"No, darling, the boys look like they need some help putting all that food away in the kitchen. You go."
Her voice was gentle, her hand on his shoulder light, yet even I noted the thin note of steel within her tone. He nodded, caught my eye for a second, and then turned to leave.
The moon was high when we walked outside, the breeze cool and refreshing. Grace took in the armed men standing sentry around the perimeter of the house, then looked back at me. "You seem like a nice person, Julie."
"I'm sensing a but coming."
"But if I'd known this was coming, I might have voted that you be exiled through the gate and left to fend for yourself." Her eyes, so familiar yet not, fixed on mine. "Finn's all I have left. This place has taken everything from me. I was a stranger, like you. I fell into this topsy turvy world, where men throw themselves at women. Multiples of them, beautiful men too, not some grotty barflies. When I bonded with Max, I thought my heart would burst in my chest, unable to feel so full. Then Rhydian and Grey joined us..." She glanced over to the driveway, across the road, where the neighbour’s house sat. "Don't let them send my boy away. Fight with whatever you have, use whoever you have to. You saw it at council. They don't like powerful males, they think of him as a throwback to those who raped our forebears and left them to die. Finn was always a threat, being Ophelia's grandson and Kelly's nephew. They think they've kept him neutralised, not realising it’s his good heart that's always kept his power in check. You're his mate now, you’re ultimately responsible for him. Protect him from them."
I nodded, unable to come up with anything sensible as her words hit me hard. I blinked, staring but not seeing for a moment before I said, "They'll never take Finn from me. I'll make the place burn if they do."
She looked me over carefully, then reached out and patted my hand. “That’s what I needed to know. He’s special, my boy. All mothers say that, but in this case, it’s true. But you know that already, don’t you?” I nodded. “I’m sorry, this is not how I’d wanted to welcome anyone to our family, but… Changes are coming. I need to know he’s safe.”
I walked inside in a bit of a daze, drifting over to the kitchen as that's where the noise was coming from.
"We're running out of room in here. I sent most of the food the caterers had brought back, but still."
Hawk stood in front of the fridge, a dish in his hand, looking for a space to put it.
"Hey," Brandon said, pushing away from the sink and coming over, hands all soapy from doing the dishes. "You OK?"
"They send you guys through the gate, into... that world?"
His eyes darted to Hawk and then back again.
"It doesn't really happen—"
"But it can. If you don't toe the line? If you piss the alpha or the matriarchs off?"
"Can't be just that, love," Hawk said, coming so close, I could feel the warm length of his body behind me. "Jack'd be thrown through a million times over by this point."
"Except he's the son of the alpha. Has he got any sisters or brothers? And where are his dads?" Silence at that. "Did his dads go with Finn's?"
"It was before all of us, obviously. The nanas and the aunties don't talk about it, except in the vaguest form of a threat," Brandon said. "There was a schism of some sort, and the dissenters lost. That's all I've been able to piece together. They went through the gate, never to be heard of again."
"To that place, the one that looks like some pastoral idyll?"
"Not sure if it looks like that anymore," Hawk said. "It's only the miners who go through." I frowned slightly. I'd heard about this mine, but never seen evidence of it. "Gold's common as dirt there, just an overly soft, pretty, but useless metal. We mine it, sell it to the humans. Carefully though, we nearly crashed the market before we understood the process, apparently. But c'mon, you can't be thinking of the past on the night of taking your second mate. I made you something special, kept it to one side so that Jack, the greedy little cunt, didn’t eat it."
Hawk dug into the fridge, swiftly moving around dishes until he produced a small ramekin full of what looked like chocolate cake.
"God, is that...?" Brandon said. Hawk nodded, his smile broadening. "Jules, you're in for a treat. That's Mate's Torte. It's fucking amazing."
"Have a taste," Hawk said.
"Don't I have to wait for Finn or Slade or something?"
"He's got his own in the fridge."
"OK, well, do you guys want some?" That provoked a low moan fro
m the two of them. "What? It's just cake."
"Not just cake," Brandon said, tugging me backwards so I could feel his hard body against mine. "This shit is next level. How'd you get the recipe, Hawk?"
"My nana shared it. Kept having sons and grandsons, so no girls to pass it onto."
"I'll wash some spoons. I think they're all in the sink," Brandon said, shifting beneath me.