Free Catalyst (Forevermore, Book Two) by K.A. Poe Page B

she’ll come around. It’s only been a few days and it’s a lot to process. She’s lost not only a husband but a daughter as well.”
    “ She hasn’t lost me,” I said with a sigh.
    “ Maybe not literally, but she probably feels like she has. You chose your real mom over her.”
    My heart ached at his words and my shoulders slumped. “I didn’t ... I didn’t choose her over her ...”
    He frowned. “You did, Madison, even if you don’t want to admit it. And even if that’s not how you intended for it to be, you did. Give her some time, and I guarantee you she’ll be back in your life and things will be like she never left.”
    I picked idly at my pancakes and thought of Eila — the cheery, hardworking woman that had raised another woman’s baby and sacrificed her time selflessly to caring for that child. Had I made a mistake in going behind her back and rescuing my biological mother? No. She was preventing me from having Alex in my life, and that was wrong — all because she was jealous of the feelings Jason had for her. I wondered if she had made it to work at all since the day she found out my mom was out of Littlehaven, and worried about the consequences this might have on her bakery.
    “ You’re lost in thought again,” Mathias noted. He was already more than halfway through eating his omelet.
    “ I’m sorry,” I said and frowned at my plate — I’d barely made a dent in the pancake. “What was it like growing up without parents? I mean ... growing up in an orphanage? Is there a difference between that and a foster home or ...?”
    He looked at me thoughtfully and didn ’t seem uncomfortable with my question, as I feared he might have been. After one last bite of omelet, he set down his fork. “I’ll make you a deal,” he offered.
    My brows arched in curiosity. “Yeah … okay.”
    “ If you continue eating your food, I will tell you.” His lips quirked into a smile.
    “ Fine,” I said and laughed, then gathered a forkful of fluffy cake. “Go on.”
    He took a sip of soda and then cleared his throat. “According to the orphanage, I was dropped off there as a baby — and by that, I really do mean baby and I really do mean dropped off. I don’t know how old I was exactly, but it was likely a few months, if not less, after I was born. Someone, I’m guessing my mother, left me at the door. And yes, there’s a difference between the two. I’ve been in both.”
    “ That’s terrible,” I said between bites. “And what do you mean by ‘both’?”
    “ For the first few years of my life, I was with the orphanage. It was a strict Catholic orphanage, and we were taught verses from the Bible and we all knew of demons and the Devil, everything like that. I’ll explain more later about why I brought that up.”
    Now I was definitely curious. “No one ever came to adopt you?”
    He shook his head. “It’s rare for abandoned children to be adopted,” he explained. “I was a good kid, for the most part. That is, until I was about seven ... that’s when I realized I was different.”
    “ Different how?”
    He smiled faintly and said, “I realized that I knew magic. Either that or that I was being possessed by a demonic presence as others would later suggest.”
    “ You were that young when you developed your gift?”
    “ It’s different for everyone. If you recall, Elijah was ten when he was brought to Haven. That’s only a few years’ difference. There are tons of witches out there that probably don’t even realize they have a gift, especially if they were raised by non-magical people. Maybe when you were an infant you were summoning pacifiers and extra milk into your crib,” he suggested with an amused grin.
    I laughed and nearly spat out the orange juice I had just sipped from my glass. “I doubt that.”
    His expression changed from amused to serious. “As I was saying ... when I was seven, things started to change. I would participate in playful races with other