RYKER
One year ago.
My mother sat at her vanity brushing out her hair, and I watched her in the mirror, and I knew before she opened her mouth that something was wrong because she had brushed the same long section three times without noticing.
"Sit with me, Ryker."
I sat on the edge of her bed. She set the silver brush down and folded her hands in her lap and looked at her own reflection for a long moment before she found my eyes in the glass.
"Your father is seeing someone."
The words came out steady. That was the worst part of it. She had practiced them in her own head enough times that they had stopped breaking on the way out of her mouth.
"Her name is Freya. She came to the pack three months ago and she has not left, and your father looks at her the way he has not once looked at me in twenty-two years of being his wife."
I knew all of this, but I let her speak. Knowing that she needed somewhere to vent all that anger.
