“Do you love this woman?” Uncle Joey asked in his serious manner.
“Yes.”
‘Then tell her.”
Raul shakily set the bottle on the coffee table. Surely he’d misunderstood. “Tell her what?”
“Tell her what you are. Let her see the whole of who you are.”
“But…but…she’s human,” he repeated, thinking his uncle must not have heard him clearly the first time.
“I know.”
Raul could only stare at him. “But Poppa said—”
“Raul, I loved your father. He was more than my alpha. He was my brother, and I still miss him today, but your father was wrong. Do you know why your mother left?”
Because of me, he thought but couldn’t say. All these years later, and he still couldn’t admit to anyone other than himself that his mother’s leaving, his father’s death, all of it was his fault. Instead he gave his standard answer. “She found out what Poppa, what we both were, and she couldn’t handle…” Raul’s words trailed off as he noted his uncle repeatedly shaking his head from side to side.
“Your mother left your father because he didn’t trust her with who he was,” Uncle Joey said flatly.
“No! She left because Poppa wasn’t human.”
Joey pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered a few soft curses. His action made Raul feel four again, trying to understand as his father explained Momma wasn’t ever coming back. “What are you saying, Uncle Joey?”
“I’m saying that after your dad died, I tracked your mother down and had a long talk with her.”
Raul felt like he’d been poleaxed. His jaw gaped, but he couldn’t close it. Words tumbled around in his mind, disjointed, but he couldn’t pull enough of them together to speak with any type of coherency.
Uncle Joey took pity on him and kept talking. “You were almost six at the time. She wasn’t hard to trace. She hadn’t gone far, just the next town over to where her best friend lived. I told her Paul was dead and asked what she wanted to do about you.”
The dull ache in his heart lingering from his mother’s abandonment grew teeth and rent at his flesh. “Momma knew Poppa was dead, and she still didn’t want me?”
Raul vaulted to his feet to pace the room, no longer able to be still. His gaze bounced around the walls, taking in the various photos showing his stages of development. None of them showed a proud, glowing mother.
It shouldn’t matter that he now had confirmation his momma didn’t want him. Over the years he’d managed to convince himself that maybe his mother really hadn’t intended to leave him behind. That she’d given him to his father because she knew Poppa wouldn’t have let him go.
Joey sighed. “It’s not that cut-and-dried.”
Raul paced to the window and stood looking at the dark glass. “It’s okay. I knew that just like with Poppa, Momma couldn’t stand the thought of what I am. If she’d really loved me, loved us, she wouldn’t have left.” After all, she’d said so herself. “Mommas always love their sons, Raul, and their sons’ daddies. No matter what.” She’d left because she no longer loved them.
The admission hit his heart like a blow as he thought of Angel. If she really loved him, would she have left him? Depression settled on him like a cloud. His one hope had been that in spite of Angel’s incomprehensible actions, she really loved him. Now he no longer knew what to believe.
“Mate a human, and she’ll break your heart.” His father’s words echoed in his mind.
“Raul, sit down and listen to me, boy!”
Raul flinched at the rarely heard sharpness in his uncle’s tone and found himself scurrying over to the couch to sit as commanded. Inwardly he sighed. Some alpha he was proving to be.
“Now, as I stated, it wasn’t that cut-and-dried. Your momma wanted you. She did,” he added when he saw the skepticism Raul knew was visible on his face. “Your parents managed to do a number on each other. Laura confessed that she’d received a letter from Paul, apologizing for his lies and asking her to return to him. It wasn’t the first that she’d received from him. In this one he stated that he couldn’t live without her, the implication being that if she didn’t return to him, he’d end his life. She didn’t believe him. She said she thought it was another one of his lies. Being angry, hurt, and not a little prideful—both your parents had more than their fair share of that particular fault—she disregarded it and him, preferring instead to continue to nurse her wounds.
“When I told her Paul was dead from suicide…” Uncle Joey took a long, deep breath, his gaze faraway as though locked on to the past. “She lost it. The shock, the guilt…it did a number on her. She had to be hospitalized.”
Raul sat stunned, his thoughts chaotic, listening to his uncle’s recitation of past events.
“Paul said once that Laura was sweet and loving, but she had a fiery temper and once hurt, she was hard of heart. She had a tendency to hold grudges and not let a matter go until she’d extracted her pound of flesh in return. To my way of thinking those two temperaments don’t exactly mesh, but I wasn’t the one mated to her. I suppose Paul knew what he was talking about regarding her having a sweet nature.” Uncle Joey shook his head, his expression showing he didn’t quite believe what he was saying but was willing to let it go.
“Anyway, it took a long time for your momma to pull herself together, and once she did? Well, we felt it best you remain with us. She watched over you from a distance, but the sight of you looking so much like your poppa? She couldn’t handle it. She sent money when she could to help with your caretaking, came to all your important events, and in general, did as much as she could handle,” Uncle Joey finished.
Raul asked the only question prevalent on his mind. “Where is she? I want to see her.”
“I’m sorry, son. She died a few years back. Cancer. She didn’t do much to fight it, feeling it was God’s justice coming to visit for pushing your father to his death. I tried to get her to let you come see her, talk to her one last time, but she didn’t feel deserving of you or your love. Pushing the issue just made things worse, so I had to let it be.”
At the news, Raul’s wolf threw back its muzzle and howled, a long mournful note. The man lurched to his feet and stumbled toward the door. “I need some air.”
“Don’t leave,” his uncle commanded. “There’s more I haven’t told you.”
Raul gave an abrupt nod before heading out the door and into the night air.
Sophie stalked past the long line of waiting humans, ignoring their muttered curses and protests, Angelica trailing behind her like a little waif. When Sophie reached the door, she hugged one of the big bruisers stationed there and gave him a long, deep kiss that looked as though it had plenty of tongue. “Hey, baby. Missed me?”
“Always,” he answered, cupping her ass familiarly. He nodded in Angelica’s direction. “Bringing your food with you now?” he murmured so low a human wouldn’t have heard him.
Sophie glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes widened. “Her? No, she’s—”
Angelica cleared her throat loudly in warning, causing the bruiser to look suspiciously back and forth between the two of them. The last thing she wanted anyone here to know was who she was, or worse, who her father was.
“—a friend of the family,” Sophie corrected hurriedly. “Angelica, this is Stephen. Stephen, this is Angelica.”