Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder

Chapter 22: Mothers Like Ours

Chapter 22: Mothers Like Ours

Rowan

She was wet. Water dripped from her hair onto the dry, cracked earth at her feet. Her nightgown was

clinging to her skin, showing off her shapely curves in their entirety. I fought the urge to reach out and

touch her, to cover her, but Kacidra grabbed my arm and yanked me backward.

“Rowan, don’t,” kacidra said firmly, her face pale and flushed with concern.

Hanna was looking at me, her deep brown eyes wide and flaked with gold. A wave of unease washed

over me as I looked at her, the feeling cutting through the intensity of the bond we had yet to act on.

“Hanna?” Kacidra said in a tone I had never heard from her before. She looked almost motherly as she

gazed at her sister, her eyes cloudy with despair. Hanna didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on me,

reaching out her hand with her palm up toward the sky. “Don’t touch her Rowan,” Kacindra warned,

sucking in her breath as she stepped between us, taking Hanna lightly by the shoulders and turning her

around, the two of them walking slowly out of the field of solar panels and into the woods. “Come find me

later, Rowan. We need to talk!” Kacidra’s voice echoed as she disappeared from view. –

***

Maeve

Gemma moved out from behind the desk in her office, flipping through the pages of a thick, paperback

book.

“Are you.. nauseous?”

“Nope.”

“Are you… having back pain?”

“No.”

“What about food avessions?”

“Not at all.”

“Hmm…” She leaned against desk, her eyes scanning the book’s contents. It had been a week since

Aaron and I slept together in the library. I was still reeling from it, processing it. Thankfully things were

good between Aaron and me. He was attentive and playful like usual. There wasn’t a sheet of

awkwardness between us.

And, I hadn’t given Gemma the details about our night. For some reason, I was desperate to keep it to

myself, to cherish it. My heart squeezed as I sat down and looked up at the massive book she was

holding. It was about pregnancy, I realized as my eyes flitted over the cover and title that was broken up

by Gemma’s splayed fingers.

If I was pregnant, Aaron would be leaving soon. I didn’t want to even think about it. “Does your mouth

taste like metal?”

“What?”

Gemma shrugged, closing the book and setting it on her desk. “It’s obviously too early to know, right?”

“It’s only been a week since…. Well, I think I have to go in for another blood sample next week.”

“Ah, yeah. It’s too early. And they’ll probably need to send the sample to the labs at the University. I

guess we just… wait and see.” She turned toward the window, the sun reflecting off the dainty necklace

she was wearing around her neck. I tilted my head to the side to get a better look at it.

“Where did that come from?”

She reached up to touch the delicate chain, sliding her touch down to finger the oval-shaped moonstone

that was fixed in an intricate gold setting. “It was my mother’s,” she said with a soft, airy smile.

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Chapter 22: Mothers Like Ours

“I’ve never seen you wear it before. It’s beautiful!” I loved dainty jewelry, but I couldn’t be trusted to wear

it. I always snapped the chains of bracelets and necklaces and lost them, and my hands were too busy

for rings. Gemma’s necklace highlighted her slender neck, the color of the moonstone vibrant against the

creamy color of her skin.

“I never thought to wear it, honestly. It was part of her collection. It kinda… I don’t know, called to me this

morning, if that makes sense.”

I shrugged, missing my own mother suddenly. I did like to see Gemma dressing up more, though. She

had traded her simple button-down shirts and jeans for skirts and dresses, rouge on her cheeks and lips

and her hair now tied back in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. I looked down at my shorts, the same

ones I had stolen back from Aaron a few days ago, and smiled softly to myself.

Gemma was every bit a Luna. I only wished she could see it. I wished Ernest would get over the insane

notion that he was cursed so that they could be together.

“What are you up to today?” Gemma asked as she rounded her desk and sat back down, reaching into a

drawer to pull out her agenda.

I shrugged again, standing and adjusting the tight shorts. Had these actually fit Aaron better than me?

Aaron and I are going to the village for lunch. I’ll be back before dinner.”

Gemma gave me a parting smile as I left her office, closing the door behind me. Aaron had come into my

room in the early morning, waking me at the crack of dawn by throwing the curtains open and being as

loud as possible. I never woke early, but Aaron was obviously a creature of the morning, always chipper

and at his most annoying.

“I need to talk to you about something,” he had said into my ear, leaning over me to kiss me on the cheek

before I could swat him away. “Meet me at Johnny’s for lunch at noon, okay?”

***

Rowan

“She was asleep.” Kacidra poked at the fire that separated us with a stick, holding it up and examining

the flame before bringing it back down onto the ground, drawing a long black line in the dirt.

“Like, sleepwalking?”

She nodded gravely, tossing the stick in the fire and walking toward me. She sat on one of the logs,

stretching her legs out in front of her. “My mother used to do the same thing sometimes. More so before

she died. She didn’t call it sleepwalking, though. She always said it was more complicated than that. She

called it dream dancing. She said, and it sounds crazy, that she was walking the thin line between our

world and hers.”

“Hers?”

“The Moon Goddess. She controls our dreams, according to our mother. Mom made… she made

decisions about our lives based on what she saw.”

“How long has she been doing this?”

“Hanna? Since she could walk. Our mother was always so proud of it, too. They were truly bonded.

Hanna only really ever spoke to her. The rest of us were just. I don’t know. We didn’t understand them.

Even Dad didn’t understand; he was scared of it. He was scared they would hurt themselves, but my

mother encouraged it.”

“How did Hanna get out to the solar field? It’s nearly a mile-long walk-”

“She’s gone farther before.” Kacidra swallowed hard, looking out over the riverbed toward the dim, yellow

lights in the trees beyond, the lantern light from the windows in the village.

“Does she remember her dreams?” I asked, curious but also totally confused. Hanna had looked like she

was awake. She had moved like she was awake. She was standing, blinking, and breathing with effort

from the walk and the heat.

“Hanna? I don’t know. If so, she’s never told me about them. My mother.. my mother did. She told me.”

Kacidra was uneasy, almost fearful.

“Can you tell me what she saw?”

She shook her head. “I can’t describe it like she could, and it was so long ago now. I just remember a

word she often repeated

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Chapter 22: Mothers Like Ours

when she was dreaming, Leto. I don’t know what it means.”

“Leto was the Moon Goddess’s name,” I said quickly, without meaning to say it aloud. Kacidra looked up

at me expectantly, waiting for an explanation as to where I had gotten that information. “It’s not taught in

not in church and stuff. But my mom is a White Queen, She supposedly shares the blood of the Moon

Goddess.”

“Yeah, those.”

“I never understood why my mother said it, though. Why would she?”

“Maybe she was on a first-name basis with the Goddess in her dreams, or something,” I said, trying to

sound playful, but my words fell flat and serious.

A silence passed between us, broken only by the sound of the fire and the river’s roaring current behind

us.

“What do you think Hanna dreams about?” I finally asked.

Kacidra took a deep breath, giving me a defeated look. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But today was the

first time in my life I’ve heard her say anything during one of her spells.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and it was your name. Rowan. She said Rowan.”

“Well, she’s obviously dreaming of me, then.” Again I tried to tease, but my chest tightened around the

words. Kacidra was usually the one joking around. Tonight, she was stone-cold serious.

“My mother died while she was dreaming. I know Dad told you she… she got sick, but really she just

dropped onto her knees one morning and never stood back up. She was stuck in her dream. I know she

was. It was shortly after we returned from visiting your family, ten years ago or so. Tell me, did you feel

the mate bond earlier? When she came to the solar farm?”

“I guess. I mean, yeah.”

“But did you feel it, feel it?” She was looking at me earnestly, her eyes begging me to understand, which I

did. I hadn’t felt the magnetic pull. I had only caught the faintest whiff of her scent.

*No. I didn’t feel it as strongly.”

“I think that’s because she wasn’t, like, in her body,”

“Hold on now,” I said, raising my hands up to stop her. “This is getting a little… I just don’t understand

what we saw, okay? Why was she soaking wet, first of all.”

“That’s her thing when she’s dreaming. She swims.”

“Swims? Swims where?”

*The river, probably. We haven’t ever caught her doing it, but she always returns to us after a spell wet

like that*

“Is she is she okay? kacidra?” Fear gripped me, twisting painfully in my stomach as I thought of Hanna

and the far-away look in her eyes. This was my mate, after all. I suddenly realized her total avoidance of

me during my stay might have more to do with the fact that she was in a dream state rather than

rejection.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I want to believe it, but our mother was so unwell toward the end, and

she ‘dream danced infrequently. Hanna has them every day. Every single day.”

I looked into the fire, my mind doing a dance of its own. I thought coming to Red Lakes would bring me

peace and direction, a stepping stone toward my greater ambitions.

But finding my mate had thrown me for a loop. And now?

“Wouldn’t it be great to just be normal every once in a while?” I asked, glancing over at Kacidra. I had

been slowly accepting her as a friend before, and definitely liked her company, but now I had a newfound

respect for the woman.

“Yeah.. it would. But with mothers like ours, it’s damn near impossible, isn’t it?”

I nodded, smiling softly to myself. I don’t think my mom had visions. She hadn’t said she did, anyway. I’m

sure she would have told

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Chapter 22: Mothers Like Ours

1. I’m sure Dad would’ve known.

“Was your mom from Finaldi, like you all?” I asked, sitting down on the log beside her. It was dark, truly

the dead of night now. But just like in Winter Forest, the sun still hung low in the sky, casting a heavy

purple light across the sky.

She shook her head, “She wasn’t. She was from the isles, though not originally.” She made a face like

she didn’t want to say more or didn’t know the history, so I let it go.

“Really? I leaned in, intrigued that she wasn’t originally from Finaldi.

“Yeah, she came to Finaldi as a teenager; that’s where she met Dad. He was a warrior for the Alpha of

Breles. She was just a villager. Their Alpha was old-school and deeply involved in the personal lives of

his pack; he didn’t give them permission to marry, so they left and hid near the Northern Border until after

the war. That is when they began their journey here.”

Another moment of silence gripped us, and we sat close to each other in the stillness. I reached out and

took her hand in mine, squeezing it. “I want to help her. I know you do, too. What can we do?”

Kacidra looked up at me, her eyes welling with tears for a moment before she composed herself.

“Her dream journal, Rowan. We need to find it.”