Primal Bonds

The next day, Andrea had time off from the bar, but Glory had business to take care of—she wouldn’t say what. Whatever it was, it made her spend forty-five minutes in the bathroom before she waltzed out again bathed in perfume and every hair in place. Meeting Dylan? Andrea wondered.

Dylan, Sean’s father, had been living here with Glory but had left for who knew where the night Andrea had moved in. That had been two weeks ago, and Glory had been in a foul mood ever since.

Andrea had long ago given up trying to figure out her aunt Glory. Glory was nothing like what Andrea remembered of her mother, Dina. As far as Andrea knew, Dina hadn’t worn outlandish outfits, mile-high shoes, and rivers of Oscar de La Renta. Andrea’s mother’s scent had been like warm baked bread overlaid with the freshness of the outdoors. Andrea remembered her mother’s touch, the hand on her back when she went to sleep at night, reassuring Andrea that whatever happened, her mother would be there to protect her. Until one day, she wasn’t.

After Glory left, Andrea ate a little breakfast, then returned to her room and took out a file folder she’d stuck under her mattress. She sat on the bed and opened it, flipping through her notes and maps, the sparse information she’d gathered about where exactly her mother had met her father.

Forty years ago, the Lupine pack that had contained Andrea’s mother and Glory had been living in Colorado, isolated in the mountains. The pack hadn’t been very big then. By now it contained fifty or sixty Lupines, but back when Shifters had been wild, low fertility rates had been good at keeping their numbers down.

Andrea’s current map of Colorado contained colorful lines that marked roads and highways, noting scenic views and tourist attractions. She overlaid it with a map she’d made herself, a transparent sheet covered with crisscrossing lines of a different kind.

These were ley lines, magic currents that ran under the earth. Much the same way fault lines formed where geologic plates met, ley lines marked where magic rammed together and flowed along the path of least resistance. Northern Europe contained a huge number of lines, which stretched from there to all corners of the planet. Interestingly, on Andrea’s map of Texas, a line snaked along the Colorado River that ran through Austin on its way to the Gulf Coast. There was a concentration of magic right under the Congress Street bridge—Andrea wondered whether that was why the bats liked it there so much.

The maps didn’t tell Andrea any more today than they had yesterday. She hadn’t learned anything new about her real father, or how he’d crossed from Faerie to this world and where, or how he met her mother, or why he’d left again. Glory’s only explanation for him was a long, foul-worded diatribe against the Fae, nothing very helpful. When Dina’s pregnancy was discovered, she, a mateless female now smelling strongly of Fae, had been cast out of the pack. Glory hadn’t been able to stop it.

Dina had survived only because a Lupine of another pack, Terry Gray, who was now Andrea’s stepfather, had found Dina, fallen in love with her, and mate-claimed her. The mate blessing had been allowed, because females were scarce and Terry could have more Lupines with Dina once her Fae-get was born. Andrea’s stepfather had been commanded to kill Andrea at birth, and Terry, for the first time in his life, had disobeyed his pack leader.

He and Dina had protected Andrea with everything they had, and once Andrea had learned to shift, she’d been grudgingly accepted if not trusted. Accepted because Andrea had been damn careful to hide any part of herself that was too Fae, like her small healing ability. But Glory hadn’t been allowed to see Andrea at all, and once Glory’s pack had been relocated to Texas after taking the Collar, all chance of them meeting had gone.

Andrea sighed, put everything back into the folder, slid the folder under the mattress, and went downstairs. She planned to continue tracking the ley lines, mapping them through Austin, but she’d need to get a car. She was saving every penny she made at the job Liam had given her toward one, but vehicles were expensive, even ones Shifters were allowed to buy.

Outside it was freakishly warm for midwinter, but the weather here could swing like that, Glory had told her. Colorado Springs would still be buried in snow, but temperatures today in Austin were pushing eighty. Andrea hopped up on the wide balustrade at the end of the porch to enjoy a patch of warm sunshine.

The Morrisseys’ house next door was a mirror image of Glory’s, a two-story bungalow with a deep porch and Craftsman-style windows. It was a homey place, kept freshly painted, the yard trimmed. The curtains on the downstairs windows were wide open, letting Andrea glimpse the cluttered living room beyond, a contrast to the neat yard outside.

Three men lived in that house—Liam, Sean, and Connor—with Kim the only female. Andrea imagined that Kim had her hands full keeping the place straight, and she smiled in sympathy. Andrea had lived with her stepfather in a tiny house and knew firsthand how messy males could be. And how they blinked in surprise whenever a female commented on it.

Glory’s house, on the other hand, was pristine. Maybe another reason Dylan had fled?

Andrea hadn’t sat there long before Sean rode up on a black motorcycle, already out and about for the day. Andrea wondered what he’d been doing, where he’d gone. She had no idea what the man did all day, only that he was around to watch her all night. What did Guardians do in their spare time?

Sean pulledonto one of the two strips of concrete that made the driveway, turned off the motorcycle, and dismounted.

Andrea swung her leg, foot bare in a sandal, and gave him a smile. “Morning, Sean.”