to abandon you like my biological father did to her?”
“Is that why you’ve never asked?”
Sterling cocked his head to the side. “I know what an unanswered question smells like. I grew up knowing it was a box I should never open. I knew knowing wouldn’t change anything, it would just hurt her, so I didn’t ask. What do you think is more likely: deadbeat or prince?”
He didn’t really want the answer to that question. “Well, we know he’s a deadbeat. Is that enough?”
He chuckled darkly. “Intellectually, I know he’s half my DNA and I am half-deadbeat. If I ever met him, would I see myself? Am I like him? Do I have some of his mannerisms? Sometimes I saw my mother looking at me, and I knew she was seeing parts of him.”
I laid my cheek against his arm.
He curled his arm up behind me and stroked my hair with his other hand. He smelled of anguish and anger—a terrible combination on an Alpha. He kissed my hair, his other hand holding my left hand and rubbing my wedding rings. “I still have you, yes?”
“You will always have me.” He was the other half of my soul.
“I worry this is too much.”
He seemed to have me confused with a human. “And who has the father who tried to sell her to turn her into some weird political I Win button? Your family situation is downright wholesome.”
He cracked a smile, even if he looked tired. “When my father adopted me, I asked him if my mother had told him everything about me. He said yes, he knew all about our pasts, even who her birthpack had been and such. I told him I didn’t want to know any of it, but if there was ever anything he thought I needed to know, tell me. I’ve relied on that promise for a long time.”
I put my hand on his thigh. “He’ll only ever be a name, and from that letter, he doesn’t even have a name.”
Sterling seemed steeled for something. “What if it’s a name you know?”
I would have remembered a tall, pale, pale-haired wolf with cutting hazel eyes and sharp features. No doubt Sterling’s sire was good-looking, but Sterling favored Cerys in many ways. Her large eyes, high cheekbones, the dry, polished elegance of his structure and frame. “I know a lot of names, Sterling. It doesn’t mean I have faces to put to the names, and I’d remember a face like yours. He’s a name that means as little as Sperm Donor #10368A.”
Sterling’s smile warmed a degree or two above absolute zero. “That’s how I’ve always thought about him. Just a tube with a number.”
“There is no reason for you to change your way of thinking.” If I had anything to say about it, I’d make sure Sterling never got within line-of-sight of his sire’s family, and I was uniquely qualified for that task. “Why, are you worried you’re some Elder Alpha’s spawn?”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “None of them would be a match for various reasons, like they wouldn’t have been old enough, or were already mated, and so on and so forth.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “That’s a relief. We need dinner and something to do. You brought the shoes?”
Not specifically the shoes, but another pair of stripper heels, which would get the job done. I’d wondered why he’d told me to bring something suitable to go ‘out’ in, but Mint had translated that to mean something skimpy and sparkly. “As requested.”
“Good. Get dressed. We are not sitting here all night.”
Mint had sent along a dress and a small bag labelled Hedonist Survival Kit to go with my stripper heels. I’d just grabbed it out of the closet. Now I had regrets. The Survival Kit included a small jar of body glitter and eye shadow colors that belonged on mylar streamers. The dress inside didn’t appear to be a dress.
The dress was stunning: a heavily sequined fabric Mint had called “mermaid fabric” that started as pure silver, then migrated to a dark blue by the hemline. The back was scathingly low and held up by two flimsy-looking shoulder straps. It was also so short that it looked like a tunic. It made a miniskirt look like a ballgown.
There had to be a mistake. It couldn’t be a dress.
Winter [Mint] >> THIS IS A DRESS? ARE YOU SERIOUS?
