Free Bound to the Alpha: Part Two by Viola Rivard Page B

with him.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been taking up a lot of his time, haven’t I? That’s not very fair to you, is it?”
    Looking suspicious, he replied, “No.”
    “I promise, I’ll make it up to you. When he gets back—”
    Caim interjected, “What if he doesn’t come back?”
    She didn’t feel like the question was malicious. He seemed to genuinely want an answer, and she tried to think of how best to reassure him.
    “He’ll come back,” she told him. “Your father would never leave you.”
    There were bears, faulty bridges, and men with guns waiting beyond the safety of the den, and Sarah was a little scared for Cain, too. But one thing she did know was that Cain was strong, and he would do everything in his power to return to them.
    “How can you know that?” Caim asked skeptically.
    Sarah scooted a bit closer to him. “Can I tell you something that I’ve never told anyone?”
    Curiosity flared in his amber eyes. He leaned closer. “A secret?”
    She smiled and nodded. “When I was around your age, my mom had a job in the city—”
    “What is a job?”
    Scratching her chin, she said, “It’s like a very long chore that you have to do every day.”
    “Hn,” was his only reply.
    Sarah continued, “While my mom was at her job, she would leave me with my aunt all day, and every night she would pick me up again. Then, one night, she never came, and I never saw her again.”
    Caim, who had been listening patiently, frowned. “Did something happen to her?”
    With a sad smile, she said, “She moved to Vermont—it’s a place, pretty far from here—and she got married. I was on my way to see her for the first time in a very long time, when I met your father.”
    “That is not a very good secret,” Caim decided, though she could see that his posture had relaxed, and he finally looked at ease in her presence.
    Sarah snickered. “That’s not the secret,” she told him. “When she left that day, I watched her leave. I didn’t tell anyone, I never have, but I knew that she wasn’t coming back.”
    He cocked his head. “She told you she was leaving?”
    “She didn’t have to. I just knew.”
    “How?”
    “She had been sad for a long time, and there was nothing I could do to make her happy.”
    It was easy to talk to Caim, and she hoped that in his father’s absence they would be able to bond. It would give her something to focus on, besides how much she missed Cain. Powered with new determination, she reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. He allowed the gesture.
    While there was no stigma about nudity among the pack, Sarah’s sense of propriety made her keep the furs bunched around her as she searched for her clothing. She grabbed her gown and wiggled into it, careful not to expose herself in the process.
    As she stood, Caim said, “You make my father happier than I do.”
    Determined to squelch that line of thinking before it went any further, she said, “Trust me, my friend, if it came down between you and me—”
    Sarah doubled over, forgetting the point she was trying to make as an intense nausea gripped her gut. Her eyes darted around the room, but with nothing at hand to throw up in, she lost the contents of her stomach on the floor.
    Caim was by her side instantly, alarm etched on his young face. Gripping her stomach with one hand, she raised the other to pat his shoulder.
    “I’m okay, don’t worry.”
    Stubbornly, he replied, “I am not worried,” though she could see his small chest rising and falling with his quickened breathing.
    Just as she was regaining her sense of equilibrium, she heard the loud slap of bare feet from the passage. She didn’t have to look up to know that it was Lotus, who always seemed to be in a big hurry.
    Lotus called out Sarah’s name in a long whine before saying, “Clover is being very rude and she is not obeying your orders at all.”
    Sarah looked up at Lotus entered the room, just in time to see the girl wrinkle