Free Southern Shifters: Bearing the Ink (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Black & White Book 3) by Lissa Matthews Page B

and an uncertainty that left his gut feeling hollow.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Seven
     
     
    “You shouldn’t have come here.”
    “That’s an understatement,” Luke muttered from the edge of the front room. “Come to see if the wolves your father shot are dead?”
    Beck turned his head to the side in an effort to address Luke. Bex could see the move was a struggle for him. “I know nothing about that.”
    “Pardon me if I don’t believe you.”
    “Stop.” Bex’s voice was solid, strong, full of an authority she didn’t feel. Beck caught her off guard by showing up at her house and she didn’t know what to make of it. If his father followed him to Dandridge, there was no telling what would happen. “Do you want me dead?” she asked Beck.
    “What?” Beck shifted his head around again to face her.
    “Do you want me dead? Is that why you’re here? Are you hoping your father trails you and comes in with guns blazing? Because you being here puts all of us in more danger than we were already in.”
    “No. I don’t want you dead. You were almost my daughter. You were her daughter. I meant what I said. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you since you left. And if anyone put you in danger, it was you by coming to see me.”
    “It wasn’t you. We didn’t know you were there. All these years, no one knew you were alive. We were there to talk to your father.”
    “He’s not going to tolerate conversation with you. He doesn’t want to talk to you, to any of you. He’ll be unreasonable simply because you’re different. You’re the epitome of loss, all of you. What I lost. What he lost because of it. It’s become his mission, his obsession. So, whatever you hoped to gain by talking to him won’t do you any good.”
    Bex believed him. “Do you know he came to see my mother from time to time while I was growing up? She always sent me out of the room. It angered him to see me, but sometimes I hid in the hall, listening.”
    “He did? He never told me. What did they talk about?”
    “Most of the conversations were about the bear and what she remembered, if she’d remembered anything new, if he ever said anything that would help your father find the rest of the shifter family. She always told him no. I don’t know if that was the truth or not, but she always told him no.”
    “Did you have a good life? Did she?”
    “She was ostracized for the most part after the rape. Some thought it was because of the inn, because there were so many strangers during tourist season, and she was a pretty woman alone when you were away on business.”
    “I… I never meant…” Beck visibly swallowed and his hand tightened on his cane until his knuckles were white with strain.
    “You don’t see it, do you?”
    Beck looked up with his good eye as Gus stepped in and sat next to Bex. She was grateful for his nearness. He took her hand, and Beck’s eye settled on that move, then focused on Gus’s face. “See what?”
    “She looks like you, too.”
    “She can’t. She looks like him.”
    “She’s got Rex’s eyes, yes. But she’s got your nose and the hair color is what I imagine was once yours when you were younger.”
    Bex and the damaged man across from her stared at one another. Gus was right. She and Beck had done this same staring thing earlier in the day, but she hadn’t seen it. “That’s what you saw, wasn’t it?” she asked him.
    “I didn’t trust that it was possible. I thought it was a trick of my mind.”
    “But it’s not.”
    “I don’t understand. How could I be the child of three people?”
    “I don’t know. It can’t be possible. It shouldn’t be possible.”
    “One thing we know, that we all don’t quite understand, is that shifter DNA is not easily explained. It has to mask itself in some way to keep the human at the forefront. Some are stronger than others. Some are terribly weak. The strain from the bear shifter that Bex has is very strong.”
    “I want to know about