Page 3
“Hush, you,” she scolds her son before rubbing the side of his face with the back of her hand. “He used to be protective of his momma,” she chuckles.
I can’t tell, I think dryly. He still is! Thane snickers, watching Raidon grow redder at his mother’s affections.
“I wouldn’t laugh too much, Thane. Don’t think I have forgotten how you used to carry around that pink unicorn blanket. It was barely a piece of scrap by the time your mother had enough. She had to sneak into your room while you slept to get rid of that thing.”
“I was a boy,” he bites back.
“Sixteen is a boy?” she taunts. He huffs and folds his arms across his chest, sitting back. “Your mother had to sneak it into the trash like she was smuggling drugs over the border. It had holes in it everywhere,” Elaine chuckles.
“It was sentimental,” he huffs.
“A unicorn blanket?” I chuckle, looking at Thane. Thane swallows but says nothing.
“Wait, she doesn’t know?” Elaine asks, looking at Thane. He presses his lips in a line, and I glance at him, before he sighs.
“I had a twin sister. Her name was Scarlett. She died when we were four. The blanket was hers,” he tells me.
I suck in a breath, not expecting such a heavy answer. I am curious to know how she died, but I know better than to pry. He will tell me when he wants to.
“Have you got siblings?” I ask Rhen, already knowing that Leon has a sister.
“Two brothers. We aren’t close, and they are half-brothers,” he tells me. I look at Raidon.
“Only child,” he answers, and I nod.
“You have a twin too?” Elaine asks me, before looking at her son. “Raidon told me about her. You two recently reconnected?”
“Yeah, I thought she was dead,” I tell her. I wonder if it is genetics that causes so many twins to be born from Alpha lines. I am very glad to be having only one baby, because I am already the size of a house.
Turning back to the bag, I find a pink dress and a teddy bear. I thank Elaine for the gesture, and we talk more about baby stuff and appointments. Charles even goes over my medical charts with me, which Thane keeps on hand. Elaine also goes over my pathology results, telling Thane I am lacking some vitamins, and he tells her he will get supplements for them tomorrow.
When Raidon gets up to help with the dishes, Elaine slides into his seat beside me. She starts fiddling with the gold bracelets on her wrist.
“There is something else I want to give you,” she says, looking up at Thane. He nods to her, and she unclips one of the bracelets from her wrist. They are matching, but the one on her wrist has a few different charms on it from the one she hands to me.
It is quite heavy for a bracelet. Charms cover one side of it, and I admire the shiny gold.
“I can’t accept this,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.
“Hana was going to give it to you. She had the charms rearranged a few weeks before she passed. She told me the other side is for you to fill with your own charms,” she says.
“This was Hana’s?” I ask, thinking I definitely can’t keep it. It should go to Thane, not me.
“Yes, she had the bracelet rearranged for Thane’s Omega. She told me she was going to bid in the auctions. She was going to find a mate for him, since he was too stubborn,” she chuckles.
I look at the charms on it as Elaine shows me her bracelet. It is an almost identical match, besides a few different charms.
“All four of us had matching bracelets,” she explains.
I remember Jake telling me how Elaine, Hana, and his mother were all friends from an Omega facility. Yet he never mentioned a fourth woman.
“You, Jake’s mother, Hana, and …?” I ask.
“Yes, originally, there were four of us. Me, Hana, Sofia, and Harper. Now there’s only two of us left. We never found out what happened to Harper. Hana got her out before she was auctioned off or put into rotation,” Elaine tells me.
“These bracelets were given to us when we were all in the Omega facility together.”
“My father bought them for my mother while he was dating her,” Thane tells me, and I peer at him over my shoulder.