Who is Magpie?

“I spoke with Kookaburra, she told me some of what she’s learned from her grandfather. They were testing their drugs effectiveness on you for control, weakness, you know,.. but it was easy to keep your wolf away when you had never shifted. Now that you have, he thinks you’re the key to preventing anyone from shifting, at any age.” Azural shook his head, teeth clenched and lip twitching like he was trying to resist snarling again. “Needless to say, with you out of his hands our alliance is over. We beat his attack to get you out, and we’ll lay low while my people recover to see where the dust settles.”

“That’s my pack you’re letting the dust settle on!” She snapped. “The first people to, mostly, accept me. The first to love me.”

“I love you.” Azural whispered, he was sitting on the bed and reach to touch her foot, but as she shrunk away he hit the bed instead. “I have been fighting to get you back for five years, the last thing you said to me, before the drugs took most of you away, was begging me to raise Oakley right and come back for you. I did that! And you want to go back to the people you’ve known for what? A couple of months? It wasn’t even a challenge for the Fae to convince those people to turn on you.”

She winced at the thought, remembering Cole’s words. “The two we caught said I killed their mates.”

“They also knew you couldn’t control what you did. I don’t give a rats ass if they saw a video of you doing it, they were well aware that it was an order given by those that provided the evidence of their claim, and they still did it.” Azural fumed, gesturing outside. “We only brought the best of our pack here, the children, the families, the protectors. My pack would never turn on you!”

“How could you even be sure!? Ezekiel and Bronx thought the same thing, and then you found those holes and broke in to kidnap me. How long before someone else I didn’t know existed finds something here to manipulate my life by?” She moved to walk toward the window, forgetting as she tried to stand that her ankle was still a factor and sat back down.

“We only brought the best.” He growled, “for you, I used my alpha tone on everyone here. No one would betray me.”

She was getting frustrated with him. “If you want me to get on my knees in gratitude, you will be waiting a long time! The only thing I am grateful for is meeting my son.” She huffed furious breaths that made her nose flayer. “For all I know you’re like everyone else that took advantage of my lost memories for their own purposes.” She rubbed the back of her neck where is bite was nearly entirely healed. “Between this and what I saw at dinner… so far, what I’ve seen of Alpha Azural is that he will hurt me to make a point, no different then the Fae sending me to kill Ezekiel to prove they could control a wolven.”

“I have never lied to you!” He boomed, standing on the other side of the bed.

She shrugged. “I have nothing to judge your sincerity on, only your word against your actions.”

“So bite me,” he jut his chin out, tipping his head to the side to showcase a faint scar. “/claim me as yours, for real, and feel how I feel.”

“I...! I can’t do that,” she uttered quietly. Rationally that made sense, but her heart clenched at the thought. “I have mates, mates chosen for me by the Goddess. I won’t betray them.”

He growled low and loud, a sound that rattled the windows and through the floor. “ ‘Goddess given mates’ ,” he scoffed. “Who is she to tell you who you should be with? You are mine, and you belong here, with me and our son.” He strode toward the door. “You can think what you want of me, but you will behave in front of Oakley. He’s dreamt of nothing but meeting his mother since he was old enough to ask who you are… There’s a shower in the ensuite. I’ll bring you clothes when I bring breakfast.”

“How am I supposed to get around?” She demanded, gesturing to the obvious obstacle.

He laughed. “Figure it out. I know if I gave you so much as a stick you’d use it to bash my head in and take off.”

He opened the door but paused when she tsked her tongue. “I wouldn’t bash your head in,… I would never do that to Oakley.”

—

Jessamine did shower after he left, carefully hopping across the room, which was thankfully much smaller than the bedrooms at the pack house. However, she decided against waiting for him to find her clothes and raided his closet immediately. Taking personal liberties in his space was just the excuse she needed to poke around.

She found a pair of jeans that sat low on her hips, and a button down that she chose in the hopes that the breast pockets would conceal that she had no bra and it was cold. Tucking the shirt into the pants loosely, she went through drawers in the bathroom for spare ‘toothbrushes’, ‘cream’, or anything hidden in a hurry. She was quiet, not hopping anymore as she moved around the room looking on, in and under everything.

There wasn’t much.

No bugs, no cameras, not secret notebooks of false wall hiding spaces… the room was completely normal of a pack leader and father. Maps of the area, natural resource guides, photos of Oakley and crayon pictures he had drawn.

The strangest thing she discovered was that the room was ready for her to move in. The second bedside table was empty, along with one side of the dresser, and a whole rack in the closet. She had also found an entire basket of personal care and feminine hygiene items under the sink.

When Azural returned she was standing at the desk, leaning against it on one leg and flipping blatantly though the maps.

“Not your sharpest move, leaving this in here, but you lucked out. The one class the Fae didn’t offer me was geography, if I shift I permanently fuck the leg, I never left the pack house after I arrived , and I was driven there, so I don’t know the area, and since I never left I don’t even know anyone’s phone number.” She closed the book and looked at him. “Take a picture,” she muttered after seeing that he had been staring.

“Those are my jeans,” he smirked, looking her over appreciatively.

She nodded sarcastically. “Yeaaahh? And your top too, I wasn’t going to sit naked and wait for you.”

“You used to,” he teased. “Until you started winning fights and wanted to make me work for it.”

Her face flushed, only because that sounded like something she would do, but her expression didn’t change. “Enough, you won’t win any brownie points reminding me of things you can’t prove are true.”

He helped her downstairs to the table for breakfast, leading her to a seat opposite his, and began to dish her plate. “You never ate until you were full before, not after the pregnancy when their hold got stronger. You look healthier now.” His eyes didn’t move back to her, getting enough upstairs. “Please eat until you’re full.”

Her gut felt tight, growling with hunger from not eating dinner and missing her mates. Their bond was so new that being so far from them, and how she left them made her feel sick.

She glanced at the small plate beside her. “No Oakley?”

“He’s in his room, he went to change and fell asleep. It was a long night for him, he was so excited he couldn’t sleep until we got you.” Azural began eating his own portion while catching Jessamine watching him.

She picked pitifully at the food, trying to get something in her stomach but not doing well. Every bite made her feel like the struggle of it going down would be balanced by it’s easy way up. She had managed two pieces of bacon and half of her toast before giving up.

“Thank you for the meal.” She replied, standing up. “ I want to check on Oakley.”

“There’s more if you’re hungry later.”

She nodded, barely listening as she slid up the stairs on her butt. She slid down the second floor, tapping lightly on a door covered in scribbled pictures, and entered. Oakley was in the bed, his blanket fallen off onto the floor, and Jessamine slid over quietly to put it back on him.

As she pulled the blanket up over his shoulders, he rolled over and grabbed her hand. “Mommy, will you snuggle me?”

There was absolutely no way that she was going to say no, crawling into the bed beside him, and he tucked her in under his quilt. Jessamine wrapped her arms around Oakley, and he whispered something she didn’t really understand but it didn’t seem to matter as they both fell asleep.