Page 12 of Bound

“It might have been worse,” she hedged, keeping still. He was the parent she had left, and her mother had been fierce that he’d done plenty that was right toward them, even if fate itself had conspired to keep them apart.

He quirked a pale brow at her so she might elaborate and she swallowed stiffly, feeling very much the child she wasn’t. “Someone pulled me out of the way. A few scrapes, that is all. I am fine, truly.”

He hummed, clearly not quite believing her. “And you’ve provisions enough?” he sighed, looking over at the land that had been granted to her. “I worry for you, out here all alone.”

It wasn’t exile, her mother insisted when Wren had grown old enough to question it. It was a gift. The best they could hope for given... everything. She wouldn’t prefer the wreckage of an escape pod, would she? A hovel in the woods rather than fertile ground and flat lands for them to thrive?

She wanted her mother happy, but she couldn’t say that. Not when there would be the tired lines about her eyes just to speak it. Loss and hardship and so much that should have been better.

“It’s what I know,” Wren reminded him as gently as she was able. “It’s my home.” He did not reach out and touch her as he might have done when she was younger. The last time he had held her, the last time she had allowed him to embrace her, was when her mother had...

She’d stopped counting how many summers it had been without her.

When her father had found her digging a hole in the pasture, sobbing and filthy. Under her mother’s favourite tree, where the creek kept the soil soft and the summers cool. A fine place for the woman who had meant so much to her.

That had simply not woken up that morning.

She’d washed her. Wrapped her in linens. Tried to remember if there were any rites to be given from her mother’s home-world. But they hadn’t discussed it, had they? Because there was supposed to be time. She was to grow old and become sickly, and Wren would have nursed her, loved her for as long as she could and then...

Her father had taken her by the shoulders. Shaken her when he could not get her to answer him at all. Couldn’t he see? See that she was alone and when had Mama failed to greet him even after... after everything?

She’d struck him. Pummelled a dirty fist against his chest as her eyes blurred from too many tears, and finally got the words past her unwilling throat. “She’s dead. She... she died and I...” she couldn’t finish. Couldn’t bring herself to face the rest of it. The rest of her life. Not yet.

He caught her wrist. Pressed it against his chest and waited, his eyes wide—and she almost felt the flutter of his pulse beneath her hand. “Wren,” he began, and she did not want to hear it. Although, what precisely she feared he might say, she did not know.

“I loved her. She was... she was my best friend.”

Her mother would have told her to mind her glares. That they had a good life and her father had been more than generous and she had to stop being so romantic about everything.

She blinked, and the light caught and...

Was there a glimmer of tears in his eyes? As he wrenched her forward and held her to his chest, and her shovel fell into what would soon be the grave of her mother.

“I wish...” he began, then shook his head. There were things they couldn’t speak of. She’d learned that early. But she regretted it now. So much left unsaid, so much tumultuous confusion for a girl that had so naively wanted her parents to love one another. To go back to how they had once been.

“Your mother,” he tried again while her throat tightened and her stomach roiled. And she hadn’t wanted him to talk, hadn’t she? Better to be angry than to feel the emptiness creeping through her. “She is...” he paused, her shoulders shaking. “She was the most remarkable woman. It was my privilege to have known her. To share a daughter with her.”

Not enough, though. Not fair.

They’d been close. So close. To when he would have been beyond the age of bonds and mates and the fates themselves.

But it had happened anyway.

And there was another remarkable woman. Who needed him. It was selfish to condemn her to a lifetime alone. She needed her mate in ways that only a trueborn Harquilcould understand. Who was horrified at his past and the history that should never have been, and...

Mama had shut the door behind them and Wren hadn’t heard the rest, no matter how she’d strained. She’d peeked out the curtains instead. To see her father, usually so immaculate and regal in his bearing, looking so... lost.

And her mother, strong and fierce...

Sobbing. Her shoulders curling in on themselves. While he... He tried to comfort her without touch.

Couldn’t touch. Not anymore. Not when he had a proper mate at home.

Wren still remembered the curl in her belly. The wrench and wrongness and hatred for bonds and fates and anything but deliberate choice.

Of... of love.

Because it had been real. Her little family. No matter what the Harquilsaid about it. She had not been a mistake. An accident of nature and biology that was to be hidden away and forgotten.